apostate emperor, must have received a still higher authority from
the painful contrast they presented to the agitated condition and
corrupted morals of the Christian Church! Everywhere there was war and
treachery, and ambition and unbelief. Half the great sees were held
by Arians, who raved against the orthodox; and the other half were
held by Athanasius and his followers, who accused their adversaries
of being "more cruel than the Scythians, and more irreconcilable than
tigers." At Rome itself there was an orthodox bishop and an Arian
rival. It is not surprising that Julian, disgusted with the scenes
presented to him by the mutual rage of the Christian sects, thought
the surest method of restoring unity to the empire would be to silence
all the contending parties and reintroduce the peaceful pageantries
of the old Pantheon. If some of the fanciful annotators of the new
faith had allegorized the facts of Christianity till they ceased to
be facts at all, Julian performed the same office for the heathen
gods. Jupiter and the rest were embodiments of the hidden powers of
nature. Vulcan was the personification of human skill, and Venus the
beautiful representative of connubial affection. But men's minds
were now too sharpened with the contact they had had with the real to
be satisfied with such fallacies as these. Eloquent teachers arose,
who separated the eternal truths of revelation from the accessories
with which they were temporarily combined. Ridicule was retorted on
the emperor, who had sneered at the Christian services. Who, indeed,
who had caught the slightest view of the spirituality of Christ's
kingdom, could abstain from laughing at the laborious heathenism of
the master of the world? He cut the wood for sacrifice, he slew the
goat or bull, and, falling down on his knees, puffed with distended
cheeks the sacred fire. He marched to the temple of Venus between
two rows of dissolute and drunken worshippers, striving in vain by
face and attitude to repress the shouts of riotous exultation and the
jeers of the spectators. Then, wherever he went he was surrounded by
pythonesses, and augurs, and fortune-tellers, magicians who could work
miracles, and necromancers who could raise the dead. When he restored
a statue to its ancient niche, he was rewarded by a shake of its head;
when he hung up a picture of Thetis or Amphitrite, she winked in sign
of satisfaction. Where miracles are not believed, the performance of
them is fatal. But his expenditure of money in honouring the gods was
more real, and had clearer results. He nearly exhausted the empire by
the number of beasts he slew. He sent enormous offerings to the shrines
of Dodona, and Delos, and Delphi. He rebuilt the temples, which time or
Christian hatred had destroyed; and, by way of giving life to his new
polity, he condescended to imitate the sect be despised, in its form
of worship, in its advocacy of charity, peace, and good will, and in
its institutions of celibacy and retirement, which, indeed, had been
a portion of heathen virtue before it was admitted into the Christian
Church. But his affected contempt soon degenerated into persecution.
He would have no soldiers who did not serve his gods. Many resigned
their swords. He called the Christians "Galileans," and robbed them
of their property and despitefully used them, to try the sincerity of
their faith. "Does not your law command you," he said, "to submit to
injury, and to renounce your worldly goods? Well, I take possession
of your riches that your march to heaven may be unencumbered." All
moderation was now thrown off on both sides. Resistance was made by the
Christians, and extermination threatened by the emperor. In the midst
of these contentions he was called eastward to resist the aggression
of Sapor, the Persian king. An arrow stretched Julian on his couch.
He called round him his chief philosophers and priests. With them, in
imitation of Socrates, he entered into deep discussions about the soul.
[A.D. 363.] Nothing more heroic than his end, or more eloquent than
his parting discourse. But death did not soften the animosity of his
foes. The Christians boasted that the arrow was sent by an angel, that
visions had foretold the persecutor's fall, and that so would perish
all the enemies of God. The adherents of the emperor in return blamed
the Galileans as his assassins, and boldly pointed to Athanasius, the
leader of the Christians, as the culprit. Athanasius would certainly
not have scrupled to rid the world of such an Agag and Holofernes, but
it is more probable that the death occurred without either a miracle
or a murder. The successors of Julian were enemies of the apostate.
They speedily restored their fellow-believers to the supremacy they
had lost. A ferocious hymn of exultation by Gregory of Nazianzen
was chanted far and wide. Cries of joy and execration resounded in
market-places, and churches, and theatres. The market-places had been
closed against the Christians, their churches had been interdicted,
and the theatres shut up, by the overstrained asceticism of the
deceased. It was perceived that Christianity had taken deeper root
than the apostate had believed, and henceforth no effort could be
made to revivify the old superstition. After a nominal election of
Jovian, the choice of the soldiers fell on two of their favourite
leaders, Valentinian and Valens, brothers, and sufferers in the late
persecutions for their faith. Named emperors of the Roman world, they
came to an amicable division of the empire into East and West. Valens
remained in Constantinople to guard the frontiers of the Danube and
the Euphrates; while Valentinian, who saw great clouds darkening over
Italy and Gaul, fixed his imperial residence in the strong city of
Milan. The separation took place in 364, and henceforth the stream of
history flows in two distinct and gradually diverging channels. This
century has already been marked by the removal of the seat of power
to Constantinople; by the attempt at the restoration of Paganism by
Julian; and we have now to dwell for a little on the third and greatest
incident of all, the invasion of the Goths, and final settlement of
hostile warriors on the Roman soil.
Names that have retained their sound and established themselves as
household words in Europe now meet as at every turn. Valentinian is
engaged in resisting the Saxons. The Britons, the Scots, the Germans,
are pushing their claims to independence; and in the farther East,
the persecutions and tyranny of the contemptible Valens are suddenly
suspended by the news that a people hitherto unheard of had made their
appearance within an easy march of the boundary, and that universal
terror had taken possession of the soldiers of the empire. Who were
those soldiers? We have seen for many years that the policy of the
emperors had been to introduce the barbarians into the military
service of the State, and to expose the wasted and helpless inhabitants
to the rapacity of their tax-gatherers. This system had been carried
to such a pitch, that it is probable there were none but mercenaries
of the most varying interests in the Roman ranks. Yet such is the
effect of discipline, and the pride of military combination, that all
other feelings gave way before it. The Gothic chief, now invested with
command in the Roman armies, turned his arms against his countrymen.
The Albanian, the Saxon, the Briton, elevated to the rank of duke or
count, looked back on Marius and Cæsar as their lineal predecessors in
opposing and conquering the enemies of Rome. The names of the generals
and magistrates, accordingly, which we encounter after this date,
have a strangely barbaric sound. There are Ricimer, and Marcomir, and
Arbogast--and finally, the name which overtopped and outlived them
all, the name of Alaric the Goth. Now, the Goths, we have seen, had
been settled for many generations on the northern side of the Danube.
Much intercourse must have taken place between the inhabitants of the
two banks. There must have been trade, and love, and quarrellings,
and rejoicings. At shorter and shorter intervals the bravest of the
tribes must have passed over into the Roman territory and joined the
Legions. Occasionally a timid or despotic emperor would suddenly order
his armies across, and carry fire and sword into the unsuspecting
country. But on the whole, the terms on which they lived were not
hostile, for the ties which united the two peoples were numerous and
strong. Even the languages in the course of time must have come to be
mutually intelligible, and we read of Gothic leaders who were excellent
judges of Homer and seldom travelled without a few chosen books. This
being the case, what was the consternation of the almost civilized
Goths in the fertile levels of the present Wallachia and Moldavia to
hear that an innumerable horde of dreadful savages, calling themselves
Huns and Magyars, had appeared on the western shore of the Black Sea,
and spread over the land, destroying, murdering, burning whatever
lay in their way! Cooped up for an unknown period, it appeared, on
the northeastern side of the Palus Maeotis, now better known to us
as the Sea of Azof--living on fish out of the Don, and on the cattle
of the long steppes which extend across the Volga, these sons of the
Scythian desert had never been heard of either by the Goths or Romans.
A hideous people to behold, as the perverted imagination of poet or
painter could produce. They were low in stature, but broad-shouldered
and strong. Their wide cheek-bones and small eyes gave them a savage
and cruel expression, which was increased by their want of nose, for
the only visible appearance of that indispensable organ consisted of
two holes sunk into the square expanse of their faces. Fear is not a
flattering painter, but from these rude descriptions it is easy to
recognise the Calmuck countenance; and when we add their small horses,
long spears, and prodigious lightness and activity, we shall see a
very close resemblance between them and their successors in the same
district, the Russian Cossacks of the Don. On, on, came the torrent of
these pitiless, fearless, ugly, dirty, irresistible foes. The Goths,
terrified at their aspect, and bewildered with the accounts they
heard of their numbers and mode of warfare, petitioned the emperor to
give them an asylum on the Roman side. Their prayer was granted on
condition of depositing their children and arms in Roman hands. They
had no time to squabble about terms. Every thing was agreed to. Boats
manned by Roman soldiers were busy, day and night in transporting
the Gothic exiles to the Roman side. Arms and jewels, and wives and
children, the furniture of their tents, and idols of their gods, all
got safely across the guarding river. The Huns, the Alans, and the
other unsightly hordes who had gathered in the pursuit, came down to
the bank, and shouted useless defiance and threats of vengeance. The
broad Danube rolled between; and there rested that night on the Roman
soil a whole nation, different in interest, in manners and religion,
from the population they had joined, numbering upwards of a million
souls, bound together by every thing that constitutes the unity of a
people. The avarice and injustice of the Roman authorities negatived
the clause of the agreement that stipulated for the surrender of the
Gothic arms. To redeem their swords and spears, they parted with
the silver and gold they had amassed in their predatory incursions
on the Roman territory. They know that once in possession of their
weapons they could soon reclaim all they gave--and in no long time
the attempt was made. Fritigern, the leader of their name, led them
against the armies of Rome. Insulted at their audacity, the Emperor
Valens, at the head of three hundred thousand men, met them in the
plain of Adrianople. The existence of the Gothic people was at stake.
[A.D. 379.] They fought with desperation and hatred. The emperor was
defeated, leaving two-thirds of his army on the field of battle.
Seeking safety in a cottage at the side of the road, he was burned by
the inexorable pursuers, who, gathering up their broken lines, marched
steadily through the intervening levels and gazed with enraptured eyes
on the glittering towers and pinnacles of Constantinople itself. But
the walls were high and strongly armed. The barbarians were inveigled
into a negotiation, and mastered by the unequal powers of lying
at all times characteristic of the Greeks. Fritigern consented to
withdraw his troops: some were embodied in the levies of the empire,
and others dispersed in different provinces. Those settled in Thrace
were faithful to their employers, and resisted their ancient enemies
the Huns; but the great body of the discontented conquerors were ready
for fresh assaults on the Roman land. Theodosius, called to the throne
in 379, succeeded in staving off the evil day; but when the final
partition of the empire took place between his two sons--Honorius
and Arcadius--there was nothing to oppose the terrible onset of the
Goths. [A.D. 394.] At their head was Alaric, the descendant of their
original chiefs, and himself the bravest of his warriors. He broke
into Greece, forcing his way through Thermopylæ, and devastated the
native seats of poetry and the arts with fire and sword. The ruler at
Constantinople heard of his advance with terror, and opposed to him
the Vandal Stilicho, the greatest of his generals. But the wily Alaric
declined to fight, and out-manoeuvred his enemies, escaping to the sure
fastnesses of Epirus, and sat down sullen and discontented, meditating
further expeditions into richer plains, and already seeing before him
the prostrate cities of Italy. The terror of Arcadius tried in vain
to soften his rage, or satisfy his ambition with vain titles, among
others, that of Count of the Illyrian Border. The spirit of aggression
was fairly roused. All the Gothic settlers in the Roman territory were
ready to join their countrymen in one great and combined attack;--and
with this position of the personages of the drama, the curtain falls on
the fourth century, while preparations for the great catastrophe are
going on.
FIFTH CENTURY
Emperors.
A.D. _West._
HONORIUS--(_cont._)
424. VALENTINIAN III.
455. PETRONIUS MAXIMUS.
455. AVITUS.
457. MAJORIANUS.
461. SEVERUS.
467. ANTHEMIUS.
472. OLIBIUS.
473. GLYCERIUS.
474. JULIUS NEPOS.
475. AUGUSTULUS ROMULUS.
A.D. _East._
ARCADIUS--(_cont._)
408. THEODOSIUS II.
450. MARCIAN.
457. LEO THE GREAT.
474. ZENO.
491. ANASTASIUS.
King of the Franks.
A.D.
481. CLOVIS.
King of Italy.
A.D.
489. THEODORIC.
Authors.
CHRYSOSTOM, JEROME, AUGUSTINE, PELAGIUS, (405,) SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS,
PATRICIUS, MACROBIUS, VICENTIUS OF LERINS, (died 450,) CYRIL, BISHOP OF
ALEXANDRIA, (412-444.)
THE FIFTH CENTURY.
END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE--FORMATION OF MODERN STATES--GROWTH OF
ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY.
We find the same actors on the stage when the curtain rises again, but
circumstances have greatly changed. After his escape from Stilicho,
Alaric had been "lifted on the shield," the wild and picturesque way
in which the warlike Goths nominated their kings, and henceforth
was considered the monarch of a separate and independent people, no
longer the mere leader of a band of predatory barbarians. In this new
character he entered into treaties with the emperors of Constantinople
or Rome, and broke them, as if he had already been the sovereign of a
civilized state.
In 403 he broke up from his secure retreat on the Adriatic, and burst
into Italy, spreading fire and famine wherever he went. Honorius,
the Emperor of the West, fled from Milan, and was besieged in Asti
by the Goths. Here would have ended the imperial dynasty, some years
before its time, if it had not been for the watchful Stilicho. This
Vandal chief flew to the rescue of Honorius, repulsed Alaric with
great slaughter, and delivered his master from his dangerous position.
The grateful emperor entered Rome in triumph, and for the last time
the Circus streamed with the blood of beasts and men. [A.D. 408.] He
retired after this display to the inaccessible marshes of Ravenna, at
the mouths of the Po, and, secure in that fortress, sent an order to
have his preserver and benefactor murdered; Stilicho, the only hope
of Rome, was assassinated, and Alaric once more saw all Italy within
his grasp. It was not only the Goths who followed Alaric's command. All
the barbarians, of whatever name or race, who had been transplanted
either as slaves or soldiers--Alans, Franks, and Germans--rallied
round the advancing king, for the impolitic Honorius had issued an
order for the extermination of all the tribes. There were Britons,
and Saxons, and Suabians. It was an insurrection of all the manly
elements of society against the indescribable depravation of the
inhabitants of the Peninsula. The wildest barbarian blushed in the
midst of his ignorance and rudeness to hear of the manners of the
highest and most distinguished families in Rome. Nobody could hold out
a hand to avert the judgment that was about to fall on the devoted
city. Ambassadors indeed appeared, and bought a short delay at the
price of many thousand pounds' weight of gold and silver, and of large
quantities of silk; but these were only additional incitements to the
cupidity of the invader. Tribe after tribe rose up with fresh fury;
warriors of every hue and shape, and with every manner of equipment.
The handsome Goth in his iron cuirass; the Alan with his saddle covered
with human skin; the German making a hideous sound by shrieking on
the sharp edge of his shield; and the countryman of Alaric himself
sounding the "horn of battle," which terrified the Romans with its
ominous note--all started forward on the march. At the head of each
detachment rode a band, singing songs of exultation and defiance; and
the Romans, stupefied with fear, saw these innumerable swarms defile
towards the Milvian bridge and close up every access to the town.
There was no corn from Sicily or Africa; a pest raged in every house,
and hunger reduced the inhabitants to despair. The gates were thrown
open, and all the pent-up animosity of the desert was poured out upon
the mistress and corrupter of the world. For six days the city was
given up to remorseless slaughter and universal pillage. The wealth
was incalculable. The captives were sold as slaves. The palaces were
overthrown, and the river choked with carcasses and the treasures of
art which the barbarians could not appreciate. "The new Babylon," cries
Bossuet, the great Bishop of Meaux, "rival of the old, swelled out like
her with her successes, and, triumphing in her pleasures and riches,
encountered as great a fall." And no man lamented her fate.
[A.D. 410.]
Alaric, who had thus achieved a victory denied to Hannibal and Pyrrhus,
resolved to push his conquests to the end of Italy. But on his march
towards the Straits of Sicily, illness overtook him. His life had been
unlike that of other men, and his burial was to excite the wonder of
the Bruttians, among whom he died. A large river was turned from its
course, and in its channel a deep grave was dug and ornamented with
monumental stone. To this the body of the barbaric king was carried,
clothed in full armour, and accompanied with some of the richest spoils
of Rome; and then the stream was turned on again, the prisoners who
had executed the works were slaughtered to conceal the secret of the
tomb, and nobody has ever found out where the Gothic king reposes. But
while the Busentino flowed peaceably on, and guarded the body of the
conqueror from the revenge of the Romans, new perils were gathering
round the throne of the Western emperor. As if the duration of the
empire had been inseparably connected with the capital, the reverence
of mankind was never bestowed on Milan or Ravenna, in which the court
was now established, as it had been upon Rome. Britain had already
thrown off the distant yoke, and submitted to the Saxon invaders.
Spain had also peaceably accepted the rule of the three kindred tribes
of Sueves and Alans and Vandals. Gaul itself had given its adhesion
to the Burgundians (who fixed their seat in the district which still
bears their name) and offered a feeble resistance to any fresh invader.
Ataulf, the brother of Alaric, came to the rescue of the empire, and of
course completed the destruction. He married the sister of Honorius,
and retained her as a hostage of the emperor's good faith. He promised
to restore the revolted provinces to their former master, and succeeded
in overthrowing some competitors who had started up to dispute with
Ravenna the wrecks of former power. He then forced his way into Spain,
and the hopes of the degenerate Romans were high. But murder, as usual,
stopped the career of Ataulf, and all was changed. [A.D. 415.] The
emperor ratified the possessions which he could not dispute, and in
the first twenty years of this century three separate kingdoms were
established in Europe. This was soon followed by a Vandal conquest of
the shores of Africa, which raised Carthage once more to commercial
importance, united Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia to the new-founded
state, and by the creation of a fleet gained the command of the
Mediterranean Sea, and threatened Constantinople itself.
With so many provinces not only torn from the empire, but erected into
hostile kingdoms, nothing was wanting but some new irruption into the
still dependent territories to put a final end to the Roman name. And a
new incursion came. In the very involved relations existing between the
emperors of the East and West, it is difficult to follow the course of
events with any clearness. While the deluded populace of Constantinople
were rejoicing in the fall of their Italian rival, they heard with
amazement, in 441, that a savage potentate, who had pitched his tents
in the plains of Pannonia and Thrace, and kept round him, for defence
or conquest, seven hundred thousand of those hideous-featured Huns who
had spread devastation and terror all over the populations of Asia,
from the borders of China to the Don, had determined on stretching his
conquests over the whole world, and merely hesitated with which of the
doomed empires to begin his career. His name was Attila, or, according
to its native pronunciation, Etzel; and it soon resounded, louder and
more terrifying than that of Alaric the Goth. The Emperor of the East
sent an embassy to this dreadful neighbour, a minute account of which
remains, and from which we learn the barbaric pomp and ceremony of the
leader of the Huns, and the perfidy and debasement of the Greeks. An
attempt was made to poison the redoubtable chief, and he complained
of the guilty ambassador to the very person who had given him his
instructions for the deed. Unsatisfied with the result, the Hunnish
monarch advanced his camp. Constantinople, anxious to ward off the blow
from itself, descanted to the savage king on the exposed condition and
ill-defended wealth of the Italian towns. Treachery of another kind
came to his aid. An offended sister of the emperor sent to Attila her
ring as a mark of espousal, and he now claimed a portion of the empire
as the dowry of his bride. When this was refused, he reiterated his old
claim of satisfaction for the attempt upon his life, and ravaged the
fields of Belgium and Gaul, in the double character of avenger of an
insult and claimant of an inheritance. It does not much matter under
what plea a barbarous chieftain, with six hundred thousand warriors,
makes a demand. It must be answered sword in hand, or on the knees.
The newly-established Frankish and Burgundian kings gathered their
forces in defence of their Christian faith and their recently-acquired
dominions. Attila retired from Orleans, of which he had commenced the
siege, and chose for the battle-field, which was to decide the destiny
of the world, a vast plain not far from Châlons, on the Marne, where
his cavalry would have room to act, and waited the assault of all the
forces that France and Italy could collect. The Visigoths prepared
for the decisive engagement under their king, Theodoric; the Franks
of the Saal under Meroveg; the Ripuarian Franks, the Saxons, and the
Burgundians were under leaders of their own. [A.D. 451.] It was a
fight in which were brought face to face the two conquering races of
the world, and upon its result it depended whether Europe was to be
ruled by a dynasty of Calmucks or left to her free progress under her
Gothic and Teutonic kings. Three hundred thousand corpses marked the
severity of the struggle, but victory rested with the West. Attila
retreated from Gaul, and wreaked his vengeance on the Italian cities.
He destroyed Aquileia, whose terrified inhabitants hid themselves in
the marshes and lagoons which afterwards bore the palaces of Venice;
Vicenza, Padua, and Verona were spoiled and burned. Pavia and Milan
submitted without resistance. On approaching Rome, the venerable
bishop, Saint Leo, met the devastating Hun, and by the gravity of his
appearance, the ransom he offered, and perhaps the mystic dignity
which still rested upon the city whose cause he pleaded, prevailed on
him to retire. Shortly after, the chief of this brief and terrible
visitation died in his tent on the banks of the Danube, and left no
lasting memorial of his irruption except the depopulation his cruelty
had caused, and the ruin he had spread over some of the fairest regions
of the earth.