He knew that the more African grain was brought into Italy, the more Italy would starve; the more money tribute Asia paid to the Empire, the more the Empire would be pauperized. He preached that the Empire was bleeding to death through usury and impiety—as it was. But others had other ideas as to how to stanch that bleeding, and the majority were willing to let it bleed to death. He was a Christian man more unbending than any Pharisee. Like every unbending man, he would have to be broken.
Stilicho's intelligent listeners—and they were intelligent—had found little to take exception to in his discourses of military matters during that afternoon. But to his Empire theories—in the night by the fire—many took their own exceptions. To most of them the Empire was a thing that might be owned; and it was a rising idea in several of them that they might be the ones to own it. Most would take it as it was, and have the use of it. To them the high office was that of emperor. Except for Alaric, the boys of the nations thought little of mere kingships; even Uldin who was born a king considered it lightly.
Alaric, perhaps, was the only one who wanted to change the Empire, to take it from the outside and not from the inside.
His developing idea at this time, inspired by the letters from his cousin Stairnon and her brothers Athaulf and Singerich, was to found a Gothia in place of a Romania; to conquer Rome, not to rise to the highest place in her defence. He was unsettled in his own mind as to this, however. He was as yet undecided whether he was a Roman or a Goth.
Alaric believed that he had it in himself to equal Stilicho—the man sixteen years his senior, who was already, or soon to be, the most powerful man in the world. They were both of them exterior Germans—but the approach of Alaric differed from that of Stilicho. Stilicho had a most extravagant loyalty to the thing he had adopted; he had no doubt at all as to what he was. He was a Roman.
But all of the cadets had caught one fever from Stilicho—the idea that there is no limit to what a single determined man can do. If that overgrown, one-minded German could do it, they could do it.
In the meantime the main study of the cadets—though it was fragmented under a dozen names—was civil engineering. One half of all warfare and all peaceful enterprise consists of this. It was the clearing, moving, building, reinforcing, provisioning, maneuvering in wheeled strength, sanitation and swamp draining, containment of epidemic and anticipation of harvests; bridge, harbor, and road building; armory, overland navigation, topography as a way of considering the world. All engineering, with the Romans, was military engineering. Even the architects of the cities were drawn from the military. This was field engineering, and it was the main study at the School for Generals.
There is one point that must be made clear here. The soldiers and the armies of that period were the real professionals. The integration of new techniques and the experiments carried out, as at the School, were in the long line of constant improvement of the military. The armies now reached a level of military excellence—right at the end of the fourth century—that was never to be surpassed till the age of gunpowder. Real proficiency and tactical sophistication had become the norm. To compare the earlier legions of Caesar or Pompey with those of Stilicho or Arbogast would be like, in the United States of today, comparing high-school football teams with professionals. Stilicho could have given Caesar three to one in numbers and broken his forces like sticks. These men of Stilicho's time were not summer soldiers of citizen levies. They were the final professional forces, and they had spent four hundred years in gaining their proficiency.
There was one very important person met by Alaric at this time of his life, though her importance was not yet realized. At the Eastern Court he had met the goblin child, Galla Placidia, two years old and already fabulous. Galla Placidia was never to be called beautiful, not even by the flatterers of the Eastern Court—the most sycophantic in the world. The silence on the subject of her charms makes it difficult to know just how she failed in the way of appearance. Though she was to grow up without beauty, every man would want her—and not only because she was the daughter and sister of emperors. They were infatuated with her when she was a discredited captive, and there were a million fair women for the taking.
It is said that she was small and dark. It may be that she was before her time; that she would be rated a beauty today, and the magnificent Gothic women would be looked upon as so many cattle. Fashions changed. She spoke when she was three days old, but in a speech that nobody could understand, in the speech of goblins—this happening is on as good authority as much else that passes in history.
She was the last child of the Emperor Theodosius, born of his second wife Galla. Galla Placidia is always written of as extremely intelligent and as achieving her will at the end. She was considered a saint, especially in her later years, and won universal admiration for her kindness. Yet she ordered the murder of her cousin, foster-sister, step-mother, Serena, who was guiltless of any crime.
Alaric, the Boy Giant of the cadets, knew the two young sons of the Emperor; now he met his small daughter. He was friends with Galla Placidia at once; and even at two years old she claimed him as one of hers. She sat on his lap and they talked—two characters out of a fairy tale, the Boy Giant, and the Goblin Child.
There would come the day when Galla Placidia, then seventeen years old, when all the royalty and officials had fled, would reorganize the Roman Senate on her own authority, and would defy Alaric and his Gothic nation while Rome tottered; that was to happen on the day the world ended.
Now, however, they were friends.
This phase of the life of Alaric ended suddenly. The School was terminated temporarily and, as it happened, forever. The cadets took their places in the active legions for a most grave emergency of the Empire. Several of the young men were given startlingly high commands; but none received such orders as did Alaric of Balthi.
He received his orders, rather strange orders for a boy of seventeen—even one of his known ability. He was given the command of an uncertain number of men—twelve to fourteen thousand of them, it is believed. They could not have been far short of that number, for ten thousand of them were to die in a single day only a few weeks afterward. But these numbers were not given to him as a ready force.
Alaric was ordered to alert and mobilize these men from certain sources, and to levy for additional numbers to come to the designated strength. He was to arm, provision, and transport them by his own device—transport them more than one thousand miles through hostile and rebellious territory, and following a route of incredible terrain. He was ordered to do this, though provided with no authority but verbal orders; though given no funds at all; and though the men designated were irregulars settled on farms, and with no pressing desire to leave them at the behest of a young boy.
It would be found also that the numbers of men available were nowise like represented; and that it would be necessary—using these unwilling irregulars for compulsive force—to levy and impress three times their number to complete the army. Arms likewise must be taken by force, and equipment requisitioned on doubtful authority.
Alaric had to find and form an army, transport it through hard going over a distance of more than a thousand miles, evade or defeat four different forces in his path, and arrive at a rendezvous point all within six weeks, with forces battle-ready.
Nor was even this the worst of his assignment. Luckily, he did not foresee the worst part, or even he might have hesitated. Nevertheless, he carried out the assignment. He would arrive with the requisite forces—however acquired—at That Place and at That Time, to take part in one of the most important battles of the Empire.
It was near the end of July, harvest time in Moesia, and of the year 394, that Alaric received his challenging orders.
5. Being a History of the World
Atrox Fabulinus, the Roman Rabelais, once broke off the account of his hero Raphaelus in the act of opening a giant goose egg to fry it in an iron skillet of six yards' span. Fabulinus interrupted the action with t
hese words: “Here it becomes necessary to pause for a moment and to recount to you the history of the world up to this point.”
After Fabulinus had given the history of the world up to that point, he took up the action of Raphaelus once more. It happened that the giant goose egg contained a nubile young girl. This revelation would have been startling to a reader who had not just read the history of the world up to that point; which history—being Fabulinian in its treatment—prepared him for the event.
And here it becomes necessary—for the understanding of the coming action—to pause and give the history of the world up to the time when Alaric of Balthi received his forbidding orders. Fortunately, it is not a long history, fifty-seven years and some months from the death of the Emperor Constantine to the preliminaries of the great battle of the Emperor Theodosius against the usurpers.
Some will give a longer term to the world, but actually it was only from the beginning of that Late Empire period that the world and the Roman Empire became identical, and the world takes on our special meaning. The Roman Empire did not, at that time, become identical with the world because of any new aggrandizement of the Empire, but because of the bewildering collapse of all the surrounding nations. It must be realized that the “barbarian” invasions of the Empire were not due to the strengthening of the exterior nations, but to their sudden break-up—turning their peoples into wandering hordes. The Empire was now the world, and outside the world there was only confusion.
Later we will give a much longer period to the world in this meaning, and we will be inconsistent; but it cannot be helped. This short history should have something to satisfy every taste and perversion: action, treachery, fratricide and regicide, corruption, and bloodshed. It contains thirteen murders, the victims being mostly of one family. It lists the ways in which a man or an Empire may be surrounded and destroyed; and contains a veritable catalog of subversions and finely wrought treacheries—which the reader may be able to make use of in his own life. And after this short interruption, we will return to our main action—the opening of the giant egg of the legendary Gothic bird.
Constantine had been the last clear and absolute Emperor of all the Roman regions. Constantine was not the first Christian Emperor—that had been Philip the Arab a hundred years before—but he was the first Emperor who declared the Empire to be Christian; though he did not himself become a Christian till on his deathbed.
There were certain advantages in Constantine's advocating a Christianity for others that he was not yet ready to practice himself. Nobody would question the sincerity of Constantine, but it was a sincerity that ran off in several opposite directions. He left, at his death, a rich heritage, and too many heirs.
Constantine had himself set the example of the blood attrition. He had executed by his own hand Crispus, his son by his first wife—to please his second wife. This left, when he died on May 22 of the year 337, three sons and two nephews to inherit the Empire.
The three sons, with their confusing and too-similar names, were to receive these territories:
Constantinus—Italy and Gaul.
Constantius—the East; that which was to become Byzantium.
Constans—Illyricum and Africa.
The territories which the two nephews, Dalmatius and Annibalianus, were to receive are not known for certain, but they are believed to have been Spain and Pannonia. This would have fragmented the Empire intolerably, but a rude sort of process was soon to simplify the holdings. These were not all the nephews—and possibly not all the sons—of Constantine, but they were the inheriting ones.
Keep your eye now on the three sons, Constantinus, Constantius, and Constans, as the shell game is played out. The three are very alike, but one of them will end up with the pea, and the others with nothing at all—not even their lives.
Constantius took it upon himself to correct his father's error of judgment in one thing; he had his two inheriting cousins murdered in the interest of practicality. Nobody objected, certainly not his two brothers. The ground was now cleared, and the main action could begin.
Constantius, partly to give his two brothers a chance to show their hands, but mainly for reasons of real urgency, went off to secure the Persian frontier. The Persians needed to be told that Rome was now the same thing as the world, and that they themselves must subside. Without this preventive action against Persia there might not have been left an Empire to dispute over.
In the meanwhile, Constantinus—the ruler of Italy and Gaul—attacked his brother Constans—the ruler of Illyricum and Africa—at Aquileia in Italy, near the present Jugoslav border. This first battle of Aquileia, in the year 340, was almost identical with the battle of Aquileia and the River Frigidus fought on the same site fifty-four years later. The battle site was a two-way trap, and it was impossible for a victor to withdraw from it victorious. In this first battle of Aquileia, Constantinus won the battle, but lost his life.
There were now two brothers left—Constantius and Constans.
Constans was killed by the usurper Magnus Magnentius in the year 350. Constantius then defeated Magnentius on the Danube, and the usurper was either killed or killed himself in the year 353.
There was now only one brother left, supreme in the Empire—Constantius. He had inherited the pea.
But the Empire could no more be ruled in one part than in five parts. The device of using the master generals for administrators had not yet appeared. The Empire had grown too unwieldy to be ruled by a single man, and there had to be the Eastern and Western subdivisions for actual administration—whatever name the apparatus went by.
In the year 351, Constantius chose his cousin Gallus as a co-Emperor to administer the West. Three years later, Constantius thought better of it, and murdered Gallus.
In the following year, Constantius chose his cousin Julian (a half-brother of Gallus) as co-Emperor of the West. Julian anticipated any second thoughts on the part of Constantius by striking first. Constantius died before Julian's attack had reached him in the East, but he may have died of a weapon called the Dagger with the Very Long Handle. Julian was a canny man, and often sent his emissaries far out in advance.
Julian the “Apostate” took up the campaign of the Persian border, but died near Ctesiphon.
The blood of Constantine had all run out in the twenty-six years following his death. Constantine had been the last clear and absolute Emperor of Rome. Julian had been the last Emperor with any blood claim at all to the honor.
There followed now a new sort of emperors, and a new concept of the office. The new rulers would be men raised by the troops—or at least approved by the troops. The office would not go, of necessity, by blood succession; and would not go in a direct line if a variant line bore better fruit. The selection of the emperors would depend on many factors, of which ability and blood would be only two. The Empire became all important; but the emperor might be almost anonymous, a changing face filling an unchanging office.
The first of the new Emperors—raised by the soldiers and circumstances—was Jovianus. He was elected Emperor in the year 363. He performed one major act in his reign; he surrendered Mesopotamia to the Persians. Then he died in 364 without effective issue.
Valentinian I was elected Emperor by the troops in 364. His election put a favorable aspect on things for the first time in a generation. He was a sound man, and he began to gather very capable men around him. One of his first acts was to appoint his brother Valens to be co-Emperor for the East. Valens was as capable a man as was his brother Valentinian, and there was no fratricide in this family. There was real affection and trust between the brother Emperors.
The two brothers were—as well as it was possible to be at that time—great restorers; of men, of morals, of land. There was a return of stability to the Empire, and the air was full of great expectations. It seemed that they might be able to override a primary force that had been in the ascendant—the tendency of the unwieldy Empire to fragmentize. The brother Emperors employed radical dev
ices to cope with some of the more urgent problems of the day, and to prop up the crumbling frontiers and the heart of the Empire.
It was the Emperor Valens who admitted the West Goths into the Empire in the year of the birth of Alaric of Balthi. This decision of Valens may have been a good one, though it cost him his life. The Goths would have come in, invited or uninvited. Valens gambled that it would be possible to make Romans of them.
In the West, Valentinian had raised his son Gratian to be co-Emperor in the year 367. Valentinian himself was killed in 375 on an expedition against the Quadi and Sarmatians.
The new Emperor Gratian, sixteen years old at the time of his father's death, after consulting with his uncle the Emperor Valens in the East, appointed his four-year-old half-brother Valentinian II to be co-Emperor of the West. Gratian was interested in maintaining the legitimacy of the line and preserving the public order.
After the death of the Eastern Emperor Valens at the hands of the Goths in 378, Gratian appointed Theodosius—a general of service in Britain and Spain—to be Emperor of the East. Gratian also, in well-placed trust, appointed Theodosius to be guardian of himself and his young half-brother Valentinian II, the two Western Emperors.
This helped to insure stability, but it was not enough. Theodosius was busied for many years in saving and restoring the Eastern Empire. The trouble in the West came in waves that could not all be contained. Gratian gave signs of being a strong man, but he was not given time enough to gain experience.
A new pretender—a splinter Emperor, Magnus Maximus—was raised by the British legions. Maximus took Gaul, and killed the Emperor Gratian at Lugdunum in 383. The details of the action are not to be had. Maximus defeated and killed the Emperor, that is all we know of it.
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