Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

by Baker, Simon

  When Honorius’s brother Arcadius, the eastern Roman emperor, died in 408, Stilicho fell out with his adolescent charge. Honorius said that, as western emperor, he wanted to go to Constantinople and arrange affairs for the smooth hand-over of power. Stilicho disagreed. Perhaps he believed that Honorius was too inexperienced to take on such a responsibility. Perhaps he was simply unwilling to surrender the power to which he, as the young emperor’s guardian, had become accustomed. No, insisted the general, he was the one who should go to Constantinople. The reason? There was no money to pay for the imperial entourage to travel east. What’s more, said Stilicho, the situation in the west was too precarious. With Constantine III so close in Arles, Italy needed Honorius. Bruised, bitter and sulking, Honorius gave way. As soon as Stilicho had gone, Olympius spied his opportunity and moved in for the kill.

  With an affected display of modesty and Christian rectitude disguising the fork in his tongue, Olympius sidled up to Honorius as they travelled together to review the army at the military headquarters in Ticinum (modern-day Pavia). Perhaps he reminded the emperor of the crisis the west was in. Constantine in Gaul was virtually on Italy’s doorstep; the Vandals, Alans and Suevi were making themselves at home in Spain; and Alaric and his army of Goths were at a loose end, still hovering menacingly in Noricum. This, he would have argued, was the fault of one man and one man alone: Stilicho. To cap it all, that same man was once again pursuing his ambitions to control the east as well as the west – just as he had tried to do from the start of Honorius’s reign. He had gone to the east, said Olympius, not to manage the situation there, but to seize the ‘opportunity of removing [Arcadius’s chosen successor] the young Theodosius, and of placing the empire in the hands of his own son, Eucherius’.12

  Stilicho had been the closest thing to a father that Honorius had known. The emperor was, of course, married to Stilicho’s daughter. Nonetheless, Olympius seemed to be winning over the young man’s attention. If there was any residue of feeling for his old guardian, the uncertain, peeved Honorius probably did not show it. Olympius would now have had one final argument up his sleeve, one final dagger to plunge. Let’s not forget, he perhaps suggested, that Stilicho himself is one of ‘them’ – a barbarian.

  It would have been quite normal for someone like Olympius to use such a tack in casting a slur on a man’s character. The old, deeply ingrained prejudice of the Romans was a reworking of Aristotle’s view of human nature and ran as follows. All humans were made up of rational and animal elements. In Romans the rational element was dominant. It gave them the capacity, in war and politics, for foresight, for holding strong under pressure and determinedly persevering towards an agreed goal in spite of short-term failures encountered along the way. In barbarians, by contrast, the animal element was dominant. They were rash, fearful, disorganized. They were prone to panicking and losing their heads in the face of adversity, victims of the slightest vicissitude of fortune.13 Above all, as Olympius no doubt pointed out, they were not to be trusted.

  Honorius remained for four days at Ticinum, rallying and encouraging the soldiers for the fight against the rebel Constantine. During his review of the ranks, Olympius maintained his show of Christian piety by visiting the sick and the wounded from the recent military engagements with the usurper. In reality, he was doing no such thing. Among the officers whom he could trust he was spreading the same insinuations he had made to Honorius: the Romans, he whispered, needed to be rid of the barbarians once and for all – and who better to start with than Stilicho? It was all part of a covert, carefully organized plan to reverse Stilicho’s policy of pragmatic toleration towards barbarians and end his influence. But the subtlety of Olympius’s infiltration of the Roman army disguised the utter brutality of his desired effect.

  On Honorius’s last day at Ticinum, Olympius gave the signal. The soldiers who were in on the plan turned on Stilicho’s allies in the army and the imperial court and started killing. To the shock and horror of many, a bloody military coup had come from nowhere and was now raging viciously. Unsuspecting commanders of the cavalry and infantry, prefects of the court, magistrates, treasurers, heralds and stewards of the emperor were all murdered for their association with Stilicho. If they tried to escape, they were swiftly hunted down. Honorius could do nothing about it. He rushed out of the palace dressed in no more than his undergarments and a short cloak, ran into the city centre and shouted out unheeded orders to stop. Ticinum was in chaos. But it was only the beginning.14

  In his proposed journey east Stilicho had got no further than Bononia (Bologna), 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Ticinum. Perhaps, for reasons that are not clear, he never intended to go to Constantinople.15 When he heard news of the mutiny at Ticinum, he was distraught. He immediately called a council of some soldiers who had accompanied him. These were the recently drafted Goths from the army of Radagaisus. It is revealing that these ‘barbarians’ were now the ones who were determined to place their loyalty with Stilicho and the Roman emperor. It was decided that if the emperor had been killed in the mutiny, Stilicho’s force of 12,000 Goths would march on Ticinum and punish the Roman soldiers who had carried out the atrocity. When news arrived that the emperor was safe, however, the plan was dropped. The general knew that inflicting heavy losses on the military establishment of northern Italy would only open the door to either Alaric or Constantine III. Indeed Stilicho, the dutiful officer, faithful to the status quo and to the integrity of the western Roman empire, had no intention of upsetting the balance between Romans and barbarians by inciting his largely Gothic Roman soldiers against native Roman soldiers. It was simply not the honourable thing to do. He had devoted his entire career to achieving just the opposite and he was not going to change now.

  Eventually he decided to return to Ravenna, Honorius’s preferred imperial capital, and to confront the new situation.16 As he made his way there, he had perhaps already guessed that he could no longer trust Honorius’s friendship. However, he was not expecting quite such a cold welcome. Olympius, now ‘master of the emperor’s inclination’, had sent out orders to soldiers at Ravenna to arrest Stilicho at the earliest opportunity. Getting wind of this on the night of his arrival, Stilicho took refuge in a church. He knew that no one could touch him there. What’s more, the sanctuary would give him valuable time to talk with the allies and friends who had accompanied him and to work out what to do.

  The following morning Olympius’s soldiers came knocking on the church door. They presented the bishop with a letter from Honorius permitting them to put Stilicho in custody. They swore to the bishop that Stilicho would not be killed. Against the wishes of his allies Stilicho agreed to leave the church, but as soon as he did so a second letter was produced. It pronounced that for his crimes against the western empire, Stilicho was to suffer the punishment of death. The throng of Stilicho’s supporters went mad with fury and promised that they would find a way to rescue him. In an angry, menacing tone of voice, Stilicho told them to stop such talk. It would only make the situation worse. With that, he calmly submitted himself to the soldiers, laid bare his neck and was beheaded on 22 August 408.17

  The violent fallout from Stilicho’s death was as devastating as it was clinical. Olympius damned all memory of his predecessor by extracting false accusations against him under torture. His chosen method was to have his victims bludgeoned. In this way he forged evidence that Stilicho ‘coveted the throne’.18 Stilicho’s son, some of his relatives and all his remaining allies in the army and administration were murdered. His daughter, the emperor’s wife, was lucky; she was unceremoniously removed from Honorius’s presence and sent to live with her mother. The tentacles of the purge reached as far as Rome. Olympius ordered the confiscation of all property from those who had held any office under Stilicho. The soldiers in Rome took this as their cue, indeed, as their licence, to vent some repressed rage. They raided houses both in Rome and in cities up and down Italy, and fell upon every man, woman and child of barbarian origin, slaughtering th
em in their thousands. The purge had now become a massacre, an ancient Roman pogrom.

  One contemporary historian’s epitaph for the dead general described him as ‘the most moderate and just of all the men who possessed great authority in his time’.19 Perhaps he had been overly ambitious for power, but this ambition was focused on the preservation of the western state. Stilicho’s great virtue had been his loyalty – to emperor and to Rome. Apart from being Rome’s greatest general in the late Roman empire, Stilicho was the lynchpin of relations between Roman and barbarian. He had seen that accommodating and Romanizing the Goths was the key to maintaining the future and, above all, the military security of the western Roman empire. Once he had gone, that policy vanished with him. Olympius’s hawks shrieked for war.

  The massacre, however, had not accounted for everyone. Some 10,000 Gothic soldiers from the army of Radagaisus had escaped the pogrom. They turned to the only person who would offer them sanctuary – Alaric, in the mountains and hills of Noricum. When they reported the horrific news from Italy, Alaric knew that the tables were turning against him once again. With the death of Stilicho, he knew he had lost not just his once great adversary, but also his greatest ally. With a wholesale change of personnel at the western court complete, he knew he had also lost his greatest hope for peace. When his initial offers for terms were rejected by the new regime, the sheer callousness of Honorius’s rejection must only have added salt to the wound.

  Faced with a new deadlock, Alaric was left with only one option. It was the option he least wanted: to use force, to take the dagger of his Gothic army – now swollen to 30,000 soldiers – and place it at the throat of the western Roman empire. At the end of the calamitous year 408, Alaric invaded Italy. This time he was not going to leave without getting what he wanted.

  ALARIC’S PEACE

  In quick succession the northern Italian towns of Aquileia, Concordia, Altinum, Cremona, Bononia, Ariminum and Picenum all fell to the Goths under Alaric’s furious assault in the autumn of 408. However, there was one city that the Gothic leader omitted: the imperial seat of Ravenna. It was a natural fortress, which was why Honorius had retreated there even though Milan was the imperial capital of the west. For the same reason Alaric decided that, even with his substantial army, he could not take his fight directly to the emperor. Rome, the revered ancient capital of the old Roman empire, would be a much softer target, a much more attractive hostage to take. By November Alaric’s army had surrounded the city. Forces were garrisoned outside each of the thirteen gates, and a blockade of the Tiber cut off the city’s access to its port at Ostia, and thus its grain supplies from North Africa. A neat, hermetically sealed siege of the ancient treasure chest of the western empire would, thought Alaric, be the best way to hurt Honorius.

  Within a matter of weeks, the city-state that had ruled the known world, the home of the ancient gods, the God of the Christians and the Senate, became a tomb, a desolate, morbid ghost town. Gothic boats patrolled the river, and sentry guards kept an eye on every inch of the city’s walls. Inside those walls the daily food rations for the city’s inhabitants were cut by two-thirds, and people died in their thousands. Corpses could not be taken out of the city, so they littered the streets, their stench a miasmic mantle hovering over everything. As the winter drew closer, there were those who would turn to cannibalism. Only the wealthy could draw on secret reserves of food. While some, no doubt, desperately hoarded their goods, the wife and mother-in-law of Gratian, the former emperor of the west, were known for their philanthropic handouts.20 Among the well-to-do caught up in Alaric’s grip was someone whose presence in Rome would have added to the impact the siege had on Honorius in Ravenna. Galla Placidia was none other than the emperor’s sister. Despite this, however, the obstinate Honorius did not lift a finger to help Rome. Indeed, the first delegation the Gothic leadership received came not from Ravenna, but from two of the city’s leading senators. Far from being humbled by the siege, they were in a blustering mood.

  The two men had a simple message for Alaric: Rome was armed and ready for a fight. ‘The thicker the grass,’ replied Alaric, ‘the more easily it is cut down!’ And with that he let out a big belly-laugh. He was not alone in finding the pathetic, pumped-up posturing of the senators amusing. When he had first reached Rome, Alaric had sent for reinforcements, and his brother-in-law Athaulf had duly arrived with additional forces of Goths and Huns. Perhaps Athaulf now shared in his brother’s joke.

  Realizing that their diplomacy had got off to a disastrous start, the Roman envoys changed tack. They adopted a more modest tone and tried to find a way of ending the crippling siege. The Gothic brothers conferred. Yes, there was something that could be done to alleviate matters somewhat: all the city’s gold, silver, movable items and barbarian slaves resident in the city might do the trick. ‘But if you take all these things, what would be left for those inside the city?’ ‘Their lives,’ came Alaric’s cold, terse reply.21

  Within days, a spectacular, unprecedented procession of wagons left the city of Rome. They carried 2250 kilograms (2 tons) of gold, 135,000 kilograms (13 tons) of silver, 4000 silk tunics, 3000 scarlet-dyed fleeces and 1350 kilograms (3000 pounds) of pepper. Since the imperial treasury in Rome was entirely empty, the senators had to pull every string, use every form of compulsion to levy the goods. Even precious statues from the ancient temples were melted down.22 In return, Alaric and Athaulf agreed that the siege be lifted for three days only. The ports and markets opened once again, food entered the city and Rome breathed a sigh of relief.

  But while Athaulf perhaps rejoiced at receiving the treasure and enjoyed the sight of Goths dishing out to Rome her just deserts, the gold and other riches were not what Alaric wanted. True, he knew they were needed urgently in the short term: he had fresh recruits, as well as his original force of 20,000 men, to keep happy and loyal. He needed to reward them, to assure them of their prestige. But in the long term Alaric wanted Gothic prestige to take an entirely different form – a form much more durable than the transitory gleam of lucre. To that end he again approached the Roman senators. He had a little task for them.

  While the siege was temporarily lifted, Alaric urged the senators to use the time wisely. They should go to Ravenna as his ambassadors and bring the emperor Honorius to the negotiating table. Alaric wanted to discuss terms for the one thing he really wanted, the one reason why he was besieging the city: a permanent peace and alliance with Rome. The senators duly set off.

  At the emperor’s palace in Ravenna the senators found an imperial court unhappy and under the thumb of Olympius. Honorius had divorced his wife (Stilicho’s daughter) and had thus cut the last tie to the old regime of his dead father-in-law. Yet now that Stilicho was gone for ever, the emperor was perhaps realizing just how valuable he had been. Indeed, Stilicho’s skills as a general and a leader at the service of the empire were just what was needed now. Without them, none of the problems affecting the west had shown any sign of improving; in fact, they had just stagnated and grown worse. As a result, when the senators arrived at the imperial palace, the emperor was no longer willing to reject out of hand Alaric’s request for negotiation.

  Honorius agreed in principle to a military alliance with Alaric. The details of land settlement, of a secure source of revenue, were not, for the time being, on the table. Nonetheless, the offer was an important step in the right direction. Or so it seemed. On closer inspection, Honorius’s response revealed the fingerprints of Olympius’s influence. Perhaps the emperor’s chief adviser had reminded him that the granting of a new land settlement spelt only more trouble. The tax revenues from Rome and Italy were already decimated thanks to Alaric’s ravaging of the peninsula. Any further handing over of land to the Goths would only make matters worse: no land meant no tax revenues; no money meant no army; and no army, perhaps suggested Olympius, rising to his theme, meant no empire. Ultimately, the greatest advantage of the non-committal agreement was that it bought the emperor more time. He could prof
itably expend this precious time trying to gather the Roman forces to face Alaric on an even military footing so that he would never have to honour the agreement anyway. So, while promising much, the offer actually gave nothing away. Batting the ball straight back into Alaric’s court, Honorius dismissed the senators to Rome.

  The Goth was delighted at the news. Peace, he believed, was within sight. Since his plan of besieging Rome seemed to be reaping rich dividends, he and his army agreed to withdraw from Rome and headed north. What Alaric had failed to realize, however, was a lesson he should have learnt long ago. He was trying to forge an alliance with people who believed he was nothing more than an uncouth barbarian leading an uncivilized rabble. The fact was that Honorius had no intention of honouring an alliance. As Alaric waited patiently in northern Italy for a proper agreement to come, the duplicity of the western court soon became painfully apparent.

  Honorius had used the hiatus to try to reinforce the defences of Rome. He had dispatched to the city an élite corps of 6000 soldiers, the cream of the Roman army in Italy. Before they even reached Rome, however, Alaric’s men had spotted them. Immediately, Alaric amassed the totality of the Gothic army, sent it in pursuit and promptly wiped out all 6000 Roman soldiers. Later on there were further indignities for the imperial forces to endure. When Athaulf and a detachment of Goths stationed near Pisa were peremptorily assaulted by an army led by Olympius himself, they were taken completely by surprise. The Goths lost over a thousand men in the conflict, but as soon as they had reorganized, they revealed to the Romans the full extent of their numbers and fury. Olympius’s pathetic army retreated to Ravenna in disgrace.23