Attila:The Scourge of God

by Ross Laidlaw

  As for the task for which we had been chosen, our only instructions at this time were that we note the Emperor’s behaviour towards his wife, the Augusta Eudoxia, a kind and gentle lady, daughter of Theodosius, the late Eastern Emperor. Maximus had assured us that the purpose of our posting to the scholae was not to serve the Emperor but to help see justice done for the memory of Aetius; details would be disclosed to us later. On no account were we to communicate with the senator; he would make contact and give further instructions in due course. Although Maximus, accompanied by his beautiful wife, was a frequent guest at the palace, neither by word nor look did he ever acknowledge our presence.

  Then, early in the year following that of Aetius’ murder, the summons came. Gibvult and I were off duty in our barracks when a slave arrived from Maximus, requesting that we accompany him to his master’s villa.

  ‘Your duties at the palace are congenial, I trust?’ asked the senator, when we were ensconced once more in his tablinum.

  ‘I’ve no complaints, Your Gloriousness,’ I said. ‘They’re hardly taxing, after all.’

  ‘Ja, sehr gut,’ confirmed Gibvult, whose command of Latin was rather less than mine, causing him to lapse at times into German.

  ‘And the Empress?’

  ‘He neglects her, although clearly she loves him; why, I can’t imagine. I’ve hardly once heard him address a civil word to her.’

  ‘He treat her shameful — worse than a Hund,’ declared Gibvult hotly. ‘In Germany, such a man would be Ausgestossene, outcast. And she such a kind lady, always with smile or Trinkgeld for us Soldaten.’

  ‘I see,’ mused Maximus. ‘Your opinion, then, would be that the marriage is a sham — at least on the Emperor’s side; that Valentinian no longer has any interest in his wife?’

  ‘That is correct,’ I said. I sensed that, bizarrely, the senator was pleased by this intelligence.

  ‘So presumably he looks elsewhere to gratify his desires?’

  ‘I’ve no means of knowing,’ I said. Where was all this leading? ‘The scholae are never with the Emperor on any occasion that could be termed intimate. You’d have to ask the palace eunuchs — especially Heraclius, who has the emperor’s ear. But I’d be surprised if you weren’t right, Your Gloriousness. After all, Valentinian’s fit, healthy, and still young.’

  Maximus rose and began to pace the room, then halted and stood with furrowed brow, lost in thought. Eventually, ‘You have proved yourselves both discreet and reliable,’ he said in a low voice, almost as if he were speaking to himself. He turned to face us. ‘The time has come to take you into my confidence. I’m sure you need no reminding that anything I say must go no further than these walls.’

  Gibvult and I assured him that our lips were sealed.

  ‘Then I must tell you this: the Emperor has begun to cast lustful eyes on my wife. She is the soul of honour and fidelity, and would never willingly betray the marriage bed. But that would not deter Valentinian, for whom to desire something is but the prelude to possessing it. He has no honour and would not scruple to force himself upon my wife, if he could find the opportunity. Despite my high position, how could I prevent him? After all, he is the Emperor.’

  Gibvult and I exchanged concerned glances. To be party to this knowledge was horribly dangerous.

  Maximus must have noticed, for he continued, ‘Why am I telling you all this? I will keep nothing from you. Should Valentinian succeed in ravishing my wife, I would be compelled to uphold the honour of my gens, the Anicii.’

  ‘By disposing of the Emperor?’ I suggested bluntly.

  Maximus gave a wry half-smile, then shrugged. ‘As a Roman, and Anician to boot, I would have no choice.’

  ‘And we would do the “disposing”,’ I observed sourly, as realization dawned. Maximus was planning nothing less then seizing the purple for himself — a move which might well succeed, given Valentinian’s huge unpopularity. Avenging his wife’s honour would give Maximus a convincing motive for killing Valentinian, as well as being guaranteed to enlist public sympathy. I could see it all clearly. The information we had given the senator, slight though it was, had convinced him that the time was ripe to use his wife as bait for Valentinian’s lust. Gibvult and myself, chosen because of our proven loyalty to Aetius and, I suppose, our boldness, were simply to be convenient tools to implement the deed. Well, no matter. If falling in with the senator’s plans, however base, would enable us to avenge our beloved leader, we could ask for no greater privilege. I looked at Gibvult, and we both nodded.

  I turned to Maximus. ‘Whenever you are ready,’ I declared heavily.

  ‘Excellent; we understand each other, then,’ he returned briskly. ‘Instructions will be given you in due course. Meanwhile, you will carry on as normal with your duties at the palace.’ He shot us a calculating glance. ‘Never fear — you’ll both be well rewarded.’

  Something snapped inside me. ‘You Romans think that everything must have its price!’ I heard myself shout. ‘Can’t you realize that some things are done for honour’s sake alone? Come, Gibvult.’ And turning on our heels we marched from the tablinum.

  Soon after that second meeting with Maximus, Rome was rocked by a scandal, the details of which the senator did nothing to conceal; in fact, short of putting up posters, he did everything he could to publicize them. What happened was this. In a gaming session with the Emperor, Maximus lost heavily — more than he could afford to settle on the spot. Valentinian insisted that the senator surrender his signet ring as a pledge that he would repay the debt. Following the incident, Valentinian had a message sent to Maximus’ wife purporting to come from her husband (together with the ring as proof of identity). She should come at once to the palace to attend the Empress Eudoxia on some urgent business. Unsuspecting, Maximus’ wife complied. On arrival at the palace, she was taken to a remote bedchamber where she was raped by Valentinian. Predictably, when word got out (as Maximus made sure it would), the Emperor’s stock plumbed even lower depths.

  Despite the scandal, in a gesture of defiance in the face of public opinion, the Emperor announced that he intended shortly to open, in person, a display of military Games to be held in the Campus Martius — a great plain in the west of Rome, between the Tiber and the city’s hills. The day before the event, I was approached by one of Maximus’ slaves, who handed me a note. It contained five words: ‘When he drops the mappa.’

  My pulses quickening, I sought out Gibvult. ‘Tomorrow the Emperor will start the Games by dropping a white cloth,’ I told him. ‘That’s when we strike.’

  He took the news calmly. ‘Better make sure we’re picked for duty, then,’ he grunted, without looking up from the task he was engaged in — buffing up his cuirass with a paste of fine sand and vinegar. ‘And check our swords are keen.’

  Because of the extra spit-and-polish involved, attendance at ceremonial occasions was not exactly welcomed by members of the scholae; so it was easy enough to ensure our names were on the duty roster.

  It was a cool, bright, mid-March morning when the procession set out from the Palatine, the Imperial couple accompanied by the guard and followed by a train of courtiers and attendants. Along the Sacred Way we passed through the Forum Romanum, where we were joined by the Senate (headed by Maximus), resplendent in their archaic togas, then below the Capitol, and on up the Flaminian Way. Turning left off the great street at the Arch of Diocletian, we headed into the Campus Martius past the Pantheon and the Stadium of Domitian, to a roped-off open area where the contestants were assembled. The first event was to be a display of mounted archery by units of the vexillationes palatinae, the cream of the cavalry. The participants began lining up a hundred paces from a row of targets, which they would gallop towards, then shoot at as they passed.

  Accompanied by Heraclius, and flanked by select members of the scholae (which I had made sure included Gibvult and myself), Valentinian mounted the steps of the podium. He took the white cloth that Heraclius handed him, and raised it aloft. I have to
admit that, vile degenerate though he may have been, he was certainly imposing. With the purple robe and glittering diadem setting off his tall, athletic figure, he looked every inch a Roman emperor.

  ‘Let’s take Heraclius as well,’ Gibvult whispered. I nodded, my heart beginning to thump violently. Everyone knew that Heraclius had poisoned Valentinian’s mind against the Patrician. But for the eunuch, Aetius would still be living.

  The mappa dropped.

  Time seemed to freeze as we drew our swords and closed on Valentinian. He turned towards us, hand still uplifted, eyes widening in shock as the glittering blades moved towards his breast. I was vaguely aware of the riders surging forward from the starting-line, the crowd rising, mouths opening to shout encouragement. The illusion of time slowing lasted a mere heartbeat; I felt my sword jar briefly against bone, then it slid deep into Valentinian’s chest. I wrenched it free, blood spurting from the wound, saw Gibvult withdraw his own reddened blade. With a choking, gurgling cry, Valentinian staggered and collapsed. Stepping over the dying Emperor, we cut down Heraclius before he had grasped what was happening. At our feet, the two figures twitched briefly, then were still.

  Slowly, the hubbub of the crowd died away as news of the killing spread. Then the vast silence was broken by a stentorian voice, that of Maximus: ‘People of Rome, you are free. The tyrant Valentinian is dead.’6

  A mighty shout (clearly pre-arranged) issued from the assembled ranks of senators: ‘Romans, behold your new Augustus, Petronius Maximus.’

  A brief pause, then from the packed multitude arose a swelling roar, ‘Maximus Augustus! Maximus Augustus! Maximus Augustus!’

  With the permission of the new Emperor (whose purpose anyway we had served), we left the scholae and, having had our fill of Rome and Romans, prepared to return to our homes in Germania. But before departing, we received a message that one Titus Valerius Rufinus, who had been an officer on Aetius’ staff, desired to see us. It could do no harm, we thought. We decided I should speak for both of us, and the meeting was arranged.

  The rest you know, Titus Valerius, my friend.

  My tale is done [wrote Titus in the Liber Rufinorum], as will soon be Rome’s, if Romulus’ vision should prove true. The twelve vultures he saw represented, according to the augur Vettius, the twelve centuries assigned to the lifetime of his city. Fable that may be, yet I cannot think the Empire of the West will long outlive the man whose genius alone for so long nourished hope for its survival. Maximus is no Aurelian to subdue the barbarians and restore the state. Already, in Gaul the Franks and Visigoths begin to push beyond their boundaries, and our army there is starved of men and resources to contain them. Hispania is ravaged by Bagaudae and the Sueves, Africa in Vandal hands, Britain lost beyond recovery. Only Italia, Provincia, and central Gaul remain inviolate. But for how long? Our armies dwindle by the day; the Treasury is empty; we look to the East for aid — which does not come.

  Let my son Marcus, if that should be his wish, take up this history where I leave off. But it is to Constantinople, not Ravenna, that he must turn his eyes. West Rome may fall, but East Rome will live on. Vale.

  1 Chnodomar, King of the Alamanni, defeated by the Romans at the Battle of Strasbourg in 357.

  2 Horburg in Alsace.

  3 In large measure impressively intact today.

  4 In Teutonic mythology, Orms or Worms were giant serpents.

  5 A famous charioteer, the first to win a thousand races.

  6 On 16 March 455, by an eerie coincidence almost exactly five centuries to the year and the day from the murder of Julius Caesar, on the Ides (15th) of March 44 BC.

  AFTERWORD

  The murder of Valentinian III ended the Theodosian dynasty which, for all its defects, did provide a measure of stability to the crumbling Roman state. Deprived of the inspired leadership of ‘the great safety of the Western Empire’, as a Byzantine chronicler has described Aetius, that empire entered its terminal decline. Valentinian’s successor, Petronius Maximus, lasted barely three months before being lynched by an angry mob, as he prepared to flee Rome ahead of a Vandal assault on the city.1 He was briefly followed by Avitus, who had served Aetius so well in Gaul but who, falling foul of the Senate (enjoying a temporary, astonishing revival of its power) was sentenced to death by that assembly. Next, German warlords proceeded to set up a succession of puppet emperors (of whom Majorian, another former colleague of Aetius, alone showed any promise), the last of whom, Romulus Augustus (sic!) was deposed in 476, bringing to an end the Roman Empire in the West.

  Gaiseric, who contributed more to the destruction of the West than any other individual, outlasted that empire by a single year. Like the Huns’, the Vandals’ legacy was entirely negative, their name linked for ever with cruelty and destruction. Two generations after Gaiseric’s death, they were routed by the East Roman army of Justinian and, like the Huns, wiped from the slate of history. (After Attila’s death, the Hun Empire rapidly disintegrated, leaving no mark on posterity except a memory of massacre and devastation with which the name of Attila, ‘the Scourge of God’ will ever be associated.)

  Was the work of Aetius, then, all for nothing? By no means. Although he probably appeared too late on the scene to rescue the Western Empire, not only did he save Europe from Asiatic domination, but his career helped to make possible the future harmonious co-existence between Germans and Romans within the limits of the former empire. The Catalaunian Plains was the Western Empire’s greatest (although final) triumph. The victory was due to a new development of seminal importance: Romans and Germans combining to repel a common enemy. This contrasts with previous Roman policy towards federate ‘guests’: reluctant toleration and containment as with the Visigoths and Franks or, in the case of the Burgundians, military suppression. Henceforth, the political dynamic lay with the constructive interaction between the two peoples, a process which survived the dissolution of the empire itself.

  The conversion of the Frankish king Clovis to Catholicism in 498 — an example followed eventually by other German monarchs — removed the last major barrier to co-operation between Germans and Romans. (Hitherto, the Franks, like other German tribes, had been Arian Christians, heretics in Roman eyes.) Aetius laid the foundation on which Theoderic (no connection with the Visigothic kings of that name) was able to build his successful Romano-German synthesis in Ostrogothic Italy. This, despite renewed conflict between the two peoples in the course of Justinian’s re-occupation of the West, was to prove a lasting achievement. From it developed European medieval civilization, embodied politically in the empire of Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire, whose heir is, arguably, the European Union.

  The two thousand years of the Christian era have been significantly occupied by Rome. The Western Empire lasted almost a quarter of that period, the Eastern nearly three-quarters, surviving (admittedly in increasingly attenuated form) until 1453 — less than two generations before the birth of Henry VIII, which, in the long perspective of history, is the day before yesterday. Rome’s influence on architecture, law, languages, ideas, the arts, religion, government, etcetera, etcetera, has been immeasurable — and lasting. To take just one example: for nearly two centuries British India was ruled by classically educated young men, who took as their model for government that of Imperial Rome; on the whole, whatever one thinks of the morality of imperialism, they made a pretty good fist of running the subcontinent. Rome’s legacy has, in the main, been a noble one, whose preservation and transfer owes not a little to Aetius — ‘the last of the Romans’, as Procopius described him.

  1 This resulted in a second (and much more destructive than that of 410) Sack of Rome.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Regarding the history of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, we know pretty well what happened, but not always why or how it happened. This requires the writer of historical fiction to flesh out the skeleton of available fact with speculation as to the motivation and personality traits of real persons. For example, we don’t know i
f Attila planned to build a ‘Greater Scythia’, as I have suggested. But it is at least arguable that he might have done. Great military leaders have tended to harbour ambitions beyond the mere acquisition of plunder and territory — Alexander and Napoleon, for instance.

  Such creative guesswork aside, I have, except in a few instances, kept to the known historical facts as closely as possible. (The story of Attila and Aetius is so extraordinary and dramatic in itself that it needs little in the way of embellishment.) The exceptions are as follows. The Burgundians have been relocated to Savoy a few years before this actually happened. My character Constantius is a conflation of two real persons of that name. Even Gibbon admits that the two Constantii ‘from the similar events of their lives might have been easily confounded’; so I don’t feel too guilty about uniting them. I have made him the key figure in Chrysaphius’ plot to have Attila murdered, rather than Edecon or Bigilas (Vigilius), the two agents most closely involved in the conspiracy. Ambrosius’ meeting with Germanus is conjectural, but certainly within the bounds of possibility when the difficulty in precisely dating events in Britain for this period, is borne in mind. According to some scholars (Winbolt, Musset, et al.), Ambrosius was active in the early to mid-fifth century; others (e.g., Cleary) place him late in that century. Like Aetius, Ambrosius Aurelianus (sometimes given as Aurelius Ambrosius), who is thought to have come from a consular family, has earned the epithet ‘the last of the Romans’. The estimated date of Germanus’ second visit to Britain (440-44) virtually coincides with that for the third appeal for help to Aetius (445), permitting, I think, a fictional conjunction. Irnac I have presented as a child rather than the young man whom Priscus saw. And Daniel, Constantinople’s ‘pillar-saint’, I have placed on his column ten years before he first sat on it. In addition, I have made a few minor changes to topography: part of the necropolis of Tarquinii (the Etruscans’ southern capital) has been translated a hundred miles north — but still within Etruria — to the valley of the Garfagnana; in Gaius’ transit of the Black Forest I have telescoped one or two features (for instance, bringing the Triberg Falls a few miles further south), and have relocated the Himmelreich from the western to the eastern end of the Hollenthal. The above changes were made in the interests of dramatic emphasis or rounded storytelling, and on that count are hopefully excusable.