The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History

by Peter Heather

  This was one part of the Ulfilas story. The other is told in Auxentius’ letter so uniquely preserved in Parisinus Latinus 8907. Constantine’s conversion brought about extraordinary transformations within Christianity. Amongst other things, it became imperative for Christians, who no longer lived in communities mainly isolated from one another by the hostility of the Roman state, to define a set of doctrines. The process began at the Council of Nicaea in 325, where the relationship of God the Son to God the Father was defined as homousios: ‘of the same substance/essence’. But this was just the start of the argument. The Nicene definition of the Christian faith only became fully accepted, after much argument, following the Council of Constantinople in 381, and for much of the intervening fifty-six years official Roman Christianity held to a much more traditional position, describing Christ as ‘like’ (homoios) or ‘similar in substance/essence to’ (homoeusios) God the Father.

  Much effort in the interim had gone into constructing coalitions between different Churchmen, many of whom had hitherto simply assumed that they believed the same things. They were now being forced to decide which of a range of theological positions best expressed their understanding of the faith. Into this arena, sometime after 348, strode Ulfilas. Auxentius’ letter contains the statement of belief that Ulfilas left as his last will and testament, and succinctly explains the reasoning behind it. Ulfilas was one of the more traditional Christians: he found the Nicene definition unacceptable because it contradicted the scriptural evidence and seemed to leave little room for distinguishing God the Father from God the Son. In Auxentius’ account:

  In accordance with tradition and the authority of the Divine Scriptures, [Ulfilas] never concealed that this God [the Son] is in second place and the originator of all things from the Father and after the Father and on account of the Father and for the glory of the Father . . . holding as greater [than himself] God his own Father [John 14:28] – this he always made clear according to the Holy Gospel.

  What’s more, people listened. Again, in Auxentius’ words:

  Flourishing gloriously for forty years in the bishopric, [Ulfilas] preached unceasingly with apostolic grace in the Greek, Latin, and Gothic languages . . . bearing witness that there is but one flock of Christ our Lord and God . . . And all that he said, and all I have set down, is from the divine Scriptures: ‘let him that readeth understand’ [Matthew 24:15]. He left behind him several tractates and many commentaries in these three languages for the benefit of all those willing to accept it, and as his own eternal memorial and recompense.

  Unfortunately, the tractates and commentaries haven’t survived. Ulfilas ended up on the losing side of doctrinal debate and his works, like those of so many of his party, were not preserved. But we do know from Auxentius and other sources that he was heavily courted not only by Constantius but also by the eastern emperor Valens, and did eventually sign up to the doctrinal settlements they put forward in, respectively, 359 and 370. He also built around himself an influential group of non-Nicene Balkan bishops, who were a major force within the Church. Auxentius was one of these, and Palladius of Ratiaria another. The last image we have is of Ulfilas riding into doctrinal battle yet again, at the age of seventy, at the Council of Constantinople in 381. This was his last hurrah, and the Council’s decisions effectively consigned him and his followers to the footnotes of history. But that was not how it was in his own lifetime. This Gothic subject of humble origins was a major player in the doctrinal debates of the mid-fourth century.36

  AGAIN, REALITY confounds image. Viewed through a Roman lens, barbarians were utterly incapable of rational thought or planning; sensualists, they lacked motive, apart from an overwhelming desire for the next fix. But our two fourth-century barbarians were neither stupid nor irrational. At the pinnacle of Gothic society, Athanaric and his councillors were faced with the brute reality of devising ways of coping with overwhelming Roman power. They could hope neither to defeat it in open conflict nor to insulate themselves from it. They could, however, formulate and pursue agendas designed to shape their relations with the Empire in the way that best suited them, while minimizing those aspects of Roman domination they found most oppressive. They could also be desirable allies in wartime and in civil conflict, and could sometimes manipulate matters for their own benefit. Lower down the social scale were communities literate in Greek and Latin who transmitted enough of current Christian culture to generate a man like Ulfilas.

  The reality of Roman-Gothic relations was not, therefore, the unremitting conflict between absolute superior and inferior that Roman ideology required. The Romans still held themselves aloof, the dominant party, but Goths could be useful. The periodic conflict between them was part of a diplomatic dance that saw both sides taking steps to maximize their advantage. Barbarians weren’t what they used to be. Even if cast firmly as junior members, the Goths were part of the Roman world.

  Client Kingdoms

  THIS DIDN’T APPLY exclusively to the Goths on the Danube, even if most fourth-century Germanic societies are not so well documented as the Tervingi. Small-scale raiding into imperial territory was endemic. The Saxon raid of 370 was perhaps more serious than some, but it wasn’t just spin on Themistius’ part that he ends his account of the Gothic war of 367–9 with a vignette of Valens fortifying those parts of the Lower Danube frontier that other emperors hadn’t reached. He and his brother were active in both building fortifications and providing garrisons. But in the fourth century, major conflicts occurred only about once in a generation on Rome’s European frontiers. One of the first acts of the emperor Constantine, in the 310s, was to undertake a major pacification of the Rhine frontier – the lands of the Franks and Alamanni (map 4). We know of no further serious conflict in this region until the early 350s. The trouble that broke out again in 364/5 was to do with a change in Roman policy (a unilateral cut in the foreign aid budget); otherwise, nothing of note occurred here before the end of the 370s. Further east, the Middle Danube frontier facing the Sarmatians, Quadi and Marcomanni saw a major Roman military intervention under the emperor Constantine, but much later in his reign, in the 330s. The next outbreak of violence there came in 357, and another in 374/5. On the Lower Danube, home to the Goths, the settlement of the 330s gave, as we have seen, more or less thirty years of peace.

  In each of these campaigns, the Romans – with greater or lesser difficulty – established their military dominance, sometimes just by pillaging widely enough to force submission, sometimes by victory in a set-piece battle. In 357, for instance, the emperor Julian led a Roman force of 13,000 men into action near the city of Strasbourg on the Roman side of the Rhine, against the assembled kings of the Alamanni. He won a stunning victory. Of the 35,000 opponents led by their pre-eminent overking, Chnodomarius, some 6,000 were left dead on the battlefield and countless others drowned trying to flee across the river, while the Romans lost a grand total of 243 soldiers and four high-ranking officers.37 The battle is an excellent example of the continued effectiveness of the remodelled Roman army of the late imperial era. From the massacring of Saxon raiders in northern France to Constantine’s subjugation of the Tervingi, this type of military dominance was the norm at all levels on Rome’s European frontiers.

  In one respect, such victories were an end in themselves. They punished and intimidated, and certainly the historian Ammianus considered that it was necessary to hit barbarians regularly to make them keep the peace. On another level entirely, however, military victory was the first act in constructing broader diplomatic settlements. After Strasbourg, Julian spent the next two years on the other side of the Rhine making separate peace treaties with various Alamannic kings, just as his co-emperor Constantius II was doing with other groups on the Middle Danube.

  As we have seen, to the Roman public these treaties were all presented as following essentially the same pattern: the barbarians surrendered themselves completely (called in Latin an act of deditio) and were then graciously granted terms in a treaty (Latin, foedu
s), which made them imperial subjects. In reality, however, the details varied dramatically, both in the degree of subjection enforced and in the practical arrangements. Where the Romans were fully in control of the situation, as Constantius was on the Middle Danube in 357, they might well interfere in their opponents’ political structures, dismantling confederations that appeared overly dangerous and promoting pliant sub-kings to independent authority as seemed to best suit Rome’s long-term interests. The Romans also extracted recruits for their army as part of most agreements, sometimes stipulating as well that larger bodies of men should be provided for particular campaigns. In 357/8 the emperor Julian also made the Alamanni pay reparations for the damage they had caused. These often took the form of grain supplies, as in this instance, but, where this was impossible, labour, wood for construction and cartage were demanded. Giving hostages, as happened with Athanaric’s father, was also quite standard, and sometimes brought greater success. One Alamannic prince was so impressed with the Mediterranean religions he encountered on Roman soil that on his return he renamed his son Serapio in honour of the Egyptian god Serapis. Where the Romans were less in control, labour, raw materials and manpower might have to be paid for, and political structures that had evolved independently given the stamp of approval. Either way, beyond the defended frontier itself lay a belt of largely Germanic client kingdoms that were firmly part of the Roman world.38

  This is not to say that these states were entirely under Roman control, or necessarily happy about being junior members of the Roman world order, as we have seen in the case of Athanaric. If other priorities got in the way, then barbarians could find themselves prospering, sometimes temporarily, sometimes more permanently. The early 350s, for instance, saw a rash of usurpations in the western half of the Empire, beginning with the murder of Constans, brother of the then eastern emperor Constantius. Constantius made it his priority to suppress the usurpers, and it was this which allowed Chnodomarius to build up the Alamannic army that would face Julian at Strasbourg. Once the usurpers had been put down, however, the Romans reined in, then utterly defeated, the Alamanni in two years of campaigning. Chnodomarius had been too aggressive, even seizing territory on the Roman bank of the Rhine, for the Romans to contemplate doing a deal. About a decade later, however, a new, pre-eminent leader of the Alamanni appeared: Macrianus. Valens’ brother Valentinian spent half a decade trying to curb his power, making a number of kidnap and murder attempts. But, unlike Chnodomarius, Macrianus never let his ambitions stray on to Roman territory, so that when trouble brewed on the Middle Danube Valentinian could invite him, without too much loss of face, to a shipborne summit on the Rhine of the kind at which Valens had entertained Athanaric on the Danube. There he gave Roman approval to Macrianus’ pre-eminence, and Macrianus proved a reliable Roman ally as long as he lived. These client kingdoms also had political agendas that didn’t involve Rome. Political life among the Alamanni had its own pattern, with kings regularly inviting each other to feasts. We hear too of wars between Alamanni and Franks, and between Alamanni and Burgundians, but nothing of their causes and consequences.39

  Overall, then, Rome’s relations with its fourth-century European frontier clients didn’t fit entirely comfortably within the ideological boundaries set by the traditional image of the barbarian. The two parties now enjoyed reciprocal, if unequal, relations on every level. The client kingdoms traded with the Empire, provided manpower for its armies, and were regularly subject to both its diplomatic interference and its cultural influence. In return, each year they generally received aid; and, sometimes at least, were awarded a degree of respect. One striking feature is that treaties were regularly formalized according to norms of the client kingdom as well as those of the Roman state. The Germani had come a long way from the ‘other’ of Roman imaginations, even if the Empire’s political elite had to pretend to Roman taxpayers that they hadn’t. What has also become clear in recent years, is that this new order in Roman–German diplomatic relations was based on a series of profound transformations in Germanic society.

  The Transformation of Germanic Europe

  THE WRITTEN EVIDENCE does contain some important clues that fundamental changes had occurred in the three and a half centuries separating Arminius from Athanaric. In the mid-third century, the west Germanic tribal names famous from the works of Tacitus suddenly disappear from our sources. Cherusci, Chatti and so forth were replaced by four new ones: Franks and Alamanni on the Rhine frontier, and Saxons and Burgundians further to the east (map 4). South-eastern Europe north of the Black Sea also now saw major political changes. By the fourth century, a huge swathe of territory from Rome’s Danube frontier to the River Don was dominated by Gothic and other Germanic-speaking groups, making late Roman Germania even larger than its first-century counterpart.

  The new situation beyond the Black Sea was generated by the migration of Germanic groups from the north-west, largely from what is now central and northern Poland. In a series of independent, small-scale initiatives, between about AD 180 and 320, they had advanced around the outer fringes of the Carpathian Mountains. North of the Black Sea, the migrating groups were competing against each other, against indigenous populations such as the Dacian-speaking Carpi and Iranian-speaking Sarmatians, and against Roman garrison forces. The process was, not surprisingly, violent. The Empire decided to abandon its north Danubian province of Dacia in 275, and large numbers of Carpi were eventually resettled on Roman soil around the year 300. The violence spilled over on to Roman soil in regular raids, and it was during one of these that Ulfilas’ parents were captured. The result was a series of largely Gothic-dominated political units, of which Athanaric’s Tervingi were closest to the Danube. Beyond them, to the north and east, was an unknown number of others.40 We have no idea of relative percentages, but the populations of these units were certainly mixed, with large numbers of Dacians and Sarmatians, not to mention Roman prisoners, living under the political umbrella of immigrant Goths and other Germani. The dominance of the Germanic immigrants is clear, however, from both Roman narrative sources and the linguistic evidence of Ulfilas’ Bible.41

  The significance of the name changes on the Rhine frontier and in its hinterland has been hotly disputed. Again, in all probability, immigration was involved. Burgundians do appear in Tacitus’ account of first-century Germania, but significantly to the north-east of the region inhabited by their fourth-century namesakes. It is likely enough that some kind of migration was behind this shift of locale, but, as in the east, it probably did not take the form of a total replacement of the existing population.42 Otherwise, we know that beneath the umbrella of the new names, some of the old groups continued to exist. Bructeri, Chatti, Ampsivarii and Cherusci are all reported in one source as belonging to the Frankish confederation of tribes, and detailed contemporary evidence shows that among the Alamanni several kings always ruled simultaneously, each with his own largely autonomous domain. At the battle of Strasbourg, for instance, Julian faced seven kings and ten princes.

  At the same time, however, Alamannic society was by this date consistently throwing up an over-king: an individual in each generation who wielded more power than his peers. Chnodomarius, defeated by Julian at Strasbourg in 357, was one of these, as were Vadomarius at whose rising power Roman policy was next directed, and Macrianus whom Valentinian was eventually forced to recognize in 374. It was not a hereditary position, and it is not recorded either how you became an over-king, or what benefits it brought you. Our Roman sources weren’t interested enough to tell us. The chances are, however, that it involved some financial and military support upon demand, a development of some importance suggesting that the name changes of the third century had a real political significance. In Alamannic territories, a new superstructure had invaded the world of small independent political units characteristic of the first century. It is perfectly possible, although there is no evidence either way, that contemporary Franks and Saxons had developed similarly unifying institutions and h
abits. Further east, on the Danube, the Gothic Tervingi certainly had. Athanaric ruled a confederation that contained an unknown number of other kings and princes.43

  But it wasn’t merely in political structure that fourth-century Germania differed from its first-century counterpart. A range of archaeological evidence has shed new light on the deeper social and economic transformations that brought the world of Athanaric into being. The story begins in the muddy fields just east of the northern sector of Rome’s Rhine frontier. In the early 1960s two small rural sites – Wijster in the Netherlands and Feddersen Wierde in Germany – were excavated. The findings were revolutionary. Both turned out to be farming settlements whose occupants practised mixed arable and pastoral agriculture, and both originated in the first century AD. The revolutionary aspect was that, for most of their history, these had been village communities with large numbers of houses occupied simultaneously: more than fifty in the case of Wijster, thirty at Feddersen Wierde. Furthermore, the settlements were occupied until the fifth century. The importance of this lies in what it implies about agricultural practice.