How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  The two new emperors were frequently at war. In part this was to win the glory necessary to bolster their rule. They divided up the comitatenses, and many individual units were split into two new regiments, named seniores and juniores respectively. (The terms seem to have already been in use before this date, but most scholars believe that the bulk of units with these titles were created at this time.) For a while, at the very least, such regiments must have been severely under strength until their ranks could be filled with new recruits. The increase in the number of regiments also instantly created more posts for commanding officers, providing a good way of rewarding loyal supporters. Valentinian operated on the Rhine and Danubian frontiers, and sent subordinates to campaign in Britain and North Africa. On and off throughout his reign Valens was occupied with friction on the borders with Persia. Although the treaty of 363 was never formally abandoned, the rival sides each interpreted it in their own way. The Romans continued to involve themselves in Armenian affairs, while the Persians strove to dominate the kingdom and still hoped to regain the remaining territories lost to Galerius. There was a good deal of raiding, and some larger fighting, although the scale of warfare never matched the operations of Constantius' and Julian's reign. Valens was in Syria in 365 when he received news of a serious rebellion. Julian's relative Procopius had been proclaimed emperor outside Constantinople. Within months several provinces acknowledged the usurper.15

  Procopius' only claim was his connection with Julian, who was himself related to Constantine. Having disappeared in the weeks after the latter's death, Procopius emerged from hiding and won over two army units marching past Constantinople on their way to the Danubian frontier. He had grown a beard and was depicted in this way on his coins, but, while he paraded his similarity to Julian, Procopius seems to have remained a Christian. There was clearly no wave of pagan resentment waiting to be tapped by men seeking imperial power. The usurpation began somewhat raggedly - Procopius' imperial robes were a makeshift, almost comic affair. Yet luck was with him and he began to rally more army units to his cause. When Valentinian heard the news of the rising he did not know whether or not his brother was alive or dead. He was engaged in a campaign on the Rhine and decided not to intervene, proclaiming that `Procopius was merely his own and his brother's enemy, while the Alamanni were the enemies of the entire Roman world'. After eight months, Valens was able to defeat the rebel. Procopius fled, but was handed over by his own officers and beheaded.26

  Procopius started with very few supporters and gradually pieced together an army from passing units, all of them from Valens' forces. It seems extremely unlikely that he ever mustered an army of io,ooo or more men. In the end, the vast majority of his units deserted back to Valens. Even with such modest resources Procopius had come close to supplanting Valens. It was yet another demonstration of the insecurity of imperial power. Soldiers and officials could often be won over to support a rival. There was a snowball effect, Procopius' initial successes persuading more troops to join him. If a usurper gained local dominance then it was dangerous for officials and soldiers in the area not to join him. It was always better to be on the winning side, and whenever there was internal conflict people had to guess who was likely to win and act accordingly. Like other usurpations, the aftermath of Procopius' revolt brought a round of dismissals and executions, as well as promotions for those who had earned the emperor's favour, often by deserting the rebel at the right moment.'

  Emperors dressed in a spectacular and ornate clothing that resembled military uniform. Their officials wore more modest versions that nevertheless reflected their delegated power and association with the ruler of the empire. Minor distinctions in colour and decoration - of tunic, headgear, cloak and even shoes - were of great importance in reflecting the hierarchy of office. A larger bureaucracy meant more posts with which to reward supporters. It also meant that many individuals came to represent imperial power wherever they happened to be. Legislation to restrict the demands made on communities by bureaucrats and soldiers suggest that they frequently took more than was necessary for the good of the state. In disturbed times such abuses were likely to be even worse.23

  During Valens' reign some bandits in Syria disguised themselves as a state treasurer and his escort. Under this guise they entered a town near the end of the day and quite openly seized the house of a prominent aristocrat, announcing that he had been condemned by the emperor. The house was looted and any servants who resisted were killed before the group marched out of town before the following dawn. The success of this brazen raid reveals the general respect for and fear of imperial representatives. This particular gang thrived for some time, living in considerable luxury. In the end, imperial troops found them and massacred them all, even killing their sons in case they grew up to be bandits."

  Such thefts of the symbols of imperial authority were exceptionally rare, if spectacular. Keeping a measure of control over legitimate officials, however, was an unending and extremely difficult task. Posts brought privileges with them. The higher ones gave the holder social rank. Almost all provided exemptions from expensive duties to home communities. Salaries were not especially high, at least for the more junior posts, but these were regularly boosted by bribes for favours or fees for services - the slang expression was `selling smoke'. Patronage and the exchange of favours were deeply embedded in Greco-Roman culture and such arrangements were not considered as corruption unless they went too far, distorting government decisions or resulting in the appointment of candidates staggeringly unsuited to the job. In some cases fees were formally recognised by the authorities. An inscription dating to Julian's reign from the outside wall of the town hall at Timgad in North Africa detailed the charges to both parties in bringing a legal case before the governor's court. Nothing would occur without the specified payment to each of the officials involved at every stage of the process. Charges were all assessed in quantities of grain, although whether they were actually paid in that form or converted into currency is unclear. Costs increased if the officials were required to travel any distance, for instance to serve a writ. Litigation was not cheap - although obviously that has been true in many eras, even if the specific nature of the costs has changed.3°

  No emperor could know all of his officials, still less keep a close eye on all their activities. Rules could be bent or even broken altogether without this ever being brought to the emperor's attention. Therefore, more officials were appointed whose main task was to watch and report on the activities of their colleagues. Chief amongst these were the agents (agentes in rebus), and a similar task was often performed by the senior clerks (notariz). Neither group was popular either with other officials or the wider public - especially the wealthy and prominent, who were most likely to be investigated. Most emperors liked them, because they seemed to offer them more control over their own administration. Constantius II greatly increased their numbers, particularly expanding the ranks of the agents. Julian publicly dismissed many of them, but the numbers again grew rapidly after his death. Such representatives could investigate specific problems and report directly to the emperor. At best this gave him accurate information about distant problems and permitted him to make an informed decision about them. This assumed that the reports they presented were accurate. Inevitably, there was the chance for human error, as well as deliberate deception."

  In the 36os the lands around Septimius Severus' home city of Lepcis were subjected to repeated raids by nomadic tribesmen from beyond the frontier. This followed the execution by the city authorities of one of the tribes' noblemen on a charge of banditry. The city councillors requested help from the local military commander, the comes Romanus. The latter gathered some units of comitatenses and then demanded 4,000 camels and supplies from the city leaders. It was normal for communities to support the armies with transport animals and food, but the quantities were wildly excessive. It is unlikely that so many animals could have been supplied at short notice, or that Romanus' forces actually needed th
em. Presumably he was interested in making a profit, either by selling off the bulk of the camels or accepting a bribe to make up for the shortfall in what the city gave him. The leaders of Lepcis refused out of hand, so Romanus waited for a month and then withdrew the army, leaving the city to its fate. Raids continued. As usual, these were evidently small in scale, and agriculture around the city was disrupted rather than destroyed. Yet it was all very galling to the citizens of Lepcis to see that the army was unwilling to protect them. A group of local notables was sent on an embassy to Valentinian, eventually gaining an audience with the emperor at Milan. Romanus sent his own version and this was persuasively presented by his relative, one of the senior officials of the imperial court.

  At first nothing was done, but as reports of new and worse raids arrived, Valentinian decided to investigate the matter and gave this task to the clerk Palladius, who was anyway going to Africa to dispense pay to the troops. This last task was urgent and took precedence over the inquiry. Palladius came to private arrangements with the commanders of the regiments in Africa, siphoning off some of the soldiers' pay - perhaps through accepting falsely inflated returns for the number of men in each unit - and sharing the profits. When he finally came to look into the question of the raiding, the clerk quickly established Romanus' culpability. However, the latter had learned of Palladius' financial activities and blackmailed him into falsifying his report. Together they persuaded some locals to contradict the envoys and deny that there had ever been serious raids at all. Therefore, Valentinian was eventually informed that there was no truth in the accusations made against his commander in Africa. Angrily, he turned on the envoys from Lepcis for making `false' accusations against an imperial official. Some were executed, as was the civilian governor of the province who had backed their story. Other envoys were to have their tongues ripped out.

  Only years later did the truth emerge in the aftermath of a tribal rebellion in North Africa, which eventually turned into an attempted usurpation. Romanus was discredited for provoking this episode and placed under arrest. Amongst his papers was a letter from Palladius revealing their secret arrangement. The former clerk had already been dismissed from service. He was arrested, but, being held overnight in a church during a festival, evaded the supervision of his guards and hanged himself. A few of the envoys had been in hiding and so had avoided the savage punishment decreed for them. They now served as witnesses, as those who had backed Romanus' and Palladius' story were sought out and punished."

  The whole squalid episode had lasted for over a decade. It revealed starkly the dependence of the emperor on his officials, and the difficulty of establishing what was actually happening in the provinces. The imperial view was limited and the increase in bureaucracy had if anything made it more distant, for all information was filtered and refined by others before it reached the emperor himself. The savagery of the imperial response - both to the envoys and their supporters, and then ultimately to the conspirators when this was exposed - was typical of the fourth century and revealed it to be a very different world from the early empire. In the first and second centuries provincial communities were able to bring unpopular governors to trial after their term of office was over. They might or might not win their case - several of Pliny's predecessors in Bithynia had been found guilty - and the outcome might or might not be just, but the worst that failure would cost them was the waste of money and effort. No one would be executed or mutilated if a prosecution failed."

  The Romanus scandal was exceptional. Corruption on such a scale did not pervade the entire administration of the empire and in the end due process caught up with the surviving conspirators. Yet the episode is too readily brushed aside by some modern scholars, eager as always to shed a favourable light on the fourth-century empire. It did reveal what was possible and while it is right to note that behaviour that would seem corrupt to modern eyes would have been perfectly acceptable to the Romans, Romanus and Palladius went far beyond that. Most of all it showed how poorly the government could function. Not only was nothing done about a genuine problem of raiding bands, but the emperor was unable even to find out correctly what had happened.34

  The governmental system did most of what emperors required of it. It allowed them to harness sufficient resources to support the army. Its complex structure and divided responsibilities also helped to protect them from usurpers. The bureaucracy itself had steadily acquired a life of its own. Departments might bicker for power, but they rarely shrank in size for very long. Officials pursued careers to win themselves wealth, prestige, honours and privileges. The efficient running of the empire was too distant an ambition for individuals and departments within the bureaucracy. Human nature being what it is, such an object was too far removed from their more immediate ambitions. The imperial government more often than not coped with what was required of it in the day-to-day running of the empire. In the last years of Valens' reign, it was to show itself far less capable of dealing with a crisis.

  13

  Goths

  `Now the sun climbed higher ... [and] the Romans were weakened by hunger and thirst, and burdened by the weight of their equipment. In the end the great force of the barbarian onslaught shattered our battleline ... Some fell without seeing who struck them, or were knocked down by the sheer weight of the attackers, or even killed by comrades... . In amongst the ordinary soldiers the emperor was struck by an arrow, and soon breathed his last - or so it was believed for no one ever claimed to have seen him or been beside him - and his body was never found subsequently.' - Ammianus'account of the disaster atAdrianople.'

  n 17 November 375, Emperor Valentinian was on the Upper Danube, receiving a delegation of chieftains from the Quadi - Marcus Aurelius' old adversaries, who had recently raided into Rome's Pannonian provinces. Valentinian's campaigns were always as much, if not more, about diplomacy than actual use of force. He was known as a quick-tempered man, something that goes beyond the well-entrenched fourth-century stereotype of the irascible and ill-educated Illyrian. When the chieftains claimed that the raids had been launched without their consent by bands of foreigners, and that in fact recent Roman building of new fortifications was provocative, the emperor flew into a rage at such insolence. In the middle of his violent harangue, Valentinian had a stroke and died. He was fifty-four.'

  Some years before, Valentinian had named his older son Gratian as Augustus. The lad was now sixteen and had been left at Trier by his father. His younger brother Valentinian I I was only four, but was immediately also proclaimed as Augustus by troops and bureaucrats on the Danube. Neither Valens nor Gratian had sanctioned this, but they did not feel able to reject the child's elevation. Valentinian, and through him Valens, were both selected as emperor by an influential group of senior bureaucrats and army officers. Throughout their reigns the brothers needed to be careful to keep these men happy. It is notable that a number of the most prominent officials remained in office for many years, far longer than was typical in the past. Julian's reign in particular had been marked by a rapid turnover of men holding senior posts. Distinct cliques of senior officials dominated the administration of the territories controlled by each of the emperors. Such men had no desire for reuniting into a single administration under a sole emperor, unless they could be sure that they alone would monopolise the senior positions. Valentinian and Valens knew that their dynasty was too recent to be fully secure and that they must respect the views of their senior officials. In 375 enough senior men decided that they wanted a separate court and administration under the nominal control of Valentinian II to force the hands of Valens and Gratian.3

  The empire was once again divided into three. Valens remained in control of the eastern provinces, while Valentinian II was given Italy and North Africa. Illyricum was also technically part of his territory, but in practice this and the remainder of the west was controlled by Gratian. In spite of his age, the latter was active on the frontiers from the beginning of his reign, continuing his father's round of punit
ive expeditions and forceful diplomacy. For the moment the groups of officials dominating the imperial courts were content with and able to maintain the rule of a youthful and an infant emperor.4

  Migrants

  In 376 a large group of Goths massed on the far bank of the Danube. This was not a raiding party, but an entire people on the move, their women and children riding in wagons. They were called the Tervingi, although they were not all of the people who called themselves by that name. There was another major group of Tervingi, and altogether at least half a dozen distinct groups of Goths are known from our sources - more may well have existed, but are simply not recorded. The Goths, just like the Almanni, Franks and others, remained a deeply divided people, split into tribes and other groups, loyal to many different kings, chieftains and magistrates. In the fifth century kingdoms were carved out from Roman territory by the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. There is no evidence that these groups already existed in Valens' day, under these or any other names. Although they figure in older accounts of the 370s, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths did not come into being for another generation.5