Invasion of Italy by Alaric—Manners of the Roman Senate and People—Rome Is Thrice Besieged, and at Length Pillaged, by the Goths—Death of Alaric—The Goths Evacuate Italy—Fall of Constantine—Gaul and Spain Are Occupied by the Barbarians—Independence of Britain
Weakness of the court of Ravenna, A.D. 408, September
THE incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often
assume the appearance and produce the effects of a
treasonable correspondence with the public enemy. If Alaric
himself had been introduced into the council of Ravenna, he
would probably have advised the same measures which were
actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius.(1) The king of
the Goths would have conspired, perhaps with some
reluctance, to destroy the formidable adversary by whose
arms, in Italy as well as in Greece, he had been twice
overthrown. Their active and interested hatred laboriously
accomplished the disgrace and ruin of the great Stilicho.
The valour of Sarus, his fame in arms, and his personal or
hereditary influence over the confederate barbarians, could
recommend him only to the friends of their country who
despised or detested the worthless characters of Turpilio,
Varanes, and Vigilantius. By the pressing instances of the
new favourites, these generals, unworthy as they had shown
themselves of the name of soldiers,(2) were promoted to the
command of the cavalry, of the infantry, and of the domestic
troops. The Gothic prince would have subscribed with
pleasure the edict which the fanaticism of Olympius dictated
to the simple and devout emperor. Honorius excluded all
persons who were adverse to the catholic church from holding
any office in the state; obstinately rejected the service of
all those who dissented from his religion; and rashly
disqualified many of his bravest and most skilful officers
who adhered to the Pagan worship or who had imbibed the
opinions of Arianism. (3) These measures, so advantageous to
an enemy, Alaric would have approved, and might perhaps have
suggested; but it may seem doubtful whether the barbarian
would have promoted his interest at the expense of the
inhuman and absurd cruelty which was perpetrated by the
direction, or at least with the connivance, of the Imperial
ministers. The foreign auxiliaries who had been attached to
the person of Stilicho lamented his death; but the desire of
revenge was checked by a natural apprehension for the safety
of their wives and children, who were detained as hostages
in the strong cities of Italy, where they had likewise
deposited their most valuable effects. At the same hour, and
as if by a common signal, the cities of Italy were polluted
by the same horrid scenes of universal massacre and pillage,
which involved in promiscuous destruction the families and
fortunes of the barbarians. Exasperated by such an injury,
which might have awakened the tamest and most servile
spirit, they cast a look of indignation and hope towards the
camp of Alaric, and unanimously swore to pursue with just
and implacable war the perfidious nation that had so basely
violated the laws of hospitality. By the imprudent conduct
of the ministers of Honorius the republic lost the
assistance, and deserved the enmity, of thirty thousand of
her bravest soldiers; and the weight of that formidable
army, which alone might have determined the event of the
war, was transferred from the scale of the Romans into that
of the Goths.
Alaric marches to Rome, A.D. 408, October, etc
In the arts of negotiation, as well as in those of war, the
Gothic king maintained his superior ascendant over an enemy
whose seeming changes proceeded from the total want of
counsel and design. From his camp, on the confines of Italy,
Alaric attentively observed the revolutions of the palace,
watched the progress of faction and discontent, disguised
the hostile aspect of a barbarian invader, and assumed the
more popular appearance of the friend and ally of the great
Stilicho; to whose virtues, when they were no longer
formidable, he could pay a just tribute of sincere praise
and regret. The pressing invitation of the malcontents, who
urged the king of the Goths to invade Italy, was enforced by
a lively sense of his personal injuries; and he might
speciously complain that the Imperial ministers still
delayed and eluded the payment of the four thousand pounds
of gold which had been granted by the Roman senate either to
reward his services or to appease his fury. His decent
firmness was supported by an artful moderation, which
contributed to the success of his designs. He required a
fair and reasonable satisfaction; but he gave the strongest
assurances that, as soon as he had obtained it, he would
immediately retire. He refused to trust the faith of the
Romans, unless Aetius and Jason, the sons of two great
officers of state, were sent as hostages to his camp: but he
offered to deliver in exchange several of the noblest youths
of the Gothic nation. The modesty of Alaric was interpreted
by the ministers of Ravenna as a sure evidence of his
weakness and fear. They disdained either to negotiate a
treaty or to assemble an army and with a rash confidence,
derived only from their ignorance of the extreme danger,
irretrievably wasted the decisive moments of peace and war.
While they expected, in sullen silence, that the barbarians
should evacuate the confines of Italy, Alaric, with bold and
rapid marches, passed the Alps and the Po; hastily pillaged
the cities of Aquileia, Altinum, Concordia, and Cremona,
which yielded to his arms; increased his forces by the
accession of thirty thousand auxiliaries, and without
meeting a single enemy in the field, advanced as far as the
edge of the morass which protected the impregnable residence
of the emperor of the West. Instead of attempting the
hopeless siege of Ravenna, the prudent leader of the Goths
proceeded to Rimini, stretched his ravages along the
sea-coast of the Hadriatic, and meditated the conquest of
the ancient mistress of the world. An Italian hermit, whose
zeal and sanctity were respected by the barbarians
themselves, encountered the victorious monarch, and boldly
denounced the indignation of Heaven against the oppressors
of the earth: but the saint himself was confounded by the
solemn asseveration of Alaric that he felt a secret and
preternatural impulse, which directed, and even compelled,
his march to the gates of Rome He felt that his genius and
his fortune were equal to the most arduous enterprises; and
the enthusiasm which he communicated to the Goths insensibly
removed the popular and almost superstitious reverence of
the nations for the majesty of the Roman name. His troops,
animated by the hopes of spoil, followed the course of the
Flaminian way, occupied the unguarded passes of the
Apennine,(4) descended into the rich plains of Umbria; and, as they lay encamped on the banks of the Clitumnus, might
wantonly slaughter and devour the milk-white oxen which had
been so long reserved for the use of Roman triumphs.(5) A
lofty situation and a seasonable tempest of thunder and
lightning preserved the little city of Narni: but the king
of the Goths, despising the ignoble prey, still advanced
with unabated vigour; and after he had passed through the
stately arches, adorned with the spoils of barbaric
victories, he pitched his camp under the walls of Rome.(6)
Hannibal at the gates of Rome
During a period of six hundred and nineteen years the seat
of empire had never been violated by the presence of a
foreign enemy. The unsuccessful expedition of Hannibal(7)
served only to display the character of the senate and
people; of a senate degraded, rather than ennobled, by the
comparison of an assembly of kings; and of a people to whom
the ambassador of Pyrrhus ascribed the inexhaustible
resources of the Hydra. (8) Each of the senators in the time
of the Punic war had accomplished his term of military
service, either in a subordinate or a superior station; and
the decree which invested with temporary command all those
who had been consuls, or censors, or dictators, gave the
republic the immediate assistance of many brave and
experienced generals. In the beginning of the war the Roman
people consisted of two hundred and fifty thousand citizens
of an age to bear arms.(9) Fifty thousand had already died in
the defence of their country; and the twenty-three legions
which were employed in the different camps of Italy, Greece,
Sardinia, Sicily, and Spain, required about one hundred
thousand men. But there still remained an equal number in
Rome and the adjacent territory who were animated by the
same intrepid courage; and every citizen was trained from
his earliest youth in the discipline and exercises of a
soldier. Hannibal was astonished by the constancy of the
senate, who, without raising the siege of Capua or recalling
their scattered forces, expected his approach. He encamped
on the banks of the Anio, at the distance of three miles
from the city: and he was soon informed that the ground on
which he had pitched his tent was sold for an adequate price
at a public auction; and that a body of troops was dismissed
by an opposite road to reinforce the legions of Spain.(10) He
led his Africans to the gates of Rome, where he found three
armies in order of battle prepared to receive him; but
Hannibal dreaded the event of a combat from which he could
not hope to escape unless he destroyed the last of his
enemies; and his speedy retreat confessed the invincible
courage of the Romans.
Genealogy of the senators
From the time of the Punic war the uninterrupted succession
of senators had preserved the name and image of the
republic; and the degenerate subjects of Honorius
ambitiously derived their descent from the heroes who had
repulsed the arms of Hannibal and subdued the nations of the
earth. The temporal honours which the devout Paula (11)
inherited and despised are carefully recapitulated by Jerom,
the guide of her conscience and the historian of her life.
The genealogy of her father, Rogatus, which ascended as high
as Agamemnon, might seem to betray a Grecian origin; but her
mother, Blasilla, numbered the Scipios, Amilius Paulus, and
the Gracchi in the list of her ancestors; and Toxotius, the
husband of Paula, deduced his royal lineage from Aeneas, the
father of the Julian line. The vanity of the rich, who
desired to be noble, was gratified by these lofty
pretensions. Encouraged by the applause of their parasites,
they easily imposed on the credulity of the vulgar; and were
countenanced in some measure by the custom of adopting the
name of their patron, which had always prevailed among the
freedmen and clients of illustrious families. Most of those
families, however, attacked by so many causes of external
violence or internal decay, were gradually extirpated: and
it would be more reasonable to seek for a lineal descent of
twenty generations among the mountains of the Alps or in the
peaceful solitude of Apulia, than on the theatre of Rome,
the seat of fortune, of danger, and of perpetual
revolutions. Under each successive reign and from every
province of the empire a crowd of hardy adventurers, rising
to eminence by their talents or their vices, usurped the
wealth, the honours, and the palaces of Rome; and oppressed
or protected the poor and humble remains of consular
families, who were ignorant, perhaps, of the glory of their
ancestors.(12)
The Anician family
In the time of Jerom and Claudian the senators unanimously
yielded the pre-eminence to the Anician line; and a slight
view of their history will serve to appreciate the rank and
antiquity of the noble families which contended only for the
second place.(13) During the five first ages of the city the name of the Anicians was unknown; they appear to have derived their
origin from Praeneste; and the ambition of those new
citizens was long satisfied with the plebeian honours of
tribunes of the people.(14) One hundred and sixty-eight years
before the Christian era the family was ennobled by the
praetorship of Anicius, who gloriously terminated the
Illyrian war by the conquest of the nation and the captivity
of their king. (15) From the triumph of that general three
consulships in distant periods mark the succession of the
Anician name.(16) From the reign of Diocletian to the final
extinction of the Western empire that name shone with a
lustre which was not eclipsed in the public estimation by
the majesty of the Imperial purple.(17) The several branches
to whom it was communicated united, by marriage or
inheritance, the wealth and titles of the Annian, the
Petronian, and the Olybrian houses; and in each generation
the number of consulships was multiplied by an hereditary
claim.(18) The Anician family excelled in faith and in
riches: they were the first of the Roman senate who embraced
Christianity and it is probable that Anicius Julian, who was
afterwards consul and praefect of the city, atoned for his
attachment to the party of Maxentius by the readiness with
which he accepted the religion of Constantine. (19) Their
ample patrimony was increased by the industry of Probus, the
chief of the Anician family, who shared with Gratian the
honours of the consulship, and exercised four times the high
office of Praetorian praefect. (20) His immense estates were
scattered over the wide extent of the Roman world; and
though the public might suspect or disapprove the methods by
which they had been acquired, the generosity and
magnificence of that fortunate statesman deserved the
gratitude of his clients and the admiration of strangers.(21)
Such was the respect entertained for his memory, that the
two sons of Probus, in their earliest youth and at the
request of the senate, were associated in the consular
dignity: a memorable distinction, without example in the
annals of Rome.(22)
Wealth of Roman nobles.
"The marbles of the Anician palace," were used as a proverbial expression of opulence and splendour;(23) but the nobles and senators of Rome aspired in due gradation to imitate that illustrious family. The accurate description of the city, which was composed in the Theodosian age, enumerates one thousand seven hundred and eighty houses, the residence of wealthy and honourable citizens. (24) Many of
these stately mansions might almost excuse the exaggeration of the poet—that Rome contained a multitude of palaces, and that each palace was equal to a city, since it included within its own precincts everything which could be subservient either to use or luxury: markets, hippodromes,
temples, fountains, baths, porticos, shady groves, and artificial aviaries.(25) The historian Olympiodorus, who represents the state of Rome when it was besieged by the
Goths,(26) continues to observe that several of the richest senators received from their estates an annual income of four thousand pounds of gold, above one hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling; without computing the stated provision of corn and wine, which, had they been sold, might have equalled in value one-third of the money. Compared to this immoderate wealth, an ordinary revenue of a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds of gold might be considered as no more than adequate to the dignity of the senatorian rank, which required many expenses of a public and ostentatious kind. Several examples are recorded in the age of Honorius of vain and popular nobles who celebrated the year of their
praetorship by a festival which lasted seven days and cost above one hundred thousand pounds sterling.(27) The estates of the Roman senators, which so far exceed the proportion of modern wealth, were not confined to the limits of Italy. Their possessions extended far beyond the Ionian and Agean seas to the most distant provinces: the city of Nicopolis, which Augustus had founded as an eternal monument of the Actian victory, was the property of the devout Paula;(28) and it is observed by Seneca, that the rivers which had divided hostile nations now flowed through the lands of private citizens.(29) According to their temper and circumstances, the estates of the Romans were either cultivated by the labour of their slaves, or granted, for a certain and stipulated rent, to the industrious farmer. The economical writers of antiquity strenuously recommend the former method wherever it may be practicable but if the object should be removed by its distance or magnitude from the immediate eye of the master, they prefer the active care of an old
hereditary tenant, attached to the soil and interested in the produce, to the mercenary administration of a negligent, perhaps an unfaithful steward.(30)
Their manners
The opulent nobles of an immense capital, who were never
excited by the pursuit of military glory, and seldom engaged
in the occupations of civil government, naturally resigned
their leisure to the business and amusements of private
life. At Rome commerce was always held in contempt; but the
senators, from the first age of the republic, increased
their patrimony and multiplied their clients by the
lucrative practice of usury, and the obsolete laws were
eluded or violated by the mutual inclinations and interest
of both parties. (31) A considerable mass of treasure must
always have existed at Rome, either in the current coin of
the empire, or in the form of gold and silver plate; and
there were many sideboards in the time of Pliny which
contained more solid silver than had been transported by
Scipio from vanquished Carthage.(32) The greater part of the
nobles, who dissipated their fortunes in profuse luxury,
found themselves poor in the midst of wealth, and idle in a
constant round of dissipation. Their desires were
continually gratified by the labour of a thousand hands; of
the numerous train of their domestic slaves, who were
actuated by the fear of punishment; and of the various
professions of artificers and merchants, who were more
powerfully impelled by the hopes of gain. The ancients were
destitute of many of the conveniences of life which have
been invented or improved by the progress of industry; and
the plenty of glass and linen has diffused more real
comforts among the modern nations of Europe than the
senators of Rome could derive from all the refinements of
pompous or sensual luxury.(33) Their luxury and their manners
have been the subject of minute and laborious disquisition;
but as such inquiries would divert me too long from the
design of the present work, I shall produce an authentic
state of Rome and its inhabitants which is more peculiarly
applicable to the period of the Gothic invasion. Ammianus
Marcellinus, who prudently chose the capital of the empire
as the residence the best adapted to the historian of his
own times, has mixed with the narrative of public events a
lively representation of the scenes with which he was
familiarly conversant. The judicious reader will not always
approve the asperity of censure, the choice of
circumstances, or the style of expression; he will perhaps
detect the latent prejudices and personal resentments which
soured the temper of Ammianus himself; but he will surely
observe, with philosophic curiosity, the interesting and
original picture of the manners of Rome.(34)
Character of the Roman nobles, by Ammianus Marcellinus
"The greatness of Rome (such is the language of the historian) was founded on the rare and almost incredible alliance of virtue and of fortune. The long period of her infancy was employed in a laborious struggle against the tribes of Italy, the neighbours and enemies of the rising city. In the strength and ardour of youth she sustained the storms of war, carried her victorious arms beyond the seas and the mountains, and brought home triumphal laurels from every country of the globe. At length, verging towards old age, and sometimes conquering by the terror only of her name, she sought the blessings of ease and tranquillity. The VENERABLE CITY, which had trampled on the necks of the fiercest nations, and established a system of laws, the perpetual guardians of justice and freedom, was content, like a wise and wealthy parent, to devolve on the Caesars, her favourite sons, the care of governing her ample patrimony. (35) A secure and profound peace, such as had been once enjoyed in the reign of Numa, succeeded to the tumults of a republic; while Rome was still adored as the queen of the earth, and the subject nations still reverenced the name of the people and the majesty of the senate. But this native splendour (continues Ammianus) is degraded and sullied by the conduct of some nobles, who, unmindful of their own dignity and of that of their country, assume an unbounded licence of vice and folly. They contend with each other in the empty vanity of titles and surnames, and curiously select or invent the most lofty and sonorous appellations — Reburrus or Fabunius, Pagonius or Tarrasius (36) which may impress the ears of the vulgar with astonishment and respect. From a vain ambition of perpetuating their memory, they affect to multiply their likeness in statues of bronze and marble; nor are they satisfied unless those statues are covered with plates of gold; an honourable distinction, first granted to Acilius the consul, after he had subdued by his arms and counsels the power of king Antiochus. The ostentation of displaying, of magnifying perhaps, the rent roll of the estates which they possess in all the provinces, from the rising to the setting sun, provokes the just resentment of every man who recollects that their poor and invincible ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers by the delicacy of their food or the splendour of their apparel. But the modern nobles measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their chariots,(37) and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by art or accident, they occasionally discover the under garments, the rich tunics, embroidered with the figures of various animals. (38) Followed by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the streets with the same impetuous speed as if they travelled with post-horses and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman people. If, in these places of mixed and general resort, they meet any of the infamous ministers of their pleasures, they express their affection by a tender embrace, while they proudly decline the salutations of their fellow-citizens, who are not permitted to aspire above the honour of kissing their hands or their knees. As soon as they have indulged themselves in the refreshment of the bath, they resume their rings and the other ensigns of their dignity, select from their private wardrobe of the finest linen, such as might suffice for a dozen persons, the garments the most agreeable to their fancy, and maintain till their departure the same haughty demeanour, which perhaps might have been excused in the great Marcellus after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes indeed these heroes undertake more arduous achievements: they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil of servile hands, the amusements of the chase. (39) If at any time, but more especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail in their painted galleys from the Lucrine lake (40) to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and Caieta, (41) they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament in affected language that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, (42) the regions of eternal darkness. In these journeys into the country (43) the whole body of the household marches with their master. In the same manner as the cavalry and infantry, the heavy and the light armed troops, the advanced guard and the rear, are marshalled by the skill of their military leaders, so the domestic officers, who bear a rod as an ensign of authority, distribute and arrange the numerous train of slaves and attendants. The baggage and wardrobe move in the front, and are immediately followed by a multitude of cooks and inferior ministers employed in the service of the kitchens and of the table. The main body is composed of a promiscuous crowd of slaves, increased by the accidental concourse of idle or dependent plebeians. The rear is closed by the favourite band of eunuchs, distributed from age to youth, according to the order of seniority. Their numbers and their deformity excite the horror of the indignant spectators, who are ready to execrate the memory of Semiramis for the cruel art which she invented of frustrating the purposes of nature, and of blasting in the bud the hopes of future generations. In the exercise of domestic jurisdiction the nobles of Rome express an exquisite sensibility for any personal injury, and a contemptuous indifference for the rest of the human species. When they have called for warm water, if a slave has been tardy in his obedience, he is instantly chastised with three hundred lashes; but should the same slave commit a wilful murder, the master will mildly observe that he is a worthless fellow, but that if he repeats the offence he shall not escape punishment. Hospitality was formerly the virtue of the Romans; and every stranger who could plead either merit or misfortune was relieved or rewarded by their generosity. At present, if a foreigner, perhaps of no contemptible rank, is introduced to one of the proud and wealthy senators, he is welcomed indeed in the first audience with such warm professions and such kind inquiries, that he retires enchanted with the affability of his illustrious friend, and full of regret that he had so long delayed his journey to Rome, the native seat of manners as well as of empire. Secure of a favourable reception, he repeats his visit the ensuing day, and is mortified by the discovery that his person, his name, and his country are already forgotten. If he still has resolution to persevere, he is gradually numbered in the train of dependents, and obtains the permission to pay his assiduous and unprofitable court to a haughty patron, incapable of gratitude or friendship, who scarcely deigns remark his presence, his departure, or his return. Whenever the rich prepare a solemn and popular entertainment, (44) whenever they celebrate with profuse and pernicious luxury their private banquets, the choice of the guests is the subject of anxious deliberation. The modest, the sober, and the learned are seldom preferred and the nomenclators, who are commonly swayed by interested motives, have the address to insert in the list of invitations the obscure names of the most worthless of mankind. But the frequent and familiar companions of the great are those parasites who practise the most useful of all arts, the art of flattery; who eagerly applaud each word and every action of their immortal patron; gaze with rapture on his marble columns and variegated pavements, and strenuously praise the pomp and elegance which he is taught to consider as a part of his personal merit. At the Roman tables the birds, the squirrels, (45) or the fish, which appear of an uncommon size are contemplated with curious attention; a pair of scales is accurately applied to ascertain their real weight and, while the more rational guests are disgusted by the vain and tedious repetition, notaries are summoned to attest by an authentic record the truth of such a marvellous event. Another method of introduction into the houses and society of the great is derived from the profession of gaming, or, as it is more politely styled, of play. The confederates are united by a strict and indissoluble bond of friendship, or rather of conspiracy; a superior degree of skill in the Tesserarian art (which may be interpreted the game of dice and tables (46)) is a sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of that sublime science, who in a supper or assembly is placed below a magistrate, displays in his countenance the surprise and indignation which Cato might be supposed to feel when he was refused the praetorship by the votes of a capricious people. The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the curiosity of the nobles, who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study; and the only books which they peruse are the Satires of Juvenal, and the verbose and fabulous histories of Marius Maximus. (47) The libraries which they have inherited from their fathers are secluded, like dreary sepulchres, from the light of day. (48) But the costly instruments of the theatre, flutes, and enormous lyres, and hydraulic organs, are constructed for their use; and the harmony of vocal and instrumental music is incessantly repeated in the palaces of Rome. In those palaces sound is preferred to sense, and the care of the body to that of the mind. It is allowed as a salutary maxim, that the light and frivolous suspicion of a contagious malady is of sufficient weight to excuse the visits of the most intimate friends; and even the servants who are despatched to make the decent inquiries are not suffered to return home till they have undergone the ceremony of a previous ablution. Yet this selfish and unmanly delicacy occasionally yields to the more imperious passion of avarice. The prospect of gain will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleto; every sentiment of arrogance and dignity is subdued by the hopes of an inheritance, or even of a legacy; and a wealthy childless citizen is the most powerful of the Romans. The art of obtaining the signature of a favourable testament, and sometimes of hastening the moment of its execution, is perfectly understood; and it has happened that in the same house, though in different apartments, a husband and a wife, with the laudable design of over-reaching each other, have summoned their respective lawyers, to declare at the same time their mutual but contradictory intentions. The distress which follows and chastises extravagant luxury often reduces the great to the use of the most humiliating expedients. When they desire to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style of the slave in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they assume the royal and tragic declamation of the grandsons of Hercules. If the demand is repeated, they readily procure some trusty sycophant, instructed to maintain a charge of poison, or magic, against the insolent creditor, who is seldom released from prison till he has signed a discharge of the whole debt. These vices, which degrade the moral character of the Romans, are mixed with a puerile superstition that disgraces their understanding. They listen with confidence to the predictions of haruspices, who pretend to read in the entrails of victims the signs of future greatness and prosperity; and there are many who do not presume either to bathe or to dine, or to appear in public, till they have diligently consulted, according to the rules of astrology, the situation of Mercury and the aspect of the moon. (49) It is singular enough that this vain credulity may often be discovered among the profane sceptics who impiously doubt or deny the existence of a celestial power."
State and character of the Roman people
In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and
manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive
their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their
hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and;
in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.
But the plebeians of Rome, who disdained such sedentary and
servile arts, had been oppressed from the earliest times by
the weight of debt and usury, and the husbandman, during the
term of his military service, was obliged to abandon the
cultivation of his farm. (50) The lands of Italy, which had
been originally divided among the families of free and
indigent proprietors, were insensibly purchased or usurped
by the avarice of the nobles; and in the age which preceded
the fall of the republic, it was computed that only two
thousand citizens were possessed of any independent
substance.(51) Yet as long as the people bestowed by their
suffrages the honours of the state, the command of the
legions, and the administration of wealthy provinces, their
conscious pride alleviated in some measure the hardships of
poverty and their wants were seasonably supplied by the
ambitious liberality of the candidates, who aspired to
secure a venal majority in the thirty-five tribes, or the
hundred and ninety-three centuries, of Rome. But when the
prodigal commons had imprudently alienated not only the use,
but the inheritance, of power, they sunk, under the reign of
the Caesars, into a vile and wretched populace, which must,
in a few generations, have been totally extinguished, if it
had not been continually recruited by the manumission of
slaves and the influx of strangers. As early as the time of
Hadrian it was the just complaint of the ingenuous natives
that the capital had attracted the vices of the universe and
the manners of the most opposite nations. The intemperance
of the Gauls, the cunning and levity of the Greeks, the
savage obstinacy of the Egyptians and Jews, the servile
temper of the Asiatics, and the dissolute, effeminate
prostitution of the Syrians, were mingled in the various
multitude, which, under the proud and false denomination of
Romans, presumed to despise their fellow-subjects, and even
their sovereigns, who dwelt beyond the precincts of the
ETERNAL CITY.(52)
Public distribution of bread, bacon, oil, wine, etc
Yet the name of that city was still pronounced with respect:
the frequent and capricious tumults of its inhabitants were
indulged with impunity; and the successors of Constantine,
instead of crushing the last remains of the democracy by the
strong arm of military power, embraced the mild policy of
Augustus, and studied to relieve the poverty and to amuse
the idleness of an innumerable people. (53)I. For the convenience of the lazy plebeians, the monthly distributions
of corn were converted into a daily allowance of bread; a
great number of ovens were constructed and maintained at the
public expense; and at the appointed hour, each citizen, who
was furnished with a ticket, ascended the flight of steps
which had been assigned to his peculiar quarter or division,
and received, either as a gift or at a very low price, a
loaf of bread of the weight of three pounds for the use of
his family. II.The forests of Lucania, whose acorns
fattened large droves of wild hogs, (54) afforded, as a
species of tribute, a plentiful supply of cheap and
wholesome meat. During five months of the year a regular
allowance of bacon was distributed to the poorer citizens;
and the annual consumption of the capital, at a time when it
was much declined from its former lustre, was ascertained,
by an edict of Valentinian the Third, at three millions six
hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds. (55) III.In the manners of antiquity the use of oil was indispensable for
the lamp as well as for the bath, and the annual tax which
was imposed on Africa for the benefit of Rome amounted to
the weight of three millions of pounds, to the measure,
perhaps, of three hundred thousand English gallons. IV. The
anxiety of Augustus to provide the metropolis with
sufficient plenty of corn was not extended beyond that
necessary article of human subsistence; and when the popular
clamour accused the dearness and scarcity of wine, a
proclamation was issued by the grave reformer to remind his
subjects that no man could reasonably complain of thirst,
since the aqueducts of Agrippa had introduced into the city
so many copious streams of pure and salubrious water.(56)
This rigid sobriety was insensibly relaxed; and, although
the generous design of Aurelian(57) does not appear to have
been executed in its full extent, the use of wine was
allowed on very easy and liberal terms. The administration
of the public cellars was delegated to a magistrate of
honourable rank; and a considerable part of the vintage of
Campania was reserved for the fortunate inhabitants of Rome.
Use of the public baths.
The stupendous aqueducts, so justly celebrated by the
praises of Augustus himself, replenished the Thermae, or
baths, which had been constructed in every part of the city
with Imperial magnificence. The baths of Antoninus
Caracalla, which were open, at stated hours, for the
indiscriminate service of the senators and the people,
contained above sixteen hundred seats of marble; and more
than three thousand were reckoned in the baths of
Diocletian. (58) The walls of the lofty apartments were
covered with curious mosaics, that imitated the art of the
pencil in the elegance of design and the variety of colours.
The Egyptian granite was beautifully encrusted with the
precious green marble of Numidia; the perpetual stream of
hot water was poured into the capacious basins through so
many wide mouths of bright and massy silver; and the meanest
Roman could purchase, with a small copper coin, the daily
enjoyment of a scene of pomp and luxury which might excite
the envy of the kings of Asia.(59) From these stately palaces
issued a swarm of dirty and ragged plebeians, without shoes
and without a mantle; who loitered away whole days in the
street or Forum to hear news and to hold disputes who
dissipated in extravagant gaming the miserable pittance of
their wives and children; and spent the hours of the night
in obscure taverns and brothels in the indulgence of gross
and vulgar sensuality.(60)
Games and spectacles
But the most lively and splendid amusement of the idle
multitude depended on the frequent exhibition of public
games and spectacles. The piety of Christian princes had
suppressed the inhuman combats of gladiators; but the Roman
people still considered the Circus as their home, their
temple, and the seat of the republic. The impatient crowd
rushed at the dawn of day to secure their places, and there
were many who passed a sleepless and anxious night in the
adjacent porticos. From the morning to the evening, careless
of the sun or of the rain, the spectators, who sometimes
amounted to the number of four hundred thousand, remained in
eager attention; their eyes fixed on the horses and
charioteers, their minds agitated with hope and fear for the
success of the colours which they espoused; and the
happiness of Rome appeared to hang on the event of a race.
(61) The same immoderate ardour inspired their clamours and
their applause as often as they were entertained with the
hunting of wild beasts and the various modes of theatrical
representation. These representations in modern capitals may
deserve to be considered as a pure and elegant school of
taste, and perhaps of virtue. But the Tragic and Comic Muse
of the Romans, who seldom aspired beyond the imitation of
Attic genius,(62) had been almost totally silent since the
fall of the republic; (63) and their place was unworthily
occupied by licentious farce, effeminate music, and splendid
pageantry. The pantomimes, (64) who maintained their
reputation from the age of Augustus to the sixth century,
expressed, without the use of words, the various fables of
the gods and heroes of antiquity; and the perfection of
their art, which sometimes disarmed the gravity of the
philosopher, always excited the applause and wonder of the
people. The vast and magnificent theatres of Rome were
filled by three thousand female dancers, and by three
thousand singers, with the masters of the respective
choruses. Such was the popular favour which they enjoyed,
that, in a time of scarcity, when all strangers were
banished from the city, the merit of contributing to the
public pleasures exempted them from a law which was strictly
executed against the professors of the liberal arts.(65)
Populous of Rome
It is said that the foolish curiosity of Elagabalus
attempted to discover, from the quantity of spiders' webs,
the number of the inhabitants of Rome. A more rational
method of inquiry might not have been undeserving of the
attention of the wisest princes, who could easily have
resolved a question so important for the Roman government
and so interesting to succeeding ages. The births and deaths
of the citizens were duly registered; and if any writer of
antiquity had condescended to mention the annual amount, or
the common average, we might now produce some satisfactory
calculation which should destroy the extravagant assertions
of critics, and perhaps confirm the modest and probable
conjectures of philosophers.(66) The most diligent researches
have collected only the following circumstances, which,
slight and imperfect as they are, may tend in some degree to
illustrate the question of the populousness of ancient Rome.
I. When the capital of the empire was besieged by the Goths,
the circuit of the walls was accurately measured by
Ammonius, the mathematician, who found it equal to
twenty-one miles.(67) It should not be forgotten that the
form of the city was almost that of a circle, the
geometrical figure which is known to contain the largest
space within any given circumference. II. The architect
Vitruvius, who flourished in the Augustan age, and whose
evidence, on this occasion, has peculiar weight and
authority, observes that the innumerable habitations of the
Roman people would have spread themselves far beyond the
narrow limits of the city; and that the want of ground,
which was probably contracted on every side by gardens and
villas, suggested the common, though inconvenient, practice
of raising the houses to a considerable height in the air.
(68) But the loftiness of these buildings, which often
consisted of hasty work and insufficient materials, was the
cause of frequent and fatal accidents; and it was repeatedly
enacted by Augustus, as well as by Nero, that the height of
private edifices within the walls of Rome should not exceed
the measure of seventy feet from the ground.(69) III. Juvenal
(70) laments, as it should seem from his own experience, the
hardships of the poorer citizens, to whom he addresses the
salutary advice of emigrating, without delay, from the smoke
of Rome, since they might purchase in the little towns of
Italy a cheerful, commodious dwelling at the same price
which they annually paid for a dark and miserable lodging.
House-rent was therefore immoderately dear: the rich
acquired, at an enormous expense, the ground, which they
covered with palaces and gardens; but the body of the Roman
people was crowded into a narrow space; and the different
floors and apartments of the same house were divided, as it
is still the custom of Paris and other cities, among several
families of plebeians. IV. The total number of houses in the
fourteen regions of the city is accurately stated in the
description of Rome composed under the reign of Theodosius,
and they amount to forty-eight thousand three hundred and
eighty-two.(71) The two classes of domus and of insulae, into which they are divided, include all the habitations of
the capital, of every rank and condition, from the marble
palace of the Anicii, with a numerous establishment of
freedmen and slaves, to the lofty and narrow lodginghouse
where the poet Codrus and his wife were permitted to hire a
wretched garret immediately under the tiles. If we adopt the
same average which, under similar circumstances, has been
found applicable to Paris,(72) and indifferently allow about
twenty-five persons for each house, of every degree, we may
fairly estimate the inhabitants of Rome at twelve hundred
thousand: a number which cannot be thought excessive for the
capital of a mighty empire, though it exceeds the
populousness of the greatest cities of modern Europe.(73)
First seige of Rome by the Goths, A.D. 408.
Such was the state of Rome under the reign of Honorius, at
the time when the Gothic army formed the siege, or rather
the blockade, of the city. (74) By a skilful disposition of
his numerous forces, who impatiently watched the moment of
an assault, Alaric encompassed the walls, commanded the
twelve principal gates, intercepted all communication with
the adjacent country, and vigilantly guarded the navigation
of the Tiber, from which the Romans derived the surest and
most plentiful supply of provisions. The first emotions of
the nobles and of the people were those of surprise and
indignation, that a vile barbarian should dare to insult the
capital of the world; but their arrogance was soon humbled
by misfortune; and their unmanly rage, instead of being
directed against an enemy in arms, was meanly exercised on a
defenceless and innocent victim. Perhaps in the person of
Serena the Romans might have respected the niece of
Theodosius, the aunt, nay even the adoptive mother, of the
reigning emperor; they abhorred the widow of Stilicho; and
they listened with credulous passion to the tale of calumny
which accused her of maintaining a secret and criminal
correspondence with the Gothic invader. Actuated, or
overawed, by the same popular frenzy, the senate, without
requiring any evidence of her guilt, pronounced the sentence
of her death. Serena was ignominiously strangled; and the
infatuated multitude were astonished to find that this cruel
act of injustice did not immediately produce the retreat of
the barbarians and the deliverance of the city. That
unfortunate city gradually experienced the distress of
scarcity, and at length the horrid calamities of famine. Famine. The daily allowance of three pounds of bread was reduced to one-half, to one-third, to nothing; and the price of corn still continued to rise in a rapid and extravagant
proportion. The poorer citizens who were unable to purchase
the necessaries of life, solicited the precarious charity of
the rich; and for a while the public misery was alleviated
by the humanity of Laeta, the widow of the emperor Gratian,
who had fixed her residence at Rome, and consecrated, to the
use of the indigent, the princely revenue which she annually
received from the grateful successors of her husband.(75) But these private and temporary donatives were insufficient to appease the hunger of a numerous people; and the progress of famine invaded the marble palaces of the senators
themselves. The persons of both sexes, who had been educated
in the enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered how little
is requisite to supply the demands of nature; and lavished
their unavailing treasures of gold and silver to obtain the
coarse and scanty sustenance which they would formerly have
rejected with disdain. The food the most repugnant to sense
or imagination, the aliments the most unwholesome and
pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured, and
fiercely disputed, by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion
was entertained that some desperate wretches fed on the
bodies of their fellow-creatures whom they had secretly
murdered; and even mothers (such was the horrid conflict of
the two most powerful instincts implanted by nature in the
human breast), even mothers are said to have tasted the
flesh of their slaughtered infants!(76)Plague. Many thousands of the
inhabitants of Rome expired in their houses, or in the
streets, for want of sustenance; and as the public
sepulchres without the walls were in the power of the enemy,
the stench which arose from so many putrid and unburied
carcasses infected the air; and the miseries of famine were
succeeded and aggravated by the contagion of a pestilential
disease. The assurances of speedy and effectual relief,
which were repeatedly transmitted from the court of Ravenna,
supported, for some time, the fainting resolution of the
Romans, Superstition. till at length the despair of any human aid tempted them to accept the offers of a preternatural deliverance.
Pompeianus, praefect of the city, had been persuaded, by the
art or fanaticism of some Tuscan diviners, that, by the
mysterious force of spells and sacrifices, they could
extract the lightning from the clouds, and point those
celestial fires against the camp of the barbarians.(77) The
important secret was communicated to Innocent, the bishop of
Rome; and the successor of St. Peter is accused, perhaps
without foundation, of preferring the safety of the republic
to the rigid severity of the Christian worship. But when the
question was agitated in the senate; when it was proposed,
as an essential condition, that those sacrifices should be
performed in the Capitol, by the authority and in the
presence of the magistrates; the majority of that
respectable assembly, apprehensive either of the Divine or
of the Imperial displeasure, refused to join in an act which
appeared almost equivalent to the public restoration of
Paganism.(78)
Alaric accepts a ransom, and raises the seige, A.D. 409.
The last resource of the Romans was in the clemency, or at
least in the moderation, of the king of the Goths. The
senate, who in this emergency assumed the supreme powers of
government, appointed two ambassadors to negotiate with the
enemy. This important trust was delegated to Basilius, a
senator of Spanish extraction, and already conspicuous in
the administration of provinces; and to John, the first
tribune of the notaries, who was peculiarly qualified, by
his dexterity in business, as well as by his former intimacy
with the Gothic prince. When they were introduced into his presence, they declared, perhaps in a more lofty style than became their abject condition, that the Romans were resolved to maintain their dignity, either in peace or war; and that, if Alaric refused them a fair and honourable capitulation, he might sound his trumpets, and prepare to give battle to an innumerable people, exercised in arms and animated by despair. "The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed," was the concise reply of the barbarian; and this rustic metaphor was accompanied by a loud and insulting laugh, expressive of his contempt for the menaces of an unwarlike populace, enervated by luxury before they were emaciated by famine. He then condescended to fix the ransom which he would accept as the price of his retreat from the walls of Rome: all the gold and silver in the city, whether it were the property of the state, or of individuals; all the rich and precious moveables; and all the slaves who could prove their title to the name of barbarians. The ministers of the senate presumed to ask, in a modest and suppliant tone,
"If such, O king! are your demands, what do you intend to leave us?" "YOUR LIVES,"
replied the haughty conqueror: they trembled and retired. Yet before they retired, a short suspension of arms was granted, which allowed some time for a more temperate negotiation. The stern features of Alaric were insensibly relaxed; he abated much of the rigour of his terms; and at length consented to raise the siege, on the immediate payment of five thousand pounds of gold, of thirty thousand pounds of silver, of four thousand robes of silk, of three thousand pieces of fine scarlet cloth, and of three thousand pounds weight of pepper. (79) But the public treasury was exhausted; the annual rents of the great estates in Italy and the provinces were intercepted by the calamities of war; the gold and gems had been exchanged, during the famine, for the vilest sustenance; the hoards of secret wealth were still concealed by the obstinacy of avarice; and some remains of consecrated spoils afforded the only resource that could avert the impending ruin of the city. As soon as the Romans had satisfied the rapacious demands of Alaric, they were restored, in some measure, to the enjoyment of peace and plenty. Several of the gates were cautiously opened; the importation of provisions from the river and the adjacent country was no longer obstructed by the Goths; the citizens resorted in crowds to the free market which was held during three days in the suburbs; and while the merchants who undertook this gainful trade made a considerable profit, the future subsistence of the city was secured by the ample magazines which were deposited in the public and private granaries. A more regular discipline than could have been expected was maintained in the camp of Alaric; and the wise barbarian justified his regard for the faith of treaties, by the just severity with which he chastised a party of licentious Goths who had insulted some Roman citizens on the road to Ostia. His army, enriched by the contributions of the capital, slowly advanced into the fair and fruitful province of Tuscany, where he proposed to establish his winter-quarters; and the Gothic standard became the refuge of forty thousand barbarian slaves, who had broke their chains, and aspired, under the command of their great deliverer, to revenge the injuries and the disgrace of their cruel servitude. About the same time he received a more honourable reinforcement of Goths and Huns, whom Adolphus,(80) the brother of his wife, had conducted, at his pressing invitation, from the banks of the Danube to those of the Tiber, and who had cut their way, with some difficulty and loss, through the superior numbers of the Imperial troops. A victorious leader, who united the daring spirit of a barbarian with the art and discipline of a Roman general, was at the head of an hundred thousand fighting men; and Italy pronounced with terror and respect the formidable name of Alaric.(81)
Fruitless negotiations for peace, A.D. 409.
At the distance of fourteen centuries we may be satisfied
with relating the military exploits of the conquerors of
Rome, without presuming to investigate the motives of their
political conduct. In the midst of his apparent prosperity,
Alaric was conscious, perhaps, of some secret weakness, some
internal defect; or perhaps the moderation which he
displayed was intended only to deceive and disarm the easy
credulity of the ministers of Honorius. The king of the
Goths repeatedly declared that it was his desire to be
considered as the friend of peace and of the Romans. Three
senators, at his earnest request, were sent ambassadors to
the court of Ravenna, to solicit the exchange of hostages
and the conclusion of the treaty; and the proposals which he
more clearly expressed during the course of the negotiations
could only inspire a doubt of his sincerity, as they might
seem inadequate to the state of his fortune. The barbarian
still aspired to the rank of master-general of the armies of
the West; he stipulated an annual subsidy of corn and money;
and he chose the provinces of Dalmatia, Noricum, and Venetia
for the seat of his new kingdom, which would have commanded
the important communication between Italy and the Danube. If
these modest terms should be rejected, Alaric showed a
disposition to relinquish his pecuniary demands, and even to
content himself with the possession of Norieum; an exhausted
and impoverished country, perpetually exposed to the inroads
of the barbarians of Germany.(82) But the hopes of peace were
disappointed by the weak obstinacy, or interested views, of
the minister Olympius. Without listening to the salutary
remonstrances of the senate, he dismissed their ambassadors
under the conduct of a military escort, too numerous for a
retinue of honour, and too feeble for an army of defence.
Six thousand Dalmatians, the flower of the Imperial legions,
were ordered to march from Ravenna to Rome, through an open
country which was occupied by the formidable myriads of the
barbarians. These brave legionaries, encompassed and
betrayed, fell a sacrifice to ministerial folly; their
general, Valens, with an hundred soldiers, escaped from the
field of battle; and one of the ambassadors, who could no
longer claim the protection of the law of nations, was
obliged to purchase his freedom with a ransom of thirty
thousand pieces of gold. Yet Alaric, instead of resenting
this act of impotent hostility, immediately renewed his
proposals of peace, and the second embassy of the Roman
senate, which derived weight and dignity from the presence
of Innocent, bishop of the city, was guarded from the
dangers of the road by a detachment of Gothic soldiers.(83)
Change and succession of ministers.
Olympius (84) might have continued to insult the just
resentment of a people who loudly accused him as the author
of the public calamities, but his power was undermined by
the secret intrigues of the palace. The favourite eunuchs
transferred the government of Honorius and the empire to
Jovius, the Praetorian praefect—an unworthy servant, who
did not atone by the merit of personal attachment for the
errors and misfortunes of his administration. The exile, or
escape, of the guilty Olympius reserved him for more
vicissitudes of fortune: he experienced the adventures of an
obscure and wandering life; he again rose to power; he fell
a second time into disgrace; his ears were cut off—he
expired under the lash—and his ignominious death afforded
a grateful spectacle to the friends of Stilicho. After the
removal of Olympius, whose character was deeply tainted with
religious fanaticism, the Pagans and heretics were delivered
from the impolitic proscription which excluded them from the
dignities of the state. The brave Gennerid,(85) a soldier of
barbarian origin, who still adhered to the worship of his
ancestors, had been obliged to lay aside the military belt;
and though he was repeatedly assured by the emperor himself
that laws were not made for persons of his rank or merit, he
refused to accept any partial dispensation, and persevered
in honourable disgrace till he had extorted a general act of
justice from the distress of the Roman government. The
conduct of Gennerid in the important station to which he was
promoted or restored, of master-general of Dalmatia,
Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhaetia, seemed to revive the
discipline and spirit of the republic. From a life of
idleness and want his troop were soon habituated to severe
exercise and plentiful subsistence, and his private
generosity often supplied the rewards which were denied by
the avarice or poverty of the court of Ravenna. The valour
of Gennerid, formidable to the adjacent barbarians, was the
firmest bullwark of the Illyrian frontier; and his vigilant
care assisted the empire with a reinforcement of ten
thousand Huns, who arrived on the confines of Italy,
attended by such a convoy of provisions, and such a numerous
train of sheep and oxen, as might have been sufficient not
only for the march of an army but for the settlement of a
colony. But the court and councils of Honorious still
remained a scene of weakness and distraction, of corruption
and anarchy. Instigated by the praefect Jovius, the guards
rose in furious mutiny and demanded the heads of two
generals and of the two principal eunuchs. The generals,
under a perfidious promise of safety, were sent on shipboard
and privately executed; while the favour of the eunuchs
procured them a mild and secure exile at Milan and
Constantinople. Eusebius the eunuch and the barbarian
Allobich succeeded to the command of the bedchamber and of
the guards; and the mutual jealousy of the subordinate
ministers was the cause of their mutual destruction. By the
insolent order of the count of the domestics, the great
chamberlain was shamefully beaten to death with sticks
before the eyes of the astonished emperor; and the
subsequent assassination of Allobich, in the midst of a
public procession, is the only circumstance of his life in
which Honorius discovered the faintest symptom of courage or
resentment. Yet before they fell, Eusebius and Allobich had
contributed their part to the ruin of the empire by opposing
the conclusion of a treaty which Jovius, from a selfish, and
perhaps a criminal motive, had negotiated with Alaric, in a
personal interview under the walls of Rimini. During the
absence of Jovius the emperor was persuaded to assume a
lofty tone of inflexible dignity, such as neither his
situation nor his character could enable him to support; and
a letter, signed with the name of Honorius, was immediately
despatched to the Praetorian praefect, granting him a free
permission to dispose of the public money, but sternly
refusing to prostitute the military honours of Rome to the
proud demands of a barbarian This letter was imprudently
communicated to Alaric himself; and the Goth, who in the
whole transaction had behaved with temper and decency,
expressed in the most outrageous language his lively sense
of the insult so wantonly offered to his person and to his
nation. The conference of Rimini was hastily interrupted and
the praefect Jovius, on his return to Ravenna, was compelled
to adopt, and even to encourage, the fashionable opinions of
the court. By his advice and example the principal officers
of the state and army were obliged to swear that, without
listening in any circumstances to any conditions of peace,
they would still persevere in perpetual and implacable war
against the enemy of the republic. This rash engagement
opposed an insuperable bar to all future negotiation. The
ministers of Honorius were heard to declare that, if they
had only invoked the name of the Deity, they would consult
the public safety, and trust their souls to the mercy of
Heaven: but they had sworn by the sacred head of the emperor
himself; they had touched in solemn ceremony that august
seat of majesty and wisdom; and the violation of their oath
would expose them to the temporal penalties of sacrilege and
rebellion.(86)
Second siege of Rome by the Goths, A.D. 409.
While the emperor and his court enjoyed with sullen pride
the security of the marshes and fortifications of Ravenna,
they abandoned Rome, almost without defence, to the
resentment of Alaric. Yet such was the moderation which he
still preserved, or affected, that as he moved with his army
along the Flaminian way he successively despatched the
bishops of the towns of Italy to reiterate his offers of
peace, and to conjure the emperor that he would save the
city and its inhabitants from hostile fire and the sword of
the barbarians.(87) These impending calamities were however
averted, not indeed by the wisdom of Honorius, but by the
prudence or humanity of the Gothic king, who employed a
milder, though not less effectual, method of conquest.
Instead of assaulting the capital he successfully directed
his efforts against the Port of Ostia, one of the boldest
and most stupendous works of Roman magnificence. (88) The accidents to which the precarious subsistence of the city
was continually exposed in a winter navigation and an open
road had suggested to the genius of the first Caesar the
useful design which was executed under the reign of
Claudius. The artificial moles which formed the narrow
entrance advanced far into the sea, and firmly repelled the
fury of the waves, while the largest vessels securely rode
at anchor within three deep and capacious basins which
received the northern branch of the Tiber about two miles
from the ancient colony of Ostia. (89) The Roman Port insensibly swelled to the size of an episcopal city,(90)
where the corn of Africa was deposited in spacious granaries
for the use of the capital. As soon as Alaric was in
possession of that important place he summoned the city to
surrender at discretion and his demands were enforced by the
positive declaration that a refusal, or even a delay, should
be instantly followed by the destruction of the magazines on
which the life of the Roman people depended. The clamours of
that people and the terror of famine subdued the pride of
the senate; they listened without reluctance to the proposal
of placing a new emperor on the throne of the unworthy
Honorius; and the suffrage of the Gothic conqueror bestowed
the purple on Attalus, praefect of the city. The grateful
monarch immediately acknowledged his protector as
master-general of the armies of the West; Adolphus, with the
rank of count of the domestics, obtained the custody of the
person of Attalus; and the two hostile nations seemed to be
united in the closest bands of friendship and alliance.(91)
Attalus is created emperor by the Goths and the Romans.
The gates of the city were thrown open, and the new emperor
of the Romans, encompassed on every side by the Gothic arms,
was conducted in tumultuous procession to the palace of
Augustus and Trajan. After he had distributed the civil and
military dignities among his favourites and followers,
Attalus convened an assembly of the senate, before whom, in
a formal and florid speech, he asserted his resolution of
restoring the majesty of the republic, and of uniting to the
empire the provinces of Egypt and the East which had once
acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome. Such extravagant
promises inspired every reasonable citizen with a just
contempt for the character of an unwarlike usurper, whose
elevation was the deepest and most ignominious wound which
the republic had yet sustained from the insolence of the
barbarians. But the populace, with their usual levity,
applauded the change of masters. The public discontent was
favourable to the rival of Honorius; and the sectaries,
oppressed by his persecuting edicts, expected some degree of
countenance, or at least of toleration, from a prince who,
in his native country of Ionia, had been educated in the
Pagan superstition, and who had since received the sacrament
of baptism from the hands of an Arian bishop.(92) The first
days of the reign of Attalus were fair and prosperous. An
officer of confidence was sent with an inconsiderable body
of troops to secure the obedience of Africa; the greatest
part of Italy submitted to the terror of the Gothic powers;
and though the city of Bologna made a vigorous and effectual
resistance, the people of Milan, dissatisfied perhaps with
the absence of Honorius, accepted with loud acclamations the
choice of the Roman senate. At the head of a formidable
army, Alaric conducted his royal captive almost to the gates
of Ravenna; and a solemn embassy of the principal ministers
—of Jovius the Praetorian praefect, of Valens, master of
the cavalry and infantry, of the quaestor Potamius, and of
Julian, the first of the notaries was introduced with
martial pomp into the Gothic camp. In the name of their
sovereign they consented to acknowledge the lawful election
of his competitor, and to divide the provinces of Italy and
the West between the two emperors. Their proposals were
rejected with disdain; and the refusal was aggravated by the
insulting clemency of Attalus, who condescended to promise
that if Honorius would instantly resign the purple he should
be permitted to pass the remainder of his life in the
peaceful exile of some remote island.(93) So desperate indeed
did the situation of the son of Theodosius appear to those
who were the best acquainted with his strength and
resources, that Jovius and Valens, his minister and his
general, betrayed their trust, infamously deserted the
sinking cause of their benefactor, and devoted their
treacherous allegiance to the service of his more fortunate
rival. Astonished by such examples of domestic treason,
Honorius trembled at the approach of every servant, at the
arrival of every messenger. He dreaded the secret enemies
who might lurk in his capital, his palace, his bedchamber;
and some ships lay ready in the harbour of Ravenna to
transport the abdicated monarch to the dominions of his
infant nephew, the emperor of the East.
He is degraded by Alaric, A.D. 410.
But there is a Providence (such at least was the opinion of
the historian Procopius (94) ) that watches over innocence and
folly, and the pretensions of Honorius to its peculiar care
cannot reasonably be disputed. At the moment when his
despair, incapable of any wise or manly resolution,
meditated a shameful flight, a seasonable reinforcement of
four thousand veterans unexpectedly landed in the port of
Ravenna. To these valiant strangers, whose fidelity had not
been corrupted by the factions of the court, he committed
the walls and gates of the city, and the slumbers of the
emperor were no longer disturbed by the apprehension of
imminent and internal danger. The favourable intelligence
which was received from Africa suddenly changed the opinions
of men and the state of public affairs. The troops and
officers whom Attalus had sent into that province were
defeated and slain, and the active zeal of Heraclian
maintained his own allegiance and that of his people. The
faithful count of Africa transmitted a large sum of money,
which fixed the attachment of the Imperial guards and his
vigilance in preventing the exportation of corn and oil
introduced famine, tumult and discontent into the walls of
Rome. The failure of the African expedition was the source
of mutual complaint and recrimination in the party of
Attalus, and the mind of his protector was insensibly
alienated from the interest of a prince who wanted spirit to
command or docility to obey. The most imprudent measures
were adopted, without the knowledge or against the advice of
Alaric, and the obstinate refusal of the senate to allow in
the embarkation the mixture even of five hundred Goths,
betrayed a suspicious and distrustful temper which in their
situation was neither generous nor prudent. The resentment
of the Gothic king was exasperated by the malicious arts of
Jovius, who had been raised to the rank of patrician, and
who afterwards excused his double perfidy by declaring
without a blush that he had only seemed to abandon the
service of Honorius more effectually to ruin the cause of
the usurper. In a large plain near Rimini, and in the
presence of an innumerable multitude of Romans and
barbarians, the wretched Attalus was publicly despoiled of
the diadem and purple; and those ensigns of royalty were
sent by Alaric as the pledge of peace and friendship to the
son of Theodosius. (95) The officers who returned to their
duty were reinstated in their employments, and even the
merit of a tardy repentance was graciously allowed, but the
degraded emperor of the Romans, desirous of life and
insensible of disgrace, implored the permission of following
the Gothic camp in the train of a haughty and capricious
barbarian.(96)
Third siege and sack of Rome by the Goths, A.D. 410, August 24.
The degradation of Attalus removed the only real obstacle to
the conclusion of the peace, and Alaric advanced within
three miles of Ravenna to press the irresolution of the
Imperial ministers, whose insolence soon returned with the
return of fortune. His indignation was kindled by the report
that a rival chieftain, that Sarus, the personal enemy of
Adolphus, and the hereditary foe of the house of Balti, had
been received into the palace. At the head of three hundred
followers that fearless barbarian immediately sallied from
the gates of Ravenna, surprised and cut in pieces a
considerable body of Goths, re-entered the city in triumph,
and was permitted to insult his adversary by the voice of a
herald, who publicly declared that the guilt of Alaric had
for ever excluded him from the friendship and alliance of
the emperor.(97) The crime and folly of the court of Ravenna
was expiated a third time by the calamities of Rome. The
king of the Goths, who no longer dissembled his appetite for
plunder and revenge, appeared in arms under the walls of the
capital; and the trembling senate, without any hopes of
relief, prepared by a desperate resistance to delay the ruin
of their country. But they were unable to guard against the
secret conspiracy of their slaves and domestics, who either
from birth or interest were attached to the cause of the
enemy. At the hour of midnight the Salarian gate was
silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the
tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and
sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial
city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable a part
of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the
tribes of Germany and Scythia.(98)
Respect of the Goths for the Christian religion
The proclamation of Alaric, when he forced his entrance into
a vanquished city, discovered, however, some regard for the
laws of humanity and religion. He encouraged his troops
boldly to seize the rewards of valour, and to enrich
themselves with the spoils of a wealthy and effeminate
people; but he exhorted them at the same time to spare the
lives of the unresisting citizens, and to respect the
churches of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul as holy and
inviolable sanctuaries. Amidst the horrors of a nocturnal
tumult several of the Christian Goths displayed the fervour
of a recent conversion; and some instances of their uncommon
piety and moderation are related, and perhaps adorned, by
the zeal of ecclesiastical writers.(99) While the barbarians
roamed through the city in quest of prey, the humble
dwelling of an aged virgin, who had devoted her life to the
service of the altar, was forced open by one of the powerful
Goths. He immediately demanded, though in civil language,
all the gold and silver in her possession, and was
astonished at the readiness with which she conducted him to
a splendid hoard of massy plate of the richest materials and
the most curious workmanship. The barbarian viewed with wonder and delight this valuable
acquisition, till he was interrupted by a serious
admonition, addressed to him in the following words:
"These," said she, "are the consecrated vessels belonging to St. Peter: if you presume to touch them, the sacrilegious deed will remain on your conscience. For my part, I dare not keep what I am unable to defend."
The Gothic captain, struck with reverential awe, despatched a messenger to inform the king of the treasure which he had discovered, and received a peremptory order from Alaric, that all the consecrated plate and ornaments should be transported, without damage or delay, to the church of the apostle. From the extremity, perhaps, of the Quirinal hill to the distant quarter of the Vatican, a numerous detachment of Goths, marching in order of battle through the principal streets, protected with glittering arms the long train of their devout companions who bore aloft on their heads the sacred vessels of gold and silver, and the martial shouts of the barbarians were mingled with the sound of religious psalmody. From all the adjacent houses a crowd of Christians hastened to join this edifying procession, and a multitude of fugitives, without distinction of age or rank, or even of sect, had the good fortune to escape to the secure and hospitable sanctuary of the Vatican. The learned work concerning the City of God was professedly composed by St. Augustin, to justify the ways of Providence in the destruction of the Roman greatness. He celebrates with peculiar satisfaction this memorable triumph of Christ, and insults his adversaries by challenging them to produce some similar example of a town taken by storm, in which the fabulous gods of antiquity had been able to protect either themselves or their deluded votaries.(100)
Pillage and fire of Rome
In the sack of Rome some rare and extraordinary examples of
barbarian virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the
holy precincts of the Vatican and the apostolic churches
could receive a very small proportion of the Roman people:
many thousand warriors, more especially of the Huns who
served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers to the
name, or at least to the faith, of Christ, and we may
suspect, without any breach of charity or candour, that in
the hour of savage licence, when every passion was inflamed
and every restraint was removed, the precepts of the Gospel
seldom influenced the behaviour of the Gothic Christians.
The writers the best disposed to exaggerate their clemency
have freely confessed that a cruel slaughter was made of the
Romans,(101) and that the streets of the city were filled
with dead bodies, which remained without burial during the
general consternation. The despair of the citizens was
sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the barbarians
were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous
massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless. The
private revenge of forty thousand slaves was exercised
without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes which
they had formerly received were washed away in the blood of
the guilty or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of
Rome were exposed to injuries more dreadful, in the
apprehension of chastity, than death itself; and the
ecclesiastical historian has selected an example of female
virtue for the admiration of future ages.(102) A Roman lady,
of singular beauty and orthodox faith, had excited the
impatient desires of a young Goth, who, according to the
sagacious remark of Sozomen, was attached to the Arian
heresy. Exasperated by her obstinate resistance, he drew his
sword, and, with the anger of a lover, slightly wounded her
neck. The bleeding heroine still continued to brave his
resentment and to repel his love, till the ravisher desisted
from his unavailing efforts, respectfully conducted her to
the sanctuary of the Vatican, and gave six pieces of gold to
the guards of the church on condition that they should
restore her inviolate to the arms of her husband. Such
instances of courage and generosity were not extremely
common. The brutal soldiers satisfied their sensual
appetites without consulting either the inclination or the
duties of their female captives; and a nice question of
casuistry was seriously agitated, whether those tender
victims, who had inflexibly refused their consent to the
violation which they sustained, had lost, by their
misfortune, the glorious crown of virginity.(103) There were
other losses indeed of a more substantial kind and more
general concern. It cannot be presumed that all the
barbarians were at all times capable of perpetrating such
amorous outrages; and the want of youth, or beauty, or
chastity, protected the greatest part of the Roman women
from the danger of a rape. But avarice is an insatiate and
universal passion; since the enjoyment of almost every
object that can afford pleasure to the different tastes and
tempers of mankind may be procured by the possession of
wealth. In the pillage of Rome a just preference was given
to gold and jewels, which contain the greatest value in the
smallest compass and weight, but, after these portable
riches had been removed by the more diligent robbers, the
palaces of Rome were rudely stripped of their splendid and
costly furniture. The sideboards of massy plate, and the
variegated wardrobes of silk and purple, were irregularly
piled in the waggons that always followed the march of a
Gothic army. The most exquisite works of art were roughly
handled or wantonly destroyed: many a statue was melted for
the sake of the precious materials and many a vase, in the
division of the spoil, was shivered into fragments by the
stroke of a battleaxe. The acquisition of riches served only
to stimulate the avarice of the rapacious barbarians, who
proceeded by threats, by blows, and by tortures, to force
from their prisoners the confession of hidden treasure.(104)
Visible splendour and expense were alleged as the proof of a
plentiful fortune; the appearance of poverty was imputed to
a parsimonious disposition; and the obstinacy of some
misers, who endured the most cruel torments before they
would discover the secret object of their affection, was
fatal to many unhappy wretches, who expired under the lash
for refusing to reveal their imaginary treasures. The
edifices of Rome, though the damage has been much
exaggerated, received some injury from the violence of the
Goths. At their entrance through the Salarian gate they
fired the adjacent houses to guide their march and to
distract the attention of the citizens; the flames, which
encountered no obstacle in the disorder of the night,
consumed many private and public buildings, and the ruins of
the palace of Sallust(105) remained in the age of Justinian a
stately monument of the Gothic conflagration. (106) Yet a
contemporary historian has observed that fire could scarcely
consume the enormous beams of solid brass, and that the
strength of man was insufficient to subvert the foundations
of ancient structures. Some truth may possibly be concealed
in his devout assertion, that the wrath of Heaven supplied
the imperfections of hostile rage, and that the proud Forum
of Rome, decorated with the statues of so many gods and
heroes, was levelled in the dust by the stroke of lightning.
(107)
Captives and fugitives
Whatever might be the numbers of equestrian or plebeian rank
who perished in the massacre of Rome, it is confidently
affirmed that only one senator lost his life by the sword of
the enemy.(108) But it was not easy to compute the multitudes
who, from an honourable station and a prosperous fortune,
were suddenly reduced to the miserable condition of captives
and exiles. As the barbarians had more occasion for money
than for slaves, they fixed at a moderate price the
redemption of their indigent prisoners; and the ransom was
often paid by the benevolence of their friends, or the
charity of strangers. (109) The captives, who were regularly
sold, either in open market or by private contract, would
have legally regained their native freedom, which it was
impossible for a citizen to lose or to alienate.(110) But as
it was soon discovered that the vindication of their liberty
would endanger their lives, and that the Goths, unless they
were tempted to sell, might be provoked to murder their
useless prisoners, the civil jurisprudence had been already
qualified by a wise regulation, that they should be obliged
to serve the moderate term of five years, till they had
discharged by their labour the price of their redemption.
(111) The nations who invaded the Roman empire had driven
before them, into Italy, whole troops of hungry and
affrighted provincials, less apprehensive of servitude than
of famine. The calamities of Rome and Italy dispersed the
inhabitants to the most lonely, the most secure, the most
distant places of refuge. While the Gothic cavalry spread
terror and desolation along the sea-coast of Campania and
Tuscany, the little island of Igilium, separated by a narrow
channel from the Argentarian promontory, repulsed, or
eluded, their hostile attempts; and at so small a distance
from Rome, great numbers of citizens were securely concealed
in the thick woods of that sequestered spot.(112) The ample
patrimonies which many senatorian families possessed in
Africa invited them, if they had time and prudence to escape
from the ruin of their country, to embrace the shelter of
that hospitable province. The most illustrious of these
fugitives was the noble and pious Proba,(113) the widow of
the praefect Petronius. After the death of her husband, the
most powerful subject of Rome, she had remained at the head
of the Anician family, and successively supplied, from her
private fortune, the expense of the consulships of her three
sons. When the city was besieged and taken by the Goths,
Proba supported with Christian resignation the loss of
immense riches embarked in a small vessel from whence she
beheld, at sea, the flames of her burning palace; and fled
with her daughter Laeta, and her grand-daughter, the
celebrated virgin Demetrias, to the coast of Africa. The
benevolent profusion with which the matron distributed the
fruits or the price of her estates contributed to alleviate
the misfortunes of exile and captivity. But even the family
of Proba herself was not exempt from the rapacious
oppression of Count Heraclian, who basely sold, in
matrimonial prostitution the noblest maidens of Rome to the
lust or avarice of the Syrian merchants. The Italian
fugitives were dispersed through the provinces, along the
coast of Egypt and Asia, as far as Constantinople and
Jerusalem; and the village of Bethlehem, the solitary
residence of St. Jerom and his female converts, was crowned
with illustrious beggars, of either sex and every age, who
excited the public compassion by the remembrance of their
past fortune.(114) This awful catastrophe of Rome filled the
astonished empire with grief and terror. So interesting a
contrast of greatness and ruin disposed the fond credulity
of the people to deplore, and even to exaggerate, the
afflictions of the queen of cities. The clergy, who applied
to recent events the lofty metaphors of Oriental prophecy,
were sometimes tempted to confound the destruction of the
capital and the dissolution of the globe.
Sack of Rome by troops of Charles V
There exists in human nature a strong propensity to
depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the
present times. Yet, when the first emotions had subsided,
and a fair estimate was made of the real damage, the more
learned and judicious contemporaries were forced to confess
that infant Rome had formerly received more essential injury
from the Gauls than she had now sustained from the Goths in
her declining age. (115) The experience of eleven centuries
has enabled posterity to produce a much more singular
parallel; and to affirm with confidence, that the ravages of
the barbarians whom Alaric had led from the banks of the
Danube were less destructive than the hostilities exercised
by the troops of Charles the Fifth, a catholic prince, who
styled himself Emperor of the Romans. (116) The Goths
evacuated the city at the end of six days, but Rome remained
above nine months in the possession of the Imperialists; and
every hour was stained by some atrocious act of cruelty,
lust, and rapine. The authority of Alaric preserved some
order and moderation among the ferocious multitude which
acknowledged him for their leader and king; but the
constable of Bourbon had gloriously fallen in the attack of
the walls; and the death of the general removed every
restraint of discipline from an army which consisted of
three independent nations, the Italians, the Spaniards, and
the Germans. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the
manners of Italy exhibited a remarkable scene of the
depravity of mankind. They united the sanguinary crimes that
prevail in an unsettled state of society, with the polished
vices which spring from the abuse of art and luxury; and the
loose adventurers, who had violated every prejudice of
patriotism and superstition to assault the palace of the
Roman pontiff, must deserve to be considered as the most
profligate of the Italians. At the same era the Spaniards
were the terror both of the Old and New World; but their
high-spirited valour was disgraced by gloomy pride,
rapacious avarice, and unrelenting cruelty. Indefatigable in
the pursuit of fame and riches, they had improved, by
repeated practice, the most exquisite and effectual methods
of torturing their prisoners: many of the Castilians who
pillaged Rome were familiars of the holy inquisition; and
some volunteers, perhaps, were lately returned from the
conquest of Mexico. The Germans were less corrupt than the
Italians, less cruel than the Spaniards; and the rustic, or
even savage aspect of those Tramontane warriors often
disguised a simple and merciful disposition. But they had
imbibed, in the first fervour of the Reformation, the
spirit, as well as the principles, of Luther. It was their
favourite amusement to insult, or destroy, the consecrated
objects of catholic superstition; they indulged, without
pity or remorse, a devout hatred against the clergy of every
denomination and degree who form so considerable a part of
the inhabitants of modern Rome; and their fanatic zeal might
aspire to subvert the throne of Antichrist, to purify, with
blood and fire, the abominations of the spiritual Babylon.
(117)
Alaric evacuates Rome, and ravages Italy, A.D. 410, August 29.
The retreat of the victorious Goths, who evacuated Rome on
the sixth day, (118) might be the result of prudence, but it
was not surely the effect of fear.(119) At the head of an
army encumbered with rich and weighty spoils, their intrepid
leader advanced along the Appian Way into the southern
provinces of Italy, destroying whatever dared to oppose his
passage, and contenting himself with the plunder of the
unresisting country. The fate of Capua, the proud and
luxurious metropolis of Campania, and which was respected,
even in its decay, as the eighth city of the empire,(120) is
buried in oblivion; whilst the adjacent town of Nola(121) has
been illustrated, on this occasion, by the sanctity of
Paulinus,(122) who was successively a consul, a monk, and a
bishop. At the age of forty he renounced the enjoyment of
wealth and honour, of society and literature, to embrace a
life of solitude and penance; and the loud applause of the
clergy encouraged him to despise the reproaches of his
worldly friends, who ascribed this desperate act to some
disorder of the mind or body.(123) An early and passionate
attachment determined him to fix his humble dwelling in one
of the suburbs of Nola, near the miraculous tomb of St.
Felix, which the public devotion had already surrounded with
five large and populous churches. The remains of his
fortune, and of his understanding, were dedicated to the
service of the glorious martyr; whose praise, on the day of
his festival, Paulinus never failed to celebrate by a solemn
hymn; and in whose name he erected a sixth church, of
superior elegance and beauty, which was decorated with many
curious pictures from the history of the Old and New
Testament. Such assiduous zeal secured the favour of the
saint,(124) or at least of the people; and, after fifteen
years' retirement the Roman consul was compelled to accept
the bishopric of Nola, a few months before the city was
invested by the Goths. During the siege, some religious
persons were satisfied that they had seen, either in dreams
or visions, the divine form of their tutelar patron, yet it
soon appeared by the event, that Felix wanted power, or
inclination, to preserve the flock of which he had formerly
been the shepherd. Nola was not saved from the general
devastation;(125) and the captive bishop was protected only
by the general opinion of his innocence and poverty.Possesion of Italy by the Goths, A.D. 408-412. Above
four years elapsed from the successful invasion of Italy by
the arms of Alaric, to the voluntary retreat of the Goths
under the conduct of his successor Adolphus; and, during the
whole time, they reigned without control over a country
which, in the opinion of the ancients, had united all the
various excellences of nature and art. The prosperity,
indeed, which Italy had attained in the auspicious age of
the Antonines, had gradually declined with the decline of
the empire. The fruits of a long peace perished under the
rude grasp of the barbarians; and they themselves were
incapable of tasting the more elegant refinements of luxury
which had been prepared for the use of the soft and polished
Italians. Each soldier, however, claimed an ample portion of
the substantial plenty, the corn and cattle, oil and wine,
that was daily collected and consumed, in the Gothic camp;
and the principal warriors insulted the villas and gardens,
once inhabited by Lucullus and Cicero, along the beauteous
coast of Campania. Their trembling captives, the sons and
daughters of Roman senators, presented, in goblets of gold
and gems, large draughts of Falernian wine to the haughty
victors, who stretched their huge limbs under the shade of
plane-trees, (126) artificially disposed to exclude the
scorching rays, and to admit the genial warmth, of the sun.
These delights were enhanced by the memory of past
hardships: the comparison of their native soil, the bleak
and barren hills of Scythia, and the frozen banks of the
Elbe and Danube, added new charms to the felicity of the
Italian climate.(127)
Death of Alaric, A.D. 410
Whether fame, or conquest, or riches were the object of
Alaric, he pursued that object with an indefatigable ardour
which could neither be quelled by adversity nor satiated by
success. No sooner had he reached the extreme land of Italy
than he was attracted by the neighbouring prospect of a
fertile and peaceful island. Yet even the possession of
Sicily he considered only an intermediate step to the
important expedition which he already meditated against the
continent of Africa. The straits of Rhegium and Messina(128)
are twelve miles in length, and in the narrowest passage
about one mile and a half broad; and the fabulous monsters
of the deep, the rocks of Scylla and the whirlpool of
Charybdis, could terrify none but the most timid and
unskilled mariners. Yet as soon as the first division of the
Goths had embarked, a sudden tempest arose, which sunk or
scattered many of the transports; their courage was daunted
by the terrors of a new element; and the whole design was
defeated by the premature death of Alaric, which fixed,
after a short illness, the fatal term of his conquests. The
ferocious character of the barbarians was displayed in the
funeral of a hero whose valour and fortune they celebrated
with mournful applause. By the labour of a captive multitude
they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus, a small
river that washes the walls of Consentia. The royal
sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of
Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed; the waters were
then restored to their natural channel; and the secret spot
where the remains of Alaric had been deposited was for ever
concealed by the inhuman massacre of the prisoners who had
been employed to execute the work.(129)
Adolphus, king of the Goths concludes a peace with the empire, and marches into Gaul, A.D. 412
The personal animosities and hereditary feuds of the
barbarians were suspended by the strong necessity of their
affairs; and the brave Adolphus, the brother-in-law of the
deceased monarchy was unanimously elected to succeed to his
throne. The character and political system of the new king
of the Goths may be best understood from his own
conversation with an illustrious citizen of Narbonne, who
afterwards, in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, related it to
St Jerom, in the presence of the historian Orosius.
"In the full confidence of valour and victory, I once aspired (said Adolphus) to change the face of the universe; to obliterate the name of Rome; to erect on its ruins the dominion of the Goths; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal fame of the founder of a new empire. By repeated experiments I was gradually convinced that laws are essentially necessary to maintain and regulate a well constituted state; and that the fierce untractable humour of the Goths was incapable of bearing the salutary yoke of laws and civil government. From that moment I proposed to myself a different object of glory and ambition; and it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger, who employed the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore and maintain, the prosperity of the Roman empire." (130)
With these pacific views the successor of Alaric suspended the operations of war, and seriously negotiated with the Imperial court a treaty of friendship and alliance. It was the interest of the ministers of Honorius, who were now released from the obligation of their extravagant oath, to deliver Italy from the intolerable weight of the Gothic powers; and they readily accepted their service against the tyrants and barbarians who infested the provinces beyond the Alps. (131) Adolphus, assuming the character of a Roman General, directed his march from the extremity of Campania to the southern provinces of Gaul. His troops, either by force or agreement, immediately occupied the cities of Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux; and though they were repulsed by Count Boniface from the walls of Marseilles, they soon extended their quarters from the Mediterranean to the ocean. The oppressed provincials might exclaim that the miserable remnant which the enemy had spared was cruelly ravished by their pretended allies; yet some specious colours were not wanting to palliate or justify the violence of the Goths. The cities of Gaul which they attacked might perhaps be considered as in a state of rebellion against the government of Honorius: the articles of the treaty or the secret instructions of the court might sometimes be alleged in favour of the seeming usurpations of Adolphus; and the guilt of any irregular unsuccessful act of hostility might always be imputed, with an appearance of truth, to the ungovernable spirit of a barbarian host impatient of peace or discipline. The luxury of Italy had been less effectual to soften the temper than to relax the courage of the Goths; and they had imbibed the vices, without imitating the arts and institutions, of civilised society.(132)
His marriage with Placidia, A.D. 414
The professions of Adolphus were probably sincere, and his
attachment to the cause of the republic was secured by the
ascendant which a Roman princess had acquired over the heart
and understanding of the barbarian king. Placidia,(133) the
daughter of the great Theodosius, and of Galla, his second
wife, had received a royal education in the palace of
Constantinople; but the eventful story of her life is
connected with the revolutions which agitated the Western
empire under the reign of her brother Honorius. When Rome
was first invested by the arms of Alaric, Placidia, who was
then about twenty years of age, resided in the city; and her
ready consent of the death of her cousin Serena has a cruel
and ungrateful appearance, which, according to the
circumstances of the action, may be aggravated or excused by
the consideration of her tender age. (134) The victorious
barbarians detained, either as a hostage or a captive,(135)
the sister of Honorius; but while she was exposed to the
disgrace of following round Italy the motions of a Gothic
camp, she experienced, however, a decent and respectful
treatment. The authority of Jornandes, who praises the
beauty of Placidia, may perhaps be counterbalanced by the
silence, the expressive silence, of her flatterers: yet the
splendour of her birth, the bloom of youth, the elegance of
manners, and the dexterous insinuations which she
condescended to employ, made a deep impression on the mind
of Adolphus; and the Gothic king aspired to call himself the
brother of the emperor. The ministers of Honorius rejected
with disdain the proposal of an alliance so injurious to
every sentiment of Roman pride; and repeatedly urged the
restitution of Placidia as an indispensable condition of the
treaty of peace. But the daughter of Theodosius submitted
without reluctance to the desires of the conqueror, a young
and valiant prince, who yielded to Alaric in loftiness of
stature, but who excelled in the more attractive qualities
of grace and beauty. The marriage of Adolphus and Placidia
(136) was consummated before the Goths retired from Italy; and
the solemn, perhaps the anniversary, day of their nuptials
was afterwards celebrated in the house of Ingenuus, one of
the most illustrious citizens of Narbonne in Gaul. The
bride, attired and adorned like a Roman empress, was placed
on a throne of state; and the king of the Goths, who assumed
on this occasion the Roman habit, contented himself with a
less honourable seat by her side. The nuptial gift, which,
according to the custom of his nation,(137) was offered to
Placidia, consisted of the rare and magnificent spoils of
her country. Fifty beautiful youths, in silken robes,
carried a basin in each hand; and one of these basins was
filled with pieces of gold, the other with precious stones
of an inestimable value. Attalus, so long the sport of
fortune and of the Goths, was appointed to lead the chorus
of the Hymeneal song; and the degraded emperor might aspire
to the praise of a skilful musician. The barbarians enjoyed
the insolence of their triumph; and the provincials rejoiced
in this alliance, which tempered, by the mild influence of
love and reason, the fierce spirit of their Gothic lord.(138)
The Gothic treasures
The hundred basins of gold and gems presented to Placidia at
her nuptial feast formed an inconsiderable portion of the
Gothic treasures; of which some extraordinary specimens may
be selected from the history of the successors of Adolphus.
Many curious and costly ornaments of pure gold, enriched
with jewels, were found in their palace of Narbonne when it
was pillaged in the sixth century by the Franks: sixty cups
or chalices; fifteen patens, or plates, for the use of the
communion; twenty boxes, or cases, to hold the books of the
gospels: this consecrated wealth(139) was distributed by the
son of Clovis among the churches of his dominions, and his
pious liberality seems to upbraid some former sacrilege of
the Goths. They possessed, with more security of conscience,
the famous missorium, or great dish for the service of the
table, of massy gold, of the weight of five hundred pounds,
and of far superior value, from the precious stones, the
exquisite workmanship, and the tradition that it had been
presented by Aetius, the patrician, to Torismond, king of
the Goths. One of the successors of Torismond purchased the
aid of the French monarch by the promise of this magnificent
gift. When he was seated on the throne of Spain, he
delivered it with reluctance to the ambassadors of Dagobert;
despoiled them on the road; stipulated, after a long
negotiation, the inadequate ransom of two hundred thousand
pieces of gold; and preserved the missorium as the pride of
the Gothic treasury. (140) When that treasury, after the
conquest of Spain, was plundered by the Arabs, they admired
and they have celebrated another object still more
remarkable; a table of considerable size, of one single
piece of solid emerald, (141) encircled with three rows of
fine pearls, supported by three hundred and sixty-five feet
of gems and massy gold, and estimated at the price of five
hundred thousand pieces of gold. (142) Some portion of the
Gothic treasures .might be the gift of friendship or the
tribute of obedience; but the far greater part had been the
fruits of war and rapine, the spoils of the empire, and
perhaps of Rome.
Laws for the relief of Italy and Rome, A.D. 410-417
After the deliverance of Italy from the oppression of the
Goths, some secret counsellor was permitted, amidst the
factions of the palace, to heal the wounds of that afflicted
country.(143) By a wise and humane regulation the eight
provinces which had been the most deeply injured—Campania,
Tuscany, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia, Calabria, Bruttium, and
Lucania—obtained an indulgence of five years; the ordinary
tribute was reduced to one-fifth, and even that fifth was
destined to restore and support the useful institution of
the public posts. By another law the lands which had been
left without inhabitants or cultivation were granted, with
some diminution of taxes, to the neighbours who should
occupy or the strangers who should solicit them; and the new
possessors were secured against the future claims of the
fugitive proprietors. About the same time a general amnesty
was published in the name of Honorius, to abolish the guilt
and memory of all the involuntary offences which had been
committed by his unhappy subjects during the term of the
public disorder and calamity. A decent and respectful
attention was paid to the restoration of the capital; the
citizens were encouraged to rebuild the edifices which had
been destroyed or damaged by hostile fire; and extraordinary
supplies of corn were imported from the coast of Africa. The
crowds that so lately fled before the sword of the
barbarians were soon recalled by the hopes of plenty and
pleasure and Albinus, praefect of Rome, informed the court,
with some anxiety and surprise, that in a single day he had
taken an account of the arrival of fourteen thousand
strangers.(144) In less than seven years the vestiges of the
Gothic invasion were almost obliterated, and the city
appeared to resume its former splendour and tranquillity.
The venerable matron replaced her crown of laurel, which had
been ruffled by the storms of war, and was still amused in
the last moment of her decay with the prophecies of revenge,
of victory, and of eternal dominion.(145)
Revolt and defeat of Heraclian, count of Africa, A.D. 413
This apparent tranquillity was soon disturbed by the
approach of an hostile armament from the country which
afforded the daily subsistence of the Roman people.
Heraclian, count, of Africa, who under the most difficult
and distressful circumstances had supported with active
loyalty the cause of Honorius, was tempted in the year of
his consulship to assume the character of a rebel and the
title of emperor. The ports of Africa were immediately
filled with the naval forces, at the head of which he
prepared to invade Italy; and his fleet, when it cast anchor
at the mouth of the Tiber, indeed surpassed the fleets of
Xerxes and Alexander, if all the vessels, including the
royal galley and the smallest boat, did actually amount to
the incredible number of three thousand two hundred.(146) Yet
with such an armament, which might have subverted or
restored the greatest empires of the earth, the African
usurper made a very faint and feeble impression on the
provinces of his rival. As he marched from the port along
the road which leads to the gates of Rome, he was
encountered, terrified, and routed by one of the Imperial
captains; and the lord of this mighty host, deserting his
fortune and his friends, ignominiously fled with a single
ship.(147) When Heraclian landed in the harbour of Carthage,
he found that the whole province, disdaining such an
unworthy ruler, had returned to their allegiance. The rebel
was beheaded in the ancient temple of Memory, his consulship
was abolished,(148) and the remains of his private fortune,
not exceeding the moderate sum of four thousand pounds of
gold, were granted to the brave Constantius, who had already
defended the throne which he afterwards shared with his
feeble sovereign. Honorius viewed with supine indifference
the calamities of Rome and Italy, (149) but the rebellious
attempts of Attalus and Heraclian against his personal
safety awakened for a moment the torpid instinct of his
nature. He was probably ignorant of the causes and events
which preserved him from these impending dangers; and as
Italy was no longer invaded by any foreign or domestic
enemies, he peaceably existed in the palace of Ravenna,
while the tyrants beyond the Alps were repeatedly vanquished
in the name and by the lieutenants of the son of Theodosius.
(150) In the course of a busy and interesting narrative I
might possibly forget to mention the death of such a prince,
and I shall therefore take the precaution of observing in
this place that he survived the last siege of Rome about
thirteen years.
Revolutions of Gaul and Spain, A.D. 409-413
The usurpation of Constantine, who received the purple from
the legions of Britain, had been successful, and seemed to
be secure. His title was acknowledged from the wall of
Antoninus , to the Columns of Hercules, and, in the midst of
the public disorder, he shared the dominion and the plunder
of Gaul and Spain with the tribes of barbarians whose
destructive progress was no longer checked by the Rhine or
Pyrenees. Stained with the blood of the kinsmen of Honorius,
he extorted from the court of Ravenna, with which he
secretly corresponded, the ratification of his rebellious
claims. Constantine engaged himself by a solemn promise to
deliver Italy from the Goths, advanced as far as the banks
of the Po, and, after alarming rather than assisting his
pusillanimous ally, hastily returned to the palace of Arles,
to celebrate with intemperate luxury his vain and
ostentatious triumph. But this transient prosperity was soon
interrupted and destroyed by the revolt of Count Gerontius,
the bravest of his generals, who, during the absence of his
son Constans, a prince already invested with the Imperial
purple, had been left to command in the provinces of Spain.
For some reason of which we are ignorant, Gerontius, instead
of assuming the diadem, placed it on the head of his friend
Maximus, who fixed his residence at Tarragona, while the
active count pressed forwards through the Pyrenees to
surprise the two emperors Constantine and Constans before
they could prepare for their defence. The son was made
prisoner at Vienne, and immediately put to death and the
unfortunate youth had scarcely leisure to deplore the
elevation of his family, which had tempted or compelled him
sacrilegiously to desert the peaceful obscurity of the
monastic life. The father maintained a siege within the
walls of Arles; but those walls must have yielded to the
assailants had not the city been unexpectedly relieved by
the approach of an Italian army. The name of Honorius, the
proclamation of a lawful emperor, astonished the contending
parties of the rebels. Gerontius, abandoned by his own
troops, escaped to the confines of Spain, and rescued his
name from oblivion by the Roman courage which appeared to
animate the last moments of his life. In the middle of the
night a great body of his perfidious soldiers surrounded and
attacked his house, which he had strongly barricaded. His
wife, a valiant friend of the nation of the Alani, and some
faithful slaves, were still attached to his person; and he
used with so much skill and resolution a large magazine of
darts and arrows, that above three hundred of the assailants
lost their lives in the attempt. His slaves, when all the
missile weapons were spent, fled at the dawn of day; and
Gerontius, if he had not been restrained by conjugal
tenderness, might have imitated their example; till the
soldiers, provoked by such obstinate resistance, applied
fire on all sides to the house. In this fatal extremity he
complied with the request of his barbarian friend and cut
off his head. The wife of Gerontius, who conjured him not to
abandon her to a life of misery and disgrace, eagerly
presented her neck to his sword: and the tragic scene was
terminated by the death of the count himself, who after
three ineffectual strokes, drew a short dagger and sheathed
it in his heart. (151) The unprotected Maximus, whom he had
invested with the purple, was indebted for his life to the
contempt that was entertained of his power and abilities.
The caprice of the barbarians, who ravaged Spain, once more
seated this Imperial phantom on the throne: but they soon
resigned him to the justice of Honorius; and the tyrant
Maximus after he had been shown to the people of Ravenna and
Rome, was publicly executed.
Character and victories of the general Constantius
The general, Constantius was his name, who raised by his
approach the siege of Arles and dissipated the troops of
Gerontius, was born a Roman; and this remarkable distinction
is strongly expressive of the decay of military spirit among
the subjects of the empire. The strength and majesty which
were conspicuous in the person of that general(152) marked
him in the popular opinion as a candidate worthy of the
throne which he afterwards ascended. In the familiar
intercourse of private life his manners were cheerful and
engaging: nor would he sometimes disdain, in the license of
convivial mirth, to vie with the pantomimes themselves in
the exercises of their ridiculous profession. But when the
trumpet summoned him to arms; when he mounted his horse,
and, bending down (for such was his singular practice)
almost upon the neck, fiercely rolled his large animated
eyes round the field, Constantius then struck terror into
his foes and inspired his soldiers with the assurance of
victory. He had received from the court of Ravenna the
important commission of extirpating rebellion in the
provinces of the West; and the pretended emperor
Constantine, after enjoying a short and anxious respite, was
again besieged in his capital by the arms of a more
formidable enemy. Yet this interval allowed time for a
successful negotiation with the Franks and Alemanni; and his
ambassador, Edobic, soon returned at the head of an army to
disturb the operations of the siege of Arles. The Roman
general, instead of expecting the attack in his lines,
boldly, and perhaps wisely, resolved to pass the Rhone and
to meet the barbarians. His measures were conducted with so
much skill and secrecy, that, while they engaged the
infantry of Constantius in the front, they were suddenly
attacked, surrounded, and destroyed by the cavalry of his
lieutenant Ulphilas, who had silently gained an advantageous
post in their rear. The remains of the army of Edobic were
preserved by flight or submission, and their leader escaped
from the field of battle to the house of a faithless friend,
who too clearly understood that the head of his obnoxious
guest would be an acceptable and lucrative present for the
Imperial general. On this occasion Constantius behaved with
the magnanimity of a genuine Roman. Subduing or suppressing
every sentiment of jealousy, he publicly acknowledged the
merit and services of Ulphilas; but he turned with horror
from the assassin of Edobic, and sternly intimated his
commands that the camp should no longer be polluted by the
presence of an ungrateful wretch who had violated the laws
of friendship and hospitality. The usurper, who beheld from
the walls of Arles the ruin of his last hopes, was tempted
to place some confidence in so generous a conqueror. He
required a solemn promise for his security; and after
receiving, by the imposition of hands, the sacred character
of a Christian presbyter, he ventured to open the gates of
the city. But he soon experienced that the principles of
honour and integrity, which might regulate the ordinary
conduct of Constantius, were superseded by the loose
doctrines of political morality. Death of the usurper Constantine, A.D. 411, November 28. The Roman general indeed
refused to sully his laurels with the blood of Constantine;
but the abdicated emperor and his son Julian were sent,
under a strong guard, into Italy; and before they reached
the palace of Ravenna they met the ministers of death.
Fall of the usurpers, Jovinus, Sebastian, and Attalus, A.D. 411-416
At a time when it was universally confessed that almost
every man in the empire was superior in personal merit to
the princes whom the accident of their birth had seated on
the throne, a rapid succession of usurpers, regardless of
the fate of their predecessors, still continued to arise.
This mischief was peculiarly felt in the provinces of Spain
and Gaul, where the principles of order and obedience had
been extinguished by war and rebellion. Before Constantine
resigned the purple, and in the fourth month of the siege of
Arles, intelligence was received in the Imperial camp that
Jovinus had assumed the diadem at Mentz, in the Upper
Germany, at the instigation of Goar, king of the Alani, and
of Guntiarius, king of the Burgundians; and that the
candidate on whom they had bestowed the empire advanced with
a formidable host of barbarians from the banks of the Rhine
to those of the Rhone. Every circumstance is dark and
extraordinary in the short history of the reign of Jovinus.
It was natural to expect that a brave and skilful general,
at the head of a victorius army, would have asserted, in a
field of battle, the justice of the cause of Honorius. The
hasty retreat of Constantius might be justified by weighty
reasons; but he resigned without a struggle the possession
of Gaul; and Dardanus, the Praetorian praefect, is recorded
as the only magistrate who refused to yield obedience to the
usurper.(153) When the Goths, two years after the siege of
Rome, established their quarters in Gaul, it was natural to
suppose that their inclinations could be divided only
between the emperor Honorius, with whom they had formed a
recent alliance, and the degraded Attalus, whom they
reserved in their camp for the occasional purpose of acting
the part of a musician or a monarch. Yet in a moment of
disgust (for which it is not easy to assign a cause or a
date) Adolphus connected himself with the usurper of Gaul;
and imposed on Attalus the ignominious task of negotiating
the treaty which ratified his own disgrace. We are again
surprised to read, that, instead of considering the Gothic
alliance as the firmest support of his throne, Jovinus
upbraided, in dark and ambiguous language, the officious
importunity of Attalus; that, scorning the advice of his
great ally, he invested with the purple his brother
Sebastian; and that he most imprudently accepted the service
of Sarus, when that gallant chief, the soldier of Honorius,
was provoked to desert the court of a prince who knew not
how to reward or punish. Adolphus, educated among a race of
warriors, who esteemed the duty of revenge as the most
precious and sacred portion of their inheritance, advanced
with a body of ten thousand Goths to encounter the
hereditary enemy of the house of Balti. He attacked Sarus at
an unguarded moment, when he was accompanied only by
eighteen or twenty of his valiant followers. United by
friendship, animated by despair, but at length oppressed by
multitudes, this band of heroes deserved the esteem, without
exciting the compassion, of their enemies; and the lion was
no sooner taken in the toils (154) than he was instantly
despatched. The death of Sarus dissolved the loose alliance
which Adolphus still maintained with the usurpers of Gaul.
He again listened to the dictates of love and prudence; and
soon satisfied the brother of Placidia, by the assurance
that he would immediately transmit to the palace of Ravenna
the heads of the two tyrants, Jovinus and Sebastian. The
king of the Goths executed his promise without difficulty or
delay: the helpless brothers, unsupported by any personal
merit, were abandoned by their barbarian auxiliaries; and
the short opposition of Valentia was expiated by the ruin of
one of the oldest cities of Gaul. The emperor chosen by the
Roman senate, who had been promoted, degraded, insulted,
restored, again degraded, and again insulted, was finally
abandoned to his fate; but when the Gothic king withdrew his
protection, he was restrained, by pity or contempt, from
offering any violence to the person of Attalus. The
unfortunate Attalus, who was left without subjects or
allies, embarked in one of the ports of Spain, in search of
some secure and solitary retreat; but he was intercepted at
sea, conducted to the presence of Honorius, led in triumph
through the streets of Rome or Ravenna, and publicly exposed
to the gazing multitude, on the second step of the throne of
his invincible conqueror. The same measure of punishment
with which, in the days of his prosperity, he was accused of
menacing his rival, was inflicted on Attalus himself: he was
condemned, after the amputation of two fingers, to a
perpetual exile in the isle of Lipari, where he was supplied
with the decent necessaries of life. The remainder of the
reign Honorius was undisturbed by rebellion; and it may be
observed that in the space of five years seven usurpers had
yielded to the fortune of a prince who was himself incapable
either of counsel or of action.
Invasion of Spain by the Suevi, Vandals, Alani etc, A.D. 409, October 13.
The situation of Spain, separated on all sides from the
enemies of Rome, by the sea, by the mountains, and by
intermediate provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of
that remote and sequestered country; and we may observe, as
a sure symptom of domestic happiness, that, in a period of
four hundred years, Spain furnished very few materials to
the history of the Roman empire. The footsteps of the
barbarians, who, in the reign of Gallienus, had penetrated
beyond the Pyrenees, were soon obliterated by the return of
peace; and in the fourth century of the Christian era, the
cities of Emerita or Merida, of Corduba, Seville, Bracara,
and Tarragona, were numbered with the most illustrious of
the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, the
vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms, was improved and
manufactured by the skill of an industrious people; and the
peculiar advantages of naval stores contributed to support
an extensive and profitable trade.(155) The arts and sciences
flourished under the protection of the emperors; and if the
character of the Spaniards was enfeebled by peace and
servitude, the hostile approach of the Germans, who had
spread terror and desolation from the Rhine to the Pyrenees,
seemed to rekindle some sparks of military ardour. As long
as the defence of the mountains was intrusted to the hardy
and faithful militia of the country, they successfully
repelled the frequent attempts of the barbarians But no
sooner had the national troops been compelled to resign
their post of the Honorian bands in the service of
Constantine, than the gates of Spain were treacherously
betrayed to the public enemy, about ten months before the
sack of Rome by the Goths.(156) The consciousness of guilt,
and the thirst of rapine, prompted the mercenary guards of
the Pyrenees to desert their station; to invite the arms of
the Suevi, the Vandals, and the Alani; and to swell the
torrent which was poured with irresistible violence from the
frontiers of Gaul to the sea of Africa. The misfortunes of
Spain may be described in the language of its most eloquent
historian, who has concisely expressed the passionate, and
perhaps exaggerated, declamations of contemporary writers.
(157)
"The irruption of these nations was followed by the most dreadful calamities: as the barbarians exercised their indiscriminate cruelty on the fortunes of the Romans and the Spaniards, and ravaged with equal fury the cities and the open country. The progress of famine reduced the miserable inhabitants to feed on the flesh of their fellow-creatures; and even the wild beasts, who multiplied, without control, in the desert, were exasperated by the taste of blood and the impatience of hunger boldly to attack and devour their human prey. Pestilence soon appeared, the inseparable companion of famine; a large proportion of the people was swept away; and the groans of the dying excited only the envy of their surviving friends. At length the barbarians, satiated with carnage and rapine, and afflicted by the contagious evils which they themselves had introduced, fixed their permanent seats in the depopulated country. The ancient Gallicia, whose limits included the kingdom of Old Castille, was divided between the Suevi and the Vandals: the Alani were scattered over the provinces of Carthagena and Lusitania, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean; and the fruitful territory of Baetica was allotted to the Silingi, another branch of the Vandalic nation. After regulating this partition, the conquerors contracted with their new subjects some reciprocal engagements of protection and obedience: the lands were again cultivated; and the towns and villages were again occupied by a captive people. The greatest part of the Spaniards was even disposed to prefer this new condition of poverty and barbarism to the severe oppressions of the Roman government; yet there were many who still asserted their native freedom, and who refused, more especially in the mountains of Gallicia, to submit to the barbarian yoke." (158)
Adolphus, king of the Goths, marches into Spain, A.D. 414
The important present of the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian
had approved the friendship of Adolphus and restored Gaul to
the obedience of his brother Honorius. Peace was
incompatible with the situation and temper of the king of
the Goths. He readily accepted the proposal of turning his
victorious arms against the barbarians of Spain; the troops
of Constantius intercepted his communication with the
seaports of Gaul, and gently pressed his march towards the
Pyrenees:(159) he passed the mountains, and surprised, in the
name of the emperor, the city of Barcelona. The fondness of
Adolphus for his Roman bride was not abated by time or
possession; and the birth of a son, surnamed, from his
illustrious grandsire, Theodosius, appeared to fix him for
ever in the interest of the public. The loss of that infant,
whose remains were deposited in a silver coffin in one of
the churches near Barcelona, afflicted his parents; but the
grief of the Gothic king was suspended by the labours of the
field; and the course of his victories was soon interrupted
by domestic treason. He had imprudently received into his
service one of the followers of Sarus, a barbarian of a
daring spirit, but of a diminutive stature, whose secret
desire of revenging the death of his beloved patron was
continually irritated by the sarcasms of his insolent
master. His death, A.D. 415, August Adolphus was assassinated in the palace of Barcelona; the laws of the succession were violated by a tumultuous faction;(160) and a stranger to the royal race, Singeric, the brother of Sarus himself, was seated on the Gothic throne. The first act of his reign was the inhuman murder of the six children of Adolphus, the issue of a former marriage, whom he tore, without pity, from the feeble arms of a venerable bishop. (161) The unfortunate Placidia, instead of the respectful compassion which she might have excited in the most savage breasts, was treated with cruel and wanton insult. The daughter of the emperor Theodosius, confounded among a crowd of vulgar captives, was compelled to march on foot above twelve miles, before the horse of a barbarian, the assassin of an husband whom Placidia loved
and lamented.(162)
The Goths conquer and restore Spain, A.D. 415-418.
But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge; and the
view of her ignominious sufferings might rouse an indignant
people against the tyrant, who was assassinated on the
seventh day of his usurpation. After the death of Singeric,
the free choice of the nation bestowed the Gothic sceptre on
Wallia, whose warlike and ambitious temper appeared, in the
beginning of his reign, extremely hostile to the republic.
He marched in arms from Barcelona to the shores of the
Atlantic Ocean, which the ancients revered and dreaded as
the boundary of the world. But when he reached the southern
promontory of Spain, (163) and, from the rock now covered by the fortress of Gibraltar, contemplated the neighbouring and fertile coast of Africa, Wallia resumed the designs of
conquest which had been interrupted by the death of Alaric.
The winds and waves again disappointed the enterprise of the
Goths; and the minds of a superstitious people were deeply
affected by the repeated disasters of storms and shipwrecks.
In this disposition, the successor of Adolphus no longer
refused to listen to a Roman ambassador, whose proposals
were enforced by the real, or supposed, approach of a
numerous army, under the conduct of the brave Constantius. A
solemn treaty was stipulated and observed: Placidia was
honourably restored to her brother; six hundred thousand
measures of wheat were delivered to the hungry Goths;(164)
and Wallia engaged to draw his sword in the service of the
empire. A bloody war was instantly excited among the
barbarians of Spain; and the contending princes are said to
have addressed their letters, their ambassadors, and their
hostages, to the throne of the Western emperor, exhorting
him to remain a tranquil spectator of their contest, the
events of which must be favourable to the Romans by the
mutual slaughter of their common enemies.(165) The Spanish
war was obstinately supported, during three campaigns, with
desperate valour and various success; and the martial
achievements of Wallia diffused through the empire the
superior renown of the Gothic hero. He exterminated the
Silingi, who had irretrievably ruined the elegant plenty of
the province of Baetica. He slew, in battle, the king of the
Alani; and the remains of those Scythian wanderers who
escaped from the field, instead of choosing a new leader,
humbly sought a refuge under the standard of the Vandals,
with whom they were ever afterwards confounded. The Vandals
themselves, and the Suevi, yielded to the efforts of the
invincible Goths. The promiscuous multitude of barbarians,
whose retreat had been intercepted, were driven into the
mountains of Gallicia; where they still continued, in a
narrow compass and on a barren soil, to exercise their
domestic and implacable hostilities. In the pride of
victory, Wallia was faithful to his engagements: he restored
his Spanish conquests to the obedience of Honorius; and the
tyranny of the Imperial officers soon reduced an oppressed
people to regret the time of their barbarian servitude.
While the event of the war was still doubtful, the first
advantages obtained by the arms of Wallia had encouraged the
court of Ravenna to decree the honours of a triumph to their
feeble sovereign. He entered Rome like the ancient
conquerors of nations; and if the monuments of servile
corruption had not long since met with the fate which they
deserved, we should probably find that a crowd of poets and
orators, of magistrates and bishops, applauded the fortune,
the wisdom, and the invincible courage of the emperor
Honorius.(166)
Their establishment in Aquitain, A.D. 419
Such a triumph might have been justly claimed by the ally of
Rome, if Wallia, before he repassed the Pyrenees, had
extirpated the seeds of the Spanish war. His victorious
Goths, forty-three years after they had passed the Danube,
were established, according to the faith of treaties, in the
possession of the second Aquitain, a maritime province
between the Garonne and the Loire, under the civil and
ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Bourdeaux. That metropolis,
advantageously situated for the trade of the ocean, was
built in a regular and elegant form; and its numerous
inhabitants were distinguished among the Gauls by their
wealth, their learning, and the politeness of their manners.
The adjacent province, which has been fondly compared to the
garden of Eden, is blessed with a fruitful soil and a
temperate climate; the face of the country displayed the
arts and the rewards of industry; and the Goths, after their
martial toils, luxuriously exhausted the rich vineyards of
Aquitain. (167) The Gothic limits were enlarged by the additional gift of some neighbouring dioceses; and the
successors of Alaric fixed their royal residence at Toulouse, which included five populous quarters, or cities, within the spacious circuit of its walls. About the same time, in the last years of the reign of Honorius, the GOTHS, the BURGUNDIANS, and the FRANKS, obtained a permanent seat and dominion in the provinces of Gaul. The liberal grant of the usurper Jovinus to his Burgundian allies was confirmed by the lawful emperor; the lands of the First, or Upper, Germany were ceded to those formidable barbarians; and they gradually occupied, either by conquest or treaty, the two provinces which still retain, with the titles of Duchy and of County, the national appellation of Burgundy.(168) The Franks, the valiant and faithful allies of the Roman republic, were soon tempted to imitate the invaders whom
they had so bravely resisted. Treves, the capital of Gaul was pillaged by their lawless bands; and the humble colony which they so long maintained in the district of Toxandria, in Brabant, insensibly multiplied along the banks of the Meuse and Scheld, till their independent power filled the whole extent of the Second, or Lower, Germany. These facts may be sufficiently justified by historic evidence; but the foundation of the French monarchy by Pharamond, the conquests, the laws, and even the existence of that hero, have been justly arraigned by the impartial severity of modern criticism.(169)
State of the Barbarians in Gaul, A.D. 420 etc
The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from
the establishment of these barbarians, whose alliance was
dangerous and oppressive, and who were capriciously
impelled, by interest or passion, to violate the public
peace. A heavy and partial ransom was imposed on the
surviving provincials who had escaped the calamities of war;
the fairest and most fertile lands were assigned to the
rapacious strangers, for the use of their families, their
slaves, and their cattle; and the trembling natives
relinquished with a sigh the inheritance of their fathers.
Yet these domestic misfortunes, which are seldom the lot of
a vanquished people, had been felt and inflicted by the
Romans themselves, not only in the insolence of foreign
conquest, but in the madness of civil discord. The Triumvirs
proscribed eighteen of the most flourishing colonies of
Italy, and distributed their lands and houses to the
veterans who revenged the death of Caesar, and oppressed the
liberty of their country. Two poets, of unequal fame, have
deplored, in similar circumstances, the loss of their
patrimony; but the legionaries of Augustus appear to have
surpassed, in violence and injustice, the barbarians who
invaded Gaul under the reign of Honorius. It was not without
the utmost difficulty that Virgil escaped from the sword of
the centurion who had usurped his farm in the neighbourhood
of Mantua;(170) but Paulinus of Bourdeaux received a sum of
money from his Gothic purchaser, which he accepted with
pleasure and surprise; and, though it was much inferior to
the real value of his estate, this act of rapine was
disguised by some colours of moderation and equity.(171) The
odious name of conquerors was softened into the mild and
friendly appellation of the guests of the Romans; and the
barbarians of Gaul, more especially the Goths, repeatedly
declared that they were bound to the people by the ties of
hospitality, and to the emperor by the duty of allegiance
and military service. The title of Honorius and his
successors, their laws and their civil magistrates were
still respected in the provinces of Gaul, of which they had
resigned the possession to the barbarian allies; and the
kings, who exercised a supreme and independent authority
over their native subjects, ambitiously solicited the more
honourable rank of master-generals of the Imperial armies.
(172) Such was the involuntary reverence which the Roman name
still impressed on the minds of those warriors who had borne
away in triumph the spoils of the Capitol.
Revolt of Britain and Armorica, A.D. 409
Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a Succession of
feeble tyrants oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the
British island separated itself from the body of the Roman
empire. The regular forces which guarded that remote
province had been gradually withdrawn; all Britain was
abandoned without defence, to the Saxon pirates and the
savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to
this extremity, no longer relied on the tardy and doubtful
aid of a declining monarchy. They assembled in arms,
repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in the important
discovery of their own strength. (173) Afflicted by similar
calamities, and actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican
provinces (a name which comprehended the maritime countries
of Gaul between the Seine and the Loire)(174) resolved to
imitate the example of the neighbouring island. They
expelled the Roman magistrate, who acted under the authority
of the usurper Constantine; and a free government was
established among a people who had so long been subject to
the arbitrary will of a master. The independence of Britain
and Armorica was soon confirmed by Honorius himself, the
lawful emperor of the West; and the letters by which he
committed to the new states the care of their own safety
might be interpreted as an absolute and perpetual abdication
of the exercise and rights of sovereignty. This
interpretation was, in some measure, justified by the event.
After the usurpers of Gaul had successively fallen, the
maritime provinces were restored to the empire. Yet their
obedience was imperfect and precarious: the vain, the
inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people, was
incompatible either with freedom or servitude; (175) and
Armorica, though it could not long maintain the form of a
republic, (176) was agitated by frequent and destructive
revolts. Britain was irrecoverably lost. (177) But as the
emperors wisely acquiesced in the independence of a remote
province, the separation was not embittered by the reproach
of tyranny or rebellion; and the claims of allegiance and
protection were succeeded by the mutual and voluntary
offices of national friendship.(178)
State of Britain, A.D. 409-449
This revolution dissolved the artificial fabric of civil and
military government; and the independent country, during a
period of forty years, till the descent of the Saxons, was
ruled by the authority of the clergy, the nobles, and the
municipal towns.(179) I. Zosimus, who alone has preserved the memory of this singular transaction, very accurately
observes that the letters of Honorius were addressed to the
cities of Britain. (180) Under the protection of the Romans,
ninety-two considerable towns had arisen in the several
parts of that great province; and, among these, thirty-three
cities were distinguished above the rest by their superior
privileges and importance. (181) Each of these cities, as in
all the other provinces of the empire, formed a legal
corporation, for the purpose of regulating their domestic
policy; and the powers of municipal government were
distributed among annual magistrates, a select senate, and
the assembly of the people, according to the original model
of the Roman constitution. (182) The management of a common
revenue, the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction,
and the habits of public counsel and command, were inherent
to these petty republics; and when they asserted their
independence, the youth of the city, and of the adjacent
districts, would naturally range themselves under the
standard of the magistrate. But the desire of obtaining the
advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political
society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord;
nor can it reasonably be presumed that the restoration of
British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The
pre-eminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently
violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty
nobles, who complained that they were become the subjects of
their own servants, (183) would sometimes regret the reign of
an arbitrary monarch. II.. The jurisdiction of each city over
the adjacent country was supported by the patrimonial
influence of the principal senators; and the smaller towns,
the villages, and the proprietors of land, consulted their
own safety by adhering to the shelter of these rising
republics. The sphere of their attraction was proportioned
to the respective degrees of their wealth and populousness;
but the hereditary lords of ample possessions, who were not
oppressed by the neighbourhood of any powerful city, aspired
to the rank of independent princes, and boldly exercised the
rights of peace and war. The gardens and villas, which
exhibited some faint imitation of Italian elegance, would
soon be converted into strong castles, the refuge, in time
of danger, of the adjacent country:(184) the produce of the
land was applied to purchase arms and horses; to maintain a
military force of slaves, of peasants, and of licentious
followers: and the chieftain might assume, within his own
domain, the powers of a civil magistrate. Several of these
British chiefs might be the genuine posterity of ancient
kings; and many more would be tempted to adopt this
honourable genealogy, and to vindicate there hereditary
claims, which had been suspended by the usurpation of the
Caesars.(185) Their situation and their hopes would dispose
them to affect the dress, the language, and the customs of
their ancestors. If the princes of Britain relapsed into
barbarism, while the cities studiously preserved the laws
and manners of Rome, the whole island must have been
gradually divided by the distinction of two national
parties, again broken into a thousand subdivisions of war
and faction by the various provocations of interest and
resentment. The public strength, instead of being united
against a foreign enemy, was consumed in obscure and
intestine quarrels; and the personal merit which had placed
a successful leader at the head of his equals might enable
him to subdue the freedom of some neighbouring cities, and
to claim a rank among the tyrants(186) who infested Britain after the dissolution of the Roman government. III. The
British church might be composed of thirty or forty bishops,
(187) with an adequate proportion of the inferior clergy; and
the want of riches (for they seem to have been poor)(188)
would compel them to deserve the public esteem by a decent
and exemplary behaviour. The interest, as well as the
temper, of the clergy, was favourable to the peace and union
of their distracted country: those salutary lessons might be
frequently inculcated in their popular discourses; and the
episcopal synods were the only councils that could pretend
to the weight and authority of a national assembly. In such
councils, where the princes and magistrates sat
promiscuously with the bishops, the important affairs of the
state, as well as of the church, might be freely debated,
differences reconciled, alliances formed, contributions
imposed, wise resolutions often concerted, and sometimes
executed; and there is reason to believe, that, in moments
of extreme danger, a Pendragon, or Dictator, was elected
by the general consent of the Britons. These pastoral cares,
so worthy of the episcopal character, were interrupted,
however, by zeal and superstition; and the British clergy
incessantly laboured to eradicate the Pelagian heresy, which
they abhorred as the peculiar disgrace of their native
country.(189)
Assembly of the seven provinces of Gaul, A.D. 418.
It is somewhat remarkable, or rather it is extremely
natural, that the revolt of Britain and Armorica should have
introduced an appearance of liberty into the obedient
provinces of Gaul. In a solemn edict,(190) filled with the
strongest assurances of that paternal affection which
princes so often express, and so seldom feel, the emperor
Honorius promulgated his intention of convening an annual
assembly of the seven provinces: a name peculiarly
appropriated to Aquitain and the ancient Narbonnese, which
had long since exchanged their Celtic rudeness for the
useful and elegant arts of Italy. (191) Arles, the seat of
government and commerce, was appointed for the place of the
assembly, which regularly continued twenty-eight days, from
the fifteenth of August to the thirteenth of September of
every year. It consisted of the Praetorian praefect of the
Gauls; of seven provincial governors, one consular, and six
presidents; of the magistrates, and perhaps the bishops, of
about sixty cities; and of a competent, though indefinite,
number of the most honourable and opulent possessors of
land, who might justly be considered as the representatives
of their country. They were empowered to interpret and
communicate the laws of their sovereign; to expose the
grievances and wishes of their constituents; to moderate the
excessive or unequal weight of taxes; and to deliberate on
every subject of local or national importance that could
tend to the restoration of the peace and prosperity of the
seven provinces. If such an institution, which gave the
people an interest in their own government, had been
universally established by Trajan or the Antonines, the
seeds of public wisdom and virtue might have been cherished
and propagated in the empire of Rome. The privileges of the
subject would have secured the throne of the monarch the
abuses of an arbitrary administration might have been
prevented, in some degree, or corrected, by the
interposition of these representative assemblies; and the
country would have been defended against a foreign enemy by
the arms of natives and freemen. Under the mild and generous
influence of liberty, the Roman empire might have remained
invincible and immortal; or if its excessive magnitude, and
the instability of human affairs, had opposed such perpetual
continuance, its vital and constituent members might have
separately preserved their vigour and independence But in
the decline of the empire, when every principle of health
and life had been exhausted, the tardy application of this
partial remedy was incapable of producing any important or
salutary effects. The emperor Honorius expresses his
surprise that he must compel the reluctant provinces to
accept a privilege which they should ardently have
solicited. A fine of three, or even five, pounds of gold was
imposed on the absent representatives, who seem to have
declined this imaginary gift of a free constitution, as the
last and most cruel insult of their oppressors.
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