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HEROES OF THE NATIONS
EDITED BY
EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A.
FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
FACTA CUCIS VIVENT OPEROSAQUE
GLORIA RERUM--OVID, IN LIVIAM, 255
THE HERO'S DEEDS AND HARD-WON
FAME SHALL LIVE
[Illustration]
THEODORIC THE GOTH
THE BARBARIAN CHAMPION OF CIVILISATION
BY THOMAS HODGKIN, D.C.L.
FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON; AUTHOR OF
"ITALY AND HER INVADERS, A.D. 376-553", ETC., ETC.
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK.
27 W. TWENTY-THIRD STREET
LONDON.
24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND
THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS.
1897
COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
By G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
G.P. Putnam's Sons.
[Illustration]
PREFACE
In the following pages I have endeavoured to portray the life and
character of one of the most striking figures in the history of the
Early Middle Ages, Theodoric the Ostrogoth. The plan of the series, for
which this volume has been prepared, does not admit of minute discussion
of the authorities on which the history rests. In my case the omission
is of the less consequence, as I have treated the subject more fully in
my larger work, "Italy and her Invaders", and as also the chief
authorities are fully enumerated in that book which is or ought to be in
the library of every educated Englishman and American, Gibbon's "History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".
The fifth and sixth centuries do not supply us with many materials for
pictorial illustrations, and I do not know where to look for authentic
and contemporary representations of the civil or military life of
Theodoric and his subjects. We have, however, a large and interesting
store of nearly contemporary works of art at Ravenna, illustrating the
ecclesiastical life of the period, and of these the engraver has made
considerable use. The statue of Theodoric at Innsbruck, a representation
of which is included with the illustrations, possesses, of course, no
historical value, but is interesting as showing how deeply the memory of
Theodoric's great deeds had impressed itself on the mind of the Middle
Ages.
And here I will venture on a word of personal reminiscence. The figure
of Theodoric the Ostrogoth has been an interesting and attractive one to
me from the days of my boyhood. I well remember walking with a friend on
a little hill (then silent and lonely, now covered with houses), looking
down on London, and discussing European politics with the earnest
interest which young debaters bring to such a theme. The time was in
those dark days which followed the revolutions of 1848, when it seemed
as if the life of the European nations would be crushed out under the
heel of returned and triumphant despotism. For Italy especially, after
the defeat of Novara, there seemed no hope. We talked of Mazzini,
Cavour, Garibaldi, and discussed the possibility--which then seemed so
infinitely remote--that there might one day be a free and united Italy.
We both agreed that the vision was a beautiful one, but was there any
hope of it ever becoming a reality? My friend thought there was not, and
argued from the fact of Italy's divided condition in the past, that she
must always be divided in the future. I, who was on the side of hope,
felt the weakness of my position, and was driven backward through the
centuries, till at length I took refuge in the reign of Theodoric.
Surely, under the Ostrogothic king, Italy had been united, strong, and
prosperous. My precedent was a remote one, but it was admitted, and it
did a little help my cause.
Since that conversation more than forty years have passed. The beautiful
land is now united, free, and mighty; and a new generation has arisen,
which, though aware of the fact that she was not always thus, has but a
faint conception how much blood and how many tears, what thousands of
broken hearts and broken lives went to the winning of Italy's freedom.
I, too, with fuller knowledge of her early history, am bound to confess
that her unity even under Theodoric was not so complete as I then
imagined it. But still, as I have more than once stated in the following
pages, I look upon his reign as a time full of seeds of promise for
Italy and the world, if only these seeds might have had time to
germinate and ripen into harvest. Closer study has only confirmed me in
the opinion that the Ostrogothic kingdom was one of the great
"Might-have-beens" of History.
THOMAS HODGKIN.
NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE,
January 25, 1891.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
THEODORIC'S ANCESTORS
Ostrogoths and Visigoths--Nations forming the Gothic Confederacy--Royal
family of the Amals--Gothic invasion in the Second Century--Hermanic the
Ostrogoth--Inroad of the Huns--Defeat of the Ostrogoths--Defeat of the
Visigoths--The Visigoths within the Empire--Battle of Adrianople--Alaric
in Rome.
CHAPTER II.
THE MIGHT OF ATTILA
The Ostrogoths under the Huns--The three royal brothers--Attila, king of
the Huns--He menaces the Eastern Empire--He strikes at Gaul--Battle of
the Catalaunian plains--Invasion of Italy--Destruction of Aquileia--Death
of Attila and disruption of his Empire--Settlement of the Ostrogoths in
Pannonia.
CHAPTER III.
THEODORIC'S BOYHOOD
Inroad of the Huns--Their defeat by Walamir--Birth of Theodoric--War
with the Eastern Empire--Theodoric a hostage--Description of
Constantinople--Its commerce and its monuments.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SOUTHWARD MIGRATION
Struggles with the Swabians, Sarmatians, Scyri, and Huns--Death of
Walamir--Theudemir becomes king--Theodoric defeats Babai--The Teutonic
custom of the Comitatus--An Ostrogothic Folc-mote--Theudemir invades the
Eastern Empire--Macedonian settlement of the Ostrogoths.
CHAPTER V.
STORM AND STRESS
Death of Theudemir, and accession of Theodoric--Leo the Butcher--The
Emperor Zeno--The march of Theodoric against the son of Triarius--His
invasion of Macedonia--Defeat of his rear-guard--His compact with the
Emperor.
CHAPTER VI.
ITALY UNDER ODOVACAR
Condition of Italy--End of the line of Theodosius--Ricimer the
Patrician--Struggles with the Vandals--Orestes the Patrician makes his
son Emperor, who is called Augustulus--The fall of the Western Empire
and elevation of Odovacar--Embassies to Constantinople.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CONQUEST OF ITALY
Odovacar invades Dalmatia--Conducts a successful campaign against the
Rugians--Theodoric accepts from Zeno the commission to overthrow
Odovacar--He invades Italy, overthrowing the Gepidae, who attempt to bar
his passage--Battles of the Isonzo and Verona--Odovacar takes refuge in
Ravenna--The treachery of Tufa--Gundobad, king of the Burgundians, comes
to Italy to oppose Theodoric, while Alaric II, king of the Visigoths,
comes as his ally--The battle of the Adda, and further defeat of
Odovacar--Surrender of Ravenna--Assassination of Odovacar.
CHAPTER VIII.
CIVILITAS
Transformation in the character of Theodoric--His title--Embassies to
Zeno and Anastasius--Theodoric's care for the rebuilding of cities and
repair of aqueducts--Encouragement of commerce and manufactures--Revival
of agriculture--Anecdotes of Theodoric.
CHAPTER IX.
ROMAN OFFICIALS--CASSIODORUS
The government of Italy still carried on according to Roman
precedents--Classification of the officials--The Consulship and the
Senate--Cassiodorus, his character and his work--His history of the
Goths--His letters and state papers.
CHAPTER X.
THE ARIAN LEAGUE 175
Political bearings of the Arianism of the German invaders of the
Empire--Vandals, Suevi, Visigoths, Burgundians--Uprise of the power of
Clovis--His conversion to Christianity--His wars with Gundobad, king of
the Burgundians--With Alaric II, king of the Visigoths--Downfall of the
monarchy of Toulouse--Usurpation of Gesalic--Theodoric governs Spain as
guardian of his grandson Amalaric.
CHAPTER XI.
ANASTASIUS
Anastasius, the Eastern Emperor--His character--His disputes with his
subjects--Theodoric and the king of the Gepidae--War of Sirmium and its
consequences--Raid on the coast of Italy--Reconciliation between the
courts of Ravenna and Constantinople--Anastasius confers on Clovis the
title of Consul--Clovis removes many of his rivals--Death of
Clovis--Death of Anastasius.
CHAPTER XII.
ROME AND RAVENNA
Theodoric's visit to Rome--Disputed Papal election--Theodoric's speech
at the Golden Palm--The monk Fulgentius--Bread distributions--Races in
the Circus--Conspiracy of Odoin--Return to Ravenna--Marriage festivities
of Amalaberga--Description of Ravenna--Mosaics in the churches--S.
Apollinare Dentro--Processions of virgins and martyrs--Arian
baptistery--So-called palace of Theodoric--Vanished statues.
CHAPTER XIII.
BOETHIUS
Clouds in the horizon--Anxiety as to the succession--Death of Eutharic,
son-in-law of Theodoric--His son Athalaric proclaimed as Theodoric's
heir--Pope and Emperor reconciled--Anti-Jewish riot at Ravenna--Strained
relations of Theodoric and his Catholic subjects--- Leaders of the Roman
party--Boethius and Symmachus--Break-down of the Arian leagues--Cyprian
accuses Albinus of treason--Boethius, interposing, is included in the
charge--His trial, condemnation and death--The "Consolation of
Philosophy".
CHAPTER XIV.
THEODORIC'S TOMB
Embassy of Pope John to Constantinople--His imprisonment and
death--Execution of Symmachus--Opportune death of Theodoric--Various
stories respecting it--His mausoleum--- Ultimate fate of his remains.
CHAPTER XV.
AMALASUENTHA
Accession of the Emperor Justinian--His place in history--Overthrow of
the Vandal kingdom in Africa by Belisarius--Battles of Ad Decimum and
Tricamaron--Belisarius' triumph--Fall of the Burgundian kingdom--Death
of Amalaric king of Spain--Amalasuentha's troubles with her subjects as
to her son's education--Secret negotiations with Justinian--Death of
Athalaric--Theodahad made partner in the throne--Murder of
Amalasuentha--Justinian declares war.
CHAPTER XVI.
BELISARIUS
Justinian begins his great Gothic war--Dalmatia recovered for the
Empire--Belisarius lands in Sicily--Siege of Palermo--The south of Italy
overrun--Naples taken by a stratagem--Theodahad deposed by the
Goths--Witigis elected king--The Goths evacuate Rome--Belisarius enters
it--The long siege of Rome by the Goths who fail to take it--Belisarius
marches northward and captures Ravenna.
CHAPTER XVII.
TOTILA
Misgovernment of Italy by Justinian's officers--The Gothic cause
revives--Accession of Ildibad--Of Eraric--Of Totila--Totila's character
and policy--His victorious progress--Belisarius sent again to Italy to
oppose him--Siege and capture of Rome by the Goths--The fortifications
of the City dismantled--Belisarius reoccupies it and Totila besieges it
in vain--General success of the Gothic arms--Belisarius returns to
Constantinople--His later fortunes--Never reduced to beggary.
CHAPTER XVIII.
NARSES
Totila again takes Rome--High-water mark of the success of the Gothic
arms--Narses, the Emperor's chamberlain, appointed to command another
expedition for the recovery of Italy--His character--His semi-barbarous
army--Enters Italy--Battle of the Apennines--Totila slain--End of the
Gothic dominion in Italy.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE THEODORIC OF SAGA 370
The fame of Theodoric attested by the Saga dealing with his name,
utterly devoid as they are of historic truth--The Wilkina Saga--Story of
Theodoric's ancestors--His own boyhood--His companions, Master
Hildebrand, Heime, and Witig--Death of his father and his succession to
the throne--Herbart wooes King Arthur's daughter, first for Theodoric
and then for himself--Hermanric, his uncle, attacks Theodoric--Flight
and exile at the Court of Attila--Attempt to return--Attila's sons slain
in battle--The tragedy of the Nibelungs--Theodoric returns to his
kingdom--His mysterious end.
INDEX
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS.
STATUE OF THEODORIC IN THE CHURCH OF THE FRANCISCANS AT INNSBRUCK--TOMB
OF MAXIMILIAN _Frontispiece._
[1]MAP OF EUROPE A.D. 493
THE BURNT COLUMN, CONSTANTINOPLE
OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS IN THE HIPPODROME AT CONSTANTINOPLE
PEDESTAL OF THE OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS
[1]MAP OF THRACIA, DACIA, AND MACEDONIA IN THE 5TH CENTURY
GOLDEN SOLIDUS, LEO II., ZENO
HALF-SILIQUA OF SILVER, ODOVACAR
[1]MAP OF ITALY UNDER THE OSTROGOTHS
THE ARENA OF VERONA, PRESENT CONDITION
HALF-SILIQUA OF THEODORIC (SILVER), BEARING THE HEAD OF ANASTASIUS
[2] A PAGE OF THE GOTHIC GOSPELS (CODEX ARGENTEUS), MARK VII., 3-7
[1] MAP OF GAUL A.D. 500-523
COIN OF THE GOTHIC KINGDOM IN ITALY
COPPER COIN OF ANASTASIUS (FORTY NUMMI)
PINE FOREST, RAVENNA
INTERIOR OF BASILICA, IN RAVENNA
MOSAIC IN THE CHURCH OF ST. APOLLINARE NUOVO AT RAVENNA, SHOWING THE
PORT OF CLASSIS
PROCESSION OF MARTYRS, MOSAIC FROM ST. APOLLINARE NUOVO IN RAVENNA
PALACE OF THEODORIC, SIDE VIEW
COIN OF THE GOTHIC KINGDOM IN ITALY
VIEW OF MODERN CONSTANTINOPLE
COPPER PIECE OF ATHALARIC, TEN NUMMI (HEAD OF JUSTINIAN?)
[3]THE TOMB OF THEODORIC, RAVENNA
CUIRASS OF THEODORIC (?) IN THE MUSEUM AT RAVENNA
[3]JUSTINIAN AND HIS NOBLES, FROM THE MOSAICS AT RAVENNA
PIECE OF FORTY NUMMI OF THEODAHAD
COPPER SOLIDUS, JUSTIN I. AND JUSTINIAN
COIN OF BADUILA (TOTILA)
COIN OF TEIAS, SUCCESSOR OF TOTILA
VERONA, FROM PONTE VECCHIO, SITE OF PALACE OF THEODORIC IN THE DISTANCE
COIN OF WITIGIS, WITH HEAD OF ANASTASIUS
[Footnote 1: Based upon map from Hodgkin's _Italy and Her Invaders._]
[Footnote 2: Bradley's _Story of the Goths._]
[Footnote 3: Bradley's Story of the Goths.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THEODORIC THE GOTH.
INTRODUCTION.
[Illustration]
Theodoric the Ostrogoth is one of those men who did great deeds and
filled a large space in the eyes of their contemporaries, but who, not
through their own fault, but from the fact that the stage of the world
was not yet ready for their appearance, have failed to occupy the very
first rank among the founders of empires and the moulders of the
fortunes of the human race.
He was born into the world at the time when the Roman Empire in the West
was staggering blindly to ruin, under the crushing blows inflicted upon
it by two generations of barbarian conquerors. That Empire had been for
more than six centuries indisputably the strongest power in Europe, and
had gathered into its bosom all that was best in the civilisation of the
nations that were settled round the Mediterranean Sea. Rome had given
her laws to all these peoples, had, at any rate in the West, made their
roads, fostered the growth of their cities, taught them her language,
administered justice, kept back the barbarians of the frontier, and for
great spaces of time preserved "the Roman peace" throughout their
habitations. Doubtless there was another side to this picture: heavy
taxation, corrupt judges, national aspirations repressed, free peasants
sinking down into hopeless bondage. Still it cannot be denied that
during a considerable part of its existence the Roman Empire brought, at
least to the western half of Europe, material prosperity and enjoyment
of life which it had not known before, and which it often looked back to
with vain regrets when the great Empire had fallen into ruins. But now,
in the middle of the fifth century, when Theodoric was born amid the
rude splendour of an Ostrogothic palace, the unquestioned ascendancy of
Rome over the nations of Europe was a thing of the past. There were
still two men, one at the Old Rome by the Tiber, and the other at the
New Rome by the Bosphorus, who called themselves August, Pious, and
Happy, who wore the diadem and the purple shoes of Diocletian, and
professed to be joint lords of the universe. Before the Eastern Augustus
and his successors there did in truth lie a long future of dominion, and
once or twice they were to recover no inconsiderable portion of the
broad lands which had formerly been the heritage of the Roman people.
But the Roman Empire at Rome was stricken with an incurable malady. The
three sieges and the final sack of Rome by Alaric (410) revealed to the
world that she was no longer "Roma Invicta", and from that time forward
every chief of Teutonic or Sclavonic barbarians who wandered with his
tribe over the wasted plains between the Danube and the Adriatic, might
cherish the secret hope that he, too, would one day be drawn in triumph
up the Capitolian Hill, through the cowed ranks of the slavish citizens
of Rome, and that he might be lodged on the Palatine in one of the
sumptuous palaces which had been built long ago for "the lords of the
world".
Thus there was everywhere unrest and, as it were, a prolonged moral
earthquake. The old order of things was destroyed, and none could
forecast the shape of the new order of things that would succeed to it.
Something similar has been the state of Europe ever since the great
French Revolution; only that her barbarians threaten her now from
within, not from without. The social state which had been in existence
for centuries, and which had come to be accepted as if it were one of
the great ordinances of nature, is either menaced or is actually broken
up, and how the new democracy will rearrange itself in the seats of the
old civilisation the wisest statesman cannot foretell.
But to any "shepherd of his people", barbarian or Roman, who looked with
foreseeing eye and understanding heart over the Europe of the fifth
century, the duty of the hour was manifest. The great fabric of the
Roman Empire must not be allowed to go to pieces in hopeless ruin. If
not under Roman Augusti, under barbarian kings bearing one title or
another, the organisation of the Empire must be preserved. The
barbarians who had entered it, often it must be confessed merely for
plunder, were remaining in it to rule, and they could not rule by their
own unguided instincts. Their institutions, which had answered well
enough for a half-civilised people, leading their simple, primitive life
in the clearings of the forest of Germany, were quite unfitted for the
complicated relations of the urban and social life of the Mediterranean
lands. There is one passage[4] which has been quoted almost to
weariness, but which it seems necessary to quote again, in order to show
how an enlightened barbarian chief looked upon the problem with which he
found himself confronted, as an invader of the Empire. Ataulfus,
brother-in-law and successor of Alaric, the first capturer of Rome, "was
intimate with a certain citizen of Narbonne, a grave, wise, and
religious person who had served with distinction under Theodosius, and
often remarked to him that in the first ardour of his youth he had
longed to obliterate the Roman name and turn all the Roman lands into an
Empire which should be, and should be called, the Empire of the Goths,
so that what used to be commonly known as Romania should now be
'Gothia,' and that he, Ataulfus, should be in the world what Caesar
Augustus had been. But now that he had proved by long experience that
the Goths, on account of their unbridled barbarism, could not be
induced to obey the laws, and yet that, on the other hand, there must be
laws, since without them the Commonwealth would cease to be a
Commonwealth, he had chosen, for his part at any rate, that he would
seek the glory of renewing and increasing the Roman name by the arms of
his Gothic followers, and would be remembered by posterity as the
restorer of Rome, since he could not be its changer".
[Footnote 4: Orosius Histor., vii., 43.]
This conversation will be found to express the thoughts of Theodoric the
Ostrogoth, as well as those of Ataulfus the Visigoth, Theodoric also, in
his hot youth, was the enemy of the Roman name and did his best to
overturn the Roman State. But he, too, saw that a nobler career was open
to him as the preserver of the priceless blessings of Roman
civilisation, and he spent his life in the endeavour to induce the Goths
to copy those laws, without which a Commonwealth ceases to be a
Commonwealth. In this great and noble design he failed, as has been
already said, because the times were not ripe for it, because a
continuation of adverse events, which we should call persistent ill-luck
if we did not believe in an overruling Providence, blighted and blasted
his infant state before it had time to root itself firmly in the soil.
None the less, however, does Theodoric deserve credit for having seen
what was the need of Europe, and pre-eminently of Italy, and for having
done his best to supply that need. The great work in which he failed was
accomplished three centuries later by Charles the Frank, who has won for
himself that place in the first rank of world-moulders which Theodoric
has missed. But we may fairly say that Theodoric's designs were as noble
and as statesmanlike as those of the great Emperor Charles, and that if
they had been crowned with the success which they deserved, three
centuries of needless barbarism and misery would have been spared to
Europe.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
THEODORIC'S ANCESTORS.
Ostrogoths and Visigoths--Nations forming the Gothic Confederacy--Royal
family of the Amals--Gothic invasion in the Second Century--Hermanric
the Ostrogoth--Inroad of the Huns--Defeat of the Ostrogoths--Defeat of
the Visigoths--The Visigoths within the Empire--Battle of
Adrianople--Alaric in Rome.
[Illustration]
Towards the end of the second century of the Christian Era a great
confederacy of Teutonic nations occupied those vast plains in the south
of Russia which are now, and have been for more than a thousand years,
the homes of Sclavonic peoples. These nations were the Ostrogoths, the
Visigoths, and the Gepidae. Approximately we may say that the Ostrogoths
(or East Goths) dwelt from the Don to the Dnieper, the Visigoths (or
West Goths) from the Dnieper to the Pruth, and the Gepidae to the north
of both, in the district which has since been known as Little Russia.
These three nations were, as has been said, Teutons, and they belonged
to that division of the Teutonic race which is called Low-German, man;
that is to say, that they were more nearly allied to the Frisians, the
Dutch, and to our own Saxon forefathers than they were to the ancestors
of the modern Swabian, Bavarian, and Austrian. They worshipped Odin and
Thunnor; they wrote the scanty records of their race in Runic
characters; they were probably chiefly a pastoral folk, but may have
begun to practise agriculture in the rich cornlands of the Ukraine. They
were essentially a monarchic people, following their kings, whom they
believed to be sprung from the seed of gods, loyally to the field, and
shedding their blood with readiness at their command; but their monarchy
was of the early Teutonic type, always more or less limited by the
deliberations of the great armed assembly of the nation, which (in some
tribes at least) was called the Folc-mote or the Folc-thing; and there
were no strict rules of hereditary succession, the crown being elective
but limited in practice to the members of one ruling and
heaven-descended family.
This family, sprung from the seed of gods, but ruling by the popular
will over the Ostrogothic people, was known as the family of the Amals.
It is true that the divine and exclusive prerogatives of the family have
been somewhat magnified by the minstrels who sang in the courts of their
descendants, for there are manifest traces of kings ruling over the
Ostrogothic people, who are not included in the Amal genealogy. Still,
as far as we can peer through the obscurity of the early history of the
people, we may safely say that there was no other family of higher
position than the Amals, and that gradually all that consciousness of
national life and determination to cherish national unity, which among
the Germanic peoples was inseparably connected with the institution of
royalty, centred round the race of the divine Amala.
The following is the pedigree of this royal clan, as given by the
historian of the Goths,[5] and with those epithets which the secretary
of Theodoric[6] attached to the names of some of the ancestors of his
lord. (The names of those who wore the crown are marked in italics.)
Gapt (possibly=Gaut, the eponymous
| hero of the Gothic nation)
Hulmul
|
Augis
|
Amal ("the fortunate")
|
Hisarna (=the man of iron)
|
_OSTROGOTHA_ ("the patient")
|
Hunuil
|
Athal ("the mild")
|________________________________
| |
Achiulf Odwulf
|
______________________________|________________________________
| | | |
Ansila Ediulf Vultwulf _Hermanric_
| |
Walaravans _Hunimund_
| ("the beautiful")
| |
Winithar_ ("the just") _Thorismund_
| ("the chaste")
_Wideric_
|
Wandalar
__________________________|__________________________
| | |
_Walamir_ _Theudemir_ _Widemir_
("the faithful") ("the affectionate")
|
THEODORIC.
[Footnote 5: Jordanes.]
[Footnote 6: Cassiodorus.]
These fifteen generations, which should carry back the Amal ancestry
four hundred and fifty years, or almost precisely to the Christian Era,
seem to have marked the utmost limit to which the memory of the Gothic
heralds, aided by the songs of the Gothic minstrels, could reach. The
forms of many of the names, the initial "Wala" and "Theude", the
terminal "wulf", "mir", and "mund" will be at once recognised as purely
Teutonic, recalling many similar names in the royal lines of the Franks,
the Visigoths and the Vandals, and the West Saxons.
In the great, loosely knit confederacy which has been described as
filling the regions of Southern Russia in the third and fourth centuries
of our Era, the predominant power seems to have been held by the
Ostrogothic nation. In the third century, when a succession of weak
ephemeral emperors ruled and all but ruined the Roman State, the Goths
swarmed forth in their myriads, both by sea and land, to ravage the
coast of the Euxine and the AEgean, to cross the passes of the Balkans,
to make their desolating presence felt at Ephesus and at Athens. Two
great Emperors of Illyrian origin, Claudius and Aurelian, succeeded, at
a fearful cost of life, in repelling the invasion and driving back the
human torrent. But it was impossible to recover from the barbarians
Trajan's province of Dacia, which they had overrun, and the Emperors
wisely compromised the dispute by abandoning to the Goths and their
allies all the territory north of the Danube. This abandoned province
was chiefly occupied by the Visigoths, the Western members of the
confederacy, who for the century from 275 to 375 were the neighbours,
generally the allies, by fitful impulses the enemies, of Rome. With
Constantine the Great especially the Visigoths came powerfully in
contact, first as invaders and then as allies (_foederati_) bound to
furnish a certain number of auxiliaries to serve under the eagles of the
Empire.
Meanwhile the Ostrogoths, with their faces turned for the time northward
instead of southward, were battling daily with the nations of Finnish or
Sclavonic stock that dwelt by the upper waters of the Dnieper, the Don,
and the Volga, and were extending their dominion over the greater part
of what we now call Russia-in-Europe. The lord of this wide but most
loosely compacted kingdom, in the middle of the fourth century, was a
certain Hermanric, whom his flatterers, with some slight knowledge of
the names held in highest repute among their Southern neighbours,
likened to Alexander the Great for the magnitude of his conquests.
However shadowy some of these conquests may appear in the light of
modern criticism, there can be little doubt that the Visigoths owned his
over-lordship, and that when Constantius and Julian were reigning in
Constantinople, the greatest name over a wide extent of territory north
of the Black Sea was that of Hermanric the Ostrogoth.
When this warrior was in extreme old age, a terrible disaster befell his
nation and himself. It was probably about the year 374 that a horde of
Asiatic savages made their appearance in the south-eastern corner of his
dominions, having, so it is said, crossed the Sea of Azof in its
shallowest part by a ford. These men rode upon little ponies of great
speed and endurance, each of which seemed to be incorporated with its
rider, so perfect was the understanding between the horseman, who spent
his days and nights in the saddle, and the steed which he bestrode.
Little black restless eyes gleamed beneath their low foreheads and
matted hair; no beard or whisker adorned their uncouth yellow faces; the
Turanian type in its ugliest form was displayed by these Mongolian sons
of the wilderness. They bore a name destined to be of disastrous and yet
also indirectly of most beneficent import in the history of the world;
for these are the true shatterers of the Roman Empire. They were the
terrible Huns.
Before the impact of this new and strange enemy the Empire of
Hermanric--an Empire which rested probably rather on the reputation of
warlike prowess than on any great inherent strength, military or
political--went down with a terrible crash. Dissimilar as are the times
and the circumstances, we are reminded of the collapse of the military
systems of Austria and Prussia under the onset of the ragged Jacobins of
France, shivering and shoeless, but full of demonic energy, when we read
of the humiliating discomfiture of this stately Ostrogothic
monarchy--doubtless possessing an ordered hierarchy of nobles, free
warriors, and slaves--by the squalid, hard-faring and, so to say,
democratic savages from Asia.
The death of Hermanric, which was evidently due to the Hunnish victory,
is assigned by the Gothic historian to a cause less humiliating to the
national vanity. The king of the Rosomones, "a perfidious nation", had
taken the opportunity of the appearance of the savage invaders to
renounce his allegiance, perhaps to desert his master treacherously on
the field of battle. The enraged Hermanric, unable to vent his fury on
the king himself, caused his wife, Swanhilda, to be torn asunder by wild
horses to whom she was tied by the hands and feet. Her brothers, Sarus
and Ammius, avenged her cruel death by a spear-thrust, which wounded the
aged monarch, but did not kill him outright. Then came the crisis of the
invasion of the Huns under their King Balamber. The Visigoths, who had
some cause of complaint against Hermanric, left him to fight his battle
without their aid; and the old king, in sore pain with his wound and
deeply mortified by the incursion of the Huns, breathed out his life in
the one hundred and tenth year of his age. All of which is probably a
judicious veiling of the fact,[7] that the great Hermanric was defeated
by the Hunnish invaders, and in his despair laid violent hands on
himself.
[Footnote 7: Mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus.]
The huge and savage horde rolled on over the wide plains of Russia. The
Ostrogothic resistance was at an end; and soon the invaders were on the
banks of the Dniester threatening the kindred nation of the Visigoths.
Athanaric, "Judge" (as he was called) of the Visigoths, a brave, old
soldier, but not a very skilful general, was soon out-manoeuvred by these
wild nomads from the desert, who crossed the rivers by unexpected fords,
and by rapid night-marches turned the flank of his most carefully
chosen positions. The line of the Dniester was abandoned; the line of
the Pruth was lost. It was plain that the Visigoths, like their Eastern
brethren, if they remained in the land, must bow their heads beneath the
Hunnish yoke. To avoid so degrading a necessity, and if they must lose
their independence, to lose it to the stately Emperors of Rome rather
than to the chief of a filthy Tartar horde, the great majority of the
Visigothic nation flocked southward through the region which is now
called Wallachia, and, standing on the northern shore of the Danube,
prayed for admission within the province of Moesia and the Empire of
Rome. In 376 an evil hour for himself Valens, the then reigning Emperor
of the East, granted this petition and received into his dominions the
Visigothic fugitives, a great and warlike nation, without taking any
proper precautions, on the one hand, that they should be disarmed, on
the other, that they should be supplied with food for their present
necessities and enabled for the future to become peaceful cultivators of
the soil. The inevitable result followed. Before many months had elapsed
the Visigoths were in arms against the Empire, and under the leadership
of their hereditary chiefs were wandering up and down through the
provinces of Moesia and Thrace, wresting from the terror-stricken
provincials not only the food which the parsimony of Valens had failed
to supply them with, but the treasures which centuries of peace had
stored up in villa and unwalled town. In 378 they achieved a brilliant,
and perhaps unexpected, triumph, defeating a large army commanded by
the Roman Emperor Valens in person, in a pitched battle near Adrianople.
Valens himself perished on the field of battle, and his unburied corpse
disappeared among the embers of a Thracian hut which had been set fire
to by the barbarians. That fatal day (August 9, 378) was admitted to be
more disastrous for Rome than any which had befallen her since the
terrible defeat of Cannae, and from it we may fitly date the beginning of
that long process of dissolution, lasting, in a certain sense, more than
a thousand years, which we call the Fall of the Roman Empire.
In this long tragedy the part of chief actor fell, during the first act,
to the _Visigothic nation_. With their doings we have here no special
concern. It is enough to say that for one generation they remained in
the lands south of the Danube, first warring against Rome, then, by the
wise policy of their conqueror, Theodosius, incorporated in her armies
under the title of _foederati_ and serving her in the main with zeal and
fidelity. In 395[8] a Visigothic chief, Alaric by name, of the
god-descended seed of Balthae, was raised upon the shield by the warriors
of his tribe and hailed as their king. His elevation seems to have been
understood as a defiance to the Empire and a re-assertion of the old
national freedom which had prevailed on the other side of the Danube. At
any rate the rest of his life was spent either in hostility to the
Empire or in a pretence of friendship almost more menacing than
hostility. He began by invading Greece and penetrated far south into
the Peloponnesus. He then took up a position in the province of
Illyricum--probably in the countries now known as Bosnia and
Servia--from which he could threaten the Eastern or Western Empire at
pleasure. Finally, with the beginning of the fifth century after Christ,
he descended into Italy, and though at first successful only in ravage,
in the second invasion he penetrated to the very heart of the Empire.
His three sieges of Rome, ending in the awful event of the capture and
sack of the Eternal City in 410, are events in the history of the world
with which every student is familiar. Only it may be remarked that the
word awful, which is here used designedly, is not meant to imply that
the loss of life was unusually large or the cruelty of the captors
outrageous; in both respects Alaric and his Goths would compare
favourably with some generals and some armies making much higher
pretensions to civilisation. Nor is it meant that the destruction of the
public buildings of the city was extensive. There can be little doubt
that Paris, on the day after the suppression of the "Commune" in 1871,
presented a far greater appearance of desolation and ruin than Rome in
410, when she lay trembling in the hand of Alaric. But the bare fact
that Rome herself, the Roma AEterna, the Roma Invicta of a thousand coins
of a hundred Emperors,--Rome, whose name for centuries on the shores of
the Mediterranean had been synonymous with worldwide dominion,--should
herself be taken, sacked, dishonoured by the presence of a flaxen-haired
barbarian conqueror from the North, was one of those events apparently
so contrary to the very course of Nature itself, that the nations which
heard the tidings, many of them old and bitter enemies of Rome, now her
subjects and her friends, held their breath with awe at the terrible
recital.
[Footnote 8: Probably. Some historians put the date in 382, others in
400.]
Alaric died shortly after his sack of Rome, and after a few years of
aimless fighting his nation quitted Italy, disappearing over the
north-western Alpine boundary to win for themselves new settlements by
the banks of the Garonne and the Ebro. Their leader was that Ataulfus
whose truly statesmanlike reflections on the unwisdom of destroying the
Roman Empire and the necessity of incorporating the barbarians with its
polity have been already quoted. There, in the south-western corner of
Gaul and the northern regions of Spain, we must for the present leave
the Western branch of the great Gothic nationality, while our narrative
returns to its Eastern representatives.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]