Summa Risus: Collected Non-Fiction

by R. A. Lafferty

  The Senate refused to deal with him. It branded him a public enemy and announced that the City would resist. Rome had lavish promise of aid from the Court City of Ravenna, and there were reports that loyal Imperial legions were on the way from every direction to raise the siege.

  But aid never arrived, as Alaric knew it would not, and as the more responsible men inside Rome knew it would not. Alaric surrounded the City completely, blocked all twelve gates, and cut off both river and road traffic from the port of Ostia. This was the main move. Rome depended on imports of grain from the provinces of Sicily and Africa through the port of Ostia for its main sustenance. It could do a while without the beef and pork and fruit and wine of the Italian countryside, likewise cut off from it; but it could not live long without the grain from the two overseas provinces. The Romans were bread eaters, and their dole consisted of bread only.

  Alaric sat down with his army to wait. The City set up an admirable administration for the distribution of the foodstuffs in the City. The people went on two-thirds rations, and then on half rations. There were inequities, but a general spirit of fairness prevailed as the weeks went by. The City doled out what food it had, and waited for the loyal legions to arrive. The emergency depots were opened and cleaned out, and personal hordes were searched for.

  The City went on one-third rations, and the relieving legions were very tardy.

  There is a sameness in the accounts of the sufferings of cities under siege. The people were reduced to eating dogs and rats, and the bark of trees. Finally, when relief was still not in sight, and when necrophagy had become widespread in the City, the Senate capitulated.

  Alaric gave them surprisingly easy terms.

  He was not a public enemy, of course, he explained. The Senate withdrew the proclamation; and Alaric was no longer a public enemy. His pay he must have, he insisted, and a certain interest upon it for the time and trouble. The four thousand pounds of gold was now five thousand pounds; surely the Senate could see the justice of that. The Senate had no choice but to see the justice of it. They paid the sum.

  There were other matters, and other expenses. For acting henceforth as special protector of the City—for it was now plain that she had no other protector—Alaric and his Goths would agree to accept a modest fee: thirty thousand pounds of silver. It was indeed, under the unilateral circumstances, a modest fee; and the Senate paid.

  And as an afterthought, and as a gesture of friendship from the Roman people, the Goths of Alaric might be prevailed upon to accept the free gift of three thousand pounds weight of pepper. Pepper was then expensive. The city of Rome controlled the importation of pepper into all Europe, and sold it for 2000 percent profit.

  And the Goths liked a little pepper. Rome had pepper and no food to use it on. The Senate agreed to the free gift of the pepper, and Alaric prevailed on his Goths to accept it.

  The Romans listened for the list of further demands.

  But, to the amazement of the City, Alaric reopened the road and river traffic from Ostia; and even aided with his soldiery in moving the grain to the City. He withdrew from the twelve gates of the town and permitted normal traffic to resume. He sent his army to establish winter quarters in Tuscany; for he had spent some months straiting the City, and it was now autumn. The siege was finished.

  The City could not believe that it was so easily delivered. It need not have starved at all. Such losses as these it could easily recoup in a year. It may be that Alaric had no real idea of the great money wealth of the City, or it may be that he was not venal at all. Alaric was still faithfully in his role as Imperial General, not as the Gothic King.

  He now set about the business of treating with the Emperor's party at Ravenna. But someone in Ravenna had meanwhile had the wisdom for a move that was to undercut Alaric. The Count Heraclian had sailed out of the Court City to assume the administration of the province of Africa. He was the most competent man of Ravenna, and was loyal to that particular administration. The African grain flow could be controlled at its source; and Alaric in encompassing Rome might himself be encompassed; for they knew in Ravenna that he would be forced to return to the Roman enterprise.

  Alaric selected three Roman senators to go to Ravenna to deal for him. He insisted on the heads of Olympius and Solinas. He desired to be recognized as Master General of the entire Western Empire. And he asked three provinces for his people: Dalmatia, Noricum, and Venetia. Much of Dalmatia he already possessed, included in his province of Illyricum. Part of Noricum he had already occupied in the early part of the year 408, the vague boundary between Noricum and Illyricum being a matter of opinion. And if he wished to seize Venetia, there seemed no force able to prevent him.

  The Goths would not be great gainers by their shift to these provinces, but they would be given strategic position. From the giant buffer province, they would be partly shifted to the crossroads of the Empire routes. Such position was necessary if they were to become the actual guardians of the Empire.

  The most difficult of the demands was the first one. Olympius conducted the negotiations in the name of the Emperor Honorius; he might have been willing to give up the head of Solinas, but he was totally unwilling to give up the head of Olympius.

  The three Roman senators were dismissed by Ravenna, but they were not handed over to Alaric's escort. Instead they were given, by subterfuge, to six thousand Imperial troops from Ravenna to accompany them back to Rome, a most foolish move. The vengeful German irregulars ranging through Italy annihilated the escort. It was too small to be an army, and too large to be considered an escort under truce.

  Alaric tried again. He selected a larger number of Roman senators, and compelled Pope Innocent to accompany them to Ravenna to present his cause in the most reasonable terms possible. Alaric gave them his statement that he was still a loyal Roman General; that he had no other thought than to restore the stability of the Empire; and that his three demands were the absolute minimum for restoring that stability.

  Alaric must have the heads of the two conspirators to heal the breach between the Old Romans and the Empire Germans, and to atone for the massacre.

  He must himself be proclaimed Master General, since there was nobody else capable of assuming that onerous task. Alaric was without either modesty or vanity. He saw his own worth clearly, and was puzzled that his position should be misunderstood.

  And he must shift the topographical base of his own people to the provinces indicated; for from no other position could they protect the whole Empire. He was right in this last assessment also; though his enemies might have said that the new position would better permit him to control, rather than protect, the Empire.

  It was the same refusal. Olympius had tottered, but he had not yet fallen. He steadfastly refused to give up his head. He still kept the negotiations largely in his own hands; and he intercepted, by his good luck, several communications that would have bypassed and undone him.

  Alaric and his emissaries could not reach the Emperor or the more nearly responsible men in Ravenna. The senators were dismissed, to the escort of Alaric's troops this time. But Pope Innocent was held in Ravenna, as a prisoner disguised with much honor, and as a pawn in the game that the party of Ravenna might somehow play.

  Alaric could not reach the Emperor. He resolved to raise his own Emperor. He returned to the second siege of Rome.

  But, by a conspiracy of fate, Alaric left Ravenna too soon. Olympius fell while Alaric was on the way to Rome. The defamer had his ears cropped, and was dismissed. Alaric could have had his head for the taking, had he known about it, and known where to find the creature.

  Everything seemed to be working for an event that nobody really wanted to happen, except possibly the extreme party among the Goths. It did not have to happen, as Stilicho had said again and again in his lifetime. The Empire did not have to go down. It could have been saved; it could yet have been saved.

  It did not have to happen, but it happened. Every move, conscious or unconscious, of every p
arty involved brought it nearer to its end. Jovius had replaced Olympius as the power in Ravenna. Other men, Eusebius and Allobich, rose and fell. Finally, it was a jungle of divided authority in the fortress Court City, and indecision became the rule.

  Alaric returned to the city of Rome, picking up his main force from their quarters in Tuscany. He returned now with a simple request: that the people of Rome give him an Emperor. The City was timorous and shut its gates on him. It had not believed its good fortune before. Rome looked on this visitation as the second phase of the assault, as a cruel jest following the earlier show of gentleness. It was now believed that the Roman people would be massacred. So it had to be starvation all over again before Alaric could make the Romans see the light.

  Alaric did not surround the City. He did not shut off the meat and fruits of the countryside. He occupied the port of Ostia and shut off the flow of grain only. The Romans could survive longer under these conditions, but they could not survive forever. They could not live without grain for bread. Alaric hoped that it would not be for long.

  He sat with his troops among the granaries of Ostia and waited for the Roman people to capitulate. And soon he became quite anxious that the people capitulate. The grain boats did not arrive from Africa. Alaric understood that the Count Heraclian had shut them off, and that no more would arrive while he maintained his hold of the City.

  It had all grown up as a peculiar political-economic arrangement. The province of Africa, by an age-old tribute, was required to furnish the million and a half people of the city of Rome with grain; to a lesser degree the province of Sicily was also required to supply grain to Rome. For this reason, grain-growing had been abandoned in the portion of Italy surrounding Rome, and the land was diverted to raising livestock, fruit, grapes, olives, and vegetables. If the siege continued long enough, the forces of Alaric would themselves feel the pinch. They might have to abandon their occupation of Ostia and travel a hundred miles to a grain belt; or Alaric would have to split his forces and make himself vulnerable, sending considerable numbers to occupy harvest lands and seize the produce.

  It was also the fact that the granaries of Ostia were near empty, and the depots inside the city of Rome were bulging full. The possibility of the second investure of Rome had been foreseen.

  Fortunately for Alaric, and most fortunate for Rome, the siege was not of long duration. The Roman Senate negotiated with Alaric once more, and found that his request was just as originally stated—with one demand now added. Alaric insisted that all slaves in Rome who could prove themselves of northern “barbarian” lineage should be freed to him. This gave the Romans cause for thought, but they quickly saw a side of the matter that Alaric had not understood; and they agreed to this.

  Rome had long been a city on a pension, drawing on the ancient tributes of the Empire. The life on the dole was easy on the citizens, and easy on their slaves. They were a town people, and most of them had never visited or wanted to visit open country. They were born in the pit formed by the hills, and they would live and die there. The slaves were a part of the City; they had no memory of the open life in the north.

  They had no desire to take their places as free men at the hard work of farming in the inhospitable north. They would live in the streets of the City, and would work when they were compelled to work. They had no wish to be free men on their own resources, and compelled to work all the time for their livelihood.

  Of possibly one hundred thousand slaves who could qualify as to northern barbarian lineage, not ten thousand chose freedom with Alaric and the hard settlement on the land. But Alaric carried his point here, and the best of the slaves did leave the City as freemen.

  It was during the early part of the negotiations that Alaric discovered a horrible thing to have happened. The girl Galla Placidia had been raised in the household of Stilicho, the ward of that great Master General and his wife, Serena, who was cousin as well as step-sister and step-mother of Placidia. Galla Placidia, the sister of the Emperor Honorius, had remained in that household in Rome even after the fall of Stilicho; and after Honorius had divorced Thermandia, the daughter of Stilicho and Serena. Eucherius, the son of Stilicho, had been murdered by a mob; and the position of Serena had been precarious. Placidia had been her shield in the intervening period.

  But Galla Placidia had now caught the Roman fever, affectedly at first; then earnestly. She now regarded Serena as wedded to the German cause in Stilicho; though Stilicho had been pro-Roman to the point of subduing his own people; and Serena was Spanish and Greek as was Placidia herself.

  Galla Placidia, now either sixteen or seventeen years old and already known to the Senate for her flaming eloquence, denounced Serena to that body. She had denounced her for carrying on correspondence with Alaric outside the walls, with no evidence whatsoever.

  Serena was incapable of intrigue. Galla Placidia had either been convinced of these charges by a party of Romans bent on the destruction of every vestige of Stilicho, or she had acted out of sheer perversity. But her impassioned denunciation was the turning point, and Serena had been condemned and executed for treason. And Galla Placidia continued to live in the house of Stilicho, alone.

  Galla Placidia, after her death many years later, would be venerated as a near saint; and there would be some justification for the veneration in her long and complex life. It may be that every saint is an early devil. Placidia had considerable of the devil in her when she was young, and she defamed to death the only mother she remembered.

  Alaric nearly broke off negotiations on hearing of this happening; and he all but lost faith in Rome. He was persuaded to continue the council by one Basilius, a prominent senator, and one John, the first tribune of the notaries and a long-standing friend of Alaric; they had become acquainted during certain Empire transactions when Alaric ruled as Master General of Illyricum. Another man who brought pressure on Alaric to continue the talks was Bacurius, the old Spanish General and now a high senator. But was not Bacurius killed at the battle of the River Frigidus? So it was said, so it was reported; but this was the same man, and alive.

  These men, with Attalus who had replaced Pompeianus as Praefect of the city of Rome, now took a leading part in the transactions. Alaric repeated once more his one request, the one thing he wanted from them, the thing he had to have. He asked that the city of Rome should give him an Emperor. And he waited. Surely such competent men could not be so dense as to fail to comprehend what he meant.

  Attalus the Praefect of Rome had understood from the beginning, but he had a sense of timing. At the proper moment he suggested himself. He was a man after Alaric's own heart in this detail, for Alaric had no patience with reluctance. And Attalus was the most justifiable choice. As Praefect of Rome he already held the highest office. He could trace a degree of kinship to several dynasties of Emperors, as could many of the high senators. And he was reputed to be a clever man.

  It was a matter of no more than a week, with all the forms observed and the proper amount of eloquence spilt. The Senate proclaimed Attalus to be Emperor. Alaric raised the siege and permitted provisions to flow once more into the City. The granaries of Ostia were not quite empty, nor were the depots of Rome; and Alaric knew that the Count Heraclian would once more permit the grain boats to leave Africa, as soon as he Alaric had left the vicinity of Rome.

  Alaric took his new Emperor Attalus, and his army, and started for Ravenna once more. Alaric was now Master General of the entire Western Roman Empire by proclamation of the Senate of Rome. He would settle with the faction at Ravenna, and in all legality. Perhaps Honorius would be continued as an inactive co-Emperor.

  Alaric also took with him, as prisoner, the wayward girl Galla Placidia who had caused the murder of her step-mother and cousin.

  18. The Day The World Ended

  Alaric came once more to the walls of Ravenna; with his army; with his Emperor; and with his royal prisoner, Galla Placidia, the sister of the Emperor Honorius within Ravenna. Alaric called for negotiation
s, and he had every hope of success.

  Olympius no longer ruled in Ravenna. In the confusion within the city one would be at a loss to say who did rule; but the truculent opposition had melted. Pope Innocent had been, to a great extent, responsible for the more mellow atmosphere. In heavily Catholic Ravenna he was of great influence, and his one desire was for peace. His enemies had often said that he was willing to pay too high a price for peace; but he had not been a persecutor when he had the power to be, and he was not so deeply sworn an enemy of the Arians as his predecessors had been. He was not opposed to Arians holding strictly political office, not even the high office of Master General of the Empire if it should bring peace.

  The name Innocent of Popes is sometimes pronounced with irony, as though some of that name had not been innocent; and as though it were the opposite of innocent to vaunt such name as though a brag. But all others used the name from admiration of this Innocent I, and he had it as a family name “Innocentius,” which went back to pagan days in their town of Albano. It was his own name; he was born with it.

  In the new atmosphere, and out of the confusion in Ravenna, certain responsible men were now coming to the fore; and they were very interested in ending the confusion. They knew, of course, that the Emperor Honorius was, and always would be, incompetent. They had no objection to seeing a competent man installed as co-Emperor with him, if that man should be in all ways acceptable; and they were inclined to accept Attalus as that man.

  Attalus had been known to them for years. He had been a leading senator in Rome, and had held various high offices before becoming Praefect of the city of Rome. He was one of the few Old Romans, a Quinquagesimus (one of fifty generations), related to at least two of the old Imperial dynasties. There was no man in the Empire with more blood right to be Emperor, though there were perhaps a score with equal right.