Barbarians.—Part I.
Invasion Of Italy By Alaric.—Manners Of The Roman Senate
And People.—Rome Is Thrice Besieged, And At Length
Pillaged, By The Goths.—Death Of Alaric.—The Goths
Evacuate Italy.—Fall Of Constantine.—Gaul And Spain Are
Occupied By The Barbarians.—Independence Of Britain.
The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the
appearance, and produce the effects, of a treasonable correspondence
with the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the
council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures
which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius. The king of
the Goths would have conspired, perhaps with some reluctance, to destroy
the formidable adversary, by whose arms, in Italy, as well as in
Greece, he had been twice overthrown. Their active and interested hatred
laboriously accomplished the disgrace and ruin of the great Stilicho.
The valor of Sarus, his fame in arms, and his personal, or hereditary,
influence over the confederate Barbarians, could recommend him only to
the friends of their country, who despised, or detested, the worthless
characters of Turpilio, Varanes, and Vigilantius. By the pressing
instances of the new favorites, these generals, unworthy as they had
shown themselves of the names of soldiers, were promoted to the command
of the cavalry, of the infantry, and of the domestic troops. The
Gothic prince would have subscribed with pleasure the edict which
the fanaticism of Olympius dictated to the simple and devout emperor.
Honorius excluded all persons, who were adverse to the Catholic church,
from holding any office in the state; obstinately rejected the service
of all those who dissented from his religion; and rashly disqualified
many of his bravest and most skilful officers, who adhered to the Pagan
worship, or who had imbibed the opinions of Arianism. These measures, so
advantageous to an enemy, Alaric would have approved, and might perhaps
have suggested; but it may seem doubtful, whether the Barbarian would
have promoted his interest at the expense of the inhuman and absurd
cruelty which was perpetrated by the direction, or at least with the
connivance of the Imperial ministers. The foreign auxiliaries, who had
been attached to the person of Stilicho, lamented his death; but the
desire of revenge was checked by a natural apprehension for the safety
of their wives and children; who were detained as hostages in the strong
cities of Italy, where they had likewise deposited their most valuable
effects. At the same hour, and as if by a common signal, the cities of
Italy were polluted by the same horrid scenes of universal massacre and
pillage, which involved, in promiscuous destruction, the families and
fortunes of the Barbarians. Exasperated by such an injury, which might
have awakened the tamest and most servile spirit, they cast a look of
indignation and hope towards the camp of Alaric, and unanimously swore
to pursue, with just and implacable war, the perfidious nation who had
so basely violated the laws of hospitality. By the imprudent conduct
of the ministers of Honorius, the republic lost the assistance, and
deserved the enmity, of thirty thousand of her bravest soldiers; and the
weight of that formidable army, which alone might have determined the
event of the war, was transferred from the scale of the Romans into that
of the Goths.
In the arts of negotiation, as well as in those of war, the Gothic king
maintained his superior ascendant over an enemy, whose seeming changes
proceeded from the total want of counsel and design. From his camp, on
the confines of Italy, Alaric attentively observed the revolutions of
the palace, watched the progress of faction and discontent, disguised
the hostile aspect of a Barbarian invader, and assumed the more popular
appearance of the friend and ally of the great Stilicho: to whose
virtues, when they were no longer formidable, he could pay a just
tribute of sincere praise and regret. The pressing invitation of the
malecontents, who urged the king of the Goths to invade Italy, was
enforced by a lively sense of his personal injuries; and he might
especially complain, that the Imperial ministers still delayed and
eluded the payment of the four thousand pounds of gold which had been
granted by the Roman senate, either to reward his services, or to
appease his fury. His decent firmness was supported by an artful
moderation, which contributed to the success of his designs. He
required a fair and reasonable satisfaction; but he gave the strongest
assurances, that, as soon as he had obtained it, he would immediately
retire. He refused to trust the faith of the Romans, unless Ætius and
Jason, the sons of two great officers of state, were sent as hostages to
his camp; but he offered to deliver, in exchange, several of the noblest
youths of the Gothic nation. The modesty of Alaric was interpreted, by
the ministers of Ravenna, as a sure evidence of his weakness and fear.
They disdained either to negotiate a treaty, or to assemble an army; and
with a rash confidence, derived only from their ignorance of the extreme
danger, irretrievably wasted the decisive moments of peace and war.
While they expected, in sullen silence, that the Barbarians would
evacuate the confines of Italy, Alaric, with bold and rapid marches,
passed the Alps and the Po; hastily pillaged the cities of Aquileia,
Altinum, Concordia, and Cremona, which yielded to his arms; increased
his forces by the accession of thirty thousand auxiliaries; and, without
meeting a single enemy in the field, advanced as far as the edge of the
morass which protected the impregnable residence of the emperor of the
West. Instead of attempting the hopeless siege of Ravenna, the prudent
leader of the Goths proceeded to Rimini, stretched his ravages along the
sea-coast of the Hadriatic, and meditated the conquest of the ancient
mistress of the world. An Italian hermit, whose zeal and sanctity were
respected by the Barbarians themselves, encountered the victorious
monarch, and boldly denounced the indignation of Heaven against the
oppressors of the earth; but the saint himself was confounded by the
solemn asseveration of Alaric, that he felt a secret and præternatural
impulse, which directed, and even compelled, his march to the gates of
Rome. He felt, that his genius and his fortune were equal to the most
arduous enterprises; and the enthusiasm which he communicated to
the Goths, insensibly removed the popular, and almost superstitious,
reverence of the nations for the majesty of the Roman name. His troops,
animated by the hopes of spoil, followed the course of the Flaminian
way, occupied the unguarded passes of the Apennine, descended into the
rich plains of Umbria; and, as they lay encamped on the banks of the
Clitumnus, might wantonly slaughter and devour the milk-white oxen,
which had been so long reserved for the use of Roman triumphs. A lofty
situation, and a seasonable tempest of thunder and lightning, preserved
the little city of Narni; but the king of the Goths, despising the
ignoble prey, still advanced with unabated vigor; and after he had
passed through the stately arches, adorned with the spoils of Barbaric
victories, he pitched his camp under the walls of Rome.
During a period of six hundred and nineteen years, the seat of empire
had never been violated by the presence of a foreign enemy. The
unsuccessful expedition of Hannibal served only to display the character
of the senate and people; of a senate degraded, rather than ennobled,
by the comparison of an assembly of kings; and of a people, to whom the
ambassador of Pyrrhus ascribed the inexhaustible resources of the Hydra.
Each of the senators, in the time of the Punic war, had accomplished
his term of the military service, either in a subordinate or a superior
station; and the decree, which invested with temporary command all those
who had been consuls, or censors, or dictators, gave the republic the
immediate assistance of many brave and experienced generals. In the
beginning of the war, the Roman people consisted of two hundred and
fifty thousand citizens of an age to bear arms. Fifty thousand had
already died in the defence of their country; and the twenty-three
legions which were employed in the different camps of Italy, Greece,
Sardinia, Sicily, and Spain, required about one hundred thousand men.
But there still remained an equal number in Rome, and the adjacent
territory, who were animated by the same intrepid courage; and every
citizen was trained, from his earliest youth, in the discipline and
exercises of a soldier. Hannibal was astonished by the constancy of
the senate, who, without raising the siege of Capua, or recalling their
scattered forces, expected his approach. He encamped on the banks of
the Anio, at the distance of three miles from the city; and he was soon
informed, that the ground on which he had pitched his tent, was sold
for an adequate price at a public auction; and that a body of troops was
dismissed by an opposite road, to reënforce the legions of Spain. He
led his Africans to the gates of Rome, where he found three armies in
order of battle, prepared to receive him; but Hannibal dreaded the event
of a combat, from which he could not hope to escape, unless he destroyed
the last of his enemies; and his speedy retreat confessed the invincible
courage of the Romans.
From the time of the Punic war, the uninterrupted succession of senators
had preserved the name and image of the republic; and the degenerate
subjects of Honorius ambitiously derived their descent from the heroes
who had repulsed the arms of Hannibal, and subdued the nations of
the earth. The temporal honors which the devout Paula inherited and
despised, are carefully recapitulated by Jerom, the guide of her
conscience, and the historian of her life. The genealogy of her father,
Rogatus, which ascended as high as Agamemnon, might seem to betray
a Grecian origin; but her mother, Blæsilla, numbered the Scipios,
Æmilius Paulus, and the Gracchi, in the list of her ancestors; and
Toxotius, the husband of Paula, deduced his royal lineage from Æneas,
the father of the Julian line. The vanity of the rich, who desired to
be noble, was gratified by these lofty pretensions. Encouraged by the
applause of their parasites, they easily imposed on the credulity of
the vulgar; and were countenanced, in some measure, by the custom of
adopting the name of their patron, which had always prevailed among the
freedmen and clients of illustrious families. Most of those families,
however, attacked by so many causes of external violence or internal
decay, were gradually extirpated; and it would be more reasonable to
seek for a lineal descent of twenty generations, among the mountains of
the Alps, or in the peaceful solitude of Apulia, than on the theatre
of Rome, the seat of fortune, of danger, and of perpetual revolutions.
Under each successive reign, and from every province of the empire, a
crowd of hardy adventurers, rising to eminence by their talents or their
vices, usurped the wealth, the honors, and the palaces of Rome; and
oppressed, or protected, the poor and humble remains of consular
families; who were ignorant, perhaps, of the glory of their ancestors.
In the time of Jerom and Claudian, the senators unanimously yielded the
preeminence to the Anician line; and a slight view of their history will
serve to appreciate the rank and antiquity of the noble families, which
contended only for the second place. During the five first ages of the
city, the name of the Anicians was unknown; they appear to have derived
their origin from Præneste; and the ambition of those new citizens was
long satisfied with the Plebeian honors of tribunes of the people. One
hundred and sixty-eight years before the Christian æra, the family was
ennobled by the Prætorship of Anicius, who gloriously terminated the
Illyrian war, by the conquest of the nation, and the captivity of their
king. From the triumph of that general, three consulships, in distant
periods, mark the succession of the Anician name. From the reign of
Diocletian to the final extinction of the Western empire, that name
shone with a lustre which was not eclipsed, in the public estimation, by
the majesty of the Imperial purple. The several branches, to whom it was
communicated, united, by marriage or inheritance, the wealth and titles
of the Annian, the Petronian, and the Olybrian houses; and in each
generation the number of consulships was multiplied by an hereditary
claim. The Anician family excelled in faith and in riches: they were the
first of the Roman senate who embraced Christianity; and it is probable
that Anicius Julian, who was afterwards consul and præfect of the city,
atoned for his attachment to the party of Maxentius, by the readiness
with which he accepted the religion of Constantine. Their ample
patrimony was increased by the industry of Probus, the chief of the
Anician family; who shared with Gratian the honors of the consulship,
and exercised, four times, the high office of Prætorian præfect. His
immense estates were scattered over the wide extent of the Roman world;
and though the public might suspect or disapprove the methods by
which they had been acquired, the generosity and magnificence of that
fortunate statesman deserved the gratitude of his clients, and the
admiration of strangers. Such was the respect entertained for his
memory, that the two sons of Probus, in their earliest youth, and at
the request of the senate, were associated in the consular dignity; a
memorable distinction, without example, in the annals of Rome.