life, but more far-reaching thoughts, those which overleap the grave
and bind together in one all the generations of the family of God, were
vibrating through the Visigothic brain. Ulfilas, the great Apostle of the
Goths, himself a Goth, but resident in early manhood at Constantinople,
began his missionary career in 341, and continued it for forty years,
labouring during all that time by his tongue and pen at the conversion
of his countrymen to Christianity. As an instrument in this great work
he translated the Bible into Gothic, only omitting, according to the
well-known story, the books of Samuel and Kings, ‘inasmuch as they
contain the story of the wars, and the Gothic race was already fond
enough of war, and needed rather a bit to hold it back from battle,
than any spur to urge it thereunto.’ This Gothic Bible is a priceless
possession for the philologist, being by far the earliest monument of
any Teutonic language, and illustrating in a countless variety of ways,
both the distant relationship which connects our family of languages with
Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and the points at which the members of our
own family, German, Danish, Dutch, English, have parted company one from
another.
[Sidenote: _Persecution of Gothic Christians. 370-375._]
The success of Ulfilas in Christianising the Goths was so great that
a persecution arose, under the stress of which many of his converts
determined to leave their homes and seek shelter in the dominions of the
great Christian Emperor. This happened about the year 348. The emigrants,
with Ulfilas at their head, ‘a second Moses,’ as he was often styled
by his contemporaries, crossed the Danube and founded a settlement in
the country about Nicopolis, on the northern slopes of the Balkans.
Here their descendants were still living after the lapse of nearly two
centuries[43], being known by the name of the Lesser Goths, ‘a numerous
people, but poor and unwarlike, having no abundance of anything, save
cattle of divers kinds, sheep and pastures and forests; having no wheat,
though the soil is fertile in other crops. Vineyards they do not possess,
but some of them as merchants buy wine from the neighbouring district:
but most of them are nourished on milk.’
Probably Ulfilas did not remain constantly with his Lesser Goths in
Moesia, but often crossed the Danube into Dacia, to strengthen the faith
of his remaining converts there, or to add to their number. Apparently
a second persecution broke out (if, indeed, it had ever ceased to
rage) about 370. From a fragment of a Gothic calendar we learn that
the 23rd October was dedicated ‘to the remembrance of many martyrs
among the Gothic people, and of Frederic’ (doubtless one of the heroes
of the persecution), and that the 29th was similarly dedicated ‘to the
remembrance of the martyrs who remained, with Priest Vereka and Batvin,
members of the Catholic Church, and were burned among the Gothic people.’
[Sidenote: _Athanaric Judge of the Visigoths._]
The leader of the persecuting party at this time was Judge Athanaric, a
stern, unbending Gothic chief, who would brook no compromise with Rome or
Roman ways, who had sworn a terrible oath that he would never set foot
on Roman soil, and who now, to the cruel utmost of his power, strove to
prevent Odin and Thunnor from being driven out of the Home of Gods by the
Nazarene, whose cross glittered upon the banners of Rome.
[Sidenote: _Fritigern._]
On the opposite side, as leader of that section of the Visigoths which
favoured the Roman civilisation and the Christian religion, appears the
gallant Fritigern, one of the most attractive figures whom Gothic history
presents to us. The contention between him and the bigoted old Gothic
party under Athanaric was so sharp that it seems to have broken out into
actual war, in which, as one author[44] tells us, Fritigern, on formally
announcing his conversion to Christianity, asked and received the help of
the Roman Emperor against his rival.
[Sidenote: _Outlook in 375._]
Such, then, was the relation of ‘Barbaricum’ towards ‘Romania’ about the
year 375. Reading (as we are too apt to do) our knowledge of subsequent
events into the history of that year, when the fourth century of our
era had reached its fourth quarter, it is easy to imagine the Roman
Empire lying rich and defenceless, at the mercy of barbarian foes all
round its border and all athirst to devour it. But such was certainly
not the aspect which it then wore to its contemporaries. The keen eye of
a statesman, if he were also possessed of fine ethical instincts, might
undoubtedly perceive many dangerous symptoms of moral and spiritual
decay, from which he might forebode its future downfall; but to the
ordinary observer, especially to the ordinary barbarian observer, seldom
had the great fabric of Roman civilisation seemed stronger or more
imposing. Of anything like a combined attack of the barbarian hordes upon
the Roman frontier, no barbarian dreamed. A petty raid here or there
might perhaps be successfully executed, and might enable its perpetrator
to return with some cattle from a few Moesian farms, or some bracelets
and golden chains from a sacked Illyrian town. But this was the height
of his ambition as Rome’s enemy. He would much rather be Rome’s friend:
enter her service as a leader of _foederati_[45]; mount guard in the
ante-chamber of the Emperor; direct the arms of Rome against some hated
rival chief; perhaps, even—supreme felicity—attain in his well-fed and
corpulent old age to the overwhelming honour of a Roman consulship.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Sudden appearance of the Huns. 374._]
The appearance on the northern shore of the Sea of Azof of a horde of
squalid savages from the steppes of Central Asia, each riding a little
pony as ugly and as unkempt as himself, changed the whole current of
men’s thoughts, and was the first visible link in the chain which drew
mediaeval Europe, the Europe of Charlemagne, Barbarossa, and Dante,
‘forth from the abyss of things that were to be.’
These savages were the terrible Huns, of whose history I shall have to
speak somewhat more in detail in my sixth lecture. For the present it
will be enough to quote a chapter from the work of the Gothic historian
Jordanes, in order to show how the Asiatic intruders were looked upon by
the first European nation with whom they came in contact[46].
[Sidenote: _Description of the Huns by Jordanes._]
‘After no great interval of time the nations of the Huns, more cruel
than Ferocity itself, flamed forth against the Goths. An unhallowed
union between unclean spirits wandering through the wilderness, and
certain Gothic women expelled [centuries before] for witchcraft from the
tents of their countrymen, gave birth to this most ferocious people,
which dwelt at first among the marshes—small, foul, and skinny, hardly
human, but spoken of as men because they possessed something which
distantly resembled human speech. This wild race formerly dwelt on the
further shore of the Sea of Azof, and there practised no other labour
than hunting, except that after they had grown into a great people they
harried the neighbouring nations with constant robberies and frauds.
Now when the huntsmen of this people were, according to their custom,
pursuing the chase on the further shore of Azof, behold, upon a sudden,
a female stag presented herself to their view, and stepping into the
pool, first going forth and then stopping, seemed to offer herself as
guide of their journey. Following her lead, therefore, the huntsmen
passed over on foot through the Sea of Azof, which they had before
thought to be as impassable as the ocean. Soon, too, when the Gothic
shore loomed up before those unknown visitors, the stag disappeared.
This, I trow, was done by those spirits to whom the Huns owed their
origin, in order to spite the Gothic people. The huntsmen who had
before thought that there was no other world beyond the Sea of Azof,
were stricken with admiration of the Gothic land, the road to which,
hitherto unknown, they deemed had been shown to them by the gods, and
going back to their own people, persuaded them to hasten by the path
which the stag had pointed out to them into the territory of the Goths.
All whom they met on the way fell victims to their fury, and as soon
as they had crossed that vast pool, five nations [whose uncouth names
I need not transcribe] were swept away by that whirlwind of savage
tribes. The Alans also, who were a match for them in war, but very unlike
them in civilisation, in appearance, and in diet, were wearied out by
them in incessant fighting, and at length subdued. For those whom they
would perhaps never have conquered in fair fight they put to flight
by the terribleness of their appearance, throwing the utmost possible
hideousness into the expression of their faces, which were naturally of
a frightful blackness, and resembled, if I may say so, a shapeless lump
of dough rather than a face, having two black points in them instead of
eyes. This scowling countenance reveals the boldness [?cruelty] of their
hearts, who rage against their new-born offspring even on the first
day of their birth, for all the male children’s cheeks are gashed by
them with an iron tool, in order that before they begin to receive the
nourishment of their mother’s milk they may learn to bear the pain of a
wound. Hence their youth lacks the beauty, and their old age the dignity
of a beard, because their faces, furrowed with iron, lose through scars
the seasonable beauty of hair. They are little in stature, but nimble and
clever in their movements, and especially ready in horsemanship: with
broad shoulders, arms well adapted to the use of the bow, necks strong,
and heads always held erect with pride. In short these people, wearing
the shape of man, practise in their lives the ferocity of beasts.’
* * * * *
Through the uncouth sentences of the half-educated Gothic historian the
general character of the Hunnish invaders may be sufficiently discerned.
They stood on a distinctly lower grade of civilisation than any of the
Teutonic invaders of the Empire. The Goth, the Frank, the Alaman, the
Vandal were barbarians indeed, but barbarians with some capacity—in
the case of the Goth with an extraordinary capacity—for appreciating
the advantages of civilisation. The Hun, fresh from his centuries
of wandering over the high table-land of Tartary, was an utter, an
irreclaimable savage. To compare them with some of the native races with
which our own has recently come in contact, the Goth was like the Maori,
the Hun like a stronger and more warlike Australian savage.
[Sidenote: _The Huns were ‘Turanians,’ not Aryans._]
This social difference between the Hun and the Teuton corresponds to a
deep ethnological chasm. Hitherto all the great struggles in which the
European nations had been engaged (except the Punic wars) had been waged
between members of the great Aryan family of nations. Persian, Greek,
Italian, Celt, Teuton, however wide their divergences of religion, of
culture, of intellectual development, were yet all children of the same
family, some of whom, so to speak, had come of age, and entered into
their inheritance, while others were still in a state of infancy and
untaught childhood. But the Hun had no such link with the great historic
peoples of the Mediterranean Sea. In his language probably no germ of
affinity with Greek or Sanskrit would have been discernible. Wheresoever
the common home of the Indo-European peoples may eventually be located,
it is certain that the progenitors of the Hun never dwelt there. He was
of kin to the Mongol, the Calmuck, the Turk, not to the Roman or the
Englishman. In the world’s history he stands in line with Jenghiz Khan,
with Tamerlane, with Bajazet, not with Alexander or with Caesar. In one
word—to adopt a term which, however inaccurate, is convenient—he was not
Aryan, but Turanian.
[Sidenote: _A nation of light cavalry._]
Such then were the invaders from Asia, who, about the year 374,
precipitated themselves upon the settlements of the Ostrogoths in
Southern Russia. What they may have lacked in size they made up in
nimbleness of movement, and against the Goths, who do not appear to have
been pre-eminently an equestrian people, they had this advantage, that
every man of the tribe was mounted, and mounted on a hardy wiry little
steed, which was probably satisfied with the roughest food, and which so
perfectly understood its rider’s wishes, that it seemed as if horse and
horseman were one being.
[Sidenote: _Hermanric defeated._]
Details as to the conflict between the Huns and the Ostrogoths are
utterly wanting, but it is clear that the latter were completely
defeated. Hermanric, ‘the Ostrogothic Alexander’ who is said to have
reached the age of 110, in his rage and shame put an end to his own life.
His wide but loosely compacted empire was broken up. Some Ostrogoths,
under a prince of the house of Hermanric, moved southwards, and took part
in the events which we are about to notice, on the Danube. But the larger
part of the nation submitted to inevitable necessity and bowed their
necks to the yoke. For three quarters of a century the Ostrogoths formed
part of the great Hunnish Empire, and their sovereigns, descendants of
the great Hermanric, ruled as vassals of the Hunnish king.
[Sidenote: _Athanaric defeated. 375._]
The barbarian flood rolled on and reached the river Dniester and the long
line of earthworks which apparently separated the land of the Visigoths
from that of the Ostrogoths[47]. Here Athanaric had drawn up his men,
expecting a regular attack, to which he would have been prepared with a
regular reply. Little did he know the nature of the nimble savages with
whom he had to deal. Having learned from their scouts where the bulk of
the Visigothic army was posted (which was probably by the rampart rather
than by the river), and having found a ford across the Dniester, they
crossed that ford by moonlight and fell like a thunderbolt on the flank
of the unsuspecting Athanaric. He was stupefied at the assault, he saw
his bravest friends slain, and he found he had no resource but flight.
Withdrawing to the Carpathians he began to construct a new line of
defence, partly formed by those mountains and partly by the river Sereth.
He would have had but little leisure to construct this new stronghold,
had not the Huns been so burdened with their booty that they could not
follow him in haste.
[Sidenote: _The Visigoths seek refuge within the Empire. 376._]
And now that the strongest Gothic champions had been worsted, dismay
and despair entered the hearts of the Visigoths. To share the hardships
of a life in the Carpathians with Athanaric was not the course which
commended itself to the majority. They looked across the broad Danube to
the well-tilled plains of Moesia; they thought of the tightening bond
which had of late united them to the Empire; they turned to Fritigern,
the steadfast partisan of Rome, and deemed that through his friendship
for the Emperor they might find a refuge from the storm. Fritigern (who,
with a perhaps older colleague, Alavivus, is always spoken of as leader
of the migration) may perhaps, through Ulfilas, have opened negotiations
with the Imperial Court, negotiations which occupied many weeks, for
Valens, the reigning Emperor, was at Antioch. The terms which Fritigern
offered were that the Goths would all enter the military service of
the Empire, and apparently that those who were still heathens would
embrace the Emperor’s creed, which was one of the many forms of Arian
Christianity. On the other hand there must have been some stipulation as
to the supply of food, at least for one season, to give the new-comers
time to till the fields for a future harvest.
[Sidenote: _The Goths on the shore of the Danube._]
While the tedious negotiations were going forward, a strange sight might
be seen on that Wallachian shore of the Danube, where Europe beheld, in
1877, the vast host of the Russians manœuvring backwards and forwards,
in order to find a place where they might cross into Bulgaria. On that
same shore in the autumn of 376 stood 200,000 Goths, stretching out their
hands in the attitude of entreaty, bewailing the hard fate that had
befallen them, and shouting out, whenever a Roman official came within
hearing, their eager offers of fealty to the Emperor.
[Sidenote: _Valens gives them permission to cross._]
At length the answer came from Antioch. Valens was flattered by the
prospect of the submission of so many stalwart warriors; he persuaded
himself that by enlisting them under his standards he might lighten the
pressure of taxation on his subjects; he perhaps also thought that in
the battle of the creeds which was still being waged, the adhesion of a
strong and warlike nation to his own Arian form of faith would secure for
it the victory. This last consideration, however, which is all-important
on the pages of the ecclesiastical historians, was probably only a
secondary one in the minds of the Emperor and his Council.
[Sidenote: _The Danube crossed._]
[Sidenote: _Rapacity of the Roman officials._]
Whatever the determining cause may have been, the Imperial orders came
to Lupicinus the Count of Thrace, and Maximus the Duke of Moesia, that
the refugees were to be admitted into the Empire on condition that they
gave up their arms, and that the boys who were still under age for
martial service should be surrendered as hostages to be quartered in
various distant cities of the Empire. Thus the long suspense was ended.
The Visigoths, who night after night had feared to see the Hunnish
watch-fires blazing in the north and to hear the discordant battle-cry of
the Asiatics sounding in their ears, were relieved from their terrible
anxiety. To have to part with their gallant sons was hard: to have to
part with their old and trusty broadswords was harder, but life was
sweet. There was the Moesian shore and safety under the shadow of Rome,
and here were the sloops ready to carry them across to the Promised
Land. Night and day, for several days, the sloops were crossing and
re-crossing, till at length 200,000 Gothic warriors, with their wives,
and children, and aged parents, stood on the soil of the Empire. They
stood there, not unarmed. Already they had made their first experience
of the gigantic corruption of the Imperial service. Lupicinus and
Maximus, and the officers under them, avaricious and lustful men, while
superintending the transport of the Goths, were thinking all the time how
to fill their villas with precious spoil and beautiful captives, rather
than how to obey the orders of the Emperor. While they were intent on the
golden torques, the linen robes, the costly-fringed carpets of the Goths,
they allowed the broadswords and the hunting-knives to pass unquestioned.
Already before the disembarkation was well over, a bitter sense of
wrong, and consciousness of power to avenge that wrong, were brooding in
thousands of Gothic hearts.
We may perhaps say of the reception by Valens of the Gothic fugitives, as
of Elizabeth’s reception of Mary Queen of Scots, that either the request
for asylum should have been refused, or, if granted, it should have been
granted generously. There was abundance of room doubtless in the solitary
spaces of Moesia for 200,000 sturdy cultivators, and if they had been
wisely and fairly treated they might have formed a stout barrier against
all other barbarian invaders. Who can say? The Roman Empire might be
standing yet.
‘Trojaque nunc staret, Priamique arx alta maneret.’
But now, in addition to the grievance of their treasures stolen,
came the far sorer grievance of food withheld. The promised rations,
perhaps partly from incompetence as well as from bad faith, were not
forthcoming. With such money as they still possessed the unhappy Goths
offered to buy food: Lupicinus and Maximus bought up dogs from all the
districts round and sold their flesh to the starving immigrants in return
for slaves, among whom were some of the sons of the noblest of the Goths,
driven to barter even their children for life. Such wickedness as this,
thank God, does not often miss its reward even in this world.
A few months, however, elapsed before the storm of vengeance burst forth.
Let us take advantage of that short interval to describe the characters
of the rulers of the Roman State.
[Sidenote: _Roman Emperors._]
[Sidenote: West, _Valentinian I, 364-375._]
[Sidenote: East, _Valens, 364-378._]
For eleven years (364-375) after the death of Julian ‘the Apostate’
and his short-lived successor Jovian, Valentinian’s strong hand was
at the Empire’s helm. A blunt, untutored soldier, with a strange dash
of cruelty in his nature, he was nevertheless a good ruler for those
times. He held an even balance between the warring Christian sects,
insisting on toleration all round; he was careful not to oppress his
subjects by too heavy taxation; he defended them from the barbarians,
and he repressed the licentiousness which was sapping the energies of
the Empire. The worst thing that he did for his country was associating
his brother Valens in the throne, giving him the rule over the East.
Both in person and character Valens presented a striking contrast to his
brother. Valentinian was strong and well-shaped, with a bright complexion
and clear blue eye: everything about him told of energy and decision.
Valens, torpid and procrastinating, with muddy complexion, lack-lustre
eye, bent legs and protuberant belly, neither looked nor spoke like an
Emperor of Rome. And over against Valentinian’s inflexible and universal
religious tolerance had to be set the somewhat bitter Arianism of Valens.
[Sidenote: West, _Gratian, 375-383. Valentinian II, 375-392._]
A year before the Hunnish irruption into Europe Valentinian died, leaving
his brother Valens Emperor of the East, and his two sons, Gratian and
Valentinian II, Emperors of the West, the former at Trier, the latter at
Milan. Gratian was a lad full of noble promise, but only sixteen years of
age; Valentinian II was a child of four, under the regency of his mother,
Justina. Decidedly the Imperial partnership was weak, ill-adapted for
the strain of a great crisis, and what made it yet weaker was that it
was not united. The dull soul of the sluggish Valens was jealous of his
brilliant nephew, who was already showing military aptitudes and earning
the devotion of his troops. Justina also, who was the second wife of the
deceased Emperor, looked probably with no friendly eye on the growing
reputation of her step-son. The _Concordia Augustorum_[48], which was so
often celebrated on the Imperial medals, was not strong in the year 376.
[Sidenote: _The banquet at Marcianople. 377._]
We return to the affairs of the betrayed and hunger-stricken Goths.
There was as yet no open insurrection, but Alavivus and Fritigern were
marching about in Moesia in a way which seemed to indicate independence
and growing suspicion; and, moreover, some of the bands of their
Ostrogothic cousins had taken advantage of the disorder of the times,
and the occupied attention of the Imperial soldiery, to cross the Danube
on rafts and pitch their camp not far from Fritigern’s. Before long
Alavivus and Fritigern appeared at the gates of Marcianople (the modern
Shumla), an important city at the intersection of two great cross-roads,
and commanding a pass through the Balkans. The two Visigothic chiefs were
still ostensibly captains of the Emperor’s _foederati_, and Lupicinus,
Count of Thrace, bade them to a banquet. The barbarians who followed
them had flocked into the city to purchase provisions. A dispute arose
between them and the citizens which led to bloodshed, and the news of
the disturbance reached Lupicinus when he was reclining at the luxurious
banquet, flushed with wine and scarcely keeping his heavy eyes open
by gazing at the performers of a pantomime. Languidly he ordered the
tall young Gothic nobles who were keeping guard over their chief at the
door of the _praetorium_ to be hewn down by the far more numerous Roman
soldiery. The groans of the dying, and the battle-shout of those who were
yet fighting for their lives, penetrated the innermost chambers of the
palace, and aroused Fritigern from the pleasures of the dainty repast.
If his host sought to soothe him by alleging that it was only a drunken
brawl that was going on outside,
‘his soul more truly knew that sound too well.’