Chapter IV: Preface (4)

One vile deed of a Roman official must have stirred many Gothic hearts to fury, yet did not receive its proper meed of vengeance. It will be remembered that when the Visigothic warriors were ferried across the Danube in the Imperial cutters, they were compelled to deliver up the sons of the noblest among them as hostages. These lads had been distributed through the cities of the East: while their fathers and their kindred had been suffering the hardships of famine, they had been growing up to manhood, and it was feared that the news of the victory of Hadrianople might arouse them to some deed of daring against the Empire. Julius, Master of the Soldiery[56], to whose care these young hostages had been especially committed, sent for the various military prefects, and after binding them to secrecy under solemn oaths, communicated to them his bloody purpose. The young Goths in each district were invited to the capital of the province under promise of receiving grants of money and land from the Emperor. They came full of hope and of good-humour towards their hosts. As soon as they were all collected in the forum of each city, the soldiers, who had been previously stationed on the roofs of the surrounding houses, assailed them with darts and stones. They were of course utterly unable to strike a blow in return against their cowardly assailants, and each Asiatic forum soon had its heap of unresisting slain. A base and treacherous deed, and one which we regret to find both our two chief historians[57] of this period mentioning with words of praise for its cowardly contrivers.

[Sidenote: _Gratian associates Theodosius in the Imperial dignity._]

The disorganisation of the Empire after the battle of Hadrianople was complete, and Gratian wisely concluded that he, a lad of nineteen, was not able, unaided, to bring it to a close. He looked around him for a colleague, and recognised with the frankness of his noble nature that there was no man so suitable for the post as one whom his family had deeply wronged, the late Duke of Moesia, THEODOSIUS.

[Sidenote: _Origin of Theodosius._]

This man, whose name in various ways has become so famous in the history both of the Empire and the Church, was born about the year 346 at a place called Cauca, in the north-western corner of Spain. He belonged by birth to the class of wealthy Provincials from which many of the officials of the Empire were chosen, and who constituted in fact, if not in name, a sort of rural nobility. After he had been clothed with the purple, flatterers and poets discovered that he was a remote descendant of the great Emperor Trajan, but this seems to have been only a courtier-like deduction from the fact that he, like Trajan, was a Spaniard.

[Sidenote: _368-376._]

[Sidenote: _Theodosius the Elder._]

[Sidenote: _376-379._]

His father, Count Theodosius, had been sent to Britain in 368 to repel an invasion of Picts, Scots, and Attacotti, and making the old town of Lundinium his base of operations, had attacked the various parties of freebooters who were roaming about the country, and had succeeded in spoiling the spoilers, and restoring the greater part of their property to the plundered provincials. Two years afterwards he had delivered Raetia (Tyrol and the Grisons) from a similar invasion of the Alamanni, and had sent many of the invaders to Italy to cultivate as serfs the meadow lands of the Po. In 373 he conducted a most successful campaign in Africa against a Mauritanian chieftain, Firmus, who had rebelled against the Emperor. The rebel committed suicide, and his conqueror, with the title of _Comes Africae_, administered the government of the province which he had saved. Then came a sudden check to his prosperous course. In 376, shortly after the death of Valentinian, he was accused, we know not on what charge, sentenced to death, and beheaded at Carthage, having first received the sacrament of baptism. The cause of this strange and sad termination of an honourable career has never been explained. Some think that the young Gratian, only just arrived at the helm of affairs, was jealous of the veteran’s fame, but nothing in the character of that Emperor justifies so foul a charge. Others believe that his real offence was having exposed the villainies and peculations of Romanus, his predecessor in the government of Africa. But it seems to me on the whole most probable that his death was in some way connected with an outburst of jealous rage and suspicion on the part of Valens against all persons whose names began with the letters THEOD, Theodorus, Theodoret, and so forth, as it had come to the ears of the Emperor that a citizen of Antioch had been resorting to magical arts to learn the name of his future successor, and that those letters (which proved fatal to many a Roman citizen) had been revealed by the oracle as forming the beginning of the fated name.

On the death of his father, the young Theodosius, then about thirty years of age, who had done good service to the State as Duke of Moesia, retired into private life. If, as was probably the case, he was succeeded by the base and corrupt Maximus, whose avarice drove the Goths to despair, the unjust death of the elder Theodosius was indeed soon and terribly avenged on his ungrateful masters.

[Sidenote: _Theodosius Emperor of the East, 19 Jan. 379._]

Now, however, the fortunes of the house of Theodosius emerged from the cloud, more resplendent than ever. The new Emperor was clothed in the purple and invested with ‘the rule of the universe’ (ἡ τῶν ὅλων ἀρχή) at Sirmium, on the 19th of January, 379. The share of the Empire assigned to his immediate superintendence was of course the East, together with Macedonia and Dacia. The rest of the Diocese of Illyricum was joined, now as on many other occasions, to the Western half of the Empire.

[Sidenote: _Guerilla War. 379-380._]

The first duty that Theodosius had to undertake was to restore the self-confidence and trust in victory of the Roman army, terribly shaken as these qualities had been by the disastrous rout of Hadrianople. This he accomplished by waging a successful guerilla war with the Gothic marauders. Valens had played into the hands of the barbarians by risking everything on one great pitched battle. Theodosius adopted the very opposite policy. He outmanœuvred the isolated and straggling bands of the Goths, defeated them in one skirmish after another that did not deserve the name of a battle, and thus restored the courage and confidence of the Imperial troops. By the end of 379 he seems to have succeeded in clearing the territory south of the Balkan range of the harassing swarms of the barbarians.

[Sidenote: _Sickness of Theodosius._]

In February, 380, he fell sick at Thessalonica (which was his chief basis of operations throughout this period), and this sickness, from which he did not fully recover for some months, was productive of two important results, (1) his baptism as a Trinitarian Christian, (2) a renewal of the war against fresh swarms of barbarians.

[Sidenote: _Theodosius adopts the Creed of Nicaea. 380._]

(1) Theodosius appears up to this point of his career not to have definitely ranged himself on either side of the great Arian controversy, though he had a hereditary inclination towards the Creed of Nicaea. Like his father, however, he had postponed baptism in accordance with the prevalent usage of his day: but now upon a bed of sickness which seemed likely to be one of death, he delayed no longer, but received the rite at the hands of Ascholius, the Catholic Bishop of Thessalonica. Before he was able to resume his post at the head of the legions, he published his celebrated Edict: ‘To the people of Constantinople.—We desire that all the nations who are governed by the rule of our Clemency shall practise that religion which the Apostle Peter himself delivered to the Romans, and which it is manifest that the pontiff Damasus, and Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of Apostolic sanctity, do now follow: that according to the discipline of the Apostles and the teaching of the Evangelists they believe in the one Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in equal Majesty, and in the holy Trinity. We order all who follow this law to assume the name of Catholic Christians, decreeing that all others, being mad and foolish persons, shall bear the infamy of their heretical dogmas, and that their Conventicles shall not receive the name of Churches: to be punished first by Divine vengeance, and afterwards by that exertion of our power to chastise which we have received from the decree of heaven.’

[Sidenote: _The power of the Eastern State now enlisted on the side of Orthodoxy._]

Thus then at length the Caesar of the East was ranged on the side of Trinitarian orthodoxy. Constantine in the latter part of his reign, Constantius, Valens, had all been Arians or semi-Arians, some of them bitter in their heterodoxy. Julian had been a worshipper of the gods of Olympus. Thus for nearly two generations the influence of the Court of Constantinople had been thrown into the scale against the teaching of Athanasius, which was generally accepted throughout the Western realm. Now by the accession of Theodosius to the Trinitarian side, religious unity was restored to the Empire: but at the same time a chasm, an impassable chasm, was opened between the Empire itself and its new Teutonic guests, nearly all of whom held fast to the Arian teaching of their great Apostle Ulfilas.

[Sidenote: _Further inroads of the barbarians._]

(2) The other consequence of the sickness of Theodosius was, as I have said, a fresh incursion of barbarian hordes, swarming across the Danube and climbing all the high passes of the Balkans. The work of clearing the country of these marauders had to be all done over again. One dark night, when the Emperor was encamping in Macedonia, the barbarians, seeing a particularly bright watch-fire burning, and rightly conjecturing that it marked the tent of the Emperor, made a sudden dash and very nearly succeeded in sending Theodosius to rejoin his predecessor Valens. There was a terrible struggle: few Romans against the overwhelming hosts of the Goths, but the soldiers of Theodosius, who loved him well, fought on desperately till he had escaped, and then fell dead, surrounded by an uncounted host of slain barbarians.

[Sidenote: _Reinforcements sent by Gratian, 380._]

The campaign of 380 was such a hard one that Theodosius had to solicit reinforcements from his colleague Gratian, which were sent to him under the command of Bauto and Arbogast, two Frankish chiefs who had entered the Imperial service. Indeed all along the line, in the West as in the East, the characteristic feature of this period was the number of barbarians who attained high rank in the legions of Rome, and who upon the whole served her with marked fidelity.

At length, in the closing months of 380, the provinces south of the Balkans (Macedonia and Thrace) were once more cleared of their barbarian intruders. Peace, in which Gratian concurred, was concluded with the Goths who still doubtless abounded in Moesia; and Theodosius on the 24th of November entered Constantinople in state.

[Sidenote: _Theodosius welcomes Athanaric at Constantinople, 381._]

[Sidenote: _Athanaric’s death._]

The inhabitants of the New Rome by the Bosphorus, who perhaps had not before seen Theodosius as Emperor, were soon to behold a ruler of a very different type side by side with the courtly and magnificent Spaniard. The grey old Visigoth, Athanaric, had been driven, apparently by Ostrogothic invaders, from his airy stronghold in the Carpathians. The death of Fritigern (which seems to have happened about this time) left him the chief ruler of the scattered and disorganised Visigothic nation. Converted from his old, almost religious prejudice against Rome, and recanting the oath which he had once sworn never to set foot on the soil of the Empire, he now crossed the Danube and accepted the Emperor’s invitation to visit him in his capital, probably in order to ratify and proclaim to the world the peace just concluded between ‘Romania’ and ‘Gothia.’ We must let the Gothic historian tell the story of this visit in his own expressive words[58].

‘Theodosius attached to himself King Athanaric, who had succeeded Fritigern, by the gifts which he gave him, and in the kindest terms invited him to visit him at Constantinople; who accepted right willingly and said, marvelling, “Lo, I behold, what often I heard incredulously, the fame of so great a city.” Then turning his eyes this way and that, now he admires the position of the city and the concourse of ships, now the long clearly-marked line of the walls, and then again the natives from so many different stocks bubbling up like water from one fountain in many directions, yet all disciplined like well-trained soldiers. “A god,” he said, “without doubt a god upon earth is the Emperor, and whoever moveth a hand against him, that man is guilty of his own blood.” In such a state of admiration, being supported by the yet greater honours which he received from the Emperor, after the interval of a few months [or more correctly fourteen days[59]] he departed from the light of day. Whom the Emperor out of the love which he bore to him, honouring almost more as dead than as alive, delivered to a worthy burial, himself going before the bier in his solemn obsequies. Therefore when Athanaric was dead, all his army, remaining in the service of the Emperor Theodosius, and submitting itself to the Roman Empire, formed as it were one body with the [Imperial] soldiery, that old enlistment of the Foederati under the Emperor Constantine being now renewed, and they themselves were now called Foederati.’

[Sidenote: _The bulk of the Goths become Foederati of the Empire._]

There can be no doubt that the politic courtesy which Theodosius showed to Athanaric exercised an important influence on the relations which existed for the next fifteen years between the Empire and the Goths. If we look at the position of the two parties to the contract we shall see that the conclusion or the renewal of the _Foedus_ between them was really for the interest of both. For the Empire, a complete reversal of the policy of Valens was now impossible. Ever since the day when the last of the 200,000 Gothic warriors was ferried across the Danube, their inclusion in the Empire in one capacity or another had become an accomplished and irreversible fact. They could not be thrust back into their old Dacian home, where by this time the Huns were probably swarming, but they might be converted from the ravagers of Thrace into the tillers of Moesia. They might be made the stalwart defenders of the Danubian frontier against those very Huns, and against the motley horde of Teutons, Slaves, and Tartars who flocked around their standard of squalid and anarchic despotism.

On the other hand the Goths, unable to capture the strong cities of the Empire, could not live perpetually on the mere ravage of the Thracian home-steads. Viewing the movements of peoples and the migrations of barbarous tribes from the high historic standpoint, and especially seeing what these movements and migrations actually accomplished in the fifth century of our era, we are apt to think that the conquest of kingdoms and the foundation of empires was the deliberate and persistent purpose of chief and people. On the contrary, if we could be present in the rough councils which gathered around their camp-fires and listen to the talk of the warriors with their wives in the great Gothic waggons, we should probably discover that the question in what way and from what source the next day’s meal was to be provided, was far more often and more anxiously debated than any question of high policy or dream of world-conquest. Now, by the policy which Theodosius seemed willing to adopt of renewing the old _Foedus_ between Rome and her Gothic friends, food, and comfortable homes, and a distinguished career in arms were assured to the meanest Gothic soldier, and admission to the dignities and luxuries of the most splendid court in the world was assured to their chiefs. The Roman Empire was still, if I may use a commercial phrase, ‘a going concern.’ The barbarians had power to wreck it and drive it into bankruptcy? Yes, perhaps they had: but it was surely a far more alluring prospect to take shares in the company and touch some part of the enormous profits which accrued to the directors.

This kind of calculation—and I have purposely chosen a commercial metaphor in order to indicate the perfectly selfish character of the bargain—prevailed at this time in the minds of the barbarians over any dim and shadowy dreams which might linger there of setting up a new and conquering Visigothic kingdom between the Danube and the Balkans. But then, when self-interest was prompting them to this course, sentiment was enlisted on the same side by the generous hospitality offered to the worn-out veteran Athanaric in the great city of the South, by his own childlike admiration of the wonders which she displayed to his view, by the splendid funeral, and by the sight of the courtly Augustus, robed in the purple and wearing the diadem of Empire, escorting the Gothic warrior to his tomb.

[Sidenote: _What did the relation of Foederati involve?_]

What the precise nature of the tie was which bound the _foederati_ to the Empire I do not think we can definitely explain. From time immemorial Rome had fought her battles with troops pretty equally divided between the legions (theoretically composed of pure Roman citizens) and the _Auxilia_ (consisting of her subject-allies). These allies had at first been chiefly dwellers in the cities of Latium, but by the time that we have now reached they were gathered from almost every nation under heaven. Here, in our own Northumberland, all the garrison duty along the Wall was done by these auxiliary troops. Asturians from Spain, Tungrians and Batavians from Holland, Dacians from Transylvania, and Dalmatians from the eastern shore of the Hadriatic, were keeping watch for Rome on these wind-swept hills. But _those_ allies were still distinctly Roman soldiers, who served under Roman officers, and were amenable to Roman discipline. The bond which held the _foederati_ to the Empire appears to have been a much looser one. It would seem that the federated Goths still served under their own native chiefs, and retained to a large extent their national weapons and their own peculiar manner of fighting. They no doubt had lands assigned to them, chiefly in Moesia, which they may have cultivated partly with their own hands and partly by the forced labour of _coloni_. In fact, though we are of course still many centuries off from regular feudal rights and obligations, there was probably something in the relation of a chief of _foederati_ to the Emperor not altogether unlike the relation of a feudal baron to his lord paramount.

[Sidenote: _Results of the policy of Theodosius._]

The scheme of Theodosius answered as a temporary expedient. It gave security to the Danubian frontier for his day; perhaps had his successors been men of equal ability with himself it might have prolonged that security for centuries. But there were some obvious dangers attending it. Evidently these masses of men, trained to act together, obeying their own princes, and conscious of their strength, might one day turn against Rome the weapons which they were now wielding on her behalf. The ‘provincials,’ the earlier subjects of Rome, finding their services less needed, would grow unused to warfare, and would in the course of time be almost sure to sink into a despised and spiritless caste, among whom the proud Teutonic _foederatus_ would stalk with an exasperating consciousness of superiority. Above all, the Emperor himself, having the barbarians for his tent companions, the sharers of his dangers, the confidants of his councils, and the supporters of his throne, would get to lean more and more upon them, and might become an Emperor of barbarians instead of an Emperor of the civilised commonwealth of Rome.

The whole history of Theodosius shows that this was a very real danger in his time. There was something in his own character, fond as he was of pomp and spectacle and the mere outward trappings of royalty, which harmonised only too well with the nature of the barbarians. While he was surrounding himself with troops of tall and brilliantly-accoutred _foederati_, and spending his time and the money of his subjects over an endless round of games and chariot-races, and on sumptuous banquets at which the Gothic ‘wassail’ was loudly heard, the provinces were groaning under the demands of the tax-gatherer; and the machine of administration which Valens, with all his faults, had superintended with some diligence, was daily getting into more and more hopeless disorganisation.

[Sidenote: _Insurrection of Antioch, 387._]

Both the two great insurrections which broke out in the reign of Theodosius, and each of which is connected with the story of a great father of the Church, sprang, directly or indirectly, from the favour shown by the Emperor to his _foederati_. In the year 387 he determined to celebrate the fifth year of the reign of his young son Arcadius, whom he had associated with him in the Empire, in a style of extraordinary magnificence. For this purpose there must be more splendid games, more exciting chariot-races, and, above all, a more liberal donative to the soldiery than any that had yet been given. In order to supply funds for these various expenses, a new tax (probably what was called the _aurum coronarium_) was levied on the cities of the Empire. At the news of this fresh imposition, the citizens of Antioch, already ground down to the very dust by the pressure of the ordinary taxation, broke out into open rebellion. While the more respectable and religious citizens betook themselves to the churches to pray God to change the Emperor’s purpose, or besought the Bishop Flavianus to intercede for the removal of the tax, a mob of boys and ‘lewd fellows of the baser sort’ visited the spacious Baths, and cutting the ropes by which the lamps were suspended, caused them to fall with a crash on the pavement. Then the boys began to throw stones at the wooden statues of the Emperor and his family. They shouted for joy when one of the statues was split in pieces; they groaned when one, more stubborn than the rest, long resisted their assaults. They then went to the more costly bronze statues, pulled them from their pedestals with ropes, dragged them ignominiously through the streets, and ended by giving them to the children to play with. What made the insult the more bitter was, that not only the statues of the Emperor himself, but those of the noble old veteran his father, of his lately deceased wife, and of his young son and colleague, were all treated with the same contumely. Next came an attempt at fire-raising in the house of a magistrate who tried to persuade them to cease their rioting; and last, the appearance of some Imperial archers, who discharged their arrows upon the crowd. Thereupon at once the tumult, which had flamed up so high and seemed so menacing, died down like a fire of straw.

[Sidenote: _Reaction from insolence to panic._]

The insult to the majesty of the Emperor had been great, perhaps unforgiveable. The whole city passed in an hour from the extreme of insolence and anarchy to the extreme of cowed submission and abject terror, while the messengers bearing the fatal tidings were going to and returning from Constantinople. The sedition had broken out a few days before Lent (387), and the whole of the forty days of that sacred season were indeed days of fasting and humiliation to the luxurious citizens of Antioch. About the middle of them arrived a letter from the Emperor, sharply rebuking the Town Council for allowing the sedition to gain such a height, ordering that the Theatre, the Hippodrome, and the Baths should all be closed, and depriving Antioch of the rank, which she had held for six centuries, as capital of Syria. Shortly after appeared two Imperial Commissioners—Caesarius and Ellebichus—charged to make enquiry into the recent events; and they began their enquiry by putting all the Senators of Antioch into close confinement.

[Sidenote: _Pardon._]

The two commissioners, however, were specimens of the best class of Roman officials, men utterly unlike Lupicinus and Maximus. They marked the sincere repentance and the agonised prostration of terror which pervaded all classes in Antioch, and they soon allowed it to appear that their influence at any rate would be exerted on the side of mercy. Caesarius, when the enquiry was completed, set off with all speed to Constantinople, and reached that city on the sixth day after his departure from Antioch. No Turkish courier probably could now traverse the length and breadth of Asia Minor in anything like so short a time. Theodosius listened to the arguments of Caesarius in favour of mercy, to the prayers and sighs of Bishop Flavianus, who had come to intercede on behalf of his flock, and granted a complete amnesty, rescinding also his previous decree for the degradation of Antioch from the rank of capital city. This letter, carried by a swift messenger to Ellebichus, was by him communicated to the citizens of Antioch, who received it with shouts of welcome and tears of joy. Their fifty days of mourning were ended, and Antioch, the light-hearted Paris of the East, was herself again.

The story of this singular insurrection has been preserved for us by the orations of the heathen sophist Libanius and by the homilies of the great Christian preacher, St. John Chrysostom, at that time a priest at Antioch, afterwards Patriarch of Constantinople.

[Sidenote: _Insurrection of Thessalonica, 390._]

[Sidenote: _Brutal vengeance._]

The insurrection at Antioch displayed the character of Theodosius in a favourable light, as a strong but merciful and magnanimous ruler of men. Very different was the effect on his fame of the insurrection which broke out three years later (390) in the Macedonian city of Thessalonica. A garrison of Gothic _foederati_ was quartered in this important city. Already it is probable that many causes of quarrel had arisen between the Thessalonians and their overbearing but under-educated guests. The wrath grew to its height when Botheric, the Gothic general, shut up in prison a certain scoundrel of a charioteer who had vilely insulted him. At the next races the mob of Thessalonica tumultuously demanded the charioteer’s liberation, and when Botheric refused, rose in insurrection and slew both him and several magistrates of the city. There was no such direct insult to the person of the Emperor as at Antioch, perhaps no such prolonged period of defiance to authority; but the affair reflected deep disgrace on the cruel, childish, show-loving Eastern provincials, and if the chief actors in it had been ordered off to instant execution, Theodosius would only have acted with praiseworthy severity. But he had now been for twelve years lord of the world, and the madness which absolute power so often brings with it had begun to work in his brain. In a frenzy of rage at the insult offered to himself in the person of his barbarian general, he sent his orders from Milan (where he was staying when the tidings reached him) that the whole city of Thessalonica should suffer for the misdeeds of its ruffianly mob. The soldiers surrounded the circus where the citizens were assembled, watching the games and unsuspecting of ill. They closed the gates, marched in amongst the densely-packed spectators, and began their bloody work. A certain number of heads was ordered to be brought to the officers, as if they had been thistles or dandelions to be gathered out of the fields. Was it 7000 as one historian says, or 15,000, as another? It matters not much: the horror of the thing was the brutal indiscriminateness of the massacre, the utter absence of any attempt to separate between the innocent and the guilty, the indifference to human life, more worthy of Tamerlane and his pyramid of skulls than of an Emperor of Rome.

[Sidenote: _Penitence of Theodosius._]

It is true that this bloody deed was afterwards repented of in dust and ashes. The humiliation and penitence of Theodosius, his self-abasement before the great Christian hero, St. Ambrose, and the forgiveness which he at last received from him, form a well-known page in church history, and one which I do not propose now to retrace. But I cannot hold, as some of the ecclesiastical historians seem to do, that the depth of the Emperor’s subsequent humility hides the greatness of his crime. That he should have been even tempted to such a monstrous abuse of his absolute power, much more that he should have yielded to the temptation, marks him out as one of the Emperors who were unfit to govern, not only as immeasurably below a saint like Marcus Aurelius, or a statesman like Trajan, but almost as fit to be classed in the same category with Caligula, Nero, and Commodus.

* * * * *

We return to our more special subject, the relation between Theodosius and the _foederati_. Twice he was able to employ his Gothic soldiers with striking success in the internal struggles of the Empire. The situation was thus very similar to that which we have seen in our own day in our Indian Empire, when the Sikhs, the fierce opponents of the English Raj in 1845, became its stalwart defenders in the terrible Mutiny of 1857.

[Sidenote: _Revolt of troops in Britain, 383._]

[Sidenote: _Elevation of Maximus._]

[Sidenote: _Gratian’s faults._]

In the year 383 a military revolt broke out in Britain against the young Emperor Gratian. Our island was ever the fruitful seed-plot of these military mutinies. The soldiers, shut up in their camps on our solitary moors, and deeming themselves cut off from the civilised world[60], probably exaggerated every hardship of their service, and welcomed any change which would take them southwards, were it even in the track of an usurper and a tyrant. Perhaps, too, there was something then as now in the disposition of the Celts by whom they were surrounded, and with whom many of them had intermarried, favourable to anarchy and fatal to that reverence for law and discipline which is needed to hold together either an army or a state. Whatever the cause, the army revolted and proclaimed Magnus Clemens Maximus, Emperor. He was, like Theodosius, a native of Spain, and though harsh and perhaps rapacious, a man of ability and experience, not unworthy of the purple if he had come to it by lawful means[61]. Gratian on his side had evidently given some real cause for dissatisfaction to his subjects. Ammianus, who was a good judge of character, says of him that ‘while the youthful down was yet on his cheeks he showed promise of emulating the best of the Emperors, if he had not given his mind too much to sport, and under the influence of frivolous companions followed too much the example of Commodus in his dissipation though not in his cruelty. He delighted to pierce the greatest possible number of beasts before the eyes of the people, and when he had given a fatal wound to each one of a hundred lions let loose from many doors all round the amphitheatre (not needing to hit any beast twice), he would exult as if he were something more than man. Thus he would spend whole days within these vast preserves which were called _vivaria_, slaying savage beasts with his multitudinous arrows. And this at a time when even the patient earnestness of a Marcus Aurelius would have been all too little for the sad necessities of the Empire[62].’

[Sidenote: _383-7._]

But there was another grievance besides Gratian’s love for sport, and that was his fondness for the barbarians. He, too, like Theodosius, had his petted barbarian guard, but instead of being Goths they belonged to the less civilised race of the Alani. We are told by another author[63] ‘that Gratian neglected the army and preferred a few of the Alans, whom by lavish pay he had attracted to his service, to the old Roman soldiery, and was so fascinated by the companionship, and one might almost say friendship of these barbarians, that he sometimes on the march even adopted their dress. By all this he aroused the hatred of the soldiers against himself.’

[Sidenote: _Death of Gratian._]

An Emperor of barbarians, an Emperor who was spending his days in shooting wild beasts while the Empire was languishing under taxes within and the attacks of savages from without,—that was the aspect which, with many noble and loveable qualities, Gratian bore to his Western subjects: and hence it was that when Maximus with the army of Britain landed in Gaul, he shook down the fabric of his power without difficulty. Gratian, finding himself deserted by his troops, escaped from the battle-field, but was overtaken and killed at Lyons.

[Sidenote: _Maximus dethrones Valentinian II, 387._]

For more than four years Maximus, satisfied with ruling over the three great Western provinces which had fallen to the share of Gratian, maintained at any rate the appearance of harmony with his two colleagues, and the CONCORDIA AUGGG was still capable of being commemorated on the Imperial medals. At length, in the autumn of 387, Maximus deemed that the time had come for grasping the whole Empire of the West. Lulling to sleep the suspicions of Valentinian and his mother by embassies and protestations of friendship, he crossed the Alps with an army and marched towards Aquileia, where the young Emperor was then dwelling in order to be as near as possible to the dominions of his friendly colleague and protector. Valentinian did not await the approach of his rival, but going down to the port of Grado, took ship and sailed for Thessalonica, his mother and sisters accompanying him.

[Sidenote: _Valentinian’s appeal for help to Theodosius._]

The Emperor and the Senate of Constantinople met the Imperial fugitives at Thessalonica, and discussed the present position of affairs. The Senate seconded the entreaties of Valentinian and his mother, and cried out for vengeance on the murderer of one Emperor and the despoiler of another. Theodosius, who was sincerely averse to war, as his detractors said through indolence, but more probably through that knowledge of the risks and miseries of war which even the most successful general cannot fail to acquire, spoke in favour of peace, and then of course all warlike views were hushed.

Upon this Justina, who was the widow of two Emperors[64], and in whose countenance still lingered the traces of the extraordinary beauty which had fascinated Valentinian I, fell on her knees before Theodosius and besought him not to allow the murder of Gratian to remain unavenged, nor the family of his former benefactor to be utterly ruined. And then she pointed to her daughter Galla,

‘Matre pulchra filia pulchrior,’

who was bathed in tears, lamenting the misfortunes of her house. What the entreaties of the mother might have failed to effect, the tears of the daughter accomplished. Theodosius, whose wife Flaccilla had died two years before (385), took Galla for his second wife, and vowed to avenge her wrongs and replace her brother on the throne.

[Sidenote: _Civil War between Theodosius and Maximus, 388._]

[Sidenote: _Defeat and death of Maximus. 28 July, 388._]

He was some time in preparing for the campaign, but, when it was opened, he conducted it with vigour and decision. His troops pressed up the Save valley, defeated those of Maximus in two engagements, entered Aemona (Laybach) in triumph, and soon stood before the walls of Aquileia, behind which Maximus was sheltering himself. The city was a strong and almost impregnable one, but a mutiny among the troops of Maximus did away with the necessity for a siege. The soldiers of Theodosius poured into the city, whose gates had been opened to them by the mutineers, and dragged off the usurper, barefooted, with tied hands, in slave’s attire, to the tribunal of Theodosius and his young brother-in-law at the third milestone from the city. After Theodosius had in a short harangue reproached him with the evil deeds which he had wrought against the Roman commonwealth, he handed him over to the executioner, by whom he was at once put to death.

There can be little doubt that the rapid and successful movements of Theodosius in this campaign were due in part to the well-trained valour of his _foederati_. We have, however, a more distinct allusion to their services in the next civil war, which was fought six years afterwards on almost the same battle-ground.

[Sidenote: _Valentinian II restored in the West._]

[Sidenote: _His factotum Arbogast._]

[Sidenote: _392. Quarrels between Valentinian and Arbogast._]

On the overthrow of Maximus, Theodosius had with generous magnanimity handed over to Valentinian II the whole of the Western Empire, both, his own especial share and that which had formerly been held by his brother Gratian. The young Emperor was now seventeen years of age: his mother, Justina, had died apparently on the eve of Theodosius’s victory, and he governed, or tried to govern, alone. He seems to have taken up his residence at Trier, the defence of the Gaulish provinces being doubtless recognised as at this time the chief duty of an Emperor of the West. But the actual functions of supreme ruler were discharged, not by this young and somewhat pliable Emperor, but by a Frankish veteran who stood beside his throne, moving legions and appointing and displacing generals at his will. I mentioned that during the sickness of Theodosius the war in Thrace was successfully conducted by two Frankish lieutenants of Gratian, by name Bauto and Arbogast. Bauto died about the year 385, and from that time onwards supreme power in the dominions of Valentinian had been more and more accumulating itself in the hands of the other great Frankish general, Arbogast, a man adored by his soldiers for his valour and experience in war, and for his noble disdain of riches. This man was apparently true to the Empire, true at first in his own rough way to the house of Valentinian. He had followed the young Emperor to exile, and after the victory at Aemona it was his hand that deprived the young Victor, son of the usurper, of life. But knowing his infinite superiority in all the arts of war and government to the young Adonis who was nominally his master, he took no pains to conceal that superiority, and sometimes in the council chamber itself openly opposed and scoffed at the proposals of the Emperor. In short, this Frankish warrior was already anticipating by three centuries the attitude of the Frankish Mayors of the Palace towards the Merovingian monarchs. At length Valentinian, unable to bear the barbarian’s insolence any longer, one day when he was sitting on his imperial throne, summoning up as much sternness as he could into his boyish countenance, presented Arbogast with a written dismissal from his command as _Magister Equitum_. With calm contempt Arbogast tore the paper in pieces. ‘You never gave me this command,’ said he, ‘nor will you be able to take it from me.’ Valentinian drew a sword against the general as he turned to depart, but the attendant to whom it belonged checked him from using it. Hearing the struggle Arbogast returned and asked what the Emperor had been trying to do. ‘To slay myself,’ moaned the miserable Valentinian, ‘because although Emperor I have no power[65].’

[Sidenote: _Death of Valentinian II, 15 May, 392._]

From this day there was open enmity between Valentinian and his Master of the Horse: and not long after, when the young Emperor was bathing in the Rhone, near Vienne, some of the servants of Arbogast, in the absence of his body-guard who had gone away to dinner, rushed upon him and strangled him. They then tied a handkerchief round his neck and hung him to a tree, that it might appear that he had committed suicide. It was generally understood, however, that the death of Valentinian was in truth the deed of Arbogast.

[Sidenote: _Eugenius Emperor, 392-394._]

[Sidenote: _Death of Galla, 394._]

The Frankish general, who durst not shock the prejudices of the Roman world by himself assuming the purple, hung that dishonoured robe upon the shoulders of a rhetorician, a confidant, and almost a dependent of his own, named Eugenius. This man, like most of the scholars and rhetoricians of the day, had not abjured the old faith of Hellas. As Arbogast also was a heathen, though worshipping Teutonic rather than Olympian gods, this last revolution looked like a recurrence to the days of Julian, and threatened the hardly-won supremacy of Christianity. Thus not only the sad voice of his wife Galla pleading for vengeance on her brother’s murderers, but, even more, the pious exhortations of all Christian bishops called on Theodosius to rescue the Western Empire from the hands of the sophist and the barbarian. Yet his preparations had to be long and careful, for he was aware that in Arbogast he would meet a general who knew as much of the art of war as himself, perhaps we might say that he should meet the greatest captain of the age. He left not Thrace till June, 394, nearly two years after the death of Valentinian, and meanwhile, on the very eve of his departure his young wife Galla died, leaving a little daughter, whose name afterwards was famous in the story of the Empire, Galla Placidia.

[Sidenote: _Theodosius marches against Eugenius. 394._]

Giving but one day to sorrow and the next to vengeance, Theodosius marched north-westwards, as before, up the valley of the Save, and to the city of Aemona. Not there did he meet his foes, but at a place about thirty miles off, half-way between Aemona and Aquileia, where the Julian Alps are crossed, and where a little stream called the Frigidus (now the Wipbach) burst suddenly from a limestone hill. Here, then, the battle was joined between Eugenius with his Frankish patron and Theodosius with his 20,000 Gothic _foederati_[66] and the rest of the army of the East. Gainas, Saul, Bacurius, Alaric were the chief leaders of the Teutonic troops.

[Sidenote: _Battle of the Frigidus, 5 and 6 Sept. 394._]

[Sidenote: _Death of Eugenius and Arbogast._]

The first day of battle fell heavily on the _foederati_ of Theodosius, half of whom were left dead upon the field. It seemed as if the West were going once more to triumph over the East, as if heathenism might even once more gain the ascendant over Christianity. That night, however, in prayer Theodosius had a vision of the Apostles John and Philip, who cheered him on with the assurance of victory. Next day Theodosius succeeded in detaching part of the army of his rival from their allegiance; and even the elements seemed eager to aid his victory. The impetuous _Bora_, a wind well known in that region, sprang up from the hills in the rear of his army and carried their arrows and their javelins with resistless force into the ranks of the enemy, whose own missiles recoiled helplessly on themselves. The battle was won after a terrible struggle. Eugenius was taken prisoner and carried bound into the presence of Theodosius, who upbraided him with his heathenism and his share in the murder of Valentinian. While he was grovelling at the proud conqueror’s feet and begging for mercy, a soldier cut off his head and carried it round the field of battle on a pole to show the vanquished army that their Emperor was slain. Arbogast wandered about for some days among the rugged mountain-defiles, and then fell upon his sword and perished.

[Sidenote: _Death of Theodosius, 17 Jan. 395._]

Theodosius, who was still in the prime of life, had now indeed ‘the rule of the world,’ without a rival or a colleague except his own boyish sons. The Church and the federated Goths, two of the most powerful forces in the Empire, were both devotedly attached to him; and the Provincials, though groaning under the weight of the taxes which he imposed, feared, and perhaps admired him. Had his life been prolonged as it well might have been for twenty or thirty years longer, many things might have gone differently in the history of the world. But, little more than four months after the victory of the Frigidus, Theodosius died of dropsy at Milan, his constitution being prematurely worn out by the hardships of his last campaign, and possibly by the high feasting and revelry which had resounded through his palace at Constantinople. He had probably not yet completed his fiftieth year.

[Sidenote: _Character of Theodosius._]

The character of Theodosius is one of the most perplexing in history. The Church historians have hardly a word of blame for him except in the matter of the massacre of Thessalonica, and that, as has been said, seems to be almost atoned for in their eyes by its perpetrator’s penitent submission to ecclesiastical censure. On the other hand, the heathen historians, represented by Zosimus, condemn in the most unmeasured terms his indolence, his love of pleasure, his pride, and hint at the scandalous immorality of his life. Varying a similar saying with reference to Constantine, we might say that he who believes all the evil that is said of Theodosius by Socrates, and all the good that is said of him by Zosimus, will not go far wrong. But this takes us only a little way, for the blame and the praise are both infinitesimal.

He had one great work to do, the reconciliation of the Goths to the Empire, and he did that work well. It is perhaps unfair to judge of it by the slenderness of its permanent results, since his early death may have been the chief cause of its failure. But he was certainly passionate, egotistic, cruel. He spared not the pockets of his subjects, and his reign, like a heavy wheat-crop, exhausted the energies of his Empire. It is the fashion to call him the Great, and we may admit that he has as good a right to that title as Louis XIV, a monarch whom in some respects he pretty closely resembles. But it seems to me that it would be safer to withhold this title from both sovereigns, and to call them, not the Great, but the _Magnificent_.

LECTURE V.

ALARIC.

[Sidenote: _Arcadius and Honorius, sons of Theodosius._]

[Sidenote: _Their incapacity._]

On the death of Theodosius (395) his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, aged respectively eighteen and ten, succeeded to ‘the rule of the world,’ Arcadius dwelling at Constantinople and ruling the Eastern portion, while the Western fell to the share of Honorius, who at this time generally dwelt at Milan. Arcadius died in the year 408, at the age of thirty-one; Honorius in 423, at the age of thirty-nine. These two men were thus nominally at the head of human affairs during some of the most profoundly interesting and important events that have happened in the history of the world; yet few men have ever by their own force of character or strength of intellect exercised less influence on the destinies of the human race. Theodosius, with all his faults, interests the student of his reign: he was brilliant, forceful, and he makes a mark on the history of his time. The dulness of his sons’ characters is so portentous, that after the lapse of a millennium and a half the Muse of History still yawns at the remembrance of them. Arcadius had a beautiful Frankish wife, and left a son of artistic temperament, and four pious daughters. Honorius married his deceased wife’s sister and left no family, but was fond of keeping pigeons. These are pretty nearly all the facts that it is possible to ascertain or to remember out of the drizzling dulness of their personal history.

[Sidenote: _Administration of Rufinus and Stilicho._]

Theodosius, who probably saw the weakness of character of his sons, and who was leaving them at an age when even strong and capable natures would have required much help and guidance, entrusted the guardianship of the lads, and the virtual regency of the Empire, to Rufinus and Stilicho. The former, with the rank of Praetorian Prefect, administered the realm of Arcadius; the latter, as _Magister Utriusque Militiae_, governed the army and the people of Honorius.

These two men resembled one another in one quality—an inordinate love of money, whether justly or unjustly acquired. In all other respects their characters were utterly dissimilar. Stilicho, though grasping and perhaps somewhat coarse-fibred, was a hero and a patriot; Rufinus (whom we unfortunately know only by the descriptions of his bitter enemies) may have had some administrative ability, but must have been a bad specimen even of the corrupt bureaucracy of Constantinople.

Dissimilar as was the character of the two men, so also was their origin and training. Stilicho was apparently of pure Teutonic extraction, the son of a Vandal chief who had commanded some barbarian auxiliaries in the army of the Emperor Valens. His tall and handsome presence had commended him to the favour of Serena, the favourite niece and trusted counsellor of Theodosius. His marriage with so near a relative of the Emperor naturally led to his speedy promotion. His employment on an embassy to the Persian king was followed by high military command. He showed indisputable talents for war in several campaigns against the barbarians, and, some years before the death of Theodosius, was raised to the highest of all military dignities—that of _Magister Utriusque Militiae_ (Commander-in-Chief of Infantry and Cavalry).

Of the early life of Rufinus we know but little. He was born at Elusa, a little town in the south-west corner of Gaul. He went to Constantinople, and there, by his obsequiousness, his perseverance, and doubtless also by his aptitude for the work of administration, succeeded in climbing from step to step of the official ladder. One or two old and faithful servants of the Empire (Tatianus and Proculus) who stood above him in rank, were cast down by his well-timed accusations of disloyalty, and at length the obscure Gaulish Provincial blazed forth to the world as Praetorian Prefect of the East—one of the wealthiest men in the Empire, a man who aspired to wear the diadem himself as colleague of Arcadius, and to obtain the Emperor’s hand in marriage for his daughter. Thus while Stilicho’s might be said to be the typical career of a robust, handsome, and warlike Teuton in the service of the Empire, the career of Rufinus was the equally typical career of a clever, pushing, and unscrupulous Provincial.

[Sidenote: _Divergence between East and West._]

Between the two administrators of the realm—Rufinus and Stilicho—there was no cordiality, no chance of well-concerted action for the good of the Empire. In fact, quite independently of the personal characters of the two men, the interests of the two divisions of the Empire were now beginning manifestly to diverge. The older Rome looked down upon the new Rome by the Bosphorus as a mere Greek city, the home of sophists and chatterers; while Constantinople regarded the city of the Tiber, with its mouldering palaces, its desolate Campagna, its still half-heathen Senate, as a great stranded hulk, unfit any longer to bear the precious freight of Empire. This divergence between the hopes and wishes of the East and West, a divergence which was often on the point of becoming actual hostility, was wider for the first fifteen years after the death of Theodosius than for a considerable time before or after that interval, and promoted not a little the success of the barbarian movement against the Roman State.

[Sidenote: _Alaric King of the Visigoths._]