Alaric’s Goths were the direct descendants of the Tervingi and Greuthungi who had negotiated the compromise peace of 382 with Theodosius.44 Their relations with the Roman state, as you might expect of such a shotgun wedding (see Chapter 4), were subject to periodic strains. Instances of partial and full-scale revolt reflected continuing distrust on both sides. The imperial authorities, for their part, did what they could – up to a point – to build trust. When a Gothic soldier was lynched by a mob in Constantinople, substantial financial penalties were imposed on the city. Likewise, when a Roman garrison stationed at Tomi, on the Lower Danube frontier, turned on a Gothic military contingent quartered alongside it, the Roman officer in charge was cashiered. Theodosius was clearly anxious not to allow moments of friction to spark off a major revolt, and we know too that he would from time to time entertain the Goths’ leaders at lavish banquets.
Nonetheless, the Goths, or some of them, clearly suspected that the Roman state was still looking to dismantle the licensed semi-autonomy that they had extracted by force of arms between 376 and 382. In particular, the peace of 382 had stipulated that large Gothic contingents would be liable for military service when called upon by the Empire. Theodosius did this twice, when confronting western usurpers: first Magnus Maximus in 387/8, then Eugenius in 392/3. On each occasion, some of the Goths preferred to revolt, or at least desert, rather than fight in a Roman civil war. The reason for this was straightforward. The Roman state tolerated the Goths’ semi-autonomy only because the prevailing military balance of power made it do so. Time-honoured policies had been suspended, but only in the case of these particular immigrants, and only because of their victories over Valens and Theodosius. Fighting in any Roman civil war would necessarily cost the Goths casualties, and should their military manpower be eroded too far, there would be nothing to prevent the Roman state from enforcing its usual asylum-seeker policy. In selling the peace treaty to the Senate of Constantinople in January 383, as we have seen, Themistius was already looking forward to the Goths losing their semi-independent status.
A large amount of fuel was heaped on the fires of Gothic suspicion during the second of these campaigns, against the usurper Eugenius. Theodosius had been trying to rule the entire Empire from Constantinople, with the predictable result that disaffected elements in the west threw up their own candidate for ruler. At the crucial battle of the River Frigidus, on the fringes of Italy, the Goths found themselves in the front line during the first, inconclusive, day of battle and suffered heavy casualties. One report, clearly exaggerating, says that 10,000 Goths died. Its author, the Christian Orosius, even said the battle produced two Roman victories: one over Eugenius, and a second over the Goths because they had suffered such heavy losses.45 When the emperor Theodosius died in early 395, therefore, the Goths were ripe for revolt, ready to rewrite the terms of the agreement of 382 to secure a greater degree of security. And in raising the banner of rebellion they appointed for themselves an overall leader, for the first time since the suppression of Fritigern and Alatheus and Saphrax – in direct contravention of the treaty. Their choice fell upon Alaric, who had made a name for himself in an earlier, smaller revolt after the Maximus campaign. As to how, precisely, the Goths wished to rewrite the peace deal, our hostile Roman sources are not very informative. One thing the Goths wanted, in any new deal, was that the Romans recognize their right to a leader by granting him official status as a fully fledged Roman general (magister militum). Whether there were further conditions attached – in particular, that the office of general should come with full military salaries for his followers – is unclear but perfectly possible.46 The Goths had had enough of their half-baked political autonomy within the Roman state, ground-breaking though it had been when instituted a quarter of a century earlier.
There’s another crucial thing about Alaric’s Goths. In 376, the Goths had come to the Danube in two separate groups, the Tervingi and Greuthungi, each with their own leaderships. They cooperated well enough during the subsequent war, but some jostling for position went on all the same. On the eve of Hadrianople, Fritigern tried to sell himself to Valens as the single recognized leader of all the Goths. Then, two years later, the two groups parted company again, moving off in different directions. What happened next is disputed. Some argue that the Tervingi and Greuthungi made separate treaties with Rome. My own view is that the treaty of 382 applied to both. Whichever option you go for doesn’t change the bigger point – which follows. In the course of Alaric’s reign the old distinction between Tervingi and Greuthungi disappeared for ever, and the two forces became one.47 The process that we have observed in Germania beyond the Roman frontier between the first and the fourth centuries – the growth of larger and more coherent political groupings – had now spread to Roman territory, and was becoming a force to be reckoned with. The reasons behind the unification of the Goths were very simple, and explained why they were already cooperating during the war of 376–82. By operating as one much larger group, they acquired safety in numbers and the chance to negotiate a better deal, thus increasing their chances of a better future in a Roman world that was far from reconciled to their presence.
The revolt of Alaric’s Goths in early 395 was thus a momentous event. A new force was on the loose, seeking to avenge their losses at the River Frigidus and to rewrite the peace treaty of thirteen years earlier. These issues did not prove easy to resolve. The united Goths were too powerful to be quickly despatched. In 395, and again in 397, they were confronted by a substantial Roman army, but actual fighting was limited, probably because the forces were too evenly matched for either side to risk engaging with the enemy.48 At the same time, old attitudes died hard, and no Roman politician was about to rush into granting the Goths new terms. Frustrated in his desire for a political deal, Alaric set his men loose. Once more, it was the provincial population of the Balkans that suffered. The revolt first broke out in Thrace in the north-east, but between 395 and 397 the Goths worked their way all the way south to Athens, then west and north up the Adriatic coast as far as Epirus, cheerfully pillaging as they went, while all the time putting out feelers for a new political deal.
Court politics in Constantinople were highly volatile during these years. Theodosius’ older son, the eastern emperor Arcadius, though twenty years old in 397 never actively ruled, but was always surrounded by a swarm of ambitious politicians seeking power through his favour. By 397, currently the most powerful of these courtiers, the eunuch Chamberlain Eutropius, was ready to negotiate. He made Alaric a Roman general and granted the Goths the better terms and extra guarantees they required. He allowed them to settle in Dacia and Macedonia, and probably arranged for local produce, levied as tax in kind, to be diverted to their subsistence. Eutropius’ fate is highly instructive. Eunuchs were generally figures of ridicule in the Roman world, portrayed as immoral and greedy: just the sort to go soft on barbarians demanding money with menaces. As both a eunuch and a Goth appeaser, Eutropius’ position was vulnerable, and was brilliantly exploited by his opponents. He was duly toppled in the summer of 399.49 His successors tore up the agreement with Alaric and refused to negotiate further.
Over the next two years Constantinople saw frequent regime change, but no eastern politician was prepared to talk to Alaric; granting the Goths the kind of terms they might accept would be political suicide. In the year 400, a political coup was staged in Constantinople against Gainas, a Roman general of Gothic origins who was one of several contenders for power after Eutropius’ fall. The prominence of Gainas – and other generals of non-Roman origin like him – follows on from the reorganization of the army in the late Roman period. Unlike the early Roman period when only Roman citizens were recruited into the legions, anyone could serve in the politically important field armies (comitatenses) of the later Empire. There was nothing to stop able individuals of non-Roman origin from rising through comitatensian ranks to acquire political prominence. As a result, from the early- to mid-fourth century onwards, a series o
f generals of barbarian origin figure in accounts of court politics. Occasionally, such men had, or were suspected of having, designs on the purple itself. Silvanus, of Frankish origins, was one case in point: one of our historians, Ammianus Marcellinus, participated in an assassination mission to remove him. Much more often, however, ‘barbarian’ generals jostled with civilian politicians to wield influence behind the throne. But, whatever hostile sources may say, there is no evidence that these generals were anything other than entirely loyal to the Empire. Some of those labelled ‘barbarian’ were classically educated second-generation immigrants – as fully Roman, in other words, as anybody else.
A dominant figure in Constantinople in autumn 399, Gainas was ousted by some of his erstwhile allies early in the next year. He was, it seems, a first-generation Gothic immigrant, and hence an easy target for anti-barbarian propaganda, but particularly so at a time when Alaric’s Goths were rampaging through the Balkans. There is no evidence, however, that he had the slightest intention of making common cause with them. In the violent coup that broke his hold on power, Gainas managed to get out of Constantinople alive, but several thousand Goths, including many women and children who lived in the city as part of the east Roman military establishment, were massacred. In the aftermath, Alaric’s Goths faced no direct military threat from the east Roman armies, but they were now excluded from Constantinopolitan politics, and soon lost all hope of obtaining a new agreement. To try to break the deadlock, in the autumn of 401 Alaric took his followers to Italy and attempted over the next twelve months to extract a deal from Stilicho, effective ruler of the western Empire, instead. Again, Alaric tried intimidation, but Stilicho was no more forthcoming than the successors of Eutropius had been in the east. Cut off from the established sources of supply available to them in the Balkans, the Goths could not maintain their Italian adventure indefinitely.50 In the autumn/winter of 402/3, two drawn battles later, they retreated back over the Dinaric Alps to their old haunts in Dacia and Macedonia.
Alaric had had no choice. And he had now to think again about how to get one half or other of the Empire round the negotiating table. The Goths re-established themselves in the same areas of the Balkans they had occupied between 397 and 401 – reactivating, one presumes, the sources of supply that had sustained them then. And here they remained for over three years. Stuck in a political wasteland, they found themselves caught, literally and metaphorically, between the eastern and western halves of the Empire, waiting for someone to give them a call. Late in 406, an approach eventually came – much to Alaric’s amazement, I suspect – from Stilicho in Italy. Just four years earlier, the western regent-ruler had moved might and main to keep Alaric and his Goths at arm’s length. Now, here he was courting them for an alliance. Even more peculiar, Stilicho made his approach to Alaric after the defeat of Radagaisus, when, as we have seen, the Rhine frontier was already showing clear signs of the turmoil that would boil over on to Roman territory. But what Stilicho proposed was an alliance in which he and Alaric would both fight Constantinople, not deal with the problems on the Rhine. To understand Stilicho’s seemingly bizarre behaviour, and how its unforeseen consequences led to the sack of Rome, we need to take a closer look at the western generalissimo and his position in the great scheme of things.
Stilicho and Alaric
FLAVIUS STILICHO is a figure about whom opinion – ancient and modern – is heavily divided. He was a particularly successful product of the late Roman career path that saw non-Romans – such as Gainas – rise through the military to political prominence. The son of a Roman cavalry officer of Vandal origins and a Roman mother, he enjoyed a distinguished military career at the court of Theodosius I in Constantinople, holding a series of prestigious staff appointments in the 380s and early 390s. In 393, he accompanied his emperor west on the campaign against the usurper Eugenius, and in its aftermath was appointed senior general (comes et magister utriusque militiae praesentalis) in command of the western Empire’s armed forces. Early in 395, Theodosius died unexpectedly in Milan at the age of forty-nine, having apparently appointed Stilicho guardian to his younger son Honorius, who had also come west. At least, that’s what Stilicho reported about a deathbed conversation he had had with the emperor, and there was no one there to deny it. Theodosius’ older son, Arcadius, was left to govern the east from Constantinople. Born in September 384, Honorius was less than ten years old on his father’s death, and so the reins of power fell naturally into Stilicho’s hands.
The general’s career had thus far been entirely eastern in focus, but now he found himself undisputed ruler of the west. A clear sign of his need to build bridges to every wielder of power and influence is his careful courting of the old Roman Senate. In May 395, he passed a law rehabilitating all those who had held office under the usurper Eugenius – a huge gesture in that direction.51 Sometime after 395, our old friend Symmachus – enjoying an Indian summer, to judge from his correspondence – suddenly found himself amongst those being courted.52 Perhaps two-thirds of his surviving letters were written between 395 and his death in 402, and these late letters show him as a man with considerable clout. For one thing, he was able to rescue his son-in-law Nicomachus Flavianus from the consequences of having served as Urban Prefect under Eugenius, securing a political rehabilitation which culminated in his becoming Urban Prefect once again in 399–400 under Honorius and Stilicho, and with his landed fortune protected.53 While not holding formal office, Symmachus also operated in the public sphere, in 397 playing a material role, as we shall see, in getting the Senate to declare Gildo, the commander in North Africa who would revolt against Stilicho in favour of Constantinople, a public enemy.
For more than a decade, as a result of this careful political courting, Stilicho held on to power: no mean feat, given the vicissitudes that fortune put in his way. Some were self-generated. The real truth about Theodosius’ deathbed wishes will never be known. But shortly after his death, Stilicho claimed that the dying emperor had ordered that he be guardian of both of his children. As the poet Claudian, Stilicho’s resident spin-doctor in Rome, put it to the Senate: ‘Then was the power of Rome entrusted to your care, Stilicho; in your hands was placed the governance of the world. The brothers’ twin majesty and the armies of both royal courts were given into your charge.’54 Everything suggests – at least as regards Arcadius – that this was a lie, conveniently authorizing Stilicho to seek power in his native east, in addition to the power he already held in the west, where he had only recently taken up residence. He proceeded to act on the claim. The underlying aim of his two interventions on eastern territory, in 395 and 397, against Alaric’s revolting Goths was to establish his credentials as the saviour – and hence natural ruler – of the east. These ambitions were firmly resisted by his peers in Constantinople. As we have seen, they were busy fighting among themselves for control of the inactive Arcadius, and the last thing any of them wanted was to see Stilicho riding over the horizon to their rescue. Not surprisingly, they now kept him at bay by throwing as many grenades in his direction as they could lay their hands on.
The most dangerous of these detonated in autumn 397, when the aforementioned military commander in Africa, Gildo, was induced to transfer his allegiance to Constantinople. This was a huge threat to Stilicho, because African grain was used to feed the city of Rome. Any disruption to the supply would quickly undermine his political position. In the event, he dealt with the crisis brilliantly, sending Gildo’s brother Mascezel to North Africa. Gildo had been responsible for the death of his children, so Mascezel had grudges to burn off. The revolt was over by July 398, and Africa had returned to its traditional western allegiance before that year’s harvest was in. Stilicho also weathered Alaric’s invasion of Italy in 401/2 – which, though the Constantinopolitan authorities probably didn’t authorize it, as has sometimes been thought, they certainly did nothing to discourage. Then, just three years later, came Radagaisus and his Gothic horde. Yet again, Stilicho coped – comfortably enough,
in the end. Throughout all this, there were many components to his power – central and regional military establishments, the Senate of Rome and the imperial bureaucracy, to mention just three. But one thing was key: his relationship with Theodosius’ son Honorius. To keep a firm grip on the emperor, as Honorius grew into adolescence, in 398 Stilicho married him to his daughter Maria. This added some extra security to the general’s position, but relations with Honorius were bound to need some finessing as the young emperor matured.
Up to August 406, Stilicho walked this tightrope pretty well. He had failed to unite east and west, but Honorius remained firmly under his thumb. Africa had been induced to resume its western allegiance, and two Gothic assaults on Italy had been dealt with successfully. Then, in the aftermath of the defeat of Radagaisus occurred the most mysterious episode in Stilicho’s career. At this point, things were already going wrong in the north. The first of the British usurpations had broken out; there was fighting east of the Rhine, and every indication that it would spill over on to Roman territory (though no inkling in any quarter of the scale of the forthcoming Rhine crossing or the form it would take). However, as we have seen, instead of moving north with every trained soldier he could muster, Stilicho picked a new fight with his counterparts in Constantinople. His aim in reopening hostilities at the tail end of 406 was much more limited than in 395/6. He demanded the return of the dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia (the eastern half of the prefecture of Illyricum, which had been transferred to the administrative control of Constantinople in the reign of Theodosius. Then, threatening war if the east resisted, he sought a military alliance with Alaric’s Goths.
It is possible, of course, that Stilicho simply suffered a catastrophic failure of judgement, obsessed on the one hand with his eastern ambitions and, on the other, underestimating the crisis in the north. But even though he probably did fail to grasp the speed with which crisis was about to become disaster, I don’t believe he lost the plot so completely. And I am not alone in this. The critical point here is that Stilicho was no longer trying to win power in Constantinople. His much more restricted aim – regaining Dacia and Macedonia in east Illyricum – suggests that there was some more specific issue, rather than pure vainglory, at stake. The mountains and upland basins of east Illyricum were a traditional recruiting ground for the Roman military (a bit like the Scottish Highlands for the British army). It has been suggested, therefore, that his apparently bizarre ambition to control east Illyricum in late 406 was linked to the unfolding crisis on the Rhine. Stilicho desperately needed military manpower, so winning back east Illyricum might have been a cunning plan to secure a vital recruiting ground. But it takes time to turn recruits into soldiers, and time was something that Stilicho conspicuously lacked. There was, however, one fully trained and experienced – even battle-hardened – military force already available in east Illyricum: the Goths of Alaric.
The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History Page 26