The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History

by Peter Heather

  SOME SCHOLARS have concluded that, already in fourth-century Germanic society, it was only a small aristocratic class, well equipped with armed retainers, that mattered. There are, however, many third- and fourth-century burials, apart from the richest, that contain some grave goods: males with weapons and females with quite sophisticated arrays of personal jewellery. These burials are far too numerous to belong just to kings and a feudal nobility. Later, written evidence offers strong hints as to whose they might have been. In the late fifth and early sixth centuries, Germanic successor states to the western Roman Empire produced large numbers of legal texts. These consistently portray Germanic (and Germanic-dominated) societies at this later date as comprising essentially three castes: freemen, freedmen and slaves. Unlike its Roman counterpart, where the offspring of freedmen were completely free – and thus freemen – freedman status in the Germanic world was hereditary. Intermarriage between the three castes was banned, and a complicated public ceremony was required for an individual to jump across any of the divides. This mode of legal categorization is widely found – amongst Goths, Lombards, Franks and Anglo-Saxons, for instance. A relatively large freeman class, rather than a small feudal nobility, is also visible playing important political and military roles in the Ostrogothic Italian kingdom, and important political, military and landowning roles in the Frankish and Lombard. Freemen were probably also the subjects of the weapons burials of fifth- and sixth-century Anglo-Saxon England, which were clearly used to claim status rather than merely to signal that the individual had been a warrior.53

  Given that much more wealth had flowed into Germanic society between the fourth and the sixth centuries, as various Germanic groups took over parts of the Roman Empire, I don’t believe that political participation could have been any less in the fourth century than in the sixth. If anything, it ought to have been broader. So if a relatively numerous freeman class still existed in the sixth century, it surely did two hundred years before. In other words, a quasi feudal warrior aristocracy did not yet dominate Germania in the late Roman period. And Roman sources, despite their lack of interest in the inner working of Germanic societies, provide just enough evidence to confirm the point. Fourth-century Gothic kings couldn’t just issue orders, for instance, but had to sell their policies to a relatively broad audience, and Gothic armies of about AD 400 contained large numbers of elite fighters – freemen, in other words – not just a few warrior aristocrats. These elite fighters had their own fighting dependants; the later law codes state that freedmen (but not slaves) fought, presumably alongside the freemen whose dependants they were.54 This is not to say that all freemen were equal: some were much richer than others, especially if high in royal favour. But social power was not yet confined to a small nobility.

  How kings and nobles, complete with their retinues, interacted with the rest of freeman society is not something that archaeology can shed much light upon. Nor are the Roman sources much help. But, to be able to feed and reward them, every figure with a substantial armed retinue – all the Alamannic kings, and the ‘judges’ and kings of the Tervingi – must have established some rights to economic support from freemen and their dependants. In fourth-century Germania there is no sign of the bureaucratic literacy necessary for large-scale taxation, but agricultural produce must have been regularly exacted. Again, therefore, the situation had clearly moved on from the first century, when contributions were occasionally made to distinguished chiefs on a voluntary basis (as Tacitus tells us in his Germania). Obviously, kings were responsible for representing their subjects in any negotiations with outside powers – such as the summit meeting between Athanaric and Valens – and for formulating ‘foreign policy’. They must also have had the right to require military service of their subjects, as foreign policy often involved little more than deciding whom to make war upon. The job description also included some kind of legal function. At the very least, kings will have judged disputes between their grander subjects. Whether they had the right to make general laws, as opposed to decisions in specific cases, is more doubtful. Law-making in the Germanic kingdoms of the post-Roman west looks like a new function, and, even then, was exercised only in the context of consensus. When a law code was devised, it was at assemblies of the great and the good, and issued in the name of all.55

  Fourth-century Roman sources shed little light on how precisely kings and their retinues intersected with this freeman caste, but the Passion of St Saba does get us a bit closer. The persecution of Christians among the Tervingi was a policy decision of the overall leadership, involving the sub-kings as well as Athanaric himself. Enforcement, however, was largely in the hands of local village communities, retainers unfamiliar with local circumstances being sent round from time to time to check on progress. In the case of Saba’s village, this gave the locals every chance to frustrate a policy with which they were clearly out of sympathy. Faced with the order to persecute, they swore false oaths that there weren’t any Christians amongst them. This village, at least, clearly wanted to protect its Christians from Athanaric’s persecution, and there was nothing his retainers could do about it. They had no idea who might or might not be a Christian; it was because Saba wouldn’t go along with the deception that he was martyred.56

  Germanic society remained, then, a broadly based oligarchy with much power in the hands of a still numerous freeman elite. It had some way to go before it reached the feudal state of the Carolingian era.

  Rome, Persia and the Germans

  OUR EXPLORATION OF the changes that remade the Germanic world between the first and fourth centuries clearly shows why Roman attention remained so firmly fixed on Persia in the late imperial period. The rise of that state to superpower status had caused the massive third-century crisis, and Persia remained the much more obvious threat, even after the eastern front had stabilized. Germania, by contrast, even in the fourth century, had come nowhere close to generating a common identity amongst its peoples, or unifying its political structures. Highly contingent alliances had given way to stronger groupings, or confederations, the latter representing a major shift from the kaleidoscopic first-century world of changing loyalties. Although royal status could now be inherited, not even the most successful fourth-century Germanic leaders had begun to echo the success of Ardashir in uniting the Near East against Roman power. To judge by the weapons deposits and our written sources, fourth-century Germani remained just as likely to fight each other as the Roman state.

  That said, the massive population increase, economic development and political restructuring of the first three centuries AD could not fail to make fourth-century Germania much more of a potential threat to Roman strategic dominance in Europe than its first-century counterpart. It is important to remember, too, that Germanic society had not yet found its equilibrium. The belt of Germanic client kingdoms extended only about a hundred kilometres beyond the Rhine and Danube frontier lines: this left a lot of Germania excluded from the regular campaigning that kept frontier regions reasonably in line. The balance of power on the frontier was, therefore, vulnerable to something much more dangerous than the periodic over-ambition of client kings. One powerful exogenous shock had been delivered by Sasanian Persia in the previous century – did the Germanic world beyond the belt of closely controlled client kingdoms pose a similar threat?

  Throughout the Roman imperial period, established Germanic client states periodically found themselves the targets of the predatory groups settled further away from the frontier. The explanation for this is straightforward. While the whole of Germania was undergoing economic revolution, frontier regions were disproportionately affected, their economies stimulated not least by the presence nearby of thousands of Roman soldiers with money to spend. The client states thus tended to become richer than outer Germania, and a target for aggression. The first known case occurred in the mid-first century AD, when a mixed force from the north invaded the client kingdom of one Vannius of the Marcomanni, to seize the vast wealth he had accumulat
ed during his thirty-year reign.57 And it was peripheral northern groups in search of client-state wealth who also started the second-century convulsion generally known as the Marcomannic War. The same motivation underlay the arrival of the Goths beside the Black Sea. Before the mid-third century, these lands were dominated by Iranian-speaking Sarmatian groups who profited hugely from the close relations they enjoyed with the Roman state (their wealth manifest in a series of magnificently furnished burials dating from the first to third centuries). The Goths and other Germanic groups moved into the region to seize a share of this wealth.

  The danger posed by the developing Germanic world, however, was still only latent, because of its lack of overall unity. In practice, the string of larger Germanic kingdoms and confederations – now stretching all the way from the mouth of the Rhine to the north Black Sea coast – provided a range of junior partners within a dominant late Roman system, rather than a real threat to Rome’s imperial power. The Empire did not always get what it wanted in this relationship, and maintaining the system provoked a major confrontation between senior and junior partners about once every generation. Nonetheless, for the most part, the barbarians knew their place: none better than Zizais, the leader who approached the emperor Constantius for assistance in 357:

  On seeing the emperor he threw aside his weapons and fell flat on his breast, as if lying lifeless. And since the use of his voice failed him from fear at the very time when he should have made his plea, he excited all the greater compassion; but after several attempts, interrupted by sobbing, he was able to set forth only a little of what he tried to ask.58

  An inability, at first, to speak, then a little quiet sobbing and the stuttering out of a few requests, did the trick. Constantius made Zizais a Roman client king and granted him and his people imperial protection. Woe betide the barbarian who forgot the script.

  The later Roman Empire was doing a pretty good job of keeping the barbarians in check. It had had to dig deep to respond to the Persian challenge, but it was still substantially in control of its European frontiers. It has long been traditional to argue, however, that extracting the extra resources needed to maintain this control placed too many strains on the system; that the effort involved was unsustainable. Stability did return to Rome’s eastern and European frontiers in the fourth century, but at too high a price, with the result that the Empire was destined to fall – or so the argument goes. Before exploring the later fourth and fifth centuries, it is important to examine the Empire of the mid-fourth more closely. Was it a structure predestined to collapse?

  3

  THE LIMITS OF EMPIRE

  IN AD 373 OR THEREABOUTS, the commander of Roman military forces in North Africa (in Latin, comes Africae), one Romanus by name, was cashiered for provoking some of the Berber tribes settled on the fringes of the province to rebel. Theodosius, the field marshal (magister militum) sent to deal with the emergency, found amongst Romanus’ papers a highly incriminating document. It was a letter to the commander from a third party, which included the following greeting from a certain Palladius, until recently a senior imperial bureaucrat: ‘Palladius salutes you and says that he was dismissed from office for no other reason than that in the case of the people of Tripolis he spoke to the sacred ears [of the Emperor Valentinian I] what was not true.’1 On the strength of this, Palladius was dragged out of retirement from his country estates and frogmarched back to Trier. Lying to the emperor was treason. Rather than face interrogation, which in such cases routinely involved torture, Palladius committed suicide en route. The full story slowly emerged.

  The trail led back to 363, when Romanus had first been appointed. The countryside around the town of Lepcis Magna in the province of Tripolitania had just been looted by Berber tribesmen from the neighbouring desert hinterland, and its inhabitants wanted Romanus to retaliate. He duly gathered his forces at Lepcis, but demanded logistic support to the tune of 4,000 camels, which the citizens refused to provide. Romanus thereupon dispersed his soldiers, and no campaign was mounted. The outraged citizens used their next annual provincial assembly, probably that of 364, to send an embassy of complaint to the emperor Valentinian. Romanus tried to head things off at the pass, getting his version of the story to Valentinian first via a relative called Remigius who was currently magister officiorum (something like the head of the Civil Service, one of the top bureaucrats of the western Empire). Valentinian refused to believe either version at first telling, and ordered a commission of inquiry. But it was slow to get moving, and in the meantime further Berber attacks prompted the townsfolk of Lepcis to send a second embassy to complain about Romanus’ continued inactivity. Hearing of yet more attacks, Valentinian lost his temper, and this is where Palladius enters the story. He was chosen to conduct a fact-finding mission, and was also given the job of taking with him gifts of cash for the African troops.2

  Following the emperor’s orders, Palladius travelled to Lepcis and discovered for himself the truth about what Romanus had – or rather, had not – been up to. At the same time, however, Palladius was doing deals with the commanders and paymasters of African army units, which allowed him to keep for himself some of the imperial cash in his care. Everything was set up for a meeting of minds. Palladius threatened Romanus with a damning indictment of his inactivity, while Romanus brought up the small matter of Palladius’ embezzlement. In a devil’s bargain, Palladius kept the cash, and, back in Trier, told Valentinian that the inhabitants of Lepcis had nothing to complain of. The emperor, believing his time had been wasted, unleashed the full apparatus of the law on the plaintiffs of Lepcis. Palladius was sent to Africa a second time, to preside over the trials. With so much at stake for the judge, there could be only one outcome for the defendants. So a few witnesses were bribed, and agreed that there had never been any attacks; the loose ends were neatly sewn up, probably in 368, and one governor and three ambassadors were executed for making false statements to the emperor. There the matter rested until Palladius’ letter to Romanus came to light six years later. Two surviving ambassadors, who’d had the sense to go into hiding when sentenced to have their tongues cut out, then re-emerged from the woodwork to have their say. The affair duly claimed its final victims: Palladius, of course, and Romanus, not to mention the magister officiorum Remigius, and the false witnesses.

  At first sight, there might seem nothing out of the ordinary here: negligence, embezzlement and a particularly nasty cover-up. What else would you expect of an imperial structure caught in a declining trajectory towards extinction? Ever since Gibbon, the corruption of public life has been part of the story of Roman imperial collapse. But while the fourth-century Empire had its fair share of corruption, it is important not to jump to conclusions. In sources of the time you can easily find examples of every kind of wrongdoing imaginable: from military commanders who artificially inflate manpower returns while keeping their units under strength so as to pocket the extra pay, to bureaucrats shuffling money around between different accounts until it becomes ‘lost’ in the paper trail and they can divert it to their own purposes.3 But whether any of this played a substantial role in the collapse of the western Empire is much more doubtful.

  Uncomfortable as the idea might be, power has, throughout history, had a long and distinguished association with money making: in states both big and small, both seemingly healthy and on their last legs. In most past societies and many present ones, the link between power and profit was not even remotely problematic, profit for oneself and one’s friends being seen as the whole, and perfectly legitimate, point of making the effort to get power in the first place. When our old friend the philosopher Themistius started to attract the attention of the emperor Constantius in the early 350s, Libanius, a friend who taught rhetoric and was a great believer in the moral values of a classical education, wrote to him: ‘Your presence at [the emperor’s] table denotes a greater intimacy . . . anyone you mention is immediately better off, and . . . his pleasure in granting such favours exceeds yours in recei
ving them.’ For Libanius, Themistius’ new-found influence was not a problem: quite the reverse. In fact, the whole system of appointments to bureaucratic office within the Empire worked on personal recommendation. Since there were no competitive examinations, patronage and connection played a critical role. In more than one speech to different emperors, Themistius dwelt on the topic of ‘friends’, an emperor’s immediate circle who were responsible for bringing to his attention the names of suitable appointees for office. Certainly, Themistius wanted these friends to have powers of discernment, so that they would make first-class recommendations; but he had no desire to change things in any structural way. Nepotism was systemic, office was generally accepted as an opportunity for feathering one’s nest, and a moderate degree of peculation more or less expected.4

  And this was nothing new. The early Roman Empire, even during its vigorous conquest period, was as much marked as were later eras by officials (friends of higher officials) misusing – or perhaps one should just say ‘using’ – power to profit themselves and their associates. According to the historian Sallust, writing in the mid-first century BC, Roman public life had been stripped of its moral fibre with the destruction of Carthage, its last major rival, in 146 BC. In fact, though, the great magnates of public life had always been preoccupied with self-advancement, and the early Empire had been no different. Much of what we might term ‘corruption’ in the Roman system merely reflects the normal relationship between power and profit. Some emperors, like Valentinian I, periodically made political capital out of cracking down on ‘corruption’, but even Valentinian made no attempt to change the system.5 To my mind, it is important to be realistic about the way human beings use political power, and not to attach too much importance to particular instances of corruption. Since the power-profit factor had not impeded the rise of the Empire in the first place, there is no reason to suppose that it contributed fundamentally to its collapse. In the Lepcis scandal, Romanus, Palladius and Remigius overstepped the mark. Looked at more closely, Lepcisgate offers us something much more than a good cover-up.