There had been, in the age of the Emperor Valens, a man named Eutropius who wrote a very good history of Rome, apparently on commission of that Emperor; who had accompanied an earlier Emperor Julian on his Persian war; who had been wounded gravely in battle, “To the very man of him,” which may have had a special meaning; who was plainly a man of the superior sort, and was most certainly a man of exceptional mind.
Immediately after this, in the age of the Emperor Theodosius, there had been a eunuch who served that Emperor in responsible capacities; who commanded the respect of such men as Stilicho; and who was an able, though not perfect, administrator. This eunuch was also named Eutropius.
And immediately after this, in the age of the Emperor Arcadius, this same eunuch, with the Master of Offices Rufinus, assumed the regency of that Eastern Empire. He committed, it is true, certain cruelties in collaboration with that Rufinus, but not yet the blackest cruelties ever committed. He survived the engineered murder of Rufinus, and was then, for some years, accepted by all as the effective ruler of the Eastern Empire. He ruled well; and the previous cruelties, whatever part he may have had in them, did not reoccur. There is no doubt that the Eutropius who served the Emperor Theodosius is the same who served his son Arcadius.
And then there is the change. Eutropius is no longer the most adroit man of the East, the educated Empire Greek, the trusted administrator of competent Emperors, and the guardian of a less competent one. He becomes either an Assyrian or an Armenian, yet curiously negroid, as were neither of those peoples. He becomes a deformed, dwarfish, dim-witted, stammering slave boy-eunuch. As such they killed him, but the corpse was that of quite an old man.
Reference works list the historian and the eunuch as two different men; and do not make it clear how the despised moronic slave rose to be Consul of the Roman Empire. We believe that the historian and the eunuch were the same man; that he was a most outstanding man; and that the distortion is completely that.
Eutropius was as sincere a restorer of the commonwealth as was Stilicho. In their outlook they differed only in this: Eutropius believed that there were two Empires; Stilicho believed that there was only one.
Enough, for the moment, of the boy-slave who was at the same time the Old Spider of Constantinople. We come to the Goth who was the left-handed or mirror image of Alaric, and who momentarily achieved a left-handed version of Alaric's conquest of the world.
This was the Goth Gainas, who was Stilicho's man, but became his own man also. The fall of Gainas was entwined with that of Eutropius. They were friends, though very unlike men.
A generation before this, in the midst of his trouble with the Visigoths in the whole Balkan region, Theodosius had settled a large force of Ostrogoths in Phrygia in Asia Minor. The behavior of those East Goths in Asia had, for that generation, paralleled that of the West Goths in Europe. They were among the finest soldiers of the Empire—when they were not attacking the Empire. They had not attacked it for a decade and a half until that last year of the fourth century. Alaric of the West Goths was an unwitting cause of that attack when it came.
The fame of Alaric, like that of all destined men, had traveled early and to great distances. Before Alaric had conquered anything at all, except, temporarily, parts of Greece and Epirus, it was known from Ireland to Parthia that he would conquer the world. And it was firmly believed that he had already conquered a great part of it. There is suspicion of organized Gothic propaganda on a very wide scale involved here. There is suspicion that this propaganda was spread by the feral Goth Athaulf outside the Empire, for he had very wide relations with all the exterior peoples; and by his sister and Alaric's wife, Stairnon, who maintained her own connections with all Goths everywhere. But even without organization, the news of a destined man will spread, and the accounts of his achievements will be common knowledge even before they have happened.
Tribigild, an Ostrogoth in Phrygia in Asia Minor, had become jealous of the feats of Alaric and had resolved to emulate him; though, apparently, without being very clear as to just what those feats were. He rose in rebellion in the year 399. Tribigild had recently been to Constantinople and believed that he had not been given proper honors. He had other grievances, and he was an important man of the East Goths.
One thing is clear: Stilicho did not have anything to do with this first rebellion, before Gainas joined up with it, and may have had very slow intelligence of it. He did not stir it up as a diversion or to counteract Arcadius' stirring up Gildo to revolt against the Western Empire in Africa.
Stilicho may have had a hand in it later, after the revolt was taken over by Gainas. If so, this was Stilicho's first serious blunder: not that he supported the rebellion, but that, having done so, he did not make sure it succeeded and survived.
Gainas was Stilicho's Goth in the East, and he was as good a general as might be found anywhere. Likely he was better than Alaric; and better now than Stilicho, who had begun to flounder. But Gainas, possibly the finest military genius among the Goths, was not such a man as would be able to rule the world; and he attempted to do just that.
The revolt of Tribigild began to move like a whirlwind. It isn't an empty phrase. The revolt generated great activity and power at its center, but for a while it remained in one place. Then it began to walk slowly and uncertainly across the land, the while it maintained a great rate of rotation and turbulence at its heart.
The revolt suffered repeated defeats, which changed its direction but did not diminish its force. Tribigild, having wandered three hundred miles south, was defeated in Pamphylia by local forces. He was defeated again at Selgae, trying to turn the corner of the Tarus Mountains. He was knocked in various directions by random encounters. But still his force grew by accretions of dissatisfied elements. It seemed sometimes that he would break down into Syria, or to the sea, or back north to the Hellespont and against Greece. Possibly he was waiting to see what would be sent against him.
Eutropius, in his person of Master of Empire, sent two generals against Tribigild: one Leo; and Gainas the Goth. Gainas had the command of Thrace and the Hellespont, and the defense of the City itself. Leo was given the command of the army of Asia, and so came first against the rebellious Tribigild.
Leo failed miserably, a great number of his troops deserting to Tribigild, and the rest being easily scattered. Tribigild had been in trouble from the opposition of local forces. The arrival of Leo with an Imperial army, instead of putting further pressure on him, brought him relief. The desertions from the Imperial army to the rebel forces were the making of it.
Gainas was then sent by Eutropius across the Hellespont—almost the last command and act of the Imperial eunuch. The sending of Gainas raised serious suspicions in the minds of the people of Constantinople. There was a connection of family or marriage between Gainas and Tribigild. The entire Gothic nobility, now settled in various lands, was closely intermarried.
Eutropius had held back Gainas from these very considerations; but perhaps he would have done better to send him first. Gainas had been alienated by the selection of Leo over himself. He might have acted in loyalty had he been first choice, as he should have been from his rank and his known ability. Eutropius had been in error, and his first mistake gave birth to the second. He had sent the Roman Leo in command of Empire troops, mainly Gothic, in the belief that he would be counterbalance to them and would be able to guarantee their loyalty. But the troops were resentful at the demotion of their leader Gainas, and they caught the Gothic fever on contact with the forces of Tribigild.
It was then necessary to send Gainas, as the only man capable of coping with the situation that had now gotten out of hand. But Gainas, having first been affronted by being held back, now caught his own brand of fever; and the campaign against Tribigild was a very strange one.
The defamation of Eutropius had reached a high pitch while he was still Consul and Master of Empire. The Empress Eudoxia and her creatures had been seeking the occasion for his ruin. They now used these milit
ary setbacks.
The ridiculous military failure of the incompetent General Leo reflected against Eutropius, who had sent him; although Leo had been raised to the generalship by Eudoxia and Arcadius, who gave to him a reputation which he did not deserve. The deliberate military delays of the very competent Gainas, the General sent by Eutropius, completed the fiasco. The revolt still remained unpunished, and someone must be held responsible.
Eutropius, on the planning of Olympius, was taken and murdered in a suburb of Chalcedon by an official named Aurelian. And this man, Aurelian, again on the connivance of Olympius, was raised to be Master of Empire.
Olympius, the instigator, was a sort of liaison between the two halves of the Empire—a connection outside and opposed to the apparatus of Stilicho. He was a Greek who spent much time in Rome and Milan and Ravenna, as well as in Constantinople. He had been sent several times as emissary from the Emperor Arcadius to his brother the Emperor Honorius. He had formed a link between the often quarreling brothers; but he had now become the instrument of the Empress Eudoxia, more than of her husband Arcadius.
Olympius had carried through to perfection the project of the defamation and death of Eutropius, and he was now rewarded in having a man of his own sort and party, Aurelian, elevated to Master of Empire. Olympius had his own world aspirations, and to him this was only one step. But the usurpation seemed a disaster to everybody concerned. Aurelian was not such a man as should be allowed to rule, nor Olympius one who should be permitted such influence.
Stilicho may have sent orders of some sort to his Goth Gainas. Or Gainas may have acted on his own without receiving his orders. Gainas had not opposed his fellow Goth with arms. He had, instead, camped by him and sat down with him for some weeks of parley, apparently friendly. It may be that Gainas was still loyal to the Empire and believed that he could persuade his kinsman to give up the revolt without bloodshed.
Now, on the word of Eutropius' murder—proclaimed an execution in the interest of the state after the fact—and Aurelian's accession to power, two things happened simultaneously.
Gainas sent word that he refused to accept Aurelian as Master of Empire. And he proclaimed himself Master of Empire. This was the official line he took, and he followed it to the last. It may have been Gainas in the person of Stilicho's Goth who made this proclamation, or he may have done it of himself. Stilicho would not have been against setting all the East under a strong military guardianship loyal to himself; letting the shadow Court of Constantinople become even more of a shadow. But he had not intended that Gainas should get out of hand.
What actually happened is that Gainas joined the revolt of Tribigild in Asia, put himself at the head of the rebellious Goths, added them to his Imperial force, and returned with them to the conquest of Constantinople.
And the other thing happening simultaneously to Gainas' seizing power, was the formation in Constantinople, by the new Consul Aurelian, of what might be called the Roman Supremacy Party. This had popular support. The Roman remnant in the city had long been uneasy under the effective Gothic domination. It was a civilian movement, and it attained great proportions while the Gothic men were off soldiering in Asia. There was some killing and looting, and a few Gothic blocks of the city were burned out. Others formed themselves into enclaves, blocking streets and resisting.
The Gothic population of Constantinople was not large, probably not more than one-tenth, and consisted largely of the families of soldiers in the Imperial service. The Goths had not intruded greatly into trade; many of them were artisans, but they had not set up large establishments or factories; a few were in politics, but they were not really strong there. The Romans had no real reason to be jealous of the Goths of the city, and it was certainly imprudent for them to turn to such butchery when the army, composed mainly of Gothic soldiery, was approaching the city.
There was a perverse mind behind Aurelian and his instigated riots, and it would appear later on a grander scale elsewhere. But the riots of Constantinople were not of great moment. The populace had shown great enthusiasm for the Roman Supremacy oratory, but it turned away from the killing; the murders and burnings were of official instigation, and not popular. And the old Greek population of the city, at least equal to the Romans in number, was first neutral; and then sheltered the Gothic families.
There were surely some second thoughts about the thing, as Gainas and his forces came near. Olympius left Constantinople for Italy, glutted with satisfaction of the thing he had done and lucky to escape the consequences. The Emperor Arcadius professed very late knowledge of the riots and disclaimed any official sanction of them. And his own Empress Eudoxia was silent as a cat after a feast, and licked the blood from her lips.
The Gothic Imperial armies returned, under Gainas and Tribigild, to the Hellespont, and there was no effective force to oppose them. Gainas, calling himself the Master of Empire, summoned the Emperor to meet him.
The Emperor Arcadius called out Singerich and other of his Goths who had gone under cover during the weeks of the Roman Supremacy reign. He set the matter in their hands, and went out with them to hold parley with Gainas. The meeting with Gainas was near Chalcedon, in the same Church of Euphemia where was later held the general Church Council of Chalcedon.
Gainas was justifiably demanding. The families of his soldiers—loyal Romans all, he insisted—had been slaughtered; and some of his own near kindred had been killed. The rightful Master of Empire, Eutropius, had been murdered, and a reprehensible man had been put into his place. Gainas, in his claim to be the new and rightful Master of Empire, insisted on absolute rights of entry and occupation. The Emperor Arcadius, on the advice of his own Court Goths, consented. He proclaimed Gainas Master of Empire on the spot and agreed to turn the city over to his mercy.
Gainas demanded a bonus: the heads of Aurelian and Saturninus, the two highest in command; and the two, now that Olympius had vanished, most forward in the anti-Gothic moves.
The Emperor agreed that Gainas should have the two heads. And Gainas entered and occupied Constantinople in his new role of Master of Empire. But it was quickly made clear that his occupation was in an entirely different role; he set out to rule, from the first hour, as the head of a Gothic nation.
Gainas assumed another title, Autocrat of the East. He struck swiftly at the remnant of the Roman Supremacy Party and had more of its heads than two. He filled all offices with Goths. He replaced the Roman Empire with a Gothic Empire.
The world, at least the Eastern part of it, had come to an end. What the partisans of Alaric were dreaming that he should do in the West, the Goth Gainas had done completely in the East. The Empire that was destined to endure forever had ended. The triumph of Gainas and his Goths was so complete, the suppression of the Roman affair so total, that it becomes incredible that it should all be no more than a night's dream, forgotten by morning.
The conquest by Gainas was a seven-day wonder, and we are tempted to state that it lasted but seven days. Actually it endured a little more than two weeks. Gainas was brought down by what moderns consider a minor detail, and which was so considered by himself.
Stilicho would have known better. Alaric would have known better. Even if he had acted in the same way, he would have known and anticipated the reaction. But Gainas was impolitic. It isn't known how a student of Stilicho could have made such a stupid mistake, but Gainas was competent only in military matters. The new and forced stability of the East was scattered like a mist. The queer little Roman party, that had been stamped dead, now rose with new allies and devoured the iron heels of the suppressors.
Gainas demanded a church where his Arians might worship. It was pointed out that the Arians already had a church commensurate with their numbers, as only a small number of the Gothic nobility was still Arian. The church was not commensurate with their dignity, Gainas replied.
Gainas seized the leading church, the Church of the Apostles. It may be that he did not even hear the low gasp of the people at this act. He tu
rned out the Archbishop, and installed Arian trustees. He let it be known that he was considering whether he should declare the Empire Arian. And once more it seems that he did not hear the gasp of the people, the furious low intake of breath before the explosion.
Gainas rode out of the city with a part of his force, to attend to certain disorders in the countryside. He had been in control of Constantinople for twelve days, and had effected such complete changes in the city that he left it with contempt and a feeling of complete safety.
The people shut the gates of Constantinople and rose in arms. They were not only the Roman Supremacy Party; they were also the Greek Party, the Catholic Party, the Empire Party; and oddly enough, the Gothic Party. The city Goths, except for certain of their high nobility, had become Catholic in the generation just past; and it was as such that they rejected Gainas who had scandalized them. They discovered that they were still loyal to the Emperor, however weak a man he might be.
But there was another element. If Gainas had not made a stupid mistake on a religious matter, he would have made it on another matter. He was not the man to play the part of the tyrant, though he had developed a strong inclination towards tyranny. He outraged the dramatic sensibilities of the Romans of the city, who had now become Greek in mind. Gainas had the appearance of an inept strutter; he could not play the role. The people might have accepted a tyrant who looked the part of a tyrant, but they would not accept one who looked the buffoon. They howled him down in an explosion of fury; and they killed his men.
It was mostly the Asian Goths of Tribigild who suffered in this second series of riots, such of them as had been left in the garrisons of the city. The original Gothic soldiery of Constantinople became Roman once more, as easily as changing their coats.
Summa Risus: Collected Non-Fiction Page 36
