Summa Risus: Collected Non-Fiction

by R. A. Lafferty

  There was still the pressing threat of the pretender Emperor Constantine who held much of Gaul and Spain. If the Empire was to be restored, Constantine would have to be eliminated. It was felt in Ravenna that Alaric, if other matters should be settled, was competent to defeat Constantine; and that no other general was.

  Alaric had demonstrated his loyalty to the Empire by his fair treatment of the city of Rome which he had twice in his power. He had a good record of late years. Materially, he had restored the rotten province of Illyricum in his years there; he had resettled its farms with his people and others, and had brought it to a hard state of prosperity. Possibly he could do the same thing for Noricum and Venetia, which had been all but abandoned by settled life. The Empire needed another Stilicho—they who had killed him realized it—and Alaric was the nearest approach.

  Many of the greatest master generals had had a touch of the brigand in them in their greener years. There were even reports that Stilicho had been an adventurer not entirely within the law before his falling under the strong influence of the Emperor Theodosius. A master general who had committed his breaches of the peace early, and then reformed of them, was less likely to go astray in his maturity.

  Alaric, on his side, had resolved to negotiate with long patience; but also he had resolved not to leave the matter unsettled. It had continued too long in intolerable confusion. Should every negotiation fail, and there was no reason why they should, he would then assail the unassailable city of Ravenna. He had accomplished the impossible before. He was certain that he could, somehow, take the fortress. But he had hardly an idea of failure, now that accord seemed so near.

  An explanation must be given why it was always so readily assumed that Ravenna was unassailable. Ravenna at that time stood on the Adriatic Sea, on a lagoon. Today it is five miles from the Adriatic; the land has risen in the fifteen and a half centuries since. It is still somewhat swampy in the countryside around Ravenna; but the present state gives no real indication of the horrifying morasses that surrounded the fortress at the beginning of the fifth century.

  Ravenna, on the left of the Montone and Ronco rivers where they come together just before going into the Adriatic, was surrounded on every land side by a belt of bog from twelve to thirty miles wide, absolutely bottomless quicksand. This was crossed by no real road. No proper Roman road had ever led into Ravenna. There were horse paths by which one could be conducted by guide. There were roads where, by much logging and shoring, wagons could go in single file, but two of them could not pass. There were firm meadows scattered through the swamps, but seldom of a size of more than five or ten acres.

  An approaching army would have to camp at fifteen or twenty miles from the city, as the army of Alaric had done before and was doing now; or it would have to be split up into dozens of small encampments of one hundred to two hundred men each on the precarious meadows.

  There was one place right under the city walls where perhaps three thousand men could be assembled, tightly formed and drawn up, and in easy range of the archers on the walls. But an assault on the fortress could not even be contemplated with less than ten times that number assembled; and this one firm spot could be entered only in single file, by men or horse.

  Alaric had competent guides, of course, to the paths through the quicksand; but the bottom of the bogs was full of the bodies of competent guides who had gone down, for the land that was firm yesterday might not be firm today.

  The bogs around Ravenna were peopled with ghosts and ghost stories, of a flavor that would later be called Gothic. There were false guides and ghost guides. One might meet a man in the bogs and speak with him; and after speaking to him for some time one would realize that the man was unsubstantial. The man would finally say that it was time he was going home; and would then wave farewell, and sink smiling into the bog, but making no ripple in it. One of the old bog dead who had been out for a walk in the upper air—such stories as that. Also, as is common with many swamps from the decomposed matter they contain, luminescent gas would hang over certain spots of it at night, of the size and shape of a man, glowing palely like ghosts indeed. There were the stories and there were such phenomena, and the men of Ravenna had found it to their advantage to let it be known that the dangerous bogs were haunted.

  Ravenna was provisioned by sea, and had sea contact with every port of the Empire. Rimini, twenty-five miles to the south of her, was reached by sea and never by land. It would seem that Ravenna could be controlled only by one who had complete control of the sea; and Ravenna was the main station of the Imperial fleet. Alaric hardly had contacts in the fleet. The Roman Imperial army had become largely German; but the Imperial fleet had remained Roman. To the fleet, the Empire was embodied in Ravenna.

  The Emperor Augustus had made Ravenna a station of the Imperial fleet; the Emperor Tiberius had made it the first station; and it was he also who built the great common wall surrounding both the city of Ravenna and the port of Classis. Classis, the fleet, was the name of the Port. The Emperor Trajan had built the aqueduct; Ravenna was in the middle of water, but it had sometimes been disease-carrying. Every following Emperor had added something to the strength of the fortress, until the Emperor Honorius moved his Court there.

  The city was ornate within, and crisscrossed with canals—the most important of them the Augusta—so that Ravenna of that day resembled the Venice still to be built. It was a cosmopolitan city, and had close ties with Constantinople, even in the years of enmity between the brother Emperors.

  Its greatest building was the Anastasis, the basilica of the Resurrection of our Lord, on the site of the present Cathedral, which contains remnants of the Anastasis built into it. San Giovanni in Fonte was the baptistery of the Catholics; and the church of Santo Spirito was that of the Arians. Later in the century the greatest building in Ravenna would be the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, containing the finest mosaics in the world. But at this time she was still very much alive.

  The fortress of Ravenna must not be set too low, for all that it had an incompetent Emperor and no true ruler. The city commonly had more than fifty thousand men under arms within its walls, more than any other city in the world. It was a fortress; and it had been built to be an unassailable fortress by better Emperors than Honorius.

  But Alaric believed that he could take it somehow, should the negotiations not succeed. His people on the opposite Adriatic coast, of Illyricum, had discovered an aptitude in themselves for the salt sea. They had been the finest river boat men in the world in the generation before. They learned new techniques from the pirates who had always been endemic to those shores; and their small swift Viking-like boats might have disconcerted the Imperial fleet.

  The negotiations went well. Alaric was staggered by the mass of detail brought up both by the men of Ravenna and the men of his own party. The Empire was more intricate than he had imagined; and many of the affairs were brought to the fore and threshed out for his own education. But the Goths themselves were a nation of councils; and Alaric knew how to debate, to consult, and to abstract information from the various minds around him. He leaned heavily on John, the First Tribune of the Notaries from Rome, and on his own Emperor Attalus. He knew that an agreement is something that must be forged and hammered out, and re-heated and tempered more than once before it is final.

  But two side events occurred in the time of the negotiations that were to affect their results. The first, right at the start of the parleys, was the disappearance of a person of some importance. The second, when the dialogues had almost come to successful fruition, was the appearance of a person of extreme importance.

  These two did not meet at the time of the negotiations at Ravenna; but later they would be closely linked together.

  Galla Placidia, the royal prisoner, out of perversity and likely not in truth, had written to Stairnon in Noricum. She told the wife of Alaric that Alaric had had relations with her, and that he had promised to make her Queen of Rome, after he had divorced Stairnon. Placidia
wrote with her peculiar arrogance, and she had early learned the tricks of insulting Stairnon. She wrote as a high Roman, and made the Goths out to be dirt. Possibly the girl had found the time heavy on her hands in her captivity, and had enticed a rider into carrying her letter.

  Stairnon replied in wrath and by special messenger, not to Galla Placidia, but to her husband Alaric. It was a furious missive, and it announced that she was following it in person. The letter was in Gothic, for Stairnon in her sudden anger had ceased to be a Roman. To her the symbol of Rome was no longer Serena, but the hated Galla Placidia. In losing Stairnon by such a circumstance, Rome lost an adherent badly needed.

  Alaric, reading the letter from his wife which had been sent by special messenger, went howling to find the wayward wench Placidia, knowing that she had to be at the bottom of such nonsense. He learned then that she had made her escape that very hour.

  Galla Placidia had broken out of her captivity, killed a forbidding Gothic matron set to guard her, stolen horse, and ridden out on the dangerous paths through quagmire and quicksand, towards Rome. So far as is known she made her escape alone and rode alone.

  In six days she covered the two hundred and twenty miles to Rome. She was apprehended by no one. She was in the process of becoming a legend, and she had caught the popular fancy. Even the German irregulars, still ravaging central Italy in revenge of the massacres, offered no harm to the Imperial minx. And the Italian people began to feel new hope, kindled by the knowledge that there was still somebody like Placidia alive. The Spanish-Greek girl now became the symbol of an arisen Rome.

  She rode into the city of Rome, and was given certain honors. This was late in May of the year 410. She began a highly partisan campaign for the outlawing of the Goths and the restoration of the Roman prestige. She denounced the Emperor Attalus as a tool of the Goths, and swore that there could be no Emperor in the realm but her brother Honorius. Her campaign would have some effect. Rome was in a particularly dry and waiting mood, and she kindled it to brightness. She brought the City up to a fever pitch in those last one hundred days of the world.

  The escape of Galla Placidia was a propaganda defeat for Alaric, but not a serious one. The talks went along most auspiciously. Alaric still could not meet the Emperor Honorius in person—his ministers may have feared Alaric's magnetic influence over him that went back to the time when Alaric was the boy giant and Honorius was an unregarded princeling. Alaric was not permitted to talk to the Emperor Honorius, but he was permitted—along with his own Emperor Attalus—to meet all the important men of Ravenna and to treat with them on all subjects. And they spoke with him, not to put him off, but to reach a settlement.

  These men were Jovius the Praetorian Praefect; Valens the Master of Cavalry and Infantry; Potamius the Quaestor; and Julian the First of the Notaries; this latter office seemed to involve everything from Attorney General to Secretary of State.

  It was not a rapid thing; it went on for many weeks. The sincerity of both parties was attested by the many hundreds of questions proposed, discussed, and settled. There would be nothing left to chance. It was not merely a question of whether Attalus should be recognized in Ravenna as co-Emperor with Honorius. The councilmen were drawing up a master plan for the restoration of the Empire. Should Alaric be given a contract as guardian of the Empire, and it would amount to that, it would be a contract with every clause thoroughly defined.

  The first rift was not between the party of Alaric and that of Ravenna; it was within Alaric's own party. Alaric was still without real experience in these matters. In taking Stilicho as his model for Master General, Alaric had thought of having such relations with an Emperor as Stilicho had had. But Attalus made it clear that he had not consented to be Emperor to be puppet. He would fill that high office to the best of his considerable ability; but it must be understood that he himself was Emperor, and that Alaric was but Master General. Alaric was humbled, but he came to see that Attalus was right. Stilicho had never set himself above the Empire, and Alaric must not.

  Alaric had intended to bring his brother-in-law Singerich from Constantinople to see to the detail of administration; but he came, in the long weeks, to understand that administration is more than a detail. Basilius and John, brought up from Rome to Ravenna to add finesse and intellectual prestige to the party of Alaric and Attalus, were invaluable. Alaric moved freely within Ravenna with a small group. He was shown the glories of the fortress city and treated royally. He talked twice with Pope Innocent, but he was not allowed to see the Emperor Honorius who was kept practically a prisoner by his dealing ministers. And Alaric, with a military eye, noted every detail of the fortress city.

  Accord was in the air. Difficulty after difficulty was erased as the weeks went by. As Stilicho had said, the Empire did not have to fall. Never, in those last years, had the hope for the restoration of the Empire been higher.

  Then Fate began to play her last cards.

  The Weird Eagle perched beyond the high Alps had become impatient. Athaulf the feral Goth had his own system of intelligence, and he knew that for the success of his own program he could not allow the negotiations to succeed. He saw his instrument Alaric slipping away from him should that instrument, as a Roman, succeed to the highest appointive office of the Empire and have military control of that entire world.

  Athaulf came quietly into Italy, if one may come quietly with twenty thousand men. He brought with him his own sister Stairnon, the wife of Alaric. He also brought various Gothic elders, and trans-Danubian Goths who were untainted by Rome. He concealed his army, insofar as such a thing may be concealed, in the great belt of pine forest that reached all the way from a dozen miles north of Ravenna up to Aquileia. And with a very small party he was brought by guides to Alaric before Ravenna.

  The feelings of Alaric were many ways mixed. For no two people in the world did he have such affection as for Stairnon and Athaulf. They were the marrow of his bones and the blood of his liver; but he suffered a curious hepatitis at the sight of Athaulf who recalled to him his own suppressed Gothic personality. And this was a reverted Stairnon, who spoke only Gothic and who no longer believed in Rome. She proclaimed that Rome amounted to no more than the harlot Galla Placidia, and accused Alaric of having consorted with such; and Alaric was unable to explain.

  Alaric was committed to Rome, and he could not allow family love or marital embarrassment to interfere with the larger business. He told the two of them that he loved them beyond all else except God and the Empire; like Stilicho, he had now come to see the Empire as the chief handiwork of God in this world.

  Stairnon he would now keep with him forever, he said; but Athaulf must go back, and his forces with him. They were unreconstructed Goths, and they could not be allowed to remain in the Empire on any terms. Athaulf would return at once out of the Empire, with his army, and under the escort of the men of Alaric; or Alaric would have him slain on the spot, and would then drive that army out with his own full force.

  Athaulf and his small escort laid their arms at Alaric's feet, and stated that they would abide by whatever Alaric should command. At once, said Alaric. They must go at once.

  In the morning, said Stairnon. Her brother would leave in the morning. For evening was now coming on, and it was dangerous to attempt to traverse the swamps in the darkness.

  With great misgivings Alaric agreed that they might remain the night; but they must leave at dawn, on pain of death for Athaulf and the harrying and destruction of his men.

  Alaric had further misgivings when he saw that the party was setting up for a Gothic feast, for they had brought cattle in with them. During the night, at the feasting on the roasted oxen, Alaric was subjected to a sort of pressure that he had almost forgotten. The old sayings which he had put aside as toys now assumed a real importance when they were stated by real Goths. He was shaken in the security of his mind, and felt his inbred Gothic feeling rise up like an old lust in him. Nevertheless, he would have surmounted all the pressure and stood fast
had not Fate now played her last wild card.

  An independent person in the Empire, riding at the head of no more than one hundred men as he commonly rode at the head of small groups, entered the fortress of Ravenna under the cover of darkness. The gate opened to his call, as every gate opened to his hard call. It was Sarus come in to give his last allegiance to the retarded Emperor Honorius, and to the party of Ravenna.

  The brother of Sarus who was no longer his brother, Athaulf, had entered the Empire. In the eyes of Sarus this broke every pact, and meant war to the death on the Goths. Sarus knew that there could never be any sort of truce between the Goths of Athaulf's sort and the Empire. And Alaric in accepting Athaulf—and Sarus would not wait for an explanation of this—had likewise become an outlaw to be killed.

  While Alaric was subject to one sort of pressure during the night, the city of Ravenna and its leading men were subjected to another. Sarus absolutely set them on fire with the eloquence he found in his anger; and the cause he pleaded was aided by two comings into Ravenna on the day that had just ended.

  Two fleets had arrived that day in the port of Ravenna, both sent by the Count Heraclian from Africa. There was a group of troop transports bearing six thousand excellent and untainted Imperial legionnaires for the defense of the already well-defended Ravenna. With these was a large gift of money from Heraclian; for an extra bonus in gold will always stiffen a soldiery under siege. With the money was the admonition that Ravenna should not treat with Alaric at all; and the advice that negotiations should be broken off if they had begun. There came also the news that the Senate in Rome had repudiated both the Master General Alaric and his Emperor Attalus. This was as a result of the popular feeling stirred up by Galla Placidia and others.

  And the second fleet was the grain transports, bringing so much wheat and produce into the city that the already adequately filled depots could hardly accommodate it. With this Ravenna could stand a siege of several years, even if blockaded by both land and sea.