Thus the European plain-dwellers, though barbarians, were considerably more civilized or less uncivilized than were the Asiatics. They had the characteristics of the plain-dwellers rather less developed; they were to a slightly greater extent attached to the soil and the less inclined to migrate. As might be imagined, it is the Europeans of whom in early times we hear somewhat the more, but the probability is that in most cases the incursions of these hosts were due rather to the disturb ances of the Asiatic nomads who were pressing on their rear than to any overwhelming desire of migration which possessed themselves.
No tribe of these nomads had very great numbers. Though organization of a kind was necessary for its very existence, it is little likely that a moving band would be so highly organized as to be able to include many in dividuals without some confusion, while there would be a great advantage in having to provide pasture for only comparatively small herds of those animals on which their lives depended. But though any tribe might be small it would usually exceed the numbers of settled people at the point at which it had arrived : these settled peoples would be forced to give way and press in turn on others who would retire before the attack. Thus, just in proportion as these tribes were true no mads, they at once caused more destruction of settled peoples and their organization, and also left little mark on the further history. They passed over the land like a whirlwind and vanished.
Remembering all these results of the geographical conditions, look now at the details of the history.
Before the time of Rome we have only dim ideas of the effects these peoples had on the history of civilized lands. We hear, indeed, of mysterious northern tribes who were looked on with fear by all the civilized peoples of ancient time, by Assyrians and Persians and Greeks alike.
Rome, during the centuries of her strength, held the barbarians beyond the rivers, but when Rome split in two, when the ancient city of Rome gave place to Constantinople, tribes passed into all the lands that owed allegiance to her rule, partly forced by the move ments of the utter barbarians, partly attracted by hope of plunder.
As was natural, the Germanic tribes came first Chatti and Allemanni, Goths and Vandals : it was the intrusion of those tribes that finally broke up the western power of Rome. They set up kingdoms within the Roman Empire, at first owing a nominal allegiance to a Roman head, but gradually loosening the ties which bound the whole together.
In the third century came the Frankish tribes bringing discord for a time to Italy and Spain, but shortly dis appearing among the rest of the peoples. Whether or
not these first comers were greatly affected by the pres sures from the plain we can only surmise, but we know that when in the end of the fourth century the Goths, who had appeared on the lower Danube a century before, began to press on Franks, Germans and Romans, they in their turn were pressed on by the far more terrible Huns. In the beginning of the fifth century the Goths under Alaric, nominally upholding law and order, in vaded Italy, and Rome was sacked. When Alaric died, however, the respect for the power of Rome was still so great that his successor withdrew to Southern Gaul and Northern Spain, setting up a kingdom which lasted for three centuries, but recognizing the authority of Rome so long as any shadow of authority remained in the imperial city.
In the middle of the fifth century the Huns under Attila—the " Scourge of God "—also came from the east, and penetrated as far as the centre of what is now France ere they received a check in one of the great battles of the world at Chalons.
Again, twenty-five years later, another wave of Goths came out of the east and set up in Italy a kingdom of their own on the ruins of the Roman power' In the sixth century Slavonic peoples appeared on the borders of the Eastern Empire, and scattered over all the lands northward to the Baltic. They had scarce appeared when the Avars, the most dangerous of all the invaders and ravagers of imperial territory, emerged from the vast distances beyond. The Germanic settlements on the Danube were checked, and the tribe known to history as the Lombards driven from their homes. These were in their turn forced to invade Italy, where they set up a kingdom, and gave their name to the plain between the Alps and the northern Apennines— the plain of Lombardy. The Avars also, by occupying the plain of Hungary and forming the beginnings of a kingdom that lasted till the ninth century, drove as it were a wedge between the northern and the southern Slays. The latter moved south of the Danube within the Empire, and acted as a defence against more dangerous foes still. This was the beginning of the series of small Slavonic states which, now free, now under the lordship of a stronger power, have remained to this day. Serbia, Croatia, Carinthia, Dalmatia, all owe their origin, as lands inhabited by more or less permanent communities, to the settlements of the Slays in the seventh century.