The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History

by Peter Heather

  At the same time, the Goths were given grants of land for themselves, not to farm for others as unfree tenant farmers. We don’t know exactly where these were located. Some were north of the Haemus Mountains in Lower Moesia and Scythia close to the Danube, where the Carpi had lived around the turn of the fourth century, but there may also have been some settlements in Macedonia.56 Much more important, wherever they were, they were clearly in sufficiently large clusters to allow the political and cultural life of the Goths to continue. This is explicitly acknowledged in Roman sources of the late 390s, and shows up implicitly in the narrative of intervening events. One of the things that the Empire got from the peace deal was a military alliance. Not only did it take the normal draft of Gothic recruits for its regular army, but the Goths also agreed to provide much larger forces, serving under their own leaders, for specific campaigns. These times of special service required the emperor to negotiate with leading Goths as a group. On the one occasion for which we have details, we learn that the emperor Theodosius threw a great feast for them.57 If, in 382, the three leaders of the revolt were sacrificed as part of the peace deal, a large number of their peers clearly survived to sustain some sense of Gothic community. Under the peace, despite losing the right to operate independently under the leader of their choice, the Goths continued to enjoy the freedom to negotiate and act as one, with or against the Roman state, as we shall see in the next chapter.58 The break with established ways of dealing with immigrants could not be clearer.

  According to Themistius, speaking to the Senate of Constantinople in January 383, this transformation in imperial policy was the result of some divinely inspired decision-making on the part of Valens’ successor Theodosius.59

  He was the first who dared entertain the notion that the power of the Romans did not now lie in weapons, nor in breastplates, spears and unnumbered manpower, but that there was need of some other power and provision, which, to those who rule in accordance with the will of God, comes silently from that source, which subdues all nations, turns all savagery to mildness and to which alone arms, bows, cavalry, the intransigence of the Scythians, the boldness of the Alans, the madness of the Massagetai yield.

  Taking his inspiration from God – and it was really to Him that he owed his appointment as eastern emperor – Theodosius understood that a better and more total victory could be won through forgiveness than by arms. Consequently, his chief negotiator ‘led the Goths [to the emperor] docile and amenable, all but twisting their hands behind their backs, so that it was a matter of doubt whether he had beaten the men in war or won their friendship’. And the overall outcome, for Romans and Goths, was better for both:

  If the Goths have not been utterly wiped out, no complaint should be raised . . . Was it then better to fill Thrace with corpses or with farmers? To make it full of tombs or living men? . . . I hear from those who have returned from there that they are now turning the metal of their swords and breastplates into hoes and pruning hooks, and that while paying distant respect to Ares [god of war], they offer prayers to Demeter [goddess of corn and fruitfulness] and Dionysus [god of wine].

  The Goths, Themistius told the Senate, have given up fighting for farming, and everyone has gained. Theodosius, Themistius’ new employer, had come up with a brilliant solution – forgiveness for the Goths and a compromise peace that would subdue them more thoroughly than war ever could, while considerably benefiting the Empire. Once again, it’s important to remember the tyranny of imperial ideology and the fact that Themistius was a remarkably adept propagandist (over a thirty-year period, he managed to create a niche for himself with no fewer than four imperial employers). As usual, he was being economical with the truth – before coming up with his peace deal, Theodosius had had a pretty good shot at winning the Gothic war by more conventional means.

  The death of Valens had left a power vacuum which lasted until Gratian appointed Theodosius as his counterpart in the east in January 379. The new emperor had clearly been appointed to avenge Hadrianople. He came from a distinguished military family – his father was a five-star general under the emperor Valentinian I – and he had a good military record of his own. Immediately he was given temporary control of part of the prefecture of Illyricum – the dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia – which belonged to the western Empire, in order to exercise a unified control over the entire area vulnerable to the rampaging Goths. He spent his first year in office rebuilding the eastern field army: calling up veterans, recruiting new units, and drafting in more troops from Egypt and other parts of the east. Themistius’ first speech for the new emperor, in spring 379, confirms the thrust of all of this activity: the emperor’s initial self-presentation was as ‘the man to win the Gothic war’ –

  It is because of . . . you [Theodosius] that we have taken a stand . . . and believe that you shall now check the impetus of success for the Scythians [the Goths] and quench the conflagration that devours all things . . . Fighting spirit returns to the cavalry and returns to the infantry. Already you make even farmers a terror to the barbarian . . . If you, though not yet in the field against the guilty ones [the Goths], have checked their wilfulness merely by pitching camp nearby and lying in blockade, what do we suppose those damned villains will suffer, when they see you readying your spear and brandishing your shield, the lightning flash from your helm gleaming close at hand?60

  Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned. Theodosius’ new model army fell apart when it tried to take on the Goths head to head in Macedonia and Thessaly in the summer of 380. The circumstances are mysterious – the sources hint at treachery and unreliability. It was not another bloody catastrophe like Hadrianople, but there’s no doubt that Theodosius failed and that the Goths overcame a second Roman army. In the autumn, Theodosius had to hand back control of the war to Gratian’s generals, and it was they who eventually drove the Goths from Thessaly in summer 381, while he ran for cover in Constantinople to secure his political position there in the aftermath of military failure.61

  Theodosius may have come up with a new plan, then, but not without trying traditional means first. He turned to diplomatic innovation in 382 only because military incapacity – the defeat of two Roman armies – required it. And this was the only time he resorted to such a deal. If he had won the war, I have not the slightest doubt that the normal terms would have been imposed upon any defeated Goths left inside the Empire. When, four years after 382, another group of Goths tried to force their way across the Danube, they were massacred in large numbers. Some of the survivors were drafted into the army, the rest distributed as unfree tenant farmers – both groups sent far afield, to Asia Minor.62

  The Goths might be hounded out of rich areas like Thessaly, ground down by constant battering of their raiding parties, starved into submission. But after the summer of 380 the Romans would not risk another set-piece battle.

  Given that it was impossible, as we’ve seen, to admit that a Godappointed emperor had ever been forced into a course of action by barbarians or even by circumstances beyond his control, Themistius came remarkably close, in January 383, to telling the truth, making little attempt to downplay Roman disarray at the time of Theodosius’ appointment:

  . . . after the indescribable Iliad of evils on the Ister and the onset of the monstrous flame [of war], when there was not yet a king set over the affairs of the Romans, with Thrace laid waste, with Illyria laid waste, when whole armies had vanished completely like a shadow, when neither impassable mountains, unfordable rivers, nor trackless wastes stood in the way, but when finally nearly the whole of the earth and sea had united beside the barbarians.

  Nor did he pretend that Theodosius could easily have chosen to press the war to a fully victorious conclusion:

  . . . just suppose that this destruction was an easy matter and that we possessed the means to accomplish it without suffering any consequences, although from past experience this was neither a foregone nor likely conclusion, nevertheless just suppose, as I said, that this
solution lay within our power . . .

  For the man who had felt constrained to claim, in 364, that the loss of provinces, cities and fortresses to Persia was actually a Roman victory, this is not so far removed from an admission that Theodosius had had no choice but to opt for a compromise peace with the Goths.

  ‘This Is Not Yet the End’

  THE TRADITIONAL INTEGRITY of the Roman state had been breached, but we mustn’t get carried away. We are still a long way from imperial collapse. The war on the Danube had affected only the Empire’s Balkan provinces, a relatively poor and isolated frontier zone, and even here some kind of Romanness survived. The late fourth- and early fifth-century layers of the recently excavated Roman city of Nicopolis ad Istrum are striking for the number of rich houses – 45 per cent of the urban area – that suddenly appeared inside the city walls.63 It looks as though, since their country villas were now too vulnerable, the rich were running their estates from safe inside the city walls. At the end of the war, moreover, both eastern and western emperors remained in secure occupation of their thrones, with their great revenue-producing centres such as Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt and North Africa entirely untouched. And most parts of the Empire hadn’t even seen a Goth.

  In his final spin on the peace deal Themistius tried to reassure Roman taxpayers that the Goths would lose even their semi-autonomy in due course. He took, as a case in point, some Celtic-speaking barbarians who had crossed the Hellespont in 278 BC and carved out the territory of Galatia (named after themselves) in Asia Minor, but who over the next centuries became fully assimilated into Graeco- Roman culture.64 Given the huge disparity in resources between themselves and the Roman Empire, it no doubt did seem that the Goths’ present status must eventually be reversed, whether by longterm assimilation, as Themistius archly evokes, or, much more likely, by renewed conflict once the Roman army had been properly rebuilt. As events turned out, Themistius’ confidence was misplaced. The descendants of the Tervingi and Greuthungi were destined not only to survive as Goths, but would eventually carve out on Roman soil the fully independent kingdom that they had originally sought. Writing soon after Hadrianople, Bishop Ambrose of Milan summarized the prevailing crisis with admirable economy: ‘The Huns fell upon the Alans, the Alans upon the Goths and Taifali, the Goths and Taifali upon the Romans, and this is not yet the end.’65 The bishop had in mind only the ongoing war with the Goths, but his words were prescient. The Empire would never get the chance to reopen the Gothic question on its own terms. Hadrianople was indeed not yet the end, and the Empire would have many more challenges to face before the full effects of the Hunnic revolution worked themselves out.

  5

  THE CITY OF GOD

  ON A HOT AUGUST DAY IN 410, the unthinkable happened. A large force of Goths entered Rome by the Salarian Gate and for three days helped themselves to the city’s wealth. The sources, without being specific, speak clearly of rape and pillage. There was, of course, much loot to be had, and the Goths had a field day. By the time they left, they had cleaned out many of the rich senatorial houses as well as all the temples, and had taken ancient Jewish treasures that had resided in Rome since the destruction of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem over three hundred years before. They also left with treasure of another sort: Galla Placidia, sister of the reigning western emperor Honorius. And arson too had been on the agenda – the area around the Salarian gate and the old Senate building had been among the casualties.

  The Roman world was shaken to its foundations. After centuries as mistress of the known world, the great imperial capital had been subjected to a smash-and-grab raid of epic proportions. In the Holy Land, St Jerome, an émigré from Rome, put it succinctly: ‘In one city, the whole world perished.’ Pagan reactions were more pointed: ‘If Rome hasn’t been saved by its guardian deities, it’s because they are no longer there; for as long as they were present, they preserved the City.’1 The adoption of Christianity, in other words, had led to this devastation. But the immediate emotional reaction to any great event is rarely the best indicator of its real significance. Reconstructing the causes, and especially the true importance, of the sack of Rome is a detective story of great complexity. It will take us back in time over the best part of two decades before that fateful summer day, and forward again for another. Geographically, the story ranges from the Caucasus Mountains in the east to the Iberian Peninsula in the west. What emerges is that, while the sack of Rome might have seemed fatefully symbolic at the time, in itself it did no fundamental harm to the Empire’s capacity to fight back.

  All Chaos on the Western Front

  NO SINGLE SOURCE lays out for us in one clear sequence everything leading up to this momentous event, let alone explores their underlying cause. In part, this is testimony to its complexity. The sack of Rome was the end product of an interaction between multiple protagonists that no contemporary historian – none, at least, whose work has survived – was able to understand in its entirety. There is also a more specific reason why the event presents us with so many difficulties. Much of the history of the period AD 407–25 was covered in a lengthy work by a well informed contemporary writer, Olympiodorus of Thebes, whose writings we briefly dipped into earlier. Originating in Egypt, and of impeccable classical education, he found employment in the Foreign Office of the eastern Empire, conducting a series of diplomatic missions, most notably to the Huns, accompanied for more than twenty years by his pet parrot who could ‘dance, sing, call its owner’s name, and do many other tricks’. Olympiodorus wrote in Greek, not Latin, and his style was less rhetorical and dramatic than was popular at the time – for which fault he apologized to his readers. This was a bonus for the modern reader, of course: his history is less overblown and more straightforwardly informative than, for instance, Ammianus Marcellinus’ account of the Gothic war in the Balkans. Unfortunately, though, Olympiodorus’ history does not survive in full. Some four hundred years later one Photius, a Byzantine bibliophile and (briefly) Patriarch of Constantinople, produced a long work – the Bibliotheca – which summarized the contents of his library; luckily for us, Olympiodorus’ history was one of the volumes. From Photius’ brief description, we can also tell that, much nearer to the time, the work was heavily drawn upon by two other writers, the Church historian Sozomen in the mid-fifth century and the pagan historian Zosimus in the early sixth. Both were interested in the sack of Rome and wrote out large, more or less intact chunks of the first part of Olympiodorus’ history, down to the year 410. For our purposes, this is clearly a good thing, but both abridged and reworked the text for their own purposes, and in so doing introduced mistakes. In particular, Zosimus, trying to join as seamlessly as possible the work of his two main sources Olympiodorus and Eunapius, which slightly overlapped at the early fifth century, omitted some key events and garbled others.2

  AFTER THE APPEARANCE of our Gothic asylum seekers on the Danube in 376, relative calm returned to Rome’s European frontiers for the best part of a generation. The peace was shattered again, however, between 405 and 408, when four major incursions overturned frontier security all the way from the Rhine to the Carpathian Mountains. The Carpathians form the east wing of the central European mountain chain which also includes the Alps. They start and finish on the River Danube, running about 1,300 kilometres from the Slovak capital Bratislava in the west to Orsova in the east, describing a huge east-facing arc (map 7). They are generally lower than the Alps, with only a few summits over 2,500 metres, and no permanent glaciers or snowfields. Their width varies dramatically between about 10 and 350 kilometres, and their western, narrower end is penetrated by many more passes than the eastern slopes facing out towards the Great Eurasian Steppe. The Carpathians have always functioned as a defining feature of European geography, separating eastern and central Europe on the one hand, and north and south on the other. Their significance is also historical, and the organization of the later Roman Empire reflected this. The Danube region east of Orsova, the Lower Danube, belonged to Thrace and
was administered from the east, whereas the Middle Danube, west and south of the mountains, protected the passes into Italy and was always part of the west. To understand the various invasions of the early fifth century, we must situate the action against this Carpathian backdrop.

  In 405/6, a pagan Gothic king by the name of Radagaisus led a large force across the Alps into Italy. Because of Zosimus’ garbling of Olympiodorus’ history, our knowledge of this attack is patchy. Most glaringly, Zosimus reports that Radagaisus was defeated beyond the frontier, when he was actually captured at Fiesole and executed outside Florence. Zosimus also says – without giving any dates – that Radagaisus gathered under him a mass of Celtic and Germanic peoples from beyond the Rhine and Danube; this suggests that he led a multiracial force from what is now southern Germany, Austria and Bohemia.3 All the other sources insist, however, that Radagaisus was a leader primarily of Goths. As Zosimus’ reworking nowhere mentions the slightly later Rhine crossing of 406, which, as we shall see in a moment, was indeed multiracial, it seems that, in making his join between Eunapius and Olympiodorus, he jumbled up Radagaisus’ invasion of Italy in 405/6 with the Rhine crossing of 406.4 One key point emerges immediately. Back in 376, the Gothic Tervingi and Greuthungi had crossed the Lower Danube from east of the Carpathian Mountains into Thrace. Thirty years later, the action moved a step further west. The fact that Radagaisus’ invasion fell upon Italy, without passing through the Balkans, indicates that he invaded the Empire from somewhere on the Great Hungarian Plain west of the Carpathians (map 7). Judging by finds of coin hoards, his invasion route passed through southeastern Noricum and western Pannonia; it also generated a stream of panic-stricken refugees who preceded him over the Alps.5