The Fall of the Roman Empire

by Michael Grant

  9

  Race against Race

  When the Germans entered the Empire, Rome was presented with an opportunity to assimilate them, and the opportunity was missed, with the gravest results. Instead of unity and partnership between the two peoples, there was acute friction, which contributed grievously to the break-up of the Roman world.

  Already for a long time before that terminal century, many German tribesmen had been living inside the Imperial borders. From the very beginning of the Empire, one Roman ruler after another had imported them in large numbers, so that there should be less trouble-makers beyond the frontiers, and more soldiers and agricultural workers within. From the time of Constantine the Great onwards, entire regiments of the Imperial field force were made up of these Germans. Many of them obtained officer rank. Emperors were surrounded by German officers. Indeed a characteristic feature of the entire period is the German who became the Master of Soldiers or commander of the Imperial armies. For Emperors were often inclined to feel that they could rely on the loyalty of a foreigner.

  On occasion, these men became the virtual controllers of the government. Such a potentate, for example, was Arbogast, under Gratian and Valentinian n; though his trustworthiness, as it turned out, could not be relied upon after all, since the mysterious death of Valentinian n in 392 was almost certainly this general's doing. But the most remarkable of all such German commanders and rulers behind the throne was Stilicho, who governed the Western Empire for the young Honorius.

  So great was the veneration felt for the Imperial monarchy that even the most powerful German generals did not aspire to it themselves. Out of all the numerous military usurpers and would-be usurpers of the fourth and fifth centuries, only two quite exceptional figures, during the 350s, seem to have been Germans. Even towards the very end, the German Ricimer still preferred to rule behind the throne of docile Emperors rather than attempt, in the face of tradition, to reign himself.

  Yet the internal balance of power between Romans and Germans in the Empire had already shifted irrevocably towards the Germans three-quarters of a century before Ricimer. The change became apparent when Valens let a host of Visigoths into the provinces. The most experienced statesman of [modern] Europe', it seemed to Gibbon in the eighteenth century, 'has never been summoned to consider the propriety or the danger of admitting or rejecting an innumerable multitude of barbarians, who are driven by despair and hunger to solicit a settlement on the territories of a civilized nation'. But that was Valens' problem, and he let them in; and the immigrants he had admitted overwhelmed him at Adrianople.

  They stayed, and in 382 Theodosius 1 took the revolutionary step of allowing whole German tribes to reside in Imperial territory as separate, autonomous, allied or federate units, committed to serving in the Roman army, though under the command of their own chieftains. Thereafter the practice continued and increased, until such federates became a regular and widespread feature of the life of the Empire.

  Early in the fifth century, when the Visigoths and Burgundians settled in Gaul, there were formal partitions of lands, in which the local Roman proprietors handed over a third of their arable territory to German immigrants. Later, the proportion rose to two-thirds, and included immovable possessions as well; woodland was perhaps divided half and half. The principle of these arrangements was derived from an old Roman formula for quartering soldiers on landowners. But now the quartering was permanent, and so was the transfer of property. The original system had been known as hospitalitas, and the name continued to be used, so that the proprietor and his partial German supplanter were somewhat euphemistically described as 'host' and 'guest'.

  These arrangements formed an important part of the process by which the ancient world gradually developed the new national patterns characteristic of the Middle Ages. Yet the part played by the Visigothic and Burgundian settlers in this historic transformation is only apparent by hindsight. At the time when they were first setting up their homes on Imperial soil they felt no desire whatever to dismember Rome or spurn its institutions.

  As archaeological evidence reveals, Germans hitherto outside the Empire but in contact with it - with the exception of savages such as the Angle, Saxon and Jute invaders of Britain - had already acquired a certain degree of Romanization themselves. Their nomadic days were over, and what they wanted was land to cultivate. Like their earlier compatriots who had been filtering through into the Empire for centuries, their strongest ambition was to establish themselves in one of the Imperial provinces, and obtain a share of its peaceful prosperity.

  When they entered the provinces, therefore, the question of their seeking full independence from the Empire around them did not, in the first instance, arise. On the contrary, these German newcomers hoped to establish a form of co-existence. It was an extraordinary moment. There was a glimpse of a new order, in which Romans and Germans might settle down together as partners.

  The Romans had not been able to keep the Germans out, and could not eject them now. Clearly the provincials could not be expected to like the land transfers. Nevertheless, Rome imperatively needed the services of the newcomers for the army, and as agricultural labourers as well. Moreover, the Germans, since they were a 'Third World' hankering after the benefits of Imperial civilization, were willing enough, in so far as they thought about the matter at all, to deal fairly with the Romans among whom they had settled. Indeed, they had little alternative, since the German element in the combined population was and remained relatively small. Perhaps there were not more than 100,000 Visigoths in their whole kingdom when it eventually extended from the Loire to Gibraltar. If so, they only amounted to about two per cent of the total inhabitants of the area.

  The Visigoths turned against Rome in the end and put it to the sack. Yet their leader, Alaric, should not be remembered just as the captor of Rome. He had originally been something far more positive and remarkable, the man who, according to the sixth-century Gothic historian Jordanes, wanted a single German-Roman people. His son and successor Ataulf (410-15), who married Honorius' half-sister Placidia, formulated the same ideal in language which remains impressively relevant to our racial problems today. Orosius, writer of the Histories against the Pagans, was told by a citizen of Narbo (Narbonne) that Ataulf had spoken in these terms:

  ... To begin with, I ardently desired to efface the very name of the Romans and to transform the Roman Empire into a Gothic Empire. Romania, as it is commonly called, would have become Gothia; Ataulf would have replaced Caesar Augustus. But long experience taught me that the unruly barbarism of the Goths was incompatible with the laws.

  Now, without laws there is no state. I therefore decided rather to aspire to the glory of restoring the fame of Rome in all its integrity, and of increasing it by means of the Gothic strength. I hope to go down to posterity as the restorer of Rome, since it is not possible I should be its supplanter.

  That, then, was the exciting ideal which at least a few of the German leaders articulately pursued. The practical possibilities have been analysed by Joseph Vogt in his book The Decline of Rome, published in 1967:

  . . . The Visigoths and Burgundians were 'billeted guests' in the Roman provinces and as such wholly dependent on what the institutions rooted in the land could provide. The numerical inferiority of the foreigners was itself a reason for reaching a considerable measure of accommodation with the native population. It was very difficult for these German minorities to withstand the pressure of Roman influence.

  Moreover, the solidarity of the Germanic peoples was to some degree impaired by their own social organization. The Visigoths had an upper and lower stratum, each with its own law, while the Burgundians were divided into the three strata of nobility, medium-free and low-free.

  Upon this shaky foundation the two peoples proceeded to

  errect a state which comprehended both Germans and Romans, two elements which were required to live side by side and yet preserve their identity.

  The most important binding ligament
was the [German] monarch. To his Roman subjects he was made acceptable by the offices and honorific titles conferred by the Emperor or a fictitious kinship with the Imperial house. The Assembly of Germanic warriors was rarely consulted before important decisions, and the Germanic aristocracy had to content themselves with serving the king.

  From the beginning, Romans had access to high positions in the central government, and in the royal household with which it was closely associated. The chancery retained its Roman stamp, the structure of the provincial government was left untouched and there was no interference in economic affairs. Latin was adopted as the administrative language, the tax system remained in being, and the coinage followed the imperial pattern.

  But the vital question was this. How were the Romans going to respond to this unprecedented experiment in co-existence, in which they were required to share their provinces and their lands with another race in a novel sort of partnership?

  On a lofty plane, there was no absence of reassuring general statements. Augustine, pointing out that we all share the bond of descent from Adam and Eve, duly echoed the ecumenism of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians: 'There is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female; for you are all one person in Christ Jesus.' Moreover, as in earlier centuries, there was still great stress on the universal, multi-racial unity of the Roman Empire. 'We may drink of the Rhine or the Orontes,' declared Claudian, 'we are all one people', and Rome's enduring service was to establish friendship among the nations:

  She is the only one who has received The conquered in her arms and cherished all The human race under a common name, Treating them as her children, not her slaves. She called these subjects Roman citizens And linked far worlds with ties of loyalty.

  And the Christian lyricist Prudentius wrote at length in the same universal spirit.

  A common law made them equals and

  bound them by a single name. . . .

  We live in the most diverse countries,

  like fellow-citizens of the same blood dwelling

  within the single ramparts of their native city

  and all united in an ancestral home.

  By the same token another poet, Rutilius Namatianus, declared that Rome ruled because she deserved to rule - because she had wisely brought all men together beneath the rule of one law, to live without fetters.

  Nor were the signs altogether lacking that these high-minded sentiments might be brought down to earth and related to coexistence with the Germans. In particular, the Christian historian Orosius saw a great opportunity in the peace which Ataulf's successor, Wallia, wanted to sign with Honorius. Orosius was even prepared to speculate that the day might arrive when the German chiefs would become great kings. Moreover, although admitting current frictions and hostilities, he noted that the Germans were already beginning to live on friendly terms with their neighbours, and that the Burgundians, for example, were mild and modest enough to treat their Gallo-Roman subjects as brothers.

  Orosius, like a number of other churchmen, was already willing to come to terms with the new forces, and envisaged the possibility of a future Christian order comprising some sort of union between the Roman and the German nations - which would solve this most pressing problem of the age. To his coreligionist Paulinus of Nola, also, it seemed that barbarians, once converted, might well become allies of law and order.

  Salvian, too, supports the new co-existence. Admittedly he does so primarily for ethical and rhetorical reasons, because he is continually contrasting the corruption of Roman society with the allegedly superior morals, humanity, social solidarity and justice of the barbarians - uncouth and imperfectly organized though they may be. Nevertheless, this point of view did help Salvian to take an unusually constructive view of the Germanic peoples. Looking ahead, and moving beyond the all-too-elevated sentiments of his contemporaries, he succeeded in detecting what was novel and important about this new German phenomenon. Could a fresh start have been made with the racial interrelationship, if only the Roman upper class had heard his isolated voice?

  A member of that class, writing some two decades later - only a decade before the final collapse of Roman rule - was a certain Paulinus: not the better-known poet of Nola, but Paulinus of Pella, the town in Macedonia that was his birthplace, though he went to reside in Gaul. In his poem The Thanksgiving he tells us how the facts of life appeared to the Gallo-Roman nobility under barbarian rule. He himself had suffered grave material losses at its hands. Nevertheless, he had formed, in his younger days, a friendly personal relationship with Ataulf, and it was his decision to acquiesce in the Visigothic peace.

  It was peace I sought

  From the Gothic masters. They themselves wanted peace And before long they gave to others, though For a price, the chance to live without annoyance. This we did not regret because we saw that they Now held power and in their favour we prospered. Still it was not an easy thing; many endured Great suffering. I was not the least of these because I had lost my goods and outlived my fatherland.

  Another Gallo-Roman aristocrat, Sidonius, came to feel much the same. In 471-5, it is true, as bishop of Arverna, he had helped to fight against the Visigothic king Euric. But both before and after that warlike interlude, he wrote and spoke in favour of co-existence with these Germans, many of whom he knew well. This attitude emerges, for example, in his panegyric of Avitus, who had been elevated to the purple in 455 by his fellow Romans of Gaul, in collusion with the Visigoths. In support of this combined action, Sidonius observed that, since the Germans and Romans were now friends, they had a common interest in saving the Empire.

  That was, by then, no longer true, and Sidonius knew it. But the Visigoths were protecting him and his friends from other and much fiercer tribes of Germans, such as the Saxons. So Sidonius dissembled, and during the year of mild imprisonment which his resistance to their dominion at Arverna had earned at their hands he wrote in exceedingly flattering terms of King Euric, 'our lord and master, to whom a conquered world pays suit'. The Frankish Count of Treveri (Trier), too, received Sidonius' assurances that his Latin style flowed as delightfully as the Tiber stream itself.

  Yet these views expressing some measure of sympathetic acquiescence in the new position of the Germans have to be sought for and extracted with care from an enormous mass of totally unfavourable Roman references. Even so distinguished a historian as Ammianus was no exception. He appreciated, it is true, that cynical ill-treatment of German immigrants by Roman officials had precipitated the disaster of Adrianople: they had given dog-meat to the starving Visigoths in exchange for their sons, sold as slaves. Nevertheless, he seemed to think, quite unrealistically, that all the Germans settled in the Empire could somehow be spirited away, if only the effort was made, or if not that they could at least be forced to live in bondage to the Romans. And the Huns, who were playing a large and helpful part in the armies of Theodosius I, appeared to Ammianus as scarcely human: 'They are so monstrously ugly and misshapen that one might take them for two-legged beasts, or for the stumps, rough-hewn into images, that are used in putting sides to bridges. . . . Like unreasoning animals, they are utterly ignorant of the difference between right and wrong.'

  It was out of the question, declared Bishop Optatus of Milevis (Mila) in Algeria in the same spirit, for any Christian virtue to exist among barbarians. And Synesius of Cyrene (Shahhat), too, displayed extreme hostility to the German settlers, deploring the policy of giving them land and demanding that they be sent back (which he did not see was quite impossible), or, if kept, degraded into serfdom.

  . . . The title of Senator which, in ancient times, seemed to Romans the climax of all honours, has become because of the barbarians something abject. . . the same blond barbarians, who in private life fulfil the role of domestic servants, give us orders in public life. Theodosius I, by excess of clemency, treated them with

  gentleness and indulgence, gave them the title of allies, conferred upon them political rights and honours, generously ma
de them gifts of lands. But they did not understand and appreciate the nobility of this treatment. They interpreted it as weakness on our part, and that inspired in them an insolent arrogance and an unheard-of boastfulness.

  It is disappointing to find Prudentius also, who had. so promisingly declared the peoples of the Empire 'equals and bound by a single name', nevertheless displaying the keenest distaste for all barbarians, lumping them together with pagan Romans as objects of contempt.

  As beasts from men, as dumb from those who speak, As from the good who God's commandments seek Differ the foolish heathen, so Rome stands, Alone in pride above barbarian lands.

  Clearly, the universalism of St Paul had been replaced among Christians by the traditional Roman disdain for these outsiders. The same feelings, once again, were expressed by Ambrose, who recognized the Goths as the ferocious destroyers of Magog deplored by the prophet Ezekiel, and when a bishop seemed to be accepting barbarian ways, denounced his attitude as plain sacrilege. Ambrose noted the fierce wars between one barbarian nation and another, and this phenomenon inspired Claudian, like others, to assert hopefully that one of the advantages of Stilicho's enlistment of Germans is that they would now have to fight and kill each other.

  Although Claudian's protector Stilicho was himself a German, the poet performed a notable feat of literary acrobatics by managing to denounce their Eastern enemy Rufinus for his secretly pro-German attitude:

  He, within the city's guarded space,

  Exulted in the crimes which spread disgrace. . . .

  The devastation gratified his sight,

  And savages he viewed with fond delight. . . .