Summa Risus: Collected Non-Fiction

by R. A. Lafferty

  Emperor Theodosius is shown on coin and medallion to be a handsome man, though somewhat wooden. It is not known how much of this was the man himself and how much was the convention of representing emperors. All of the fourth-century emperors resemble each other in their faces on coins, and they were not all of one kindred. Theodosius had a clear penetrating voice, but keyed too high. As Emperor he had a mincing way of walking which was incongruous in such a large man, and which was burlesqued by his enemies. He had not had such a mannerism when he was a soldier, and he had been a great soldier. There is some likelihood for the belief that he was often in physical pain when he moved; that perhaps he had suffered rupture or wound or disease and could go in no other way. His movement was clearly not an affectation. He seems to have ridden horseback with more ease than he walked. He had served in Britain and Spain, and may have served in Greece also before his accession to Emperor. His estates were in Spain—he was called Spanish and was known at a later date to have cousins still in Spain; but he could have been of an old Roman line for all that. Area of origin, at that time, had a very loose connection with lineage.

  But the basic fact about Theodosius was that he understood himself and all his failings. He was sincere in his wish to build up a nucleus of future leadership that would be more stable than he was himself, though he could not honestly see how it might be more successful than he had been. From the picked youths of the nations within the Empire, he intended to fabricate an instrument that would continue the Empire forever. The Empire, to him, was a main part of religion and the faith; and he believed that the acceptance of the Holy Empire should be a part of the creed.

  Alaric of Balthi came to the Imperial School when he was twelve years old. With him were other noble Gothic youths, Hafras and Vargas his friends, and Sarus his cousin who stood in the position of a rather critical older brother. Athaulf and Singerich had been held back. The Balthi family did not intend to give all their princes as hostages. Athaulf, in fact, had already been sent to a branch of the family still living beyond the Danube; and he would not come into the Empire again until he came in to destroy it. The sending of Athaulf was, to the Balthi, as important as the sending of Sarus and Alaric. The family did not neglect its ties with the Goths living beyond the Empire.

  Alaric attended the School, along with an extraordinary group of superior students, for about five years. At the end of that time Alaric, still short of eighteen years old, was to be given the command of ten or twelve thousand men in a bloody key operation of a critical civil war. This was not foreseen, but both the material and the instruction had to be superior to make such a thing possible.

  The School itself was sometimes at Constantinople, sometimes at Adrianople; in garrisons and barracks and field; and in an academy. It was sometimes on the frontiers and, at least twice, beyond. Part of the courses may have been held in Italy.

  When Alaric commanded troops in Italy, in his eighteenth year during the Civil War, it was said that he had been in that country before; just when is not known.

  The youths received instruction in all types of warfare and in nearly every sort of weapon. The javelin seems to have been an exception. The Roman pilum, the javelin, had last been used at the fiasco of Marcianapolis. The sardonic laughter of the Goths, at the sight of such a weapon, can still be heard by one who has the ear for such things. The javelin had been a survival of the boyhood of the Roman people, and was on par with the slings of the Balearic people. It was a hunting weapon of the early countrymen soldiers, but it had no place in serious warfare. A Roman could throw but one to three javelins, and then stood naked of missiles; a Gothic archer could loose ten arrows in about the same time—more accurate and of much greater penetrating power.

  The boys learned the correct use of the lance, pike, halberd-axe, long-sweep sword from horseback, short sword for afoot, heavy mace to break spear-armed infantry squares, short bow, and long bow. They learned horsemanship of the Gothic, Hunnic, and Saracen styles and worked out an effective combination of these. They learned about siege engines and circumvallation and entrenchment.

  They were taught by experts of every sort and overseen by men interested in developing new tactics. The Romans, still the fastest men with a blade ever, gave instruction to the powerful outlander youths. There were seasoned Gothic and Hunnic warriors in service at the School who were as good with the long-sweep sword as the Romans were with the short sword, and who were of the two peoples who had simultaneously brought horse warfare to a finesse that it had never known before. There were archers from Scythia who had made the use of their weapons an art. There were armorers who invented and tested various devices with the youths of the school.

  There was a more-than-Spartan cult of physical culture, with many of the instructors from old Sparta itself—though the city had shrunk to a village. Wrestling had always been the soldiers' sport; now it became a daily occupation of forced excellence. One who excelled in this was the Gothic boy Sarus, already called the lion. He had a speed and a ferocity and a strength of hand that would make any other boy cry out in pain. Years later, after Alaric had gone from being the Boy Giant to being the gigantic King of the Goths, Sarus could always make him back off with a good-natured offer to hand wrestle.

  The cadets were instructed in field and by book in every subject that might be important to a general, in a day when any general might be called upon to take charge of the entire Empire. They heard lectures from some very great men; and from one unusual man who might seem an odd choice to address the future generals. This was Eutropius, the intricate eunuch of the Eastern Court. He lectured them in this manner, or in this manner as recollected by Hafras half a century later, for we have this account from him:

  “We will discuss what it is by which a man excels,” the eunuch told them, “and why, out of the forty million men in the Empire, there are scarce forty of any competence at all; and not one—not even our Emperors of the East and West, for I am no sycophant—not one man of complete competence. We will discuss the ideal of complete competence, the attainment of partial competence, and the question whether the basis of this competence is of necessity so narrow as it has been in fact. Competence is merely the management of men, and the navigation of the tide of affairs. It should not be so rare as it is. Failure in the management of men cannot be compensated for by success in all other things.

  “A man may be proficient in all the arts and philosophies; he may have the amenities; he may have scope and balance, and a strength of hand and mind; he may understand history like the back and the front of his own hand—what has been, and what will be; but with all this he may, or may not, have a measure of competence. There are many elements in the complex, and the lightning cannot be compelled to strike. But remember that it is more likely to strike the high eminences than the flatlands of humanity. The more parts of the man there are present in him, the more it is possible that he will be formed into a full man.

  “We are most of us Christians—as it is now the fashion to be. But we must realize that both Fate and Fortune are deities of an older Theology. We must not believe that our Faith inhibits us from hazarding for the higher fortune. Every man has an ordained place in the world. Some of you will have very high places; one or more of you may some day have the very highest. Now let us understand several things. Cruelty in those of high station may not be the same thing as in lesser men. Murder is reprehensible in one of the common sort. To the State itself, or to a judge, or a regent, it may become a necessary execution. A man of real competence is entitled to consider himself as a judge, as a regent, as a State. A man of competence is a public thing. He cannot consider his affairs as private, even to himself.

  “Your Christian Faith teaches you why you are in this world—to serve God. But the thing you must teach yourselves is that the highest service is to excel. It was to excel in everything that comes to your hand that you were born into this world. If you do not excel, then you were born in vain.

  “You are all of you
born into the Line, or you would not be here. No well-governing son ever came from inferior parentage. It cannot happen. You may hear that some sudden General is the son of thieves and robbers. Believe me, if he is a competent General, then he is the son of competent thieves and robbers, at least.”

  Eutropius the eunuch talked to them in this fashion and fired in them the desire for competence. The eunuch of uncertain ancestry was enamored with the aristocracy. Not himself born into the Line, he believed that to be born into the Line was everything. It was not an orthodox Christian morality that he preached to the cadets; it was the morality that had been distilled in the mind of the Emperor Theodosius. There is a close similarity between all statements of Theodosius and of Eutropius the eunuch who served him; and for a reason. The thoughts were from the Emperor, but the words from the eunuch. Eutropius was speech-writer for the Emperor for the sixteen years of his reign.

  Alaric, coming into his thirteenth year, was a master of horse. He had suddenly changed form and acquired the beginnings of his authority. In their earlier months at the school, while Sarus had already been named the lion, Alaric had been called the struthio, the ostrich. This was from his general stringiness and his bird-like head with its piercing eyes set atop his long neck. But now, at the coming of his adolescence, he developed a sort of animal magnetism and became a leader—though still of grotesque appearance. In several years he would become the Boy Giant, but the transition was painful. Alaric was made master of horse for his new qualities of leadership—even over boys of a much greater age. He would never be the horseman his cousin Sarus was, but he was already a leader such as Sarus could never be.

  And at the school they were doing things with horses that had never been done before, neither by Goth nor Roman nor Sarmatian. It is said that the heavy mail-clad Sarmatian and Gothic horsemen, armed with heavy lance and long sword, were the true ancestors of the later medieval knights—even having their appearance. They were not the ancestors of the knights, they were the knights themselves; but with a discipline that the medievals would have forgotten. They were stirruped and saddled and pommeled, and mounted on horses heavy enough to make the effective use of heavy lances possible.

  It has been written seriously that there were no stirrups before the year 600. But the ornate silver-chased stirrups of that time, the earliest that we possess, had certainly a long ancestry behind them. Rope-sling stirrups, at least, were used from the Baltic to China, as they are still used on much of that steppe land today. Without stirrups a horseman could not retain his mount under the shock of a heavy lance thrust, and the Goths and half a dozen other peoples from the North did use heavy lances.

  The technique that was now put together, by the instructors and youths at the School, was superior, not only to anything that had gone before, but to anything that was to come after. The Roman legions had always been insufficient in cavalry; and the Goths had relied on it too heavily. A balance was found now—the perfect employment of heavy and light horse with the orthodox foot legions. The horse-madness of the Goths was a new element. It had broken the Romans at Adrianople and obsoleted the primarily foot legions. The Empire had to adopt it or go down to it.

  The tacticians at the School integrated not one but three techniques of cavalry: the very heavy horse of the Goths that could carry heavy men in armor to break the center of a line; the medium horse of the Huns combining speed and power in kaleidoscopic attacks that dazzled and routed; the light horse of the Saracen- Arabs of incomparable speed and ferocity. It is significant that Saras, when he had become the most feared raider in the Empire, would use all three types in his very small bands.

  The boys of Alaric's sort quickly learned the discipline and the patterns and worked well with the diversified groups. They already had the horse-madness.

  The Gothic youths learned infantry tactics. They mastered the complete circumvallation of the Romans and walled and trenched camps for even a one night stand. These gave a backing and a sure base for the line. Complete routing of a force with such a camp at its back is almost impossible, and such a camp established the battle site. In the several conflicts between the Romans and the Goths, it had always been the case that the Goths reached the battle line after a long and brutal uphill charge, to meet the waiting and rested Romans with a fortified camp at their backs. The fact that the Goths had triumphed more times than not was due to their superiority in strength and determination, not to their tactics.

  The boys were serious and the instructors, devoted. What was fashioned here, out of the already superior Roman legions and the best of devices from outside the Empire, was a really professional military tactic. The Roman force, at the time of its defeat by the Goths at Adrianople, was not in decline; it was an incomparably finer force than anything that the Republic or the early Empire had devised.

  But Alaric and his Goths had intuitive knowledge of military aspects that were completely beyond the scope of the Romans, then or ever. He understood the organization of companies and bands as well as any Roman, being of the race of convoyers and wagon-train masters. He knew the advantage of raiding down from mountains and Alps as a hawk strikes out of a cloud. The Romans could construct no camp as well-walled as a mountain. Of wagoning in mountains he had generations of knowledge—of the wagon winch and windlass and sling-drops that permit baggage vehicles to be lowered down cliffs; of cordage and tackles and hoists; of tall stripped trees to serve as masts and gin poles for the swinging of wagon after wagon over impossible chasms. He knew, as all the Goths knew, that a heavy army with heavy equipment can be moved over any space of land, mountain, swamp, river—or sea.

  The Goths could cross country that the Romans could not—that the Romans did not regard as fit habitation for man or army. The Goths would always be able to outflank the Empire by coming at it over the forbidding areas that the Romans did not believe needed guarding. That is why Alaric believed, later, that he could penetrate even the unpenetrable fortress city of Ravenna. There is likelihood that he could have, but for the unforeseen change of status.

  The “primitive” Goths of the school now learned another instrument of war from the Romans—a most primitive one—the human voice. None had used the voice quite as the Romans had. Others used heralds, but others did not use the voice of the commander himself to the same extent. The Goths had used horns and trumpets with coded calls and orders. They learned from the classic Romans to go back to the more primitive and effective instrument.

  The Roman legions moved to the sound of trumpets, but that was only for the march beat. In conflict they obeyed the human voice of their commander. A legion with auxiliaries, special guards, slaves and dignitaries, followers and provisioners, might total twenty thousand persons. A well-voiced man, even in the open air, can address twenty thousand persons assembled for an oration. It is another matter to have voice command over them in scattered battle array. But it was done by the commander and his centurions. A legion worked better under this direct voice command, and for this reason the cultivation of the voice was given high place. To the Romans, the great voice was a part of complete manhood. Every Roman commander had to be an orator, and every Roman orator had been a commander.

  Tully (Cicero) had been proconsul of Cilicia, and concomitant to this office he had commanded troops. Every great orator of the Romans had commanded troops at some time in his career. This ability of voice command of troops was a primitive advantage that the Romans retained to the last.

  Alaric, who was now becoming the Boy Giant, had this powerful voice, and it was partly because of this that he was so early given a command over his fellow students. Others of the Goths never acquired it, not even the intrepid Sarus. We shall see how, on the walls of Ravenna, the voice of Sarus broke and he had to turn the invective over to a herald.

  The Emperor Theodosius visited the cadets many times and instructed them at length, on at least one occasion giving them the basis of his idea of Empire. He told them simply that the Empire was ordained by God. That God h
ad a representative on earth, and that he sat in Rome, the heart of the Empire. He told them that Christendom was the Empire; that it was the world itself, and the highest handiwork of God. He told them that if the Empire should ever fall, it was the world itself that would end: that their life was not their own; that they were the stewards but not the proprietors of their own bodies; that these belonged to the Empire, and through the Empire to God.

  This was neither the established nor the universal view; nor was it the Catholic view. But it was the Catholic view as interpreted by the Emperor Theodosius, and perhaps by the Archbishop Ambrose of Milan since these two were very close. St. Ambrose believed the preservation of the Empire to be of the utmost importance, and he had impressed his view on the Emperor—the one person able to implement it. It was an extreme view and would do much mischief in history—when such divine sanction came to be applied to lesser entities than the Empire.

  The temporary continuance of a cult is insured by the adherence of even one important convert. Theodosius had already found that convert in one Stilicho. He had impressed his Empire outlook on that great—or soon to be great—Master General. And among the cadets of the school, the Emperor made other converts—assuring that his view would continue for at least another generation.

  A young Hun named Uldin and a young Goth named Sarus were possessed of the idea like fire. Both were of the princely line and would be important, and both would give their whole lives to it till it burned them to death.

  Bacurinius, the son of a great Spanish general, was likewise captivated by the idea, as was Vargas—another young Goth. They would be the first of the cadet group actually to suffer death for that emblazoned idea of Empire.

  Alaric of Balthi was also strongly taken by the idea of the divinely constituted Empire; and he might have followed it as fervidly, as did his cousin Sarus, had not another influence, at the same time, come to bear. This was a reassertion of the oldest influence on him, and it tended to carry him in a divergent direction.