by Ross Laidlaw
Judged by the standards of the ancient world, Attila may not have been quite the monster he appears to us. ‘Greatness’ in that world tended to be equated with scale of conquest, large numbers of enemy killed or enslaved being a bonus – vide Alexander ‘the Great’, Pompey ‘the Great’, et al. One condition of a Roman general’s being awarded a triumph was that enemy dead should number not less than five thousand. (Julius Caesar boasted of having slaughtered a million Gauls.) By this yardstick, Attila would certainly qualify as a legitimate contender for the palm of greatness! ‘Attila the Great’ – it sounds preposterous, but only perhaps because he left no legacy. Had the vast empire he built up endured, and not disintegrated immediately following his death, his reputation might today be very different. History, after all, is written by the winners.
On a personal level, Attila compares favourably with many supposedly ‘civilized’ Greeks and Romans. His legendary simplicity of dress and lifestyle (skin garments, wooden cup and platter) was in refreshing contrast to the ostentatious pomp and luxury of the imperial courts of Constantinople and Ravenna. Although his punishments could be cruel (crucifixion and impalement were favourite forms), he could – as befits magnanimous monarchs who are above acts of petty revenge – display mercy and forgiveness. For example, when Bigilas/Vigilius, the chief agent in the bungled conspiracy to assassinate Attila, was brought before him, the King disdained to punish the man as being so insignificant as to constitute no threat. This surely displays a certain nobility of character, which contrasts with the jealous vindictiveness of Valentinian III, who slew his chief general, Aetius, with his own hand, or the rancorous spite shown by the Empress Eudoxia in hounding the saintly John Chrysostom to his death.
Attila’s onslaught on first the Eastern then the Western Roman Empire, has created an indelible image of a power-hungry megalomaniac. The truth is that he had little choice. By inheriting the Hun throne, he became shackled to a juggernaut. The only way to hold the Hun nation together, and maintain personal power by rewarding his followers, was to wage war – incessant, successful war. Failure to maintain that momentum would have resulted in his swift replacement (and almost certain liquidation). So, by a (very) generous re-interpretation of history, Attila could be portrayed more as a man of his time and the prisoner of circumstances, than as the Scourge of God.
APPENDIX II
WHY DID THE EASTERN EMPIRE SURVIVE WHILE THE WESTERN DID NOT?
The West finally succumbed in 476, but the East survived for many more centuries. Why? A hundred years before the West’s collapse, Rome was still a mighty power with an immense army which, though stretched, was dealing capably with enemies on many fronts. These extended from the Rhine to the Euphrates, as Ammianus Marcellinus, an army officer turned historian, shows us in his Histories, that magnificent picture of the late Roman world, at a time when it was the West that was seen as the stronger of the two halves of the empire. In his vivid pages, the only hint of coming disaster lies in his account of the Battle of Adrianople (Hadrianopolis) and its immediate aftermath: a conflict (involving the destruction of East Rome’s army and the death of her emperor) whose effects, initially at least, seemed confined to the East. However, events in the next few decades were brutally to expose the true reality of the empire’s situation: the West had serious deep-seated weaknesses, not fully apparent till after the death of Theodosius I in 395, while the East was in fact far stronger and more stable than it seemed in 378, the year of Adrianople. These differences become clear if we compare the two halves of the empire in three areas.
First, the frontiers. The West, with its extremely long frontier – the whole of the Rhine and upper Danube – was far more exposed to barbarian inroads than the East, which only had the lower Danube to worry about. (Persia, on its eastern border – potentially a far greater threat than any barbarian federation – was a civilized power which on the whole kept its treaties.) Unlike the East, whose poorer Balkan provinces could serve as a buffer zone to absorb barbarian attacks, leaving the richer eastern and southern provinces inviolate behind an impregnable Constantinople, the whole Western Empire, bar Africa, could easily be penetrated by barbarians once they had crossed the boundaries. Also, the East became adept at passing on invaders to the West, once they had tired of plundering the Balkans. (Vide Alaric and the Visigoths.)
Second, the economy. The East was far wealthier and more productive than the West, which still had great tracts of forest and undrained bottom land. Moreover, wealth in the East (with its generally fair tax system, and well-to-do land-owning peasantry) was much more evenly distributed than in the West. Here, an immensely rich senatorial aristocracy lived lives of luxury in contrast to the great mass of the population, who existed dangerously close to subsistence level. Yet it was the poor – mostly agricultural labourers or smallholders – who had to shoulder an unfairly high proportion of the tax burden, in addition to paying rent to the great landowners from whom they leased their plots. Much territory in the West was lost to German invaders who, though most eventually settled down as federates, paid no tax. A shrinking tax base, difficulty in recruiting, and massive losses incurred in barbarian wars, made the task of putting a strong Roman army into the field increasingly difficult for the Western government. Signs of the growing disparity between the two halves of the empire were: in the West, disaffection and decline in patriotism, with many driven by poverty into flight to the estate of a powerful lord (relief from the tax-collectors traded for serfdom), outlawry, or open rebellion as in the ‘Peasants’ Revolt’ of the Bagaudae; in the East, a much more homogeneous, prosperous, and stable population.
Third, the government. In the West, Rome’s curse of usurpation by ambitious generals or politicians lingered on: Firmus, Magnus Maximus, Eugenius, Gildo, Constantine III, Constans, Attalus, Jovinus, John (Iohannes) Petronius Maximus. Compare this with the situation in the East, where in the whole of the same period, 364–476, there were only two attempts at usurpation – by Procopius at the very beginning and Basilius at the very end – both of which were easily put down. In the East the civil service was staffed by efficient middle-class professionals, much less prone to graft than their Western counterparts. In the West, the sale of offices (suffragium) was endemic, tending to create a corrupt bureaucracy more concerned with lining its pockets than with serving the state. And the curial class, once the backbone of Western administration, had been demoralized and decimated by an ever-increasing workload imposed on it from Ravenna. In the East, all power was concentrated in Constantinople (like the status of Paris in France until very recently), with the civil service mandarinate, Senate (a service aristocracy, as opposed to the Western club of ‘grands seigneurs’), army, patriarchate, Emperor, and Consistory, combining to form a smooth-working administrative whole. Being forced to work in close proximity to each other, and thus able to establish a system of mutual checks and balances, none of the above entities could become dis-proportionately powerful. Instead, accountability, and co-operation between all state departments, received strong reinforcement. In the West, where the machinery of government was weaker and more fragmented, this did not happen.
Given the above differences, it is not difficult to see why the West – afflicted by administrative, economic, and social breakdown, and militarily too weak to stem barbarian encroachment – collapsed in 476, while the more prosperous and stable East was able to survive for another thousand years.
NOTES
Chapter 1
11 ‘The year of the consuls Asclepiodotus and Marinianus, IV Ides Oct.’ The Romans dated important events ‘from the founding of the city – ab urbe condita’ or AUC (753 BC), but for most dating purposes the names of the consuls for any given year were used, one from Rome, the other from Constantinople. Dating from the birth of Christ was introduced by one Dionysius Exiguus, only in 527. Dates within any given month were calculated by counting the number of days occurring before the next of the three fixed days dividing the Roman month: Kalends, the first day
of the month, the Nones on the 5th or 7th, and the Ides on the 13th or 15th. (In March, May, July, and October, the Nones fell on the 7th and the Ides on the 15th, in the remaining months on the 5th and 13th respectively.) Thus, the Ides of January happening on the 13th of that month, the next day would be termed by a Roman not the 14th, but the 19th before the Kalends of February, reckoning inclusively, i.e., taking in both the 14th of January and the 1st of February; and so on to the last day of the month which was termed pridie Kalendas.
Chapter 2
19 ‘ridge helmets’. These had replaced the classic ‘Attic’ helmet (familiar to all from every Hollywood Roman epic ever made) in about 300, except in the Eastern, more Hellenic half of the Empire where (from representational evidence) Attic-style helmets continued to be worn until at least the time of Justinian (527–65). For convenience, and speed of construction, the bowl was made in two sections, joined by a central strip or ‘ridge’. The vastly increased army under Diocletian must have called for ‘assembly-line’ techniques in the state arms factories (fabricae) in order to meet production targets.
Chapter 3
23 ‘Jordanes, Gothic History’. The Gothic History was a summary of a much fuller work (unfortunately lost), De rebus Geticis, by a Roman, Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, 468–c. 568 (sic). Cassiodorus – historian, statesman, and adviser to Theoderic, the Ostrogothic king of Italy – whose very long life encompassed both the fall of the Western Empire in 476 and its partial recovery by Justinian – may in his youth have consulted veterans of the Catalaunian Plains. If so, he would have incorporated the knowledge gained into his great work. In 551 he commissioned Jordanes, a Romanized Goth, to make a summary version of his work: Gothic History.
Chapter 4
30 ‘Augustine, the saintly Bishop of Hippo’. The influence of Augustine (354–430) on Western thought has been profound, especially regarding Catholic belief, from late Roman times to the present. His doctrine of predestination (with its corollary of ‘the Elect’) has helped to shape the mindset of many, from Calvin and Wittgenstein to the ‘acid murderer’ Haig. It was mined, to brilliant effect, by James Hogg in his seminal novel The Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
32 ‘ludus latrunculorum’. A board game not dissimilar to chess, in which one piece was taken by being trapped by two enemy pieces. The player who captured most opposing pieces won.
34 ‘the chain of forts established by Diocletian’. Their well-preserved remains can still be seen today.
35 ‘seen service at the Milvian Bridge’. The Milvian Bridge outside Rome was the scene of Constantine’s victory over his rival Maxentius in 312, and of his vision which brought about his conversion to Christianity. The bridge is still in use.
36 ‘drawers’. It used to be thought that Roman soldiers – like men in Highland regiments, did not wear underpants. However, the recently discovered ‘Vindolanda tablets’ at Hadrian’s Wall, contain evidence that they sometimes did.
38 ‘a Blemmye, judging by his tribal markings’. The Blemmyes’ homeland was Nubia, to the south of Egypt. They were a part-Semitic, part-African people.
44 ‘The cursus velox’. The Cursus Publicus, or Imperial Post, covering some 54,000 miles of road, was an amazing feat of organization and efficiency. While its primary function was the delivery of government and military dispatches, it also catered for the transport of imperial freight and the conveyance of official personnel. If the news was urgent, it could reach its destination very rapidly, by means of a special dispensation within the system – the cursus velox or express post. Changing horses every 8–12 miles, a good rider could cover 240 miles in one day. The system reached its peak in the fourth century, but began to break down in the fifth with the disruption caused by barbarian invasions.
44 ‘it was all built underground’. The well-preserved remains of this villa, known today as ‘Maison d’Amphitrite’, can still be seen – as can those of several more of these remarkable underground buildings.
46 ‘who might almost have stepped down from the Arch of Constantine’. As an artistic convention, representations of soldiers on the Arch are mostly shown wearing classical armour and helmets (obsolete by this time in the West, though retained in the East for many more years). Some of the panels on the Arch were filched from Trajanic monuments.
Chapter 5
54 ‘He had failed’. It is recorded that Augustine spoke for over two and a half hours at Carthage, against the Feast of the Kalends – in vain. The Feast continued in the West as long as urban life survived; when the Arabs conquered Roman Africa in the seventh century, they found the Kalends still celebrated.
Chapter 8
66 ‘scale armour or chain mail’. Most book illustrations (and, unfortunately, films and TV programmes) depicting Roman soldiers of any period from 200 BC to AD 400, show them wearing ubiquitous ‘hoop armour’, lorica segmentata, along with (naturally) classical helmets and curved rectangular shields. This efficient type of body-armour was in use by the early first century (specimens have recently been discovered at Kalkriese, the probable site of Varus’ military disaster in 9 AD) and is last seen (in a carving) c. AD 230 in the time of Alexander Severus – a good run, but of only perhaps 250 years as opposed to 600. It was superseded by scale armour (lorica squamata), chain mail (lorica hamata), and lamellar armour (small vertical iron plates) – possibly because of its weight, and the fact that its complex construction made it relatively slow and expensive to produce.
Chapter 10
74 ‘the German’s bid for power’. Germans were never acceptable as Roman emperors and could only rule indirectly through puppets of their choice. This despite the fact that Spaniards, Africans, Illyrians, and an Arab had all at various times donned the purple – without anyone objecting on ethnic or cultural grounds.
74 ‘the great Anician family of Rome’. The Anicii were, like the Symmachi, one of those great Roman families whose influence was felt in the corridors of power at the highest level. They were connected by blood to, among others, Eparchius Avitus (Emperor, 455–6), and in marriage to Emperor Theodosius I, to Petronius Maximus (Emperor, 455), to Eudocia, widow of Valentinian III, and perhaps to the Spanish usurper Magnus Maximus.
75 ‘Gaius Valerius acquired an unofficial agnomen’. The Romans were sometimes referred to as ‘the people with three names’. From an early period they adopted the Sabine practice of using a praenomen or personal name (chosen from an extremely limited stock – Titus, Quintus, Marcus, etc., usually abbreviated to T., Q., M., etc.) – followed by a gentile or tribal name ending in ‘ius’, such as Julius, Claudius, or Tullius. This, in the case of patricians, was followed by a family name or cognomen, often originally deriving from a personal peculiarity: Caesar (having a full head of hair), Cicero, Naso, etc. Occasionally, as a mark of distinction, a second cognomen or honorific agnomen such as ‘Africanus’ or ‘Germanicus’ was added. By the fifth century, the system had loosened up a little, to the extent of widening the choice of personal names, and occasionally the affecting of more than one family name. In general, however, naming practice remained remarkably conservative and consistent throughout the whole Roman period. Incidentally the style ‘Julius Caesar’, referring to Caius Julius Caesar, is a modern adoption and wouldn’t have been used by the Romans themselves. They would have called him Caius (interchangeable with Gaius), or Caesar, or Caius Julius, or Caius Caesar; never by a combination of the gentile and family names.
76 ‘the Altar of Victory removed from the Senate’. This was bitterly opposed by Symmachus, city prefect of Rome, consul, orator, man of letters, and distinguished member of one of the great influential Roman families, the Symmachi.
76 ‘the pursuit of otium’. Leisured scholarship was the preserve of the senatorial aristocracy and country gentlemen in Rome and the Latin provinces, as well as in the Eastern Empire. This created a remarkably uniform, if sterile, classical culture which survived in the Western Empire right up to the end in 476, and even beyond.
77 ‘
Many of their leaders copy Roman dress and manners’. Sidonius Apollinaris, who visited the Visigoth court of Theoderic II, draws a flattering pen-portrait of the monarch, and describes Gallo-Roman aristocrats being sumptuously entertained by Visigoth courtiers displaying the courteous manners and wit of Roman gentlemen.
Chapter 11
81 ‘like a latter-day Cincinnatus’. In Rome’s early days, the exconsul Cincinnatus was summoned from the plough to lead Rome against the Aequians; that tribe defeated, he returned to ploughing his farm.
Chapter 13
91 ‘Ariminum’s five-spanned bridge . . . triumphal arch’. The bridge is still in use today, and the arch spans a main road into Rimini.
Chapter 14
101 ‘Ad Kalendas Graecas’. The Roman Kalends was the usual day for paying rents, accounts, etc. But as the Greeks used a different mode of reckoning, a postponement of payment ‘to the Greek Kalends’ simply meant a refusal to pay altogether. Popularized by Emperor Augustus, the expression became a synonym for ‘never’.
Chapter 15
107 ‘his son-in-law Sebastian’. ‘the virtuous and faithful Sebastian’ (Gibbon) was subsequently hounded implacably by the agents of Aetius, ‘from one kingdom to another, till he perished miserably in the service of the Vandals’, a Catholic martyr of Arian persecution.
109 ‘he will be outlawed’. After the Battle of the Fifth Milestone, Aetius and the remnants of his force managed to retreat to Gaul. Defeated, disgraced, declared a rebel by Placidia, he then withdrew to a fortified estate inherited from his father, where he attempted to hold out. However, besieged by imperial troops and nearly falling victim to a murder attempt by Sebastian, Aetius soon realized that his position was untenable. Accompanied by a few loyal followers, he slipped away in secret and escaped to Pannonia, to be granted sanctuary by his faithful friends the Huns.
