Stairnon had come to them, very tall and happy, with a long bull whip coiled on her arm. There was a bell clanging, an evening or supper bell, or a slave bell.
The men of Alaric camped in the farmstead, and considerably raised the surrounding earth walls, working into the late dark. Though Goths, they were Roman soldiers, and they would follow Roman camp discipline.
Stairnon was prodigal in caring for them and completely unperturbed by their numbers. The feast that began a little after midnight lasted throughout the following day. She slaughtered steers, sheep, and goats, and also prepared that old Gothic delicacy—foal colt. They had mead and grape wine. There were bread loaves the size of cart wheels.
The meal of the Christian Goths could not begin with other than bread and wine, though they believed all food to be holy. To them every meal must be a form of the Eucharist, though they had the Eucharist itself and were not confused between the reality and the symbol.
They had honey with mare's milk, goat cheese, curds from cows' milk, fowl and hare, fish of the Pontus and the Maritza. Euxine sturgeon, roast dog, wheat and barley cakes, pigs fatted on acorns and hazel nuts. They had old apples and pomegranates, and new melons and garlic and onions. They had plums, pears, and figs; almonds, chestnuts, walnuts, cherries, peaches, and apricots. They had—and theirs was the first generation north of Greece to have such—citrus fruit. They had olives and oysters and butter, duck and goose eggs and flesh. They drank a heavy beer much like the porter of later centuries.
There has been some misunderstanding as to the food of the near-ancient people, and those of the Low Middle Ages. They ate well; they had to eat well, if at all. This was before the appearance of the artificial foods; there was no food but the genuine.
The low-born potato and the turnip, those latter-day degradations to afflict fallen man, were not known. Corn and oats were eaten by animals, as was proper; but not by men. The ranker vegetables had not yet substituted themselves in place of the nobler fruits. Mankind, in its nobler races, had not fallen to peas or beans (which were slave foods); nor commonly to beets, radishes, cabbages, cress, or weeds. Vegetables, some of them, might be used in compounding relishes, but they were not used as basic foods. Meat, fruit, nuts, milk, cheese, wheat and barley cakes and bread, were the food of the people. Oats were for horses; millet and semolina for the poor of the Romans.
The drink of the Goths was wine, beer, and mead. Christian men had not yet been seduced by the oriental impostors tea and coffee; the nothing drinks. They knew that only the drink that moves itself, that undergoes a form of metamorphosis or fermentation, can be the resurrection and the life.
The farmstead was one of the more than one thousand such large steads as the Goths established wherever they set down. The Goths had no small farms and could not have conceived of them. The farmstead would comprise from fifty to two hundred persons, and the buildings were encircled with earthen walls, for every farm was likewise a fortress. The farmstead included shops and smithies for carpentry and armory and tanning and fulling and weaving. The wooden and iron implements of the farm were made on the farm. The shoes and the clothing were made there. The manorial life of the Middle Ages had already begun with the settlement of the Goths. The Goths had already done for themselves what Stilicho, not knowing the details of their lives, had dreamed of doing for the Romans in the resettlement of the lands.
It is not known just what was the personal relationship of Stairnon and Alaric at this time. The Goths married much later than did the Greeks and Romans, though Alaric and Stairnon did marry either one or three years later; whether before or after the Greek adventure, it is not known. But Alaric at seventeen was not in a hurry for the thing. He was not as precocious in marital as in martial ways. They did not have the first of their several children till either five or seven years after their marriage; and it may have been a policy marriage, not a marriage of fact, in the early years of it. Stairnon did not reveal too early all the roles that she intended to play in the life and legend of Alaric.
Alaric learned the news of his family. Stairnon's brother Singerich was at Constantia on the Black Sea. Her older brother, Athaulf, had gone feral and was across the Danube near the Barcea Complex with his new father, who was not the father of Stairnon and Singerich and Sarus. And Alaric gave Stairnon the news of her brother Sarus—that he had gone directly into the Roman inner service from the Academy; that Sarus was a Roman now and nevermore a Goth.
On the first morning of the feasting, Alaric called together the Gothic men from the countryside. These were likewise operators of the great farms, and their sons and nephews and kindred. He told them to prepare and arm and be ready to leave within twenty-four hours.
They told him that their harvests would not be completed for ten days; that they would follow him then.
Their harvests should have been completed, Alaric insisted. The harvests had been finished in the land he had traversed in the three days previous. The Roman orders that Alaric had received had assumed that the harvests would be completed in Little Moesia.
The harvests were always a little later here on the Thracian Plain, the Gothic men told him. They knew that the harvests were completed down around Constantinople, what little grain they grew there. The men would follow Alaric as soon as they had finished their harvest.
Alaric said that they would follow him now, on the following morning, or that he would burn them out. Stairnon told Alaric that he would not burn any of the Goths out. She told him that the Gothic men were right, and he was wrong; she won him over on it.
The plan decided on for Alaric and his growing forces was that they should ride to his cousin Singerich in Constantia, in which region he was already raising and arming forces. After joining with the Gothic and Greek forces of Singerich, the army would cross the narrow Dobruja Plain to the Ister—the Danube—where Athaulf would meet them. Athaulf would accompany them for much of their journey and would give them such troops as he could find; but he would not accompany them all the way. He would not re-enter the Empire at this time; he would not re-enter till the decision for the final solution of the Empire had been made, so his message ran—which Alaric did not understand.
Alaric was no fool; he realized that the time element in the whole business was distorted. It was less than four days since he had received his own orders. For messages to go to his two cousins, Singerich and Athaulf, and their answers received back, would have taken no less than ten days. Yet messages of the situation had gone to them from someone, and their answers had already been received.
His selection, Alaric knew, had not only been discussed by the Romans, but had been settled by the Romans with his own people, the Goths. Alaric was a tool and had been the last one to receive the word of his own assignment. He had been selected by the Roman Master General Stilicho to play a role. He had also been selected by the elders of the Goths, both those within the Empire and those outside it, to play a role. He had the feeling, however, that the Romans and the Goths had not selected him for exactly the same role.
It isn't known how deep the Gothic intrigue ran. There were certainly parties and divisions among them—and there were the beginnings of the real Gothic nationalists, and an anti-Empire group. It had been discussed whether the Goths should not soon raise up a king, as they had not done for several generations.
There were those among the Gothic elders, especially beyond the Empire, who inclined to the young Athaulf for the ultimate leadership, as being more intelligent and more what they called wide-seeing than Alaric. The difficulty was that Athaulf, from a childhood fixation and the influence of his sister, Stairnon, supported Alaric and would not consider himself or any other as final leader. Athaulf always stated that he would remain beyond the Danube until the development of certain events; and that he would aid in their development if they seemed tardy.
There were also some among the Gothic leaders who preferred Singerich as leader. Singerich was an easy and urbane boy with an intelligence far beyond h
is years. He had comprehended the thought of the Gothic interviewers without their having to go into embarrassing explanations. He was scholar and scribe and notary and lawyer, though only of the age of Alaric. He was a commission agent in the Port City of Constantia, and was acquainted with the shipping and business of every part of the Empire. He was a friend of the Emperor and a very close friend of the Eastern ministers, and had become so on his own, without influence and without favor. He had a genius for affairs, and even had a fine understanding of military affairs, which many men of that sort do not have. The Gothic elders were amazed at this young prodigy who had been hatched from their nest, and were very impressed by his achievements. But here there was the same impediment: Singerich was committed to Alaric forever. His mind, that could see nearly every side of every problem, could see only one side of this. It had to be Alaric for Singerich.
Sarus would have been the natural choice of the Gothic men. But they understood what had happened to the boy. It had come to them by too many reports to allow doubt of it. Sarus was a Roman and would be so forever. He could no longer be considered as a Goth.
As for Alaric the Boy Giant, he had talked very little to the Gothic emissaries—not identified as such—who had visited him at the school. It was not even certain that Alaric was intelligent. But the selection of Alaric to lead the Gothic levy, made by the Roman Master General Stilicho, could not be set aside. The leading Goths knew Stilicho, and respected him and his judgment. They finally agreed with the Master General that the leader should be Alaric. This was several weeks before Alaric himself received his orders.
There had been campaigning on Alaric's behalf from other sources. Bacurius the Spanish General had visited his son at the School, and had been greatly impressed by Alaric. He had insisted to Stilicho, again and again, that Alaric would be a great power in the Empire. The father of Uldin the Boy King of Huns, himself both King and General, had made the same recommendations to Stilicho. These men, of other race, saw something in Alaric that his own people did not yet see.
It is not to take anything from Alaric to point out that he had considerable help in raising, arming, and transporting his troops. The orders of Alaric were often only the confirmation of orders that the men had already received from the Gothic elders. Alaric had soldiers from the great force of Fritigern that had broken the best of the Romans and killed their Emperor Valens sixteen years before. He had veterans of every Empire action of the ensuing sixteen years. There were young men who, like Alaric, had been born in the camps. There were the Goths who were also trained Roman soldiers, most of them with from six to sixteen years service in the legions.
They had settled and farmed in the meantime. But they would rather soldier. They had been waiting impatiently for the blast of the war horn. Now they began to respond before Alaric had quite got it raised to his lips.
But another wind was blowing through them when they came to arms this time. And when they now took up their arms they would not put them down for more than a thousand years—until they had lost their identity as a people. The new wind was a non-Roman thing. The Empire was calling on them to take arms for one great battle in the civil war; but many of the Goths were looking far beyond the one battle in the service of Rome.
Rumor is persistent that Stairnon was inextricably involved in this new feeling. She became a legend-molder, both before and after the facts. She was either a willing creature or one of the brilliant originators of the Gothic National Movement. The Romans did not know what they had started. Any amateur magician can call up a wind, but can he shut it off when he wishes?
It was at the farmstead in Little Moesia that Alaric, in discussion with Stairnon and the Gothic men of the countryside and uneasy at the old Gothic basis of their thought, put forward some of the ideas of Stilicho. He did this badly, being not yet a talker, but he did it with conviction. He was half-Roman now, believed himself to be completely Roman, and he wanted them to understand. He quoted Stilicho to the effect that as long as there was one pauper or one slave or one heretic or one rebel remaining, they had failed at the proper ordering of the world and the Empire.
The answer to this, as Hafras reports, was the rich red laughter of Stairnon. She reminded Alaric that all of them present, except Bacurinius, were heretics in the eyes of Stilicho, being Arians. She told him that they were paupers as to the possession of town things. That they were slaves of the Empire and owners of slaves in their turn. And that they might very well be rebels before the earth had made its full journey. So perhaps it was they themselves who were standing in the way of the proper ordering of the Empire and the world, and they who should be eliminated.
Alaric sincerely believed the thesis of Stilicho, however; and he recognized the answer of Stairnon as no more than a cheerful sophism. Alaric would have effected it all if he had lived long enough—if he had lived for a thousand years, and the Goths and the Romans, and people generally, had been other than they were. The Stilicho dream of restoring the Empire came too late, and to too few men.
After the time of their stay at the farmstead, probably only two days, Alaric and his band—grown to some six or seven hundred men now—rode off to Constantia (anciently named Tomi, where Ovid had lived) to find the cousin Singerich and pick up the troops he had raised. Appointment was made with the Goths of the countryside for a meeting at the cataracts of the Danube—modernly called the Iron Gate—to which place they were to proceed as soon as their harvest was completed.
From the farmstead in Little Moesia it was five days—two hundred miles—to Constantia. The speed was necessarily less than formerly. There was a greater force to move, and horses could not so easily be changed in such numbers.
It was at Constantia that Alaric was almost perturbed to find how well things were going. The small fleet of Singerich, Black Sea and river boats, had already sailed. Singerich had answered the question some days before it had been put to him. The boats had sailed north twelve days before, which was prior to Alaric's receiving his orders. The fleet would go, had in fact already gone, north to the southernmost mouth of the Danube (today known as St. George Mouth); it would cruise the south shore of Fir Island (where Alaric had been born), and there it would pick up further Goths. The boats would then proceed around the great bend of the river and south to the Barcea Complex. Somewhere in those lakes and side rivers and swamps there would be Athaulf waiting. The river men would surely be there before the land men.
Singerich had initiated certain financial transactions at Constantia, and these he now confirmed to Alaric. It was an extremely simple business as he presented it. He had raised funds and boats and arms and equipment by mortgages on the basis of warrant claims, which he now executed on the authority of Alaric, who did not understand that he had such authority. It was not Alaric who was so bonded, Singerich explained, but the Empire by his name. Alaric, as the commander of auxiliaries, was so entitled to requisition. Nor should he feel uneasy as to the success of the moneylenders and provisioners. For the risk that they took their mark-up was high, more than 50 percent. It would not have been possible, of course, had not the word come to the financial men of the port city that Alaric held legitimate appointment from the Master General Stilicho.
There were discrepancies in the matter, however. Singerich and Alaric had received fewer boats and wagons than they had signed for, but they had received a quantity of gold bar that made up the balance. Singerich would go far in his line. Besides, the gold would buy more arms and wagons and provisions on the Gothic border than it would in the Greek port city.
After they had rested for one day and transacted such business, Alaric and Singerich, with their forces joined, traveled on the second day to the Barcea—for it was no more than thirty miles overland—there to meet Athaulf.
The plan thereafter was to proceed up the river (which was then called the Ister as far up as the cataracts—the Iron Gate—and only above the cataracts was named the Danube), traveling by the river and on both shores, with one foot
always in the Empire and the other one outside. They would travel the Danube upstream till they came to the Savo Branch (at modern Belgrade); and there Athaulf would give them such troops as he could, but he would not come with them further. He would not enter the Empire. They would follow the Savo Branch up to its source—its ultimate source where it came out of the mountains as a spring that a man could divert with his two hands.
When Alaric should come to that place he would be high in the Julian Alps and not a hundred strides from the divide. From the top of the divide it would be possible for him to see, distantly, the army that he with his forces was to join and support. It would be no more than twenty Roman miles away, to the south, near the passes out of the Julians.
And coming down from the Julians they would be at the gates of Italy and already on the battle field that was the scene of two previous carnages. Five weeks they had left for the rendezvous, or a little less.
Alaric rode out from Constantia with his cousin Singerich, the Goth who had become a Greek, starting early while it was still dark, and came to the river on the same day, while it was high afternoon. There were many who called to Alaric by name as he went by, those who could never have seen him before. Alaric was one of those rare persons—all of them are great, but not all great persons have the attribute—who will be known by name and face wherever they go. Before the age of produced pictures and general literacy, the thing was more noticed than it is now. One king would ride among the people and be known. Another would not be known. There are persons of such a striking image that the rumor of them describes them exactly, and they will be everywhere recognized. Alaric was such a man, and it was partly for this reason that he was selected as leader. Sarus and Athaulf, for all their great ability, were not such men. They would not be known popularly either by face or by name.
Summa Risus: Collected Non-Fiction Page 24
