United States or Guyana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


After this victory, Alaric died, and his successor, Astolphus, having married Placidia, sister of the emperors, agreed with them to go to the relief of Gaul and Spain, which provinces had been assailed by the Vandals, Burgundians, Alans, and Franks, from the causes before mentioned.

They saw before them a man somewhat above the middle height, who might have served an aspiring sculptor as a perfect model for a chieftain of old Gaul, or a dauntless Viking. His frame was firmly and powerfully built, and seemed to be exceptionally strong and muscular; yet an air of almost courtly grace pervaded his movements, making each attitude he assumed more or less picturesque.

That society, all of one piece as it was, both in England and in Gaul, was wholly Feudal, though somewhat less precisely so here than in Normandy. Men's allegiance was not given to any such vague unity as England, but to a feudal lord, in whose quarrel they were bound to fight, in whose victory they shared, and in whose defeat they suffered.

Serapion boasted of ten thousand. Altogether, so we are told, there were in the fifth century more than one hundred thousand persons in the monasteries, three-fourths of whom were men. The rule of Pachomius spread over Egypt into Syria and Palestine. It was carried by Athanasius into Italy and Gaul. It existed in various modified forms until it was supplanted by the Benedictine rule.

If the beginning of the struggle were postponed till spring, the Spanish troops of Pompeius would assume the offensive in Transalpine, and his Italian troops in Cisalpine, Gaul, and Pompeius, a match for Caesar in tactics and superior to him in experience, was a formidable antagonist in such a campaign running its regular course.

Whether there was something in those island idiosyncracies, shapeless as sea-mists, with which this story began, or whether the Roman imprint had really been lighter than in Gaul, the feudal undergrowth prevented even a full attempt to build the Civitas Dei, or ideal mediæval state. What emerged was a compromise, which men long afterwards amused themselves by calling a constitution.

The wild Gaelic hunter, located in the gloomy fastnesses of wood and morass, had little or no communication with the southern sea-margin of our isle: and when we find the south Cymry of Britain much advanced in civilisation, owing to connection with Belgic Gaul, and Phœnician colonists of Spain, and the Greek colonists of the Mediterranean, we find the tribes inhabiting the midland and northern counties still barbaric, and little advanced in the arts that make life pleasant.

Cicero, an opportunity being now afforded, again begs of that Vertico, the Gaul, whom we mentioned above, to convey back a letter to Caesar; he advises him to perform his journey warily; he writes in the letter that the enemy had departed and had turned their entire force against him.

The army of Gaul was drawn up in two lines, according to the usual practice of war; but their experienced leader, perceiving that the numbers of the Italians far exceeded his own, suddenly changed his disposition, and, reducing the second, extended the front of his first line to a just proportion with that of the enemy.

"Why have you deserted the Gallic camp!" Albinik answered not a word, but unwrapped the bloody bandage in which his arm was swathed. The Romans then saw that his left hand was cut off. The interpreter resumed: "Who has thus mutilated you?" "The Gauls." "But you are a Gaul yourself?" "Little does that matter to the Chief of the Hundred Valleys."