shooting wild beasts while the Empire was languishing under taxes within
and the attacks of savages from without,—that was the aspect which, with
many noble and loveable qualities, Gratian bore to his Western subjects:
and hence it was that when Maximus with the army of Britain landed in
Gaul, he shook down the fabric of his power without difficulty. Gratian,
finding himself deserted by his troops, escaped from the battle-field,
but was overtaken and killed at Lyons.
[Sidenote: _Maximus dethrones Valentinian II, 387._]
For more than four years Maximus, satisfied with ruling over the three
great Western provinces which had fallen to the share of Gratian,
maintained at any rate the appearance of harmony with his two colleagues,
and the CONCORDIA AUGGG was still capable of being commemorated on the
Imperial medals. At length, in the autumn of 387, Maximus deemed that
the time had come for grasping the whole Empire of the West. Lulling
to sleep the suspicions of Valentinian and his mother by embassies and
protestations of friendship, he crossed the Alps with an army and marched
towards Aquileia, where the young Emperor was then dwelling in order to
be as near as possible to the dominions of his friendly colleague and
protector. Valentinian did not await the approach of his rival, but going
down to the port of Grado, took ship and sailed for Thessalonica, his
mother and sisters accompanying him.
[Sidenote: _Valentinian’s appeal for help to Theodosius._]
The Emperor and the Senate of Constantinople met the Imperial fugitives
at Thessalonica, and discussed the present position of affairs. The
Senate seconded the entreaties of Valentinian and his mother, and cried
out for vengeance on the murderer of one Emperor and the despoiler of
another. Theodosius, who was sincerely averse to war, as his detractors
said through indolence, but more probably through that knowledge of the
risks and miseries of war which even the most successful general cannot
fail to acquire, spoke in favour of peace, and then of course all warlike
views were hushed.
Upon this Justina, who was the widow of two Emperors[64], and in whose
countenance still lingered the traces of the extraordinary beauty which
had fascinated Valentinian I, fell on her knees before Theodosius and
besought him not to allow the murder of Gratian to remain unavenged, nor
the family of his former benefactor to be utterly ruined. And then she
pointed to her daughter Galla,
‘Matre pulchra filia pulchrior,’
who was bathed in tears, lamenting the misfortunes of her house. What
the entreaties of the mother might have failed to effect, the tears of
the daughter accomplished. Theodosius, whose wife Flaccilla had died two
years before (385), took Galla for his second wife, and vowed to avenge
her wrongs and replace her brother on the throne.
[Sidenote: _Civil War between Theodosius and Maximus, 388._]
[Sidenote: _Defeat and death of Maximus. 28 July, 388._]
He was some time in preparing for the campaign, but, when it was opened,
he conducted it with vigour and decision. His troops pressed up the Save
valley, defeated those of Maximus in two engagements, entered Aemona
(Laybach) in triumph, and soon stood before the walls of Aquileia,
behind which Maximus was sheltering himself. The city was a strong and
almost impregnable one, but a mutiny among the troops of Maximus did
away with the necessity for a siege. The soldiers of Theodosius poured
into the city, whose gates had been opened to them by the mutineers,
and dragged off the usurper, barefooted, with tied hands, in slave’s
attire, to the tribunal of Theodosius and his young brother-in-law at the
third milestone from the city. After Theodosius had in a short harangue
reproached him with the evil deeds which he had wrought against the Roman
commonwealth, he handed him over to the executioner, by whom he was at
once put to death.
There can be little doubt that the rapid and successful movements of
Theodosius in this campaign were due in part to the well-trained valour
of his _foederati_. We have, however, a more distinct allusion to their
services in the next civil war, which was fought six years afterwards on
almost the same battle-ground.
[Sidenote: _Valentinian II restored in the West._]
[Sidenote: _His factotum Arbogast._]
[Sidenote: _392. Quarrels between Valentinian and Arbogast._]
On the overthrow of Maximus, Theodosius had with generous magnanimity
handed over to Valentinian II the whole of the Western Empire, both, his
own especial share and that which had formerly been held by his brother
Gratian. The young Emperor was now seventeen years of age: his mother,
Justina, had died apparently on the eve of Theodosius’s victory, and
he governed, or tried to govern, alone. He seems to have taken up his
residence at Trier, the defence of the Gaulish provinces being doubtless
recognised as at this time the chief duty of an Emperor of the West.
But the actual functions of supreme ruler were discharged, not by this
young and somewhat pliable Emperor, but by a Frankish veteran who stood
beside his throne, moving legions and appointing and displacing generals
at his will. I mentioned that during the sickness of Theodosius the war
in Thrace was successfully conducted by two Frankish lieutenants of
Gratian, by name Bauto and Arbogast. Bauto died about the year 385, and
from that time onwards supreme power in the dominions of Valentinian had
been more and more accumulating itself in the hands of the other great
Frankish general, Arbogast, a man adored by his soldiers for his valour
and experience in war, and for his noble disdain of riches. This man was
apparently true to the Empire, true at first in his own rough way to
the house of Valentinian. He had followed the young Emperor to exile,
and after the victory at Aemona it was his hand that deprived the young
Victor, son of the usurper, of life. But knowing his infinite superiority
in all the arts of war and government to the young Adonis who was
nominally his master, he took no pains to conceal that superiority, and
sometimes in the council chamber itself openly opposed and scoffed at
the proposals of the Emperor. In short, this Frankish warrior was already
anticipating by three centuries the attitude of the Frankish Mayors of
the Palace towards the Merovingian monarchs. At length Valentinian,
unable to bear the barbarian’s insolence any longer, one day when he
was sitting on his imperial throne, summoning up as much sternness as
he could into his boyish countenance, presented Arbogast with a written
dismissal from his command as _Magister Equitum_. With calm contempt
Arbogast tore the paper in pieces. ‘You never gave me this command,’
said he, ‘nor will you be able to take it from me.’ Valentinian drew a
sword against the general as he turned to depart, but the attendant to
whom it belonged checked him from using it. Hearing the struggle Arbogast
returned and asked what the Emperor had been trying to do. ‘To slay
myself,’ moaned the miserable Valentinian, ‘because although Emperor I
have no power[65].’
[Sidenote: _Death of Valentinian II, 15 May, 392._]
From this day there was open enmity between Valentinian and his Master of
the Horse: and not long after, when the young Emperor was bathing in the
Rhone, near Vienne, some of the servants of Arbogast, in the absence of
his body-guard who had gone away to dinner, rushed upon him and strangled
him. They then tied a handkerchief round his neck and hung him to a tree,
that it might appear that he had committed suicide. It was generally
understood, however, that the death of Valentinian was in truth the deed
of Arbogast.
[Sidenote: _Eugenius Emperor, 392-394._]
[Sidenote: _Death of Galla, 394._]
The Frankish general, who durst not shock the prejudices of the Roman
world by himself assuming the purple, hung that dishonoured robe upon the
shoulders of a rhetorician, a confidant, and almost a dependent of his
own, named Eugenius. This man, like most of the scholars and rhetoricians
of the day, had not abjured the old faith of Hellas. As Arbogast also
was a heathen, though worshipping Teutonic rather than Olympian gods,
this last revolution looked like a recurrence to the days of Julian,
and threatened the hardly-won supremacy of Christianity. Thus not only
the sad voice of his wife Galla pleading for vengeance on her brother’s
murderers, but, even more, the pious exhortations of all Christian
bishops called on Theodosius to rescue the Western Empire from the hands
of the sophist and the barbarian. Yet his preparations had to be long
and careful, for he was aware that in Arbogast he would meet a general
who knew as much of the art of war as himself, perhaps we might say
that he should meet the greatest captain of the age. He left not Thrace
till June, 394, nearly two years after the death of Valentinian, and
meanwhile, on the very eve of his departure his young wife Galla died,
leaving a little daughter, whose name afterwards was famous in the story
of the Empire, Galla Placidia.
[Sidenote: _Theodosius marches against Eugenius. 394._]
Giving but one day to sorrow and the next to vengeance, Theodosius
marched north-westwards, as before, up the valley of the Save, and to
the city of Aemona. Not there did he meet his foes, but at a place about
thirty miles off, half-way between Aemona and Aquileia, where the Julian
Alps are crossed, and where a little stream called the Frigidus (now the
Wipbach) burst suddenly from a limestone hill. Here, then, the battle
was joined between Eugenius with his Frankish patron and Theodosius with
his 20,000 Gothic _foederati_[66] and the rest of the army of the East.
Gainas, Saul, Bacurius, Alaric were the chief leaders of the Teutonic
troops.
[Sidenote: _Battle of the Frigidus, 5 and 6 Sept. 394._]
[Sidenote: _Death of Eugenius and Arbogast._]
The first day of battle fell heavily on the _foederati_ of Theodosius,
half of whom were left dead upon the field. It seemed as if the West
were going once more to triumph over the East, as if heathenism might
even once more gain the ascendant over Christianity. That night,
however, in prayer Theodosius had a vision of the Apostles John and
Philip, who cheered him on with the assurance of victory. Next day
Theodosius succeeded in detaching part of the army of his rival from
their allegiance; and even the elements seemed eager to aid his victory.
The impetuous _Bora_, a wind well known in that region, sprang up from
the hills in the rear of his army and carried their arrows and their
javelins with resistless force into the ranks of the enemy, whose own
missiles recoiled helplessly on themselves. The battle was won after a
terrible struggle. Eugenius was taken prisoner and carried bound into the
presence of Theodosius, who upbraided him with his heathenism and his
share in the murder of Valentinian. While he was grovelling at the proud
conqueror’s feet and begging for mercy, a soldier cut off his head and
carried it round the field of battle on a pole to show the vanquished
army that their Emperor was slain. Arbogast wandered about for some days
among the rugged mountain-defiles, and then fell upon his sword and
perished.
[Sidenote: _Death of Theodosius, 17 Jan. 395._]
Theodosius, who was still in the prime of life, had now indeed ‘the rule
of the world,’ without a rival or a colleague except his own boyish sons.
The Church and the federated Goths, two of the most powerful forces in
the Empire, were both devotedly attached to him; and the Provincials,
though groaning under the weight of the taxes which he imposed, feared,
and perhaps admired him. Had his life been prolonged as it well might
have been for twenty or thirty years longer, many things might have gone
differently in the history of the world. But, little more than four
months after the victory of the Frigidus, Theodosius died of dropsy at
Milan, his constitution being prematurely worn out by the hardships of
his last campaign, and possibly by the high feasting and revelry which
had resounded through his palace at Constantinople. He had probably not
yet completed his fiftieth year.
[Sidenote: _Character of Theodosius._]
The character of Theodosius is one of the most perplexing in history.
The Church historians have hardly a word of blame for him except in the
matter of the massacre of Thessalonica, and that, as has been said, seems
to be almost atoned for in their eyes by its perpetrator’s penitent
submission to ecclesiastical censure. On the other hand, the heathen
historians, represented by Zosimus, condemn in the most unmeasured
terms his indolence, his love of pleasure, his pride, and hint at
the scandalous immorality of his life. Varying a similar saying with
reference to Constantine, we might say that he who believes all the evil
that is said of Theodosius by Socrates, and all the good that is said of
him by Zosimus, will not go far wrong. But this takes us only a little
way, for the blame and the praise are both infinitesimal.
He had one great work to do, the reconciliation of the Goths to the
Empire, and he did that work well. It is perhaps unfair to judge of it by
the slenderness of its permanent results, since his early death may have
been the chief cause of its failure. But he was certainly passionate,
egotistic, cruel. He spared not the pockets of his subjects, and his
reign, like a heavy wheat-crop, exhausted the energies of his Empire. It
is the fashion to call him the Great, and we may admit that he has as
good a right to that title as Louis XIV, a monarch whom in some respects
he pretty closely resembles. But it seems to me that it would be safer
to withhold this title from both sovereigns, and to call them, not the
Great, but the _Magnificent_.
LECTURE V.
ALARIC.
[Sidenote: _Arcadius and Honorius, sons of Theodosius._]
[Sidenote: _Their incapacity._]
On the death of Theodosius (395) his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius,
aged respectively eighteen and ten, succeeded to ‘the rule of the world,’
Arcadius dwelling at Constantinople and ruling the Eastern portion, while
the Western fell to the share of Honorius, who at this time generally
dwelt at Milan. Arcadius died in the year 408, at the age of thirty-one;
Honorius in 423, at the age of thirty-nine. These two men were thus
nominally at the head of human affairs during some of the most profoundly
interesting and important events that have happened in the history of the
world; yet few men have ever by their own force of character or strength
of intellect exercised less influence on the destinies of the human race.
Theodosius, with all his faults, interests the student of his reign: he
was brilliant, forceful, and he makes a mark on the history of his time.
The dulness of his sons’ characters is so portentous, that after the
lapse of a millennium and a half the Muse of History still yawns at the
remembrance of them. Arcadius had a beautiful Frankish wife, and left a
son of artistic temperament, and four pious daughters. Honorius married
his deceased wife’s sister and left no family, but was fond of keeping
pigeons. These are pretty nearly all the facts that it is possible to
ascertain or to remember out of the drizzling dulness of their personal
history.
[Sidenote: _Administration of Rufinus and Stilicho._]
Theodosius, who probably saw the weakness of character of his sons, and
who was leaving them at an age when even strong and capable natures would
have required much help and guidance, entrusted the guardianship of the
lads, and the virtual regency of the Empire, to Rufinus and Stilicho. The
former, with the rank of Praetorian Prefect, administered the realm of
Arcadius; the latter, as _Magister Utriusque Militiae_, governed the army
and the people of Honorius.
These two men resembled one another in one quality—an inordinate love
of money, whether justly or unjustly acquired. In all other respects
their characters were utterly dissimilar. Stilicho, though grasping and
perhaps somewhat coarse-fibred, was a hero and a patriot; Rufinus (whom
we unfortunately know only by the descriptions of his bitter enemies) may
have had some administrative ability, but must have been a bad specimen
even of the corrupt bureaucracy of Constantinople.
Dissimilar as was the character of the two men, so also was their origin
and training. Stilicho was apparently of pure Teutonic extraction, the
son of a Vandal chief who had commanded some barbarian auxiliaries in the
army of the Emperor Valens. His tall and handsome presence had commended
him to the favour of Serena, the favourite niece and trusted counsellor
of Theodosius. His marriage with so near a relative of the Emperor
naturally led to his speedy promotion. His employment on an embassy
to the Persian king was followed by high military command. He showed
indisputable talents for war in several campaigns against the barbarians,
and, some years before the death of Theodosius, was raised to the
highest of all military dignities—that of _Magister Utriusque Militiae_
(Commander-in-Chief of Infantry and Cavalry).
Of the early life of Rufinus we know but little. He was born at Elusa, a
little town in the south-west corner of Gaul. He went to Constantinople,
and there, by his obsequiousness, his perseverance, and doubtless also
by his aptitude for the work of administration, succeeded in climbing
from step to step of the official ladder. One or two old and faithful
servants of the Empire (Tatianus and Proculus) who stood above him in
rank, were cast down by his well-timed accusations of disloyalty, and
at length the obscure Gaulish Provincial blazed forth to the world as
Praetorian Prefect of the East—one of the wealthiest men in the Empire,
a man who aspired to wear the diadem himself as colleague of Arcadius,
and to obtain the Emperor’s hand in marriage for his daughter. Thus while
Stilicho’s might be said to be the typical career of a robust, handsome,
and warlike Teuton in the service of the Empire, the career of Rufinus
was the equally typical career of a clever, pushing, and unscrupulous
Provincial.
[Sidenote: _Divergence between East and West._]
Between the two administrators of the realm—Rufinus and Stilicho—there
was no cordiality, no chance of well-concerted action for the good of
the Empire. In fact, quite independently of the personal characters of
the two men, the interests of the two divisions of the Empire were now
beginning manifestly to diverge. The older Rome looked down upon the new
Rome by the Bosphorus as a mere Greek city, the home of sophists and
chatterers; while Constantinople regarded the city of the Tiber, with
its mouldering palaces, its desolate Campagna, its still half-heathen
Senate, as a great stranded hulk, unfit any longer to bear the precious
freight of Empire. This divergence between the hopes and wishes of the
East and West, a divergence which was often on the point of becoming
actual hostility, was wider for the first fifteen years after the death
of Theodosius than for a considerable time before or after that interval,
and promoted not a little the success of the barbarian movement against
the Roman State.
[Sidenote: _Alaric King of the Visigoths._]
That movement began very shortly after Theodosius was laid in his
grave. It was in all probability in the spring of the year 395 that the
Visigoths in Moesia raised the young Alaric upon a shield, and with
joyful shouts acclaimed him as their king. We have already noticed this
young Gothic chief as commanding a troop in the army of Theodosius at
the battle of the Frigidus, and that is in fact all that we know about
him up to this date, except that he was born (probably between 360 and
370) in the island of Peuce at the mouth of the Danube, and that he was
either himself surnamed Baltha (the Bold), or belonged to a clan of kings
or chieftains who bore that name. As the Gothic historian says: ‘As soon
as Alaric was created king, deliberating with his people he persuaded
them rather by their own labour to seek for kingdoms than quietly to
lie down in subjection to strangers.’ In other words he decided, and
persuaded them to decide, to abandon the easy but inglorious position
of _foederati_, and cutting themselves loose from the old and decaying
Empire, to hew out new realms for themselves with their own trusty
broadswords. Towards this decision he was no doubt partly guided by what
he had himself seen, when in the Imperial service, of the weakness of
the legions, the unwarlike character of the Provincials of the Empire,
the oppressions of the tax-gatherers which caused even the barbarians to
seem welcome as deliverers from their yoke; above all by what he, and
every officer of rank in the Roman army, knew of the discord and jealousy
between the two chief ministers of the Empire.
[Sidenote: _395._]
The first blows of Alaric and his Goths were struck at the Eastern
Empire. This was natural enough, since they were themselves settled
within it: but there was another reason for the choice. The army which
Theodosius had led with him across the Julian Alps seems not to have been
dismissed to its Eastern cantonments during the few months between the
battle of the Frigidus and his death. It and the troops of Eugenius were
now all collected in the north of Italy under the orders of Stilicho,
who was thus in another than the official sense _Magister Utriusque
Militiae_, since both the conquering and the conquered army of the late
campaign received the watchword from him. A singular position certainly,
and one which excuses some things otherwise difficult to justify in the
conduct of Arcadius and his minister.
[Sidenote: _Alaric strikes at the Eastern Empire._]
[Sidenote: _Stilicho forbidden to repel the invasion._]
[Sidenote: _Alaric in Greece._]
Alaric, then, with his Gothic followers marched first towards
Constantinople. Perhaps he had some hopes of taking the city by surprise,
but if so he was disappointed. Rufinus, who, Provincial as he was,
professed a certain fondness for the barbarians and imitated their dress
and accoutrements, seems to have sought an interview with the Gothic
king, and suggested to him that instead of undertaking a hopeless siege
he would do well to turn his steps southwards, where he would reap
abundance of spoil from the still undevastated plains of Greece. Alaric
accepted the suggestion, and marched through Macedonia into Thessaly.
There, however, his course was stayed for a while by the arrival of
Stilicho, who, loyally fulfilling the behest of the dying Theodosius,
had come with an army to deliver the invaded Empire from its foe. Before
manœuvres had ceased and hard fighting had begun, there came a strange,
and at first sight incomprehensible, message from the Eastern Court:
‘Let Stilicho withdraw the legions of Honorius within the limits of
his master’s Empire, and let the legions of the East be sent to their
proper quarters at Constantinople.’ Loyally, but sadly, Stilicho obeyed
the command, and thus the campaign of 395 closed, leaving Alaric in
undisputed possession of the Greek peninsula. No Leonidas with his Three
Hundred defended now Thermopylae, not even the easily held Isthmus of
Corinth was occupied by troops. All over the sacred places of Grecian
story, Delphi, Corinth, Argos, Sparta, the tall barbarians swarmed.
Only Athens seems to have escaped comparatively unharmed, a deliverance
which the heathen historian[67] attributes to the fact that when Alaric
approached the city he saw Athene Promachus, in such guise as she is
represented in her statue, going round about its towers, and Achilles,
the hero, such as Homer painted him in his wrath for the death of
Patroclus, standing before the walls. Those who doubt the truth of these
apparitions may accept the theory that the Acropolis was too strong to be
taken, and that Alaric, who was no mere barbarous destroyer, was induced,
partly by a heavy ransom and partly by reverence for her old renown, to
refrain from sacking a city which was illustrious and venerable rather
than wealthy or strategically important.
[Sidenote: _March of the recalled troops to Constantinople._]