No More Learning

The new importance assumed by the Senate in the course of the fifth
century is evident both at Constantinople and at Rome. During the
minority of Theodosius II it is chiefly the Senate of Constantinople which
aids the regent Pulcheria and her minister Anthemius, the praetorian
praefect, in the conduct of affairs ; and though the Roman Senate hardly
exerts any continuous influence, again and again in times of crisis it
helps to determine the course of events. The autocracy consolidated
by Diocletian begins to revert to the original dyarchy of princeps and
senatus which Augustus had founded. In the early years of the fifth
century, partly in the later years of Stilicho, who made it his policy
to favour the Senate, and partly during the interregnum in the effective
exercise of the office of magister militiae, which lasted from the fall of


## p. 397 (#427) ############################################

411–472]
The Position of the Senate
397
a
Stilicho till the appearance of Constantius (411), it had shewn con-
siderable activity ; but the period of its greatest influence covers the last
twenty-five years of the Western Empire. It was with two of the chief
senators that Pope Leo went to meet Attila in 451: it was before the
Senate that Valentinian defended himself for the assassination of Aëtius
in 454. The assassination of Valentinian himself was followed by the
accession of Maximus, a member of the great senatorial family of the
Anicii; and it has even been suggested that the accession of Maximus
perhaps indicates an attempt of the Anicii to establish a new govern-
ment in the West, independent of Constantinople and resting on the
support of the Senate. Maximus fell; but his successor, Avitus, who
came to the throne by the support of a Gallo-Roman party, was resisted
by the Senate, and fell in his turn. The accession of the next emperor,
Majorian, is at any rate in form a triumph for the Senate ; in his first
constitution Majorian thanks the Senate for letting its choice fall upon
him, and promises to govern by its advice. But the reign of Anthemius
(467-472) seems to mark the zenith of senatorial power. It was the
appeal of the Senate to Constantinople which led to his accession; during
his reign the Senate is powerful enough to try and condemn Arvandus,
the praetorian praefect of Gaul, on a charge of treason; and in the civil
war which precedes his fall, the Senate takes his side against his adver-
sary Ricimer. Thus, in the paralysis of the imperial authority, the
Senate stands side by side, and sometimes face to face, with the military
power, as the representative of public authority and civil order. Its
effective power is indeed little; the sword is too strong and too keen
for that; but at any rate, in the agonies of the Empire, it behaves not
unworthily of its secular tradition. And indeed in still other ways
one cannot but feel that the end of Rome was not unworthy of herself.
Her last work in her age-long task of ruling the peoples was to give
into the hands of the Teutonic tribes her structure of law and her
system of administration : to the one, as late as 438, the Codex
Theodosianus had just been added, while the other was being reformed
and purified as late as the days of the last real Emperor of the West,
Majorian. So Rome handed on the torch, as it were, newly trimmed;
and though we must admit that in fact the imperial government of the
fifth century suffered from the impotence of over-centralisation, we
must also allow that she was in intention, as Professor Dill has well said,
“ probably never so anxious to check abuses of administration, or so
compassionate for the desolate and the suffering, as in the years when
her forces were being paralysed. "
The figures in the drama of the last years of the Western Empire,
which have perhaps had the greatest appeal for the imagination of the
historian, are those of Galla Placidia and of Attila. Both figures have,
indeed, a significance, which deserves some little consideration. Ravenna
still testifies to-day to the fame of Placidia ; and her name suggests the
CH. XIV.


## p. 398 (#428) ############################################

398
Placidia and Attila
[412–451
names of many others, her kinswomen and contemporaries, Pulcheria,
Eudocia, Eudoxia, and Honoria, whose influence appears, in the pages
of the Byzantine historians, to have largely determined the destinies of
their age. “It is indeed,” writes Gregorovius, “a remarkable historic
phenomenon, that in periods of decadence some female figure generally
rises into prominence”; and Professor Bury has also remarked that the
influence of women was a natural result of the new mode of palatial life
-a result which is obviously apparent in the attribution of the title of
Augusta to Eudoxia in the East and to Placidia in the West.
cannot but feel that the Byzantine historians have been led by a certain
“feminism," if it may be so called, which is characteristic of their
historiography, to attribute to women, at any rate as regards the
West, an excessive influence on the politics of the period. The fifth
century was the age of the erotic novel-of Daphnis and Chloe, of
Leucippe and Cleitophon; and it would almost appear as if Byzantine
historians had infused into their history the eroticism of contemporary
novels'. It is therefore permissible to doubt whether Honoria was
really responsible for the attack of Attila upon the West, or Eudoxia
for the sack of Rome by Gaiseric: whether Olympiodorus' account of
the relations of Honorius and Placidia after the death of Constantius is
not a play of fancy, and the story given by Joannes Antiochenus” and
Procopius of the seduction of the wife of Maximus by Valentinian III,
which led Maximus to compass his death, is not equally fanciful.
The figure of Attila owes much of its fascination to the vivid descrip-
tions which Priscus gives of his court and Jordanes of the great battle of
the Mauriac plain ; and the Nibelungenlied has added the attraction of
legend to the appeal of history. Attila has, indeed, his significance in
the history of the world. It matters little that he was vanquished in
one of the so-called “ decisive battles of the world”: if he had been the
victor on the Mauriac plain, and had lived for twenty years afterwards,
instead of two, he would none the less have fallen at last, if only the
allies who stood together in that battle had continued their alliance.
The real significance of Attila lies in the fact, that the pressure of his
Huns forced the Romans and the Teutons to recognise that the common
interest of civilisation was at stake, and thus drove them to make the
great alliance, on which the future progress of the world depended. The
fusion of Romans and Teutons, of which the marriage of Ataulf and
Placidia, as it is described in the pages of Olympiodorus, may seem to be
a harbinger, is cemented in the bloodshed of the Mauriac plain.
1 Most striking is the fragment of Malchus (Müller, F. H. G. iv. p. 117)
describing the amour of Harmatius and Zenonis. It reads like the
passage
in Dante
which tells the story of Paolo and Francesca.
2 The fragment of Joannes Antiochenus in which this story occurs (Müller,
F. H. G. iv. p. 614) contradicts another fragment, in which a totally different
version is given; and it is rejected as spurious by Bury, History of the Later
Roman Empire, 1. p. 181 n. 4.


## p. 399 (#429) ############################################

410—476]
Ataulf in Italy
399
Between the death of Alaric and the fall of Romulus Augustulus, the
progress of events may be arranged in three definite stages. A period,
which is marked by the patriciate of Constantius, begins in 410 and ends
with the death of Honorius in 423; during this period there takes place
the Visigothic settlement in the South of France. A second period,
marked by the patriciate of Aëtius, covers the reign of Valentinian III,
and ends in 455: it is the period of the Vandal settlement in Africa,
and of Hunnish inroads into Gaul and Italy. A final period, in which
the patriciate is held by Ricimer, follows upon the extinction of the
Theodosian house in the West: it ends, in the phrase of Count Mar-
cellinus, who alone seems to have realised the importance of the event,
with the “ extinction of the Western Empire of the Roman race," and
the settlement of Odovacar in Italy.
At the end of 410 Rufinus, as he wrote the preface to his translation
of the homilies of Origen in a Sicilian villa which looked across to
Reggio, saw the city in flames, and witnessed the gathering of the ships
with which Alaric was preparing to invade Africa. A little later, and
he may have seen the ships destroyed by a tempest; a little later still,
and he may have heard of Alaric's death and of his burial in the bed of
the Busento. The Gothic king was succeeded by his brother-in-law
Ataulf; and upon the doings of Ataulf, for the next two years, there
rests a cloud of darkness. We know, indeed, that he stayed in Italy till
the spring of 412; we learn from the Theodosian Code that he was in
Tuscany in 411; and we are told by Jordanes that at this time he was
spoiling Italy of public and private wealth alike, and that his Goths
stripped Rome once more, like a flock of locusts, while Honorius sat
powerless behind the walls of Ravenna—the one rock left to the
Emperor in the deluge which at this time covered Italy, Gaul, and
Spain. But the story of Jordanes is probably apocryphal. Orosius and
Olympiodorus, who are excellent contemporary authorities, both remark
on the prosperity of Rome in the years that followed on the sack of 410:
“recent as is the sack, we would think, as we look at the multitude of
the Roman people, that nothing at all had happened, were it not for
some traces of fire. ” In the face of this evidence, a second plundering of
Rome by Ataulf is improbable ; and it appears equally improbable,
when we consider the character of the new Gothic king and the natural
line of his policy. A Narbonese citizen, who had perhaps witnessed the
marriage of Ataulf to Galla Placidia in 414 at Narbonne and heard
the shouts of acclamation, from Romans and Goths alike, which hailed
the marriage festivities, reported to St Jerome at Bethlehem, in the
hearing of Orosius, the words which he had often heard fall from the lips
of Ataulf. “I have found by experience, that my Goths are too
savage to pay any obedience to laws, but I have also found, that without
laws a State is never a State ; and so I have chosen the glory of seeking
CH. XIV.


## p. 400 (#430) ############################################

400
The position in Gaul
(406–412
to restore and to increase by Gothic strength the name of Rome.
Wherefore I avoid war and strive for peace. " In 411 Ataulf had
indeed already strong motives for seeking peace. He had abandoned
the African expedition of Alaric, but he needed the supplies which that
expedition had been meant to procure, and which he could now only
gain from the Emperor; and he had in his train the captive Placidia,
the sister of Honorius, whose hand would carry the succession to her
brother's throne. To negotiate with Honorius for supplies and for
formal consent to his marriage with Placidia was thus the natural policy
of Ataulf; and in such negotiations the year 411 may have passed.
But if there were negotiations, there was no treaty? Honorius had
been strengthened by the arrival of a Byzantine fleet with an army on
board ; and he shewed himself obdurate. When Ataulf was driven
from Italy into Gaul, apparently by lack of supplies, in the spring of
412, he did not come as the friend and ally of Honorius.
In 412 Gaul was beginning to emerge from a state of whirling chaos.
The usurper within, and the barbarian from without, had divided the
country since 406. There had been two swarms of invaders, and two
different “ tyrants. ” In 406 the Vandals, Alans and Sueves had poured
into Gaul, surged to the feet of the Pyrenees, and falling back for å
while had then, with the aid of treachery, poured over the mountains
and vanished into Spain, which henceforth became the prey of “four
plagues—the sword, and famine, and pestilence, and the noisome beast”
(409). In the wake of this tide had followed an influx of Franks,
Alemanni and Burgundians; and in 411 these three peoples were still
encamped in Gaul, along the western bank of the Rhine, preparing for
a permanent settlement. The usurpation of Constantine in 406 had
synchronised with the invasion of Gaul by the Vandals, Alans and
Sueves; and indeed, the invasion was probably the result of the usur-
pation, for Stilicho would seem to have invited these peoples into Gaul,
in the hope of barring the usurper's way into Italy. In 409 a second
tyrant had arisen in Spain: Gerontius, one of Constantine's own
officers, had created a rival emperor, called Maximus ; and it was this
usurpation which had caused the invasion of Spain by the Vandals and
their allies, Gerontius having invited them into Spain, as Stilicho had
before invited them into Gaul, in order to gain their alliance in his
struggle with Constantine. In 411 Gerontius had advanced into Gaul,
L. Schmidt (Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, p. 225) thinks that Ataulf's
policy of peace was only conceived towards 414, under the influence of Placidia.
But did not Ataulf think of marrying Placidia, and therefore of “Romanising,"
from the
very
first?
2 F. Martroye (Genséric, pp. 92–3) is inclined to believe that there was a treaty:
otherwise, he thinks, Ataulf would not have had sufficient supplies to maintain
himself in Italy for the year, and Honorius would not have been able to despatch
Constantius with an army into Gaul. But the fact remains that Ataulf entered
Gaul as a free-lance, and not as a man under treaty.


## p. 401 (#431) ############################################

411-413)
Ataulf in Gaul
401
and was besieging Constantine in Arles, while Constantine was hoping
for the arrival of an army of relief from the barbarians on the Rhine.
At this moment Constantius, the new “master of the troops,” arrived in
Gaul to defend the cause of the legitimate emperor, Honorius. He
met with instant success. Gerontius was overwhelmed and perished :
.
Constantine's barbarian reinforcements were attacked and defeated ;
Constantine himself was captured, and sent to Italy for execution. By
the end of 411 Gaul was clear of both usurpers; and the Roman general
stood face to face with the Franks, Alemanni and Burgundians, who had
meanwhile, during the operations round Arles, created a new emperor,
Jovinus, to give a colour of legality to their position in Gaul. Without
attacking Jovinus, however, Constantius seems to have left Gaul at the
end of the year, perhaps because the northward march of Ataulf was
already causing unrest at Ravenna.
When Ataulf's march finally conducted him over Mont Genèvre
into Gaul, somewhere near Valence, in the spring of 412, it seemed
probable that he would throw himself on the side of Jovinus, now
encamped in Auvergne, and acquire from the usurper a settlement in
southern Gaul. It was his natural policy : it was the course which was
advised by the ex-Emperor Attalus, who still followed in the train of
the Goths. But Jovinus and Ataulf failed to agree. Ataulf seems to
have occupied Bordeaux in the course of 412, and Jovinus regarded him
as an intruder, whose presence in Gaul threatened himself and his
barbarian allies; while on his side Ataulf attacked and killed one
of Jovinus' supporters, with whom he had an ancient feud. Dardanus,
the loyal praefect of the Gauls, was able to win Ataulf over to the side
of his master, and some sort of treaty was made (413), by which Ataulf
engaged to send to Honorius the heads of Jovinus and his brother
Sebastian, in return for regular supplies of provisions, and the recog-
nition of his position in Bordeaux and (possibly) the whole of Aquitanica
Secunda! Ataulf fulfilled his promise with regard to Jovinus and
Sebastian; but by the autumn of 413 he had already quarrelled with
Honorius, and the Goths and the Romans were once more at war. Two
causes were responsible for the struggle. - In the first place the govern-
ment of Honorius had failed to provide the Goths with the promised
supplies. The failure is evidently connected with the revolt of Heraclian,
the Count of Africa, in the course of the year 413. Heraclian, influenced
by the example of the many usurpations in Gaul, and finding a basis in
.
1 The date of the treaty is taken from Olympiodorus (Müller, F. H. G. iv.
p. 61). That Ataulf had occupied Bordeaux in 412 is a suggestion of Seeck
(article on Ataulf in Pauly-Wissowa): that the occupation was recognised in the
treaty of 413 is suggested by the entry in Chronica Gallica (no. 73), Aquitania Gothis
tradita—an entry which is best dated under the year 413. Seeck and Schmidt,
however, both think that the cession of Aquitaine was made by Attalus, when
acting as Emperor at Ataulf's behest, in 414.
26
C. MED. H, VOL. I. CH. XIV.


## p. 402 (#432) ############################################

402 Revolt of Heraclian. The position of Constantius (413–414
the anti-imperial sentiment of the persecuted Donatists of Africa, had
prepared for revolt in 412; and in 413 he prohibited the export of
corn from his province, the great granary of Rome, and had sailed for
Italy with an armada which contained, according to Orosius, the almost
incredible number of 3700 ships. He was beaten at Otricoli in
Umbria with great slaughter, and flying back to Africa perished at
Carthage; but his revolt, however unsuccessful in its issue, exercised
during its course a considerable effect on the policy of Honorius. On the
one hand, it must have been largely responsible for the treaty with
Ataulf in 413: the imperial Government needed Constantius in Italy
to meet Heraclian, and, destitute of troops of its own in Gaul, it had to
induce the Goths to crush the usurper Jovinus on its behalf. At the
same time, however, the revolt had also exercised an opposite effect; it
had prevented the imperial Government from furnishing the Goths with
supplies, and had made it inevitable that Ataulf should seek by war
what he could not get by peace.
There was however a second and perhaps more crucial cause of
hostilities between the Goths and the Romans. Placidia still remained
with the Goths; and the question of the succession, which her marriage
involved, had still to be settled. Again and again, in the course of
history, the problem of a dubious succession has been the very hinge of
events; and the question of the succession to Honorius, as it had
influenced the policy and the fate of Stilicho, still continued to deter-
mine the policy of Ataulf and the history of the Western Empire. In
this question Constantius, the“ master of the troops," was now resolved to
interfere. Sprung from Naissus (the modern Nisch), he was a man of pure
Roman blood, and stood at the head of the Roman or anti-barbarian
party. “ In him," says Orosius, “ the State felt the utility of having its
forces at last commanded by a Roman general, and realised the danger
it had before incurred from its barbarian generals. ” As he rode, bending
over his horse's mane, and darting quick looks to right and left, men
said of him (Olympiodorus writes) that he was meant for empire; and
he had resolved to secure the succession to the throne by the hand of
Placidia--the more, perhaps, as such a marriage would mean the victory
of his party, and the defeat of the “barbarian " Ataulf.
In the autumn of 413 hostilities began. Ataulf passed from
Aquitanica Secunda into Narbonensis: he seized Toulouse, and “at
the time of the gathering of the grapes ” he occupied Narbonne.
Marseilles (which, as a great port, would have been an excellent source
of supplies) he failed to take, owing to the stout resistance of Boniface,
the future Count of Africa ; but at Narbonne, in the beginning of 414,
he took the decisive step of wedding Placidia. By a curious irony, the
bridegroom offered to the bride, as his wedding gift, part of the
treasures which Alaric had taken from Rome; and the ex-Emperor
Attalus joined in singing the epithalamia. Yet Romans and Goths
1


## p. 403 (#433) ############################################

414-415]
The end of Ataulf
403
rejoiced together; and the marriage, like that of Alexander the Great
to Roxana, is the symbol of the fusion of two peoples and two
civilisations. “Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of Daniel,” Hydatius
writes, “that a daughter of the King of the South should marry the
King of the North. ” Meanwhile in Italy Constantius had been created
consul for the year 414, and was using the confiscated goods of the
rebel Heraclian to celebrate his entry upon office with the usual public
entertainments, in the very month of the marriage festivities at Nar-
bonne. In the spring he advanced into Gaul. Here he found that
Ataulf, anxious for some colour of legitimacy, and seeking to maintain
some connexion with the “Roman name,” had caused Attalus once more
to play the part of emperor, excusing thereby his occupation of
Narbonensis, as the Franks and their allies had sought to excuse their
position on the west of the Rhine by the elevation of Jovinus in 412.
An imperial Court arose in Bordeaux in the spring of 414; and Paulinus
of Pella was made procurator of the imaginary imperial domain of the
actor-emperor Attalus, who once more, in the phrase of Orosius,“ played
at empire" for the pleasure of the Goths. But on the approach of
Constantius, Ataulf set the city on fire, and leaving it smoking behind
him, advanced to defend Narbonensis. Constantius, however, used
his fleet to prevent the Goths from receiving supplies by sea ; and the
pressure of famine drove Ataulf from Narbonne.
He retreated by way
of Bazas, which he failed to take, as the procurator Paulinus induced the
Alans to desert from his army; and, having no longer a base in Bor-
deaux, he was forced to cross the Pyrenees into Spain, where along with
the Emperor Attalus, he occupied Barcelona (probably in the winter of
414-415). In devastated Spain famine still dogged the steps of the
Goths: the Vandals nicknamed them Truli, because they paid a piece
of gold for each trula of corn they bought. This of itself would
naturally drive Ataulf to negotiate with Honorius, but the birth of
a son and heir, significantly named Theodosius, made both Ataulf and
Placidia tenfold more anxious for peace, and for the recognition of their
child's right of succession to the throne of his childless uncle. The
Emperor, Attalus, was thrown aside as useless; Ataulf was ready to
recognise Honorius, if Honorius would recognise Theodosius. But his
hopes shipwrecked on the resistance of Constantius, who had now been
rewarded by the title of patricius for his success in expelling the Goths
from Gaul. Soon afterwards the child Theodosius died, and was buried
in a silver coffin with great lamentations at Barcelona. In the same city,
in the autumn of 415, Ataulf himself was assassinated in his stables ?
by one of his followers. With him died his dream of “ restoring by
1 It be suggested here that the phrase in Prosper and Hydatius (inter familiares
fabulas jugulatur, followed by Isidore of Seville) should read inter familiares
stabulis jugulatur. Olympiodorus speaks of Ataulf as killed while eis énitúpnou
των οικείων ίππων. . . διατρίβων εν τω ίππωνι (Müller, F. H. G. ΙV. p. 63).
а
may
CH. XIV.
26—2


## p. 404 (#434) ############################################

404
The reign of Wallia
[416-419
Gothic strength the Roman name”; yet with his last breath he com-
manded his brother to restore Placidia and make peace with Rome.
The Goths, however, were not minded for peace. On the death of
Ataulf (after the week's reign of Sigerich, memorable only for the
humiliation he inflicted on Placidia, by forcing her to walk twelve miles
on foot before his horse), there succeeded a new king, Wallia, “elected
by his people,” Orosius says, “ to make war with Rome, but ordained by
God to make peace. ” Harassed by want of supplies, Wallia resolved to
imitate the policy of Alaric, and to strike at Africa, the great granary
of the West? The fate of Alaric attended his expedition: his fleet
was shattered by a storm during its passage, twelve miles from the
Straits of Gibraltar, at the beginning of 416. Wallia now found that
it was peace with Rome, which alone would give food to his starving
army; and Rome was equally ready for peace, if it only meant the
restoration of Placidia. In the course of 416 the treaty was made.
The Romans purchased Placidia by 600,000 measures of corn; Wallia
became the ally of the Empire, and promised to recover Spain from the
Vandals, Alans and Sueves. In January 417 Constantius was once
more created consul : in the same month he became the husband of the
unwilling Placidia. She bore him two children, Honoria and Valentinian ;
and thus the problem of the succession was finally settled by the victory
of the Roman Constantius, and the name of Rome was renewed by Roman
strength. It was no undeserved triumph which Constantius celebrated
in 417. The turmoil which had raged since Alaric's entry into Greece
in 396 seemed to have ceased : the loss of the whole of the Gauls, which
had seemed inevitable since the usurpation and the barbarian influx of
406, was, at any rate in large measure, averted. Constantius had
recovered much of the Seven Provinces : Wallia was recovering Spain.
Constantius too was finally destined to settle the problem of
the Goths, and to give them at last the quieta patria, in search of
which they had wandered for so many years.
For a time Wallia
fought valiantly in Spain (416–418): he destroyed the Silingian
Vandals, and so thoroughly defeated the Alans, that the broken
remnants of the tribe merged themselves into the Asdingian Vandals.
In the beginning of 416 the Romans had only held the east coast and
some of the cities of Spain: by 418 the Asdingian Vandals and the
Sueves had been pushed back into the north-west of the peninsula,
and Lusitania and Baetica had been recovered. In 419 Wallia had his
.
reward ; Constantius summoned the Goths into Gaul, and gave them
for a habitation the Second Aquitaine. Along with it went Toulouse,
1 It is possible that Wallia first attempted to move northward again into Gaul.
In the Chronica Gallica (no. 78) there is mention of a movement by the Goths on
the death of Ataulf, and of its being repelled by Constantius, who would naturally
be encamped in southern Gaul. It is unlikely that Constantius entered Spain, as
Seeck thinks.


## p. 405 (#435) ############################################

418-421]
Imperial policy in Gaul
405
which became their capital, and other towns in the Narbonese province ;
and thus the Visigoths acquired a territory of their own, with an
Atlantic seaboard, but, as yet, without any outlet to the Mediterranean.
We can only conjecture the reasons which dictated this policy. It may
be, as Professor Bury suggests, that Honorius did not wish to surrender
Spain, because it was the home of the Theodosian house and the seat of
the gold mines : it may be that the imperial Government wished to in-
vigorate with the leaven of Gothic energy the declining population of
south-western Gaul. In any case the policy is of great importance.
For the first time the imperial Government had, of its own motion, given
a settlement within the Empire to a Teutonic people living under its
own king'. But the policy becomes doubly important, when it is con-
sidered in connexion with the constitution of 418, which gave local
government to Gaul, and enacted that representatives of all its towns
should meet annually at Arles. Honorius was endeavouring to throw
upon Gaul the burden of its own government, and in the new municipal
federation which he had thus instituted he sought to find a place for
the Goths. On the one hand, the council at Arles would contain
representatives from the towns in Gothic territory, and would thus
connect the Goths with the Roman name: on the other, the Goths, as
foederati of the council, defending its territory, and supplying its troops,
would give weight to its deliberations. The policy of decentralisation
thus enunciated in 418, and the combination of that policy with the
settlement of the Visigoths in 419, indicate that the Empire was
ceasing to be centralised and Roman, and was becoming instead Teutonic
and local.
The years that elapse between the settlement of the Goths and the
death of Honorius in 423 are occupied by the affairs of Italy and the
court history of Ravenna. In 421 Constantius, who had been virtual
ruler of the West since 411, was elevated by Honorius, somewhat
reluctantly, to the dignity of Augustus and the position of colleague.
Placidia, to whose instance the elevation of her husband was probably
due, had her own ambition satisfied by the title of Augusta, and began
actively to exercise the influence on events, which she had already
exercised more passively during the struggle between Ataulf and
Constantius. The elevation of Constantius and of Placidia to the
imperial dignity led to friction with the Eastern Empire, which refused
to ratify the action of Honorius, and in 421 a war seemed imminent
between East and West. But Constantius, whose rough soldier tastes
made him chafe at the restrictions of imperial etiquette, fell ill and died
1 It is, however, possible that Ataulf had already, as was suggested above,
received the Second Aquitaine in 412. It is also possible that, as von Wietersheim
suggests, the imperial Government had recognised the Burgundians in the district
round Worms as early as 413 (cf. Prosper Tiro, 8. a. 413: Burgundiones partem
Galliae. . . optinuerunt).
CH. XIV.


## p. 406 (#436) ############################################

406
The struggle of Castinus and Boniface
[421–423
in the autumn of 421, and with his death the menace of war disappeared.
The influence of Placidia remained unshaken after her husband's death:
the weak Honorius shared his affection between his beloved poultry and
his sister; and scandalmongers even whispered tales about his excessive
affection for Placidia. But by 422 the affection had yielded to hatred;
and a struggle raged at Ravenna between the party of Honorius, and a
party gathered round Placidia, which found its support in the retinue
of barbarians she had inherited from her marriages with Ataulf and
Constantius. The struggle would appear to be the old struggle of the
Roman and the barbarian parties ; and it is perhaps permissible to con-
jecture that the question at issue was the succession to the office of magister
militum, which Constantius had held. If this conjecture be admitted,
Castinus may be regarded as the candidate of Honorius, and Boniface as
the candidate of Placidia ; and the quarrel of Castinus and Boniface, on
the eve of a projected expedition against the Vandals of Spain, which is
narrated by the annalists, may thus be connected with the struggle between
Honorius and Placidia. The issue of the struggle was the victory of
Honorius and Castinus (422). Castinus became the magister militum and
took command of the Spanish expedition, in which he allowed himself to
be signally defeated by the Asdingian Vandals, now settled in Baetica :
Boniface fled from the Court to Africa, and established himself, at the head
of a body of foederati, as a semi-independent governor of the African dio-
cese, where he had before been serving as the tribune of barbarian auxilia.
The flight of Boniface was followed by the banishment of Placidia and
her children to Constantinople (423); but in her exile she was supported
by Boniface, who sent her money from Africa. This was the position
of affairs when Honorius died (423). One of the weakest of emperors,
he had had a most troubled reign ; yet the last years of his rule had
been marked by peace and success, thanks to the valour and policy of
Constantius, who had defeated the various usurpers and recovered much
of the Transalpine lands. The one virtue of Honorius was a taste
for government on paper, such as his nephew Theodosius II also
shewed; he issued a number of well-meant constitutiones, alleviating
the burden of taxation on Italy after the Gothic ravages, and seeking
to attract new cultivators to waste lands by the offer of advantageous
terms.
The death of Honorius marks the beginning of a new phase in the
history of the Western Empire. For the next thirty years a new
personality dominates the
course of events within the Empire:
Aëtius, ūotatos 'Pwualwv, fills the scene with his actions; while without
the barbaric background is peopled by the squat figures of the Huns.
Aëtius was a Roman from Silistria, born about the year 390, the son of
a certain Gaudentius, a magister equitum, by a rich Italian wife. In his
youth he had served in the office of the praetorian praefect; and twice


## p. 407 (#437) ############################################

423–424]
The usurpation of John
407
66
he had been a hostage, once with Alaric and his Goths, and once with
the Huns. During the years in which he lived with the Huns, some
time between 411 and 423, he formed a connexion with them, which
was to exercise a great influence on the whole of his own career and on
the history of the Empire itself. The Huns themselves, until they
were united by Attila under a single government after the year 445,
were a loose federation of Asiatic tribes, living to the north of the
Danube, and serving as a fertile source of recruits for the Roman army.
They had already served Stilicho as mercenaries in his struggle with
Radagaisus, and some time afterwards Honorius had taken 10,000 of them
into his service. After 423 they definitely formed the bulk of the
armies of the Empire, which was now unable to draw so freely on the
German tribes, occupied as these were in winning or maintaining their
own settlements in Gaul, in Spain, and in Africa. Valentinian III may
thus almost be called Emperor“ by the grace of the Huns"; and to them
Aëtius owed both his political position and his military success.
On the death of Honorius the natural heir to the vacant throne
was the young Valentinian, the son of Constantius and Placidia. But
Valentinian was only a boy of four, and he was living at Constantinople.
When the news of Honorius' death came to the ears of Theodosius II,
he concealed the intelligence, until he had sent an army into Dalmatia ;
and he seems to have contemplated, at any rate for the moment, the
possibility of uniting in his own hands the whole of the Empire. But
meanwhile a step was taken at Ravenna—either in order to anticipate
and prevent such a policy on the part of the Eastern Emperor, or
independently and without any reference to his action—which altered
the whole position of affairs. A party, with which Castinus, the new
magister militum, seems to have been connected, determined to assert
the independence of the West, and elevated John, the chief of the
notaries in the imperial service, to the vacant throne. Aëtius took
office under the usurper as Cura Palatii (or Constable), and was sent
to the Huns to recruit an army; while all the available forces were
despatched to Africa to attack Boniface, the foe of Castinus and the
friend of Placidia and Valentinian. Theodosius found himself compelled
to abandon any hopes he may have cherished of annexing the Western
Empire, and to content himself with securing it for the Theodosian
house, while recognising its independence. He accordingly sent
Valentinian to the West in 424, with an army to enforce his claims ;
and as John was weakened by the despatch of his forces to Africa, and
Aëtius had not yet appeared with his Huns, the triumph of Valentinian
was easy. His succession was a vindication of the title of the Theodosian
house ; and, when we consider the anti-clerical policy pursued by John,
who had attacked the privileges of the clergy, it may also be regarded
as a victory of clericalism, a cause to which the Theodosian house was
always devoted.
A closer connexion between East and West may also
CH, XIV.


## p. 408 (#438) ############################################

408
Count Boniface in Africa
[424–427
be said to be one of the results of the accession of Valentinian, even if
it finally prevented the union of the two which had for a moment seemed
possible; and the hostile attitude which had characterised the relations
of Byzantium and Rome during the reign of Honorius, both in the
days of Stilicho and in those of Constantius, now disappears.
Three days after the execution of the defeated usurper, Aëtius
appeared in Italy with 60,000 Huns. Too late to save his master, he
nevertheless renewed the fight; and he was only induced to desist, and
to send his Huns back to the Danube, by the promise of the title of
comes along with a command in Gaul. Here Theodoric, the king of the
Visigoths, had taken advantage of the confusion which had followed on
the death of Honorius to deliver an attack upon Arles. Aëtius relieved
the town, and eventually made a treaty with Theodoric, by which, in
return for the cession of the conquests they had recently made, the
Visigoths ceased to stand to the Western Empire in the dependent
relation of foederati, and became autonomous. Meanwhile in Italy
Castinus, who appears to have been the chief supporter of John, had
been punished by exile; and a certain Felix had taken his place at the
head of affairs, with the titles of magister militum and patricius.
Inheriting the position of Castinus, Felix seems to have inherited, or at
any rate to have renewed, his feud with Boniface, the governor of
Africa'. Possibly Boniface, the old friend and supporter of Placidia,
may have hoped for the position of regent which Felix now held, and he
may have been discontented with the reward which he actually received
after Placidia's victory-the title of comes and the confirmation of his
position in Africa ; possibly the situation in Africa itself may have
forced Boniface, as it had before forced Heraclian, into disloyalty to the
Empire. Africa was full of Donatists, and the Donatists hated the
central government, which, under the influence of clericalism, used all its
resources to support the orthodox cause. Religious schism became the
mother of a movement of nationalism ; in contrast with loyal and
imperialist Gaul, Africa, in the early years of the fifth century, was
rapidly tending to political independence. At the same time a certain
degeneration of character seems to have affected Count Boniface himself.
The noble hero celebrated by Olympiodorus, the pious friend and
correspondent of St Augustine, who had once had serious thoughts of
deserting the world for a monastery, would appear-if it be not a calumny
of orthodox Catholics—to have lost all moral fibre after his second
marriage to an Arian wife. He shewed himself slack at once in his
private life and in his government of Africa; and the result was a summons
from Felix, recalling him to Italy, in 427. Boniface shewed himself
1 The Procopian story, which also appears in Joannes Antiochenus, of the
intrigues of Aëtius against Boniface, is here ignored, as mere fable. Felix was in
control of affairs, and Aëtius absent in Gaul, at the date at which these intrigues are
supposed to have taken place.


## p. 409 (#439) ############################################

427–429]
The Vandal Invasion of Africa
409
contumacious, and a civil war began. In the course of the war Boniface
defeated one army sent against him by Felix; but when a second army
came, largely composed of mercenaries hired from the Visigoths, and
under the command of a German, Sigisvult, he found himself hard
pressed.
At this moment, if we follow the accounts of Procopius and Jordanes,
Boniface made his fatal appeal to the Vandals of Spain, and thereby
irretrievably ruined his own reputation and his province. But Procopius
and Jordanes belong to the sixth century; and the one contemporary
authority who writes of this crisis with any detail—Prosper Tiro-
definitely says that the Vandals were summoned to the rescue by both
contending parties (a concertantibus), and thus implies, what is in itself
most probable, that the imperial army under Sigisvult and the rebel
force of Boniface both sought external aid. It may well have been the
case that the Vandals were already pressing southward from Spain
towards Africa, and that, perhaps impelled by famine, or attracted
by the fertility of Africa, the El Dorado of the Western Germans
of this century, they were following the line of policy already indicated
by Alaric, and unsuccessfully attempted from Spain itself by Wallia.
Spain and Northern Africa have again and again in history been
drawn together by an inevitable attraction, alike in the days of
Hamilcar and Hannibal, in the times of the Caliphate of Cordova, and
during the reigns of the Spanish monarchs of the sixteenth century,
So the Vandals, who in 419 had moved down from their quarters in the
north-west of Spain, and again occupied its southernmost province
(Baetica), already appear as early as 425 in Mauretania (probably the
western province of Mauretania Tingitana, which lay just across the
Straits of Gibraltar and counted, for administrative purposes, as part of
Spain). Their pressure would naturally increase, when the civil war in
Africa opened the doors of opportunity; and we may well imagine that
the incoming bands, whose numbers and real intentions were imperfectly
apprehended in the African diocese, would naturally be invited to their
aid by both sides alike. In any case Gaiseric came with the whole of
the Vandal people in the spring of 429, and evacuating Spain he rapidly
occupied the provinces of Mauretania? . The Romans at once awoke
to their danger: the civil war abruptly ceased ; and the home govern-
ment quickly negotiated first a truce, and then a definite treaty, with the
rebel Boniface. Uniting all the forces he could muster, including the
Visigothic mercenaries, Boniface, as the recognised governor of Africa,
attacked the Vandals, after a vain attempt to induce them to depart by
means of negotiations. He was defeated; the Vandals advanced from
| Hydatius, the Spanish chronicler, says never a word of any invitation to
Gaiseric. He chronicles under 425 the attack on Mauretania; and under 429
he enters the invasion of that year, as if it were a natural sequel of the previous
attack.
CH. XIV.


## p. 410 (#440) ############################################

410
Aëtius and Boniface
[426–432
A new
Mauretania into Numidia ; and he was besieged in Hippo (430).
army came to his aid from Constantinople, under the command of
Aspar; but the combined troops of Aspar and Boniface suffered another
defeat (431). After the defeat Aspar returned to Constantinople, and
Boniface was summoned to Italy by Placidia ; Hippo fell, and Gaiseric
pressed onwards from Numidia into Africa Proconsularis.
It was Aëtius who was the cause of the recall of Boniface to Italy
in 432; for the summons of Placidia was dictated by the desire to find
a counterpoise to the influence which Aëtius had by this time acquired.
After his struggle with the Goths, and the treaty which ended the
struggle (? 426), Aëtius had still been occupied in Gaul by hostilities
with the Franks. While Africa was being lost, Gaul was being recovered;
Tours was relieved; the Franks were repelled from Arras, and, in 428,
driven back across the Rhine. Aëtius even carried his arms towards the
Danube, and won success in a campaign in Rhaetia and Noricum in the
year 430, in the course of which he inflicted heavy losses on the Juthungi,
a tribe which had crossed the Danube from the north. Like Julius
Caesar five centuries before, he now acquired, as the result of his Trans-
alpine campaigns, a commanding position at Rome. In 429 he became
magister equitum per Gallias, but Felix, with the title of patricius, still
stood at the head of affairs. In 430, however, Felix was murdered on
the steps of one of the churches at Ravenna, in a military tumult which
was apparently the work of Aëtius. Felix had been plotting against his
dangerous rival, and Aëtius, forewarned of his plots, and forearmed by
the support of his own Hunnish followers, saved himself from impending
ruin by the ruin of his enemy. He now became magister utriusque
militiae, at once generalissimo and prime minister of the Empire of the
West; and in 432 (after a new campaign in Noricum, and a second
defeat of the Franks) he was created consul for the year.
It was at this juncture that Placidia (who, according to one
authority, had instigated the plots of Felix in 430) summoned Boniface
to the rescue, and sought to recover her independence, by creating him
“master of the troops” in Aëtius' place. The dismissed general took
'
to arms; and a great struggle ensued. Once more, as in the days of
Caesar and Pompey, two generals fought for control of the Roman
Empire; and as the earlier struggle had shewn the utter decay of the
Republic, so this later struggle attests, as Mommsen remarks, the
complete dissolution of the political and military system of the Empire.
The fight was engaged near Rimini; and though one authority' speaks
of Aëtius as victor, the bulk of evidence and the probabilities of the case
both point to the victory of Boniface. Boniface died soon after the
1 Joannes Antiochenus (Müller, F. H. G. iv. frag. 201 & 2), followed by Professor
Bury (op. cit. 1. p. 169). But earlier authorities like Prosper Tiro and the Chron.
Gall. speak of Aëtius as defeated ; and his subsequent Aight to the Huns surely
implies defeat.


## p. 411 (#441) ############################################

432–439
439]
Aëtius in Gaul
411
victory, but his son-in-law, Sebastian, succeeded to his position; and
the defeated Aëtius, after seeking in vain to find security in retirement
on his own estates, fled to his old friends the Huns. Here he was
received by King Rua, and found welcome support. Returning in 433
with an army of Huns, he was completely victorious. It was in vain
that Placidia attempted to get the support of the Visigoths; she had to
dismiss and then to banish Sebastian, and to admit Aëtius not only to
his old office of master of the troops, but also to the new dignity of
patricius. Once more, as in 425 and in 430, Aëtius had forced Placidia
to use his services; and henceforward till his death in 454 he is the ruler
of the West, receiving in royal state the embassies of the provinces,
and enjoying the honour, unparalleled hitherto under the Empire for
an ordinary citizen, of a triple consulate.
The policy of Aëtius seems steadily directed towards Gaul, and to
the retention of a basis for the Empire along the valleys of the Rhine,
the Loire, and the Seine. Loyal Gaul seemed to him well worth
defence; nationalist Africa he apparently neglected. One of the first
acts of the government, after his accession to power, was the conclusion
of a treaty with the Vandals and their king, whereby the provinces
of Mauretania and much of Numidia were ceded to Gaiseric, in return
for an annual tribute and hostages. In this treaty Aëtius imitated the
policy of Constantius towards the Visigoths, and gave the Vandals a
similar settlement in Africa, as tributary foederati. Peace once made
in Africa, he turned his attention to Gaul. Here there were several
problems to engage his attention. The Burgundians were attacking
Belgica Prima, the district round Metz and Trèves; a Jacquerie of
revolted peasantry and slaves (the Bagaudae, who steadily waged a
social war during the fourth and fifth centuries) was raging everywhere ;
and, perhaps most dangerous of all, the Visigoths, taking advantage of
these opportunities to pursue their policy of extension from Bordeaux
towards the Mediterranean, were seeking to capture Narbonne. Aëtius,
with the aid of his Hunnish mercenaries, proved equal to the danger.
He defeated the Burgundians, who were shortly afterwards almost
annihilated by an attack of the Huns (the remnant of the nation gaining
a new settlement in Savoy); his lieutenant Litorius raised the siege of
Narbonne, and he himself, according to his panegyrist Merobaudes,
defeated a Gothic army, during the absence of Theodoric, ad montem
Colubrarium (436); while the Jacquerie came to an end with the capture
of its leader in 437. Encouraged by their successes, the Romans seem
to have carried their arms into the territory of the Visigoths, and in
439 Litorius led his Hunnish troops to an attack upon Toulouse itself.
Eager to gain success on his own hand, and rashly trusting the advice
of his pagan soothsayers, he rushed into battle, and suffered a considerable
defeat. Aëtius now consented to peace with the Goths, on the same
terms as before in 426; and he sought to ensure the continuance of the
CH. XIV.


## p. 412 (#442) ############################################

412 The Codex Theodosianus. The piracy of Gaiseric [438–440
peace by planting a body of Alans near Orleans, to guard the valley
of the Loire. Then, leaving Gaul at peace—a peace which continued
undisturbed till the coming of Attila in 451—he returned once more
to Italy.
During the absence of Aëtius in Gaul, Valentinian III had gone to
the East, and married Eudoxia, the daughter of Theodosius II, thus
drawing closer that new connexion of East and West, which had begun
on the death of Honorius, and had been testified by the despatch of
Eastern troops to the aid of the Western Empire against the Vandals
in 431. One result of Valentinian's journey to the East was the reception
at Rome by the senate in 438 (the reception is described in an excerpt
from the acts of the Senate which precedes the Code) of the Codex
Theodosianus, a collection of imperial constitutions since the days of
Constantine, which had just been compiled in Byzantium at the instance
of Theodosius? . Another result was the final cession by the Western
Empire of part of Dalmatia, one of the provinces of the diocese of
Illyricum, the debatable land which Stilicho had so long disputed with
the East. The cession was perhaps the price paid by the West in order
to gain the aid of the East against the Vandals of Africa, and, more
especially, to secure the services of the fleet which was still maintained
in Eastern waters. In spite of the treaty of 435, the encroachments of
the Vandals in Africa had still continued, and they had even begun to
make piratical descents on the coasts of the Western Mediterranean.
In the first years of his conquest of Africa, Gaiseric must have put
himself in possession of a small fleet of swift cruisers (liburnae), which
was maintained in the diocese of Africa for the defence of its coasts from
piracy. To these he would naturally add the numerous transports
belonging to the navicularii, the corporation charged with the duty of
transporting African corn to Rome. In 439 he was able, by the capture
of Carthage, to provide himself with the necessary naval base; and hence-
forth he enjoyed the maritime supremacy of the Western Mediterranean.
Like many another sovereign of Algeria since his time, Gaiseric made
his capital into a buccaneering stronghold. Even before 435, he had
been attacking Sicily and Calabria: in 440 he resumed the attack, and
not only ravaged Sicily, but also besieged Panormus, from which, how-
ever, he was forced to retire by the approach of a fleet from the East.
In the face of this peril Italy, apparently destitute of a fleet, could do no
more for itself than repair the walls of its towns, and station troops along
a
1 Though the reception of the Codex Theodosianus in the West may be taken as
a symptom of the connexion of East and West at this date, its issue nevertheless
marks an epoch in the history of the separation of the two. After 438 the East
and the West legislate independently; the validity of a law made in the East is
restricted to the East, unless it has been specifically adopted, after due communica-
tion, by the ruler of the West. The independence vindicated for the West in 425
was thus maintained in 438.


## p. 413 (#443) ############################################

440–442] Gaiseric's policy. The advance of the Teutons 413
>
the coasts—measures which are enjoined by the novels of Valentinian III
for the years 440 and 441; but Theodosius II determined to use the
Eastern fleet to attack Gaiseric in his own quarters. The expedition
of 441 proved, however, an utter failure, as indeed all expeditions
against the Vandals were destined to prove themselves till the days of
Belisarius. Gaiseric, a master of diplomacy, was able to use his wealth
to induce both the Huns of the Danube and the enemies of the Eastern
Empire along the Euphrates to bestir themselves; and Theodosius,
finding himself hard pressed at home, was forced to withdraw his fleet,
which Gaiseric had managed to keep idle in Sicily by pretence of
negotiation. The one result of the expedition was a new treaty, made
by Theodosius and confirmed by Valentinian in 442, by which Gaiseric
gained the two rich provinces of Africa Proconsularis and Byzacena, and
retained possession of part of Numidia (possibly as full sovereign, and
no longer as foederatus), while he abandoned to the Empire the less
productive provinces of Mauretania on the west. But the treaty could
.
not be permanent; and the two dangers which had shewn themselves
between 439 and 442 were fated to recur. On the one hand the
piratical inroads of Gaiseric were destined to sap the resources and
hasten the fall of the Western Empire; on the other, Gaiseric was to
continue with fatal results the policy, which he had first attempted in
441, of uniting the enemies of the Roman name by his intrigues and his.
bribes in a great league against the Empire. It is of these two themes
that the history of the Western Empire is chiefly composed in the few
remaining years of its life. .
The loss of Africa thus counterbalanced, and indeed far more than
counterbalanced, Aëtius' arduous recovery of Gaul. Elsewhere than in
Gaul and Italy, the Western Empire only maintained a precarious hold
on Spain. Britain was finally lost: a Gaulish chronicler notes under the
years 441–442 that “the Britains, hitherto suffering from various disasters
and vicissitudes, succumb to the sway of the Saxons. " The diocese of
Illyricum was partly ceded to the Eastern Empire, partly occupied by
the Huns. Gaul itself was thickly sown with barbarian settlements :
there were Franks in the north, and Goths in the south-west; there
were Burgundians in Savoy, Alemanni on the upper Rhine and Alans at
Valence and Orleans; while the Bretons were beginning to occupy the
north-west. In Spain the disappearance of the Vandals in 429 left the
.
Sueves as the only barbarian settlers; and they had for a time remained
entrenched in the north-west of the peninsula, leaving the rest to the
Roman provincials. But the accession of Rechiar in 438 marked the
beginning of a new and aggressive policy. In 439 he entered Merida, on
the southern boundary of Lusitania ; in 441 he occupied Seville, and
conquered the provinces of Baetica and Carthagena. The Roman com-
manders, who in Spain, as in Gaul, had to face. a. Jacquerie of revolted
CH. AI.


## p. 414 (#444) ############################################

414
The Huns
[440–450
peasants as well as the barbarian enemy, were impotent to stay his
progress ; by his death in 448 he had occupied the greater part of Spain,
and the Romans were confined to its north-east corner.
Such was the state of the Western Empire, when the threatening
cloud of Huns on the horizon began to grow thicker and darker, until in
451 it finally burst. Till 440 the Huns, settled along the Danube, had
not molested the Empire, but had, on the contrary, served steadily as
mercenaries in the army of the West; and it had been by their aid that
Aëtius had been able to pursue his policy of the reconquest of Gaul. But
after 440 a change begins to take place. The subtle Gaiseric, anxious
to divert attention from his own position in the south, begins to induce
the Huns to attack the Empire on the north; while at the same time a
movement of consolidation takes place among the various tribes, which
turns them into a unitary State under a single ambitious ruler. After
the death of King Rua, to whom Aëtius had fled for refuge in 433, two
brothers, Attila and Bleda, had reigned as joint sovereigns of the Huns ;
but in 444 Attila killed his brother, and rapidly erecting a military
monarchy began to dream of a universal empire, which should stretch
from the Euphrates to the Atlantic. It was against the Eastern Empire
that the Huns, like the Goths before them, first turned their arms.
Impelled by Gaiseric, they ravaged Illyria and Thrace to the very gates
of Constantinople, in the years 441 and 442; and the “ Anatolian
Peace” of 443 had only stayed their ravages at the price of an annual
Hungeld of over 2000 pounds of gold. But it was an uneasy peace
which the Eastern Empire had thus purchased ; and in 447 Attila swept
down into its territories as far as Thermopylae, plundering 70 cities on
his way. After this great raid embassies passed and repassed between
the Court of Attila and Byzantium, among others the famous embassy
(448), of which the historian Priscus was a member, and whose fortunes
in the land of the Huns are narrated so vividly in his pages. Still the
Hungeld continued to be paid, and still Theodosius seemed the mere
vassal of Attila ; but on the death of Theodosius in 450 his successor
Marcian, who was made of sterner stuff, stoutly refused the tribute. At
this crisis, when the wrath of Attila seemed destined to wreak itself in
the final destruction of the Eastern Empire, the Huns suddenly poured
westward into Gaul, and vanished for ever from the pages of Byzantine
history.
It has already been seen that under the influence of Aëtius the
relations of the Western Empire to the Huns had been steadily amicable,
and indeed that Hunnish mercenaries had been the stay and support not
only of the private ambitions of the patricius but also of his public
policy. The new policy of hostility to the Empire, on which Attila had
embarked in 441, seems for the next ten years to have affected the East
alone. During these ten years, the history of the Western Empire is
1
1


## p. 415 (#445) ############################################

440–450]
Attila and the West
415
curiously obscure: we hear nothing of Aëtius, save that he was consul for
the third time in 446, and we know little, if anything, of the relations of
Valentinian III to the Huns. We may guess that tribute was paid to
the Huns by the West as well as by the East; we hear of the son of
Aëtius as a hostage at the Court of Attila. We know that, during the
campaign of 441-442, the church plate of Sirmium escaped the clutches
of Attila, and was deposited at Rome, apparently with a government
official; and we know that in 448 Priscus met in Hungary envoys of the
Western Empire, who had come to attempt to parry Attila's demand
for this plate. To this motive, which it must be confessed appears but
slight, romance has added another, in order to explain the diversion of
Attila's attention to the West in 451.
In 434 the princess Honoria, the sister of Valentinian III, had been
seduced by one of her chamberlains, and banished to Constantinople,
where she was condemned to share in the semi-monastic life of the ladies
of the palace. Years afterwards, embittered by a life of compulsory
asceticism, and snatching at any hope of release, she is said (but our
information only comes from Byzantine historians, whose tendency to a
“feminine ” interpretation of history has already been noticed) to have
appealed to Attila, and to have sent him a ring. Attila accepted the
appeal and the ring; and claiming Honoria as his betrothed wife, he
demanded from her brother the half of the Western Empire as her dowry.
The story may be banished, at any rate in part, as an instance of the
erotic romanticism which occasionally appears in the Byzantine his-
toriography of this century. We may dismiss the episode of the ring
and the whole story of Honoria's appeal, though we are bound to believe
(on the testimony of Priscus himself, confirmed by a Gaulish chronicler)
that when Attila was already determined on war with the West, he
demanded the hand of Honoria and a large dowry, and made the refusal
of his demands into a casus belli. But there are other causes which will
serve to explain why Attila would in any case have attacked the West in
451. The Balkan lands had been wasted by the raids of the previous ten
years; and Gaul and Italy offered a more fertile field, to which events
conspired to draw Attila's attention about 450. A doctor in Gaul, who
had been one of the secret leaders of the Bagaudae, had fled to his Court
in 448, and brought word of the discontent among the lower classes which
was rife in his native country. At the same time a civil war was raging
among the Franks; two brothers were contending for the throne, and
while one of the two appealed to Aëtius, the other invoked the aid of
Attila. Finally, Gaiseric was instigating the Huns to an expedition against
the Visigoths, whose hostility he had had good reason to fear, ever since
he had caused his son Huneric to repudiate his wife, the daughter of
Theodoric I, and send her back mutilated to her father, some years
before (445). The reason here given for hostility between the Vandals
and the Visigoths, which only comes from Jordanes, is perhaps dubious ;
CH. XIV.