The garrisons would now remain faithful to the legitimate Emperors forever; Stilicho decreed it to them; to this order there could never be an exception. There were men of the garrisons who later said that they would rather be lashed with a whip than by the tongue of Stilicho. But the Master General satisfied himself that those of the garrisons were good men who had been misled and would not be misled again—not while he lived.
The Western frontiers were solid. Stilicho tapped them with his mallet-like hands and assured himself that there was no real rot in them.
There remained Africa—with the incipient revolt of Gildo, and the east. Stilicho sent a man secretly to Africa to kill Gildo. Then he himself started east, out of Italy and along the Adriatic. He led certain Western Roman troops and certain Eastern Roman levies. He was returning the Eastern troops, left over from the battle of Aquileia, to the east; he wanted them in Italy less than anywhere. He skimmed the cream off them, retaining a few thousand of the finest for his own use.
Near Thessalonika, Stilicho and his forces encountered Alaric with his Gothic detachment, which had just by-passed Constantinople and was raiding south. This was a strange situation.
Alaric was still subject to the orders of Stilicho—the guardian of the entire Empire and the over-general of all the troops. Alaric was also subject to the orders of Rufinus, the Master of Offices of the East; and to Arcadius the young Emperor of the East. Alaric was, moreover, playing a dual role: that of a minor Roman general, and that of the uncrowned (for two years yet) King of the Goths.
Stilicho sat down and talked it over with Alaric for a week or so, and there came others to join in the conversation.
An important man who came and joined the discussion was Gainas, the Gothic commander of the forces of Constantinople. He had been following several days behind Alaric on his ravaging; it isn't known with what sort of force Gainas had followed, nor under what orders.
But Gainas did bring definite orders from the Emperor Arcadius that Stilicho was to advance no further towards Constantinople; that any closer advance would constitute a hostile act. The Emperor ordered Stilicho to turn over the Eastern detachment accompanying him to Gainas; he ordered Stilicho to return to the affairs of the Western Empire—particularly to the African affairs which pertained to the West.
That part was agreeable to Stilicho. He did not wish to precipitate a civil war. His own thought was for the stability of the Empire. He had wanted the Eastern forces returned to the East, and it was for that reason that he had escorted them on the long way. And he was quite willing that Gainas should be the man in charge of them. Gainas was Stilicho's man privately.
Stilicho had come east for one other reason—to kill a man whom he believed to be a malign influence on the Empire. Stilicho reached concord with Gainas on this point also. Gainas agreed to kill the man for him.
Stilicho also came to agreement with Alaric on several matters, or believed that he had. There should be no invasion of Greece, Stilicho insisted. If it were true that Alaric carried orders from the Emperor Arcadius that he should check on the towns and garrisons and general well-being of Greece, then he might check on them. But if, as had been rumored, Alaric intended to loot and devastate the country and set himself up as its master, such an adventure would cost him his life. Stilicho would come and take him and hang him. That was a promise subject to no conditions.
But Stilicho proposed that Alaric should become a different kind of master of a different province—Illyricum.
The division of the Empire into East and West, following the pattern of most previous divisions, gave to the Eastern Ruler, Arcadius, the provinces of Thrace, Greece, Asia (that is, Asia Minor), Syria, Armenia as far as the Persian frontier, and Egypt.
To the Western Ruler, Honorius, of whom Stilicho was direct guardian, went Italy, Africa (which was Africa west of Egypt, Egypt not being considered a part of Africa), Gaul, Spain, and Britain; Raetia also (approximately modern Switzerland), and such territory beyond the Rhine as was held by the Imperial armies at any time. This left the giant, and somewhat unsettled, province of Illyricum (the greater part of modern Jugoslavia), the division of which had never followed a pattern.
In general, the portions of Noricum, Pannonia, and Dalmatia (itself of indefinite area, to add to the confusion) were thought of as belonging to the West; and the portions of Dacia (Lesser Dacia, the part south of the Danube), and Macedonia (also of vague extent) were thought of as belonging to the East.
Stilicho believed that all Illyricum should be ruled as one province, in fact if not in name: the whole Adriatic march that he had just traversed, but not including Greece. He believed that it must be under his own control from the West, whatever the appearance should be. He would not, however, allow it to become the object of a civil war.
The proposition of Stilicho was something like this: that Alaric should be appointed Master General of all Illyricum by the Eastern Emperor Arcadius—but that Alaric must bring about the appointment himself by his own influence and suits, though he would be supported by the secret connivance of Stilicho in ways still to be revealed. And that Stilicho, at the same time, acting in his own name and that of the Western Emperor Honorius, would recognize Alaric as the Master General for the West over the same regions. This latter arrangement, of course, would not be known of openly by the Eastern Court. This is to say that Alaric would hold authority from both the East and the West over the buffer region of the Adriatic province.
Stilicho was offering to adopt Alaric into the overguardianship of the entire Empire, and asking him to lend a hidden hand to that heavy burden. Stilicho insisted that he would expect full and final obedience to himself as guardian of the Empire, his own orders to override any contrary orders that either of the young Emperors should mistakenly give.
They talked about it for several days, and Alaric gazed at the distant sky. He gave Stilicho assurance of many things, and Stilicho believed that he had final assurance of this. It is probable that Stilicho did not understand the strong Gothic feeling in Alaric or realize at all the meaning of the Gothic nation. Stilicho was a Vandal, a German who had become completely Roman. To him a nation was but another word for a province. In underestimating the non-Roman elements in the Gothic movement, Stilicho made one of the few serious mistakes of his life.
The dialogues broke up on a promising note. The three burly Germans, Stilicho and Alaric and Gainas, who believed themselves to be Romans and who handled Roman affairs, went their three ways. Stilicho received a packet while he was camped near Thessalonika; it had come from overseas and then by fast courier. It contained the head of the man whom Stilicho had sent to kill Gildo in Africa.
The man who thrust the packet on Stilicho, in its very high and offensive condition, was a fanatical partisan of Gildo. He stated insolently that he brought greetings from his master, and this gift which his master believed that Stilicho might value. He said also that he was to convey that the Comes Gildo hoped that he and Stilicho now understood one another.
Stilicho told the man to return to his master, to tell him that Stilicho had received and understood the gift, and that he, Stilicho, would soon pay Gildo a visit in person.
So Stilicho would have to leave the affairs of the East in doubtful shape and go to Africa to put down the rebellion.
Gainas, with the Eastern troops returned from the battle of Frigidus and Aquileia, took march to Constantinople. And Alaric started south once more, but very slowly. He resumed his selective raiding, against the absolute orders of Stilicho; but he did defer to Stilicho in one respect. In the raiding of the Goths through Thrace and Greece and Macedonia, the estates of Stilicho himself (and he had extensive ones, gifts of the Emperor Theodosius) were completely spared. Alaric had put Stilicho at the head of one of his two lists.
Alaric moved south through Macedonia and Thessaly without real opposition. Two of the appointees of Rufinus—Antiochus the proconsul of Greece, and Gerontius the commander of the Imperial troops—showed great re
luctance to closing with Alaric in battle. They were the weak instruments of a man who had already failed—the man whom Stilicho had decided was a malign influence on the Empire. Alaric moved slowly, for he was waiting for a sound.
It came—the news of the murder of Rufinus by the Imperial troops of Gainas the Goth. Stilicho had given an order, and it had been carried out after he himself was far distant from the scene. Stilicho had failed, temporarily, with Gildo in Africa; but he did not always fail. It may be that he never failed in the final issue. The Master General Stilicho could command any of the generals in any part of the Empire; and he would kill any man who was in any way a threat to that Empire.
Alaric studied this great general and guardian of the Empire, this unusual friend who would as soon have had his life at the battle of the River Frigidus. This was the man who would have set him up as a buffer between the two halves of the Empire; who would have adopted him as his own heir in that onerous guardianship of the Empire, making him sharer in the most responsible office in the world. And he was the man who would have him killed as surely as he had had Rufinus killed, if his death would prosper the Empire; had said that he would kill him under the circumstances that were now about to become fact. Stilicho had gone off to settle Africa, but he would be back.
Alaric considered it all—but not for too long. He gave the order to proceed south to the open attack and looting of Greece. This act was in absolute contradiction to every instruction that Stilicho had given him, and Alaric now knew how deftly Stilicho could kill.
Stilicho had sworn that he would come and hang Alaric, if he should do what he was now doing.
10. Of the Game Named King
Alaric started from Larissa in Thessaly on the Peneus River, and swept south into Greece proper. The vague border of Greece, wherever it may be, has never varied much from here. With his forces he picked his way by ragged roads over mountains. At Thermopylae, the Goths could have been stopped or slowed, but they met hardly token resistance.
Into that early first summer, cold and blustery through June, the Goths were in Boeotia and Attica. Then Alaric put together one of the three-day crash marches that were to make him famous, and took Piraeus, the port of Athens. The speed of the assault was so stunning that there was no warning, no resistance, nothing.
The Goths of Alaric's contingent saw that southern sea itself for the first time at Piraeus. They thawed considerably here, and discovered in themselves a new capacity for ease and luxury.
It has been said that the Goths went wild in Greece, like children in a candy store. There is an aptness in this comparison, for one of the things that the Goths went wild about was candy itself—confections. Honey was the only sweetener in that world that did not yet know cane or beet sugar. And Athens was the honey capital of the world; she was this after she had left off being everything else.
Greece itself was, and has always been, one single field of clover. It is furrowed by mountains and interrupted by arms of the sea; pock-marked by plowed fields and broken by groves; infiltrated by swamps, separated by narrow deserts; but it remains one field of clover. It is grazed by sheep, goats, and bees. It is the true land of milk and honey.
The Goths, like all the northern peoples, had had a craving for sweets for generations. Whatever their advances in other lines of agriculture, they were very backward in apiculture. Their only bees had been wild ones, and their only hives had been bee trees. Even their mead—honey whiskey—had been wild stuff, full of bark and pulp wood. It had been nothing like the real mead of the Greeks—which was another name for nectar.
The Goths went wild, literally, over the Greek confections, and they also tasted peculiar confections in other forms. They lived on the countryside and the resources of the Port City while Alaric treated for the surrender of Athens.
Piraeus was a cosmopolitan sea port, as nothing that is not Greek can really be cosmopolitan; it was an international slave market, the second largest in the entire Empire. The Goths were a vigorous and earthy people, but they were unsophisticated in the ancient and heterodox vices. They tasted new confections in the timeless sin port, and indulged in the abominations that are spoken of by the prophets.
And Alaric came down from the hills of Athens, like an angry prophet, to his Gothic people on the Bay of Phalerum, having heard reports that horrified him. He discovered that the Goths had been worshipping strange kine and tasting of illicit fleshpots.
Alaric was not a tolerant man, in either the good or the evil sense of the word. His anger now was somewhere between that of the infrequent but absolute madnesses of Theodosius and the controlled iciness of Stilicho. He appointed executioners, and had more than one hundred of his own men put to death; for sodomy, for abuse of children and slaves, for pygal perversions, for using narcotics. Alaric was not greatly disturbed over simple drunkenness. He fulminated against such; but it was for the perversions that he killed.
Alaric had taken a bold and direct step in this. Even Stilicho, whatever his strong personal puritan feelings, would not have ordered the execution of his own men for such. The lines were drawn now; there could never be any doubt about what sort of man Alaric was. He would play the part of one of the anointed of God, and he would pass final judgments. Only a chosen leader can act in such a manner, whether chosen by himself or by a group. Alaric had been chosen by both. He is still contemned in history by the peculiar brotherhood which one offends at his peril.
Alaric wrought another sort of execution in Greece, for which he has been widely condemned. This was the destruction of many statues, paintings, reliefs, friezes, temples, statuettes, and artifacts of ceramic, stone, bronze, and silver and gold. He destroyed them as pagan survivals; as offensive to the public morality; and as the work of the Devil.
Alaric, in his own mind, had some justification for this destruction, in the orders he carried from the Emperor Arcadius. The formula of the orders of a Master General contained certain standardized phrases: seeing to the defenses of the cities, attending to the problems of commerce, putting down piracy, suppressing insurrection. The formula also had a phrase about maintaining the public morality and fostering religion. Alaric put great stress on this one phrase of his orders.
It is true that he did not otherwise follow out the orders of the Emperor, though he did check on the defenses of the cities in his own way. And he did not accept the further orders that the Emperor sent after him.
The couriers whom the Emperor sent after Alaric, on hearing of his depredations, were unhorsed and hamstrung and left crippled by the Gothic soldiers, who pretended to be unable to understand either Greek or Latin. Even Gothic couriers were unable to reach Alaric. They were beaten as bandits and sent on their way under threat of their lives.
Alaric set himself up as judge of the artifacts—as to what should be demolished, and what should be spared. But it was not only pagan art that he destroyed. He also did away with what he believed was bad Christian art. He swore that all bad workmanship, no matter to whose service it pretended, was the work of the Devil, but that any thing well done, no matter what name it went under, was wrought under the influence of the Holy Ghost and was to be considered as inspired.
The historian Cassiodorus believed that the selective destruction of Alaric, as regards the Greek monuments, was of good effect. Alaric had some taste and was awed by really great art. The Greeks were only human, and all their work could not have been excellent. But almost all their ancient work that survived the ravages of Alaric was of unsurpassed excellence.
There is abominable and worthless ancient Greek art in Asia Minor, in Constantinople, in Thebes, in Eritrea, in the Cyclades and other islands. There is little or none of this worthless ancient art surviving in the path of the Gothic Greek adventure; not in Athens, or Megara or Corinth or Argos. Sparta does not figure in the account at all; it never had art.
It is said that Alaric destroyed half of the art of Greece. It may have been the worst half. He was a critic of unusual effectiveness. But we hav
e run ahead while Alaric was still dealing with Athens.
With Piraeus, the port of Athens, in the hands of the Goths, Athens itself could easily be starved out. But it was not to come to that. She opened her gates and let the army in. The destruction here was, as always, selective; there were no massacres of the people. Alaric had come to the city for one thing, and he knew it was to be had there. Athens had a fund for just such contingencies; she was not the wealthiest city in the world, but she had always budgeted for this.
Athens ransomed herself from Alaric, as she had from a dozen conquerors. She had a great sea trade and was the center of the olive and wine and honey commerce; she was a great exporter of pottery and woolen cloth, and an importer for a wide area of silk and citrus and Egyptian grain. Her slave commerce alone would have made her wealthy, she having the only superior slave schools in the Empire. She imported the raw commodity, instructed and refined it, and reshipped it at high profit.
The contingent fund for the payment of ransom was one of the fixed charges that Athens had always imposed on her commerce.
The treaty of Alaric's Goths with the city of Athens seems to have been a simple one—coin and ingot payment in exchange for freedom from further molestation. Alaric and his retinue came and went freely for some weeks and enjoyed the luxury of the city, though the bulk of his army was kept encamped in the near countryside. There is no serious bill of particulars drawn against the Goths for their destruction in the city, though for centuries the sources of history were in the hands of those who were the natural enemies of the Goths in thought and temperament. Alaric may have been the most gentle conqueror that Athens ever knew.
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