In AD 403, Alaric and his Visigoths had again invaded Italy, and this time Stilicho had stung Alaric with defeat before he could cross the River Po, at the Battle of Verona. Alaric, like his luck, had survived the encounter, and he had negotiated his way back to Pannonia. Two years later, Honorius, Roman emperor of the Western Empire, had more to worry about than Alaric. A massive German coalition led by Ostrogoths under Radagaisus had flooded down through Raetia and invaded northern Italy. Again Stilicho was called on to save Italy; he came on the barbarians when they were attacking the city of Florentia, latter-day Florence. He drove the invaders north, cut off their supplies, then massacred them at Fiesole. Radagaisus was captured by Stilicho, and featured in a Triumph celebrated by Honorius in August, after which the German leader was executed.
But the following year, a coalition of Suebi Germans, Vandals and disenchanted Alans had crossed the undefended Rhine and plundered their way through Gaul and into Spain. In AD 407, Alaric led his Visigoths into the Roman province of Noricum, demanding 4,000 pounds (1,812 kilograms) of gold to leave. Stilicho convinced a reluctant Senate in Rome to pay up, and Alaric had withdrawn with his gold. But he had not yet finished with the Romans.
By early AD 408, 23-year-old Honorius’ wife Maria, the daughter of Stilicho, had died. Honorius then married Stilicho’s younger daughter Thermantia. But relations between Honorius and his father-in-law and one-time guardian began to sour when it was rumored that Stilicho was plotting to put his son Eucherius on the throne. Then came the news that Honorius’ brother Arcadius, Roman emperor of the Eastern Empire, had died at Constantinople. When Stilicho proposed to go to Constantinople to play a role in the settlement of the succession there, suspicions grew about his intentions, and renewed rumors circulated about his plans for his son. In August, on the orders of Honorius, Stilicho was arrested in Ravenna. On August 23, Stilicho was beheaded. His son was executed shortly after.
Rome had just lost her last great general, and her last hope. And Alaric knew it. He immediately marched his Visigoths into Italy. With numerous auxiliary units from barbarian tribes defecting to him from the Roman army, and apparently disposing of Stilicho’s leaderless legions with ease, Alaric reached Rome and laid siege to it. The Senate of Rome granted Alaric another payment in gold, and agreed to assist him in negotiations with Honorius, who had taken up residence at Ravenna.
But when Honorius refused to consider paying Alaric anything more, the Visigoth king returned to Rome in AD 409, laying siege to the city anew. This siege was lifted after a negotiated peace deal permitted Alaric to install a puppet emperor of his own choice, Attalus, in Rome. At this same time, Roman officials in Britain wrote desperately to the emperor Honorius at Ravenna, begging him to send back the legion that Stilicho had taken from them several years before, the 6th Victrix, together with any other Roman troops he could spare, for the Picts and the Scots had burst across Hadrian’s Wall and were ravaging Britain.
There would be no record in the Notitia Dignitatum of the four legions that Stilicho had withdrawn from Britain, the Rhine, and Raetia to fight Alaric. It is probable that since Pollentia, all these units had been ground down to nothing by the continual fighting in Italy, and Honorius wrote back to the officials in Britain to say that he could offer Britannia no hope of military assistance. No more Roman troops would ever be sent to Britain; the locals would have to provide for their own future defense.
In AD 410, Alaric was again outside Rome with his army—to depose Attalus, who had turned against him—laying siege to the city once more. On August 24, AD 410, almost exactly two years to the day since Stilicho’s death, Visigoth agents inside Rome opened a city gate, and Alaric’s army flooded into the capital. With pitiful ease, Rome had fallen, and for three days the Visigoths sacked the eternal city.
Rome’s buildings were pillaged, some set alight. The fate of the city’s defenders is unknown, although the civilian population was generally not harmed. All the gold and silver that adorned the city, from the statue of golden-winged Victoria that once stood in the Senate House to the gold and silver glittering around Trajan’s Column, and even the milliarium aureum, the gilded column in the Forum from which all distances in the Roman world were said to be measured, all these would have fallen to the invaders, who, there in the city, would have industriously melted down their loot for ease of transport.
Following the AD 402 rebuff to Alaric at Pollentia, the Roman poet Claudian had boasted that Stilicho had saved Rome, and that she would never again have to fear the barbarian. But Stilicho’s brilliant generalship, like all things, was doomed to be lost with time. Under his steadying hand, Rome had been like the dying man who seems to experience a remarkable and unexpected improvement in health, only to collapse and perish soon after. Claudian himself seems not to have lived to have seen the day, in August 410, when Alaric the Visigoth kept his vow to his pagan god and walked the well-trod paving stones of the Forum, as conqueror of Rome.
Just a matter of weeks later, as Alaric was leading his victorious army on a pillaging progress through southern Italy after the sack of Rome, the Visigoth king fell ill at Cosentia, today’s Cosenza in Calabria. At just the age of 40, he died there. Legend has it that Alaric was buried in the bed of the Busento river, along with loot from Rome.
Alaric was dead. But he had demonstrated that mighty Rome could fall. Forty-five years later, Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, would invade Italy from the south after conquering North Africa, and he too would sack Rome. The imperial legions of Rome were no longer invincible. After dominating the western world in the first century, they had been fighting a long losing battle ever since, to hold Rome’s frontiers. The legions of Rome and the empire they had created were no more.
LXXVI. WHY DID THE LEGIONS DECLINE AND FALL?
Explaining Rome’s end
Vegetius, attempting to advise the child emperor Valentinian II (reigned AD 371–392), shortly before Rome fell to the barbarians, complained that the Roman soldier of his day had become soft. During the AD 367–383 reign of Gratian, he said, the legions had sought permission to lay aside their armor, because it was too heavy, and later their helmets, too. [Vege., MIR, I] “After the example of the Goths, the Alans and the Huns, we have made improvements in the arms of the cavalry,” Vegetius said, “yet it is plain the infantry are entirely defenseless.” [Ibid.]
“The name of the legion indeed remains to this day in our armies,” Vegetius told his emperor, “but its strength and substance are gone.” He complained that vacancies in the legions of his day were no longer filled—not surprising considering the huge drain in manpower caused by the numerous civil wars and defeats served out on Rome’s armies by invaders in Vegetius’ day. Vegetius complained that the men of the legions had come to find “duty hard, the arms heavy, the rewards uncertain, and the discipline severe.” [Vege., II]
Since the year AD 212, once Roman citizenship was conferred on all free men, the distinction between legion and auxiliary unit had virtually disappeared, and to avoid service in the legions, said Vegetius, young men of his day enlisted in auxiliary units, “where the service is less laborious and they have reason to expect more speedy recompense.” [Ibid.]
By the end of the fourth century, Rome’s legions, once considered glamorous to Roman youth and perceived as formidable fighting units by Rome’s enemies, were routinely chewed up in the endless wars in both the East and West. But even men whose legions were outnumbered and who had previously suffered defeat at the hands of their enemies could be turned into victors by good generals; in the Western Empire’s last years both Julian and Stilicho proved that. But in the end, Rome ran out of good generals, just as she ran out of time.
From the time of Trajan, Rome was in decline. Considering the number of poor emperors, assassinations and civil wars, the most remarkable thing about the Roman Empire is that it lasted as long as it did. That longevity can only be attributed to her legions. Despite all that inept commanders and ambitious throne-seekers did to it,
the institution that was the imperial legion nonetheless served Rome well for more than 400 years.
This golden sword and scabbard would have been the proud possession of an imperial officer. (see The Legionary’s Weapons)
(The Art Archive Provinciaal Museum G M Kam Nijmegen Netherlands Gianni Dagli Orti)
A cameo showing the emperor Augustus early in his reign. Augustus was the father of the imperial legions, improving their organization and command structure.
(The Art Archive / British Museum)
Roman officers and marines ready to storm aboard an opposition ship. The ship’s oarsmen, out of sight below deck, were paid seamen, not slaves, and were trained to join shipboard fighting also.
(AKG Images / Vatican Museums)
This Roman aqueduct along the Mediterranean Sea, in Caesaria, Israel, was built by troops of the 10th Fretensis Legion.
(Corbis / Richard T. Nowitz)
Rome’s chariot-racing corporations had first call on horses from stud farms throughout the Empire, even ahead of the Roman army. This charioteer, represented in a pavement mosiac, drove for the Greens corporation. (see Cavalry)
(The Art Archive / Gianni Dagli Orti)
Scythian fighters such as these shown on a gold ornament were typically armed with bows and arrows. It was for defeating warriors like these that the 4th Scythica Legion gained its title.
(The Bridgeman Art Library / Boltin Picture Library)
This sculpture depicts Claudius overwhelming a female figure representing Britannia. Claudius, who had no military experience, silenced his military critics by masterminding the AD 43 invasion of Britain by four legions.
(Darren Wickham).
Built by Herod the Great and named after his friend Mark Antony, Jerusalem’s massive Antonia Fortress was praetorium of the legion cohorts stationed at Jerusalem. Falling to Jewish rebels in AD 66, it was leveled by Titus’ legions in AD 70. (See Rioting in Jerusalem)
(Corbis / Richard T. Norwitz)
The rocky outcrop of Masada, today, showing the remains of the palace of Herod. Masada was one of the first Roman fortresses to fall to Jewish rebels in AD 66. It was retaken by the 10th Fretensis Legion and auxiliary units in AD 73.
(Corbis Nathan Benn Ottochrome)
Chronicling Trajan’s second-century conquest of Dacia after two bloody wars, Trajan’s Column was designed to be “read” by walking around the ramped structure, which no longer exists, that originally wound around it.
(SCALA, Florence Ann Ronan HIP)
Marcus Aurelius spent most of his second-century reign away from Rome, leading the fight against German tribes who invaded Roman territory via the Danube.
(Corbis Paul Seheult Eye Ubiquitous)
Ctesiphon, one of the Parthian capitals, ruins of which are seen here today, was the target of various Roman invasions, and was twice taken by the legions.
(Topfoto / Roger Viollet)
The soldier emperor Pertinax, depicted on this gold coin, reigned only for several months. His murder inspired Septimius Severus to take the throne and to punish the Praetorian Guard for the murder.
(Alamy)
The soldier emperor Septimius Severus, at right, with his sons, the ambitious Caracalla and the illfated Geta. This relief, dating from around AD 203-204, is from the Arch of Severus, in Severus’s home town of Leptis Magna, in today’s Libya, North Africa.
(AKG Images / Gilles Mermet)
Elagabalus, reigning from AD 218–222, was only 14 when he became emperor through the support of the legions. His eccentric behavior led to his assassination by his own Praetorian Guard, not an uncommon fate for wayward emperors.
(Corbis / Araldo de Luca)
Maximinus was busy fighting barbarians in the Balkans, as depicted here on the Ludovisi Sarcaphagus, when news arrived that the Senate had replaced him with the Gordians, father and son. He led his legions to Italy to defend his throne, only to be murdered by men of his own 2nd Parthica Legion and Praetorians.
(Werner Forman Archive)
The Temple of Bel in the heart of the city-state of Palmyra. The city was destroyed by Rome’s legions after the defeat of Queen Zenobia’s army. Zenobia would be led through the streets in golden chains during a Triumph. Living at Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli outside Rome, she would eventually marry a Roman senator. (see The Palmyran Wars)
(Corbis / Michael Nicholson)
Valentinian I, depicted here on a medallion, was a cavalry commander prior to attaining the throne, and fought in Julian’s famous victory at Argentoratum, today’s Strasbourg, against a large invading German army.
(SCALA, Florence / Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin)
For years Alaric and his Visigoths were kept beyond these massive Aurelian Walls around Rome by Stilicho and his legions. Once Stilicho was dead, Alaric’s AD 410 sack of Rome was inevitable. (see The Fall of Rome)
(SCALA, Florence / Royal Academy of History, Madrid)
The Notitia Dignitatum, whose pages are variously dated by scholars between AD 360 and 420, depicts shield emblems and shows postings for hundreds of Late Empire units. Many of these units had disappeared by the start of the fifth century, wiped out by the Persians in the East and invaders from beyond the Rhine and Danube.
(Bodleian Library)
Picture Acknowledgment
Part 1: X. The Legionary’s Weapons - Selection of Roman swords (AKG / Peter Connolly)
KEY TO SOURCES
AE—L’Annee Epigraphique, Paris
Alex. W.—The Alexandrian War (Caesar, CW)
Amm.—Ammianus Marcellinus
Arr. TH—Arrian, Tactical Handbook
Arr. EAA—Arrian, Expedition Against the Alans
A.V.—Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus
Birl. DRA—Birley, Documenting the Roman Army, “The Commissioning of Equestrian Officers”
Bon. B&B—Bonet, Bulls & Bullfighting
Caes. GW—Caesar, The Gallic War
Caes. CW—Caesar, The Civil War
Carc.—Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome
CAS—Chester Archaeological Society, Table 1
Cic. Phil.—Cicero, Philippics
CIL—Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin
Claud. OSC—Claudian, On Stilicho’s Consulship
Claud. SCH—Claudian, Sixth Consulship of Honorius
Claud. TGW—Claudian, The Gothic War
Cow. RL 58–69—Cowan, Roman Legionary, 58 BC–AD 69
Dio—Cassius Dio, Roman Histories
Dus.—Dusanic, Documenting the Roman Army, “The Imperial Propaganda of Significant Day-Dates”
Eus. Chron.—Eusebius Pamphilius, Chronicle
Eus. EH—Eusebius Pamphilius, Ecclesiastic History
Eus. LC—Eusebius, Life of Constantine
Front.—Frontinus, Stratagems
Guey—Essai de la Guerre Parthique de Trajan
Herod.—Herodian, History of the Empire
Hold. DRA—Holder, Documenting the Roman Army, “Auxiliary Deployment in the Reign of Hadrian”
Hold. RAB—Holder, The Roman Army in Britain
Horr.—Horrocks, Secrets & Stories of the War, Foreword
ILS—Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, H. Dessau, Berlin
Jos. JA—Josephus, The Jewish Antiquities
Jos. JW—Josephus, The Jewish War
Kepp. CVSI—Keppie, Colonisation & Veteran Settlement in Italy 47–14 BC
Kepp. MRA—Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army
Livy—History
Not. Dig.—Notitia Dignitatum
Pelle.—Pelletier, Histoire de Lyon
Petr.—Petronius, The Satyricon
Plut.—Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians & Romans
Poly.—Polybius, History
Res Gest.—Augustus, Res Gestae
Speid.—Speidel, Riding for Caesar
Starr—Imperial Roman Navy
Suet.—Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars
Tac. A—Tacitus, The Annals
<
br /> Tac. Agr.—Tacitus, The Agricola
Tac. Germ.—Tacitus, The Germania
Tac., H—Tacitus, The Histories
Tom. DRA—Tomlin, Documenting the Roman Army, “Documenting the Roman Army at Carlisle”
Vale.—Excerpta Valesiana
Vege.—Vegetius, De Rei Militaris
Velle.—Vellius Paterculus, Roman History
Vitr.—Vitruvius, On Architecture
VWT—Vindolanda Writing Tablets
W&D—Webster & Dudley, The Roman Invasion of Britain
Warry—Warfare in the Classical World
Web.—Webster, Roman Imperial Army
Wells—The Day that Stopped Rome
Yadin—Bar-Kokhba
Zos.—Zosimus, Historica Nova
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Abbott, F. F., and Johnson, A. C., Municipal Administration in the Roman Empire. Princeton, NJ; PUP, 1926.
Ammianus Marcellinus, History, and The Excerpts of Valesius by Anonymous (J. C. Rolfe transl.). Cambridge, MA; 1935.
Appian, Roman History (H. White transl.). London; Loeb, 1913.
Arrian, Expedition Against the Alans, J. G. DeVoto (ed.). Chicago; Ares, 1993.
Arrian, History of Alexander, and Indica (P. Brunt transl.). London; Loeb, 1976.
Arrian, Tactical Handbook, J. G. DeVoto (ed.). Chicago; Ares, 1993.
Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti (F. W. Shipley transl.). Cambridge, MA; HUP, 1924.
Aurelius, M., Meditations (G. Long transl.). Chicago; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952.
Aurelius Victor, S., De Caesaribus. Liverpool; LUP, 1994.
Azzaroli, A., A History of Early Horsemanship. London; Brill, 1985.
Berger, P. C., The Insignia of the Notitia Dignitatum. New York; Garland, 1981.
Birley, A., Marcus Aurelius. London; Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1966.
Birley, E., Roman Britain and the Roman Army. Kendal, UK; Wilson, 1953.
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