Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

by Baker, Simon

  As the unscathed Roman soldiers beat their hurried, ignoble retreat and scurried through the Golden Gate of Ravenna, perhaps Honorius looked on from a window in his palace. The sorry picture threw the contrast between Olympius and Stilicho into stark relief. Shortly afterwards some eunuchs in the emperor’s court spied an opportunity for the kind of wholesale blood-letting common to autocratic regimes throughout history. In front of the emperor they accused Olympius of heaping more disasters upon the state. The emperor saw absolutely no reason to disagree. Indeed, disillusion quickly turned to anger. As if waking from a drug-induced stupor, Honorius was perhaps at last seeing things clearly; or perhaps he was just lurching petulantly from one ill-judged strategy to another. The sources don’t say. Either way, the young Honorius finally made a decision. As quickly as he had been adopted as the emperor’s unctuous chief counsellor, so Olympius was unceremoniously dumped.24

  On a black winter’s night in Italy, some time in early 409, the signs that the future of the western empire had once again hit rock bottom were to be seen in three places at once. Somewhere north of Ravenna, in a dismal bid to save his life, the deposed, ruthless courtier Olympius was in flight to Dalmatia (modern-day Croatia) and anonymity. Further south, Alaric was wasting not a moment to vent his scorching fury. Perhaps vowing never again to be made a fool of, never again to be so roundly dishonoured and insulted by the Romans, he gave his army clear instructions to return to Rome, to put it again under siege, and to make the city suffer once more. Meanwhile, in the imperial palace of Ravenna, the forlorn Honorius was in despair. His hated enemy Alaric would soon be slowly strangling the life out of Rome and, while the Roman army in Italy was stretched to its limit in its failed efforts to deal with the Goths, day by day the usurper and self-proclaimed emperor Constantine III in Gaul grew in stature and power. Indeed, Honorius was at such a low ebb that around this time he even dispatched the purple imperial robes of office to his rival emperor and formally recognized Constantine’s claim to power. The real ruler of the west had clearly come to the depressing conclusion that he might, after all, need the armies of Britain and Gaul under the usurper’s command. And yet, despite the gloom, there was a glimmer of hope for Honorius.

  It came in the forms of his Praetorian prefect, Jovius, and his most senior general, Sarus. The latter was a military commander of considerable experience, who had proved his abilities under Stilicho and Olympius. Indeed, the Italian army could still boast a total of 30,000 soldiers, and Honorius could rely on Sarus to lead them. But the general had another key quality: he was by origin a Goth, a nobleman, a man of the same stock as Alaric. The two men came from rival Gothic families, and it is very possible that Alaric had beaten Sarus to the leadership of the Goths in 395. That contest would not have been the clean-cut election of modern politics, but something closer to a blood feud, the vanquished possibly losing not just his chance to lead, but his family too in the victor’s cull of potential rivals. Sarus, rejected by his own, had taken his military skills to the emperor and the service of Rome.25 A Goth with a bitter, ancient grievance against the enemy of the emperor – who better to help Honorius outwit Alaric? Jovius, however, was even more key to the emperor’s future.

  Jovius had been Stilicho’s chief administrative officer in Dalmatia. As such, his responsibility had been to help supply Alaric’s Goths and organize them for the planned joint attack on the east back in 406. Jovius was the man who had negotiated that old agreement between Alaric and Stilicho, the man who had spent days in the company of the Goth in Epirus (modern-day Albania), the man who could almost call Alaric his friend. Honorius now turned to Jovius and promoted him to chief adviser. Perhaps, thought the young emperor, there was a way out of this awful mess after all.

  THE SACK OF ROME

  The historian Zosimus tells us that Jovius was conspicuous for his ‘education’.26 He now used his wisdom, tact and diplomacy to advocate to Honorius the only viable solution to the spiralling crisis: peace with Alaric.

  Jovius knew that Alaric had the western empire exactly where he wanted it. The Gothic army had an extraordinary force of 40,000, their numbers recently swollen by runaway slaves. That mighty force was surrounding Rome, and Honorius could do nothing about it. True, the Roman army in Italy could be deployed against them, but since their numbers were evenly matched a fight was far too much of a gamble – there could be no guarantee that the Romans would win. True, Honorius’s recognition of Constantine III had taken the sting out of his rival’s threats for the time being, but both he and Jovius were not yet prepared to capitulate the entire western empire to the usurper. By the spring of 409 Constantine III had elevated his sons to emperor, thus establishing a new dynasty, and had also established his ‘imperial’ seat at Arles in southern Gaul. He had his feet firmly planted on the doorstep of Italy. Should Honorius’s forces be weakened by Alaric, Constantine was ready to break in: to cross the Alps and add the remainder of the western empire to his swag bag of imperial domains.27 Honorius had decidedly run out of bargaining chips.

  Alaric knew this too. So when Jovius sent a delegation to Rome informing him of the Roman about-face and inviting him and Athaulf to Ariminum (Rimini) near Ravenna to negotiate a settlement, Alaric was, most probably, not in the least surprised.28 Although the worth of the emperor’s word and the meaningfulness of so-called Roman honour and justice had become seriously devalued commodities, he was nonetheless persuaded.

  Admittedly, he had Rome under siege and had once again pinched an artery of the western empire, but he had no intention of executing his threat and sacking it. That would be futile and result only in failure: he would be forsaking the chance of a permanent, long-term peace for short-term gains that would only mean more running, more looking over his shoulder, more insecurity for his people. It would be the political equivalent of banging his head against a brick wall. Slowly he picked himself up, begged his disaffected brother-in-law to lend him his support, and together the disgruntled men headed north to meet Jovius. He was at last going to prise all he could out of the Romans.

  Alaric put his terms on the table. He wanted an annual payment of gold, an annual supply of grain, and an agreement that the Goths could settle in the Roman provinces of the two Venetias (the region around Venice), Noricum and Dalmatia. His final term – a senior generalship for himself in the Roman army – would secure his influence at court and a voice to protect the interests of his people. The terms were dispatched to Honorius, and Jovius, Alaric and Athaulf awaited the emperor’s response. When it came back the letter was read out and at first it sounded promising. Honorius agreed to the corn and the gold, but he made no mention of the land question. And as for the generalship. . . Allow a barbarian a principal role in his government? No, that was absolutely out of the question!29

  Alaric flew into a rage. Thumping his fist on the table, he threatened the immediate burning, sacking and destruction of Rome, and promptly marched out. Jovius left too, though for Ravenna, and more out of fear that the deal had blown up in his face. It took some days for Alaric to regain his composure. Finally, he asked some bishops to act as his emissaries and sent the emperor a radically revised offer. He did not want the money or the position, or even Venetia or Dalmatia. All he wanted, he said, was the measly province of Noricum for his people, a province that was ‘situated at the far end of the Danube, was continuously harried by invasions, and contributed little tax to the treasury’.30

  This was an extraordinary moment. Here was a man who could have destroyed the western empire at the nod of his head, who had all the power and held all the aces. Yet he was prepared to sacrifice that power in return for a durable peace, a stable home and a permanent end to the suffering of his people. Ultimately, he wanted the Roman empire to survive just so long as his people had a place in it. Even Honorius was astounded. When the bishops read out Alaric’s offer, ‘everyone alike was amazed at the man’s moderation’.31 Incredibly, however, the callow, capricious emperor refused Alaric’s request. The sour
ces don’t make clear exactly why. Perhaps in the end he preferred to sacrifice the city of Rome rather than come to terms with his enemy. Ultimately, he was prepared to allow even the city in which his sister was held hostage to be destroyed rather than suffer the humiliation of having to make the Goths Roman partners on Roman soil.

  For the third time Alaric marched on Rome. Athaulf and his generals, snorting plumes of scorn and hatred for Honorius and the western empire, must have bayed for their leader to honour his threat. Alaric, however, was not going to attack yet. Admittedly, he had now given up on the western Roman emperor, but he was determined not to give up on the western Roman empire. In the summer of 409, to the problem of how to apply pressure without resorting to violence, Alaric devised a cunning solution. He recruited in Rome the help of an ambitious, patrician senator with a fondness for Rome’s ancient past and ideas above his station. The Goth sanctioned this man’s appointment by the Senate to the rank of emperor, and set up a new seat of power in the ancient capital to rival that of Honorius in Ravenna. As a result, in the summer of 409 there were, unbelievably, three ‘emperors’ in the west: Honorius, Constantine III and now Attalus. Alaric at last had a temporary place in the western Roman state: as Attalus’s commander-in-chief.

  The bold plan certainly hurt Honorius. As Alaric’s army won over northern Italy to Attalus’s cause, Honorius was sent spinning into a panic. He even considered abandoning the western empire, and had some ships prepared to whisk him off to Constantinople. His resolve to face the enemy was given a much-needed injection of steel only when 4000 reinforcement soldiers from the eastern empire arrived just in time and defended Ravenna. Soon, however, perhaps urged by Jovius, Honorius came up with a way to counter the rebellion.

  The province of North Africa, on whose grain supply Rome relied for food, was still loyal to Honorius, so the one legitimate western emperor simply ordered it to be cut off. Attalus’s brief, insubstantial regime quickly became discredited. Even Alaric, who had effectively promoted him to emperor, grew disillusioned with, and tired of, this irritating, pathetic mock-emperor. He stripped him of his imperial robes and sent them to Honorius to prove his change of strategy once again. In the end, Alaric took Galla Placidia, Honorius’s sister, hostage. Cocooned in Ravenna, the insensitive Honorius still turned a blind eye to the ancient capital on its knees. And still the Goth did not attack Rome.

  Alaric’s decisiveness, his foresight and determination to achieve his vision are all the more astonishing because the stakes were now higher than ever. He had a new battle on his hands – this time with his own administration. Not to punish Rome violently for Honorius’s treatment of the Gothic nation encamped on Italian soil was a highly unpopular policy. Athaulf and others would have made their position clear: a treaty with the Romans was simply pie in the sky. The Romans could not even be trusted to keep their word! Athaulf and the restless administrators had reason on their side. Indeed, it was now so difficult to sell a policy of negotiation rather than force that Alaric’s leadership was on the line. Nonetheless, with the odds utterly stacked against him, he was prepared to stake all his quickly evaporating political clout on one final throw of the dice.

  When he sent one last delegation to Ravenna little did he know it, but Honorius was, most probably, finally ready to make peace. A deal was on the table. But if Honorius and Alaric were expecting to resolve the great problem of the Goths by negotiation, their hopes were to be shattered in the most unexpected and tragic way. As Alaric, Athaulf and their detachment of Gothic soldiers made their journey north and reached to within 12 kilometres (7 miles) of Ravenna, they were ambushed by the Roman general Sarus. Alaric was completely stunned.

  Unbeknownst to the emperor, Sarus had decided to act on his own initiative. He knew that any settlement between Alaric and the Romans would have completely jeopardized his own hard-earned position at the Roman top table. If there were to be an agreement, it had to involve him. If not, he would lose his position and probably his life. His attack also gave him a chance to settle an old score against his rival. Just at the moment when there was a real chance of peace between Roman and Goth, he was utterly determined to torpedo it. Acting out of spite and revenge a Goth, not a Roman, finally scuttled any chance of negotiation.

  When Honorius heard the news of the ambush, perhaps he felt that the whole sorry episode proved his old prejudice: no barbarian, not even a Romanized one such as Sarus, could ever be trusted. Heading south, having narrowly escaped with their lives, Alaric and Athaulf too were licking the wounds of a prejudice they believed had been painfully confirmed. Honorius, they thought, had proved to be the same cowardly embodiment of deceit he had always been. They had been betrayed one last fatal time. In the heat of a mid-August day in 410 the Goths’ leaders returned for the final time to Rome.

  Arranged in neat columns around the city wall was the most extraordinary sight: an army of 40,000 men, the equivalent of eight old Roman legions. The city had last been sacked by the Celts in 390 BC. Now, some eight hundred years later, a new force of soldiers thronged outside. The more senior commanders and noblemen wore helmets, body armour and short capes of wolfskin or sheepskin. Their swords would have been carefully engraved with herringbone patterns, sheathed in scabbards of wood or leather, and lined with fur. The ranks of Gothic soldiers had only the protection of their short tunics and trousers, and their armoury of shields, barbed javelins, bows and throwing axes.

  The tall, graceful Athaulf felt vindicated. With his brother’s policy of reason utterly destroyed, he was in belligerent mood, urging on the ranks as they beat their weapons against their shields. The clatter that greeted Alaric as he left his tent to take command built to a crashing, unstoppable crescendo. Rome was utterly hamstrung, on its knees. Nearly two years earlier, Alaric had first raised the sword over the city’s neck. Now he let it fall. But when he gave the signal to attack, on 24 August 410, the proud, ambitious Alaric knew that he had failed.32

  The city was easy to overpower. On the night of the assault somebody opened the Salarian Gate for the Goths. According to a later account, a noblewoman had taken the action out of a desperate desire to put the city out of its prolonged misery. More probably, whoever invited the Goths in had been bribed.33

  Inside too there was little resistance: Rome had no army – only a small, ramshackle ceremonial guard. There is no detailed account of what happened over the next three days. What is clear is that in all the chaos there was a surprising level of order and restraint. This was not quite the uncivilized act of savagery by a barbarian horde one might have expected.

  Alaric was not only a Christian, but a Christian who had been helped over the previous two years by bishops. Out of respect for them and his faith, the basilicas of St Peter’s and St Paul’s became places of sanctuary. With the exception of a massive silver Eucharist cup donated by Constantine, Christian treasures and the churches that housed them were respected and preserved.34 In contrast to the infamous Roman sacks of Carthage and Corinth in 146 BC, in which wholesale destruction, mass slaughter, enslavement and looting were the standard, the sack of Rome was very un-Roman indeed. Nonetheless, although Alaric and his Goths may have been Christians they were not saints. They had come to plunder, to exact revenge.

  Perhaps guided by the slaves who had defected to Alaric, Gothic squads searched the streets for the houses of the rich. When they found them they put the sharp blade of an axe at their victims’ heads and demanded all their gold, silver and treasures. The pagan temples were looted for movable statues and precious objects, and the treasures from the Temple of Jerusalem, the victims of a Roman sack some 350 years earlier, were stolen once again. Some Romans escaped to the places of asylum, but the many who resisted or could not flee were killed, tortured or beaten up. The stories of defiant heroic women who resisted rape, or who were battered but mustered the courage to protect another (found in the writings of Orosius, Sozomen and Jerome), suggest that for widows, married women and virgins quite the opposite was true.
35

  On the third day the Gothic army, its efficient and horrific work complete, reassembled. Some grand houses and public buildings – notably the mansion of Sallust, the Basilica Aemilia and the old Senate House – were set on fire. With the thick black smoke of this last act rising above the Salarian Gate, the Goths abandoned the battlefield of their ‘victory’ over the Romans. The army was laden down with loot, but Alaric, with no homeland and no peace, came away empty-handed.

  EPILOGUE

  The after-shock of the disaster reverberated across the breadth of the Roman world. In Jerusalem St Jerome lamented how, ‘In one city the whole world perished’.36 Pagans and Christians alike used the destruction of the Eternal City to score points. For pagans the sack was proof that once the traditional gods had been rejected and had left the city, so too had its protection. To St Augustine in North Africa, however, the lesson to be learnt was quite different. He met eyewitnesses who had fled to that province to escape the Goths, and what he learnt from them confirmed only one thing: Rome had been on a slippery slope of moral decline ever since the sack of Carthage in 146 BC. Without the fear of that Mediterranean power to keep it in check, Rome had free reign to indulge in the selfish passions of greed and domination. Now, in the sack of Rome, that process had come to its logical, revolutionary conclusion. All human, earthly cities – even the new Christianized Rome of Constantine – were transitory and ephemeral, concluded St Augustine.37 Only the City of God in heaven was eternal and supreme. The natural order of the world, the ancient scheme of things, anchored in the city that had dominated the Mediterranean world for hundreds of years had gone topsy-turvy.