Orthodoxy._]
Thus then at length the Caesar of the East was ranged on the side of
Trinitarian orthodoxy. Constantine in the latter part of his reign,
Constantius, Valens, had all been Arians or semi-Arians, some of them
bitter in their heterodoxy. Julian had been a worshipper of the gods of
Olympus. Thus for nearly two generations the influence of the Court of
Constantinople had been thrown into the scale against the teaching of
Athanasius, which was generally accepted throughout the Western realm.
Now by the accession of Theodosius to the Trinitarian side, religious
unity was restored to the Empire: but at the same time a chasm, an
impassable chasm, was opened between the Empire itself and its new
Teutonic guests, nearly all of whom held fast to the Arian teaching of
their great Apostle Ulfilas.
[Sidenote: _Further inroads of the barbarians._]
(2) The other consequence of the sickness of Theodosius was, as I have
said, a fresh incursion of barbarian hordes, swarming across the Danube
and climbing all the high passes of the Balkans. The work of clearing the
country of these marauders had to be all done over again. One dark night,
when the Emperor was encamping in Macedonia, the barbarians, seeing a
particularly bright watch-fire burning, and rightly conjecturing that
it marked the tent of the Emperor, made a sudden dash and very nearly
succeeded in sending Theodosius to rejoin his predecessor Valens. There
was a terrible struggle: few Romans against the overwhelming hosts of
the Goths, but the soldiers of Theodosius, who loved him well, fought on
desperately till he had escaped, and then fell dead, surrounded by an
uncounted host of slain barbarians.
[Sidenote: _Reinforcements sent by Gratian, 380._]
The campaign of 380 was such a hard one that Theodosius had to solicit
reinforcements from his colleague Gratian, which were sent to him under
the command of Bauto and Arbogast, two Frankish chiefs who had entered
the Imperial service. Indeed all along the line, in the West as in
the East, the characteristic feature of this period was the number of
barbarians who attained high rank in the legions of Rome, and who upon
the whole served her with marked fidelity.
At length, in the closing months of 380, the provinces south of the
Balkans (Macedonia and Thrace) were once more cleared of their barbarian
intruders. Peace, in which Gratian concurred, was concluded with the
Goths who still doubtless abounded in Moesia; and Theodosius on the 24th
of November entered Constantinople in state.
[Sidenote: _Theodosius welcomes Athanaric at Constantinople, 381._]
[Sidenote: _Athanaric’s death._]
The inhabitants of the New Rome by the Bosphorus, who perhaps had not
before seen Theodosius as Emperor, were soon to behold a ruler of a
very different type side by side with the courtly and magnificent
Spaniard. The grey old Visigoth, Athanaric, had been driven, apparently
by Ostrogothic invaders, from his airy stronghold in the Carpathians.
The death of Fritigern (which seems to have happened about this time)
left him the chief ruler of the scattered and disorganised Visigothic
nation. Converted from his old, almost religious prejudice against Rome,
and recanting the oath which he had once sworn never to set foot on the
soil of the Empire, he now crossed the Danube and accepted the Emperor’s
invitation to visit him in his capital, probably in order to ratify and
proclaim to the world the peace just concluded between ‘Romania’ and
‘Gothia.’ We must let the Gothic historian tell the story of this visit
in his own expressive words[58].
‘Theodosius attached to himself King Athanaric, who had succeeded
Fritigern, by the gifts which he gave him, and in the kindest terms
invited him to visit him at Constantinople; who accepted right willingly
and said, marvelling, “Lo, I behold, what often I heard incredulously,
the fame of so great a city.” Then turning his eyes this way and that,
now he admires the position of the city and the concourse of ships, now
the long clearly-marked line of the walls, and then again the natives
from so many different stocks bubbling up like water from one fountain
in many directions, yet all disciplined like well-trained soldiers.
“A god,” he said, “without doubt a god upon earth is the Emperor, and
whoever moveth a hand against him, that man is guilty of his own blood.”
In such a state of admiration, being supported by the yet greater honours
which he received from the Emperor, after the interval of a few months
[or more correctly fourteen days[59]] he departed from the light of day.
Whom the Emperor out of the love which he bore to him, honouring almost
more as dead than as alive, delivered to a worthy burial, himself going
before the bier in his solemn obsequies. Therefore when Athanaric was
dead, all his army, remaining in the service of the Emperor Theodosius,
and submitting itself to the Roman Empire, formed as it were one body
with the [Imperial] soldiery, that old enlistment of the Foederati under
the Emperor Constantine being now renewed, and they themselves were now
called Foederati.’
[Sidenote: _The bulk of the Goths become Foederati of the Empire._]
There can be no doubt that the politic courtesy which Theodosius showed
to Athanaric exercised an important influence on the relations which
existed for the next fifteen years between the Empire and the Goths.
If we look at the position of the two parties to the contract we shall
see that the conclusion or the renewal of the _Foedus_ between them was
really for the interest of both. For the Empire, a complete reversal
of the policy of Valens was now impossible. Ever since the day when
the last of the 200,000 Gothic warriors was ferried across the Danube,
their inclusion in the Empire in one capacity or another had become
an accomplished and irreversible fact. They could not be thrust back
into their old Dacian home, where by this time the Huns were probably
swarming, but they might be converted from the ravagers of Thrace into
the tillers of Moesia. They might be made the stalwart defenders of the
Danubian frontier against those very Huns, and against the motley horde
of Teutons, Slaves, and Tartars who flocked around their standard of
squalid and anarchic despotism.
On the other hand the Goths, unable to capture the strong cities of the
Empire, could not live perpetually on the mere ravage of the Thracian
home-steads. Viewing the movements of peoples and the migrations of
barbarous tribes from the high historic standpoint, and especially seeing
what these movements and migrations actually accomplished in the fifth
century of our era, we are apt to think that the conquest of kingdoms and
the foundation of empires was the deliberate and persistent purpose of
chief and people. On the contrary, if we could be present in the rough
councils which gathered around their camp-fires and listen to the talk
of the warriors with their wives in the great Gothic waggons, we should
probably discover that the question in what way and from what source the
next day’s meal was to be provided, was far more often and more anxiously
debated than any question of high policy or dream of world-conquest. Now,
by the policy which Theodosius seemed willing to adopt of renewing the
old _Foedus_ between Rome and her Gothic friends, food, and comfortable
homes, and a distinguished career in arms were assured to the meanest
Gothic soldier, and admission to the dignities and luxuries of the most
splendid court in the world was assured to their chiefs. The Roman
Empire was still, if I may use a commercial phrase, ‘a going concern.’
The barbarians had power to wreck it and drive it into bankruptcy? Yes,
perhaps they had: but it was surely a far more alluring prospect to take
shares in the company and touch some part of the enormous profits which
accrued to the directors.
This kind of calculation—and I have purposely chosen a commercial
metaphor in order to indicate the perfectly selfish character of the
bargain—prevailed at this time in the minds of the barbarians over any
dim and shadowy dreams which might linger there of setting up a new and
conquering Visigothic kingdom between the Danube and the Balkans. But
then, when self-interest was prompting them to this course, sentiment
was enlisted on the same side by the generous hospitality offered to the
worn-out veteran Athanaric in the great city of the South, by his own
childlike admiration of the wonders which she displayed to his view, by
the splendid funeral, and by the sight of the courtly Augustus, robed in
the purple and wearing the diadem of Empire, escorting the Gothic warrior
to his tomb.
[Sidenote: _What did the relation of Foederati involve?_]
What the precise nature of the tie was which bound the _foederati_ to the
Empire I do not think we can definitely explain. From time immemorial
Rome had fought her battles with troops pretty equally divided between
the legions (theoretically composed of pure Roman citizens) and the
_Auxilia_ (consisting of her subject-allies). These allies had at first
been chiefly dwellers in the cities of Latium, but by the time that
we have now reached they were gathered from almost every nation under
heaven. Here, in our own Northumberland, all the garrison duty along the
Wall was done by these auxiliary troops. Asturians from Spain, Tungrians
and Batavians from Holland, Dacians from Transylvania, and Dalmatians
from the eastern shore of the Hadriatic, were keeping watch for Rome on
these wind-swept hills. But _those_ allies were still distinctly Roman
soldiers, who served under Roman officers, and were amenable to Roman
discipline. The bond which held the _foederati_ to the Empire appears to
have been a much looser one. It would seem that the federated Goths still
served under their own native chiefs, and retained to a large extent
their national weapons and their own peculiar manner of fighting. They no
doubt had lands assigned to them, chiefly in Moesia, which they may have
cultivated partly with their own hands and partly by the forced labour
of _coloni_. In fact, though we are of course still many centuries off
from regular feudal rights and obligations, there was probably something
in the relation of a chief of _foederati_ to the Emperor not altogether
unlike the relation of a feudal baron to his lord paramount.
[Sidenote: _Results of the policy of Theodosius._]
The scheme of Theodosius answered as a temporary expedient. It gave
security to the Danubian frontier for his day; perhaps had his successors
been men of equal ability with himself it might have prolonged that
security for centuries. But there were some obvious dangers attending
it. Evidently these masses of men, trained to act together, obeying
their own princes, and conscious of their strength, might one day turn
against Rome the weapons which they were now wielding on her behalf.
The ‘provincials,’ the earlier subjects of Rome, finding their services
less needed, would grow unused to warfare, and would in the course of
time be almost sure to sink into a despised and spiritless caste, among
whom the proud Teutonic _foederatus_ would stalk with an exasperating
consciousness of superiority. Above all, the Emperor himself, having
the barbarians for his tent companions, the sharers of his dangers, the
confidants of his councils, and the supporters of his throne, would
get to lean more and more upon them, and might become an Emperor of
barbarians instead of an Emperor of the civilised commonwealth of Rome.
The whole history of Theodosius shows that this was a very real danger
in his time. There was something in his own character, fond as he was
of pomp and spectacle and the mere outward trappings of royalty, which
harmonised only too well with the nature of the barbarians. While he
was surrounding himself with troops of tall and brilliantly-accoutred
_foederati_, and spending his time and the money of his subjects over an
endless round of games and chariot-races, and on sumptuous banquets at
which the Gothic ‘wassail’ was loudly heard, the provinces were groaning
under the demands of the tax-gatherer; and the machine of administration
which Valens, with all his faults, had superintended with some diligence,
was daily getting into more and more hopeless disorganisation.
[Sidenote: _Insurrection of Antioch, 387._]
Both the two great insurrections which broke out in the reign of
Theodosius, and each of which is connected with the story of a great
father of the Church, sprang, directly or indirectly, from the favour
shown by the Emperor to his _foederati_. In the year 387 he determined
to celebrate the fifth year of the reign of his young son Arcadius, whom
he had associated with him in the Empire, in a style of extraordinary
magnificence. For this purpose there must be more splendid games, more
exciting chariot-races, and, above all, a more liberal donative to the
soldiery than any that had yet been given. In order to supply funds for
these various expenses, a new tax (probably what was called the _aurum
coronarium_) was levied on the cities of the Empire. At the news of
this fresh imposition, the citizens of Antioch, already ground down to
the very dust by the pressure of the ordinary taxation, broke out into
open rebellion. While the more respectable and religious citizens betook
themselves to the churches to pray God to change the Emperor’s purpose,
or besought the Bishop Flavianus to intercede for the removal of the tax,
a mob of boys and ‘lewd fellows of the baser sort’ visited the spacious
Baths, and cutting the ropes by which the lamps were suspended, caused
them to fall with a crash on the pavement. Then the boys began to throw
stones at the wooden statues of the Emperor and his family. They shouted
for joy when one of the statues was split in pieces; they groaned when
one, more stubborn than the rest, long resisted their assaults. They then
went to the more costly bronze statues, pulled them from their pedestals
with ropes, dragged them ignominiously through the streets, and ended by
giving them to the children to play with. What made the insult the more
bitter was, that not only the statues of the Emperor himself, but those
of the noble old veteran his father, of his lately deceased wife, and of
his young son and colleague, were all treated with the same contumely.
Next came an attempt at fire-raising in the house of a magistrate who
tried to persuade them to cease their rioting; and last, the appearance
of some Imperial archers, who discharged their arrows upon the crowd.
Thereupon at once the tumult, which had flamed up so high and seemed so
menacing, died down like a fire of straw.
[Sidenote: _Reaction from insolence to panic._]
The insult to the majesty of the Emperor had been great, perhaps
unforgiveable. The whole city passed in an hour from the extreme of
insolence and anarchy to the extreme of cowed submission and abject
terror, while the messengers bearing the fatal tidings were going to and
returning from Constantinople. The sedition had broken out a few days
before Lent (387), and the whole of the forty days of that sacred season
were indeed days of fasting and humiliation to the luxurious citizens
of Antioch. About the middle of them arrived a letter from the Emperor,
sharply rebuking the Town Council for allowing the sedition to gain such
a height, ordering that the Theatre, the Hippodrome, and the Baths should
all be closed, and depriving Antioch of the rank, which she had held for
six centuries, as capital of Syria. Shortly after appeared two Imperial
Commissioners—Caesarius and Ellebichus—charged to make enquiry into the
recent events; and they began their enquiry by putting all the Senators
of Antioch into close confinement.
[Sidenote: _Pardon._]
The two commissioners, however, were specimens of the best class of Roman
officials, men utterly unlike Lupicinus and Maximus. They marked the
sincere repentance and the agonised prostration of terror which pervaded
all classes in Antioch, and they soon allowed it to appear that their
influence at any rate would be exerted on the side of mercy. Caesarius,
when the enquiry was completed, set off with all speed to Constantinople,
and reached that city on the sixth day after his departure from Antioch.
No Turkish courier probably could now traverse the length and breadth
of Asia Minor in anything like so short a time. Theodosius listened to
the arguments of Caesarius in favour of mercy, to the prayers and sighs
of Bishop Flavianus, who had come to intercede on behalf of his flock,
and granted a complete amnesty, rescinding also his previous decree for
the degradation of Antioch from the rank of capital city. This letter,
carried by a swift messenger to Ellebichus, was by him communicated to
the citizens of Antioch, who received it with shouts of welcome and
tears of joy. Their fifty days of mourning were ended, and Antioch, the
light-hearted Paris of the East, was herself again.
The story of this singular insurrection has been preserved for us by
the orations of the heathen sophist Libanius and by the homilies of the
great Christian preacher, St. John Chrysostom, at that time a priest at
Antioch, afterwards Patriarch of Constantinople.
[Sidenote: _Insurrection of Thessalonica, 390._]
[Sidenote: _Brutal vengeance._]
The insurrection at Antioch displayed the character of Theodosius in a
favourable light, as a strong but merciful and magnanimous ruler of men.
Very different was the effect on his fame of the insurrection which broke
out three years later (390) in the Macedonian city of Thessalonica. A
garrison of Gothic _foederati_ was quartered in this important city.
Already it is probable that many causes of quarrel had arisen between the
Thessalonians and their overbearing but under-educated guests. The wrath
grew to its height when Botheric, the Gothic general, shut up in prison
a certain scoundrel of a charioteer who had vilely insulted him. At the
next races the mob of Thessalonica tumultuously demanded the charioteer’s
liberation, and when Botheric refused, rose in insurrection and slew both
him and several magistrates of the city. There was no such direct insult
to the person of the Emperor as at Antioch, perhaps no such prolonged
period of defiance to authority; but the affair reflected deep disgrace
on the cruel, childish, show-loving Eastern provincials, and if the chief
actors in it had been ordered off to instant execution, Theodosius would
only have acted with praiseworthy severity. But he had now been for
twelve years lord of the world, and the madness which absolute power so
often brings with it had begun to work in his brain. In a frenzy of rage
at the insult offered to himself in the person of his barbarian general,
he sent his orders from Milan (where he was staying when the tidings
reached him) that the whole city of Thessalonica should suffer for the
misdeeds of its ruffianly mob. The soldiers surrounded the circus where
the citizens were assembled, watching the games and unsuspecting of ill.
They closed the gates, marched in amongst the densely-packed spectators,
and began their bloody work. A certain number of heads was ordered to be
brought to the officers, as if they had been thistles or dandelions to be
gathered out of the fields. Was it 7000 as one historian says, or 15,000,
as another? It matters not much: the horror of the thing was the brutal
indiscriminateness of the massacre, the utter absence of any attempt to
separate between the innocent and the guilty, the indifference to human
life, more worthy of Tamerlane and his pyramid of skulls than of an
Emperor of Rome.
[Sidenote: _Penitence of Theodosius._]
It is true that this bloody deed was afterwards repented of in dust and
ashes. The humiliation and penitence of Theodosius, his self-abasement
before the great Christian hero, St. Ambrose, and the forgiveness which
he at last received from him, form a well-known page in church history,
and one which I do not propose now to retrace. But I cannot hold, as
some of the ecclesiastical historians seem to do, that the depth of the
Emperor’s subsequent humility hides the greatness of his crime. That he
should have been even tempted to such a monstrous abuse of his absolute
power, much more that he should have yielded to the temptation, marks
him out as one of the Emperors who were unfit to govern, not only as
immeasurably below a saint like Marcus Aurelius, or a statesman like
Trajan, but almost as fit to be classed in the same category with
Caligula, Nero, and Commodus.
* * * * *
We return to our more special subject, the relation between Theodosius
and the _foederati_. Twice he was able to employ his Gothic soldiers with
striking success in the internal struggles of the Empire. The situation
was thus very similar to that which we have seen in our own day in our
Indian Empire, when the Sikhs, the fierce opponents of the English Raj in
1845, became its stalwart defenders in the terrible Mutiny of 1857.
[Sidenote: _Revolt of troops in Britain, 383._]
[Sidenote: _Elevation of Maximus._]
[Sidenote: _Gratian’s faults._]
In the year 383 a military revolt broke out in Britain against the young
Emperor Gratian. Our island was ever the fruitful seed-plot of these
military mutinies. The soldiers, shut up in their camps on our solitary
moors, and deeming themselves cut off from the civilised world[60],
probably exaggerated every hardship of their service, and welcomed any
change which would take them southwards, were it even in the track of
an usurper and a tyrant. Perhaps, too, there was something then as now
in the disposition of the Celts by whom they were surrounded, and with
whom many of them had intermarried, favourable to anarchy and fatal to
that reverence for law and discipline which is needed to hold together
either an army or a state. Whatever the cause, the army revolted and
proclaimed Magnus Clemens Maximus, Emperor. He was, like Theodosius,
a native of Spain, and though harsh and perhaps rapacious, a man of
ability and experience, not unworthy of the purple if he had come to it
by lawful means[61]. Gratian on his side had evidently given some real
cause for dissatisfaction to his subjects. Ammianus, who was a good
judge of character, says of him that ‘while the youthful down was yet
on his cheeks he showed promise of emulating the best of the Emperors,
if he had not given his mind too much to sport, and under the influence
of frivolous companions followed too much the example of Commodus in
his dissipation though not in his cruelty. He delighted to pierce the
greatest possible number of beasts before the eyes of the people, and
when he had given a fatal wound to each one of a hundred lions let loose
from many doors all round the amphitheatre (not needing to hit any beast
twice), he would exult as if he were something more than man. Thus he
would spend whole days within these vast preserves which were called
_vivaria_, slaying savage beasts with his multitudinous arrows. And this
at a time when even the patient earnestness of a Marcus Aurelius would
have been all too little for the sad necessities of the Empire[62].’
[Sidenote: _383-7._]
But there was another grievance besides Gratian’s love for sport, and
that was his fondness for the barbarians. He, too, like Theodosius, had
his petted barbarian guard, but instead of being Goths they belonged to
the less civilised race of the Alani. We are told by another author[63]
‘that Gratian neglected the army and preferred a few of the Alans, whom
by lavish pay he had attracted to his service, to the old Roman soldiery,
and was so fascinated by the companionship, and one might almost say
friendship of these barbarians, that he sometimes on the march even
adopted their dress. By all this he aroused the hatred of the soldiers
against himself.’
[Sidenote: _Death of Gratian._]