Describing the battle, Ammianus spoke of Romans and Goths wielding the battleaxes that had become common weapons for infantrymen: “On both sides, the strokes of axes split helmet and breastplate.” He described Goths who’d had their hamstrings severed or right hands lopped off in the fighting yet who still fought with defiant courage. One Goth, he said, though pierced through the side and near death, was still “threateningly casting about his fierce glance.” Romans, their lances broken, and seeing no way of escape, weighed into the enemy with their swords, determined not to sell their lives cheaply. [Ibid., 13, 4]
The Roman lines had been completely broken by the rush of Goths from the hill. The number of 10,000 that Valens’ scouts put on the Gothic warriors proved woefully short of the truth. Modern-day authorities suggest that there were 200,000 Goths present that day—men, women and children—and that as many as 50,000 of them were warriors who took part in the battle. [Warry, WCW] Not only did they almost match the Romans in numbers, the Goths had in their favor the element of surprise with the unexpected arrival of their cavalry, plus the impetus of their infantry charge from the wagon line on higher ground.
All over the body-strewn field, Roman units broke and their men ran. Valens, never one to inspire devoted loyalty from his troops, was even deserted by most of his imperial bodyguard. In the middle of the Roman line, two Roman legions had unflinchingly held their ground. One was a Mattiarii legion, either the Mattiarii Seniors or the Mattiarii Juniors, which were Palatine legions. The other was a Palatine legion made up of foot lancers—either the Lanciarii Seniors or Lanciarii Juniors. All the Palatine legions were considered elite units, and were paid more and received more imperial favors than other units. Valens took refuge with these two steadfast but encircled legions, as they fought off each barbarian attack.
Seeing the emperor with these two legions, old Count Trajanus, the former commander-in-chief of Valens’ troops who had been recalled from retirement by Valens for this campaign, yelled out from the back of his horse that, as Valens had been abandoned by his bodyguard troops, all hope was gone unless he called up the foreign auxiliaries that he had placed in reserve.
Valens agreed, and above the din of battle Trajanus instructed the Sarmatian Victor, his Master of Cavalry, to ride with all speed to summon up the famously tough Batavian auxiliaries who had been held in reserve—the Batavi Seniors and/or the Batavi Juniors—and the Palatine auxiliary units. Bent on his mission, Victor turned his horse around and slashed his way through the surrounding Visigoths, but when he reached the place where the Batavian troops should have been, there was no sign of them. They too had fled. So Victor kept riding. [Ibid.]
The fighting, which had raged all afternoon, continued into the twilight. And then night fell; an inky, moonless night. With its arrival, the battle ended. The Roman army had been destroyed. Ammianus estimated that no more than one third of the troops in Valens’ army escaped with their lives. Modern authorities put the Roman losses at 40,000. [Warry, WCW] Certainly Roman casualties were massive. Ammianus said that the roads were blocked with the dead and the dying. “With them also mounds of fallen horses filled the plains with corpses.” [Amm., XXXI, 13, 11]
Valens’ most senior generals, the counts Sebastianus and Trajanus—one who encouraged the early battle, the other who had stayed with his emperor to the last—both fell on the battlefield. Thirty-five Roman tribunes also perished in this bloody defeat that became known as the Battle of Adrianople. One of the Roman officers to fall that day was Potentius, a tribune “in the first flower of his youth” who had commanded a Palatine mounted unit, the Equites Promoti Seniors, which was apparently made up of men promoted from other units. Potentius would have been a personal friend of the historian Ammianus, for he was the son of Ammianus’ former chief, Count Ursicinus, who had been Roman commander-in-chief under the emperor Constantius II. [Ibid., XXXI, 13, 18]
As for the emperor Valens, he was never seen again, dead or alive. Ammianus related a story told by a young officer cadet of the Candidati Militares relating his fate. The soldier said that Valens, though wounded by an arrow, had escaped from the battlefield late in the day with a few officer cadets, including the teller of the tale, and some eunuchs from the Palatium staff, and found refuge in a two-story farmer’s cottage nearby. While Valens’ companions were attempting to treat his wound, the cottage was surrounded by Gothic warriors. As the Goths were attempting the break down the bolted doors, one or more of the officer cadets from Valens’ party loosed off arrows at the attackers from an upper window and drove them back. The Goths then piled firewood against the house, and set it alight.
As the cottage burned, the storyteller decided to take his chances with the Goths, and dived through a window. None of the other occupants of the cottage emerged from the flames, and all perished. The young officer cadet was made a prisoner by the Goths, who were appalled when they learned from him that they had just fried the Roman emperor, for they would have won great glory among their people had they captured Valens alive. The young officer cadet later escaped from his captors, found his way to Roman forces and told his story. [Ibid., XXXI, 13, 14–16]
The Roman defeat at Adrianople was a staggering blow to Roman prestige. “The annals record no such massacre of a battle except the one at Cannae,” said Ammianus, referring to the defeat of the Romans in Italy by Hannibal many centuries before. [Ibid., 13, 19] But worse than the stink of defeat, these were “ever irreparable losses,” Ammianus lamented, “so costly to the Roman state.” [Ibid., 13, 11] Poor generalship had been to blame. The barbarian nations in both the West and the East took heart from this telling defeat and renewed their savage inroads into the Roman provinces. The conquest of Italy now seemed achievable. Rome itself now beckoned.
Who would or could save the Roman Empire from collapse now?
AD 401–403
LXXIV. STILICHO SAVES ITALY
Rome’s last hope
“You and you alone, Stilicho, have dispersed the darkness that enshrouded our empire and have restored its glory.”
CLAUDIAN, The Gothic War, AD 36–39
It was the middle of the winter of AD 401–402, and a Roman cavalry column was warily picking its way across the snowbound Swiss Alps, urged on by their impatient young commander; Rome’s most senior general was attempting to come to the rescue of his emperor after Italy had been invaded by the Visigoths.
Flavius Stilicho was just 36 years of age. Yet, according to the poet Claudian, who knew him, Stilicho had “shining gray hair.” [Claud., TGW, 458] The weight of command had apparently sent him prematurely gray, for on his young shoulders Stilicho carried the command of all of Rome’s military in the west of the Roman Empire as Master of Both Military Services, a post previously occupied by two men that combined the roles of Master of Foot and Master of Cavalry. Stilicho’s mother was a Roman, his father a Vandal from Scandinavia who had been a tribune of Roman cavalry.
As a teenager Stilicho had embarked on a career within the Roman military, swiftly becoming an outstanding soldier and an extremely confident and inspiring leader. Both qualities meant that he was swiftly propelled to the rank of tribune of cavalry. In AD 385, at the age of just 20, Stilicho had been appointed by the emperor Theodosius to the post of Comes Domesticorum—Count of the Household troops, the imperial bodyguard that succeeded the Praetorian Guard abolished by Constantine the Great. Theodosius had also given Stilicho the hand in marriage of his favorite niece, Serena. Two years before Theodosius died in AD 395, he had made Stilicho Master of all his forces in the west, and guardian of his 10-year-old son and successor Honorius. This, in effect, made Stilicho regent of the Western Empire. Young Honorius had subsequently married Stilicho’s daughter Maria.
Now, Stilicho faced his greatest test—saving Italy from the invading hordes. The Visigoths, originally from the Ukraine, had crossed the Danube thirty years before. After the massive Gothic defeat of the army of the emperor Valens at Adrianople in AD 378, the Visigoths had occupied Moesia, making their cap
ital Novae, previously the base of the 1st Italica Legion. Two years after the death of Theodosius, in AD 395, the Visigoths had elected a new king and war leader, 25-year-old Alaric, who had previously served as commander of Goth auxiliary troops in the Roman army. Since then, the Visigoths had invaded Thrace, occupied all of Greece, and seized Pannonia and Illyricum from Rome, forcing Roman settlers to flee. Alaric had been placated by the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Arcadius, Theodosius’ eldest son, apparently with a bribe, and for six years the Visigoths had controlled their Balkan empire on Italy’s eastern flank while maintaining an uneasy peace with the Romans.
As the autumn of AD 401 was coming to an end, Alaric led his people—men, women and children—along a recently built path that traversed the Julian Alps, and entered northeastern Italy unheralded. As Alaric had hoped, the Romans were caught completely off guard. The Visigoths supposedly had a treaty of peace with them, while the looming winter gave the residents in Italy a false sense of security—no one, they thought, would launch an invasion at this time of year. In late October, once the invaders’ presence in northeastern Italy became known, a hastily assembled Roman army met the Visigoths at the Timavus, the Timavo river, northwest of Trieste. In the battle that followed, the Roman army was destroyed, after which Alaric’s forces flooded unimpeded across northern Italy as far as Liguria to the west, overwhelming farms and villages, and laying siege to cities and towns.
Community after Roman community fell to the invaders. Walls reinforced with steel, mighty defensive towers and iron gates, none of these could keep the invaders out. No rampart or palisade could withstand the onrush of the Visigoth cavalry, said Claudian; it was almost as if the city gates opened of their own accord. [Claud., TGW, 213–16] The people of northern Italy resorted to praying for foul weather which would bring rain that flooded the rivers and kept the invaders from reaching their towns and villages. But through the winter and into the spring the rain stayed away, and the people complained that even the sunshine seemed to conspire against them. [Ibid., 48] Nothing stopped the invaders; they glutted themselves with booty, and took tens of thousands of Roman civilian captives—some to ransom, others to retain as slaves.
Rome was no longer the seat of emperors. In northwestern Italy, the young emperor Honorius had made his capital at Mediolanum, today’s city of Milan, just as his father and several previous emperors had done since early in the fourth century. And now the invaders surrounded the imperial city, cutting off Honorius and his court from the outside world. In southern Italy, as news arrived that the north was being overrun, Rome and every other city and town closed their gates and levied every able-bodied man to their defense. A massive earthen wall was thrown up around Rome’s outer suburbs and equipped with numerous wooden watchtowers—Claudian, who was in Rome to see it being built, said that the wall’s architect was fear. [Claud., SCH., 533] Yet, while many were industrious in their preparations to defend Rome, the wealthy prepared to evacuate their families and their valuables to the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. [Claud., TGW, 218]
At Honorius’ court in Milan there was talk of giving up Rome to the invaders and transferring the city’s population to southern Gaul at the junction of the Saône and Rhine rivers, making Lugdunum the new capital, the new Rome. [Ibid., 296–300] In Gaul itself, and in Spain and Britain, the news of the Visigoth invasion generated a rumor, which quickly spread, that Rome had fallen. [Ibid., 201–204] Meanwhile, messengers from the emperor had been sent on a desperate mission to find Stilicho and beg him to return to Italy at once to direct the defense.
When tidings of the invasion reached Stilicho, he had been in Vindelicia, a region taking in parts of modern-day Switzerland, Germany and Austria. He had been busy putting down an uprising by Ostrogoth tribesmen who had settled in Vindelicia and Noricum under a peace settlement with Rome. [Warry, WCW] Apparently encouraged by Alaric, the barbarian settlers had broken their treaties. [Claud., TGW, 364–6] Once Stilicho arrived in Vindelicia, despite being accompanied by only a small number of Roman troops, he had soon quelled the rebellion. His soldiers from Raetia had then sacked the Ostrogoth farms across Vindelicia and generated a “mass of spoil.” [Ibid., 415]
Another barbarian tribe which had also settled in Roman territory in Switzerland under an agreement with a previous administration. They were Alans, and were reported to have been ready to participate in the uprising, or at the very least had supported it. The (unnamed) king of the Alans had protested his innocence, and volunteered to lead his mounted fighting men in Stilicho’s service. So Stilicho enrolled the Alans, “setting such number to their forces as should best suit” to ensure that he did not take over many of them to Italy with him, where, if there were too large a number, they might have been a burden to the country or a threat to him. [Ibid., 400–403] Stilicho would soon have plenty of bloody work for the Alani cavalry.
To speed his journey south, Stilicho had used a small boat to cross “the lake”—Lake Como, according to Gibbon. He then joined a waiting mounted column quite probably made up of the Alani volunteers, for the passage of the Alps, which were considered “inaccessible in winter.” [Ibid., 320–23] As Stilicho hurried toward Italy, messengers were carrying the youthful Master of the Armies’ orders to legion commanders throughout western Europe, telling them to march their units to join him with all speed in northern Italy.
From their station at Castra Regina (Regensburg) in Raetia, the 3rd Italica Legion set off to join their general. From faraway Britain, the only legion that remained intact in the British Isles, the 6th Victrix, hastened from Eburacum to the Kent coast, from where it was ferried to Gaul for the march to Italy. This was the legion, said Claudian, “that had kept the fierce Scots in check, [and] whose men had scanned the strange devices tattooed on the faces of the dying Picts.” [Ibid., 416–18]
From the Rhineland came the last two legions left guarding the Rhine frontier. The 1st Minervia left its base at Bonna, where it had “held the Chatti and wild Cherusci in subjection” since the reign of Trajan. The 22nd Primigeneia marched from Mogontiacum, where it had been based without interruption from the days of Claudius, and where it had lately “faced the flaxen-haired Sugumbri.” With these legions’ departures, said Claudian, the Rhine was defended by just one thing—the fear of Rome. [Ibid., 421–4] While Stilicho lived, his reputation alone guarded the west bank of the Rhine from German attack, despite the removal of Rome’s best frontier troops.
The path that Stilicho took across the Alps to reach Italy was deep with snow, and men commonly froze to death trying to use this route in winter, or were carried away by avalanches of ice and snow, while oxcarts plunged from icy paths into crevasses. There was no wine and little food for Stilicho’s mountain crossing, and what food they had Stilicho and each man ate with sword in hand, “burdened with rain-soaked cloak,” before urging on “his half-frozen steed.” At night, Stilicho slept in caves or shared the huts of alpine shepherds, using his shield for a pillow. [Ibid., 348–56]
Despite the bitter conditions, Stilicho and his escort pressed on and succeeded in crossing the Alps. As soon as they reached the foothills of northern Italy, Stilicho sent riders galloping south with a message for the people of Rome, urging them not to abandon hope, but patiently to await the defeat of the foe. [Ibid., 268–9] He himself set his course for Milan, which was crowded with Roman refugees. At Milan, refugees and residents, “herded together like sheep,” had to watch glumly from the city walls as Alaric’s Visigoths put farmland to the torch, and flames swept through the fields around the city. [Ibid., 45–7]
Twilight was descending as, from one of the city’s Palatine towers, the 17-year-old emperor Honorius surveyed the depressing scene around Milan. The city had been surrounded by the Visigoths since February, but they were not making any effort to storm it; Alaric was convinced that, without any hope of relief from outside, the boy emperor would soon be forced to come to terms with him “on any conditions he chose.” [Claud., SCH., 448–9] Claudian w
as to quote Honorius directly about this night. A leading poet in Rome at the time, he was close to Serena, Stilicho’s wife, so it is likely that the emperor spoke to him about these events. “Wherever I looked I saw the watch fires of the enemy shining like stars,” the young emperor recalled. [Ibid., 453–4]
Somewhere out there, Honorius hoped, his wife’s father was trying to reach him, for he was counting on Stilicho getting through to lift the siege of the city. [Claud., SCH, 450–51] “But the enemy held the road between my father-in-law and myself,” Honorius said. “What was Stilicho to do? Halt? My danger forbade the slightest delay. Break through the enemy’s line? His force was too small—in hurrying to my aid he had left behind him many troops, both of our country and foreign.” [Ibid., 462–3]
Stilicho was in fact very close by. After coming down out of the mountains east of the River Adda, his mounted column had followed the Adda south toward Milan without encountering Visigoth patrols. Opposite Milan, where a bridge crossed the churning river’s icy mountain waters, Stilicho had come on a Visigoth encampment barring the way over the bridge. From Milan, just across the river, Roman trumpets could be heard summoning the men of the first watch to their guard posts. [Ibid., 444–5] Stilicho decided not to wait for his other forces to join him. Time was of the essence. In the fading light, Stilicho and his cavalry escort charged into the Visigoth camp at the Adda bridge. Surprising the sentries, he rode right through the camp, “sword in hand, cutting down all who stood in his path.” [Ibid., 488–9]
The sentries in the tower at Milan’s main gate recognized their general at once as he and his small force of heavy cavalry galloped up from the bridge with their dragon pennants flying. Tall and slim, with large eyes, small mouth, a neat beard and his gray hair shorn in the page-boy style that had become the fashion, Stilicho wore a richly embroidered cavalry cloak that reached all the way to his knees, while his helmet gleamed. As the gate rose up and Stilicho was admitted to the embattled city, the troops in Milan came running to him. “The cohorts, such love they bore their commander, hurriedly assembled from everywhere, and at the sight of Stilicho their courage revived and they burst into tears of joy.” [Claud., TGW, 404–407]
Legions of Rome Page 61