58 THE DECLINE AND FALL Cchap.xxxvi Decay of Odoacer was the first Barbarian who reigned in Italy, over spirft° man a people who had once asserted their just superiority above the rest of mankind. The disgrace of the Romans still excites our respectful compassion, and we fondly sympathize with the imaginary grief and indignation of their degenerate posterity. But the calamities of Italy had gradually subdued the proud consciousness of freedom and glory. In the age of Roman virtue, the provinces were subject to the arms, and the citizens to the laws, of the republic ; till those laws were subverted by civil discord, and both the city and the provinces became the servile property of a tyrant. The forms of the constitution, which alleviated or disguised their abject slavery, were abolished by time and violence; the Italians alternately lamented the presence or the absence of the sovereigns, whom they detested or despised ; and the succession of five centuries inflicted the various evils of military licence, capricious despotism, and elaborate oppression. During the same period, the Barbarians had emerged from obscurity and contempt, and the warriors of Germany and Scythia were introduced into the provinces, as the servants, the allies, and at length the masters, of the Romans, whom they insulted or protected. The hatred of the people was suppressed by fear ; they respected the spirit and splendour of the martial chiefs «who were invested with the honours of the empire ; and the fate of Rome had long de- pended on the sword of those formidable strangers. The stern Ricimer, who trampled on the ruins of Italy, had exercised the power, without assuming the title, of a king; and the patient Romans were insensibly prepared to acknowledge the royalty of Odoacer and his Barbaric successors, character The King of Italy was not unworthy of the high station to of odoacer. which his valour and fortune had exalted him; his savage manners were polished by the habits of conversation ; and he respected, though a conqueror and a Barbarian, the institu- tions, and even the prejudices, of his subjects. After an interval of seven years, Odoacer restored the consulship of the West. For himself, he modestly, or proudly, declined an original life by Eugippius. The narrative of the last migration of Severinus to Naples is likewise an authentic pieoe. [It has been conjectured by Hodgkin (Italy and her Invaders, iii. 2 , p. 172) that tho Neapolitan lady (Barbaria) was the mother of Augustulus.]
