Chapter XLVII: The Fall of Rome (1)

The Vandals were of the Low German stock and closely allied to the Goths. We first hear of them in the time of Pliny and Tacitus as occupying a district nearly corresponding to Brandenburg and Pomerania. From thence, in the second century, they pressed southwards to the confines of Bohemia, where they gave their name to the mountains now called the Riesengebirge.

After a century of hostile and desultory operations against the Roman Empire, having been signally defeated by Aurelian (271) they made peace with Rome, one of the conditions being that they should supply two thousand _fœderati_ to the imperial army. Sixty years later they sustained a great defeat from the Goths under their king Geberic, after which they humbly sought and obtained permission from Constantine to settle as Roman subjects within the province of Pannonia. Here they remained seventy years, and during this period they probably made some advances in civilisation and became Christians of the Arian type.

In 406, when the empire under Honorius was falling into ruin, they crossed the Rhine and entered Gaul. Stilicho, the chief adviser of Honorius, who was a man of Vandal extraction, was accused by his enemies of having invited them into the empire, but this is probably a groundless calumny. In Gaul they fought a great battle with the Franks, in which they were defeated with the loss of two thousand men, and their king Godigisclus was slain. In 409 his son Gunderic led them across the Pyrenees. They appear to have settled in Spain in two detachments. One, the Asdingian Vandals, occupied Gallæcia, the other, the Silingian, part of Bætica (Andalusia). Twenty years of bloody and purposeless warfare with the armies of the empire and with their fellow-barbarians, the Goths and the Suevi, followed. The Silingian Vandals were well-nigh exterminated, but their Asdingian brethren (with whom were now associated the remains of a Turanian people, the Alans, who had been utterly defeated by the Goths) marched across Spain and took possession of Andalusia.

In 428 or 429 the whole nation set sail for Africa, upon an invitation received by their king from Boniface, count of Africa, who had fallen into disgrace with the court of Ravenna. Gunderic was now dead and supreme power was in the hands of his bastard brother, who is generally known in history as Genseric, though the more correct form of his name is Gaiseric. This man, short of stature and with limping gait, but with a great natural capacity for war and dominion, reckless of human life and unrestrained by conscience or pity, was for fifty years the hero of the Vandal race and the terror of Constantinople and Rome. In the month of May 428 (?) he assembled all his people on the shore of Andalusia, and numbering the males among them from the graybeard down to the new-born infant found them to amount to eighty thousand souls. The passage was effected in the ships of Boniface, who, however, soon returning to his old loyalty, besought his new allies to depart from Africa. They, of course, refused, and Boniface turned against them, too late, however, to repair the mischief which he had caused. Notwithstanding his opposition the progress of the Vandals was rapid, and by May 430 only three cities of Roman Africa--Carthage, Hippo, and Cirta--remained untaken.

[Sidenote: [430-455 A.D.]]

The long siege of Hippo (May 430 to July 431), memorable for the last illness and death of St. Augustine, which occurred during its progress, ended unsuccessfully for the Vandals. At length (30th of January, 435) peace was made between the emperor Valentinian III and Genseric. The emperor was to retain Carthage and the small but rich proconsular province in which it was situated, while Hippo and the other six provinces of Africa were abandoned to the Vandal. Genseric observed this treaty no longer than suited his purpose. On the 19th of October 439, without any declaration of war, he suddenly attacked Carthage and took it. The Vandal occupation of this great city, the third among the cities of the Roman Empire, lasted for ninety-four years. Genseric seems to have counted the years of his sovereignty from the date of its capture. Though most of the remaining years of Genseric’s life were passed in war, plunder rather than territorial conquest seems to have been the object of his expeditions. He made, in fact, of Carthage a pirates’ stronghold, from whence he issued forth, like the Barbary pirates of a later day, to attack, as he himself said, “the dwellings of the men with whom God is angry,” leaving the question who those men might be to the decision of the elements. Almost alone among the Teutonic invaders of the empire, he set himself to form a powerful fleet, and was probably for thirty years the leading maritime power in the Mediterranean.[b]

The revolutions of the palace, which left the Western Empire without a defender, and without a lawful prince, dispelled the apprehensions and stimulated the avarice of Genseric. He immediately equipped a numerous fleet of Vandals and Moors, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Tiber, about three months after the death of Valentinian and the elevation of Maximus to the imperial throne.

The private life of the senator Petronius Maximus was often alleged as a rare example of human felicity. His birth was noble and illustrious, since he descended from the Anician family, his dignity was supported by an adequate patrimony in land and money; and these advantages of fortune were accompanied with liberal arts and decent manners, which adorn or imitate the inestimable gifts of genius and virtue. The luxury of his palace and table was hospitable and elegant. Whenever Maximus appeared in public, he was surrounded by a train of grateful and obsequious clients; and it is possible that, among these clients, he might deserve and possess some real friends. His merit was rewarded by the favour of the prince and senate; he thrice exercised the office of prætorian prefect of Italy; he was twice invested with the consulship, and he obtained the rank of patrician.

These civil honours were not incompatible with the enjoyment of leisure and tranquillity; his hours, according to the demands of pleasure or reason, were accurately distributed by a water-clock; and this avarice of time may be allowed to prove the sense which Maximus entertained of his own happiness. The injury which he received from the emperor Valentinian appears to excuse the most bloody revenge. Yet a philosopher might have reflected that, if the resistance of his wife had been sincere, her chastity was still inviolate, and that it could never be restored if she had consented to the will of the adulterer. A patriot would have hesitated, before plunging himself and his country into those inevitable calamities which must follow the extinction of the royal house of Theodosius. The imprudent Maximus disregarded these salutary considerations; he gratified his resentment and ambition, he saw the bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his feet, and heard himself saluted emperor by the unanimous voice of the senate and people. But the day of his inauguration was the last day of his happiness. He was imprisoned (such is the lively expression of Sidonius) in the palace; and, after passing a sleepless night, he sighed that he had attained the summit of his wishes, and aspired only to descend from the dangerous elevation. Oppressed by the weight of the diadem, he communicated his anxious thoughts to his friend and quæstor Fulgentius; and when he looked back with unavailing regret on the secure pleasures of his former life, the emperor exclaimed, “O fortunate Damocles, thy reign began and ended with the same dinner!” a well-known allusion, which Fulgentius afterwards repeated as an instructive lesson for princes and subjects.

[Sidenote: [455-456 A.D.]]

The reign of Maximus continued about three months. His hours, of which he had lost the command, were disturbed by remorse, or guilt, or terror; and his throne was shaken by the seditions of the soldiers, the people, and the confederate barbarians. The marriage of his son Palladius with the eldest daughter of the late emperor might tend to establish the hereditary succession of his family; but the violence which he offered to the empress Eudoxia could proceed only from the blind impulse of lust or revenge. His own wife, the cause of these tragic events, had been seasonably removed by death; and the widow of Valentinian was compelled to violate her decent mourning, perhaps her real grief, and to submit to the embraces of a presumptuous usurper, whom she suspected as the assassin of her deceased husband.

These suspicions were soon justified by the indiscreet confession of Maximus himself; and he wantonly provoked the hatred of his reluctant bride, who was still conscious that she was descended from a line of emperors. From the East, however, Eudoxia could not hope to obtain any effectual assistance; her father and her aunt Pulcheria were dead; her mother languished at Jerusalem in disgrace and exile; and the sceptre of Constantinople was in the hands of a stranger. She directed her eyes towards Carthage, secretly implored the aid of the king of the Vandals; and persuaded Genseric to improve the fair opportunity of disguising his rapacious designs by the specious names of honour, justice, and compassion. Whatever abilities Maximus might have shown in a subordinate station, he was found incapable of administering an empire; and though he might easily have been informed of the naval preparations which were made on the opposite shores of Africa, he expected with supine indifference the approach of the enemy, without adopting any measures of defence, of negotiation, or of a timely retreat.

When the Vandals disembarked at the mouth of the Tiber, the emperor was suddenly roused from his lethargy by the clamours of a trembling and exasperated multitude. The only hope which presented itself to his astonished mind was that of a precipitate flight, and he exhorted the senators to imitate the example of their prince. But no sooner did Maximus appear in the streets than he was assaulted by a shower of stones; a Roman, or a Burgundian soldier, claimed the honour of the first wound; his mangled body was ignominiously cast into the Tiber; the Roman people rejoiced in the punishment which they had inflicted on the author of the public calamities, and the domestics of Eudoxia signalised their zeal in the service of their mistress.

On the third day after the tumult, Genseric boldly advanced from the port of Ostia to the gates of the defenceless city. Instead of a sally of the Roman youth, there issued from the gates an unarmed and venerable procession of the bishop at the head of his clergy. The fearless spirit of Leo, his authority and eloquence, again mitigated the fierceness of a barbarian conqueror; the king of the Vandals promised to spare the unresisting multitude, to protect the buildings from fire, and to exempt the captives from torture; and although such orders were neither seriously given nor strictly obeyed, the mediation of Leo was glorious to himself and in some degree beneficial to his country. But Rome and its inhabitants were delivered to the licentiousness of the Vandals and Moors, whose blind passions revenged the injuries of Carthage.

(In the British Museum)]

The pillage lasted fourteen days and nights; and all that yet remained of public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure, was diligently transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among the spoils, the splendid relics of two temples, or rather of two religions, exhibited a memorable example of the vicissitudes of human and divine things. Since the abolition of paganism, the Capitol had been violated and abandoned; yet the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected, and the curious roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands of Genseric. The holy instruments of the Jewish worship, the gold table and the gold candlestick with seven branches, originally framed according to the particular instructions of God himself, and which were placed in the sanctuary of his temple, had been ostentatiously displayed to the Roman people in the triumph of Titus. They were afterwards deposited in the temple of Peace; and, at the end of four hundred years, the spoils of Jerusalem were transferred from Rome to Carthage, by a barbarian who derived his origin from the shores of the Baltic. These ancient monuments might attract the notice of curiosity, as well as of avarice.

But the Christian churches, enriched and adorned by the prevailing superstition of the times, afforded more plentiful materials for sacrilege; and the pious liberality of Pope Leo, who melted six silver vases, the gift of Constantine, each of a hundred pounds’ weight, is evidence of the damage which he attempted to repair. In the forty-five years that had elapsed since the Gothic invasion, the pomp and luxury of Rome were in some measure restored; and it was difficult either to escape or to satisfy the avarice of a conqueror, who possessed leisure to collect and ships to transport the wealth of the capital. The imperial ornaments of the palace, the magnificent furniture and wardrobe, the sideboards of massy plate, were accumulated with disorderly rapine; the gold and silver amounted to several thousand talents; yet even the brass and copper were laboriously removed.

Eudoxia herself, who advanced to meet her friend and deliverer, soon bewailed the imprudence of her own conduct. She was rudely stripped of her jewels; and the unfortunate empress, with her two daughters, the only surviving remains of the great Theodosius, was compelled as a captive to follow the haughty Vandal; who immediately hoisted sail and returned with a prosperous navigation to the port of Carthage. Many thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric; and their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling barbarians, who, in the division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands and the children from their parents. The charity of Deogratias, bishop of Carthage, was their only consolation and support. He generously sold the gold and silver plate of the church to purchase the freedom of some, to alleviate the slavery of others, and to assist the wants and infirmities of a captive multitude, whose health was impaired by the hardships which they had suffered in their passage from Italy to Africa. By his order two spacious churches were converted into hospitals; the sick were distributed in convenient beds, and liberally supplied with food and medicines, and the aged prelate repeated his visits, both in the day and night, with an assiduity that surpassed the value of his services. Compare this scene with the field of Cannæ; and judge between Hannibal and the successor of St. Cyprian.

The deaths of Aëtius and Valentinian had relaxed the ties which held the barbarians of Gaul in peace and subordination. The sea coast was infested by the Saxons; the Alamanni and the Franks advanced from the Rhine to the Seine; and the ambition of the Goths seemed to meditate more extensive and permanent conquests. The emperor Maximus relieved himself, by a judicious choice, from the weight of these distant cares; he silenced the solicitations of his friends, listened to the voice of fame, and promoted a stranger to the general command of the forces in Gaul. Avitus, the stranger, whose merit was so nobly rewarded, descended from a wealthy and honourable family in the diocese of Auvergne. The convulsions of the times urged him to embrace, with the same ardour, the civil and military professions; and the indefatigable youth blended the studies of literature and jurisprudence with the exercise of arms and hunting. Thirty years of his life were laudably spent in the public service; he alternately displayed his talents in war and negotiation; and the soldier of Aëtius, after executing the most important embassies, was raised to the station of prætorian prefect of Gaul. Either the merit of Avitus excited envy, or his moderation was desirous of repose, since he calmly retired to an estate which he possessed in the neighbourhood of Clermont. In this retreat, where Avitus amused his leisure with books, rural sports, the practice of husbandry, and the society of his friends, he received the imperial diploma, which constituted him master-general of the cavalry and infantry of Gaul. He assumed the military command; the barbarians suspended their fury; and whatever means he might employ, whatever concessions he might be forced to make, the people enjoyed the benefits of actual tranquillity. But the fate of Gaul depended on the Visigoths; and the Roman general, less attentive to his dignity than to the public interest, did not disdain to visit Tolosa in the character of an ambassador.

He was received with courteous hospitality by Theodoric, the king of the Goths; but while Avitus laid the foundations of a solid alliance with that powerful nation, he was astonished by the intelligence that the emperor Maximus was slain, and that Rome had been pillaged by the Vandals. A vacant throne, which he might ascend without guilt or danger, tempted his ambition; and the Visigoths were easily persuaded to support his claim by their irresistible suffrage. They loved the person of Avitus, they respected his virtues; and they were not insensible of the advantage, as well as honour, of giving an emperor to the West.

The season was now approaching in which the annual assembly of the seven provinces was held at Arelate (Arles); their deliberations might perhaps be influenced by the presence of Theodoric and his martial brothers, but their choice would naturally incline to the most illustrious of their countrymen. Avitus, after a decent resistance, accepted the imperial diadem from the representatives of Gaul; and his election was ratified by the acclamations of the barbarians and provincials. The formal consent of Marcian, emperor of the East, was solicited and obtained; but the senate, Rome, and Italy, though humbled by their recent calamities, submitted with a secret murmur to the presumption of the Gallic usurper.

Theodoric, to whom Avitus was indebted for the purple, had acquired the Gothic sceptre by the murder of his elder brother Torismond; and he justified this atrocious deed by the design which his predecessor had formed of violating his alliance with the empire. Such a crime might not be incompatible with the virtues of a barbarian, but the manners of Theodoric were gentle and humane; and posterity may contemplate without terror the original picture of a Gothic king, whom Sidonius had intimately observed in the hours of peace and of social intercourse.

When the king of the Visigoths encouraged Avitus to assume the purple, he offered his person and his forces as a faithful soldier of the republic. The exploits of Theodoric soon convinced the world that he had not degenerated from the warlike virtues of his ancestors. After the establishment of the Goths in Aquitania, and the passage of the Vandals into Africa, the Suevi, who had fixed their kingdom in Gallæcia, aspired to the conquest of Spain and threatened to extinguish the feeble remains of the Roman dominion. The provincials of Carthago (Cartagena), and Tarraco (Tarragona), afflicted by a hostile invasion, represented their injuries and their apprehensions.

Count Fronto was despatched, in the name of the emperor Avitus, with advantageous offers of peace and alliance; and Theodoric interposed his weighty mediation to declare that, unless his brother-in-law, the king of the Suevi, immediately retired, he should be obliged to arm in the cause of justice and of Rome. “Tell him,” replied the haughty Rechiarius, “that I despise his friendship and his arms; but that I shall soon try whether he will dare to expect my arrival under the walls of Tolosa.” Such a challenge urged Theodoric to prevent the bold designs of his enemy; he passed the Pyrenees at the head of the Visigoths, the Franks and Burgundians served under his standard, and though he professed himself the dutiful servant of Avitus, he privately stipulated for himself and his successors the absolute possession of his Spanish conquests. The two armies, or rather the two nations, encountered each other on the banks of the river Urbicus, about twelve miles from Augusta Asturica (Astorga); and the decisive victory of the Goths appeared for a while to have extirpated the name and kingdom of the Suevi. From the field of battle Theodoric advanced to Bracara (Braga), their metropolis, which still retained the splendid vestiges of its ancient commerce and dignity. His entrance was not polluted with blood, and the Goths respected the chastity of their female captives, more especially of the consecrated virgins; but the greatest part of the clergy and people were made slaves, and even the churches and altars were confounded in the universal pillage.

The unfortunate king of the Suevi had escaped to one of the ports of the ocean, but the obstinacy of the winds opposed his flight; he was delivered to his implacable rival; and Rechiarius, who neither desired nor expected mercy, received with manly constancy the death which he would probably have inflicted. After this bloody sacrifice to policy and resentment, Theodoric carried his victorious arms as far as Augusta Emerita (Merida), the principal town of Lusitania, without meeting any resistance, except from the miraculous powers of St. Eulalia; but he was stopped in the full career of success, and recalled from Spain, before he could provide for the security of his conquests. In his retreat towards the Pyrenees he revenged his disappointment on the country through which he passed; and in the sack of Pallantia and Augusta Asturica he showed himself a faithless ally as well as a cruel enemy.

Whilst the king of the Visigoths fought and vanquished in the name of Avitus, the reign of Avitus had expired, and both the honour and the interest of Theodoric were deeply wounded by the disgrace of a friend whom he had seated on the throne of the Western Empire.

The pressing solicitations of the senate and people persuaded the emperor Avitus to fix his residence at Rome, and to accept the consulship for the ensuing year. Avitus, at a time when the imperial dignity was reduced to a pre-eminence of toil and danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italian luxury; age had not extinguished his amorous inclinations, and he is accused of insulting, with indiscreet and ungenerous raillery, the husbands whose wives he had seduced or violated.[69] But the Romans were not inclined either to excuse his faults or to acknowledge his virtues. The several parts of the empire became every day more alienated from each other; and the stranger of Gaul was the object of popular hatred and contempt.

The senate asserted their legitimate claim in the election of an emperor; and their authority, which had been originally derived from the old constitution, was again fortified by the actual weakness of a declining monarchy. Yet even such a monarchy might have resisted the votes of an unarmed senate, if their discontent had not been supported, or perhaps inflamed, by Count Ricimer, one of the principal commanders of the barbarian troops, who formed the military defence of Italy. The daughter of Wallia, king of the Visigoths, was the mother of Ricimer; but he was descended, on the father’s side, from the nation of the Suevi; his pride or patriotism might be exasperated by the misfortunes of his countrymen, and he obeyed with reluctance an emperor in whose elevation he had not been consulted. His faithful and important services against the common enemy rendered him still more formidable; and after destroying on the coast of Corsica a fleet of Vandals, which consisted of sixty galleys, Ricimer returned in triumph with the appellation of the Deliverer of Italy. He chose that moment to signify to Avitus that his reign was at an end; and the feeble emperor, at a distance from his Gothic allies, was compelled after a short and unavailing struggle to abdicate the purple. By the clemency, however, or the contempt of Ricimer, he was permitted to descend from the throne to the more desirable station of bishop of Placentia; but the resentment of the senate was still unsatisfied, and their inflexible severity pronounced the sentence of his death. He fled towards the Alps, with the humble hope not of arming the Visigoths in his cause but of securing his person and treasures in the sanctuary of Julian, one of the tutelar saints of Auvergne. Disease, or the hand of the executioner, arrested him on the road; yet his remains were decently transported to Brivas or Brioude, in his native province, and he reposed at the feet of his holy patron.

[Sidenote: [456-457 A.D.]]

The successor of Avitus presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arises in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honour of the human species. The emperor Majorian has deserved the praises of his contemporaries and of posterity; and these praises may be strongly expressed in the words of a judicious and disinterested historian: “That he was gentle to his subjects; that he was terrible to his enemies; and that he excelled in every virtue all of his predecessors who had reigned over the Romans.” Such a testimony may justify at least the panegyric of Sidonius; and we may acquiesce in the assurance that, although the obsequious orator would have flattered, with equal zeal, the most worthless of princes, the extraordinary merit of his object confined him, on this occasion, within the bounds of truth. Majorian derived his name from his maternal grandfather who, in the reign of the great Theodosius had commanded the troops of the Illyrian frontier. He gave his daughter in marriage to the father of Majorian, a respectable officer, who administered the revenues of Gaul with skill and integrity; and generously preferred the friendship of Aëtius to the tempting offers of an insidious court. His son, the future emperor, who was educated in the profession of arms, displayed, from his early youth, intrepid courage, premature wisdom, and unbounded liberality in a scanty fortune. He followed the standard of Aëtius, contributed to his success, shared, and sometimes eclipsed, his glory, and at last excited the jealousy of the patrician, or rather of his wife, who forced him to retire from the service. Majorian, after the death of Aëtius, was recalled and promoted, and his intimate connection with Count Ricimer was the immediate step by which he ascended the throne of the Western Empire. During the vacancy that succeeded the abdication of Avitus, the ambitious barbarian whose birth excluded him from the imperial dignity governed Italy, with the title of patrician; resigned to his friend the conspicuous station of master-general of the cavalry and infantry; and, after an interval of some months, consented to the unanimous wish of the Romans, whose favour Majorian had solicited by a recent victory over the Alamanni.

[Sidenote: [457-461 A.D.]]

The public and private actions of Majorian are very imperfectly known; but his laws, remarkable for an original cast of thought and expression, faithfully represent the character of a sovereign who loved his people, who sympathised in their distress, who had studied the causes of the decline of the empire, and who was capable of applying (as far as such reformation was practicable) judicious and effectual remedies to the public disorders. His regulations concerning the finances manifestly tended to remove, or at least to mitigate, the most intolerable grievances.

(1) From the first hour of his reign, he was solicitous (these are his own words) to relieve the weary fortunes of the provincials, oppressed by the accumulated weight of indictions and superindictions. With this view, he granted a universal amnesty, a final and absolute discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts which, under any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from the people. This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable claims improved and purified the sources of the public revenue; and the subject, who could now look back without despair, might labour with hope and gratitude for himself and for his country.

(2) In the assessment and collection of taxes, Majorian restored the ordinary jurisdiction of the provincial magistrates; and suppressed the extraordinary commissions which had been introduced, in the name of the emperor himself, or of the prætorian prefects. The favourite servants, who obtained such irregular powers, were insolent in their behaviour and arbitrary in their demands; they affected to despise the subordinate tribunals, and they were discontented if their fees and profits did not twice exceed the sum which they condescended to pay into the treasury. One instance of their extortion would appear incredible, were it not authenticated by the legislator himself. They exacted the whole payment in gold; but they refused the current coin of the empire, and would accept only such ancient pieces as were stamped with the names of Faustina or the Antonines. The subject who was unprovided with these curious medals had recourse to the expedient of compounding with their rapacious demands; or, if he succeeded in the research, his imposition was doubled, according to the weight and value of the money of former times.

(3) “The municipal corporation,” says the emperor, “the lesser senates (so antiquity has justly styled them), deserve to be considered as the heart of the cities, and the sinews of the republic. And yet so low are they now reduced, by the injustice of magistrates and the venality of collectors, that many of their members, renouncing their dignity and their country, have taken refuge in distant and obscure exile.” He urges and even compels their return to their respective cities; but he removes the grievance which had forced them to desert the exercise of their municipal functions. They are directed, under the authority of the provincial magistrates, to resume their office of levying the tribute; but, instead of being made responsible for the whole sum assessed on their district, they are only required to produce a regular account of the payments which they have actually received, and of the defaulters who are still indebted to the public.

(4) But Majorian was not ignorant that these corporate bodies were too much inclined to retaliate the injustice and oppression which they had suffered; and he therefore revives the useful office of the defenders of cities. He exhorts the people to elect, in a full and free assembly, some man of discretion and integrity, who would dare to assert their privileges, to represent their grievances, to protect the poor from the tyranny of the rich, and to inform the emperor of the abuses that were committed.

The spectator who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient Rome is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals for the mischief which they had neither leisure nor power, nor perhaps inclination, to perpetrate. The tempest of war might strike some lofty turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the foundations of those massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently, during a period of ten centuries; and the motives of interest that afterwards operated without shame or control were severely checked by the taste and spirit of the emperor Majorian.

The decay of the city had gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus and theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified the desires of the people; the temples, which had escaped the zeal of the Christians, were no longer inhabited either by gods or men; the diminished crowds of the Romans were lost in the immense space of their baths and porticoes; and the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed either by study or business. The monuments of consular or imperial greatness were no longer revered as the immortal glory of the capital; they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper and more convenient than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of stones or bricks for some necessary service; the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry or pretended repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished with sacrilegious hands the labours of their ancestors. Majorian, who had often sighed over the desolation of the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil. He reserved to the prince and senate the sole cognisance of the extreme cases which might justify the destruction of an ancient edifice; imposed a fine of fifty pounds of gold [£2000 or $10,000] on every magistrate who should presume to grant such illegal and scandalous license; and threatened to chastise the criminal obedience of their subordinate officers by a severe whipping and the amputation of both their hands.

In the last instance, the legislator might seem to forget the proportion of guilt and punishment; but his zeal arose from a generous principle, and Majorian was anxious to protect the monuments of those ages in which he would have desired and deserved to live. The emperor conceived that it was his interest to increase the number of his subjects, that it was his duty to guard the purity of the marriage bed; but the means which he employed to accomplish these salutary purposes are of an ambiguous and perhaps exceptionable kind. The pious maids who consecrated their virginity to Christ were restrained from taking the veil till they had reached their fortieth year. Widows under that age were compelled to form a second alliance within the term of five years, by the forfeiture of half their wealth to their nearest relatives or to the state. Unequal marriages were condemned or annulled. The punishment of confiscation and exile was deemed so inadequate to the guilt of adultery, that if the criminal returned to Italy he might, by the express declaration of Majorian, be slain with impunity.

While the emperor Majorian assiduously laboured to restore the happiness and virtue of the Romans, he encountered the arms of Genseric, from his character and situation their most formidable enemy. A fleet of Vandals and Moors landed at the mouth of the Liris or Garigliano: but the imperial troops surprised and attacked the disorderly barbarians, who were encumbered with the spoils of Campania; they were chased with slaughter to their ships, and their leader, the king’s brother-in-law, was found in the number of the slain. Such vigilance might announce the character of the new reign; but the strictest vigilance and the most numerous forces were insufficient to protect the long-extended coast of Italy from the depredations of a naval war. The public opinion had imposed a nobler and most arduous task on the genius of Majorian. Rome expected from him alone the restitution of Africa; and the design which he formed of attacking the Vandals in their new settlements was the result of bold and judicious policy. If the intrepid emperor could have infused his own spirit into the youth of Italy, if he could have revived in the Field of Mars the manly exercises in which he had always surpassed his equals--he might have marched against Genseric at the head of a Roman army.

Such a reformation of national manners might be embraced by the rising generation; but it is the misfortune of those princes who laboriously sustain a declining monarchy that, to obtain some immediate advantage or to avert some impending danger, they are forced to countenance and even to multiply the most pernicious abuses. Majorian, like the weakest of his predecessors, was reduced to the disgraceful expedient of substituting barbarian auxiliaries in the place of his unwarlike subjects; and his superior abilities could only be displayed in the vigour and dexterity with which he wielded a dangerous instrument, so apt to recoil on the hand that used it.

Besides the confederates who were already engaged in the service of the empire, the fame of his liberality and valour attracted the nations of the Danube, the Borysthenes, and perhaps of the Tanaïs. Many thousands of the bravest subjects of Attila, the Gepidæ, the Ostrogoths, the Rugians, the Burgundiones, the Suevi, the Alani, assembled in the plains of Liguria; and their formidable strength was balanced by their mutual animosities. They passed the Alps in a severe winter. The emperor led the way on foot, and in complete armour; sounding, with his long staff, the depth of the ice or snow, and encouraging the Scythians, who complained of the extreme cold, by the cheerful assurance that they should be satisfied with the heat of Africa. The citizens of Lugdunum had presumed to shut their gates; they soon implored and experienced the clemency of Majorian. He vanquished Theodoric in the field; and admitted to his friendship and alliance a king whom he had found not unworthy of his arms. The beneficial though precarious reunion of the greatest part of Gaul and Spain was the effect of persuasion as well as of force; and the independent Bagaudæ, who had escaped or resisted the oppression of former reigns, were disposed to confide in the virtues of Majorian.

His camp was filled with barbarian allies, his throne was supported by the zeal of an affectionate people; but the emperor had foreseen that it was impossible, without a maritime power, to achieve the conquest of Africa. In the First Punic War, the republic had exerted such incredible diligence that, within sixty days after the first stroke of the axe had been given in the forest, a fleet of 160 galleys proudly rode at anchor in the sea. Under circumstances much less favourable, Majorian equalled the spirit and perseverance of the ancient Romans. The woods of the Apennine were felled; the arsenals and manufactures of Ravenna and Misenum were restored; Italy and Gaul vied with each other in liberal contributions to the public service; and the imperial navy of three hundred large galleys, with an adequate proportion of transports and smaller vessels, was collected in the secure and capacious harbour of Carthago Nova (Cartagena) in Spain.

The intrepid countenance of Majorian animated his troops with a confidence of victory; and if we might credit the historian Procopius, his courage sometimes hurried him beyond the bounds of prudence. Anxious to explore, with his own eyes, the state of the Vandals, he ventured after disguising the colour of his hair to visit Carthage in the character of his own ambassador; and Genseric was afterwards mortified by the discovery that he had entertained and dismissed the emperor of the Romans. Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction; but it is a fiction which would not have been imagined unless in the life of a hero.

Without the help of a personal interview, Genseric was sufficiently acquainted with the genius and designs of his adversary. He practised his customary arts of fraud and delay; but he practised them without success. His applications for peace became each hour more submissive, and perhaps more sincere; but the inflexible Majorian had adopted the ancient maxim that Rome could not be safe, so long as Carthage existed in a hostile state. The king of the Vandals distrusted the valour of his native subjects, who were enervated by the luxury of the south; he suspected the fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as an Arian tyrant; and the desperate measure which he executed, of reducing Mauretania into a desert, could not defeat the operations of the Roman emperor, who was at liberty to land his troops on any part of the African coast.

But Genseric was saved from impending and inevitable ruin by the treachery of some powerful subjects, envious or apprehensive of their master’s success. Guided by their secret intelligence, he surprised the unguarded fleet in the Bay of Cartagena; many of the ships were sunk, or taken, or burned, and the preparations of three years were destroyed in a single day. After this event, the behaviour of the two antagonists showed them superior to their fortune. The Vandal, instead of being elated by this accidental victory, immediately renewed his solicitations for peace. The emperor of the West, who was capable of forming great designs and of supporting heavy disappointments, consented to a treaty, or rather to a suspension of arms; in the full assurance that before he could restore his navy he should be supplied with provocations to justify a second war. Majorian returned to Italy, to prosecute his labours for the public happiness; and as he was conscious of his own integrity, he might long remain ignorant of the dark conspiracy which threatened his throne and his life.

The recent misfortune of Cartagena sullied the glory which had dazzled the eyes of the multitude. Almost every description of civil and military officers were exasperated against the reformer, since they all derived some advantage from the abuses which he endeavoured to suppress; and the patrician Ricimer impelled the inconstant passions of the barbarians against a prince whom he esteemed and hated. The virtues of Majorian could not protect him from the impetuous sedition which broke out in the camp near Tortona, at the foot of the Alps. He was compelled to abdicate the imperial purple; five days after his abdication it was reported that he died of a dysentery,[70] and the humble tomb which covered his remains was consecrated by the respect and gratitude of succeeding generations. The private character of Majorian inspired love and respect. Malicious calumny and satire excited his indignation, or, if he himself were the object, his contempt; but he protected the freedom of wit, and in the hours which the emperor gave to the familiar society of his friends he could indulge his taste for pleasantry, without degrading the majesty of his rank.[c]

THE BARBARIAN EMPEROR-MAKERS

[Sidenote: [456-461 A.D.]]

The spoliation of Rome by Genseric was only a beginning of sorrows; for, during the sixteen years that ensued Italy remained at the mercy of her own paid leader, Count Ricimer, by birth and family alliances a barbarian, who defeated every attempt to re-establish legal government. After the fall of Aëtius, Ricimer obtained the command of the Western forces and the patrician dignity. The career of Ricimer resembled in some degree those of Stilicho and of Aëtius; for though his delinquencies were more numerous and of a far deeper dye than theirs, like them he possessed great military abilities, and like them he had personal interests that could not be reconciled with those of the “Respublica Romana.”[d] The prestige which he gained by his services against the Vandal Corsairs enabled him to make himself virtual master of Empire and emperors for almost twenty years (456-472). The attack of Avitus upon the Suevi in Spain offended the Suevian Ricimer; and although it was an imperial duty which Avitus performed in withstanding the encroachments of the Suevi, the commander of the Roman troops found the way to his undoing. For the next ten months Ricimer ruled under the title of patrician, which was now very much akin to that of tyrant in the Greek sense of the word or our modern political “boss.” He chose to be maker of emperors rather than emperor himself and thus initiated a policy which was continued to the fall of the Empire in the West. The history of these last years is not that of the shadow emperors who flit across the scene, powerless in themselves and in their circumstances, but of the great leaders like Ricimer the Suevic-Goth, Orestes of Pannonia, or Bauto the Frank.

Meantime in the East conditions prevailed that were not altogether dissimilar. The death of Marcian, after a reign of seven years, left no hereditary claimant to the Eastern throne.[a] The man of most authority in the army was the general Aspar (_magister militum per orientem_), an Alan by descent, who with his father Ardaburius had distinguished himself thirty-five years before in suppressing the usurper John and helping Valentinian III to his legitimate succession. Aspar’s position in the East resembled that of Ricimer in the West. He and his three sons, being Arians and foreigners, could not hope to sit on the imperial throne; and thus the only course open to Aspar was to secure the elevation of one on whose pliancy he might count. He chose Leo, a native of Dacia and an orthodox Christian, who was steward of his own household. Thus Aspar, like Ricimer, was a king-maker.

But when Leo assumed the purple (7th February, 457)--on which occasion the ceremony of coronation by the Patriarch of Constantinople (then Anatolius) was first introduced--he did not prove as amenable to influence as Aspar had hoped; on the contrary, he took measures to reduce the resources of Aspar’s family, which by its close relations with the army had considerable power, and was the centre of a large faction of Arians and barbarians. In fact Aspar, though an Alan and not a German, was the representative of German influence in the Empire, and the danger which had threatened the Empire in the reign of Arcadius through the power of Gainas was now repeated. Leo however firmly resisted the aggressiveness of this influence, and in order to neutralise the great fact which worked in Aspar’s favour, namely that the bulk and flower of the army consisted of Germans, he formed the plan of recruiting the line from native subjects. For this purpose he chose the hardy race of Isaurian mountaineers, who lived almost like an independent people, little touched by the influence of Hellenism, in the wild regions of Mount Taurus. This is Leo’s great original work, for which he deserves the title “Great,” more than for his orthodoxy, for which he probably received it. He conceived an idea, whose execution, begun by himself and carried out by his successor, counteracted that danger of German preponderance which threatened the State throughout the fifth century.

Aspar appears to have possessed all the characteristics of an untutored barbarian. Brave and active in war, he was idle and frivolous in peace. During the reign of Marcian, and doubtless also in the reign of Leo, while the Empire enjoyed rest, “he betook himself to relaxation and womanly ease. His pleasures consisted in actors and jugglers and all stage amusements, and spending his time on these ill-famed occupations he lost all count of the things that make for glory.” But if he was no longer active as a warrior, he won repute in the humbler part of an energetic citizen or a competent policeman, for in the great fire which laid waste a large part of Constantinople in 465 it is recorded that Aspar exerted himself unsparingly for the public interest.

Leo had made a promise, apparently at the time of his elevation, to raise one of Aspar’s sons to the rank of cæsar, and thereby designate him as his successor, in spite of the fact that he was a barbarian. When he delayed to perform this promise, Aspar is said to have seized him by his purple robe and said, “Emperor, it is not meet that he who wears this robe should speak falsely;” to which Leo replied, “Nor yet is it meet that he should be constrained and driven like a slave.”[j]

After this extraordinary scene, it was impossible that the reconciliation of the emperor and the patrician could be sincere; or, at least, that it could be solid and permanent. An army of Isaurians was secretly levied and introduced into Constantinople; and while Leo undermined the authority, and prepared the disgrace of the family of Aspar, his mild and cautious behaviour restrained them from any rash and desperate attempts, which might have been fatal to themselves or their enemies. The measures of peace and war were affected by this internal revolution. As long as Aspar degraded the majesty of the throne, the secret correspondence of religion and interest engaged him to favour the cause of Genseric. When Leo had delivered himself from that ignominious servitude, he listened to the complaints of the Italians; resolved to extirpate the tyranny of the Vandals; and declared his alliance with Anthemius.[c]

[Sidenote: [460-467 A.D.]]

Even the genius and energy of Majorian is of no avail against the dictatorship of Ricimer. But the spell of the imperial dignity was still strong, and the commander of the army was not long in nominating another to the purple.[a]

Severus, as the nominee of Ricimer, next wore the purple, and decrees were registered in his name; but his appointment obtained no confirmation at Constantinople, and the usurped power of Ricimer himself never extended beyond the limits of Italy. In Gaul and in Dalmatia, the Roman governors, Egidius and Marcellinus, continued to hold their respective provinces in trust for the “sancta res publica,” acknowledging no emperor but Leo; and Leo nominated both consuls. After four years of confusion and misery Severus died; and when Ricimer, as patrician, had exercised for above a year the power of the executive, he appears to have become satisfied that, without a combined effort in which the naval resources of the East should be brought to bear, the plague of Vandal descents could not be stayed. Yielding, it would seem, to necessity, he concurred with the senate in a request to the emperor Leo that he would name an emperor of the West (465).

In this attempt to establish closer relations with the East, the senate appears to have acted in conformity with the original constitution of the two empires, and at the same time to have adopted a policy that might under other circumstances have relieved the Roman world from its besetting danger--namely, that of a military despotism exercised by men who derived their wealth and importance from Roman sources and yet failed to entertain any exclusive attachment to Roman interests.

The choice of Leo fell on Anthemius, who some years previously had served as consul, and whose hereditary influence placed him at the head of the Eastern magnates.[d] The virtues of Anthemius have perhaps been magnified, since the imperial descent, which he could only deduce from the usurper Procopius, has been swelled into a line of emperors. But the merit of his immediate parents, their honours, and their riches, rendered Anthemius one of the most illustrious subjects of the East. His father, Procopius, obtained, after his Persian embassy, the rank of general and patrician; and the name of Anthemius was derived from his maternal grandfather, the celebrated prefect, who protected, with so much ability and success, the infant reign of Theodosius. The grandson of the prefect was raised above the condition of a private subject, by his marriage with Euphemia, the daughter of the emperor Marcian.

This splendid alliance, which might supersede the necessity of merit, hastened the promotion of Anthemius to the successive dignities of count, of master-general, of consul, and of patrician; and his merit or fortune claimed the honours of a victory, which was obtained, on the banks of the Danube, over the Huns. Without indulging an extravagant ambition, the son-in-law of Marcian might hope to be his successor; but Anthemius supported the disappointment with courage and patience; and his subsequent elevation was universally approved by the public, who esteemed him worthy to reign till he ascended the throne.

The solemn inauguration of Anthemius was followed by the nuptials of his daughter and the patrician Ricimer; a fortunate event, which was considered as the firmest security of the union and happiness of the state. The wealth of two empires was on this occasion most ostentatiously displayed: and many senators completed their ruin by an expensive effort to disguise their poverty. All serious business was suspended during the time of this festival; the courts of justice were shut; the streets of Rome, the theatres, the places of public and private resort resounded with hymeneal songs and dances; and the royal bride, clothed in silken robes, with a crown on her head, was conducted to the palace of Ricimer, who had changed his military dress for the habit of a consul and a senator.[c]

The unprecedented task intrusted to the emperor Leo of selecting the man with whom he was to share the administration and defence of the whole Roman world, makes it requisite to consider his actual position. Leo had now attained the eleventh year of his reign, which, from the first, had been beset with difficulties. Aspar, with his barbarian satellites, overawed the Eastern senate; and it was only by compliances savouring of duplicity that the government could be carried on. Leo could do no more than turn to advantage any opportunity that might arise for the extension of his influence. When the Huns invaded Thrace, he gained a battle in which one of Attila’s sons was slain; a success which increased his influence. By enlisting the services of an Isaurian prince, whose barbaric name he changed to that of the stoic Zeno, he at length obtained a counterpoise to Aspar. The Isaurian, though no philosopher and though in his manners a barbarian, had at his disposal a considerable array of hardy combatants, whose services Leo secured by accepting their leader for his son-in-law. The resources of the Eastern Empire were then freely devoted to an enterprise on the success and failure of which the weal or woe of Italy depended.

Coins were struck representing the two emperors with joined hands, and sanguine hopes were once more entertained that, by their combined efforts, Africa with the command of the Mediterranean would be regained.

[Sidenote: [467-468 A.D.]]