The Romans greeted the death of Attila as the dawn of a new era. On the night of the great Hun’s death, the eastern emperor Marcian is said to have had a happy dream in which he saw Attila’s bow broken in two.40 However, the disappearance of a rival superpower proved not to be the end of all troubles, but a development that spawned a whole series of new problems. The prospect of a further clash of empires had vanished only to be replaced by many complicated regional conflicts with serious implications for both halves of the Roman world. And I strongly suspect that those we hear about in our motley collection of sources represent no more than the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, the many and varied problems of refugees and invaders were as nothing compared with the broader consequences of the crash of Attila’s Empire. Above all, it destroyed the balance of forces on which, by the mid-fifth century, the western Roman Empire had come to depend.
The Fall of Aetius
AS WE SAW in Chapter 6, the emperor Valentinian III, son of Flavius Constantius and Galla Placidia, came to the throne in 425 at the age of six. He had been put there by the armies of the eastern Empire, and had never really held the reins of power. An eight-year domination by his mother, who eventually failed in her balancing act between the commanders of the several western army groups, had given way to that of Aetius. This man’s extraordinary military acumen during the 430s would both keep the western Empire afloat and cement his own hold on power. At fourteen a Roman youth was notionally an adult and could make legally binding decisions about property, but at this age in 433 Valentinian was nowhere near ready to compete for power with a tough and experienced general, especially when the Empire faced so many military problems. And by the time he might have been able to exercise authority, five or six years later, Aetius’ position was fully consolidated. By 440 it was the general, not the emperor, who was making the key decisions about policies and appointments – the very state of affairs that Placidia had laboured to avoid.
Thus, trapped within patterns of power over which he had no control, the notional emperor of the Roman west found himself a mere figurehead. The drudgery of such an existence is easy to underestimate. Never venturing out of Italy, Valentinian spent his time shuttling between Rome and Ravenna, his routine alternating between a private life replete with the trappings of almost limitless wealth, and state occasions. An emperor’s job, as we have seen, was to embody the core ideologies of the Roman state. He was expected to encapsulate the superhuman, indeed God-ordained, nature of the Roman world order, displaying in his ceremonial self the divine support that had called the Roman Empire into being. As the star turn in the many ceremonies, processions, Christian masses and audiences, he could never let his halo slip. And what he had to officiate at, day in and day out, was supremely tedious in its repetitiveness. The Empire being the epitome of the one-party state in action, public disagreement was not tolerated. Unity was all. Ceremonies were relentlessly orchestrated to bring this point home. It was under Valentinian, it will be remembered, that the Theodosian Code was introduced to the Senate (see p. 124). Valentinian was spared this particular performance, but it was typical of what he had daily to endure. The acclamations that probably prefaced every major imperial ceremony involved 245 shouts of approval from the assembled senators. A brief experiment I have just run with my eleven-year-old son reveals that you can shout about eighteen such acclamations in a minute, so that the ceremony for the Code would have taken at least forty minutes – and that’s not allowing for fatigue setting in and slowing things down towards the end.
Valentinian’s predecessors had experienced the same daily grind, but they at least had the satisfaction of making policy decisions and appointments behind closed doors once the spectaculars were over. We have already witnessed the frustration that such a lifestyle engendered in Valentinian’s sister Honoria: an affair with her estate manager, an unwanted pregnancy and a dangerous liaison with Attila the Hun (see Chapter 7). Nor was it easy for Valentinian to change things. Life is difficult for royal minors who reach adulthood only to find that they still remain marginal to the exercise of power. They may throw caution to the winds, like the seventeen-year-old Edward III, who at midnight on 19 October 1330 broke into Nottingham castle to remove his mother Queen Isabella, arrest her lover Mortimer, and seize the reins of power. But most royal minors are not so daring, and in the 440s Aetius was the young emperor’s only bulwark against the Huns.
If there was nothing that Valentinian could do about his frustrations in the 430s and 440s, the collapse of the Hunnic Empire brought a wind of change blowing through western court circles. By 450 or so, two bones of contention had arisen between Aetius and his emperor. On 28 July that year the eastern emperor Theodosius II had died after a fall from his horse. Valentinian was of the Theodosian dynasty, married to one of Theodosius’ daughters, Eudoxia, and it was Theodosius’ forces who had put him on the western throne in a determined restatement of the unity of that dynasty (see Chapter 6). Theodosius had been its last male representative in the east, his only son Arcadius having predeceased him. Hearing of his cousin’s death, Valentinian had the idea, so we are told, of going to Constantinople to assert his claim to rule the entire Roman world as sole emperor. Aetius set himself against the plan. It was certainly ill conceived. Valentinian had no contacts in Constantinople, and eastern political circles were not about to welcome him. Matters there were ordered by Theodosius’ sister Pulcheria, who had been a strong voice throughout her brother’s reign. Eventually she married a staff officer by the name of Marcian. On 25 August it was Marcian who became the new emperor of the east. Valentinian had missed his chance, such as it was, and Aetius’ opposition to his plan continued to rankle.
The second disagreement between the two concerned marriage alliances. Valentinian’s union with Eudoxia, produced only two daughters: Eudocia (born in 438 or 439) and Placidia (born between 439 and 443). By the early 450s, after fifteen years of marriage, it was unlikely that the imperial couple would have any more children. This meant that the succession to the western Empire was up for grabs, and the likeliest route to securing it would be marriage to one or other of Valentinian’s daughters. As we saw in Chapter 6, Eudocia had been betrothed to Huneric, son of Geiseric king of the Vandals, as part of the peace deal of the 440s, and he was not a serious contender for the throne. It was thus Placidia who became the key to the future of the Roman west, and Aetius worked hard in the early 450s to persuade Valentinian to betroth her to his son Gaudentius. Such a marriage would have cemented Aetius in power, making it extremely likely that Gaudentius would succeed Valentinian. Given the lack of a male Theodosian heir, marriage into the dynasty would have been sufficient to confer legitimacy, especially as the same procedure had just been followed in Constantinople. Whether, in pushing for the marriage, Aetius was responding to a perception that the eastern succession issue had already weakened his hold over Valentinian, is unclear. But the proposal certainly increased the emperor’s already festering resentment at the extent to which he was being marginalized within his own Empire.41
Moreover, with the death of Attila and the collapse of his Empire, Aetius now seemed much less critical to Valentinian’s survival, and it was the emperor, not Aetius, after all, who embodied imperial continuity. For the first time since reaching adulthood, Valentinian could dare to contemplate life without his generalissimo. Aetius perhaps sensed the danger, which might be another reason why he risked adding the marriage issue to Valentinian’s list of grievances. For all its emphasis on consensus, sharks always lurked in the deeper waters of Roman imperial politics; now, individuals in the emperor’s entourage caught the first faint scent of blood. Of the plot that eventually brought Aetius down we are pretty well informed, thanks again to the labours of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. An account survives in another of his works: Excerpts concerning Plots. The fall of Aetius is preserved in a fragment from the history of a certain John of Antioch, but he was a late compiler and probably drew primarily on the history of Priscus. So it
is again the Priscus–Constantine axis that tells us what we want to know.
There were two main conspirators. The first was a Roman senator of high birth named Petronius Maximus. He had begun his career before Aetius came to power, but was clearly considered an Aetian loyalist. Between 439 and 441 he held the important post of Praetorian Prefect of Italy, and was named consul for a second time in 443 – both appointments taking place during Aetius’ pre-eminence.42 The second was drawn from the A-list of likely suspects in any Roman palace plot: the eunuch head of the emperor’s household Heraclius, the primicerius sacri cubiculi (Chief of the Sacred Bedroom). Armed with two issues with which to work on Valentinian, and aided by the fact that the Hunnic threat had receded, the plotters did their worst.43
As Aetius was explaining the finances and calculating the tax revenues, with a shout Valentinian suddenly leaped up from his throne and cried out that he would no longer be abused by such treacheries . . . While Aetius was stunned by this unexpected rage and was attempting to calm his irrational outburst, Valentinian drew his sword from his scabbard and, together with Heraclius, who was carrying a knife ready under his cloak . . . fell upon him.
Attacked simultaneously by emperor and eunuch, on 21 or 22 September 454 Aetius lay dead in the palace. His fall was followed by the usual round of bloodletting. Chief among the victims was Aetius’ current Praetorian Prefect of Italy, a senator by the name of Boethius, grandfather of the famous philosopher.
Valentinian had waited until his thirties, but he had finally broken free. Unfortunately for him, he was not nearly as successful as the young Edward would be some 900 years later at rallying support afterwards. For one thing, the conspirators soon fell out among themselves:
After the murder of Aetius, Maximus paid court to Valentinian hoping that he would be made consul, and when he failed to achieve this, he wished to become Patrician. But Heraclius . . . acting from the same ambition and not wishing a counter-balance to his own power, thwarted Maximus’ efforts by persuading Valentinian that, now he had freed himself from the oppression of Aetius, he should not transfer his power to others.
Old habits die hard, and even after Aetius’ death Valentinian was not really in charge. The challenge was on to run him, especially as he had no male offspring, which meant that, in the longer term, the imperial succession remained an open race. Once it became clear that he was getting nowhere by persuasion, Maximus turned again to deadlier methods, this time suborning two guards officers, Optila and Thraustila, who had been close to Aetius. Priscus relates that, on 16 March 455:
Valentinian decided to go riding [in Rome] on the Campus Martius . . . When he dismounted from his horse and was walking off to practise archery, Optila and his followers . . . attacked him. Optila struck Valentinian across the side of the head and, when he turned to see who had struck him, felled him with a second blow to the face. Thraustila cut down Heraclius, and both of them took the emperor’s diadem and horse and rode off to Maximus.
So perished Valentinian, less than six months after the murder of Aetius. This is the kind of political anarchy that always followed regime change in the Empire. After years of of autocratic rule, albeit in this case more a regency, there was no ready-made regime-in-waiting. As usual, a coalition had been hastily constructed by individuals who had no intention of sharing power with one another afterwards. But if the pattern of Aetius’ fall was nothing out of the ordinary, and the fact that it failed to generate an immediate successor hardly surprising, other features were highly particular. Fascinating in this respect is the obituary for Aetius, originally appearing in Priscus’ history immediately after the murder:
Through his alliance with the barbarians, he had protected Placidia, Valentinian’s mother, and her son while he was a child. When Boniface crossed from North Africa with a large army, he out-generalled him . . . Felix, who was his fellow general, he killed by cunning when he learned that he was preparing to destroy him at Placidia’s suggestion. He crushed the [Visigoths] who were encroaching on Roman territory, and he brought to heel the [Bagaudae] . . . In short, he wielded enormous power, so that not only kings but neighbouring peoples came at his order.
As obituaries go, it’s pretty succinct, and it captures the mix of plotting at court and campaigning in the field that was the reality of Aetius’ political life. What is especially interesting is the mention in its opening words of Aetius’ dependence on an alliance with ‘barbarians’. Not just any barbarians, but one group in particular: the Huns. As the passage suggests, Aetius’ career was founded upon his Hunnic alliance. It was the Huns who sustained him when he seemed about to lose civil wars – first in 425 as the usurpation of John unravelled, and again in 433 when Boniface defeated him at their first confrontation. And as we saw in Chapter 6, Hunnic troops played a central role in his restoration of order in Gaul in the 430s, particularly in his defeats of the Burgundians and Visigoths. Aetius’ death was far more than one man’s tragedy. It also marked the end of an era. The death of Attila and disappearance of the Hunnic Empire not only made it possible for Valentinian to contemplate life without Aetius, it also undermined the delicate balance of powers by which Aetius had kept the western Empire in business. Aetius without the Huns had been surplus to requirements. His successors needed to find a new mechanism for sustaining the west.
Brave New World
THE KEY TO understanding the new political order brought on by the extinction of Hunnic power is provided by virtually the first act of the short-lived regime of Petronius Maximus.
Having murdered Valentinian III on 16 March 455, he was proclaimed emperor the following day. His hands had barely grasped the imperial sceptre when he sent an ambassador to solicit the support of the powerful Visigoths, who had been settled in south-western France since 418. The man he chose was one of his newly appointed military commanders, perhaps commanding general in Gaul (magister militum per Gallias), Eparchius Avitus. Avitus was a Gallic aristocrat of impeccable fortune and education. Descended from high office-holders, he was related to a network of important families, and his estates centred on Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne. He had served with distinction under Aetius in the campaigns against the Norici and Burgundians in the 430s, then followed this up with a spell as supreme civilian administrator in Gaul – Praetorian Prefect – between 439 and 441. At that point he left office, possibly through natural rotation or because he fell out with Aetius, to return to prominence about a decade later. He then played a major role in negotiating the Visigothic assistance that helped Aetius repel Attila’s assault on Gaul in 451.44 In every way, therefore, Avitus was an excellent choice. Close to Aetius, but not too close, he had a good track record and connections with both the Gallic aristocracy and the Goths.
From Avitus himself, no writings have survived. As more than partial compensation, however, we have a collection of poetry and letters from his son-in-law, a certain Gaius Sollius Modestus Apollinaris Sidonius (who has already been cited in this book). The name is generally shortened for sanity’s sake to Sidonius. As his marriage alliance with the family of Avitus might suggest, Sidonius derived from Gallic landowning stock of similar standing – its main estates were situated around Lyon in the Rhône valley. His father had been Praetorian Prefect of Gaul himself about a decade after Avitus, holding the post in 448/9.45 In the past, Sidonius’ writings tended to get a rather bad press. At a time when any decent-thinking chap valued the standards of the classical Latin (first-century BC or AD) he was brought up on, the complexities and allusiveness of Sidonius’ work could only aggravate, if not shock. Compared with the clarity and matter-of-factness of, say, Caesar, his love of showing off seemed the height of decadence. Writing at the end of the Victorian era, Sir Samuel Dill passed this judgement:
[Sidonius] is essentially a literary man, of the stamp which this age of decadence [the fifth century] most admired. He is a stylist, not a thinker or inquirer. There is little doubt that he valued his own compositions not for their substance, but for those cha
racteristics of style which we now think most worthless or even repulsive in them, the childish conceits, the meaningless antitheses, the torture applied to language so as to give an air of interest and distinction to the trivial commonplace of a colourless and monotonous existence . . .46
Even in translation, Sidonius can drive you crazy with his inability to call a spade a spade, and there’s no doubt he spent a lot of time trying to say things in as complicated a way as possible. One of his later letters contains a nicely illuminating comment, delivered at a moment when he thought that the literary audience he had been educated to address had gone for ever: ‘I am putting together the rest of my letters in more everyday language; it is not worth embellishing phrases which may never be published.’47 But it is not fair to judge fifth-century style by first-century standards, and more recent commentators on late Roman Latin (not to mention late Roman Greek) have been less quick to condemn the stylistic complexities that were the height of artistic chic in the fourth and fifth centuries.48 An age that can see chain-sawed cows in preservative as art is by definition unlikely to judge other artistic endeavours by rigid universal standards.
The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History Page 45