hostages, and streamed across the river as fast as the Roman
Danube-flotilla could transport them. But no sooner had they reached
Moesia than troubles broke out. The Roman officials at first tried to
disarm the immigrants, but the Goths were unwilling to surrender their
weapons, and offered large bribes to be allowed to retain them: in strict
disobedience to the Emperor’s orders, the bribes were accepted and the
Goths retained their arms. Further disputes soon broke out. The provisions
of Moesia did not suffice for so many hundred thousand mouths as had just
entered its border, and Valens had ordered stores of corn from Asia to be
collected for the use of the Goths, till they should have received and
commenced to cultivate land of their own. But the governor, Lupicinus, to
fill his own pockets, held back the food, and doled out what he chose to
give at exorbitant prices. In sheer hunger the Goths were driven to barter
a slave for a single loaf of bread and ten pounds of silver for a sheep.
This shameless extortion continued as long as the stores and the patience
of the Goths lasted. At last the poorer immigrants were actually beginning
to sell their own children for slaves rather than let them starve. This
drove the Goths to desperation, and a chance affray set the whole nation
in a blaze. Fritigern, with many of his nobles, was dining with Count
Lupicinus at the town of Marcianopolis, when some starving Goths tried to
pillage the market by force. A party of Roman soldiers strove to drive
them off, and were at once mishandled or slain. On hearing the tumult and
learning its cause, Lupicinus recklessly bade his retinue seize and slay
Fritigern and the other guests at his banquet. The Goths drew their swords
and cut their way out of the palace. Then riding to the nearest camp of
his followers, Fritigern told his tale, and bade them take up arms against
Rome.
There followed a year of desperate fighting all along the Danube, and the
northern slope of the Balkans. The Goths half-starved for many months, and
smarting under the extortion and chicanery to which they had been
subjected, soon showed that the old barbarian spirit was but thinly
covered by the veneer of Christianity and civilization which they had
acquired in the last half-century. The struggle resolved itself into a
repetition of the great raids of the third century: towns were sacked and
the open country harried in the old style, nor was the war rendered less
fierce by the fact that many runaway slaves and other outcasts among the
provincial population joined the invaders. But the Roman armies still
retained their old reputation; the ravages of the Goths were checked at
the Balkans, and though joined by the remnants of the Ostrogoths from the
Danube mouth, as well as by other tribes flying from the Huns, the
Visigoths were at first held at bay by the imperial armies. A desperate
pitched battle at Ad Salices, near the modern Kustendje thinned the ranks
of both sides, but led to no decisive result.
Next year, however, the unwarlike Emperor, driven into the field by the
clamours of his subjects, took the field in person, with great
reinforcements brought from Asia Minor. At the same time his nephew
Gratian, a gallant young prince who had succeeded to the Empire of the
West, set forth through Pannonia to bring aid to the lands of the Lower
Danube.
The personal intervention of Valens in the struggle was followed by a
fearful disaster. In 378 A.D., the main body of the Goths succeeded in
forcing the line of the Balkans; they were not far from Adrianople when
the Emperor started to attack them, with a splendid army of 60,000 men.
Every one expected to hear of a victory, for the reputation of
invincibility still clung to the legions, and after six hundred years of
war the disciplined infantry of Rome, _robur peditum_, whose day had
lasted since the Punic wars, were still reckoned superior, when fairly
handled, to any amount of wild barbarians.
But a new chapter of the history of the art of war was just commencing;
during their sojourn in the plains of South Russia and Roumania the Goths
had taken, first of all German races, to fighting on horseback. Dwelling
in the Ukraine they had felt the influence of that land, ever the nurse of
cavalry from the day of the Scythian to that of the Tartar and Cossack.
They had come to “consider it more honourable to fight on horse than on
foot,” and every chief was followed by his war-band of mounted men. Driven
against their will into conflict with the empire, they found themselves
face to face into the army that had so long held the world in fear, and
had turned back their own ancestors in rout three generations before.
Valens found the main body of the Goths encamped in a great “laager,” on
the plain north of Adrianople. After some abortive negotiations he
developed an attack on their front, when suddenly a great body of horsemen
charged in on the Roman flank. It was the main strength of the Gothic
cavalry, which had been foraging at a distance; receiving news of the
fight it had ridden straight for the battle field. Some Roman squadrons
which covered the left flank of the Emperor’s army were ridden down and
trampled under foot. Then the Goths swept down on the infantry of the left
wing, rolled it up, and drove it in upon the centre. So tremendous was
their impact that legions and cohorts were pushed together in hopeless
confusion. Every attempt to stand firm failed, and in a few minutes left,
centre, and reserve, were one undistinguishable mass. Imperial guards,
light troops, lancers, auxiliaries, and infantry of the line were wedged
together in a press that grew closer every moment. The Roman cavalry saw
that the day was lost, and rode off without another effort. Then the
abandoned infantry realized the horror of their position: equally unable
to deploy or to fly, they had to stand to be cut down. Men could not raise
their arms to strike a blow, so closely were they packed; spears snapped
right and left, their bearers being unable to lift them to a vertical
position; many soldiers were stifled in the press. Into this quivering
mass the Goths rode, plying lance and sword against the helpless enemy. It
was not till forty thousand men had fallen that the thinning of the ranks
enabled the survivors to break out and follow their cavalry in a headlong
flight. They left behind them, dead on the field, the Emperor, the Grand
Masters of the Infantry and Cavalry, the Count of the Palace, and
thirty-five commanders of different corps.
The battle of Adrianople was the most fearful defeat suffered by a Roman
army since Cannæ, a slaughter to which it is aptly compared by the
contemporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus. The army of the East was
almost annihilated, and was never reorganized again on the old Roman
lines.
This awful catastrophe brought down on Constantinople the first attack
which it experienced since it had changed its name from Byzantium. After a
vain assault on Adrianople, the victorious Goths pressed rapidly on
towards the imperial city. Harrying the whole country side as they passed
by, they presented themselves before the “Golden Gate,” its south-western
exit. But the attack was destined to come to nothing: “their courage
failed them when they looked on the vast circuit of walls and the enormous
extent of streets; all that mass of riches within appeared inaccessible to
them. They cast away the siege machines which they had prepared, and
rolled backward on to Thrace.”(3) Beyond skirmishing under the walls with
a body of Saracen cavalry which had been brought up to strengthen the
garrison, they made no hostile attempt on the city. So forty years after
his death, Constantine’s prescience was for the first time justified. He
was right in believing that an impregnable city on the Bosphorus would
prove the salvation of the Balkan Peninsula even if all its open country
were overrun by the invader.
The unlucky Valens was succeeded on the throne by Theodosius, a wise and
virtuous prince, who set himself to repair, by caution and courage
combined, the disaster that had shaken the Roman power in the Danube
lands. With the remnants of the army of the East he made head against the
barbarians; without venturing to attack their main body, he destroyed many
marauders and scattered bands, and made the continuance of the war
profitless to them. If they dispersed to plunder they were cut off; if
they held together in masses they starved. Presently Fritigern died, and
Theodosius made peace with his successor Athanarich, a king who had lately
come over the Danube at the head of a new swarm of Goths from the
Carpathian country. Theodosius frankly promised and faithfully observed
the terms that Fritigern had asked of Valens ten years before. He granted
the Goths land for their settlement in the Thracian province which they
had wasted, and enlisted in his armies all the chiefs and their war-bands.
Within ten years after the fight of Adrianople he had forty thousand
Teutonic horsemen in his service; they formed the best and most formidable
part of his host, and were granted a higher pay than the native Roman
soldiery. The immediate military results of the policy of Theodosius were
not unsatisfactory; it was his Gothic auxiliaries who won for him his two
great victories over the legions of the West, when in A.D. 388 he
conquered the rebel Magnus Maximus, and in A.D. 394 the rebel Eugenius.
[Illustration]
Gothic Captives. (_From the Column of Arcadius._)
But from the political side the experiment of Theodosius was fraught with
the greatest danger that the Roman Empire had yet known. When barbarian
auxiliaries had been enlisted before, they had been placed under Roman
leaders and mixed with equal numbers of Roman troops. To leave them under
their own chiefs, and deliberately favour them at the expense of the
native soldiery, was a most unhappy experiment. It practically put the
command of the empire in their hands; for there was no hold over them save
their personal loyalty to Theodosius, and the spell which the grandeur of
the Roman name and Roman culture still exercised over their minds. That
spell was still strong, as is shown in the story which the Gothic
historian Jornandes tells about the visit of the old King Athanarich to
Constantinople. “When he entered the royal city, ‘Now,’ said he, ‘do I at
last behold what I had often heard and deemed incredible.’ He passed his
eyes hither and thither admiring first the site of the city, then the
fleets of corn-ships, then the lofty walls, then the crowds of people of
all nations, mingled as the waters from divers springs mix in a single
pool, then the ranks of disciplined soldiery. And at last he cried aloud,
‘Doubtless the Emperor is as a god on earth, and he who raises a hand
against him is guilty of his own blood.’ ” But this impression was not to
continue for long. In A.D. 395, the good Emperor Theodosius, “the lover of
peace and of the Goths,” as he was called, died, and left the throne to
his two weakly sons Arcadius and Honorius.
IV. THE DEPARTURE OF THE GERMANS.
The Roman Empire, at the end of the fourth century, was in a condition
which made the experiment of Theodosius particularly dangerous. The
government was highly centralized and bureaucratic; hosts of officials,
appointed directly from Constantinople, administered every provincial post
from the greatest to the least. There was little local self-government and
no local patriotism. The civil population was looked on by the
bureaucratic caste as a multitude without rights or capacities, existing
solely for the purpose of paying taxes. So strongly was this view held,
that to prevent the revenue from suffering, the land-holding classes, from
the _curialis_, or local magnate, down to the poorest peasant, were
actually forbidden to move from one district to another without special
permission. A landowner was even prohibited from enlisting in the army,
unless he could show that he left an heir behind him capable of paying his
share in the local rates. An almost entire separation existed between the
civil population and the military caste; it was hard for a civilian of any
position to enlist; only the lower classes—who were of no account in
tax-paying—were suffered to join the army. On the other hand, every
pressure was used to make the sons of soldiers continue in the service.
Thus had arisen a purely professional army, which had no sympathy or
connection with the unarmed provincials whom it protected.
The army had been a source of unending trouble in the third century; for a
hundred years it had made and unmade Cæsars at its pleasure. That was
while it was still mainly composed of men born within the empire, and
officered by Romans.
But Theodosius had now swamped the native element in the army by his
wholesale enlistment of Gothic war-bands. And he had, moreover, handed
many of the chief military posts to Teutons. Some of them indeed had
married Roman wives and taken kindly to Roman modes of life, while nearly
all had professed Christianity. But at the best they were military
adventurers of alien blood while at the worst they were liable to relapse
into barbarism, cast all their loyalty and civilization to the winds, and
take to harrying the empire again in the old fearless fashion of the third
century. Clearly nothing could be more dangerous than to hand over the
protection of the timid and unarmed civil population to such guardians.
The contempt they must have felt for the unwarlike provincials was so
great, and the temptation to plunder the wealthy cities of the empire so
constant and pressing, that it is no wonder if the Teutons yielded.
Cæsar-making seemed as easy to the leaders as the sack of provincial
churches and treasuries did to the rank and file.
When the personal ascendency of Theodosius was removed, the empire fell at
once into the troubles which were inevitable. Both at the court of
Arcadius, who reigned at Constantinople, and at that of Honorius, who had
received the West as his share, a war of factions commenced between the
German and the Roman party. Theodosius had distributed so many high
military posts to Goths and other Teutons, that this influence was almost
unbounded. Stilicho _Magister militum_ (commander-in-chief) of the armies
of Italy was predominant at the council board of Honorius; though he was a
pure barbarian by blood, Theodosius had married him to his own niece
Serena, and left him practically supreme in the West, for the young
emperor was aged only eleven. In the East Arcadius, the elder brother, had
attained his eighteenth year, and might have ruled his own realm had he
possessed the energy. But he was a witless young man, “short, thin, and
sallow, so inactive that he seldom spoke, and always looked as if he was
about to fall asleep.” His prime minister was a Western Roman named
Rufinus, but before the first year of his reign was over, a Gothic captain
named Gainas slew Rufinus at a review, before the Emperor’s very eyes. The
weak Arcadius was then compelled to make the eunuch Eutropius his
minister, and to appoint Gainas _Magister militum_ for the East.
Gainas and Stilicho contented themselves with wire-pulling at Court; but
another Teutonic leader thought that the time had come for bolder work.
Alaric was a chief sprung from the family of the Balts, whom the Goths
reckoned next to the god-descended Amals among their princely houses. He
was young, daring, and untameable; several years spent at Constantinople
had failed to civilize him, but had succeeded in filling him with contempt
for Roman effeminacy. Soon after the death of Theodosius, he raised the
Visigoths in revolt, making it his pretext that the advisers of Arcadius
were refusing the _foederati_, or auxiliaries, certain arrears of pay. The
Teutonic sojourners in Moesia and Thrace joined him almost to a man, and
the Constantinopolitan government found itself with only a shadow of an
army to oppose the rebels. Alaric wandered far and wide, from the Danube
to the gates of Constantinople, and from Constantinople to Greece,
ransoming or sacking every town in his way till the Goths were gorged with
plunder. No one withstood him save Stilicho, who was summoned from the
West to aid his master’s brother. By skilful manœuvres Stilicho blockaded
Alaric in a mountain position in Arcadia; but when he had him at his
mercy, it was found that “dog does not eat dog.” The Teutonic prime
minister let the Teutonic rebel escape him, and the Visigoths rolled north
again into Illyricum. Sated with plunder, Alaric then consented to grant
Arcadius peace, on condition that he was made a _Magister militum_ like
Stilicho and Gainas, and granted as much land for his tribesmen as he
chose to ask. [A.D. 396.]
For the next five years Alaric, now proclaimed King of the Goths by his
victorious soldiery, reigned with undisputed sway over the eastern parts
of the Balkan Peninsula, paying only a shadow of homage to the royal
phantom at Constantinople. There appeared every reason to believe that a
German kingdom was about to be permanently established in the lands south
and west of the Danube. The fate which actually befell Gaul, Spain, and
Britain, a few years later seemed destined for Moesia and Macedonia. How
different the history of Europe would have been if the Germans had settled
down in Servia and Bulgaria we need hardly point out.
But another series of events was impending. In A.D. 401, Alaric, instead
of resuming his attacks on Constantinople, suddenly declared war on the
Western Emperor Honorius. He marched round the head of the Adriatic and
invaded Northern Italy. The half-Romanized Stilicho, who wished to keep
the rule of the West to himself, fought hard to turn the Goths out of
Italy, and beat back Alaric’s first invasion. But then the young emperor,
who was as weak and more worthless than his brother Arcadius, slew the
great minister on a charge of treason. When Stilicho was gone, Alaric had
everything his own way; he moved with the whole Visigothic race into
Italy, where he ranged about at his will, ransoming and plundering every
town from Rome downwards. The Visigoths are heard of no more in the Balkan
Peninsula; they now pass into the history of Italy and then into that of
Spain.
While Alaric’s eyes were turned on Italy, but before he had actually come
into conflict with Stilicho, the Court of Constantinople had been the seat
of grave troubles. Gainas the Gothic _Magister militum_ of the East, and
his creature, the eunuch Eutropius, had fallen out, and the man of war had
no difficulty in disposing of the wretched harem-bred Grand Chamberlain.
Instigated by Gainas, the German mercenaries in the army of Asia started
an insurrection under a certain Tribigild. Gainas was told to march
against them, and collected troops ostensibly for that purpose. But when
he was at the head of a considerable army, he did not attack the rebels,
but sent a message to Constantinople bidding Arcadius give up to him the
obnoxious Grand Chamberlain. Eutropius, hearing of his danger, threw
himself on the protection of the Church: he fled into the Cathedral of St.
Sophia and clung to the altar. John Chrysostom, the intrepid Patriarch of
Constantinople, forbade the soldiers to enter the church, and protected
the fugitive for some days. One of the most striking incidents in the
history of St. Sophia followed: while the cowering Chamberlain lay before
the altar, John preached to a crowded congregation a sermon on the text,
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” emphasizing every period of his
harangue by pointing to the fallen Eutropius—prime minister of the empire
yesterday, and a hunted criminal to-day. The patriarch extorted a promise
that the eunuch’s life should be spared, and Eutropius gave himself up.
Arcadius banished him to Cyprus, but the inexorable Gainas was not
contented with his rival’s removal; he had Eutropius brought back to
Constantinople and beheaded.
The _Magister militum_ now brought his army over to Constantinople, and
quartered it there to overawe the emperor. It appeared quite likely that
ere long the Germans would sack the city; but the fate that befell Rome
ten years later was not destined for Constantinople. A mere chance brawl
put the domination of Gainas to a sudden end. He himself and many of his
troops were outside the city, when a sudden quarrel at one of the gates
between a band of Goths and some riotous citizens brought about a general
outbreak against the Germans. The Constantinopolitan mob showed itself
more courageous and not less unruly than the Roman mob of elder days. The
whole population turned out with extemporized arms and attacked the German
soldiery. The gates were closed to prevent Gainas and his troops from
outside returning, and a desperate street-fight ranged over the entire
city. Isolated bodies of the Germans were cut off one by one, and at last
their barracks were surrounded and set on fire. The rioters had the upper
hand; seven thousand soldiers fell, and the remnant thought themselves
lucky to escape. Gainas at once declared open war on the empire, but he
had not the genius of Alaric, nor the numerical strength that had followed
the younger chief. He was beaten in the field and forced to fly across the
Danube, where he was caught and beheaded by Uldes, King of the Huns.
Curiously enough the officer who defeated Gainas was himself not only a
Goth but a heathen: he was named Fravitta and had been the sworn
guest-friend of Theodosius, whose son he faithfully defended even against
the assault of his own countrymen, [A.D. 401.]
The departure of Alaric and the death of Gainas freed the Eastern Romans
from the double danger that has impended over them. They were neither to
see an independent German kingdom on the Danube and Morava, nor to remain
under the rule of a semi-civilized German _Magister militum_, making and
unmaking ministers, and perhaps Cæsars, at his good pleasure. The weak
Arcadius was enabled to spend the remaining seven years of his life in
comparative peace and quiet. His court was only troubled by an open war
between his spouse, the Empress Ælia Eudoxia, and John Chrysostom, the
Patriarch of Constantinople. John was a man of saintly life and apostolic
fervour, but rash and inconsiderate alike in speech and action. His
charity and eloquence made him the idol of the populace of the imperial
city, but his austere manners and autocratic methods of dealing with his
subordinates had made him many foes among the clergy. The patriarch’s
enemies were secretly supported by the empress, who had taken offence at
the outspoken way in which John habitually denounced the luxury and
insolence of her court. She favoured the intrigues of Theophilus,
Patriarch of Alexandria, against his brother prelate, backed the Asiatic
clergy in their complaints about John’s oppression of them, and at last
induced the Emperor to allow the saintly patriarch to be deposed by a
hastily-summoned council, the “Synod of the Oak” held outside the city.
The populace rose at once to defend their pastor; riots broke out,
Theodosius was chased back to Egypt, and the Emperor, terrified by an
earthquake which seemed to manifest the wrath of heaven, restored John to
his place.
Next year, however, the war between the empress and the patriarch broke
out again. John took the occasion of the erection of a statue of Eudoxia
in the Augustaeum to recommence his polemics. Some obsolete semi-pagan
ceremonies at its dedication roused his wrath, and he delivered a scathing
sermon in which—if his enemies are to be believed—he compared the empress
to Herodias, and himself to John the Baptist. The Emperor, at his wife’s
demand, summoned another council, which condemned Chrysostom, and on
Easter Day, A.D. 404, seized the patriarch in his cathedral by armed
force, and banished him to Asia. That night a fire, probably kindled by
the angry adherents of Chrysostom, broke out in St. Sophia, which was
burnt to the ground. From thence it spread to the neighbouring buildings,
and finally to the Senate-house, which was consumed with all the treasures
of ancient Greek art of which Constantine had made it the repository.