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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4 by Edward Gibbon
page 21 of 952 (02%)
extraordinary fatigue was recompensed by an increase of pay and
occasional donatives. Theodoric had convinced his brave
companions, that empire must be acquired and defended by the same
arts. After his example, they strove to excel in the use, not
only of the lance and sword, the instruments of their victories,
but of the missile weapons, which they were too much inclined to
neglect; and the lively image of war was displayed in the daily
exercise and annual reviews of the Gothic cavalry. A firm though
gentle discipline imposed the habits of modesty, obedience, and
temperance; and the Goths were instructed to spare the people, to
reverence the laws, to understand the duties of civil society,
and to disclaim the barbarous license of judicial combat and
private revenge. ^32

[Footnote *: Compare Gibbon, ch. xxxvi. vol. iii. p. 459, &c. -
Manso observes that this division was conducted not in a violent
and irregular, but in a legal and orderly, manner. The
Barbarian, who could not show a title of grant from the officers
of Theodoric appointed for the purpose, or a prescriptive right
of thirty years, in case he had obtained the property before the
Ostrogothic conquest, was ejected from the estate. He conceives
that estates too small to bear division paid a third of their
produce. - Geschichte des Os Gothischen Reiches, p. 82. - M.]
[Footnote 26: Procopius, Gothic, l. i. c. i. Variarum, ii. Maffei
(Verona Illustrata, P. i. p. 228) exaggerates the injustice of
the Goths, whom he hated as an Italian noble. The plebeian
Muratori crouches under their oppression.]

[Footnote 27: Procopius, Goth. l. iii. c. 421. Ennodius
describes (p. 1612, 1613) the military arts and increasing
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