If Rome Hadn't Fallen

by Timothy Venning

  Assuming Justinian and his general Belisarius had succeeded in invading the West, there would have been one Empire as last seen under Theodosius I in 394–5. The Imperial writ would have run from the upper Euphrates and upper Nile valleys to Southern Gaul and the Straits of Gibraltar, with or without a surviving Rhine frontier (which even if it had not been breached in 406 could have fallen to a migration of refugees from Attila’s empire in the 430s). The West could then have been given to a separate ruler in a new division of power in the later sixth century, as appears to have been considered as an option in real life by Tiberius II in 582. At the time, the possible division of power between Tiberius’ son-in-law Maurice (East) and Germanus Postumus (West) would have left a weakened West struggling to hold back the Lombards in an Italy ravaged by Gothic wars.18 But there could have been been no Gothic occupation of Italy in 493 (or any grant of land to Germans in 476), or a more decisive victory for the East by 540 without Totila’s subsequent fight-back. In these scenarios, Italy would have been free from the presence of German settlers with homes to defend against the Eastern troops and a ruinous war would not have occurred.

  Even in the circumstances of real-life 540, the East had driven the Goths back into the Po valley and their demoralised remnants were reduced to inviting Belisarius (evidently admired as a chivalrous foe) to become their ruler. (This did not do his reputation any good with his suspicious Emperor.) The Goths’ initially successful recovery in the early 540s was partly due to the capable Totila taking on the command; partly due to Justinian’s recall of Belisarius and many of his soldiers, and partly due to Roman manpower losses in the devastating plague of 542–3. The Persian attack on Syria and sack of Antioch made the recalls probable, and the plague meant that Justinian could not send an adequate army West until his nephew Germanus’ mission in 550 (aborted by the general’s death).19 Justinian, like George Bush in Iraq in 2003, seems to have been too eager to proclaim ‘mission accomplished’ and not alert to the possibility of revolt. But what if Totila had been won over or killed quickly, or Belisarius had not been recalled? Italy would have been in a far better condition to meet any new invasions in the later sixth century, though still denuded of manpower if the plague of 542 had occurred. As it was, the land had already been ruined by decades of Romans and Goths fighting over it before the Lombards moved in, making conquest easier, and Justinian’s extortionate tax demands did not help agricultural recovery either.

  The survival of the Western Empire during 476–535 would have provided a ‘comitatus’ to be incorporated into Justinian’s army at the reconquest, and a stronger force available to hold back the Lombards. The Western Empire, possibly incorporating southern Gaul and Spain as well as Berber-raided North Africa, should have survived as a viable political entity into the seventh century. Crucially, providing there were good relations with the current Eastern Emperor it would have been able to send him troops to fight the Persian incursions in the 610s, and later to fight the Arabs. But if the plague of 542 had carried off up to half the population, as estimated by Procopius, military manpower (and tax revenues to hire troops from outside the Empire) would have been smaller in the later sixth century than in the fourth and fifth. The military challenges from the new nomad threat, the Avar empire (centred in the Hungarian basin and Wallachia like Attila’s), and the mass-movements of its fleeing enemies (e.g. the Lombards) would have prevented a peaceful and prosperous future for the united or divided Empire of the period 570–600.

  Part II

  Consequences

  Chapter 4

  Western Empire:

  What Would Have Been the Likely

  Developments for the West, the British Isles,

  the Vikings, and North-Eastern Germany had

  One of the Foregoing Scenarios Occurred?

  It is reasonable to speculate on the further unfolding of the history of the Weastern Empire as follows, bearing in mind the actual developments of society in the unconquered East and in the more urbanised areas of the West that survived under Germanic rule.

  A kingdom of Britain

  Decline in Roman military manpower in Britain in the later fourth century is probable, with many troops accompanying rebel Emperor Magnus Maximus to Gaul in 383. Indeed, later legend asserted that he had been the final Roman Emperor to rule in Britain rather than rebel Constantine III (who took a second army to Gaul in 407). Maximus allegedly settled a large force of British troops in Armorica, modern Brittany, led by his British wife Helen’s kinsmen. It is not clear how many troops remained in Britain after 383, but the frontier ‘limitanei’ forts on Hadrian’s Wall and anti-piracy forts in Yorkshire appear to have been garrisoned into the 390s. The departure of troops under Constantine III to fight the invading Germans in Gaul in 407 was a result of the central authorities in Ravenna failing to end an army to do so, as they had done in similar circumstances in the mid-270s and 350s. But a similar crisis leading to Roman troops abandoning Britain at a later date was probable, even had a competent Emperor (for instance a surviving Theodosius I) not needed to use British troops against the invaders of Gaul after 406. By the early 440s more tribes were moving into Gaul in flight from Attila, such as the Burgundians.

  Assuming that the Empire had to withdraw troops and/or authority from Britain in the early fifth century to concentrate resources in Gaul, there would have been independent authorities in the island. Another Germanic crossing of the Rhine could still have required the Empire to order most of its garrisons in Britain to intervene, as the nearest large army, had the central government been preoccupied. Much is uncertain about numbers and precise tribal identities in the chaos of the early fifth century, but it is logical to assume that had aggressive and ambitious tribes (or tribal coalitions) like the Vandals been held back from crossing the Rhine in 406 the threat from the Huns would have led to a later attempt. The Western Roman civil war of 423–5 was an obvious opportunity to exploit military weakness, though that occurrence would not have taken place had the militarily capable co-Emperor Constantius III not died young in 421. Alternatively, a usurper in Britain could have taken most of his troops abroad and left the island’s provinces under-manned; Constantine the Great had launched his Imperial career from Britain in 306 and Magnus Maximus followed suit less successfully in 383. A rebel Emperor could have taken over Britain and defied the government successfully with his fleet, as Carausius did in 287–93.

  Any of these events would thus have led to the British provinces breaking away from central control or being abandoned. But this did not entail an end to ‘Roman’ government in Britain. Roman-style civic institutions, with or without the villa economy, seems to have continued until the major Saxon attacks of the 440s (c.f. the Life of St. Germanus on the situation circa 429).1 The defeat of the German invasion of Gaul from 406, leaving the roads of Gaul more settled for trade and a Roman army on the Rhine in need of British corn, should indeed have aided the survival of the Late Roman economy and farming-system in fifth century Britain. The new states that emerged in post-Roman Britain, some at least dynastically based kingdoms in the tribal areas of the west and north, would still have been threatened by invaders in any scenario and had limited economic and military resources. Once the threat of Attila to the Empire passed around 453, Rome would have been able to lend assistance but it is not likely that any massive diversion of troops for a reconquest would have been seen as desirable.

  It is debateable to what extent any British over-kingship in the fifth century owes more to medieval legend than reality. It is now argued that the stories of a powerful over-king during the post-Roman period that were current in the time of the first Welsh historian, Bishop Nennius of Gwynedd (fl. circa 829), were composed with a view to inspiring contemporaries about a British revival that the Bishop’s employer King Merfyn ‘Frych’ could lead. The legends of ‘Vortigern’, apparently the ancestor of the Kings of Powys in central Wales and the great war-leader ‘Arthur’ had a contemporary, ninth century purpose and should n
ot be taken as an accurate record.2 The history of a powerful fifth century British kingship written in the 1130s by Geoffrey of Monmouth was certainly couched in contemporary, twelfth century terms that reflected Anglo-Norman kingship and its international pretensions, and is highly unreliable. But it is clear from the nearest contemporary writer, the monastic controversialist Gildas in the 540s, that the British civil and military authorities after 410 had fought back against the Saxons with initial success, which would suggest a unified command.3

  Given the structure of Late Roman governance and military command (the latter is preserved in the Notitia Dignitatum of circa 400), there was a field-army under a ‘Count’ operating in Britain. Most of the troops seem to have left the island with the pretender Constantine III to fight in Gaul in 407, but the command structure could well have been re-created after 410 to co-ordinate resistance. Some modern historians, following Robin Collingwood, have argued that Arthur or his predecessor Ambrosius Aurelianus were Counts of Britain, utilising late Roman military structures.4 Novelist Rosemary Sutcliff duly used this idea.

  According to Welsh tradition by the ninth or tenth centuries, the elusive ruler Constantine, possibly Custennin ‘Fendigaid’ (‘the Blessed’), who ruled before Vortigern, may have been called in from the expatriate British military settlements placed in Armorica under Emperor Maximus in the 380s. He could have been a son of Maximus, who had commanded in Britain before his usurpation in 383, or else a descendant of Maximus’ British brother-inlaw Conan Meriadawc of Armorica. In 1284 the conqueror of Gwynedd, Edward I, was shown the supposed tomb of Constantine, as son of Maximus, at Caernarfon – a late Roman military fortress in Gwynedd linked to Maximus in the Welsh poem ‘The Dream of Macsen Wledig’. The later Welsh genealogies placed Maximus, then a famous figure of legend as ‘Macsen Wledig’ (who starred in the twelfth century literary collection later known as the ‘Mabinogion’), at the head of several major dynastic lines including Powys and Morgannwg-Glamorgan.5 He was thus an important source of legitimacy to later British-Welsh royal court propagandists.

  This may be due to later attempts to glorify the ancestry of important dynasties, but might genuinely reflect a real-life fifth century political role held by his Imperial descendants like Constantine. Some sort of supreme authority over parts of southern Britain seems to have been wielded by the elusive Vortigern (as indicated by his name, which means ‘overlord’), Maximus’ son-in-law, before the Saxon revolt which the Gallic Chronicle dates to 442; he and his Council called in Saxon mercenaries to fight the Picts and granted them land in the traditional Late Roman manner for ‘federate’ allies.6 After Vortigern’s overthrow leadership of the struggle against the Saxons passed to the ‘last of the Romans’, Ambrosius Aurelianus, of a noble Roman family wearing the ‘purple’ (would that have been consular or Imperial?) in the 470s or 480s (as stated by Gildas in De Excidio Britanniae in the 540s).7

  The existence of a central military command for Ambrosius’ fight against the Saxons has sometimes been linked to the survival of the earlier Roman office of Count of Britain and of a Romanised cavalry force derived from the late Roman military tradition. Cavalry would have given the British the ability to move quickly around the country on the Roman road network, as has been implied from the wide ranging placing of the elusive Twelve Battles which Nennius ascribes to Arthur, and given them a military advantage over Saxon infantry. In fact the said battles may only have been ascribed to one man in later centuries, perhaps by ninth century mythographers. It is unclear if the office of ‘Count’ of Britain, or a similar command on the socalled Saxon Shore of southeast Britain centred on its fortresses, existed by around 400. The theory that the chain of fortresses from Portchester to Brancaster were the centre of a coherent, long-lasting Roman defensive network is also now in dispute; if they were military bases, where were their barracks? It has been suggested that the forts were probably more collection points for corn supplies en route to the Rhine army than major centres of troop deployment.8 It is more likely that they were mainly military. Whatever the true nature of the alleged network of Saxon Shore forts and the extent of Germanic raiding, the latter was evidently a major problem by the later fourth century, as were the descents of the Picts from modern Scotland and the Irish.

  A triple attack and major destruction in 367–8 is testified to by Ammianus Marcellinus, and the few written sources for the early fifth century agree that the end of direct Roman rule in 410 was followed by another major attack which the Britons managed to fight off themselves.9 The local authorities who took action to raise troops, mentioned by Gildas around 540, would have been the civic councils of the major towns (principally the five ‘coloniae’) and presumably the senior civil servants of the five Roman provinces in Britain.

  The names of the final civil governors (‘praeses’) and their military counterparts (‘duces’) in each of the five are unknown, but the complicated structure of late Roman civil and military governance would not have collapsed overnight and experienced officials and officers would have been available for the first years of independence. Given the pattern of urban and rural settlement, with farms rather than Italian-style villas predominant outside the South and Midlands and most towns in the lowland areas, it would seem likely that Roman cultural and economic life was essentially a phenomenon of the south and east, with traditional tribal ‘Celtic’ lifestyles predominant outside these areas. Even in this area pre-Roman tribal administrative terminology survived, e.g the name of the Cantii in Kent, and may underlie the geographical limits of later Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (e.g. Sussex as continuing the ‘Regni’, Wessex the ‘Belgae’ or ‘Atrebates’, and East Anglia the ‘Iceni’). Does this mean a survival of a sense of regional tribal identity by the local Romano-British landowners over 367 years of Roman rule, ready to emerge in 410?10 Did they even have identifiable aristocracies tracing their lineage to the conquered nobles of the first century AD? The pre-Roman names certainly survived in Roman Gaul, frozen into neat Roman administrative districts.

  The division of Britain into two provinces, Northwest and Southeast, with capitals at London and York, by Septimius Severus, probably reflects the existence of a civil, romanised area and a military, tribalised zone. Noticeably, almost all the known post-Roman British kingdoms of the fifth century emerged in the latter; the Southern kingdom of Dumnonia, in Devon and Cornwall, had a non-Roman ‘Celtic’ pattern of farming.)

  Continuing Roman authority in Northern Gaul through the fifth century would have been a source of backing to the post-Roman civil and military leadership, and possibly in the real-life chaos of post-406 Gaul the return of some degree of order after 418 may have resulted in a degree of Roman authority in or assistance to the more romanised areas of Southern Britain for a decade or so. (The term Celtic should be taken as referring to the indigenous pre-Roman Britons; the notion of a distinct culture or race’ is more contentious. The contemporary useage would have been ‘Britanni’; the term ‘Celt’ for Britons was invented by Edward Lhuyd circa.1690).11

  There also appears to have been Germanic settlement in southeast Britain by the early fifth century, near towns and in undefended villages so by arrangement with the residents. This has been interpreted as a sign of Germanic ‘federates’ settled in Britain before the end of Roman rule, possibly to help defend the coast against other raiders from the Continent or seaborne Pictish and Irish raids. Many German artefacts have been found in the region near the late Roman Saxon Shore forts from Kent to Norfolk, leading to assumptions that the owners were German troops and their families based at these places. However, one modern theory prefers the idea that the presence of such Germanic artefacts need not mean German residents brought over from the Continent, only a shift in emphasis in trade from an insecure Roman Gaul to the Germanic lands, which brought in German goods. A change in imports and fashion, making Saxon ornaments desirable objects that the rich would then bury in their graves, is thus the explanation for the arrival of such items – not a mass-inva
sion of landhungry Germans.12 But the physical presence of at least some Germans is more logical, although Gildas’ ravings about massacres in mid-fifth Britain are dubious. If most post-Roman farms were left empty for new settlers as a result of Germanic attacks, why does the recently analysed vegetation record show no break in usage of the fields?13

  If the Empire had still been extant and ruling in Gaul through the fifth and sixth centuries, Roman influence on terminology, military tactics, and institutions in Britain should have been much greater than in reality and a pro-Roman leadership in the campaigns against Saxons and Irish raiders would have been probable. In real life, by the 460s the only surviving Roman authority in nearby Northern Gaul was the kingdom of Soissons, the minor state based on the lands of Aetius’ former lieutenant Aegidius and then his successor Syagrius. This was practically independent after Aetius’ murder in 454 and the following year’s sack of Rome, and was conquered by Clovis the Frank and absorbed into his growing kingdom in 486. But had Roman power been sufficient to contain the Germanic invasions of Gaul after 406, as it had been in the 270s and 350s, the Empire could still have wielded authority as far as the Channel – except possibly for one or more allied kingdoms of Germanic tribal settlers in Belgica and on the lower Rhine, where Franks had been settled under their own leadership as early as the 360s.