During this same period, also, the Germans increased
rapidly in numbers. Consequently it was a difficult matter for them to live by
hunting and fishing, or by such rude agriculture as their country allowed. They
could find additional land only in the fertile and well cultivated territories
of the Romans. It was this hunger for land, together with the love of fighting
and the desire for booty and adventure, which led to their migrations.
GROWING WEAKNESS OF ROME
The German inroads were neither sudden, nor unexpected,
nor new. Since the days of Marius and of Julius Caesar not a century had passed
without witnessing some dangerous movement of the northern barbarians. Until
the close of the fourth century Rome had always held their swarming hordes at
bay. Nor were the invasions which at length destroyed the empire much more
formidable than those which had been repulsed many times before. Rome fell
because she could no longer resist with her earlier power. If the barbarians
were not growing stronger, the Romans themselves were steadily growing weaker.
The form of the empire was still the same, but it had lost its vigor and its
vitality.
