the change which he made in the habits of his nation after he had become
master of Carthage. The Vandals, who had dwelt so long on the skirts
of the Riesengebirge, in the highlands of Austria, or in the plains of
Hungary, were essentially an inland people, who only dabbled a little
in seamanship, when they reached the Andalusian shore. But now that the
fleets, the arsenal, the docks of Carthage were all their own, now that
its harbour—one of the finest in the Old World—reflected everywhere
the Vandal flag, they became under Gaiseric’s guidance the first naval
power on the Mediterranean, and he, by a singular anticipation of the
history of the Barbary States in later days, made himself the great
Buccaneer-King. With every returning spring his long ships of war were
made ready in the harbour. Sometimes he ravaged Sicily, sometimes the
southern coasts of Italy, leading the inhabitants of one city into
captivity, throwing down the walls of another, wasting the whole country
with his wide-reaching raids. Then when the very poverty of these lands
frighted him away from their devastated shores, he turned to the Eastern
Empire. Illyricum, Peloponnesus, the islands of the Ionian and Aegean
seas, all that bore the name of Hellas, bewailed the visits of Gaiseric.
Then to Italy and Sicily again, to try if there were any nook which
had hitherto escaped his visitations. At length the work became almost
monotonous, and the choice of a victim hard. Once when the fleet had
weighed anchor and was sailing forth from the broad harbour of Carthage,
the helmsman turned to the king and asked for what port he should steer.
‘For the men with whom God is angry,’ answered the Vandal king, and left
the winds and the waters to settle the question who were the proper
objects of the wrath of Heaven.
[Sidenote: _Vandal land-settlement._]
The land-settlement of the Vandals and the order of succession to the
Vandal throne were two subjects to which Gaiseric’s legislative energies
were especially directed. (1) The rich Province in which Carthage was
situated, called Zeugitana, or the Proconsular Province, the last
of all the acquisitions of the Vandals, was portioned out among the
warriors of the nation, who received these estates as an inheritance
to be transmitted to their children, and who paid no taxes of any kind
for them. In the other Provinces, far larger in extent but not nearly
so fertile in quality, lay the vast domains of Gaiseric and his sons,
consisting of estates forcibly taken away from their Roman owners, often
men of culture and noble birth, who were in some cases compelled to
cultivate as slaves the lands of which the invader had despoiled them.
The poor and barren lands were for the most part left to their former
owners, but so burdened with taxes and obligations of service that the
unhappy possessors could barely make a livelihood out of them. Many of
these unhappy possessors tried to flee, but were arrested and executed,
sundry grievous charges being brought against them, especially the one
unforgivable sin of concealing treasure from Gaiseric. ‘Thus,’ as the
historian[95] says, ‘did the Provincials of Africa fall into every kind
of misery.’
[Sidenote: _Law of succession to the throne._]
(2) As for the succession to the throne, in order to avert the rivalries
and civil wars which often resulted from the elective character of
Teutonic royalty, and at the same time to prevent the crown from being
worn by a fatuous boy like Honorius or Valentinian, he ordained that the
oldest living male among his descendants should, on the death of each
reigning monarch, ascend the Vandal throne. The law was like that which
has regulated the succession of the Ottoman Sultans and the Egyptian
Pashas. It worked smoothly for near sixty years after the death of
Gaiseric, who was succeeded by his eldest son Huneric, he by his two
nephews, Gunthamund and Thrasamund, and the latter of these by his cousin
Hilderic, the son of Huneric. Then dissensions broke out: Hilderic was
dethroned and finally put to death by his cousin Gelimer, but religious
differences—for Gelimer was an Arian and Hilderic a Catholic—were the
chief cause of these disputes, for which I am not sure that we can fairly
blame the Vandal law of succession.
[Sidenote: _Persecution of the Catholics._]
In this allusion to religious differences I have touched upon that
which was the distinguishing and the shameful characteristic of the
Vandal kingdom, especially under Gaiseric and his son; I mean, their
brutal persecution of the Catholics. In their profession of Arianism the
Vandals, as we have seen, only followed the example of all the other
barbarian nations who had embraced Christianity in any form. Naturally
Attila, who worshipped a naked sword, while hating all priests and
coveting their costly Communion-plate, was under no temptation to treat
the orthodox believers in the Homoousion worse than the Arian believers
in the Homoiousion (if any such there yet remained), but would slay both
with ferocious impartiality. Naturally, too, the still heathen ancestors
of Clovis robbed and murdered the Catholic bishops of Belgic Gaul simply
as rich and civilised men, without any special antipathy to them on
account of their Catholicism. With the Visigoths, Suevi, and Burgundians
the case was different. They were parties to the long Arian lawsuit,
and were disposed to depress, and sometimes to harass, the Athanasian
litigants on the other side, but they did not systematically persecute,
and there are few if any instances of Catholics actually put to death by
them for their faith.
Gaiseric, however, seems to have hugged his Arian belief with the
fanatical love of a convert, and to have hated the Nicene Confession
with the bitter hatred of an apostate. It was indeed reported[96] in
Spain that such was the very truth, that he had been once a Catholic
and had ‘apostatised to the Arian infidelity’: but it is difficult to
understand how the son of King Godigisclus can have been brought up in
the Athanasian faith, unless his illegitimate birth permitted him to be
trained by his mother, probably a Gaulish concubine of the king, in the
despised faith of the Roman Provincials.
Whatever the cause there can be no doubt that Gaiseric detested the
Catholic faith, the faith of the vast majority of his new subjects, and
showed that detestation by acts of savage cruelty. The churches were not
merely plundered—that the barbarian hunger for gold would sufficiently
account for—but wantonly burned: and insult was sometimes added to
rapine, as when the beautiful altar-cloths were cut up and made into
shirts and drawers for the grooms of a barbarian officer. In the regions
which paid tribute to the Palace the bishops were accused of stirring up
the people to revolt, and of likening the king to Pharaoh, Holofernes,
and Nebuchadnezzar: and a number of them were sent into exile. The
Bishop of Carthage, with several of his clergy, was sent to sea in a
crazy ship, which it was hoped would founder on the voyage, but arrived
safe but penniless on the shores of Campania. The Metropolitan Church of
Carthage was forbidden to elect any successor to the exile, and seems to
have remained for twenty years or more ‘widowed of its bishop.’ The same
measure was meted out to a great number of African Churches, evidently
with the intention of breaking down their episcopal organisation for ever.
In his own palace Gaiseric seemed as if he could not endure the presence
of an adherent of the rival creed. Sebastian, the son-in-law of
Bonifacius, though a man who was on other grounds acceptable at Court and
influential with the king, was put to death because he refused to change
his religion. Count Armogast, for the same refusal, was stretched upon
the rack, hung head downwards from the ceiling by one foot, and at last
sent to do the work of a ditcher and a shepherd in the fields, where he
soon died of his hardships.
These and many similar stories which are told us by Victor Vitensis,
show the intense and bitter animosity of the great Vandal against all
who refused to accept what the ecclesiastical historians call ‘the
Arian infidelity.’ At the same time they fail to bring before us any
well-concerted and systematic scheme of persecution, which could by
possibility have rooted out the Catholic faith from Africa. Gaiseric was
evidently no Diocletian, with sad thoroughness undertaking to eradicate
a hostile faith in order to fulfil his duty to the State. Nor was he a
Louis XIV, organising dragonnades and revoking edicts of toleration in
order that he might keep his mistresses and yet save his soul. He was
essentially a barbarian, though a clever one, with all that intolerance
of opposition which is shown not by barbarians only when
‘Dressed in a little brief authority.’
He could not bear that any of those about him should dare to belong
to any other than ‘the King’s religion,’ and he tortured, degraded,
banished, at last sometimes even killed, in order to punish those who
differed from him for their independence.
Such was the character and such the past career of the founder of the
great Buccaneer State. We have now to glance at the course of events
which, in the year 455, brought him across the sea to Rome.
[Sidenote: _Family relations of Valentinian III._]
Valentinian III, in the year 437, when he had reached the age of
eighteen, went on a visit of state to his cousin, Theodosius II, at
Constantinople, and returned bringing with him that cousin’s daughter as
a bride. She bore the name which, with slight modifications, had been
borne by two previous generations of Imperial ladies in the palace at
Constantinople, Eudoxia or Eudocia. Of this marriage there was no male
issue, but two daughters were born to the Imperial pair, Eudoxia and
Placidia.
[Sidenote: _His jealousy of Aetius._]
On the death of Attila (453) the thought, the base thought, began to
insinuate itself into the mind of Valentinian that he had now less need
of the services of the great minister, Aetius. Men called that minister
‘the great safeguard of the Western Commonwealth and the terror of
Attila[97].’ His praises were sung with wearisome repetition, and the
very presence of the strenuous, care-worn warrior was an oppression and
a rebuke to the frivolous Emperor who ‘reigned but did not govern.’
The growing dislike, now that the wise Placidia was laid in the grave,
could be fostered at their pleasure by the mischief-making lacqueys of
the palace, and one of these, the eunuch Heraclius, for ever seeming
to anticipate the Emperor’s wishes, and really making him the tool of
his own base designs, had begun to talk of possible means of freeing
Valentinian from the yoke of his minister and making him master in his
own house. Hints of treachery reached the ears of Aetius, and to secure
himself he pressed the Emperor to exchange with him solemn oaths of
mutual faith. At the same time a scheme which had probably been for some
time talked of, and which seemed to promise the undisturbed succession to
the throne of a hero’s son, received its final ratification. Valentinian
promised to give one of his daughters in marriage to Gaudentius[98], the
son of Aetius.
[Sidenote: _454. Valentinian murders Aetius._]
Such was the state of affairs, a hollow crust of reconciliation and
plighted vows over the red-hot lava of hatred and suspicion, when one
day Aetius entered the palace and had an interview with the Emperor.
He spoke of the covenant entered into between them: he perhaps urged
the completion of the marriage at once, and hinted that his master was
seeking to evade the fulfilment of his promise. Valentinian was, or
feigned to be, enraged against his importunate petitioner. He struck
Aetius a blow: the swords of the surrounding courtiers, we are told,
‘cruelly finished the work.’ The last of the Romans was lying dead at the
feet of one of the meanest of the Caesars. Along with Aetius fell one of
his friends, bearer of a name destined to European celebrity,—Boetius,
an ancestor of the author of the ‘Consolation of Philosophy.’
Soon after the foul deed had been done Valentinian asked a Roman nobleman
if he had done well in slaying Aetius. ‘Well done, or ill done, most
noble Augustus, I am hardly able to decide. But I know one thing, that
you have chopped off your right hand with your left.’
[Sidenote: _Vengeance on Valentinian. 455._]
The death of Aetius, which probably occurred towards the end of 454,
remained not long unavenged. Valentinian, who with all his many vices
does not appear to have been a coward, allowed the friends and retainers
of the murdered man to approach him without hindrance. He supposed
that what his flatterers told him was true, and that the deed of the
Emperor of Rome would be accepted as if it were the decree of heaven by
his adoring subjects. Little did he know the longing for revenge which
filled the hearts of the barbarian guardsmen of Aetius, who, like the
_Comitatus_ of a German chief, deemed themselves for ever disgraced
by the unrequited murder of their lord. On the 16th of March, 455,
Valentinian rode forth from the City to a place called ‘the Two Laurels,’
to watch some contest (perhaps a wrestling match) which was going
forward. While he was intent on the spectacle two henchmen of Aetius,
named Optila and Thraustila[99]—their names reveal their barbarian
origin—approached and ‘stabbed him with unexpected blows[100].’ The
eunuch Heraclius, who had been his accomplice in the murder of Aetius,
was slain at the same time.
[Sidenote: _Accession of Maximus._]
[Sidenote: _His marriage with Eudoxia._]
[Sidenote: _455._]
With the death of Valentinian the dynasty of Theodosius came to an end,
his cousin Pulcheria, the Augusta at Constantinople, having died two
years before (453). The person who was chosen to succeed him was Maximus,
an elderly Senator, a man who had been twice Consul, and had filled
various offices of the State with credit and distinction. The hopes which
had been formed of a wise and honourable administration of the affairs
of the Republic by the new Emperor were, however, soon disappointed.
Maximus not only left the murder of his predecessor unavenged: he even
seemed ostentatiously to court the society of the murderers, thus
definitely enrolling himself as a partisan of the family of Aetius and
an antagonist of the probably still numerous adherents of the Theodosian
house. He carried this partisanship to such lengths as to suggest to
the minds of his subjects that he had himself been privy to the death
of his predecessor. The suspicion was probably unfounded, but the mere
fact that it was widely entertained must have been fatal to the moral
ascendency of the new Emperor. Moreover he compelled the beautiful widow
of Valentinian, who was still truly mourning her unworthy husband, to
accept his hand in marriage, and proposed to marry his son Palladius
to her daughter, Placidia. If he hoped thus to consolidate his dynasty
by a double union with the family of his predecessor, he was bitterly
disappointed. Eudoxia was wounded in her affections by the indecent
haste with which she had been compelled to accept this elderly and
commonplace civil servant instead of the brilliant, if worthless, husband
of her youth. She was wounded in her pride by a marriage, or rather by
two marriages, deemed by her to be beneath the dignity of that great
Theodosian house to which she belonged by a double title, and which had
now for three quarters of a century been, in the flattering dialect of
the Court, ‘domus divina.’
[Sidenote: _Eudoxia invokes the aid of Gaiseric._]
Like her sister-in-law Honoria, in her rage and despair she looked to
the barbarian for aid. She found means to send a messenger to Gaiseric,
inviting him to attack Rome and deliver her from shameful bondage. The
messenger found the Vandal king in no unwilling mood. Most likely he had
often discussed with himself the probabilities of success or failure in
the most brilliant enterprise that ambition and avarice could suggest to
a Teutonic warrior: and now all doubts were removed by the knowledge that
Rome’s powers of resistance, feeble at the best, would be paralysed by
internal dissensions. His ships were no doubt all equipped in readiness
for his usual spring-tour of desolation: he had but to give to the
waiting pilot the word of command, ‘for Rome.’
[Sidenote: _Gaiseric sets sail for Rome, June, 455._]
[Sidenote: _Flight and death of Maximus._]
The Vandal fleet reached the mouth of the Tiber in the early days of
June (455); but already, three days before their arrival, the reign of
Maximus, which lasted only about ten or eleven weeks, had come to an
end. The rumour of the impending invasion, fears of domestic treachery,
the unconcealed scorn and hatred of Eudoxia, quite unnerved the elderly
Emperor, who, after publishing a proclamation granting liberty to leave
the City to all who desired to do so, himself claimed the permission
which he had accorded to his subjects and stole away from the palace.
As soon as his departure was discovered an insurrection broke out. The
servants of the palace, who were all on Eudoxia’s side, followed and
overtook the fugitive. According to the ghastly precedent set in the
case of Rufinus, they tore him limb from limb, dragged the pieces of his
body through the streets of Rome and hurled them contemptuously into
the Tiber. Already, in the general ruin of society, the men who called
themselves Romans were showing themselves even more barbarous than the
barbarians.
[Sidenote: _Surrender of the City._]
[Sidenote: _455. Plunder of Rome._]
A city thus left without a ruler, and probably divided against itself,
(the enemies and the friends of the late Theodosian dynasty regarding one
another with hatred and fear,) could offer no effectual resistance, and
appears to have offered no resistance at all, to the mighty Vandal. Once
more the expedient of Papal intercession was resorted to, but this time
with only partial success. When Pope Leo with his clergy met Gaiseric
outside the Porta Portuensis the conqueror agreed—no doubt on condition
that his entry should be unopposed—to spare the lives of the inhabitants,
to set fire neither to church, palace, nor private dwelling, and to
abstain from the use of torture for the discovery of hidden wealth.
These conditions being observed, there was to be no limit to the Vandal
capacities for spoliation. ‘For fourteen days,’ says an annalist[101],
‘with secure and unhindered investigation, Rome was stripped of all her
wealth.’ Temple and Christian church were impartially plundered. Half of
the gilded roof of the Temple of Capitolian Jove, the Communion-plate of
all the great basilicas, statues from forum and hippodrome and villa, the
crown and jewelled ornaments of Theodosius and his posterity, even the
seven-branched candlestick and the table of the shew-bread which Titus
had brought from ruined Jerusalem, these and endless other treasures
were borne during those fourteen days of leisurely spoliation along the
Via Portuensis and stowed away in the capacious holds of the Vandal
galleys[102]. The vessel which bore the statues and other treasures of
art most unfortunately foundered on the voyage. The spoils of the Jewish
temple reached their destination in safety, and after reposing in the
recesses of the Vandal palace at Carthage for seventy-nine years were
carried to Constantinople to grace the triumph of Belisarius: but the
Roman Emperor Justinian, fearing that these sacred treasures which had
already witnessed the sack of three great cities, Jerusalem, Rome, and
Carthage, bringing ill fortune with them like the Ark of God to the
cities of the Philistines, might also witness the fall of Constantinople,
sent them back to their original home on Mount Moriah, where apparently
they must still have been stored up when Omar, at the head of his true
believers, stormed the Holy City.
[Sidenote: _Gaiseric returns to Africa._]
[Sidenote: _Captivity of Eudoxia and her daughters._]
Gaiseric, having fully accomplished his purpose, not conquest but
plunder, returned to Carthage, laying waste on his way the shores of
Campania and ruining the cities of Capua and Nola. The Empress Eudoxia
and her two daughters were transported to Carthage. The elder daughter,
Eudoxia, was married to Gaiseric’s eldest son, Huneric,—a most miserable
union, since she was a devoted Catholic and her husband a bitter Arian.
In 472, after twenty-seven years of wedlock, she escaped from the hated
land to Jerusalem, and there died, after a few months spent in religious
seclusion, at the Tomb of the Saviour. The Empress Eudoxia and her other
daughter, Placidia, were sent to Constantinople in 462, after seven
years’ captivity, in consideration of a large ransom paid by the Emperor
Leo, who, though no relation of the Theodosian family, felt his dignity
wounded by the detention of the widow and daughter of an Emperor in the
palace of the barbarian.
[Sidenote: _Further fortunes of the Theodosian family._]
Placidia’s husband, a senator named Olybrius, was one of the
‘shadow-Emperors’ whose coming and going marked the last twenty years
of the Empire of the West. In March, 472, he was proclaimed Augustus
by Ricimer, the successor of Stilicho and Aetius in the position of
‘powerful friend’ of the Emperors. In October of the same year he died
of dropsy, having produced no perceptible eddy in the swift downward
current of the fortunes of Rome. A grandson of his and Placidia’s, a
great-grandson of Valentinian III, named also Olybrius, was Consul in
491. His inconspicuous name is the last vestige left in history of the
family of the great Theodosius.
I have overpassed the proper limits of my subject by a few years in
order to trace the fortunes of the Theodosian _family_. The Theodosian
_dynasty_ ended, as we have seen, in March, 455; and that event, with the
immediately succeeding sack of Rome by Gaiseric, is a fitting close to my
narrative.
[Sidenote: _Conclusion._]
In 375, before the Huns had crossed the Dniester, or the fugitive
Visigoths had crowded to the shore of the Danube, beseeching the
hospitality of the Empire, it seemed as if the stately fabric reared
by the Senate and People of Rome, which had already stood for eleven
centuries, might stand for eleven centuries more. In 455, when the
ships of the Vandal king were bearing away the widow and daughters of
an Emperor, the spoils of the city and palace, and a crowd of well-born
captives, to his robber-fortress of Carthage, the sceptre of the great
world-conquering power was broken. Britain, Gaul, Germany, Spain,
Africa, were lost to her dominion. Rome herself had twice surrendered
to a barbarian conqueror, and had twice been sacked by his soldiers.
The sacred soil of Italy had for years been trodden under foot by the
armies of the Goth, the Hun, and the Vandal. The Empire’s reputation of
unconquerableness had departed from her, and when Roman and barbarian
met on the battle-field, the expectation in both armies was that the
legions would _not_ be victorious. A long and wonderful existence yet
lay before the New Rome by the Bosphorus, but from the Old Rome by the
Tiber the spell of Empire had for a time departed. Yet already there were
indications in the sky from what quarter her new day would dawn. Already
the majestic figure of Leo betokened the uprising of a new order of men,
the avowed successors of a fisherman of Bethsaida, who should rule over
a wider world than the Roman Empire, and wield a more absolute authority
than had been enjoyed by the proudest of the successors of Augustus.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Greece.
[2] Regulus.
[3] ‘I appeal unto Caesar.’
[4] Strictly speaking the Ulpii, Aelii, Antonini, and Annii. But
Antoninus is the best central name for the dynasty.
[5] The city of Spalato now occupies the site of the palace of
Diocletian, which was built in the neighbourhood of Salona.
[6] Valens.
[7] Cod. Theod. xii. 1, 160. It is Arcadius who uses this expression.
[8] Vegetius (De Re Militari ii. 5).
[9] ‘Nam imperator cum Augusti nomen accepit, tanquam praesenti et
corporali Deo fidelis est praestanda devotio, inpendendus pervigil
famulatus.’