If Rome Hadn't Fallen

by Timothy Venning

  On an archaeological level beyond the Roman frontier, there is evidence of elite, maybe royal, residences in fourth century tribal territory lacking in earlier centuries, such as Urach, in Alemmanic territory. New wealth, and goods from the Empire, was clearly concentrated in a few hands, and status could be hereditary. Arguably, this posed an extra danger to the Empire that had been absent in the first or second centuries, as such leaders could look to war with Rome to boost their reputation and leadership. An agricultural revolution of greater arable yields has also been traced, as seen in the 1960s at the excavated fourth century settlements of Feddersen Wierde (Germany) and Wijster (Netherlands)27. Did this produce greater survival rates for the populace and a hunger for lands, leading to more pressure on the Empire?

  All this is suggestive of a probability of extra problems for the Roman frontier and new aggression by an emerging royal elite of Germanic warleaders. But their tribes’ leadership in the fourth century was multiple, even when attacking the Empire (355–6 on the Rhine and 376–8 on the Danube). Individual kingship only emerges in the fifth century, among peoples traversing or settling in the Empire, and did not emerge among the fifth century Ripuarian Franks who were not in contact with Rome. Would these dynasties have emerged but for a permanent military confrontation with or settlement within the Empire?

  Less successful warbands broke up and less successful tribes were amalgamated into their rivals’ kingdoms; the fifth century is littered with the names of leaders without their own tribal following (e.g. Odovocar) and tribes who disappeared from history (e.g. the Heruls). In Gaul, the Merovingian dynasty originally only ruled a small section of the Frankish peoples, based around Tournai in Belgium in the mid-fifth century. Many other Frankish groups (e.g. the Ripuarians on the Rhine) and their kings fell victim to Clovis and his sons after 481.28

  Indeed, it should be recognised that the empire of Attila the Hun, the supreme charismatic non-Roman leader and loot-plunderer whose state collapsed after his death, was not a coherent grouping of Huns alone. The latter were described by contemporaries as Mongolian in feature, attacked the Goths on the Ukrianian steppes in the 370s from the East, and were assumed to be unholy savages (the ‘scourge of God’) by fifth century writers from their appearance and ferocity. Ammianus in 376 already recognised them as a distinct, aggressive, non-Germanic people relying on cavalry archers not the usual foot-soldiers.29 Attila himself seems to have turned on violence as a matter of policy, and received the East Roman embassy of Priscus in 449 coolly enough despite a recent Roman assassination-plot. But the state created by Attila from the Rhine to the steppes in the 430s and 440s consisted of Germanic tribes he had subdued as much as his own Mongolian steppe horsemen, and many of them revolted and resumed their tribal identity in 454. Other nomadic states generally referred to as Hunnic existed on the steppes and raided the Balkans through the later fifth century and into the sixth century, but ethnically are now known as proto-Bulgar. It is possible that their newly sedentary settlement on the Hungarian plain after 400 speeded up the Huns’ centralization into a state, changing their manner of leadership.

  476 – a convenient but misleading date?

  The end of the Western Empire is conventionally dated at 476 when the final Emperor exercising authority in Italy, Romulus ‘Augustulus’, was deposed; but in fact there had been a vacancy in a resident Emperor in the region in the 460s after the death of the shadowy Libius Severus in 465; commander-inchief Ricimer ruled alone, recognising the Eastern Emperor as his sovereign. The interregnum ended with the arrival of Anthemius with an army from the East in 467. After the deposition of Romulus in 476 the Germanic successor- state of Odovacer recognised the titular authority of the Eastern Emperor Zeno, a return to the situation of 465–7, not an innovation. It turned out to be permanent, with the regalia sent to Zeno in Constantinople, but he could have named a new Emperor as Leo I had done in 467.

  Indeed, the real authority of a Roman Emperor, sitting in Constantinople, was restored to Italy, North Africa, and even part of Spain in the 530s-550s by Justinian’s generals and did not end in Rome itself until the eighth century. Ravenna, seat of Eastern Roman power in Italy, did not fall to the Germans until 751. The last Eastern Emperor to visit Rome was Constans II in 663, and he was resident for some years in Sicily not Constantinople. The Eastern Emperors regarded themselves as fully Roman despite residing in a Greek city on the Bosphorus and from the early seventh century using Greek as the official language of State, the modern term ‘Byzantine’ for the Eastern Empire is a seventeenth century invention.30 In parts of southern Italy, the Eastern government exercised authority until the Norman conquest in 1071.

  The notion of a Western Empire falling and the creation of a medieval, post-Roman world in 476 would have seemed inaccurate to its contemporaries. As far as Justinian, ruling from the Cadiz area across the Mediterranean world to the Euphrates, and his heirs were concerned the Roman Empire was still functioning. It was indeed as a Roman Emperor of the ‘Romaoi’ that Constantine XI fell defending the ramparts of Constantinople against the Ottoman Turks on 29 May 1453; that date was the end of the Roman Empire. The term ‘Rumelia’ for the ex-Roman Balkans continued to be used by the Ottoman state, and the restored state of Greece provocatively numbered its first King Constantine (reigned 1913–17, 1920–2) as ‘XII’ not ‘I’.

  The timing of the end of Rome was thus seen as different in the East than in the West. And other questions need to be asked about the undoubted end of a separate Imperial-led governmental structure in the West in the 470s. How much did the contemporary chroniclers exaggerate the extent of disruption to ordinary life in the Western provinces caused by the invasions? Would the post-378 Germanic invasions, whose numerical scope has been revised downwards in recent decades, have occurred but for a lapse in strong, unified Roman leadership? And were they bound to lead to the collapse of Imperial authority across the entire Western empire?

  For example, the shocking sack of Rome by Alaric’s Goths in August 410 was traumatic but not politically decisive; it was followed by a revival in Imperial power in the central lands of the West under strong leadership by Constantius III in the later 410s. He tackled the Germans within the frontier as well as assorted Roman pretenders systematically, and restored a measure of peace by 418, only to die within months of gaining the co-emperorship. Britain, the Rhine frontier, parts of Gaul and Spain, and from the later 420s North Africa were already or subsequently lost, but after a bout of civil war unity was restored by new Imperial commander-in-chief Aetius from 433–54. He preserved Rome’s military predominance over its allies in Gaul and Spain, secured Eastern help to tackle Gaiseric, and fought off Attila the Hun (with Gothic help) in 451. Usefully, he had once lived among the Huns as an exile and understood ‘barbarians’ better than many haughty Roman aristocrats. The failure of Attila’s invasion of Italy in 452, probably due to plague as he did not suffer military defeat, and his death in 453, which caused his empire (a tribal confederation owing personal allegiance to one war-leader) to collapse seemed to leave the Western Empire intact within its shrunken post-420s borders.

  Apart from Gaiseric the Vandal and his large Mediterranean fleet the Western Empire faced no serious military challenge, and even after Gaiseric had sacked Rome in 455 his realm came close to defeat by a massive Eastern Roman naval attack in 468. As far as military collapse was concerned, was the irreversible destruction of the Empire only dateable to 455 or 468? Even after that, Odovacar could have named a new puppet-emperor in 476 and kept the ‘kingdom of Italy’ in being under a titular Emperor until he was overthrown by Theodoric in 491–3.

  A vicious circle of gradual collapse?

  The final collapse of Imperial power outside Italy, and the reduction of the tax-starved government to being the victim of its German-dominated armies, only followed the murders of Aetius in 454 and his killer, weak Emperor Valentinian III, in 455. Even after the sack of Rome by Gaiseric’s Vandals later in 455 one competent military le
ader, Emperor Majorian, could revive Roman power to a limited extent in its central lands in 457–62. The East brought a new Emperor (Anthemius) and major military aid in 467–8, and its incompetent commander’s defeat in North Africa was arguably the final blow to the Empire’s security as a viable government controlling Italy and southern Gaul.31 Even after that, the over-powerful German military commanders at the Western court (Ricimer and then Gundobad) controlled Italy and kept up a series of puppet-emperors, a regime that could have survived for decades.

  The decline of the central government’s control of its provinces was thus sporadic, and could be (temporarily) reversed by determined action by Constantius, Aetius, and Majorian; but each new crisis led to further aggression by its enemies against a state whose ability to fight back was weakening. It led to a vicious circle through the years 395–476; each loss of extra provinces and revenues weakened the Empire further, thus emboldening its ambitious neighbours to attack again. And on each occasion it was less likely to fight back successfully. It is no coincidence that the death of Theodosius in 395 was followed by Alaric revolting in the Balkans and playing off East against West. The murder of generalissimo Stilicho in 408 led to Alaric attacking Rome, the deaths of Constantius and Emperor Honorius, both in 421, led to civil war, and the Vandal attack on Africa, and the murders of 454–5 led to Gaiseric’s attack on Rome.

  Potential alternatives and the crucial moments of Roman collapse

  The proposal considered is that a crucial preservation of strong leadership in the later fourth and early-mid fifth centuries in particular should have seen off the challenges of the Germanic peoples to the unity of the state. Outlying provinces and their resources might have fallen away under the pressures from outside from around 395, but the core Empire would have remained intact if there had been domestic stability and an unbroken run of powerful military leaders from Theodosius the Great to Stilicho to Constantius III to Aetius to the latter’s heirs (e.g. Majorian). The collapse of the Western Empire was brought about by a series of internal crises and invasions from the death of Theodosius, with the first establishment of an autonomous German ‘federate’ kingdom within Roman borders (382) by the Goths in Thrace being followed by its successful attacks on both East and West, crucially at odds with each other at the time, from 395 to 410.

  It is of paramount importance to remember that in the crisis of 395–7, when Alaric roamed at will across Greece and the south-western Balkans, the Western commander-in-chief Stilicho (regent for Theodosius’ younger son Honorius), a Vandal by birth, so looked down on by aristocratic Romans, brought aid to the East but was not trusted by their government. He was suspected of wanting to rule the East as well, Honorius’ elder brother Arcadius being mentally feeble and a puppet of his ministers. His panegyricist Claudian referred to him as entrusted with the regency of both Empires by his late master Theodosius I, a claim evidently not accepted by Rufinus who Stilicho’s German allies in the Eastern army then killed in late 395 after returning from service with Stilicho. He was also suspected of not destroying Alaric in Greece while he had the chance in order to use him as a military weapon against the East. Alaric’s army was able to survive a halfhearted Roman blockade in Epirus and secure another grant of a ‘federate’ state on the Eastern-Western borders. From this vantage point Alaric was able to invade the West in 402, and despite defeating him at Pollentia near Milan Stilicho failed to destroy him again. But had Stilicho or a competent Eastern general cornered and destroyed Alaric’s men, most obviously during the time they were trapped in Epirus, the Gothic survivors would have been reintegrated under direct Roman military command or driven into flight to the Danube. The Gothic troops of Gainas in the East met this fate in 400, after their leader and his closest officers were killed in a coup in Constantinople. Italy would then have been safe from the attacks that Alaric was to launch from Illyria in 402 and 408.

  Alaric’s survival as a major military threat to East and West through the period 395–408 was fortuitous and partly due to internal Roman politics, namely Stilicho’s ambitions to rule the East; and when Arcadius died in 408 Stilicho apparently preferred to plan taking over the Eastern regency for Theodosius II to using the Western army against the invading Germans in Gaul. This gave the latter a breathing-space to spread further afield, whereas in the 270s and 350s the Empire had acted swiftly to contain them. In 407 Stilicho was planning some sort of move on Eastern-held Illyricum and Epirus with Alaric, not sending troops north to Gaul. Indeed, court resentment at Stilicho’s behaviour was stirred up by the courtier Olympius and caused the killing of him and his military partisans, who would have included quite a few competent officers in a violent purge in August 408.

  This then left the West with a demoralised and faction-ridden army to face Alaric’s next attack, while the lack of state help to Gaul had led to the commander of Britain taking charge of the defence and proclaiming himself Emperor (Constantine III). The resulting civil war paralysed the West further, Alaric’s success in blackmailing the Western government into paying him off in 408–9 and then sacking Rome and ravaging Italy in 410 thus owed much to internal Roman politics not inevitable German military superiority. The West recovered after 410 under a competent new general, the later Constantius III, but the Goths under Alaric’s heirs had to be bought off with another ‘federate’ state (in Aquitaine) and the Vandals and other tribes remained at large in Spain. After another Western Roman civil war in 423–5 the Vandals were able to move on into Africa and revive the old threat of a naval power based at Carthage to Italy. Had there been no civil war then due to Constantius III not dying in 421, he would have been at liberty to attack the Vandals in the rear in Spain or even also reinforce Africa when it was attacked. The actual course of events saw the West’s two post-425 generals, Aetius and Boniface, at loggerheads in these years to the detriment of any counter-attack.

  The major Germanic invasion-crisis on the Rhine of 406–7 was not the first such attack, and though its scale is unclear it involved several peoples and probably tens of thousands of fighting men. There were enough of them to spread out across Gaul and to move into northern Spain as mercenaries hired by Constantine III’s ex-general Gerontius and divide the peninsula up. Large-scale German invasions had been halted by the Emperor Probus in 276–7 and by Constantius II’s nephew, the ‘Caesar’ Julian, in 355–6. But this time Roman weakness enabled the invaders to remain at large within the Empire thereafter. The gradual loss of outlying provinces to the invaders meant loss of their tax revenues and a spiral of diminishing Roman resources, out-of-control Germanic kingdoms facing a weakening Imperial army, though strong leadership under Constantius III and Aetius delayed military-political collapse until 455, and a situation where each barbarian success emboldened more ambitious war-leaders to defy the Empire.

  As of circa 420 the Empire had been stabilised by Constantius III, though analysis of the ‘Notitia Dignitatum’ indicates that 97 of the West’s 181 regiments had been raised since 395 and only 84 ‘originals’ from the C4th survived – an indication of disruption to half the army. The Rhine was worst hit. This stabilisation was then hit by the deaths of Constantius and Honorius, and the struggle between Aetius and Boniface to be Western commander-in-chief in the late 420s – leading to the Vandals invading Africa. The latter could not be expelled, and delivered the devastating blows of seizure or Rome’s grain-supplies and in 455 the second sack of the city. After Gaiseric’s attack, the new Emperor Avitus had to be provided by the Goths and his successor Majorian was chosen by the German general Ricimer – both signs of the West’s catastrophic decline in 454–5 (when it finally lost control of central and northern Gaul). Anarchy undermined trade and security, the State lost its ability to impose order outside Italy, and by the 460s the government was at the mercy of its German allies and riven by coups. Much of this could have been averted with strong and continuous Roman leadership, which was lacking at court for most of the period after 395.

  This was not inevitabl
e. Theodosius the Great, for example, died aged 47 and could easily have survived for another decade or two as sole ruler of the Empire. Given his military successes against the Goths (limited) in 379–81 and Western Roman rivals in 388 and 394, he was unlikely to have faced or been defeated by a challenge under Alaric (his loyal subordinate as of 394). Alaric or his followers may have revolted against Theodosius – suspected of exposing them to heavy losses in battle deliberately in 394 – in any case. But victory was unlikely. A competent military leader of the East in 395–7 could have defeated Alaric, which Stilicho failed to do; but the Empire had a feeble young ruler who never left his capital and a circle of vicious, feuding ministers like Rufinus (renownedly corrupt) and the eunuch chamberlain Eutropius. Stilicho’s murder and the Western military collapse in 408 owed much to the distraction of the Eastern crisis; though he might not have tackled the Germans in Gaul himself if he was free (to avoid being undermined at Court in his absence) he could have sent a capable subordinate.

  The Western civil war of 407–12 was thus avoidable, and if Constantius III had not died in 421 he would have succeeded his brother-in-law Honorius in 423 and the West avoided a civil war then. Constantius was probably under fifty when he died; he could easily have ruled the West as ‘stand-in’ for his son Valentinian III into the 440s. A long-lived Theodosius, Stilicho, or Constantius would still have had to face the threat from the Huns on the steppes, which developed into a new ‘empire’ of anti-Roman tribes raiding the Empire in the 430s independent of Roman politics. But the West would not have lost control of the manpower or taxes of Britain, parts of Gaul and Spain, and later North Africa, and would have been in a much stronger position by the 450s.