C. 8.—­Whatever these may have been they did not include the financial administration of the Diocese, the general management of which was in the hands of two officers, the “Accountant of Britain” [Rationalis Summarum Britanniarum] and the “Provost of the London Treasury” [Praepositus thesaurorum Augustensium].[360] Both these were subordinates of the “Count of the Sacred Largesses” [Comes Sacrarum Largitionum], one of the greatest officers of State, corresponding to our First Lord of the Treasury, whose name reminds us that all public expenditure was supposed to be the personal benevolence of His Sacred Majesty the Emperor, and all sources of public revenue his personal property.  The Emperor, however, had actually in every province domains of his own, managed by the Count of the Privy Purse [Comes Rei Privatae], whose subordinate in Britain was entitled the “Accountant of the Privy Purse for Britain” [Rationalis Rei Privatae per Britanniam].  Both these Counts were “Illustrious” [illustres]; that is, of the highest order of the Imperial peerage below the “Right Noble” [nobilissimi] members of the Imperial Family.

C. 9.—­Such and so complete was the system of civil and military government in Roman Britain up to the very point of its sudden and utter collapse.  When the ‘Notitia’ was compiled, neither Celerinus, as he wrote, nor the officials whose functions and ranks he noted, could have dreamt that within ten short years the whole elaborate fabric would, so far as Britain was concerned, be swept away utterly and for ever.  Yet so it was.

C. 10.—­For what was left of the British Army now made a last effort to save the West for Rome, and once more set up Imperial Pretenders of its own.[361] The first two of these, Marcus and Gratian, were speedily found unequal to the post, and paid the usual penalty of such incompetence; but the third, a private soldier named Constantine, all but succeeded in emulating the triumph of his great namesake.  For four years (407-411) he was able to hold not only Britain, but Gaul and Spain also under his sceptre; and the wretched Honorius, the unworthy son and successor of Theodosius, who was cowering amid the marshes of Ravenna, and had murdered his champion Stilicho, was fain to recognize the usurper as a legitimate Augustus.  Only by treachery was he put down at last, the traitor being the commander of his British forces, Gerontius.  Both names continued for many an age favourites in British nomenclature, and both have been swept into the cycle of Arturian romance, the latter as “Geraint.”

C. 11.—­Neither Gerontius nor his soldiers ever got back to their old homes in Britain.  What became of them we do not know.  But Zosimus[362] tells us that Honorius now sent a formal rescript to the British cities abrogating the Lex Julia, which forbade civilians to carry arms, and bidding them look to their own safety.  For now the end had really come, and the Eternal City itself had been sacked by barbarian hands.  Never before and never since does history record a sacked city so mildly treated by the conquerors.  Heretics as the Visi-goths were, they never forgot that the vanquished Catholics were their fellow-Christians, and, barbarians as they were, they left an example of mercy in victory which puts to the blush much more recent Christian and civilized warfare.