Summa Risus: Collected Non-Fiction

by R. A. Lafferty

  This was a savage blow to the West, and the Emperor Theodosius was bound to avenge it. It had been Gratian who had raised him up to be Emperor, and who had placed him as guardian over both halves of the Empire.

  It seemed that Theodosius hesitated a very long time before moving against Maximus; but this was just at the time when the Goths in the East had finally been contained, and Theodosius had stretched his resources to their limit to bring that about. He must have prayed for a few years grace to allow him to stabilize and re-order the Empire; but the time was never given to him.

  Maximus drove the young Emperor Valentinian II out of Italy in 387; and Theodosius finally came to the defence of the family that had raised him to power. There was special inducement for this. Theodosius had now married Galla, the sister of the young Valentinian II, and they were a very close family.

  When Theodosius struck, it was with incredible force and rapidity, which betokened careful preparation beforehand. The Emperor was aided in this action by two fine Generals; Arbogast, an established man, and Stilicho, a younger man of great promise.

  It had to be done in a single battle. Theodosius was not yet able to wage a sustained campaign from the East. A single battle it was, and the Emperor Theodosius captured and killed Maximus at Aquileia on July 28, 388.

  This was the second battle of Aquileia—the first had been fought between two sons of Constantine in 340—and a third terrible battle would be fought on the same site just over six years later. Why it was that Aquileia should three times be such a battle site will be detailed in a moment. It is worth noting that, in all three engagements, the commanders, coming from the East out of the Julian Alps, prevailed in their final aims; though in two cases they suffered stunning military defeats, and in the third case the military engagement was a stalemate.

  The commanders from the West, fighting from the narrow plains, lost their lives in all three cases, but won great victories in two of them and a partial victory in the third.

  At this battle, the second for Aquileia, it was a case of Maximus absorbing and defeating the quick-striking troops of Theodosius, but being killed in the action. The death of Maximus voided his victory, which was turning into a rout of the Easterners, and his troops defected to the Emperor Theodosius.

  Maximus, the splinter Emperor, was dead, and it would appear that the Empire, both East and West, was secure. Years of restoration were badly needed. But the Empire was not secure, and the time to make it secure was denied to the Emperor Theodosius. Maximus had been but one wave of a new sort of assault. Arbogast now rose as a most threatening second wave; and the third and fourth waves had already begun to gather in unknown places.

  Arbogast was the Count of the Franks. The title still maintains itself sixteen hundred years later, but the title and the man were one. Arbogast was the one and only Count—Comes—of the Franks. He was a good soldier and had held second rank in the service of Gratian. After the defeat and death of Gratian at the hands of Maximus, Arbogast had escaped from the West and entered the services of the Eastern Emperor Theodosius—loudly vowing vengeance on the usurper Emperor. It is not known how far Arbogast was then looking into the future, but he seems to have been completely loyal at the time. He had been foremost in urging the Emperor Theodosius to avenge the death of Gratian and the expulsion of Valentinian II.

  Arbogast had been a valiant leader in Theodosius' battle against Maximus, and nobody doubted that he was a fine soldier. It was after this action that Arbogast was appointed to be Master General of the armies of Gaul. The appointment was not made by the orders of the young Valentinian, but by the power of Theodosius. It was then that Arbogast fell prey to a disease that had afflicted many of the master generals; treason was endemic to all the master generals except Stilicho. Under a certain combination of circumstances it would come out, and it did now.

  Arbogast came under the influence of one of his subordinates, a man named Solinas. This man was of evil prompting, and the opportunity very rich. Arbogast made his decision under the urging of Solinas—a decision that he might have resisted but for this man. Once he had made up his mind, it became easier for him; it is so promising a road that one wonders that everyone does not try it.

  The Count Arbogast, having the trust of both Valentinian and Theodosius, began his moves carefully. He worked his own favorites into positions of command in the army—men Frankish for the most part. Arbogast, with the aid of the talented Solinas, did this so skillfully that Valentinian believed the new men were also his own favorites and were of his own selection. The young Valentinian was short of acumen in dealing with his great Master General.

  Valentinian is always excused as being a very young man. But he was either twenty-one or twenty-two years old at the time of his death, and by the standards of that time he would have been a full man if he was ever going to be one. The young Emperor was not a coward nor was he physically insignificant. He was a man somewhat above the average in size and courage. He was not a fool. He was guilty of no rash act; nor of any particular negligence. He was intelligent, honorable, good-natured, and whimsically humorous. He made good selections of men and policies, but the man he selected as master general of Gaul developed a policy of treason. Valentinian was a good man, but he failed being a great man. And the Emperor Theodosius remained very seriously involved in the East. Theodosius had spared more men and more months than he could afford in dealing with the usurper Magnus Maximus. He had to trust young Valentinian to rule the West, and he trusted completely Arbogast, the Frankish Count.

  Arbogast worked until every leading man in the army and in the Western Court was his own man. In this infiltration and subversion he was aided by Solinas who practiced these matters as a form of art. They were able men who were intruded. Their Court seemed more stable than the Court of the East; more flexible, more able to move against the barbarians.

  It was to increase this flexibility that the Western Court was moved temporarily to Vienne in Gaul. Valentinian had been persuaded to move his Imperial residence to that place to give it greater weight and authority. Vienne was in Gaul, and Arbogast was Count of Gaul, and of the Franks.

  Either suddenly or slowly Valentinian realized that he was the captive of his Master General. It may be that he would have been allowed to live out his life as puppet. More likely he would have been killed when Arbogast felt secure in his power. But Valentinian was man enough to take up the challenge.

  There is a colorful story of the showdown between Count Arbogast and the Emperor Valentinian. After a formal meeting in full view of the Court, Valentinian calmly handed Arbogast a paper telling him that he was relieved of all his commands and offices. Arbogast read it through; then laughed blackly and tore it up and threw it down.

  Arbogast motioned to his guards to take the Emperor. Valentinian overpowered the first guard, took his sword from him, and attempted to use it against Arbogast. Such a grand gesture was of no avail there. Arbogast was too well prepared. The Emperor was pinioned and taken away.

  Shortly afterwards Valentinian was found strangled in his own apartment. There is no doubt that it was either by the orders or at the hand of Arbogast.

  The word came to the Emperor Theodosius that his young Western colleague had died by an accident. The word came from Arbogast, who pledged eternal fealty to the Empire and the Emperor; but who announced that, for the public order, he was himself taking the reins of the Western lands into his unworthy hands. The true account of the affair came to Theodosius, of course; Emperors have long ears. It may have come verbally by the same messenger who brought the official announcement.

  Arbogast did not officially make himself Emperor of the West. Instead, he appointed Eugenius to be Emperor and puppet—the famous pagan rhetorician of Rome—Arbogast now owned the West. He had the full armies of Rome, and the armies of Gaul—of the Franks, his own people. The Franks, the Gauls—half-Celtic, half-German—were the threat to the Western Empire that the Goths had been to the Eastern. But this threat was now m
ade his instrument by Arbogast. He was native Count—leader of that restive people; he was victorious Master General, and he owned his own Emperor. He held Gaul, as well as Rome and all Italy, and all the Western provinces.

  Theodosius would be compelled to move against Arbogast, though his resources were still exhausted from his move against Magnus Maximus and his settling of various border disputes. It is said that Theodosius knew that this would be the last campaign of his life; that his unknown physical disability would put an end to his life in the near future; and that he knew the day of his death. It is believed that it was at this time that he appointed Stilicho the guardian of the Emperor and of the two young sons, the future emperors. Theodosius had just been betrayed by one Master General, but he had no fear of betrayal by Stilicho.

  It is certain that they were planning the campaign while they maintained the fiction that they were taking Arbogast's account of the death of Valentinian at face value. But Theodosius simply did not have the troops to combat the traitor immediately. He dissembled and swallowed his anger for two years while he built up his forces. The Eastern Empire had been bled of troops for service in both the East and West.

  Finally, when time itself was running strongly against him and some sort of move would have to be made soon or not at all—when he considered the day of his coming death and realized how short a period he had remaining—Theodosius erupted into galvanizing action and set the thing into motion, naming the date of the battle. He had two Master Generals in the East, Stilicho and Timasius, one of them as great as Arbogast, the other nearly as outstanding. They had the brains and the flair to ignite an action. Between them they would have to find a device to make up for the deficiency in numbers.

  Theodosius gave the orders to his Master Generals, and they in their turn gave more detailed and motivating orders. Some of the orders were wild and unheard-of. The orders given to the gawky and impossibly tall Gothic teen-ager, Alaric of Balthi, were orders as wild as could be imagined. But by such devices the Emperor and the two Master Generals put together a final army and began to move it to Italy.

  There was one complicating detail in the line-up, which would turn out to be the detail of final effect. The pseudo-Emperor Eugenius had been openly pagan, and the Count Arbogast secretly so. Both believed—and Eugenius had been chosen Emperor by Arbogast because of the skillful phrasing he gave the belief—that Christianity was a parasite on the Empire; and that corporate health could only be restored by the elimination of that new religion. This now became the declared policy. It was a very chauvinistic movement, and it gathered adherents as it became apparent that it was in full power.

  The Pope at that time was Siricius, later sainted. He was known for his wide tolerance—which was often given a harsher name by the zealots. He judged correctly that the thunder of excommunication would hold no terrors for those already outside the Faith; that the returned paganism was not an interior heresy but an exterior menace. He found himself powerless to move against the pagan usurpers. The only loud protest came, not from Pope Siricius, but from Archbishop Ambrose in Milan; and it was the one voice that even Arbogast did not dare to still.

  The force of Arbogast the Count was now essentially pagan, and that of Theodosius coming against him was Catholic and Arian. This made for deeply divided loyalties in each force: among the Frankish Catholics who followed Arbogast with greatly qualified support, and among the old Eastern Empire army pagans who marched with Theodosius and Stilicho and hoped for the victory of Arbogast.

  Several bitter contemporary references to the pseudo-Emperor Eugenius had puzzled us. They asked how a man of such an appearance could attempt the pagan re-establishment. They asked it in horror, for there were certain horrifying aspects to this particular pagan reversion. It was not the old disinterested paganism; it was impassioned and very nearly diabolical in some of its manifestations.

  The meaning of the references came clear with the examination of reproductions of coins and medallions of the pseudo-Emperor. Eugenius, who affected an old oriental style in hair and beard, had the face of Jesus Christ.

  6. About Little Moesia

  Alaric demanded of the tribune of the academy, a very grizzled old General, that he should be assigned three of his fellow cadets to accompany him in the carrying out of his orders. This, Alaric insisted, was the absolute minimum. He could not even begin with nothing at all to go on.

  Alaric was assigned three cadets, but not the three he had requested. He had asked for Sarus his cousin, for Uldin the Hun, and for Heraclian. But these were all considered young men of ability on a par with that of Alaric, and they would have their own very important assignments. The four most talented cadets in the school could not be assigned to a single project—however important it might be.

  The three who were assigned to Alaric were Hafras and Vargas, fellow Goths, and Bacurinius, the son of a great Spanish General. These three were the best friends of Alaric at the school, but he was not pleased. The three had much ability, and they would follow him forever; but Alaric knew that he could get followers and good ones. He wanted leaders of high caliber, and he would have to find them for himself.

  There was but one thing that Alaric could do with his impossible orders: he could go to his people with them. He was still a boy but he must find the Gothic men and one Gothic woman—Stairnon. He did not know where she was, nor her brothers Athaulf and Singerich, nor his—her—family. People, at that time, did not have addresses. The letters from Stairnon and Athaulf and Singerich had been brought to Alaric by Gothic wagoners who were passing his way.

  Alaric simply mounted his horse and with his three aides, rode out on the first road, without caring where it should lead. However, this was not the aimless procedure that it seemed.

  The Goths were a horse, mule, wagon, cart, and saddle sort of people. The stage-houses and the way-stables were mostly owned by the Goths, as were the houses that passed for inns. The roads were the newspapers of the Goths; and every report could be found out by one who traveled, for every Gothic groom or wagoner or provisioner was a source of information. Tidings of every Goth would come over the roads, but it was not always understood who carried the information. There were some who said that the news of distant Goths was brought by the mules. For the rumor-of-the-roads there was indeed a saying: Talimodo narrant-id muli—The mules narrate it so.

  The mules told Alaric that Stairnon was still to the north and west of them. They were already on the westerly road when they came out of Constantinople by its southernmost or Golden Gate. Alaric rode with his three friends, though he would have preferred three youths of higher ability who need not be such close friends. Yet, for us, it is an advantage. Had it been one of Alaric's first selection instead of Hafras, we would not have had the account of the affair. Hafras—the other two, Vargas and Bacurinius, would be dead within the six weeks—was to live a long life and become an indefatigable letter writer and reminiscenser. He lived through the greatest things and paid them no mind; but he remembered the little things.

  Alaric, as he rode, picked up support and spread the word of the mobilization. After three days and nearly two hundred miles, they came to Stairnon on a farm on the Maritza River in the Thracian Plain, in the region that had come to be known as Little Moesia.

  The retinue of Alaric had by this time increased from three men to nearly one hundred—the additions being both green boys and trained soldiers. They would pick up many more by their appearance, for they had barely entered the Gothic countryside. Alaric had his three tribunes—unless he should come upon any better—in his first three companions, Bacurinius, Hafras, and Vargas. He selected a dozen of his centurions and a number of his horse commanders from the men who had joined him early. There had been many of these seasoned men, in full arms, waiting to join him on the road, and Alaric understood how it had been brought about.

  The mysterious telegraph had gone out—either from a Roman official or a Goth in Roman service—that the Gothic army would be raised
once more, and under the young hereditary ruler. There must have been many who heard the orders of Alaric before he had heard them himself; there was a nucleus of Gothic soldiers and commanders who had gotten them in advance. The Master General Stilicho, from whom the orders originated, had not given Alaric cold orders; they had already been implemented to some extent. Stilicho had intended to test the young Goth with the apparently impossible instructions; but even with the apparatus set in motion, the execution of the project would be very difficult.

  Stairnon was on a large farm with none of her family with her. She had about two dozen free Goths and a hundred or so slaves on the land. Hafras recounts, with some surprise, that there were several chained slaves. Both the Romans and the Goths kept slaves, though the Goths to a less extent. The chaining of slaves seems not to have been normal to the Goths; to have been accounted an act of cruelty. But there was no doubt that Stairnon was in complete charge of the enterprise.

  The descriptions we have of the farm in Little Moesia—from Hafras—must mostly refer to this first visit and sojourn; but there were subsequent visits of Alaric to the farmstead at which Hafras was also present.

  Alaric and Stairnon spoke to each other in Low Latin, and by formula.

  “God bless the people and the land,” Alaric greeted her.

  “God bless the people and the arms of the people,” was the answer of Stairnon. So she understood his mission. She had known of it before he had—that he was to raise the Goths to arms again.

  Hafras tells of their party coming to the farmstead between dusk and dark; of pine knots burning in open iron buckets for torches, and of the homey smell of warm cows' milk. The Goths did not share the Greek—and later Turkish—abhorrence for cows' milk and cows' cheese. In their settled state the Goths used cows more than ewes or goats or mares for milking. The warm milk was in wooden buckets.