Rome

by Faulkner, Neil

  As the East retreated into a form of Splendid Isolation, the Battle of the West began. It centred first on the Balkans and the threat posed by King Alaric of the Visigoths, who was at large in the region seeking a homeland for his people. While offering minimal assistance to Stilicho, the eastern regime sought to protect itself by bribing Alaric to go elsewhere, thus deflecting Gothic aggression away from Constantinople (and towards the West). Stilicho struggled to protect Italy and eject the Goths from the Balkans. When he failed – despite having defeated them on the battlefield more than once – he cut a deal: it was agreed in AD 405 that Alaric and his people would settle in Illyricum and that the king would be paid to keep the peace and guard Italy as magister militum of Illyricum. Stilicho’s weakness thus compelled him to concede a huge new federate settlement – a new state within a state – as the only way to protect the western heartland.

  Even before the agreement could be finalized, the Rhineland defences collapsed under a great surge of invading Alans, Burgundians, Sueves and Vandals, who poured across the frozen river in the winter of AD 406– 407. As the hordes entered imperial territory, they took different routes, some penetrating deep into southern Gaul and eventually Spain. Britain, cut off, raised a usurper, Constantine III, to organize the island’s defence. Alaric compounded the crisis by demanding immediate payment of nearly 2,000 kg of gold in return for peace. The disaster shattered confidence in Stilicho’s government. He had many enemies in the western aristocracy, men who resented his barbarian origins, his dependence on Germanic troops, his intimacy with Alaric and the Goths. Now, as Stilicho struggled desperately to raise money and soldiers, the young emperor Honorius was persuaded that his military commander was plotting against him. In AD 408 Stilicho was overthrown in a palace coup orchestrated by a civilian minister, Olympius, who probably represented a faction of Roman courtiers and aristocrats hostile to ‘barbarian’ influence. Stilicho was executed, the families of federate soldiers were massacred, and the soldiers themselves fled to join Alaric.

  The coup was a disaster. Its effect was to destroy the only solid pillar that had remained of the Western Empire’s state edifice: the power-nexus represented by Stilicho and his barbarian soldiers and allies. Olympius lacked the social, political and, above all, military support to establish a stable regime: he represented nothing more than the blind reaction of an embittered court elite whose world was falling apart. The succeeding ten years was a chaotic period of palace coups, usurper revolts and military defeats. When Alaric’s offer of peace in return for land and gold was rejected, the regime’s hollowness was at once exposed. The Goths marched on Rome and threatened to sack the city, forcing the Senate to pay out 5,000 lbs kg in gold, 30,000 lbs kg in silver, and much else in kind (AD 409). The power of the King of the Goths symbolized the rotten condition of the empire. With its resource-base crumbling and its military power shrivelled, the West had become entirely dependent on alliances with barbarian federates. The hordes breaking across the frontiers could be resisted only by hiring other hordes to fight them. To defend itself the empire had to authorize the construction of mini-states within its territory. The distinction between friends and enemies blurred. Alaric was sometimes an open enemy threatening pillage, sometimes a robber-baron extorting protection money, sometimes a highly paid mercenary captain. Weak and reactionary, the Western regime continued to wobble between conciliating and insulting Alaric. Finally, in AD 410, having placed the city under siege for the third time since Stilicho’s death, Alaric stormed into Rome and put it to the sack.

  The psychological shock was immense. It was the first time in 800 years that a barbarian enemy had captured Rome. Alaric quickly withdrew with his booty, shortly afterwards died, and was succeeded by a brother, Athaulf, who decided in AD 412 to quit Italy and try his luck in Gaul. Even so, there could hardly have been a more potent symbol of imperial decline and of the degree to which the Western Empire had become prey to roving war-bands. Traumatized, sections of the fragmented western elite now coalesced around a new strongman: from AD 411–421, though the emperor Honorius continued to reign, the effective ruler of the West was a Roman general from Illyricum called Constantius. His pre-eminence was consolidated by the award of patrician status in AD 415, his marriage to the emperor’s half-sister Galla Placidia in AD 417, and, shortly before his death, his coronation as Augustus by his brother-in-law.

  The Western Empire’s centre of gravity had shifted from the Balkans to its western provinces. The British usurper Constantine III had invaded the Continent in an attempt to restore Roman rule in Gaul and Spain, but his would-be empire quickly fell apart, with the secession of Britain and Brittany, a revolt by his own commander in Spain, and a large Burgundian settlement on the west bank of the Rhine. Into this maelstrom plunged Constantius in AD 411, determined to wrest back control of the western provinces for the legitimate regime of Honorius, now based mainly at Ravenna in northern Italy. Constantine III was besieged and eventually captured at Arles; he was dispatched to Italy and later executed. Gerontius, the rebel commander in Spain, found his army melting away, was forced to retreat, and later perished in a mutiny. The barbarian settlers, on the other hand, proved more intractable. They asserted their independence by creating their own usurper emperor – Jovinus – and only by hiring the services of Athaulf’s Goths, recently arrived in Gaul, was Constantius able to extinguish this new revolt. The Burgundian settlement was already too well rooted to be removed, however: the first of the Germanic states that would form the post-imperial world had come into existence. Soon there was a second. Having broken with his erstwhile ally Athaulf, Constantius had driven the Goths into Spain. This threatened the recent carve-up of territory in the peninsula by the barbarian hordes. When Athaulf was assassinated in AD 415, the Goths, under their new leader Wallia, were re-hired and charged with restoring imperial authority in Spain. This done, they were granted a permanent home in Aquitania (AD 418).

  Relative stability returned for a time to the Western Roman Empire. But the face of it had been transformed. The Notitia Dignitatum, in the copy that survives, was regularly updated for the Western Empire until c. AD 425. Of the 180 field-army units listed, only 85 had been in existence before AD 395. The army seems, in other words, to have lost over half its strength – and in Gaul, in fact, almost two-thirds. The Rhineland frontier-army, moreover, is almost non-existent: in contrast to the scores of regiments listed for the Danube, a mere handful is recorded on the Rhine. The change was permanent. The tax-base of the Western Empire was fast degrading. In addition to the chronic problems of overtaxation, agri deserti, popular resistance and collapsing state authority, there was now the additional problem that great swathes of imperial territory had been surrendered, either because, as with Britain and parts of Spain, no resources were available for recovery, or because, as with Burgundy and Aquitaine, barbarian settlements had been granted. Even areas still under Roman control were often so devastated by war that they could pay nothing and their taxes had to be remitted. And despite the depth of the Western Empire’s crisis, many of the richest potential taxpayers avoided paying. Even the preamble of a contemporary law records how ‘the powerful refuse and the rich reject’ payment of taxes. Sometimes immunity was granted in return for service and support. But other times the authorities simply lacked any means of enforcement. Often local administration was little more than a racket run by the rich themselves. Under a weak state, the rich evaded tax one way or another, and the burden fell ever more heavily on the poor. But they, too, could resist.

  A key ancient source for social conditions in the mid 5th century AD is the Gallic monk Salvian’s tract Concerning the Government of God. Salvian condemned the entire Late Roman establishment as oppressors of the rural poor: the rich were guilty of gross injustice and acted like a pack of brigands; Roman officials were corrupt, the taxes they imposed crippling; businessmen practised fraud and perjury; soldiers were plunderers. The result, wrote Salvian, was that the oppressed poor would flee for
refuge to the bagaudae or the barbarians. Though given to rhetorical exaggeration, Salvian’s picture is borne out by other sources. References to the bagaudae reach a peak in the 5th century AD. We hear elsewhere of peasant communities willingly placing themselves under the authority of barbarian rulers. Nor was Salvian the only radical churchman denouncing the wickedness of the age. The Donatist Church still thrived in North Africa, and Pelagianism was widespread across the West. Pelagius was a British-born monk who argued that people had free will, could choose to act righteously, and in this way accumulate enough heavenly credit to ensure salvation. In contrast to conservatives like Augustine, who believed that sin was inevitable and God’s grace could be earned by faith and obedience alone, Pelagius maintained that people were responsible for their own actions and it was deeds not words that counted: a much harder road for the rich to tread, since it required them not merely to profess to be Christian, but also to act Christian.

  We see much circumstantial evidence for the economic and social decay implicit in Salvian’s account. After AD 395 the government abandoned the issue of base coinage except for tiny nummi, and issues of silver became sparse and occasional. Only gold was minted regularly in large quantity – solidi (staters), semisses (half-staters) and tremisses (third-staters). The old tax-pay cycle that had driven the military-supply economy and pump-primed a host of subsidiary commercial exchanges was grinding to a halt. Of monumental building there was almost none; even in the great imperial capitals like Rome, Milan, Ravenna, Trier and Arles, buildings of the mid 5th century AD are virtually non-existent. Most towns, if they survived at all, had shrunk into small defended enclosures, usually centred on an episcopal church.

  Constantius died in AD 421, Honorius two years later. The rule of the House of Theodosius was briefly disrupted by the usurpation of the emperor Johannes (AD 423–425), but was then restored with the elevation of Valentinian III (AD 425–455), son of Galla Placidia, nephew of Honorius. Valentinian was another boy-emperor, and his mother acted as effective regent. The new regime was threatened, however, by a new strongman: Aëtius. Having spent some years in his youth as a hostage of the Huns, when he formed a close relationship with their royal family, Aëtius had in recent times been acting as Roman ambassador to the Hunnic court. When news reached him of the coup at home, he enlisted the support of his Hunnic allies in negotiating a role for himself in the new government. For many years thereafter the politics of the western court was dominated by a factional struggle between the supporters of Galla Placidia and those of Aëtius. But his powerful allies gave Aëtius the edge. A leading figure in the politics of the Western Empire from AD 425 onwards, Aëtius enjoyed supreme power from AD 434 until his murder in AD 454. His long supremacy was dominated by the loss of North Africa, the attempt to maintain Roman influence in Gaul, and by the impact of the Huns on the disintegrating empire.

  Large areas of Spain had remained under the control of Vandals and Sueves after the withdrawal of Wallia’s Goths in AD 418. The Vandals were settled mainly in the south, and in AD 429 a huge horde, recorded as 80,000 in total, so including perhaps 20,000 warriors, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into North Africa. A new, massive, highly disruptive folk-movement was under way. Though, unusually, we have a precise figure for the size of the horde at the beginning of the expedition, numbers are likely to have fluctuated greatly thereafter. Some will have settled quickly. Others will have broken away in subsidiary movements. More may have arrived later in secondary waves. Some, perhaps many, who were not Vandals at all, but soldiers of fortune picked up along the way, may have joined. Numbers and movements will have been influenced, too, by the rivalries of chieftains within the horde, each seeking to build and maintain his retinue by accumulating land, gold and men in a dynamic and highly fluid struggle for power. Perhaps, indeed, when Gaiseric, the Vandal king, decided to invade, his initial intention was only to raid and sate his warriors’ appetite for plunder before returning home to Spain. But the Vandals were lured on by the rich pickings of Roman North Africa, one of the great centres of classical civilization, and one little affected by the centuries of war that had ravaged Europe and the East. By AD 435 the Vandals were in control of Morocco and Algeria, and stood poised on the edge of the Tunisian heartland of Rome’s African empire. In AD 439 the great city of Carthage, ancient capital of the Province of Africa, and in recent times one of the well-springs of Late Roman Christianity, fell to the Vandals. There was no possibility of dislodging them. Attempts by expeditionary forces from both East and West to do so were beaten off. Soon the Vandals were attacking Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and eventually even Rome itself.

  The Western Empire was, by mid-century, too embroiled in Gaul to challenge the Vandal advance. The Huns had been transformed from allies of the Western Empire into terrifying enemies. When a Christian hermit dubbed Attila ‘the Scourge of God’, the Hunnic king adopted the title with relish. He and his people, in the literature of the day, became synonymous with ugliness, filth, cruelty and ruthlessness. The Huns – illiterate, nomadic, pagan – were portrayed as the apocalyptic antithesis of civilization, religion and culture. Contemporaries viewed the decisive battle at Châlons in AD 451 between the Romans and the Huns as an awesome collision between civilization and barbarism. Yet Attila was a monster created by Rome.

  The Kingdom of the Huns had evolved quite suddenly in the second quarter of the 5th century into a fast expanding and predatory empire. Militarily formidable, the Huns lacked political coherence. With their origins in the nomadism of the Central Asian steppes, they were essentially loosely organized and highly mobile masses of light horse-archers. They moved into Eastern and Central Europe as the resistance of the Goths collapsed, and then, intent on feeding off the riches of classical civilization, they began levying protection money. Repeatedly, when threatened elsewhere, Constantinople faced demands for payments to keep the peace in the Balkans, payments that became a regular and rising subsidy to the King of the Huns: 350 lbs of gold a year in the AD 420s; 700 lbs kg of gold a year in the AD 430s; 2,100 lbs of gold a year in the AD 440s, plus an immediate one-off payment of 6,000 lbs to seal the new agreement. Roman prisoners also became a source of income: they were ransomed for first 8, then 12, gold staters per man. For the Roman Empire this was, if unavoidable, disastrous. The subsidies fed the rising power of the Hunnic King, whose capacity to reward his followers, cement their allegiance, and recruit and arm fresh forces was enormously enhanced. By the middle of the 5th century AD, Attila controlled a huge Central European empire. Roman gold had created a barbarian super-state.

  In AD 447 Attila attacked across the Danube again. The Romans were defeated, and, after further Balkan devastation, Constantinople yet again accepted the Huns’ terms, which this time included the cession of a huge belt of territory on the south bank of the Danube ‘five days’ journey in depth’. Then, suddenly, Attila’s attitude to the Eastern Empire changed from predatory menace to conciliation. Eager to turn West, he secured his rear by offering Constantinople a moderate final settlement. Why he turned West, we do not know. Certainly, the Huns knew much about Gaul: many had fought there as federate allies of Aëtius in the AD 430s and 440s, participating in his campaigns against Visigoths, Franks, Burgundians and bagaudae. Probably, quite simply, the riches of Gaul, even the impoverished Gaul of Late Antiquity, seemed to offer more lucrative returns than the bribes and plunder to be had in the Balkans.

  The pretext for invasion was a dispute between two Frankish chieftains on the lower Rhine, one of whom appealed for support to Aëtius, the other to Attila. The Huns moved first. A great invasion force first crushed the King of the Burgundians and conquered Eastern Gaul. It then split into three armies, one to protect the Huns’ Frankish allies and guard Attila’s right flank in the north, another to hold down the Burgundians and guard the left flank in the south, the third to push forwards in the centre towards Orleans, the territory of the Visigoths, and the prospective conquest of Western Gaul. But as Aëtius and King Theodori
c of the Visigoths advanced against him, Attila fell back eastwards, ordering a concentration at Châlons-sur-Marne – a central position to which his northern and southern armies could march, and an area of wide open country ideal for massed cavalry action.

  Châlons was a medieval battle. Both armies formed up in three separate battle-groups, and each fought its own engagement. The great majority on both sides were barbarian warriors organized in clans and tribes under kings and chieftains. Aëtius and the regular Roman troops were deployed on the right of the Romano-Gothic line, Theodoric and the Visigoths on the left, with the Alans (whose loyalty was suspect) sandwiched in the centre. Attila commanded the Huns in the centre of his own line, while Ostrogoths, Gepids and other subject peoples of his empire formed the wings. The battle, fought with aggression and determination on both sides, lasted two days. On the first, Attila launched furious but unsuccessful attacks on the Romans and the Alans, but the Ostrogoths on his right flank collapsed before the onslaught of Theodoric’s Visigoths. Exposed to the danger of a devastating flank attack by Gothic cavalry on his embattled centre, Attila engineered a fighting retreat to his fortified camp, keeping the Goths at bay with massed archery. The following day he stood on the defensive in a great wagon laager. In the centre was a huge pyramid of wooden saddles. Around it were ranged the king’s spoils and wealth. Perched on the sides were his wives. And on the summit was Attila himself, directing the battle, but ready to be consumed in a vast conflagration should the laager fall. The pyramid was his funeral pyre.