Founded upon a principle which appeals to our modern
respect for nationality, this partition only gave a legal form to a schism
which had been long in preparation. But in one respect it was disastrous. The defence
of the Danube frontier was divided between the two governments; and that of the
East, rating the impoverished Balkan peninsula as of secondary importance, and
envisaging the problem from a wholly selfish point of view, left unguarded the
great highways leading from the Danube into Italy. Stilicho, the great general
who administered the West in the name of Honorius, ventured to meet this danger
by intervening in the peninsula, and even in the political intrigues of
Constantinople. He only succeeded in winning a precarious alliance with the
Visigoths and the permanent ill-will of the Eastern Empire. He was left to deal
single-handed with the first invaders of Italy; and the estrangement of the two
imperial courts persisted after his untimely fall. The Western Empire, betrayed
by the one possible ally, collapsed under the strain of simultaneous attacks
along the whole line of the European frontier.
It has been alleged that the Roman armies were neither so
robust nor so well disciplined in the fifth century as they had been in an
earlier age. However this may be, they could still give a good account of themselves
when matched on equal terms with the most warlike of the barbarians. It was in
patriotism and in numbers, rather than in professional efficiency, that they
failed when put to the supreme test.
