ALARIC INVADES ITALY
The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the
appearance and produce the effects of a treasonable correspondence with
the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the council
of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures which were
actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius. The king of the Goths
would have conspired, perhaps with some reluctance, to destroy the
formidable adversary by whose arms, in Italy as well as in Greece, he had
been twice overthrown. Their active and interested hatred laboriously
accomplished the disgrace and ruin of the great Stilicho. The valour
of Sarus, his fame in arms, and his personal or hereditary influence
over the confederate barbarians could recommend him only to the friends
of their country, who despised or detested the worthless characters of
Turpilio, Varanes, and Vigilantius. By the pressing instances of the
new favourites, these generals, unworthy as they had shown themselves
of the name of soldiers, were promoted to the command of the cavalry,
of the infantry, and of the domestic troops. The Gothic prince would
have subscribed with pleasure the edict which the fanaticism of Olympius
dictated to the simple and devout emperor.
Honorius excluded all persons adverse to the Catholic church from
holding any office in the state; obstinately rejected the service of
all those who dissented from his religion; and rashly disqualified many
of his bravest and most skilful officers, who adhered to the pagan
worship or who had imbibed the opinions of Arianism. These measures, so
advantageous to an enemy, Alaric would have approved, and might perhaps
have suggested; but it may seem doubtful whether the barbarian would
have promoted his interest at the expense of the inhuman and absurd
cruelty which was perpetrated by the direction or at least with the
connivance of the imperial ministers. The foreign auxiliaries who had
been attached to the person of Stilicho lamented his death; but the
desire of revenge was checked by a natural apprehension for the safety
of their wives and children, who were detained as hostages in the strong
cities of Italy, where they had likewise deposited their most valuable
effects. At the same hour, and as if by a common signal, the cities of
Italy were polluted by the same horrid scenes of universal massacre and
pillage, which involved in promiscuous destruction the families and
fortunes of the barbarians. Exasperated by such an injury, which might
have awakened the tamest and most servile spirit, they cast a look of
indignation and hope towards the camp of Alaric, and unanimously swore
to pursue with just and implacable war the perfidious nation that had so
basely violated the laws of hospitality. By the imprudent conduct of the
ministers of Honorius, the republic lost the assistance and deserved the
enmity of thirty thousand of her bravest soldiers; and the weight of that
formidable army, which alone might have determined the event of the war,
was transferred from the scale of the Romans into that of the Goths.
[Sidenote: [408-409 A.D.]]
In the arts of negotiation, as well as in those of war, the Gothic king
maintained his superiority over an enemy whose seeming changes proceeded
from the total want of counsel and design. From his camp on the confines
of Italy, Alaric attentively observed the revolutions of the palace,
watched the progress of faction and discontent, disguised the hostile
aspect of a barbarian invader, and assumed the more popular appearance
of the friend and ally of the great Stilicho; to whose virtues, when
they were no longer formidable, he could pay a just tribute of sincere
praise and regret. The pressing invitation of the malcontents, who
urged the king of the Goths to invade Italy, was enforced by a lively
sense of his personal injuries; and he might speciously complain that
the imperial ministers still delayed and eluded the payment of the four
thousand pounds of gold which had been granted by the Roman senate,
either to reward his services or to appease his fury. His decent firmness
was supported by an artful moderation, which contributed to the success
of his designs. He required a fair and reasonable satisfaction; but he
gave the strongest assurances that as soon as he had obtained it he
would immediately retire. He refused to trust the faith of the Romans,
unless Ætius and Jason, the sons of two great officers of state, were
sent as hostages to his camp; but he offered to deliver, in exchange,
several of the noblest youths of the Gothic nation. The modesty of
Alaric was interpreted by the ministers of Ravenna as a sure evidence
of his weakness and fear. They disdained either to negotiate a treaty,
or to assemble an army; and, with a rash confidence, derived only from
their ignorance of the extreme danger, irretrievably wasted the decisive
moments of peace and war.
While they expected that the barbarians would evacuate Italy, Alaric,
with bold and rapid marches, passed the Alps and the Po; hastily pillaged
the cities of Aquileia, Altinum, Concordia, and Cremona, which yielded
to his arms; increased his forces by the accession of thirty thousand
auxiliaries; and, without meeting a single enemy in the field, advanced
as far as the edge of the morass which protected the impregnable
residence of the emperor of the West. Instead of attempting the hopeless
siege of Ravenna, the prudent leader of the Goths proceeded to Ariminum,
stretched his ravages along the seacoast of the Adriatic, and meditated
the conquest of the ancient mistress of the world. An Italian hermit,
whose zeal and sanctity were respected by the barbarians themselves,
encountered the victorious monarch, and boldly denounced the indignation
of heaven against the oppressors of the earth; but the saint himself was
confounded by the solemn asseveration of Alaric that he felt a secret
preternatural impulse, which directed and even compelled his march to
the gates of Rome. He felt that his genius and his fortune were equal to
the most arduous enterprises; and the enthusiasm which he communicated
to the Goths insensibly removed the popular and almost superstitious
reverence of the nations for the majesty of the Roman name. His troops,
animated by the hopes of spoil, followed the course of the Flaminian way,
occupied the unguarded passages of the Apennines, descended into the rich
plains of Umbria; and as they lay encamped on the banks of the Clitumnus,
might wantonly slaughter and devour the milk-white oxen which had been
so long reserved for the use of Roman triumphs. A lofty situation, and a
seasonable tempest of thunder and lightning, preserved the little city
of Narnia (Narni); but the king of the Goths, despising the ignoble prey,
still advanced with unabated vigour; and after he had passed through the
stately arches adorned with the spoils of barbaric victories, he pitched
his camp under the walls of Rome.
By a skilful disposition of his numerous forces, who impatiently watched
the moment of an assault, Alaric encompassed the walls, commanded the
twelve principal gates, intercepted all communication with the adjacent
country, and vigilantly guarded the navigation of the Tiber, from which
the Romans derived the surest and most plentiful supply of provisions.
The first emotions of the nobles and of the people were those of surprise
and indignation that a vile barbarian should dare to insult the capital
of the world; but their arrogance was soon humbled by misfortune, and
their unmanly rage, instead of being directed against an enemy in arms,
was meanly exercised on a defenceless and innocent victim. Perhaps in
the person of Serena, the Romans might have respected the niece of
Theodosius, the aunt, nay even the adoptive mother, of the reigning
emperor; but they abhorred the widow of Stilicho, and they listened with
credulous passion to the tale of calumny which accused her of maintaining
a secret and criminal correspondence with the Gothic invader. Actuated or
overawed by the same popular frenzy, the senate, without requiring any
evidence of her guilt, pronounced the sentence of her death.
Serena was ignominiously strangled, and the infatuated multitude were
astonished to find that this cruel act of injustice did not immediately
produce the retreat of the barbarians and the deliverance of the city.
That unfortunate city gradually experienced the distress of scarcity,
and at length the horrid calamities of famine. The daily allowance
of three pounds of bread was reduced to one-half, to one-third, to
nothing; and the price of corn still continued to rise in a rapid and
extravagant proportion. The poorer citizens, who were unable to purchase
the necessaries of life, solicited the precarious charity of the rich;
and for a while the public misery was alleviated by the humanity of
Læta, the widow of the emperor Gratian, who had fixed her residence at
Rome, and consecrated to the use of the indigent the princely revenue
which she annually received from the grateful successors of her husband.
But these private and temporary donatives were insufficient to appease
the hunger of a numerous people; and the progress of famine invaded the
marble palaces of the senators themselves. The persons of both sexes who
had been educated in the enjoyment of ease and luxury discovered how
little is requisite to supply the demands of nature; and lavished their
unavailing treasures of gold and silver to obtain the coarse and scanty
sustenance which they would formerly have rejected with disdain. The
food the most repugnant to sense or imagination, the aliments the most
unwholesome and pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured and
fiercely disputed by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion was entertained
that some desperate wretches fed on the bodies of their fellow-creatures,
whom they had secretly murdered; and even mothers (such was the horrid
conflict of the two most powerful instincts implanted by nature in the
human breast), even mothers are said to have tasted the flesh of their
slaughtered infants.
Many thousands of the inhabitants of Rome expired in their houses, or
in the streets, for want of sustenance; and as the public sepulchres
without the walls were in the power of the enemy, the stench which
arose from so many putrid and unburied carcasses infected the air; and
the miseries of famine were succeeded and aggravated by the contagion
of a pestilential disease. The assurances of speedy and effectual
relief, which were repeatedly transmitted from the court of Ravenna,
supported for some time the fainting resolution of the Romans, till at
length the despair of any human aid tempted them to accept the offers
of a preternatural deliverance. Pompeianus, prefect of the city, had
been persuaded by the art or fanaticism of some Tuscan diviners that,
by the mysterious force of spells and sacrifices, they could extract
the lightning from the clouds, and point those celestial fires against
the camp of the barbarians. The important secret was communicated to
Innocent, the bishop of Rome; and the successor of St. Peter is accused,
perhaps without foundation, of preferring the safety of the republic
to the rigid severity of the Christian worship. But when the question
was agitated in the senate; when it was proposed, as an essential
condition, that those sacrifices should be performed in the Capitol, by
the authority and in the presence of the magistrates; the majority of
that respectable assembly, apprehensive either of the divine or of the
imperial displeasure, refused to join in an act which appeared almost
equivalent to the public restoration of paganism.
[Illustration: ROMAN LAMP]
The last resource of the Romans was in the clemency, or at least in the
moderation, of the king of the Goths. The senate, who in this emergency
assumed the supreme powers of government, appointed two ambassadors
to negotiate with the enemy. This important trust was delegated to
Basilius, a senator, of Spanish extraction, and already conspicuous in
the administration of provinces; and to Joannes, the first tribune of
the notaries, who was peculiarly qualified, by his dexterity in business
as well as by his former intimacy with the Gothic prince. When they were
introduced into his presence, they declared, perhaps in a more lofty
style than became their abject condition, that the Romans were resolved
to maintain their dignity, either in peace or war; and that if Alaric
refused them a fair and honourable capitulation, he might sound his
trumpets and prepare to give battle to an innumerable people, exercised
in arms and animated by despair. “The thicker the hay, the easier it is
mowed,” was the concise reply of the barbarian; and this rustic metaphor
was accompanied by a loud and insulting laugh, expressive of his contempt
for the menaces of an unwarlike populace, enervated by luxury before they
were emaciated by famine. He then condescended to fix the ransom which he
would accept as the price of his retreat from the walls of Rome: all the
gold and silver in the city, whether it were the property of the state or
of individuals; all the rich and precious movables; and all the slaves
who could prove their title to the name of barbarians. The ministers of
the senate presumed to ask, in a modest and suppliant tone: “If such, O
king! are your demands, what do you intend to leave us?” “Your lives,”
replied the haughty conqueror.
They trembled and retired. Yet before they retired, a short suspension
of arms was granted, which allowed some time for a more temperate
negotiation. The stern features of Alaric were insensibly relaxed; he
abated much of the rigour of his terms; and at length consented to raise
the siege on the immediate payment of five thousand pounds of gold, of
thirty thousand pounds of silver, of four thousand robes of silk, of
three thousand pieces of fine scarlet cloth, and of three thousand pounds
weight of pepper. But the public treasury was exhausted; the annual rents
of the great estates in Italy and the provinces were intercepted by the
calamities of war; the gold and gems had been exchanged, during the
famine, for the vilest sustenance; the hoards of secret wealth were still
concealed by the obstinacy of avarice; and some remains of consecrated
spoils afforded the only resource that could avert the impending ruin of
the city.
As soon as the Romans had satisfied the rapacious demands of Alaric
they were restored in some measure to the enjoyment of peace and
plenty. Several of the gates were cautiously opened; the importation
of provisions from the river, and the adjacent country, was no longer
obstructed by the Goths; the citizens resorted in crowds to the free
market, which was held during three days in the suburbs; and while
the merchants who undertook this gainful trade made a considerable
profit, the future subsistence of the city was secured by the ample
magazines which were deposited in the public and private granaries. A
more regular discipline than could have been expected was maintained
in the camp of Alaric; and the wise barbarian justified his regard for
the faith of treaties by the just severity with which he chastised a
party of licentious Goths who had insulted some Roman citizens on the
road to Ostia. His army, enriched by the contributions of the capital,
slowly advanced into the fair and fruitful province of Tuscany, where
he proposed to establish his winter quarters; and the Gothic standard
became the refuge of forty thousand barbarian slaves, who had broken
their chains, and aspired, under the command of their great deliverer,
to revenge the injuries and the disgrace of their cruel servitude. About
the same time he received a more honourable reinforcement of Goths
and Huns, whom Atawulf the brother of his wife, had conducted, at his
pressing invitation, from the banks of the Danube to those of the Tiber,
and who had cut their way, with some difficulty and loss, through the
superior numbers of the imperial troops. A victorious leader, who united
the daring spirit of a barbarian with the art and discipline of a Roman
general, was at the head of a hundred thousand fighting men; and Italy
pronounced with terror and respect the formidable name of Alaric.
At the distance of fifteen centuries we may be satisfied with relating
the military exploits of the conquerors of Rome, without presuming to
investigate the motives of their political conduct.
In the midst of his apparent prosperity, Alaric was conscious perhaps of
some secret weakness, some internal defect; or perhaps the moderation
which he displayed was intended only to deceive and disarm the easy
credulity of the ministers of Honorius. The king of the Goths repeatedly
declared that it was his desire to be considered as the friend of
peace and of the Romans. Three senators, at his earnest request, were
sent ambassadors to the court of Ravenna, to solicit the exchange of
hostages and the conclusion of the treaty; and the proposals, which he
more clearly expressed during the course of the negotiations, could
only inspire a doubt of his sincerity as they might seem inadequate
to the state of his fortune. The barbarian still aspired to the rank
of master-general of the armies of the West; he stipulated an annual
subsidy of corn and money; and he chose the provinces of Dalmatia,
Noricum, and Venetia, for the seat of his new kingdom, which would have
commanded the important communication between Italy and the Danube. If
these modest terms should be rejected Alaric showed a disposition to
relinquish his pecuniary demands, and even to content himself with the
possession of Noricum, an exhausted and impoverished country perpetually
exposed to the inroads of the barbarians of Germany. But the hopes of
peace were disappointed by the weak obstinacy or interested views of
the minister Olympius. Without listening to the salutary remonstrances
of the senate he dismissed their ambassadors under the conduct of a
military escort, too numerous for a retinue of honour and too feeble for
an army of defence. Six thousand Dalmatians, the flower of the imperial
legions, were ordered to march from Ravenna to Rome, through an open
country, which was occupied by the formidable myriads of the barbarians.
These brave legionaries, encompassed and betrayed, fell a sacrifice to
ministerial folly; their general Valens, with a hundred soldiers, escaped
from the field of battle; and one of the ambassadors, who could no longer
claim the protection of the law of nations, was obliged to purchase his
freedom with a ransom of thirty thousand pieces of gold. Yet Alaric,
instead of resenting this act of impotent hostility, immediately renewed
his proposals of peace; and the second embassy of the Roman senate, which
derived weight and dignity from the presence of Innocent, bishop of the
city, was guarded from the dangers of the road by a detachment of Gothic
soldiers.
Olympius might have continued to insult the just resentment of a people
who loudly accused him as the author of the public calamities; but his
power was undermined by the secret intrigues of the palace. The favourite
eunuchs transferred the government of Honorius and the empire to Jovius,
the prætorian prefect; an unworthy servant, who did not atone, by the
merit of personal attachment, for the errors and misfortunes of his
administration. The exile or escape of the guilty Olympius reserved him
for more vicissitudes of fortune; he experienced the adventures of an
obscure and wandering life; he again rose to power; he fell a second
time into disgrace; his ears were cut off; he expired under the lash;
and his ignominious death afforded a grateful spectacle to the friends
of Stilicho. After the removal of Olympius, whose character was deeply
tainted with religious fanaticism, the pagans and heretics were delivered
from the impolitic proscription which excluded them from the dignities of
the state. The brave Gennerid, a soldier of barbarian origin, who still
adhered to the worship of his ancestors, had been obliged to lay aside
the military belt; and though he was repeatedly assured by the emperor
himself that laws were not made for persons of his rank or merit, he
refused to accept any partial dispensation, and persevered in honourable
disgrace till he had extorted a general act of justice from the distress
of the Roman government. The conduct of Gennerid, in the important
station to which he was promoted or restored of master-general of
Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rætia, seemed to revive the discipline
and spirit of the republic. From a life of idleness and want, his troops
were soon habituated to severe exercise and plentiful subsistence; and
his private generosity often supplied the rewards which were denied by
the avarice or poverty of the court of Ravenna. The valour of Gennerid,
formidable to the adjacent barbarians, was the firmest bulwark of the
Illyrian frontier; and his vigilant care assisted the empire with a
reinforcement of ten thousand Huns, who arrived on the confines of
Italy, attended by such a convoy of provisions and such a numerous train
of sheep and oxen as might have been sufficient, not only for the march
of an army but for the settlement of a colony.
But the court and councils of Honorius still remained a scene of weakness
and distraction, of corruption and anarchy. Instigated by the prefect
Jovius, the guards rose in furious mutiny, and demanded the heads of
two generals and of the two principal eunuchs. The generals, under a
perfidious promise of safety, were sent on shipboard and privately
executed; while the favour of the eunuchs procured them a mild and secure
exile at Mediolanum and Constantinople. Eusebius the eunuch, and the
barbarian Allobich succeeded to the command of the bedchamber and of the
guards; and the mutual jealousy of these subordinate ministers was the
cause of their mutual destruction. By the insolent order of the count of
the domestics, the great chamberlain was shamefully beaten to death with
sticks, before the eyes of the astonished emperor; and the subsequent
assassination of Allobich, in the midst of a public procession, is the
only circumstance of his life in which Honorius discovered the faintest
symptom of courage or resentment.
Yet before they fell, Eusebius and Allobich contributed their part to
the ruin of the empire by opposing the conclusion of a treaty which
Jovius, from a selfish and perhaps a criminal motive, had negotiated with
Alaric, in a personal interview under the walls of Ariminum. During the
absence of Jovius, the emperor was persuaded to assume a lofty tone of
inflexible dignity, such as neither his situation nor his character could
enable him to support; and a letter, signed with the name of Honorius,
was immediately despatched to the prætorian prefect, granting him a
free permission to dispose of the public money, but sternly refusing
to prostitute the military honours of Rome to the proud demands of a
barbarian. This letter was imprudently communicated to Alaric himself;
and the Goth, who in the whole transaction had behaved with temper and
decency, expressed, in the most outrageous language, his lively sense
of the insult so wantonly offered to his person and to his nation. The
conference of Ariminum was hastily interrupted; and the prefect Jovius,
on his return to Ravenna, was compelled to adopt, and even to encourage,
the fashionable opinions of the court. By his advice and example, the
principal officers of the state and army were obliged to swear that
without listening, in any circumstances, to any conditions of peace, they
would still persevere in perpetual and implacable war against the enemy
of the republic. This rash engagement opposed an insuperable bar to all
future negotiation. The ministers had sworn by the sacred head of the
emperor himself the most inviolable of oaths.
HONORIUS RETIRES TO RAVENNA; ATTALUS NAMED EMPEROR
While the emperor and his court enjoyed, with sullen pride, the security
of the marshes and fortifications of Ravenna, they abandoned Rome, almost
without defence, to the resentment of Alaric. Yet such was the moderation
which he still preserved or affected, that, as he moved with his army
along the Flaminian way, he successively despatched the bishops of the
towns of Italy to reiterate his offers of peace, and to conjure the
emperor that he would save the city and its inhabitants from hostile fire
and the sword of the barbarians. These impending calamities were however
averted, not indeed by the wisdom of Honorius but by the prudence or
humanity of the Gothic king; who employed a milder, though not less
effectual, method of conquest. Instead of assaulting the capital, he
successfully directed his efforts against the port of Ostia, one of the
boldest and most stupendous works of Roman magnificence. The accidents
to which the precarious subsistence of the city was continually exposed
in a winter navigation and an open road had suggested to the genius of
the first Cæsar the useful design which was executed under the reign of
Claudius. The artificial moles which formed the narrow entrance advanced
far into the sea, and firmly repelled the fury of the waves; while the
largest vessels securely rode at anchor within three deep and capacious
basins, which received the northern branch of the Tiber, about two miles
from the ancient colony of Ostia. The Roman port insensibly swelled to
the size of an episcopal city, where the corn of Africa was deposited in
spacious granaries for the use of the capital. As soon as Alaric was in
possession of that important place, he summoned the city to surrender at
discretion; and his demands were enforced by the positive declaration
that a refusal, or even a delay, should be instantly followed by the
destruction of the magazines on which the life of the Roman people
depended. The clamours of that people and the terror of famine subdued
the pride of the senate; they listened without reluctance to the proposal
of placing a new emperor on the throne of the unworthy Honorius; and the
suffrage of the Gothic conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus, prefect
of the city. The grateful monarch immediately acknowledged his protector
as master-general of the armies of the West; Atawulf, with the rank of
count of the domestics, obtained the custody of the person of Attalus;
and the two hostile nations seemed to be united in the closest bands of
friendship and alliance.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF DRUSUS]
The gates of the city were thrown open, and the new emperor of the
Romans, encompassed on every side by the Gothic arms, was conducted in
tumultuous procession to the palace of Augustus and Trajan. After he
had distributed the civil and military dignities among his favourites
and followers, Attalus convened an assembly of the senate; before whom,
in a formal and florid speech, he asserted his resolution of restoring
the majesty of the republic and of uniting to the empire the provinces
of Egypt and the East, which had once acknowledged the sovereignty
of Rome. Such extravagant promises inspired every reasonable citizen
with a just contempt for the character of an unwarlike usurper, whose
elevation was the deepest and most ignominious wound which the republic
had yet sustained from the insolence of the barbarians. But the populace,
with their usual levity, applauded the change of masters. The public
discontent was favourable to the rival of Honorius; and the sectaries,
oppressed by his persecuting edicts, expected some degree of countenance,
or at least of toleration, from a prince who, in his native country of
Ionia, had been educated in the pagan superstition, and who had since
received the sacrament of baptism from the hands of an Arian bishop.
The first days of the reign of Attalus were fair and prosperous. An
officer of confidence was sent with an inconsiderable body of troops to
secure the obedience of Africa; the greatest part of Italy submitted to
the terror of the Gothic powers; the city of Bononia made a vigorous and
effectual resistance; the people of Mediolanum, dissatisfied perhaps with
the absence of Honorius, accepted, with loud acclamations, the choice of
the Roman senate. At the head of a formidable army, Alaric conducted his
royal captive almost to the gates of Ravenna; and a solemn embassy of the
principal ministers, of Jovius, the prætorian prefect, of Valens, master
of the cavalry and infantry, of the quæstor Potamius, and of Julian, the
first of the notaries, was introduced with martial pomp into the Gothic
camp. In the name of their sovereign, they consented to acknowledge the
lawful election of his competitor, and to divide the provinces of Italy
and the West between the two emperors. Their proposals were rejected with
disdain; and the refusal was aggravated by the insulting clemency of
Attalus, who condescended to promise that, if Honorius would instantly
resign the purple, he should be permitted to pass the remainder of his
life in the peaceful exile of some remote island. So desperate, indeed,
did the situation of the son of Theodosius appear to those who were the
best acquainted with his strength and resources, that Jovius and Valens,
his minister and his general, betrayed their trust, infamously deserted
the sinking cause of their benefactor, and devoted their treacherous
allegiance to the service of his more fortunate rival. Astonished by such
examples of domestic treason, Honorius trembled at the approach of every
servant, at the arrival of every messenger. He dreaded the secret enemies
who might lurk in his capital, his palace, his bedchamber; and some ships
lay ready in the harbour of Ravenna to transport the abdicated monarch to
the dominions of his infant nephew, the emperor of the East.
But there is a providence (such at least was the opinion of the historian
Procopius) that watches over innocence and folly; and the pretensions
of Honorius to its peculiar care cannot reasonably be disputed. At the
moment when his despair, incapable of any wise or manly resolution,
meditated a shameful flight, a seasonable reinforcement of four thousand
veterans unexpectedly landed in the port of Ravenna. To these valiant
strangers, whose fidelity had not been corrupted by the factions of the
court, he committed the walls and gates of the city; and the slumbers
of the emperor were no longer disturbed by the apprehension of imminent
and internal danger. The favourable intelligence which was received
from Africa, suddenly changed the opinions of men, and the state of
public affairs. The troops and officers, whom Attalus had sent into that
province, were defeated and slain; and the active zeal of Heraclian
maintained his own allegiance, and that of his people. The faithful count
of Africa transmitted a large sum of money, which fixed the attachment of
the imperial guards; and his vigilance in preventing the exportation of
corn and oil, introduced famine, tumult, and discontent into the walls of
Rome.
ATTALUS DEPOSED; ROME SACKED BY ALARIC
[Sidenote: [409-410 A.D.]]
The failure of the African expedition was the source of mutual complaint
and recrimination in the party of Attalus; and the mind of his protector
was insensibly alienated from the interest of a prince, who wanted
spirit to command or docility to obey. The most imprudent measures were
adopted, without the knowledge, or against the advice, of Alaric; and
the obstinate refusal of the senate, to allow, in the embarkation, the
mixture even of five hundred Goths, betrayed a suspicious and distrustful
temper, which, in their situation, was neither generous nor prudent. The
resentment of the Gothic king was exasperated by the malicious arts of
Jovius, who had been raised to the rank of patrician, and who afterward
excused his double perfidy by declaring, without a blush, that he had
only seemed to abandon the service of Honorius, more effectually to
ruin the cause of the usurper. In a large plain near Ariminum, and in
the presence of an innumerable multitude of Romans and barbarians, the
wretched Attalus was publicly despoiled of the diadem and purple; and
those ensigns of royalty were sent by Alaric, as the pledge of peace and
friendship, to the son of Theodosius.
The degradation of Attalus removed the only real obstacle to the
conclusion of the peace; and Alaric advanced within three miles of
Ravenna, to press the irresolution of the imperial ministers, whose
insolence soon returned with the return of fortune. His indignation was
kindled by the report that a rival chieftain, that Sarus, the personal
enemy of Atawulf and the hereditary foe of the house of Balti, had
been received into the palace. At the head of three hundred followers,
that fearless barbarian immediately sallied from the gates of Ravenna;
surprised, and cut in pieces, a considerable body of Goths; re-entered
the city in triumph; and was permitted to insult his adversary, by the
voice of a herald, who publicly declared that the guilt of Alaric had
forever excluded him from the friendship and alliance of the emperor.
The crime and folly of the court of Ravenna was expiated a third time by
the calamities of Rome. The king of the Goths, who no longer dissembled
his appetite for plunder and revenge, appeared in arms under the walls
of the capital; and the trembling senate, without any hope of relief,
prepared, by a desperate resistance, to delay the ruin of their country.
But they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their
slaves and domestics; who, either from birth or interest, were attached
to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate
was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous
sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years
after the foundation of Rome, the imperial city, which had subdued
and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the
licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.
The proclamation of Alaric, when he forced his entrance into a vanquished
city, discovered some regard for the laws of humanity and religion.
He encouraged his troops boldly to seize the rewards of valour and to
enrich themselves with the spoils of a wealthy and effeminate people;
but he exhorted them, at the same time, to spare the lives of the
unresisting citizens, and to respect the churches of the apostles St.
Peter and St. Paul, as holy and inviolable sanctuaries. Amidst the
horrors of a nocturnal tumult, several of the Christian Goths displayed
the fervour of a recent conversion; and some instances of their uncommon
piety and moderation are related, and perhaps adorned, by the zeal of
ecclesiastical writers.
While the barbarians roamed through the city in quest of prey, the humble
dwelling of an aged virgin, who had devoted her life to the service of
the altar, was forced open by one of the powerful Goths. He immediately
demanded, though in civil language, all the gold and silver in her
possession; and was astonished at the readiness with which she conducted
him to a splendid hoard of massy plate, of the richest materials and
the most curious workmanship. The barbarian viewed with wonder and
delight this valuable acquisition, till he was interrupted by a serious
admonition, addressed to him in the following words: “These,” said she,
“are the consecrated vessels belonging to St. Peter; if you presume to
touch them, the sacrilegious deed will remain on your conscience. For my
part, I dare not keep what I am unable to defend.” The Gothic captain,
struck with reverential awe, despatched a messenger to inform the king
of the treasure which he had discovered; and received a peremptory order
from Alaric, that all the consecrated plate and ornaments should be
transported, without damage or delay, to the church of the Apostle. From
the extremity, perhaps, of the Quirinal Hill, to the distant quarter
of the Vatican, a numerous detachment of Goths, marching in order of
battle through the principal streets, protected, with glittering arms,
the long train of their devout companions, who bore aloft on their heads
the sacred vessels of gold and silver; and the martial shouts of the
barbarians were mingled with the sound of religious psalmody. From all
the adjacent houses a crowd of Christians hastened to join this edifying
procession; and a multitude of fugitives, without distinction of age
or rank, or even of sect, had the good fortune to escape to the secure
and hospitable sanctuary of the Vatican. The learned work, Concerning
the City of God, was professedly composed by St. Augustine to justify
the ways of Providence in the destruction of the Roman greatness. He
celebrates, with peculiar satisfaction, this memorable triumph of
Christ; and insults his adversaries by challenging them to produce some
similar example, of a town taken by storm, in which the fabulous gods of
antiquity had been able to protect either themselves or their deluded
votaries.
In the sack of Rome some rare and extraordinary examples of barbarian
virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the holy precincts of the
Vatican and the Apostolic churches could receive a very small proportion
of the Roman people; many thousand warriors, more especially of the Huns,
who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers to the name, or
at least to the faith, of Christ; and we may suspect, without any breach
of charity or candour, that in the hour of savage license, when every
passion was inflamed and every restraint was removed, the precepts of
the gospel seldom influenced the behaviour of the Gothic Christians.
The writers the best disposed to exaggerate their clemency, have freely
confessed that a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; and that the
streets of the city were filled with dead bodies, which remained without
burial during the general consternation. The despair of the citizens was
sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the barbarians were provoked
by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the
innocent, and the helpless. The private revenge of forty thousand slaves
was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes which
they had formerly received were washed away in the blood of the guilty
or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to
injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death
itself; and the ecclesiastical historian has selected an example of
female virtue for the admiration of future ages.
A Roman lady, of singular beauty and orthodox faith, had excited the
impatient desires of a young Goth, who, according to the sagacious
remark of Sozomen, was attached to the Arian heresy. Exasperated by her
obstinate resistance he drew his sword, and with the anger of a lover
slightly wounded her neck. The bleeding heroine still continued to brave
his resentment and to repel his love, till the ravisher desisted from
his unavailing efforts, respectfully conducted her to the sanctuary of
the Vatican, and gave six pieces of gold to the guards of the church,
on condition that they should restore her inviolate to the arms of her
husband. Such instances of courage and generosity were not extremely
common. The brutal soldiers satisfied their sensual appetites without
consulting either the inclination or the duties of their female captives;
and a nice question of casuistry was seriously agitated, whether those
tender victims, who had inflexibly refused their consent to the violation
which they sustained, had lost by their misfortune the glorious crown of
virginity? There were other losses indeed of a more substantial kind,
and more general concern. It cannot be presumed that all the barbarians
were at all times capable of perpetrating such amorous outrages; and the
want of youth, or beauty, or chastity, protected the greatest part of the
Roman women from the danger of a rape. But avarice is an insatiate and
universal passion; since the enjoyment of almost every object that can
afford pleasure to the different tastes and tempers of mankind, may be
procured by the possession of wealth.
[Illustration: ROMAN GOLD BRACELET]
In the pillage of Rome, a just preference was given to gold and jewels,
which contain the greatest value in the smallest compass and weight;
but after these portable riches had been removed by the more diligent
robbers, the palaces of Rome were rudely stripped of their splendid and
costly furniture. The sideboards of massy plate, and the variegated
wardrobes of silk and purple, were irregularly piled in the wagons that
always followed the march of a Gothic army. The most exquisite works
of art were roughly handled, or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was
melted for the sake of the precious materials; and many a vase, in
the division of the spoil, was shivered into fragments by the stroke
of a battle-axe. The acquisition of riches served only to stimulate
the avarice of the rapacious barbarians, who proceeded by threats, by
blows, and by tortures, to force from their prisoners the confession
of hidden treasure. Visible splendour and expense were alleged as the
proof of a plentiful fortune; the appearance of poverty was imputed to a
parsimonious disposition; and the obstinacy of some misers, who endured
the most cruel torments before they would discover the secret object of
their affection, was fatal to many unhappy wretches, who expired under
the lash for refusing to reveal their imaginary treasures.
The edifices of Rome, though the damage has been much exaggerated,
received some injury from the violence of the Goths. At their entrance
through the Salarian Gate they fired the adjacent houses to guide their
march, and to distract the attention of the citizens; the flames, which
encountered no obstacle in the disorder of the night, consumed many
private and public buildings; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust
remained in the age of Justinian a stately monument of the Gothic
conflagration. Yet a contemporary historian has observed that fire could
scarcely consume the enormous beams of solid brass, and that the strength
of man was insufficient to subvert the foundations of ancient structures.
Some truth may possibly be concealed in his devout assertion, that the
wrath of heaven supplied the imperfections of hostile rage; and that
the proud Forum of Rome, decorated with the statues of so many gods and
heroes, was levelled in the dust by the stroke of lightning.
Whatever might be the numbers of equestrian or plebeian rank who perished
in the massacre of Rome, it is confidently affirmed that only one senator
lost his life by the sword of the enemy. But it was not easy to compute
the multitudes who, from an honourable station and a prosperous fortune,
were suddenly reduced to the miserable condition of captives and exiles.
As the barbarians had more occasion for money than for slaves, they
fixed at a moderate price the redemption of their indigent prisoners;
and the ransom was often paid by the benevolence of their friends or the
charity of strangers. The captives who were regularly sold, either in
open market or by private contract, would have legally regained their
native freedom, which it was impossible for a citizen to lose or to
alienate. But as it was soon discovered that the vindication of their
liberty would endanger their lives; and that the Goths, unless they were
tempted to sell, might be provoked to murder their useless prisoners; the
civil jurisprudence had been already qualified by a wise regulation that
they should be obliged to serve the moderate term of five years, till
they had discharged by their labour the price of their redemption. The
nations who invaded the Roman Empire had driven before them into Italy
whole troops of hungry and affrighted provincials, less apprehensive of
servitude than of famine. The calamities of Rome and Italy dispersed the
inhabitants to the most lonely, the most secure, the most distant places
of refuge. While the Gothic cavalry spread terror and desolation along
the sea coast of Campania and Tuscany, the little island of Igilium,
separated by a narrow channel from the Argentarian promontory, repulsed
or eluded their hostile attempts; and at so small a distance from Rome
great numbers of citizens were securely concealed in the thick woods
of that sequestered spot. The ample patrimonies which many senatorian
families possessed in Africa invited them, if they had time and prudence
to escape from the ruin of their country, to embrace the shelter of that
hospitable province. The Italian fugitives were dispersed through the
provinces, along the coast of Egypt and Asia, as far as Constantinople
and Jerusalem; and the village of Bethlehem, the solitary residence of
St. Jerome and his female converts, was crowded with illustrious beggars
of either sex and every age, who excited the public compassion by the
remembrance of their past fortune. This awful catastrophe of Rome filled
the astonished empire with grief and terror. So interesting a contrast
of greatness and ruin disposed the fond credulity of the people to
deplore, and even to exaggerate, the afflictions of the queen of cities.
The clergy, who applied to recent events the lofty metaphors of oriental
prophecy, were sometimes tempted to confound the destruction of the
capital and the dissolution of the globe.
There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the
advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times. Yet, when the
first emotions had subsided, and a fair estimate was made of the real
damage, the more learned and judicious contemporaries were forced to
confess that infant Rome had formerly received more essential injury from
the Gauls, than she had now sustained from the Goths in her declining
age. The experience of eleven centuries has enabled posterity to produce
a much more singular parallel; and to affirm with confidence that the
ravages of the barbarians, whom Alaric had led from the banks of the
Danube, were less destructive than the hostilities exercised by the
troops of Charles V, a Catholic prince, who styled himself emperor of the
Romans.
The Goths evacuated the city at the end of six days, but Rome remained
above nine months in the possession of the imperialists; and every
hour was stained by some atrocious act of cruelty, lust, and rapine.
The authority of Alaric preserved some order and moderation among the
ferocious multitude, but in the later capture under Charles V, the
commander, the constable of Bourbon had gloriously fallen in the attack
on the walls; and the death of the general removed every restraint of
discipline from an army which consisted of three independent nations,
the Italians, the Spaniards, and the Germans. In the beginning of the
sixteenth century, the manners of Italy exhibited a remarkable scene of
the depravity of mankind. They united the sanguinary crimes that prevail
in an unsettled state of society, with the polished vices which spring
from the abuse of art and luxury; and the loose adventurers, who had
violated every prejudice of patriotism and superstition, to assault the
palace of the Roman pontiff, must deserve to be considered as the most
profligate of the Italians. At the same era, the Spaniards were the
terror both of the Old and New World; but their high-spirited valour was
disgraced by gloomy pride, rapacious avarice, and unrelenting cruelty.
Indefatigable in the pursuit of fame and riches, they had improved, by
repeated practice, the most exquisite and effectual methods of torturing
their prisoners; many of the Castilians who pillaged Rome were familiars
of the holy inquisition; and some volunteers, perhaps, were lately
returned from the conquest of Mexico. The Germans were less corrupt than
the Italians, less cruel than the Spaniards; and the rustic or even
savage aspect of those Tramontane warriors, often disguised a simple
and merciful disposition. But they had imbibed, in the first fervour of
the Reformation, the spirit as well as the principles of Luther. It was
their favourite amusement to insult or destroy the consecrated objects of
Catholic superstition: they indulged, without pity or remorse, a devout
hatred against the clergy of every denomination and degree, who form so
considerable a part of the inhabitants of modern Rome; and their fanatic
zeal might aspire to subvert the throne of Antichrist, to purify, with
blood and fire, the abominations of the spiritual Babylon.
The retreat of the victorious Goths, who evacuated Rome on the sixth day,
might be the result of prudence; but it was not surely the effect of
fear. At the head of an army, encumbered with rich and weighty spoils,
their intrepid leader advanced along the Appian Way into the southern
provinces of Italy, destroying whatever dared to oppose his passage, and
contenting himself with the plunder of the unresisting country.
DEATH OF ALARIC; SUCCESSION OF ATAWULF
[Sidenote: [410-412 A.D.]]
Whether fame, or conquest, or riches were the object of Alaric, he
pursued that object with an indefatigable ardour which could neither be
quelled by adversity nor satiated by success. No sooner had he reached
the extreme land of Italy, than he was attracted by the neighbouring
prospect of a fertile and peaceful island. Yet even the possession of
Sicily he considered only as an intermediate step to the important
expedition which he already meditated against the continent of Africa.
The straits of Rhegium and Messina are twelve miles in length, and, in
the narrowest passage, about one mile and a half broad; and the fabulous
monsters of the deep, the rocks of Scylla and the whirlpool of Charybdis,
could terrify none but the most timid and unskilful mariners. Yet as soon
as the first division of the Goths had embarked, a sudden tempest arose,
which sunk or scattered many of the transports; their courage was daunted
by the terrors of a new element; and the whole design was defeated by the
premature death of Alaric, which fixed, after a short illness, the fatal
term of his conquests.
The brave Atawulf, the brother-in-law of the deceased monarch, was
unanimously elected to succeed to his throne. The character and
political system of the new king of the Goths may be best understood
from his conversation with an illustrious citizen of Narbo Martius, who
afterwards, in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, related it to St. Jerome,
in the presence of the historian Orosius. “In the full confidence of
valour and victory, I once aspired,” said Atawulf, “to change the face
of the universe; to obliterate the name of Rome; to erect on its ruins
the dominion of the Goths; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal
fame of the founder of a new empire. By repeated experiments, I was
gradually convinced that laws are essentially necessary to maintain
and regulate a well-constituted state; and that the fierce untractable
humour of the Goths was incapable of bearing the salutary yoke of laws
and civil government. From that moment I proposed to myself a different
object of glory and ambition; and it is now my sincere wish, that the
gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger,
who employed the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore
and maintain, the prosperity of the Roman Empire.” With these pacific
views, the successor of Alaric suspended the operations of war, and
seriously negotiated with the imperial court a treaty of friendship and
alliance. It was the interest of the ministers of Honorius, who were
now released from the obligation of their extravagant oath, to deliver
Italy from the intolerable weight of the Gothic powers; and they readily
accepted their service against the tyrants and barbarians who infested
the provinces beyond the Alps. Atawulf, assuming the character of the
Roman general, directed his march from the extremity of Campania to the
southern province of Gaul. His troops, either by force or agreement,
occupied the cities of Narbo Martius, Tolosa (Toulouse), and Burdigala
(Bordeaux); and though they were repulsed by Count Bonifacius from
the walls of Massilia, they soon extended their quarters from the
Mediterranean to the ocean. The oppressed provincials might exclaim, that
the miserable remnant, which the enemy had spared, was cruelly ravished
by their pretended allies; yet some specious colours were not wanting to
palliate or justify the violence of the Goths. The cities of Gaul, which
they attacked, might perhaps be considered as in a state of rebellion
against the government of Honorius; the articles of the treaty, or the
secret instructions of the court, might sometimes be alleged in favour
of the seeming usurpations of Atawulf; and the guilt of any irregular,
unsuccessful act of hostility might always be imputed, with an appearance
of truth, to the ungovernable spirit of a barbarian host, impatient of
peace or discipline. The luxury of Italy had been less effectual to
soften the temper, than to relax the courage, of the Goths; and they
had imbibed the vices, without imitating the arts and institutions, of
civilised society.
[Sidenote: [412-414 A.D.]]
The professions of Atawulf were probably sincere, and his attachment
to the cause of the republic was secured by the ascendant which a
Roman princess had acquired over the heart and understanding of the
barbarian king. Placidia, the daughter of the great Theodosius, and of
Galla his second wife, had received a royal education in the palace of
Constantinople. The marriage of Atawulf and Placidia was consummated
before the Goths retired from Italy; and the solemn, perhaps the
anniversary, day of their nuptials was afterwards celebrated in the house
of Ingenuus, one of the most illustrious citizens of Narbo Martius in
Gaul. The bride, attired and adorned like a Roman empress, was placed
on a throne of state; and the king of the Goths, who assumed, on this
occasion, the Roman habit, contented himself with a less honourable seat
by her side (414).
After the deliverance of Italy from the oppression of the Goths, some
secret counsellor was permitted, amidst the factions of the palace,
to heal the wounds of that afflicted country. By a wise and humane
regulation, the eight provinces which had been the most deeply injured,
Campania, Tuscany, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia, Calabria, Bruttium, and
Lucania, obtained an indulgence of five years; the ordinary tribute
was reduced to one-fifth, and even that fifth was destined to restore
and support the useful institution of the public posts. By another law
the lands which had been left without inhabitants or cultivation, were
granted, with some diminution of taxes, to the neighbours who should
occupy, or the strangers who should solicit them; and the new possessors
were secured against the future claims of the fugitive proprietors. About
the same time a general amnesty was published in the name of Honorius,
to abolish the guilt and memory of all the involuntary offences, which
had been committed by his unhappy subjects during the term of the public
disorder and calamity.
A decent and respectful attention was paid to the restoration of the
capital; the citizens were encouraged to rebuild the edifices which had
been destroyed or damaged by hostile fire; and extraordinary supplies of
corn were imported from the coast of Africa. The crowds that so lately
fled before the sword of the barbarians, were soon recalled by the hopes
of plenty and pleasure; and Albinus, prefect of Rome, informed the court
that in a single day he had taken an account of the arrival of fourteen
thousand strangers. In less than seven years, the vestiges of the Gothic
invasion were almost obliterated; and the city appeared to resume its
former splendour and tranquillity.
This apparent tranquillity was soon disturbed by the approach of a
hostile armament from the country which afforded the daily subsistence
of the Roman people. Heraclian, count of Africa, who, under the most
difficult and distressful circumstances, had supported with active
loyalty the cause of Honorius, was tempted, in the year of his
consulship, to assume the character of a rebel and the title of emperor.
The ports of Africa were immediately filled with the naval forces at the
head of which he prepared to invade Italy; and his fleet, when it cast
anchor at the mouth of the Tiber, indeed surpassed the fleets of Xerxes
and Alexander, if all the vessels, including the royal galley and the
smallest boat, did actually amount to the incredible number of thirty-two
hundred.
Yet with such an armament, which might have subverted or restored the
greatest empire of the earth, the African usurper made a very faint
and feeble impression on the provinces of his rival. As he marched
from the port, along the road which leads to the gates of Rome, he was
encountered, terrified, and routed, by one of the imperial captains; and
the lord of this mighty host, deserting his fortune and his friends,
ignominiously fled with a single ship. When Heraclian landed in the
harbour of Carthage, he found that the whole province, disdaining such an
unworthy ruler, had returned to their allegiance. The rebel was beheaded
in the ancient temple of Memory; his consulship was abolished, and the
remains of his private fortune, not exceeding the moderate sum of four
thousand pounds of gold, were granted to the brave Constantius, who had
already defended the throne which he afterwards shared with his feeble
sovereign. Honorius viewed with supine indifference the calamities of
Rome and Italy, but the rebellious attempts of Attalus and Heraclian
against his personal safety awakened for a moment the torpid instinct
of his nature. He was probably ignorant of the causes and events which
preserved him from these impending dangers; and as Italy was no longer
invaded by any foreign or domestic enemies, he peaceably existed in the
palace of Ravenna, while the tyrants beyond the Alps were repeatedly
vanquished in the name, and by the lieutenants, of the son of Theodosius.
CONSTANTINE AND GERONTIUS; CONSTANTIUS
[Sidenote: [411-413 A.D.]]
The usurpation of Constantine, who received the purple from the legions
of Britain, had been successful; and seemed to be secure. His title was
acknowledged from the wall of Antoninus to the columns of Hercules;
and, in the midst of the public disorder, he shared the dominion and
the plunder of Gaul and Spain with the tribes of barbarians, whose
destructive progress was no longer checked by the Rhine or Pyrenees.
Stained with the blood of the kinsmen of Honorius, he extorted from the
court of Ravenna, with which he secretly corresponded, the ratification
of his rebellious claims. Constantine engaged himself, by a solemn
promise, to deliver Italy from the Goths; advanced as far as the banks
of the Po; and after alarming, rather than assisting, his pusillanimous
ally, hastily returned to the palace of Arles, to celebrate, with
intemperate luxury, his vain and ostentatious triumph. But this transient
prosperity was soon interrupted and destroyed by the revolt of Count
Gerontius, the bravest of his generals, who, during the absence of his
son Constans, a prince already invested with the imperial purple, had
been left to command in the provinces of Spain.
For some reason, of which we are ignorant, Gerontius, instead of assuming
the diadem, placed it on the head of his friend Maximus, who fixed his
residence at Tarraco (Tarragona), while the active count pressed forwards
through the Pyrenees, to surprise the two emperors, Constantine and
Constans, before they could prepare for their defence. The son was made
prisoner at Vienna, and immediately put to death; and the unfortunate
youth had scarcely leisure to deplore the elevation of his family, which
had tempted or compelled him sacrilegiously to desert the peaceful
obscurity of the monastic life. The father maintained a siege within
the walls of Arelate (Arles); but those walls must have yielded to the
assailants, had not the city been unexpectedly relieved by the approach
of an Italian army.
The name of Honorius, the proclamation of a lawful emperor, astonished
the contending parties of the rebels. Gerontius, abandoned by his
own troops, escaped to the confines of Spain, and rescued his name
from oblivion by the Roman courage which appeared to animate the last
moments of his life. In the middle of the night, a great body of his
perfidious soldiers surrounded and attacked his house, which he had
strongly barricaded. His wife, a valiant friend of the nation of the
Alani, and some faithful slaves, were still attached to his person; and
he used, with so much skill and resolution, a large magazine of darts
and arrows, that above three hundred of the assailants lost their lives
in the attempt. His slaves, when all the missile weapons were spent,
fled at the dawn of day; and Gerontius, if he had not been restrained
by conjugal tenderness, might have imitated their example; till the
soldiers, provoked by such obstinate resistance, applied fire on all
sides to the house. In this fatal extremity he complied with the request
of his barbarian friend, and cut off his head. The wife of Gerontius, who
conjured him not to abandon her to a life of misery and disgrace, eagerly
presented her neck to his sword; and the tragic scene was terminated by
the death of the count himself, who, after three ineffectual strokes,
drew a short dagger, and sheathed it in his heart.[65] The unprotected
Maximus, whom he had invested with the purple, was indebted for his
life to the contempt that was entertained of his power and abilities.
The caprice of the barbarians who ravaged Spain, once more seated this
imperial phantom on the throne; but they soon resigned him to the justice
of Honorius; and the tyrant Maximus, after he had been shown to the
people of Ravenna and of Rome, was publicly executed.
The general, Constantius was his name, who raised by his approach the
siege of Arles and dissipated the troops of Gerontius, was born a Roman;
and this remarkable distinction is strongly expressive of the decay
of military spirit among the subjects of the empire. The strength and
majesty which were conspicuous in the person of that general marked him,
in the popular opinion, as a candidate worthy of the throne, which he
afterwards ascended. In the familiar intercourse of private life, his
manners were cheerful and engaging: nor would he sometimes disdain, in
the license of convivial mirth, to vie with the pantomimes themselves
in the exercises of their ridiculous profession. But when the trumpet
summoned him to arms; when he mounted his horse, and bending down (for
such was his singular practice) almost upon the neck, fiercely rolled
his large animated eyes round the field, Constantius then struck terror
into his foes, and inspired his soldiers with the assurance of victory.
He had received from the court of Ravenna the important commission of
extirpating rebellion in the provinces of the West; and the pretended
emperor Constantine, after enjoying a short and anxious respite, was
again besieged in his capital by the arms of a more formidable enemy. Yet
this interval allowed time for a successful negotiation with the Franks
and Alamanni; and his ambassador, Edobic, soon returned, at the head of
an army, to disturb the operations of the siege of Arles.
The Roman general, instead of expecting the attack in his lines,
boldly, and perhaps wisely, resolved to pass the Rhone and to meet the
barbarians. His measures were conducted with so much skill and secrecy,
that while they engaged the infantry of Constantius in the front, they
were suddenly attacked, surrounded, and destroyed by the cavalry of
his lieutenant Ulfilas, who had silently gained an advantageous post in
their rear. The remains of the army of Edobic were preserved by flight
or submission, and their leader escaped from the field of battle to the
house of a faithless friend, who too clearly understood that the head
of his obnoxious guest would be an acceptable and lucrative present for
the imperial general. On this occasion, Constantius behaved with the
magnanimity of a genuine Roman. Subduing or suppressing every sentiment
of jealousy, he publicly acknowledged the merit and services of Ulfilas;
but he turned with horror from the assassin of Edobic, and sternly
intimated his commands, that the camp should no longer be polluted by the
presence of an ungrateful wretch, who had violated the laws of friendship
and hospitality.
The usurper, who beheld from the walls of Arelate the ruin of his last
hopes, was tempted to place some confidence in so generous a conqueror.
He required a solemn promise for his security; and after receiving, by
the imposition of hands, the sacred character of a Christian presbyter,
he ventured to open the gates of the city. But he soon experienced
that the principles of honour and integrity, which might regulate the
ordinary conduct of Constantius, were superseded by the loose doctrines
of political morality. The Roman general, indeed, refused to sully his
laurels with the blood of Constantine; but the abdicated emperor and his
son Julian were sent under a strong guard into Italy; and before they
reached the palace of Ravenna, they met the ministers of death.
At a time when it was universally confessed that almost every man in the
empire was superior in personal merit to the princes whom the accident
of their birth had seated on the throne, a rapid succession of usurpers,
regardless of the fate of their predecessors, still continued to arise.
This mischief was peculiarly felt in the provinces of Spain and Gaul,
where the principles of order and obedience had been extinguished by
war and rebellion. Before Constantine resigned the purple, and in the
fourth month of the siege of Arles, intelligence was received in the
imperial camp that Jovinus had assumed the diadem at Mogontiacum, in the
Upper Germany, at the instigation of Goar, king of the Alani, and of
Guntiarius, king of the Burgundians; and that the candidate, on whom they
had bestowed the empire, advanced with a formidable host of barbarians,
from the banks of the Rhine to those of the Rhone. Every circumstance is
dark and extraordinary in the short history of the reign of Jovinus. It
was natural to expect that a brave and skilful general, at the head of a
victorious army, would have asserted, in a field of battle, the justice
of the cause of Honorius.
The hasty retreat of Constantius might be justified by weighty reasons;
but he resigned, without a struggle, the possession of Gaul; and
Dardanus, the prætorian prefect, is recorded as the only magistrate who
refused to yield obedience to the usurper. When the Goths, two years
after the siege of Rome, established their quarters in Gaul, it was
natural to suppose that their inclination could be divided only between
the emperor Honorius, with whom they had formed a recent alliance, and
the degraded Attalus, whom they reserved in their camp for the occasional
purpose of acting the part of a musician or a monarch. Yet in a moment of
disgust (for which it is not easy to assign a cause or a date), Atawulf
connected himself with the usurper of Gaul; and imposed on Attalus the
ignominious task of negotiating the treaty, which ratified his own
disgrace. We are again surprised to read that, instead of considering the
Gothic alliance as the firmest support of his throne, Jovinus upbraided,
in dark and ambiguous language, the officious importunity of Attalus;
that, scorning the advice of his great ally, he invested with the purple
his brother Sebastian; and that he most imprudently accepted the service
of Sarus, when that gallant chief, the soldier of Honorius, was provoked
to desert the court of a prince who knew not how to reward or punish.
[Sidenote: [413-415 A.D.]]
Atawulf, educated among a race of warriors, who esteemed the duty of
revenge as the most precious and sacred portion of their inheritance,
advanced with a body of ten thousand Goths to encounter the hereditary
enemy of the house of Balti. He attacked Sarus at an unguarded moment,
when he was accompanied only by eighteen or twenty of his valiant
followers. United by friendship, animated by despair, but at length
oppressed by multitudes, this band of heroes deserved the esteem, without
exciting the compassion, of their enemies; and the lion was no sooner
taken in the toils, than he was instantly despatched. The death of Sarus
dissolved the loose alliance which Atawulf still maintained with the
usurpers of Gaul. He again listened to the dictates of love and prudence;
and soon satisfied the brother of Placidia, by the assurance that he
would immediately transmit to the palace of Ravenna the heads of the two
tyrants, Jovinus and Sebastian.
The king of the Goths executed his promise without difficulty or delay;
the helpless brothers, unsupported by any personal merit, were abandoned
by their barbarian auxiliaries; and the short opposition of Valentia was
expiated by the ruin of one of the noblest cities of Gaul. The emperor,
chosen by the Roman senate, who had been promoted, degraded, insulted,
restored, again degraded, and again insulted, was finally abandoned
to his fate; but when the Gothic king withdrew his protection, he was
restrained, by pity or contempt, from offering any violence to the person
of Attalus. The unfortunate Attalus, who was left without subjects or
allies, embarked in one of the ports of Spain in search of some secure
and solitary retreat; but he was intercepted at sea, conducted to the
presence of Honorius, led in triumph through the streets of Rome or
Ravenna, and publicly exposed to the gazing multitude on the second step
of the throne of his invincible conqueror. The same measure of punishment
with which, in the days of his prosperity, he was accused of menacing
his rival, was inflicted on Attalus himself; he was condemned, after the
amputation of two fingers, to a perpetual exile in the isle of Lipara,
where he was supplied with the decent necessaries of life. The remainder
of the reign of Honorius was undisturbed by rebellion; and it may be
observed, that in the space of five years, seven usurpers had yielded to
the fortune of a prince who was himself incapable either of counsel or of
action.
The important present of the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian had
approved the friendship of Atawulf, and restored Gaul to the obedience
of his brother Honorius. Peace was incompatible with the situation
and temper of the king of the Goths. He readily accepted the proposal
of turning his victorious arms against the barbarians of Spain; the
troops of Constantius intercepted his communication with the seaports
of Gaul, and gently pressed his march towards the Pyrenees; he passed
the mountains, and surprised, in the name of the emperor, the city of
Barcino (Barcelona). The course of his victories was soon interrupted by
domestic treason. He had imprudently received into his service one of the
followers of Sarus, a barbarian of a daring spirit but of a diminutive
stature, whose secret desire of revenging the death of his beloved patron
was continually irritated by the sarcasms of his insolent master. Atawulf
was assassinated in the palace of Barcelona; the laws of the succession
were violated by a tumultuous faction; and a stranger to the royal race,
Sigeric, the brother of Sarus himself, was seated on the Gothic throne.
The first act of his reign was the inhuman murder of the six children of
Atawulf, the issue of a former marriage, whom he tore without pity from
the feeble arms of a venerable bishop. The unfortunate Placidia, instead
of the respectful compassion which she might have excited in the most
savage breasts, was treated with cruel and wanton insult. The daughter
of the emperor Theodosius, confounded among a crowd of vulgar captives,
was compelled to march on foot above twelve miles, before the horse of a
barbarian, the assassin of a husband whom Placidia loved and lamented.
[Sidenote: [415-418 A.D.]]
But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge; and the view of
her ignominious sufferings might rouse an indignant people against the
tyrant, who was assassinated on the seventh day of his usurpation. After
the death of Sigeric, the free choice of the nation bestowed the Gothic
sceptre on Wallia, whose warlike and ambitious temper appeared in the
beginning of his reign extremely hostile to the republic. He marched in
arms from Barcino to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which the ancients
revered and dreaded as the boundary of the world. But when he reached
the southern promontory of Spain, and from the rock now covered by the
fortress of Gibraltar contemplated the neighbouring and fertile coast of
Africa, Wallia resumed the designs of conquest which had been interrupted
by the death of Alaric. The winds and waves again disappointed the
enterprise of the Goths; and the minds of a superstitious people were
deeply affected by the repeated disasters of storms and shipwrecks. In
this disposition, the successor of Atawulf no longer refused to listen to
a Roman ambassador, whose proposals were enforced by the real or supposed
approach of a numerous army, under the conduct of the brave Constantius.
A solemn treaty was stipulated and observed, Placidia was honourably
restored to her brother, six hundred thousand measures of wheat were
delivered to the hungry Goths, and Wallia engaged to draw his sword in
the service of the empire.
A bloody war was instantly excited among the barbarians of Spain; and
the contending princes are said to have addressed their letters, their
ambassadors, and their hostages, to the throne of the Western emperor,
exhorting him to remain a tranquil spectator of their contest, the event
of which must be favourable to the Romans, by the mutual slaughter
of their common enemies. The Spanish War was obstinately supported
during three campaigns, with desperate valour and various success; and
the martial achievements of Wallia diffused through the empire the
superior renown of the Gothic hero. He exterminated the Silingi, who had
irretrievably ruined the elegant plenty of the province of Bætica. He
slew in battle the king of the Alani; and the remains of those Scythian
wanderers who escaped from the field, instead of choosing a new leader,
humbly sought a refuge under the standard of the Vandals, with whom
they were ever afterwards confounded. The Vandals themselves, and the
Suevi, yielded to the efforts of the invincible Goths. The promiscuous
multitude of barbarians, whose retreat had been intercepted, were
driven into the mountains of Gallæcia; where they still continued, in
a narrow compass, and on a barren soil, to exercise their domestic and
implacable hostilities. In the pride of victory, Wallia was faithful
to his engagements; he restored his Spanish conquests to the obedience
of Honorius; and the tyranny of the imperial officers soon reduced an
oppressed people to regret the time of their barbarian servitude.
His victorious Goths, forty-three years after they had passed the
Danube, were established, according to the faith of treaties, in the
possession of the second Aquitania, a maritime province between the
Garumna (Garonne) and the Liger (Loire), under the jurisdiction of
Bordeaux. The Gothic limits were enlarged by the additional gift of some
neighbouring dioceses; and the successors of Alaric fixed their royal
residence at Tolosa, which included five populous quarters, or cities,
within the spacious circuit of its walls. About the same time, in the
last years of the reign of Honorius, the Goths, the Burgundiones, and the
Franks obtained a permanent seat and dominion in the provinces of Gaul.
The liberal grant of the usurper Jovinus to his Burgundian allies was
confirmed by the lawful emperor; the lands of the First or Upper Germany
were ceded to those formidable barbarians; and they gradually occupied,
either by conquest or treaty, the two provinces which still retain, with
the titles of Duchy and of County, the national appellation of Burgundy.
The Franks, the valiant and faithful allies of the Roman Republic, were
soon tempted to imitate the invaders whom they had so bravely resisted.
Augusta Trevirorum, the capital of Gaul, was pillaged by their lawless
bands; and the humble colony which they so long maintained in the
district of Toxandria, in Brabant, insensibly multiplied along the banks
of the Meuse and Scheldt, till their independent power filled the whole
extent of the Second or Lower Germany.
The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from the
establishment of these barbarians, whose alliance was dangerous and
oppressive, and who were capriciously impelled, by interest or passion,
to violate the public peace. The odious name of conquerors was softened
into the mild and friendly appellation of the “guests” of the Romans; and
the barbarians of Gaul, more especially the Goths, repeatedly declared
that they were bound to the people by the ties of hospitality, and to the
emperor by the duty of allegiance and military service.
[Sidenote: [409-423 A.D.]]
Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a succession of feeble tyrants
oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British island separated
itself from the body of the Roman Empire. The regular forces which
guarded that remote province had been gradually withdrawn; and Britain
was abandoned, without defence, to the Saxon pirates and the savages
of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to this extremity, no
longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining monarchy. They
assembled in arms, repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in the important
discovery of their own strength. Afflicted by similar calamities, and
actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican provinces (a name which
comprehended the maritime countries of Gaul, between the Seine and the
Loire) resolved to imitate the example of the neighbouring island.
They expelled the Roman magistrates, who acted under the authority of
the usurper Constantine; and a free government was established among a
people who had so long been subject to the arbitrary will of a master.
The independence of Britain and Armorica was soon confirmed by Honorius
himself, the lawful emperor of the West; and the letters, by which he
committed to the new states the care of their own safety, might be
interpreted as an absolute and perpetual abdication of the exercise and
rights of sovereignty (409).[b]
FOOTNOTES
[65] The praises which Sozomen has bestowed on this act of despair,
appear strange and scandalous in the mouth of an ecclesiastical
historian. He observes that the wife of Gerontius was a Christian, and
that her death was worthy of her religion and of immortal fame.
[Illustration]