Chapter V: Preface (5)

That movement began very shortly after Theodosius was laid in his grave. It was in all probability in the spring of the year 395 that the Visigoths in Moesia raised the young Alaric upon a shield, and with joyful shouts acclaimed him as their king. We have already noticed this young Gothic chief as commanding a troop in the army of Theodosius at the battle of the Frigidus, and that is in fact all that we know about him up to this date, except that he was born (probably between 360 and 370) in the island of Peuce at the mouth of the Danube, and that he was either himself surnamed Baltha (the Bold), or belonged to a clan of kings or chieftains who bore that name. As the Gothic historian says: ‘As soon as Alaric was created king, deliberating with his people he persuaded them rather by their own labour to seek for kingdoms than quietly to lie down in subjection to strangers.’ In other words he decided, and persuaded them to decide, to abandon the easy but inglorious position of _foederati_, and cutting themselves loose from the old and decaying Empire, to hew out new realms for themselves with their own trusty broadswords. Towards this decision he was no doubt partly guided by what he had himself seen, when in the Imperial service, of the weakness of the legions, the unwarlike character of the Provincials of the Empire, the oppressions of the tax-gatherers which caused even the barbarians to seem welcome as deliverers from their yoke; above all by what he, and every officer of rank in the Roman army, knew of the discord and jealousy between the two chief ministers of the Empire.

[Sidenote: _395._]

The first blows of Alaric and his Goths were struck at the Eastern Empire. This was natural enough, since they were themselves settled within it: but there was another reason for the choice. The army which Theodosius had led with him across the Julian Alps seems not to have been dismissed to its Eastern cantonments during the few months between the battle of the Frigidus and his death. It and the troops of Eugenius were now all collected in the north of Italy under the orders of Stilicho, who was thus in another than the official sense _Magister Utriusque Militiae_, since both the conquering and the conquered army of the late campaign received the watchword from him. A singular position certainly, and one which excuses some things otherwise difficult to justify in the conduct of Arcadius and his minister.

[Sidenote: _Alaric strikes at the Eastern Empire._]

[Sidenote: _Stilicho forbidden to repel the invasion._]

[Sidenote: _Alaric in Greece._]

Alaric, then, with his Gothic followers marched first towards Constantinople. Perhaps he had some hopes of taking the city by surprise, but if so he was disappointed. Rufinus, who, Provincial as he was, professed a certain fondness for the barbarians and imitated their dress and accoutrements, seems to have sought an interview with the Gothic king, and suggested to him that instead of undertaking a hopeless siege he would do well to turn his steps southwards, where he would reap abundance of spoil from the still undevastated plains of Greece. Alaric accepted the suggestion, and marched through Macedonia into Thessaly. There, however, his course was stayed for a while by the arrival of Stilicho, who, loyally fulfilling the behest of the dying Theodosius, had come with an army to deliver the invaded Empire from its foe. Before manœuvres had ceased and hard fighting had begun, there came a strange, and at first sight incomprehensible, message from the Eastern Court: ‘Let Stilicho withdraw the legions of Honorius within the limits of his master’s Empire, and let the legions of the East be sent to their proper quarters at Constantinople.’ Loyally, but sadly, Stilicho obeyed the command, and thus the campaign of 395 closed, leaving Alaric in undisputed possession of the Greek peninsula. No Leonidas with his Three Hundred defended now Thermopylae, not even the easily held Isthmus of Corinth was occupied by troops. All over the sacred places of Grecian story, Delphi, Corinth, Argos, Sparta, the tall barbarians swarmed. Only Athens seems to have escaped comparatively unharmed, a deliverance which the heathen historian[67] attributes to the fact that when Alaric approached the city he saw Athene Promachus, in such guise as she is represented in her statue, going round about its towers, and Achilles, the hero, such as Homer painted him in his wrath for the death of Patroclus, standing before the walls. Those who doubt the truth of these apparitions may accept the theory that the Acropolis was too strong to be taken, and that Alaric, who was no mere barbarous destroyer, was induced, partly by a heavy ransom and partly by reverence for her old renown, to refrain from sacking a city which was illustrious and venerable rather than wealthy or strategically important.

[Sidenote: _March of the recalled troops to Constantinople._]

Meanwhile the troops which had been ordered to Constantinople, and which were commanded by Gainas the Goth, had done a strange and fearful deed. They loved Stilicho, and cursed the order issued by the officials at Constantinople which parted them from his standards. Everywhere, as they marched through the Empire they heard execrations against the avarice and arrogance of the Gaulish upstart, who presumed, forsooth, to put himself forward as a suitable colleague for the Emperor. And, most important of all, their leader, Gainas the Goth, aspired to play at Constantinople the same part which Stilicho the Vandal was playing at Milan. The soldiers said to one another that when Rufinus met them at Constantinople he should have a reception that he little expected.

[Sidenote: _The review._]

When they reached the Capital they were drawn up in a great plain near the city, and Arcadius, with Rufinus by his side, came thither to review them. The two stood upon a high platform, conspicuous to all, and those who were nearest could see Rufinus plucking the Emperor’s mantle and evidently desiring him to fulfil some promise which he had made and to utter some oration to the army. In this oration, could it have been delivered, the simple-minded Arcadius, who would have done anything which his minister commanded, was to have presented Rufinus to the army as his colleague in the Empire. Then, had the programme been fulfilled, the soldiers would have clashed their swords upon their shields and shouted ‘Ave Imperator’: the minister would have come forward and offered them a liberal donative, and Rufinus Augustus would have struck his coins commemorating his Justice, his Temperance, and the Concord of the Emperors.

[Sidenote: _Death of Rufinus._]

Such was the programme of the day’s proceedings, but what actually occurred was very different from this. While the promised oration was still lingering on the lips of the scared and helpless Emperor, the army stretched forth both its wings and folded the high tribunal in a narrower and ever narrower embrace. Threatening gestures were made, and murmurs, not of acclamation, were heard. Soon the dreadful truth flashed upon Rufinus that he was surrounded, not by friends eager to be his subjects, but by enemies thirsting for his blood. A soldier stepped forth from the ranks, and mounting the platform, thrust him through with his sword, saying, ‘With this sword Stilicho strikes thee.’ Then the barbarians and the barbarised Roman soldiers carried the head of Rufinus round the city on a pole, strewed his limbs in fragments over the fields, and showed to every passer-by the dead hand opening and closing upon imaginary coins, while his mock courtiers shouted ‘Give, give to the Insatiable.’

Even the heavy soul of Arcadius must have felt some stirrings of horror and resentment at such a tragedy enacted in his own sacred presence, but he passed at once under the dominion of other masters whose fortunes we cannot here follow. Gainas the Goth, Eutropius the Eunuch, Eudoxia the beautiful Empress, daughter of the Frankish general Bauto, kept up a vivid game of Court intrigue, and disputed with varying success for the chief place in that empty chamber which represented the mind of the Emperor.

[Sidenote: _396. Second campaign of Stilicho against Alaric, 396._]

We return to Alaric and his invasion of the Peloponnesus. Any dreams which he may have nourished of establishing his kingdom by the banks of the Eurotas or Cephissus were dispelled by the second appearance of Stilicho, who, this time apparently at the earnest request of Arcadius, brought the army of Honorius for the deliverance of Greece. No great battle was fought, but Stilicho, who was evidently a great master of strategy, penned up his antagonist in the valleys of Arcadia. From this difficult position, however, he allowed him to escape, whether through mere carelessness, through fear of driving a powerful foe to despair, by a tacit agreement that if liberated he should at once evacuate Greece, or from what other motive it is impossible now to say. The enemies of Stilicho always asserted that both on this and other occasions he refrained from crushing Alaric when he had the power to do so, in order that he, as the only general who could successfully cope with him, might never find his services superfluous.

[Sidenote: _Alaric as Roman governor of Illyricum. 396-400._]

On evacuating Greece, Alaric with his Goths did not relapse into the position of a Fritigern or an Athanaric. Another plan for the future had now opened itself before him. As the time was not yet come for conquering kingdoms he would accept once more, in seeming, the position of a captain of _foederati_, but in such circumstances as to be still practically independent of the Empire. The part of the Prefecture of Illyricum which had fallen to the share of Arcadius consisted in its northern portion of the so-called Diocese of Dacia, nearly corresponding to the present kingdoms of Servia and Bosnia. Over this eastern Illyricum Alaric was placed as governor by the ministers of Arcadius. The precise official title which he bore is not mentioned. He may have been _Vicarius Daciae_ or _Dux Daciae et Moesiae Primae_: but his power is undoubted. For the next four or five years he wielded all the enormous powers, both civil and military, of a Roman Imperial governor. He enlisted recruits, he managed arsenals, he collected taxes, though what proportion of the taxes so collected found its way into the Treasury of Byzantium no historian has told us.

[Sidenote: _Advantages of this position._]

The especial advantage to Alaric of his position in this corner of Illyricum was that it enabled him to profit to the full by the discord existing between the two sections of the Empire, and at his pleasure to threaten either. He could with almost equal ease move southwards upon Macedon and Thrace and threaten Constantinople, or north-westwards to the Julian Alps, and so descend into Italy. This advantage is emphatically alluded to by a contemporary poet[68], who represents Stilicho as saying of him—

‘Discord ’twixt East and West and mutual wrong,
Not his own strength, has shielded him so long;
While he, deceitful, pledged his faith to both,
And sold to each by turns his perjured oath.’

Yet doubtless during these years of repose his thoughts were turning with increased frequency to the West rather than to the East. He knew, none better, the matchless strength of the situation of Constantinople. He suspected, if he did not know, the comparative weakness of Rome. Moesia and Thrace had been wandered over for years by the wasting bands of his countrymen, while Italy, so long the wealthy mistress of the world, was still unravaged. Above all he had already begun to hear a voice—like that which other makers of history, beings such as Mohammed, Joan of Arc, Savonarola listened to—telling them of great deeds set before them which they should one day accomplish. And this voice—call it by what name we may, it is vouched for by contemporary evidence _before_ its prediction was accomplished—said ever in his ears, ‘Alaric, delay not. Thou shalt penetrate to the City’[69]—the awful and still inviolate majesty of Rome.

[Sidenote: _Alaric’s first invasion of Italy, 400-403._]

At length in the year 400 the thunder-cloud burst. Alaric, with the whole nation which obeyed him, the women and children in the great Gothic waggons, the warriors on their war-horses, moved slowly up the valley of the Save, crossed the Julian Alps, and by the way which he had learned when he rode in the train of Theodosius, descended upon Italy. At the same time, there is reason to think, another troop of Goths, possibly belonging to the Ostrogothic section of the people, entered Italy under the leadership of Radagaisus, but of their movements we have no information, and even the fact of their invasion is not generally admitted by historians.

Of the three or four years (400-403) that Alaric spent in Italy during this invasion, we have the slenderest and most tantalisingly imperfect information from our authorities. We can say certainly that he did not reach Rome, probably did not cross the Apennines. There are dim rumours of a battle, a Roman defeat, somewhere near Aquileia. Then there is an inexplicable delay. During the whole of the year 401 Alaric appears to linger in Venetia and the valley of the Po, while Stilicho is fighting with some enemies (possibly Radagaisus and his Ostrogoths) in Raetia, and drawing in troops from the Rhine, and even from Britain, for the defence of the menaced capital. It was at this time that the Twentieth Legion was withdrawn from the cantonments which it had for centuries occupied at Chester, but to which it never returned.

[Sidenote: _Honorius retires to Ravenna._]

[Sidenote: _402-752._]

The Emperor Honorius seems to have been besieged by Alaric either at Milan or the not distant city of Asta. If thus menaced, he at any rate sustained no actual injury; but the shock to his Imperial nerves of seeing the yellow-haired barbarians under the walls of his city had been so severe that he migrated to Ravenna, which strong city, effectually sheltered from every land-attack by the network of rivers and canals which surrounded it, was from henceforth for three centuries and a half the regular residence of Roman Emperors, Ostrogothic Kings, and Byzantine Exarchs.

[Sidenote: _Battle of Pollentia. 4 Apr. 402._]

At last, at Eastertide in the year 402, the armies of Stilicho and Alaric met in battle at Pollentia, a city of what is now Piedmont, about twenty miles south-east of Turin. The accounts of the battle are very conflicting, but it was probably a defeat, though not a decisive defeat, of the Goths. The advantage was gained by a piece of sharp practice which was hardly worthy of the troops of a Christian Emperor. It was Good Friday, and Alaric—an Arian, but a zealous Christian—was celebrating the great event of Calvary in the usual manner, and not dreaming of battles, when one of Stilicho’s officers, an Alan and a heathen, named Saulus, led an impetuous charge of cavalry against the Gothic army, and compelled it to turn from prayer to fighting. Saulus himself fell at the very beginning of the engagement, and the cavalry wavered; but Stilicho and the legions of the centre restored the battle, and, perhaps, won the victory. But that the barbarian should have been forced against his will to fight on the most solemn fast-day of the Christian calendar was accounted a blot on the fair fame of Stilicho, and was not forgotten when the day of reckoning came between him and his enemies at the Imperial Court.

[Sidenote: _Alaric retires from Italy, 403._]

[Sidenote: _406._]

Another defeat, a doubtful defeat, of the Goths at Verona seems to have ended the war. In the year 403 Alaric made his way back out of Italy, probably over the Brenner Pass. He had not this time ‘penetrated to the City’: he had lost some of his treasure, the spoils of preceding years, and, according to one account, his wife even had fallen into the enemy’s hands. In itself the expedition had proved fruitless and inglorious enough, but it was the parent of mighty results; for doubtless in consequence of the withdrawal of the Imperial forces from the Rhine, a multitude of barbarous hordes—Vandals, Alans, and Suevi—poured from Germany into Gaul, and that fair province, the keystone of the arch of the Western Prefecture, was henceforward virtually lost to the Empire.

[Sidenote: _Invasion of Radagaisus, 405._]

[Sidenote: _Radagaisus shut up near Fiesole._]

[Sidenote: _Radagaisus slain and his army sold into slavery._]

Two years after Alaric’s departure from Italy, his confederate Radagaisus returned to it, having 200,000 Goths (probably Ostrogoths) in his train. This man was spoken of with terror as ‘by far the most savage of all the ancient or modern enemies of Rome.’ He was a Pagan, and a rumour was spread abroad that he had vowed to offer to his country’s savage gods the blood of the whole Roman people as an acceptable drink-offering. The impending heathenism without gave a despairing courage to the yet unsubdued heathenism within. The little knot of senators and their clients who still adhered to the ancient faith (which died out more slowly in Rome than anywhere else) dared to lift up their voices and openly assert that all these troubles were coming upon the State because she had left her old moorings, and because Jupiter Capitolinus and his family of gods were no longer receiving their ancient honours. However, there was not time for this party to effect a religious counter-revolution before deliverance came. If Radagaisus actually appeared under the walls of the City (which is doubtful), he soon departed and marched northwards into the rich land of Etruria. Stilicho followed him with an army, in which Uldin the Hun and Sarus the Goth were conspicuous figures. Once again he played that clever strategic game which he had probably learnt from Theodosius, and which he had already twice successfully practised against Alaric in Greece and in Italy. He ‘shut him up,’ we are told, in that circle of mountains which surrounds Fiesole and looks down on Florence. Skilfully-posted detachments of troops prevented the savage invaders from piercing at any point through the iron girdle that encompassed them; and this result being satisfactorily attained, of course the hugeness of the host only hastened the inevitable surrender. While the wild horde of Ostrogoths were starving in famished Fiesole, the soldiers of Stilicho were living in comfort—feasting, gaming, singing their rough camp-songs—but a sufficient number of them ever watching that none of the barbarians should creep over the mountains and escape. Before long the end came. Radagaisus, trying to steal forth by himself from the trap into which he and his followers had fallen, stumbled upon one of Stilicho’s outposts, was brought before his conqueror, and, after a few days’ interval, was put to death. The multitude which had accompanied him into Italy, with proud dreams of conquest and plunder, surrendering themselves at last to their watchful enemies, were all sold as slaves. So glutted was the market by their numbers that thousands of them fetched no more than an _aureus_ (twelve shillings) apiece. But so long had the brave Teutons delayed their surrender, that even the food which their new masters gave them came, in the majority of cases, too late to save their lives; and the greedy purchaser found in thousands of instances that his _aureus_ procured for him only the obligation to bury a starved-out Ostrogoth.

[Sidenote: _Nature of the manœuvre by which Radagaisus was defeated._]

The fact that both Theodosius and the captain who had been formed in his school practised so often and so triumphantly this manœuvre of ‘shutting up’ the Goths suggests a question as to the reason of its success. We must remember that the armies which followed Fritigern, Alaric, and Radagaisus were, for the most part, _nation-armies_, encumbered with women and children, old men and other non-combatants, for whose conveyance a long train of waggons was needed. The Goths had no doubt some horses, since we hear of their cavalry, but they do not seem to have been essentially an equestrian nation; and their cavalry evidently lacked rapidity and nimbleness of movement, which was the cause of their defeat by the Huns.

[Sidenote: _408._]

So long as they could confine themselves to the great plains of the Danube and the Po, the overpowering numbers of this human torrent made them terrible and victorious; and even the waggons were useful, since when formed in square they made a rough but safe encampment. But when the time came for this nation-army to penetrate from one river-system to another, to cross the soaring range of the Balkans or the Apennines, then their difficulties began. Their deficiency of light cavalry prevented them from reconnoitring well their ground, and obtaining (in those mapless days) the much-needed information as to the easiest passes and the most fruitful valleys. Soon there would be stragglers from the main host, and then petty and harassing skirmishes to defend those stragglers. The great cumbrous waggons would stick in morasses. There would be night-alarms, and in the stampede of cattle and flying men, many would be dashed down precipitous ravines or swallowed up in swollen rivers. By gentle but judicious pressure the Imperial general would succeed in forcing the unwieldy procession into some bay among the mountains carefully selected beforehand, whence exit for heavily armed warriors, for horses and for waggons was only possible by two or three well-defined passes. Then, if he could only keep strict watch enough, his task was accomplished. He would station his bravest soldiers, Huns very likely, or even Gothic _foederati_ on whose fidelity he could depend, at the mouths of these passes, and wait for hunger to do its swift work upon the cattle, upon the little children, upon the women; till at length thousands of brave men who longed for nothing so much as the opportunity to die fighting, found even this denied them, and had to surrender themselves and be sold as slaves to cultivate the lands of some Roman lord whose dainty life one blow from a Gothic fist would have at once annihilated.

This picture is chiefly an imaginary one[70], but those who remember the terrible scenes which marked the destruction of the British army in the Khyber Pass will, I think, recognise its probable truth.

We pass over three years and come to 408. Honorius, who was aged twenty-three, had now been for thirteen years the nominal ruler of the West. During the whole of that time the administration of affairs and the supreme command of armies had been in the hands of Stilicho, who, notwithstanding some blunders and some crimes, had upon the whole proved himself equal to the Herculean task which the weight of the falling Empire had brought upon him, and had certainly by his military genius marked himself out as the only champion fit to contend successfully with Alaric. This champion, through a sinister combination of fatuity, intolerance, and spite, was now struck down by the Emperor himself.

[Sidenote: _Revolt of Constantine in Britain, 407._]

[Sidenote: _408. Negotiations between Stilicho and Alaric._]

The circumstances of the Empire were more than ever difficult and perplexing. The usual British pretender to the purple had appeared in the shape of a private soldier named Constantine, whom (chiefly on account of his distinguished name) the legions still remaining in Britain had hailed as Imperator, and under whose command they had crossed over into Gaul to contend for such fragments of that wealthy province as still remained Roman, amid the generally pervading swarm of Franks, Vandals, Alans, and Alamanni. In the East the relations with Arcadius had been growing steadily worse for years. The present subject of contention was a claim—a preposterous claim as it seems to me—on the part of the Western Empire for the possession of the whole instead of a mere half of the Prefecture of Illyricum. In support of this claim Alaric, who seems to have been in frequent, almost confidential, communication with Stilicho ever since his last invasion of Italy, had been engaged by that minister to commence a joint invasion of the Eastern Empire. The project was, however, abandoned owing to the persuasions of Serena, the wife of Stilicho, who appears in all good faith to have exerted her influence with her husband and her Imperial cousins in order to prevent the outbreak of war between Arcadius and Honorius. But Alaric, dissatisfied with such a termination of the affair which left him and his followers without their stipulated guerdon, suddenly appeared at Aemona (Laybach) in a threatening attitude, and demanded compensation for the trouble and expense to which he had been put in preparing for the abandoned expedition.

[Sidenote: _Alaric’s claim for compensation._]

This extraordinary claim was brought by Stilicho before the Senate at Rome, and was supported by his own voice and by an easily procured letter from Honorius. Against such powerful advocates who could plead? The Conscript Fathers decided that 4000 pounds weight of gold (£160,000 sterling) should be paid over to Alaric in consideration of his not making war on either portion of the Empire. One Senator alone, a man of high rank named Lampadius, uttered an indignant exclamation[71], ‘This is no peace, but a selling of ourselves into slavery’; but fearing punishment for his boldness, when the Senate was broken up he took refuge in a neighbouring church, the sanctity of whose asylum seems to have preserved him from punishment[72].

[Sidenote: _Danger of Stilicho’s position._]

It might seem that a minister who could thus impose his will on Emperor and Senate could do anything, but in fact the position of Stilicho was already undermined. His daughter Maria, wife of the Emperor, had died, and the docile Honorius had acquiesced in the command to marry her sister Thermantia; but it seems possible to discern in his feeble soul some faint struggles of revolt against the yoke which the Stilichonian family, especially his mother-in-law, Serena, imposed upon him. In the legions, the regular Roman part of the army, there was an increasing feeling of bitterness against the favours shown, doubtless deservedly, to the Teutonic _foederati_. ‘Count Stilicho,’ they said one to another, ‘is after all a Vandal by birth, Sarus is a Goth, Uldin is a Hun. All the high commands are being monopolised by men whose fathers were skin-clothed barbarians. We are Romans, the sons of the comrades of Romulus, scions of the race that has conquered the world, yet we are nothing in our own land.’ Side by side with this military discontent, there was also ecclesiastical dissatisfaction. Stilicho, if not actually an Arian, pretty certainly threw his influence into the scale against the persecuting edicts and civil disabilities which the orthodox party were endeavouring to persuade the Emperor to hurl at the heretics. A rumour was also spread abroad—the truth or the origin of which it is impossible now to ascertain—that his son Eucherius shared that devotion to the old idolatry which, as has been said, lingered on so long among the nobility of Rome. Whatever the truth of that rumour may have been, another report which was industriously brought under the notice of Honorius, that Stilicho was scheming to secure the diadem for his son, was almost certainly unfounded. In point of fact the great minister had shown singular moderation in reference to the advancement of this son, who at this time held only the unimportant office of _Tribunus Notariorum_.

[Sidenote: _Death of Arcadius, 1 May, 408._]

[Sidenote: _Honorius in the camp at Ticinum._]

[Sidenote: _Mutiny at Ticinum._]

Such was already the thunderous state of the atmosphere of the Court when news reached Ravenna of the death of the Eastern Emperor, Arcadius. Both Honorius and Stilicho seem to have desired the office of guardian to the young Theodosius, son of Arcadius, and to have proposed to go to Constantinople to claim it. Stilicho had not much difficulty in dissuading the timid and parsimonious Honorius from the dangers and expense of the journey, but he could not allay the suspicions which his own eagerness for the office had excited, that he was again striving in an underhand way to procure either the Eastern or the Western diadem for the young Pagan, Eucherius. There was a certain officer of the Imperial guard named Olympius, ‘a man who, under the guise of devotion to Christianity, concealed every kind of wickedness,’ who was perpetually whispering into the Emperor’s ear the danger to religion from this ambition of Stilicho. A camp had been formed at Ticinum (Pavia), for the soldiers who were to march into Gaul to quell the revolt of Constantine. To this camp, which seems to have contained a large preponderance of Roman-born soldiers, Honorius set forth accompanied by Olympius; and Stilicho, who had thus allowed his most useful instrument to be purloined from him, lingered in a curious state of irresolution and inactivity with his _foederati_ round him at Bologna. Soon the news came of a terrible mutiny of the troops at Ticinum. Olympius had been ingratiating himself with the soldiers in every possible way, visiting those who were sick, and on every occasion letting fall words of sympathy for their hardships, and indignation at the partiality which constantly postponed their interests to those of the barbarian favourites of Stilicho. These hints, coming from an officer of the Imperial guard and a manifest favourite of the Emperor, had produced their natural effect. There had been what in Spanish politics is called a _pronunciamento_. The soldiers had risen in rebellion, slain four officers of the highest rank in the army and four heads of departments in the State, put the magistrates to flight, and held a carnival of blood in the city, robbing and murdering at their will.

[Sidenote: _Stilicho arrested, and put to death._]

At first the news ran that Honorius himself had been killed in the tumult, and then the _foederati_ at Bologna urged, and Stilicho consented, that they should at once march to Ticinum and avenge his death. Soon, however, a correcter version of the affair was received. Honorius was not dead, but had been paraded up and down the streets of the city by Olympius, in a short military cloak and without a diadem, endeavouring to persuade the soldiers to return to their obedience. In this he had at length succeeded. The mutiny had been quelled, but the authors of it had gained their end. All the more powerful friends of Stilicho at Ticinum had been treacherously slain, and it was now deemed safe to issue an order for the apprehension of Stilicho himself. The officers of the _foederati_, when the designs of the Court were apparent, naturally wished to defend themselves and their great general by force, but he refused to take any part in such a civil war, ‘not deeming it honourable or safe to employ barbarians against the Roman army[73].’ Sarus, the Goth, having no sympathy with such scruples, perceiving that it would, in these circumstances, ruin his prospects of a military career to be known as an adherent of Stilicho, ungenerously turned against his old chief, slew the brave Huns who formed his body-guard, and would fain have captured Stilicho himself, who, however, fled to Ravenna, but even in the hurry of his own flight found time to warn the neighbouring cities not to receive the _foederati_ within their walls. Soon after his arrival came a messenger from Olympius bearing the Emperor’s orders that he was to be apprehended and imprisoned. Stilicho took refuge in one of the many churches of Ravenna, but on the soldiers swearing a solemn oath in the presence of the Bishop that they were ordered to imprison him only but not to kill him, he surrendered himself to them. At once the same messenger produced a second letter from the Emperor, denouncing against Stilicho the punishment of death for his crimes against the Commonwealth. His friends and servants and a mass of indignant _foederati_ entreated to be allowed to defend him by arms, but Stilicho sternly forbade them, and calmly presented his neck to the sword of the executioner (Aug. 22, 408).

Some men who have led apparently righteous and honourable lives are unmasked by Death, who exposes their well-hidden wickedness. In Stilicho’s case Death wrought exactly the opposite change. At every step of his career we ask ourselves the question, ‘Self-seeker or Patriot?’ and it must be confessed that we scarcely get a perfectly satisfactory answer. But the closing scenes of his life show that he was indeed true to Rome, and refused the vengeance and the deliverance which lay all ready to his hand rather than use against her the swords of the barbarians.

[Sidenote: _Persecution of the friends of Stilicho._]

The death of Stilicho was the signal for an outburst of jealous rage against his family and friends. Eucherius, who had fled to Rome, was before long put to death. Thermantia was sent back by Honorius to her mother. The adherents of Stilicho were tortured to make them confess his traitorous designs, and when they steadfastly denied the existence of any such, were beaten to death with cudgels. Above all, the Roman soldiers, in every city where the wives and children of the _foederati_ were dwelling, rose in riotous insurrection, killing some and plundering others. Henceforth, of course, there was open war between legionaries and _foederati_, the latter of whom, to the number of 30,000, streamed forth to Alaric’s Illyrian camp and urged him to avenge them on their cruel and cowardly foes.

[Sidenote: _Alaric invades Italy, 408._]

Mindful of his former reverses in Italy, Alaric, though the voice ‘Penetrabis ad Urbem’ was still ringing in his ears, offered peace to Honorius in exchange for a small sum of money, hostages, and the province of Pannonia, on which by this time the Empire can have had but a slender hold. Honorius, safe behind the canals of Ravenna, and relying on the prayers of Olympius, refused all terms of compromise, and late in this eventful year, 408, Alaric marched for the last time over the Julian Alps into Italy, never again to leave that land, the goal of so many aspirations. The events of the three years, 408-410, in each of which there was a siege of Rome, cannot here be related with any detail, and some of them are among the best-known commonplaces of history. I will only briefly assign to each year its distinguishing features.

[Sidenote: _Rome ransomed, 408._]

The first, 408, was the year of _ransom_. Alaric, as has been said, in the later months of the year marched into Italy, and did not, as before, linger in the plains of Lombardy, but struck southward through Picenum and Umbria, marching no doubt by the great Flaminian Way, and stood before long at the gates of Rome. There seems to have been no opposition to his progress. The ‘Roman’ party, so zealous in killing women and children and in organising _pronunciamentos_, slunk into their holes when an army appeared. It is probable that in this Italian expedition Alaric had made his host more of an army and less of a nation than on the previous occasion. We hear nothing of the waggons, and some of his marches and counter-marches can hardly have been performed with a long train of non-combatants following him.

At Alaric’s appearance under their walls the Senate (for Honorius was safe at Ravenna) could think of no other means of opposing him than putting the hapless Serena, the widow of Stilicho, to death, fearing that she might open treacherous communications with the besiegers. The cowardly deed was not long unpunished. Alaric watched the Tiber above and below, and drew a strict line of blockade round the city. Hunger and pestilence were soon raging among the people, and the Senate found itself compelled to send ambassadors to Alaric to ask his terms. The threat that despair might drive the citizens to some audacious sortie was met by the well-known answer, ‘The thicker the hay, the easier mown’: the enquiry what Alaric meant to leave them if he insisted on their surrendering all their gold, all their moveable property, and all their barbarian slaves, by the equally well-known words, ‘Your lives[74].’

More days of famine followed. At length a final embassy arranged the terms of the ransom which Alaric condescended to receive from the Imperial City. It consisted of 5000 lbs. weight of gold (£225,000), 30,000 lbs. of silver (£90,000), 4000 silken tunics, 3000 scarlet hides, and 3000 lbs. of pepper. The date of this transaction is not known, but it was probably in the very last days of 408.

[Sidenote: _409. Alaric negotiates._]

[Sidenote: _Moderation of his requests._]

The next year, 409, is the _year of the anti-Emperor, Attalus_. All Alaric’s dealings with the Senate and People of Rome at this time were directed to the conclusion of a firm treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with the Emperor. His aim was not to conquer Rome, or to settle his followers in any part of Italy, but to legitimise his position within the Empire, to have a large space on the Middle Danube, either Noricum or Pannonia, assigned to his people, and then to be recognised as Rome’s champion against all other enemies. In fact, he desired to renew the old _federate_ relation only on a footing of equality instead of one of semi-dependence. To all such propositions Honorius, or rather the ministers who spoke in his name, replied with an unceasing ‘_non possumus_,’ as they could not be attacked, being safe behind the dykes and lagoons of Ravenna. Alaric’s only resource was to put pressure, even cruel pressure, on Rome, in order to bring her sovereign to terms.

[Sidenote: _Oath sworn by the head of Honorius._]

A considerable part of the year 409 was consumed in these vain negotiations. The Praetorian Prefect, Jovius, who had supplanted Olympius in the position of chief adviser of the Emperor, seems to have been at first disposed to try to make terms with Alaric, and to see if the title ‘_Magister Utriusque Militiae_’ could not divert him from his schemes of conquest. But Honorius demurred to the proposal, and Jovius, accommodating himself to his master’s humour, insisted on all the chief officers of the Emperor assembling round him and swearing by their master’s head (which they touched in making the asseveration) that they would make no peace with Alaric, but would wage against him perpetual war. To all subsequent overtures of Alaric (and some of them surprise us by their moderation, offering terms such as the Empire might have safely and honourably granted), this tremendous oath by the empty head of Honorius was opposed as an insuperable obstacle.

[Sidenote: _Attalus proclaimed Emperor._]

Alaric, whose patience was worn out, returned to Rome, and again formed the blockade of the City. But the Senate, whose patience was equally exhausted, refused to again undergo the horrors of famine and pestilence for the ungrateful Honorius, and sent messengers to Alaric declaring that they were willing to renounce their allegiance to the Emperor. Peace on these terms was easily arranged. Attalus, the Praetorian Prefect of the City, a man of Greek extraction, was saluted as Emperor, and in that capacity concluded a treaty with Alaric, recognising him as an ally of the Empire, probably conceding to him a settlement in the coveted provinces on the Danube, and conferring on him at once the splendid position of _Magister Utriusque Militiae_.

[Sidenote: _410. Attalus refuses to divide Italy with Honorius._]

[Sidenote: _Supplies from Africa stopped._]

[Sidenote: _Attalus deposed._]

So opened the year 410, the ever-memorable year of the _Third Siege and Capture of Rome_. It seemed for a time as if Attalus would indeed wrest the Rule of All Things from his incapable rival. He marched towards Ravenna, from whence issued forth a piteous supplication for peace on the basis of a yet further subdivided Empire. If Honorius might but continue to reign at Ravenna, Attalus should reign at Rome, and the _Concordia Augustorum_ might unite them and Constantine, the Emperor of the Gauls, with the son of Arcadius, Emperor of the East. Attalus made a cruel and insulting reply, threatening his rival with mutilation and banishment: but the timely arrival at Ravenna of six legions from Constantinople prevented him from carrying his threat into execution, and turned the tide of fortune. Famine again threatened Rome, from another cause than the blockade of Alaric. Heraclian, to whom had been entrusted the execution of the sentence against Stilicho, was now holding the great province of Africa loyally for Honorius, and by cutting off the food supplies of Carthage from Rome, brought the City into such terrible straits that an angry cry was heard in the Amphitheatre, when the new Emperor was sitting there in state watching the games, ‘Pone pretium carni humanae’ (‘Fix the tariff for human flesh’). Alaric’s keen eye saw that Africa was now the key of the position, and he urged upon Attalus the necessity of sending troops, barbarian _foederati_, thither to overcome Heraclian. But Attalus, who was evidently a futile, inefficient ruler, delayed and lingered, and, as it was hinted, began to entertain schemes for disembarrassing himself of the oppressive patronage of the Visigoth. At length Alaric, tired of his vacillation and bad faith, and recognising the failure of his scheme of creating a rival Emperor, assembled his army on the plain outside Ariminum, and there, in the sight of thousands of Romans and Goths, formally stripped Attalus of the emblems of Empire, and proclaimed that he was reduced to the rank of a private citizen.

[Sidenote: _Sarus breaks off the negotiations between Alaric and Honorius._]

The diadem and the purple were sent to Honorius at Ravenna, and it seemed for a moment as if the just and honourable peace, so eagerly desired by Italy, by Rome, and by Alaric, might be secured. But Sarus the Goth, the same man who had turned treacherously against Stilicho in his adversity, and who, perhaps on that account, hated Alaric and was hated by him, entered Ravenna at the head of 300 veterans, and succeeded in breaking off the just-resumed thread of the negotiations.

Then at length, as it seemed that nothing but the sword could cut the Gordian knot, Alaric again crossed the Apennines, determined to show what he could do to Rome as an enemy, since she in her infatuation rejected him as a friend.

[Sidenote: _Alaric enters Rome, 24 Aug. 410._]

There was this time no long agony of blockade, no famine or pestilence. On the night of the 24th of August, 410, almost as soon as he had appeared under the walls of the City, Alaric effected an entrance through the Salarian Gate, at the north-east corner of the City, at very nearly the same place where, on the 20th Sept. 1870, the soldiers of Victor Emmanuel entered Rome. Whether the gate was carried by a sudden surprise, or was opened by slaves or treacherous citizens within, it is impossible now to decide; but the theory of surprise seems, upon the whole, most probable. The splendid palace of the historian Sallust, hard by the Salarian Gate, was set on fire, and its spacious gardens had their beauty ruined by the entering Gothic soldiers.

[Sidenote: _Rome sacked._]

Thus, then, at length ‘the great city which reigned over the kings of the whole earth’ was captured and was pillaged by a foreign and a barbarian enemy. Civil war, sedition, frenzied Emperors had ‘dealt upon the Seven-hilled City’s pride’ in the course of the centuries; but not for 800 years—not since Brennus and his Gauls had slain the Conscript Fathers in the Forum—had Rome been violently entered by a conquering foreign foe. There were some alleviations to the horrors of the capture, derived from the fact that the assailants were Christians; and these alleviations are naturally emphasised by the Church historians, from whom we derive most of our scanty information as to the Third Siege of Rome. Alaric had ordered that no Christian church should be injured, and that the right of asylum, especially in the two great Basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul, should be religiously observed. These orders were perhaps made known to the citizens, multitudes of whom, Pagan as well as Christian, were soon flying for shelter to these islands of safety. But notwithstanding any such humane orders, honourable both to the general who issued them and to the army by whom they were obeyed, the sack of a great and wealthy city by a hungry and exasperated army of barbarians was of necessity a terrible thing. We hear of an aged widow beaten to death to make her disclose her imaginary treasures, of matrons ravished, of palaces laid in ashes. And above all rose now the terrible fact that _Roma Invicta_ had been conquered. Where one barbarian chief had penetrated, more could, and of a surety would, follow. The citizens henceforth—like men who have lived through a great and fearful earthquake—must live evermore in dread of seeing the ghastly terror recommence.

As even political caricatures may sometimes help us to understand what contemporary spectators think of the actors on the stage of history, let us listen to Procopius, who wrote 150 years later, but who has preserved to us a possibly contemporary story, as to the reception of the news of the fall of Rome by the Roman Augustus.

[Sidenote: _Reception of the tidings by Honorius._]

‘They say that at Ravenna one of the eunuchs who was in charge of the Imperial poultry announced to the Emperor Honorius that Roma had actually perished. Whereupon he cried with a loud voice—“But just now he fed out of my hands!” [for he had an exceedingly large fowl, Roma, by name.] Then the eunuch, understanding what was passing in his mind, said that it was Roma the _City_ which had been destroyed by Alaric. But the Emperor in reply said, “But I thought, my friend, that the _bird_ Roma had perished!”—so great they say was the stupidity of this Emperor.’

[Sidenote: _The capture of Rome settled nothing._]

[Sidenote: _Death of Alaric, 410._]

The capture of Rome by Alaric, though an event of incalculable importance in the history of the world, settled nothing in the immediate present. Still the Augustus, the only legitimate source of power in the Roman State, remained inaccessible at Ravenna. Still Heraclian, his yet loyal governor of Africa, held that province for his master, withholding the grain-supplies without which Rome could not live. Still Alaric could not conquer that firm peace, guaranteed by sufficient hostages, and securing to him a lawful position in the Empire, without which he was determined not to return to Illyricum. He marched to the extreme south of Italy, and designed to cross over into Sicily, in whose ports he would probably have collected an armament for the conquest of Africa. But he never effected the passage of the Straits of Messina, the ships which he had collected at Rhegium being destroyed by a violent storm. While he was still lingering in Calabria he was seized by an illness, which lasted but a few days. He had ‘penetrated to the City’; his work was done. The fateful voice rang in his ears no longer, telling him of great exploits yet reserved for him in the future, but instead of it came Death. He was probably in about the forty-fifth year of his age; so that he, like Theodosius, left great possibilities of conquest unexhausted. But in his short career he had done enough to change the current of the world’s history.

[Sidenote: _Burial of Alaric._]

The story of his burial is well known. In order to guard his grave from the possibility of insult at the hands of the Provincials, a number of captives were employed in diverting the stream of the Busentus, a river of Bruttii. In the old river-bed a great trench was dug, wherein were laid the bones of the conquering king, and, after the fashion of his heathen forefathers, some of the most precious spoils of Rome were laid by his side, that he might not miss them in the gardens of Paradise or the halls of Walhalla. Then the trench was filled in, the river was turned back into its ancient bed, the captives were slain: and thus ‘no man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day.’

LECTURE VI.

PLACIDIA: ATTILA.

[Sidenote: _Historical perspective._]

An interval of forty-two years elapsed between Alaric’s sack of Rome and the next great barbarian invasion of Italy. To us, looking at these years as they appear on the outstretched map of History, it is manifest that they were years of gradual but progressive decline and decay for the Roman Empire. Probably, but not certainly, they wore the same aspect to contemporary observers. But the important point to remember is that there _was_ such an interval between the first and the second acts of the great World-Tragedy. Reading history in a manual, or glancing over it in such a rapid sketch as I am now attempting to draw, we are apt to forget how slowly some of its scenes have unrolled themselves. Superficial students, if they do not actually confound Alaric with Attila, often think of them as contemporaries, perhaps as allies, and suppose that they and Genseric and Odoacer, by some combined and concerted effort, brought about ‘the fall of the Western Empire.’ What I want to impress upon my hearers is the fact that if a child was born on the day that Alaric was laid under the waters of the Busentus, he would be a middle-aged man when Attila stood under the walls of Aquileia, and would be verging on threescore and ten when the last Roman Emperor of the West was bidden to hand over the purple and the diadem to a barbarian conqueror. I ask also for a full measure of pity for those true Roman hearts whose allotted span of life had to be all passed in these years of irresistible decline. There are times like that of which a poet has sung—

‘Bliss was it in those days to be alive,
And to be young was very heaven;’

times like the first years that followed the battle of Salamis, like the first thrill and rapture of the Crusades, like ‘the spacious days of great Elizabeth,’ when the life of a nation has been so strong, so fresh, and so triumphant that one feels as if even the saddest individual life must have been overflowed by the great national gladness and saved from utter sorrow. On the other hand, could even the most unclouded domestic happiness atone to a patriotic Roman who lived in the fifth century for the necessity of watching the lingering agony of his country? Like a man dwelling upon a subsiding continent, he saw one familiar landmark after another submerged beneath the waters of barbarism. Or like those remote descendants of ours, if such shall then be living on this planet, who, as physical philosophers tell us, will see this earth begin to part with her atmosphere and become incapable of sustaining organic life, he must have felt that all the old conditions of being were inverted, and that life by the beautiful Mediterranean was going to become in truth unliveable.

[Sidenote: _Early life of Placidia, born about 388._]

[Sidenote: _Death of Galla, 394. Death of Theodosius, 395._]

[Sidenote: _Captivity of Placidia._]

In order to bring the length of this interval of comparative tranquillity properly before our minds, let us trace the fortunes of one person who lived through it, a daughter, sister, wife and mother of Emperors, the lady Galla Placidia. The daughter of Theodosius’s second marriage, she lost her mother, Galla, when a child of five or six years old, and her father in the following year. She appears to have been brought up at Rome, perhaps by her kinswoman Serena, who possibly intended that she should be the bride of her son, Eucherius. Her position was one of forlorn splendour, that of an orphan with no sister and with two such brothers as Arcadius and Honorius; nor does it appear to have been cheered by any gleams of friendship between herself and the house of Stilicho. When Alaric first appeared under the walls of Rome, the resolution to put Serena to death as his suspected accomplice was taken ‘by the Senate and by the Emperor’s sister, Placidia[75].’ Probably the name of a young maiden of twenty was somewhat ostentatiously used by the Senate in order to justify their own action against the niece of the great Theodosius: still it is impossible for the admirers of Placidia (of whom I am one) not to regret that her influence on this occasion was exerted on the side of vengeance rather than on the side of compassion. It was probably at the end of the first siege of Rome that Placidia was taken prisoner by the Goths, who retained her as a hostage, but treated her with all outward show of honour and royal ministrations. She was therefore doubtless present at the great assembly at Ariminum, where her brother’s rival, Attalus, was deposed; she would hear from the Gothic soldiers their histories of the sack of Rome; she perhaps saw the mighty form of her conqueror outstretched in death in his tent by the Busentus. Now, for the next five years, her history was to be singularly interwoven with that of his brother-in-law and successor, Ataulfus.

[Sidenote: _Alaric’s successor, Ataulfus._]