No More Learning

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.


## p. 416 (#446) ############################################

416
Attila and Gaul
[451
72
the fact of such hostility, resting as it does on the authority of Priscus,
must be accepted
When the Huns poured into Gaul in 451, the position of the
Western Empire seemed desperate. It was perhaps a little thing that
a terrible famine (obscenissima fames) had devastated Italy in 450. Far
more serious was the absence of any army, with which Aëtius might
confront the enemy. For the last twenty-five years he had relied on
Hunnish mercenaries to fight his battles; and now, when he had to
fight the Huns themselves, he was practically powerless. Everything
depended on the line which the Visigoths would take. If they would
combine with Rome in the face of a common danger, Rome was saved :
if they stood aloof, and waited until they were themselves attacked,
Rome could only fall. Attila was cunning enough to attempt to sow
dissension between the Visigoths and the Romans, writing to assure
either, that the other alone was the object of his attack ; but his actions
were more eloquent than his words. After crossing the Rhine, some-
where to the north of Mainz, he sacked the Gallo-Roman city of Metz.
The Romans now awoke to the crisis : Aëtius hastened to Gaul, and
collected on the spot a motley army of mercenaries and foederati.
Meanwhile, as the Romans looked anxiously to the Visigoths, Attila
moved on Orleans, in the hope of acquiring possession of the city from
the Alans who were settled there, and so gaining a base of operations
against the Goths. The move shewed Theodoric I his danger; he
rapidly joined his forces with those of Aëtius, who now at last could
draw breath ; and the two together hastened to the defence of Orleans.
Finding Orleans too strongly guarded, Attila checked his advance, and
retired eastwards ; the allies followed, and near Troyes, on the Mauriac
plain”, was engaged bellum atrox multiplex immane pertinar. The great
battle was drawn; but its ultimate result was the retreat of the Huns,
after they had stood their ground in their camp for several days. We
are assured by more than one of our authorities, that the camp might
have been stormed, and the Huns annihilated, but for the astute policy
of Aëtius. Perhaps he desired to keep his hands free to renew once
more his old connexion with the Huns; perhaps he feared the pre-
dominance of the Visigoths, which would have followed on the annihilation
of the Huns. At any rate he is said to have induced the new Gothic
king Thorismud—Theodoric I had been killed in the battle-to with-
1 Resting on the authority of Priscus, I have refused to follow Martroye
(Genséric, pp. 142–3) in rejecting the whole story of Honoria, or Schmidt
(Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, p. 244) in refusing to believe in the hostility
between Vandals and Visigoths.
2 The battle is often called the battle of Châlons. Contemporaries speak of it
as engaged in campis Catalaunicis, but this means in the plains of Châlons
(Champagne), not at Châlons itself. The battle was actually fought at a point on
the road between Sens and Troyes, a few miles in front of Troyes.


## p. 417 (#447) ############################################

452]
Attila in Italy
417
draw at once to his territories, by representing forcibly to him the need
of securing his succession against possible rivals at home. A bridge
was thus built for Attila's retreat; and Aëtius was able to secure for
himself the booty, which the retreating Huns were forced to relinquish
in the course of their long march.
The significance of the repulse of Attila from Gaul by the joint
forces of the Romans and the Goths has already been discussed at the
beginning of this chapter. The repulse was no decisive crisis in the
history of the world: the Empire of Attila was of too ephemeral a
nature to be crucially dangerous; and his attack on the West was like
the passing of a transitory meteor, which affected its destinies far less
than the steady and deliberate menace of the policy of Gaiseric. But
the meteor was not yet exhausted; and Italy had to feel in 452, what
Gaul had experienced in 451. Attila now marched from Pannonia
over the Julian Alps : Aquileia fell, and the whole of the province of
Venetia was ravaged? Passing from Venetia into Liguria, the Huns
,
sacked Milan and Pavia ; and the way seemed clear across the Apennines
to Rome itself. Aëtius, with no troops at his command, was powerless ;
a contemporary writer, Prosper Tiro, failing to understand that the
successes of the previous year had only been won by the aid of Goths,
blames the Roman general “ for making no provision according to the
manner of his deeds in the previous year; failing even to bar the Alpine
passes, and planning to desert Italy together with the Emperor. ” In
truth the position was desperate; and it remains one of the problems
of history why the Huns refrained from attacking Rome, and retired
instead to the Danube. Tradition has ascribed the merit of diverting
Attila from Rome to Pope Leo I; the Liber Pontificalis tells how Leo
“ for the sake of the Roman name undertook an embassy, and went
his way to the king of the Huns, and delivered Italy from the peril
of the enemy. ” It is indeed true that the Emperor, now resident in
Rome, joined with the senate in sending to Attila an embassy of three
persons, one of whom was Pope Leo, and that soon after the coming of
this embassy Attila gave the signal for retreat. It may be that the
embassy promised Attila a tribute, and even the hand of Honoria with
a dowry; and it may be that Attila was induced to listen to these
promises, by the unfavourable position in which he began to find himself
placed. His army was pressing for return, eager perhaps to secure the
spoils it had already won, and alleging the fate of Alaric as a warning
against laying hands on Rome. His troops, after all their ravages, were
suffering from famine, and an Italian summer was infecting them with
fever; while the Eastern Emperor, who had been occupied by the
Council of Chalcedon and the problem of Eutychianism in the year 451,
It was at this date, and as a result of this march of Attila, that, according to
tradition, fugitives from Padua fled to Rialto and Malamocco, and founded a
settlement which afterwards grew into the city of Venice.
27
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. XIV.


## p. 418 (#448) ############################################

418
The assassination of Aëtius
[ 452–454
was now despatching troops to the aid of Aëtius. Swayed, perhaps,
by these considerations, Attila listened to the offers of the embassy,
and returned home; and there he died, in the year after his Italian
campaign.
The death of Attila was followed, in the next year, by the assassina-
tion of Aëtius (454); and the assassination of Aëtius was followed, a
year afterwards, by the assassination of his master, Valentinian III.
The death of Attila, and the subsequent collapse of the Hunnish Empire,
which had rested entirely on his personality, deprived Aëtius of any
prospect of support from the Huns, if his position were once again
challenged. Nor was there, after the end of the war with Attila, any
pressing danger which made the services of the great soldier indispensable.
He had never enjoyed the confidence of the Theodosian house: he had
simply forced himself on Placidia and her son Valentinian, both in 425
and in 433. Placidia, a woman of ambitious temper, must have chafed
under his domination ; and she must equally, as a zealous Catholic
and the friend of the Roman party in the Empire, have resented the
supremacy of a man who rested on barbarian support and condoned, if he
did not share, the paganism of supporters like Litorius and Marcellinus.
She had died in 450 ; but the eunuch Heraclius had succeeded to her
policy and influence, and in conjunction with the senator Maximus he
instigated his master to the ruin of Aëtius. The ambition of Aëtius
made Valentinian the more ready to consent to his ruin. No son had
been born to Valentinian from his marriage with Eudoxia ; and Aëtius
apparently aspired to secure the succession for his own family, by gain-
ing the hand of one of the two imperial princesses for his son Gaudentius.
One of the few things, however, which stirred the pusillanimity of the
Theodosian house to action was a dynastic question ; and as Theodosius II
had been ready to go to war rather than admit the elevation of
Constantius to the dignity of Augustus in 419, so Valentinian III nerved
himself to assassinate Aëtius with his own hand, rather than permit the
marriage of one of his daughters to the son of a subject. At the end
of September 454, as the minister and his master sat together over the
accounts of the Empire, Valentinian suddenly sprang up from the table,
and after hot words drew his sword on Aëtius. Heraclius hurried to
his aid, and the two together cut him down. Thus he fell, atque cum
ipso Hesperium cecidit regnum. Of his character and real magnitude
we know little. Gregory of Tours preserves a colourless eulogy from
the pages of a contemporary prose-writer ; and the panegyrics of
Merobaudes are equally colourless. That he was the one prop and stay
of the Western Empire during his life is the unanimous verdict of his
contemporaries ; but whether or no he was really great as a general or a
statesman we cannot tell. He was beaten by Boniface ; and it was not
he, but the Goths and their king, who really triumphed on the Mauriac
plain ; yet he recovered Gaul in a series of campaigns, and he kept the
Visigoths in check. As a statesman he may be blamed for neglect of


## p. 419 (#449) ############################################

454—455]
The assassination of Valentinian III
419
Africa, and a too ready acquiescence in its occupation by Gaiseric;
yet it may be doubted whether the Roman hold on the allegiance of
Africa was not too weak to be maintained, and in any case he kept Italy
comparatively free from the ravages of the Vandals so long as he lived.
If he was less Roman than his predecessor Constantius, he was far more
Roman than his successor Ricimer; and if he had occasionally used
the arms of the Huns for his own ends, he had also used them to
maintain the Empire. One merit he had which must count for much-
the merit of recognising and encouraging men of ability. Majorian
and Marcellinus, two of the finest figures in the history of the falling
Empire, were men of his training.
A wit at Court, when asked by Valentinian III what he thought of
the death of Aëtius, replied—“Sir, you have used your left hand to cut
off your right. ” In truth, Valentinian signed his own death warrant,
when he joined in the murder of his minister. He had hastened,
immediately after the murder, to send explanations to the barbarian
foederati, with whom Aëtius had been allied; but vengeance was to
come upon him within his own Court. Maximus, the senator who had
joined with Heraclius in compassing the ruin of Aëtius, had hoped to
succeed to the position and office of his victim. Disappointed in his
hopes, he resolved to procure the assassination of Valentinian, and to
seize for himself the vacant throne!
Two of Aëtius' followers, whose
names, Optila and Thraustila, suggest a Hunnish origin, were induced
to revenge their master; and in March 455 Valentinian was assassinated
on the Campus Martii, in the sight of his army, while he stood watching
the games. Heraclius fell with him; but not a hand was raised to
punish the assassins. With Valentinian III the Theodosian house was
extinguished in the West, as it had already come to an end in the East
on the death of Theodosius II in 450. Though he had ruled for thirty
years, Valentinian had influenced the destinies of his Empire even less
than his uncle Honorius. Procopius, it his evidence is worth considera-
tion, tells us that Valentinian had received an effeminate education from
his mother Placidia, and that, when he became a man, he consorted with
quacks and astrologers, and practised immorality. He only once flashed
into action, when, piqued by the presumption of Aëtius in aspiring to
connect himself with the imperial family, he struck him down. He
thought he had slain his master; he found that he had slain his
pro-
tector; and he fell a helpless victim to the first conspiracy which was
hatched against his throne.
The twenty-one years which precede the utter extinction of the
Roman Empire in the West are distinguished in several respects from
the preceding thirty years in which Aëtius had ruled and Valentinian III
1 I have dismissed, as a Byzantine invention based on the erotic motive, the story
that Valentinian was murdered in revenge for his seduction of the wife of Maximus.
CH. XIV.
27--2


## p. 420 (#450) ############################################

420
The Rugi, Heruli and Sciri
[455–476
a
ence.
had reigned. The “master of the troops” is still the virtual ruler of the
Empire; and after a short interval Ricimer proves himself the destined
successor of Aëtius. But the new master of the troops, in the absence
of any legitimate representative of the Theodosian house, shews his
power more openly: he becomes a king-maker instead of a prime
minister, and ushers on and off the stage a rapid succession of puppet
emperors. And while Aëtius had rested on the support of the Huns,
Ricimer uses instead the support of new German tribes. The death of
Attila in 453 had been followed by a great struggle between the
Huns and the various Germanic tribes whom they had subdued-the
Ostrogoths and the Gepidae, the Rugii, the Heruli and the Sciri. At
the battle of Nedâo the Huns had been vanquished, and the German
tribes had settled down in the Danubian provinces either as independent
powers, or as foederati of the Western Empire. It was from these
tribes, and particularly from the Rugii, Heruli and Sciri that the army
of the Western Empire was drawn for the last twenty years of its exist-
The Rugii were settled to the north of the Danube, in what is
now Lower Austria: they appear in the history of the time now as
sending troops to Italy (for instance in 458), and now as vexing with
their inroads the parts of Noricum which lay immediately south of the
river. The Life of St Severinus, one of the most trustworthy and valu-
able authorities which we possess, describes their depredations, and the
activity of the Saint in protecting the harassed provincials. The Sciri
had settled after 453 in the north-west corner of modern Hungary;
but shattered in a struggle with the Ostrogoths in 469, they had either
merged themselves with the Heruli, or passed into Italy to serve under
the Roman standards. The Heruli had also settled in Hungary, close
to the Sciri : they were a numerous people, and they supplied the bulk
of the German mercenaries who served in the legions. Herulian troops
were the leaders in the revolt of 476, which overthrew the last emperor;
and Odovacar is styled rex Herulorum. It was the steady influx of these
tribes which led to their demand for a regular settlement in Italy in 476;
and when that settlement took place, it involved the disappearance of the
Empire from Italy, and the erection in its place of a barbarian kingdom,
similar to the kingdoms established by the Vandals and Visigoths, except
that it was a kingdom resting not on one people, but on a number of
different if cognate tribes.
Apart from these new factors, the play of forces remains in many
ways much the same. The Gallo-Romans still form the loyalist core of
the Empire ; but the advance of the Visigoths threatens, and finally
breaks, their connexion with Rome. There is still an intermittent
connexion with the East; and the policy of Gaiseric still contributes
to determine the course of events. It was Gaiseric who, after the
catastrophe of 455, first struck at the derelict Empire. The assassination
of Valentinian had been followed by the accession of Maximus. The
head of the great family of the Anicii, Maximus was the leader of the


## p. 421 (#451) ############################################

455–456]
Maximus and Avitus
421
:
senatorial and Roman party ; and his accession would seem to indicate
an attempt by that party to institute a new government, independent
at once of the magister militiae at home and of the Eastern Emperor at
Constantinople. But it was an age of force; and in such an age such a
government had no root. Gaiseric saw his opportunity, and with no
Aëtius to check his progress, he launched his fleet at Rome. Byzantine
tradition ascribes the attack once more to the influence of a woman;
Eudoxia, the wife of the murdered Valentinian, whom Maximus had
married to support his title, is said to have invited Gaiseric to Rome,
as Honoria is said to have invited Attila, in order to gain her revenge.
In reality Gaiseric simply came because the riches of Rome were to
be had for the coming. As his ships put into the Tiber, the defenceless
Maximus fled from the city, and was killed by the mob in his flight,
after a brief reign of 70 days. The Vandals entered Rome unopposed,
in the month of June. Once more, as in the days of Attila, the Church
shewed itself the only power which, in the absence of an army, could
protect the falling Empire, and at the instance of Pope Leo Gaiseric
confined himself to a peaceful sack of the city. For a fortnight the
.
Vandals plundered at their leisure, secura et libera scrutatione : they
stripped the roof of the Temple of Jupiter of its gilded bronze, and
laid their hands on the sacred vessels of the Temple, which Titus
had brought to Rome nearly four hundred years before. Then they
sailed for Africa with their spoils, and with valuable hostages, destined
for the future to be pawns in the policy of Gaiseric-Gaudentius the son
of Aëtius, and Eudoxia the widow of Valentinian, with her two daughters,
Eudoxia and Placidia.
The next Emperor, Avitus, came from Gaul. Here Thorismud,
the new king of the Visigoths, who had succeeded to his crown on the
Mauriac plain, had been killed by his brothers in 453, for pursuing a
policy “contrary to Roman peace. ” Theodoric II, his successor, owing
his succession to a Roman party, was naturally friendly to Rome.
He had learned Latin from Avitus, a Gallo-Roman noble, and he shewed
his Latin sympathies by renewing the old foedus of the Visigoths with
Rome, and by sending an army to Spain to repress the Bagaudae in the
interest and under the authority of the Empire. Avitus, who had been
despatched to Gaul during the brief reign of Maximus as master of the
troops of the diocese, came to Toulouse in the course of his mission,
during the summer of 455; and here, on the death of Maximus, he was
induced to assume the imperial title. The new Emperor represented
an alliance of the Gallo-Roman nobility with the Visigothic kingdom;
and the fruits of his accession rapidly appeared, when Theodoric, in the
course of 456, acting under an imperial commission, invaded and con-
quered the Suevic kingdom in Spain, which had shewn itself of late
inimical to the Empire, and had taken advantage of the troubles of
455 to pursue a policy of expansion into the Roman territory in the
north-east of the peninsula.
CH. XIV.


## p. 422 (#452) ############################################

422
Ricimer
[455–456
But Avitus, strong as was his position in Gaul and Spain, failed to
conciliate the support of Rome. He was indeed recognised by the
Senate, when first he came to Rome, at the end of 455; and he was
adopted by the Eastern Emperor, Marcian, as his colleague in the
government of the Empire. But difficulties soon arose. One of his
first acts had been the despatch of an embassy to Gaiseric, who seems
to have annexed the province of Tripolitana and reoccupied the
Mauretanias during the course of 455. Avitus demanded the observance
of the treaty of 435, and sent into Sicily an army under Ricimer the
Sueve to support his demand. Gaiseric at once replied by launching
his fleet against Italy; but Ricimer, in 456, was able to win a consider-
able victory over the Vandal fleet near Corsica. The victory might
seem to consolidate the position of Avitus; but Ricimer determined
to use his newly won influence against his master, and he found a body
of discontent in Rome to support his plans. Avitus had come to Rome
with a body of Gothic troops ; but famine had compelled him to dismiss
his allies, and in order to provide them with pay before they departed
he had been forced to strip the bronze from the roofs of public buildings.
In this way he succeeded at once in finally alienating the Romans, who
had always disliked an emperor imposed upon them by Gaul, and in
leaving himself defenceless; and when Ricimer revolted, and the Senate,
in conjunction with Ricimer, passed upon him the sentence of deposition,
he was forced to fly to Gaul. Returning with an insufficient army, in
.
the autumn of 456, he was defeated by Ricimer near Piacenza; and his
short reign was ended by his compulsory consecration to the office of
bishop, and shortly afterwards by his death. It is curious to notice
that the two things which seemed most in his favour had proved his
undoing. The Gothic invasion of Spain, successful as it was, had left
him without the aid of the Gothic king at the critical moment; while
Ricimer's victory over the Vandals had only impelled the victor to
attempt the destruction of his master.
Ricimer, now virtual ruler of the West, was a man of pure German
blood—the son of a Suevic noble by a Visigothic mother, the sister of
Wallia. Magister militum, he is the successor of Stilicho and Aëtius ;
but unlike his predecessors, he has nothing Roman in his composition
and little that is Roman in his policy. Stilicho and Aëtius had wished
to be first in the State, but they had also wished to serve the Theodosian
house ; Ricimer was a jealous barbarian, erecting puppet after puppet,
but unable to tolerate even the rule of his puppets.
His
power
rested
nakedly on the sword and the barbarian mercenaries of his race; and
one only wonders why he tolerated the survival of an emperor in Italy
throughout his life, and did not anticipate Odovacar in making a king-
dom of his own instead. It may be that his early training among the
Visigoths, and his subsequent service under Aëtius, had given him the
Roman tincture which Odovacar lacked ; in any case his policy towards
the Vandals and the Visigoths shews something of a Roman motive.


## p. 423 (#453) ############################################

457–460]
Majorian
423
a
For some months after the disappearance of Avitus there was an
interregnum. Ricimer apparently took no steps to fill the vacancy;
and Marcian, the Eastern Emperor, was on his death-bed. At last Leo,
who had eventually succeeded to Marcian by the grace of Aspar, the
master of the troops” in the East, elevated Ricimer to the dignity of
patricius (457), and named Majorian, who had fought by Ricimer's side
in the struggle of 456, as magister militum in his stead. A few months
afterwards the election of the Senate and the consent of the army
united
to make Majorian emperor. Majorian belonged to an old Roman family
with administrative traditions. His grandfather had been magister pedi-
tum et equitum on the Danube under Theodosius the Great: his father
had been a fiscal officer under Aëtius; and under Aëtius he had himself
served with distinction. If we can trust the evidence of his constitutions
and the testimony of Procopius, Majorian has every title to be considered
one of the greatest of the later Roman Emperors. Not only is the
rescript in which he notifies his accession to the senate full of pledges
of good government; he sought in the course of his reign to redeem his
pledges, and by strengthening, for instance, the office of defensor civitatis
to repeople and reinvigorate the declining municipia of the Empire. The
constitution by which he sought to protect the ancient monuments of
Rome is in marked contrast with the vandalism to which Avitus had been
forced, and bears witness to the conservative and Roman policy which he
sought to pursue. In his foreign policy he addressed himself manfully
to the problems which faced him in Africa, in Gaul, and in Spain.
His first problem lay naturally in Gaul. The party which had
stood for Avitus, and the Visigoths who had been its allies, were both
inevitably opposed to the man who had joined in Avitus' deposition ;
and the reconciliation of Gaul to the new régime was thus of primary
importance. After issuing a number of constitutions for the reform of
the Empire in the course of 458, Majorian crossed the Alps at the end
of the year, with a motley army of Rugians, Sueves and Ostrogoths.
The Gallo-Roman party received him without a struggle, and the
littérateur of the party, Sidonius Apollinaris, pronounced a eulogy on
the Emperor at Lyons. With the Visigoths, who had been attacking
Arles, there was a short but apparently decisive struggle : Theodoric II
was beaten, and renewed his alliance with Rome. It remained for
Majorian to regulate the affairs of Spain, and, using it as a base, to
equip a fleet in its ports for a final attack on Gaiseric. In 460 he
moved into the province. His victory over the Visigoths, themselves in
occupation of much of Spain since 457, had made his path easy; and a
fleet of 300 vessels, which had long been under preparation, was assembled
at the port of Alicante for the expedition against the Vandals. But
Gaiseric, aided by treachery, surprised the fleet and captured a number
of ships: the projected expedition collapsed, like every expedition
against Gaiseric, and Majorian had to acknowledge defeat. He seems
CH. XIV.


## p. 424 (#454) ############################################

424
The reign of Libius Severus
[460–464
to have made a treaty with Gaiseric, recognising the new acquisitions
which Gaiseric had made since 455; but the failure of the expedition
proved nevertheless his ruin. Ricimer was jealous of an emperor who
shewed himself too vigorous ; and though Majorian had sought to con-
ciliate him, as the language of his constitutions shews, he had failed
to appease his jealousy. When he moved into Italy, in the summer of
461, perhaps to forestall an attack by Ricimer, he only came to meet
with defeat and death in a battle near Tortona. With him indeed died
the “Roman name," and in his fall the barbarian party triumphed. His
reign had been filled by a manly attempt at the renovatio imperii, both
by administrative reforms within, and a vigorous policy without; but
his reforms had aroused the opposition of a corrupt bureaucracy; his
foreign policy had been defeated by the cunning of Gaiseric; and he
fell before the jealousy of the barbarian whom he overshadowed.
The death of Majorian advanced the dissolution of the Western
Empire a step further. The Visigoths and the Vandals both regarded
themselves as absolved from the treaties which they had made with
Majorian; and Gaiseric, hating Ricimer as the nephew of Wallia, the
destroyer of part of his people, directed his piratical attacks once more
against Sicily and Italy. Not only so, but when Ricimer raised to the
imperial throne Severus (a puppet-emperor, on the reverse of whose
coins he significantly placed his own monogram), two of the provincial
governors of the Empire refused him allegiance, and ruled as independent
sovereigns within their spheres—Aegidius in central Gaul, and Mar-
cellinus in Dalmatia. Ricimer was almost powerless : he could only
attempt an alliance with the Visigoths against Aegidius, and send his
petitions to the Eastern Emperor Leo to keep Marcellinus and the
Vandals in check. The policy had some success : Aegidius and Theo-
doric checked each other, until the death of the former in 464; and
Marcellinus was induced by the Eastern Emperor to keep the peace.
But Gaiseric, though he consented to restore Eudoxia and one of her
daughters to Leo, refused to cease from his raids upon Italy, until he
had received the inheritances of Aëtius and Valentinian III, which he
claimed in the name of his captives—Gaudentius, the son of Aëtius, and
Eudoxia, the elder daughter of Valentinian, now married to his son
Huneric. To these claims he soon added another. Placidia, the younger
daughter of Valentinian, was married at Constantinople to a Roman
senator, Olybrius; and Gaiseric demanded that Olybrius, now the
brother-in-law of his own son, and therefore likely to be a friend of
the Vandals, should be acknowledged as Emperor of the West. As
Attila had demanded the church plate of Sirmium and the hand of
Honoria, so Gaiseric now demanded the two inheritances and the
succession of Olybrius; and it was to give weight to these demands
that he continued to direct his annual raids against Italy.
It is perhaps the positions held by Aegidius and Marcellinus in Gaul
and Dalmatia which shew most clearly the ruin of the Empire. The


## p. 425 (#455) ############################################

463–465]
Marcellinus, Aegidius and St Severinus
425
flagging brain ceases to control the limbs and members of the State ; the
Roman scheme of an organised world-community falls into fragments.
Marcellinus, one of the young men trained by Aëtius, had been promoted
to the office of magister militiae in Dalmatia. On the murder of Aëtius,
he had refused obedience to Valentinian III ; but on the succession of
Majorian, who was also one of Aëtius' men, he resumed his allegiance to
the Empire, and was given the task of defending Sicily. The fall of
Majorian drove him once more into rebellion, and though he was forced
to leave Sicily, owing to the intrigues of Ricimer among his troops, he
maintained himself as the independent ruler of Dalmatia. In the great
expedition of 468 he joined with the Eastern and Western Emperors as
a practically independent sovereign, and though he was assassinated in
the course of the expedition, possibly at the instigation of Ricimer, he
seems to have left his nephew, Nepos, the future Emperor, to succeed to
his position. A pagan, and a friend of philosophers, with whom he held
high converse in his Dalmatian palace, Marcellinus stands, alike in his
character and in his political position, as one of the most interesting
figures of his age. His contemporary, Aegidius, is a man of more ordinary
type. A lieutenant of Majorian, he had been created magister militum per
Gallias ; and on the death of his master, he had assumed an independent
position in central Gaul, with the aid of the Salian Franks, who, in
revolt against their own king, had, if Gregory of Tours may be trusted,
accepted him for their chief. In 463 he had defeated the Visigoths in
a battle near Orleans, and put himself into touch with Gaiseric for a
combined attack on Italy; but in 464 he died. His power descended to
his son Syagrius, who maintained his independence as “Roman King of
Soissons” until he was overthrown by Clovis in 486. Parallel in some
ways to the position of Marcellinus and Aegidius is the beneficent
theocracy which St Severinus established about the same time in
Noricum, a masterless province unprotected by Rome, and harassed
by the raids of the Rugii from the north of the river. The Saint
mediated for his people with the Rugian kings Flaccitheus and his
successor Feletheus; he used his influence among the provincials of
Noricum to secure the regular payment of tithes for the use of the
poor; in famine and flood he helped his flock, and kept the lamp of
Christianity alight in a dark land.
The death of the nominal Emperor, Severus, in 465, made little
difference in the history of the West. For two years after his death
the West had no emperor of its own, and the whole Empire was nomin-
ally united under Leo I. Ricimer was content to prolong an interregnum,
which left him sole ruler ; Gaiseric was still pressing for the succession
of Olybrius; and Leo was at once unwilling to create an emperor who
was likely to be a vassal of Gaiseric, and anxious to maintain the peace
which existed between the Vandals and the Eastern Empire. Accord-
ingly he delayed the creation of a successor to Severus until Gaiseric, in
CH, XIV.


## p. 426 (#456) ############################################

426
The great armada of 468
[
467-468
F
467, impatient of the delay, delivered an attack on the Peloponnesus.
Leo now felt himself free to act: he listened to the prayers of the Roman
Senate, and appointed as Emperor Anthemius, à son-in-law of the
Emperor Marcian, and a man of large experience, who had held the
highest offices of the Eastern Empire. The gift of Anthemius' daughter
in marriage was intended to conciliate the support of Ricimer; and East
and West, thus united together on a firm basis, were to deliver a final
and crushing attack on the Vandals, and to punish Gaiseric for the reign
of terror he had exercised in the West ever since 461. '
In April 467, Anthemius came to Italy, escorted by Count Mar-
cellinus and an army. By 468 a great armada had been collected, to
be launched against Carthage. The expenses were enormous: one office
supplied 47,000 pounds of gold, another 17,000 pounds of gold and
700,000 pounds of silver; and this vast sum, which seems incredibly
large, was furnished partly from the proceeds of confiscations, and partly
by the Emperor Anthemius. A triple attack was projected. On the
side of the East Basiliscus was to command the armada, and to deliver
an attack on Carthage, while Heraclius marched by land through Tripoli
to deliver a simultaneous attack on the flank of the Vandals. On the side of
the West Marcellinus (conciliated by the Eastern Emperor, who was not
unwilling to see Dalmatia in the hands of a ruler practically independent
of the West) commanded a force which was destined to operate in
Sardinia and Sicily. Once more, however, Gaiseric defeated his foes, as
in 442 and 461, and once more treachery, perhaps instigated by the
subtle Vandal, proved the ruin of an expedition against Carthage. The
Alan Aspar, magister militum per Orientem, frowned on an expedition
which might render his master independent of his support; and already
dubious of his ascendancy, he seems to have procured the nomination of
Basiliscus, an incapable procrastinator, in order to ruin the success of the
expedition. Ricimer, generalissimo of the West, was in a very similar
position: he feared the success of the expedition, because it might con-
solidate the power of Anthemius, and he hated with a personal hatred
the Count Marcellinus, who commanded the Western forces. The
inevitable result followed. Basiliscus was amused by Gaiseric with
negotiations, and not unwillingly delayed, until Gaiseric sent fire-ships
among his armada, and destroyed the bulk of his ships; while Mar-
cellinus, after recovering Sardinia, was killed in Sicily by an assassin,
in whom it is impossible not to suspect an agent of Ricimer. The success
gained by Heraclius, who had won Tripoli and was marching on Carthage,
was neutralised; the destruction of Basiliscus' fleet and the assassination
of Marcellinus involved the complete failure of the expedition. When
one remembers that Aspar, Ricimer and Gaiseric were all Arians, one
almost wonders if the whole story does not indicate an Arian conspiracy
against the Catholic Empire; but political exigencies are sufficient to
explain the issue, and the real fact would appear to be, that the two
:


## p. 427 (#457) ############################################

468–471]
The reign of Anthemius
427
generalissimos of East and West were content to purchase their own
security at the cost of the Empire they served.
Aspar indeed failed in the event to buy security, even at the price
he had been willing to pay. In 471 Leo attempted a coup d'état :
Aspar fell, and the victorious Emperor, who had already been recruiting
Isaurians within his own Empire, in order to counteract and eventually
supersede the dangerous influence of the German mercenaries, was able
to continue his policy, and thus to preserve the independent existence of
the Eastern Empire. With the West it was different. Here there was
no substitute for Ricimer and his Germans: here there was no elasticity
which would enable the Empire to recover, as it did in the East, from
the loss of prestige and of resources involved by the disastrous failure of
468. For a time, indeed, Anthemius, with the support of the Senate
which had called him to the throne, and of the Roman party which
hated barbarian domination, struggled to make head against Ricimer.
The struggle partly turned on the course of events in Gaul. Here Euric,
in 466, had assassinated his brother Theodoric II, as Theodoric had
before assassinated his brother Thorismud. A vigorous and enterprising
king, the most successful of all the Visigothic rulers of Toulouse, Euric
immediately began, after the failure of the expedition of 468, to take
advantage of the condition of the Western Empire in order to make
himself ruler of the whole of Gaul. He may have hoped to gain the
aid of the Gallo-Roman nobility, who were by no means friendly to the
ascendancy of Ricimer; and there were certainly Roman officials in
Gaul, like Arvandus, the Praefectus Praetorio, who lent themselves to his
plans. But Anthemius and the Senate saw the danger by which they
were threatened. Arvandus was brought to Rome in 469, tried by the
Senate, and sentenced to death-a striking instance of the activity which
the Senate could still display; and Anthemius attempted to gain the
support of the nobility of Gaul, by giving the title of patricius to
Ecdicius, the son of Avitus, and the office of praefect of Rome to Sidonius
Apollinaris. In spite of these measures, however, he failed to save Gaul
from the Visigoths. In 470 Euric took the field, and, defeating a Roman
army, gained possession of Arles and other towns as the prize of his
victory. Much of Auvergne also fell into his hands, but he failed to
take its chief city, Clermont, where the valour of Ecdicius and the
exhortations of Sidonius, newly consecrated bishop of the city, inspired
a stout resistance. Yet Gaul was none the less really lost; and failure
in Gaul meant for Anthemius ruin in Italy. Already in 471 civil war
was imminent. Ricimer, seeing his chance, had gathered his forces at
Milan, while Anthemius was stationed at Rome. Round the one was
collected the army of Teutonic mercenaries ; round the other, though he
was not popular in Catholic Italy, being reputed to be “ Hellenic” and a
lover of philosophy, there rallied the officials, the Senate, and the people
of Rome. Once more the old struggle of the Roman and barbarian
CH, XIV.


## p. 428 (#458) ############################################

428
The accession of Olybrius
[ 472–473
parties was destined to be rehearsed. For a moment the mediation of
Epiphanius, the saintly bishop of Pavia, procured (if we may trust the
account of his biographer Ennodius) a temporary peace; but in 472 war
came. Early in the year Ricimer marched on Rome, and besieged the
city with an army, in which the Scirian Odovacar was one of the
commanders. For five months the city suffered from siege and from
famine. At last an army which had marched from Gaul to the relief of
Anthemius, under the command of Bilimer, the master of troops of that
province, was defeated by Ricimer, and treachery completed the fall of
the beleaguered city. In July Ricimer marched into Rome, now under
the heel of a conqueror for the third time in the course of the century;
and Anthemius, seeking in vain to save his life by mingling in disguise
with the beggars round the door of one of the Roman churches, was
detected and beheaded by Ricimer's nephew, Gundobad. Once more the
Empire seemed destroyed : civil war, said Pope Gelasius, had overturned
the city and the feeble remnants of the Roman Empire.
The death of Anthemius had already been preceded by the accession
of Olybrius, the husband of Valentinian's daughter, and the relative
by marriage of Gaiseric. The circumstances of the accession of Olybrius
are obscure. A curious story in a late Byzantine writer makes him
appear in Italy during the struggle between Anthemius and Ricimer,
with public instructions from Leo to mediate in the struggle, but with
a sealed letter to Anthemius, in which it was suggested that the bearer
should be instantly executed. The letter is said to have fallen into the
hands of Ricimer, who replied by elevating Olybrius to the imperial
throne. We can only say that Olybrius came to Italy in the spring of
472, whether sent by Leo, or (as is perhaps more likely) invited by
Ricimer, and that he was proclaimed emperor by Ricimer before the fall
of Rome and the death of Anthemius. The reign of Olybrius, connected
as he was with the old Theodosian house and with the Vandal rulers of
Africa, seemed to promise well for the future of the West; but it only
lasted for a few months. Short as it was, it saw the death of Ricimer,
at the end of August 472, and the elevation in his place of his nephew
Gundobad, a Burgundian. But though a nominal successor took his
place, the death of Ricimer left a gap that could not be filled. If he
was a barbarian, he had yet in his way venerated the Roman name and
preserved the tradition of the Roman Empire; he had sought to be
emperor-maker rather than King of Italy, and for sixteen years he had
kept the Empire alive in the West. Within four years of his death the
last shadow of an emperor had disappeared ; and a barbarian kingdom
had been established in Italy.
Olybrius died at the end of October 472. The throne remained
vacant through the winter; and it was not until March of 473 that
Gundobad proclaimed Glycerius emperor at Ravenna. But Gundobad
soon left Italy, having affairs in Gaul; and Glycerius, deprived of his
1


## p. 429 (#459) ############################################

473–475]
Nepos and Orestes
429
support, was unable to maintain his position. He succeeded, indeed, in
averting one danger, when he induced a body of Ostrogoths, who had
entered Italy from the north-east under their king Widimir, to join
their kinsmen, the Visigoths of Gaul. His position, however, had never
been confirmed by the Eastern Emperor; and at the end of 473 Leo
appointed Julius Nepos, the nephew of Marcellinus of Dalmatia, to be
emperor in his place. In the spring of 474 Nepos arrived in Italy with
an army: Glycerius could offer no resistance; and in the middle of June
he was captured at Portus, near the mouth of the Tiber, and forcibly
consecrated bishop of Salona in Dalmatia'. The accession of Nepos
seemed a triumph for the Roman cause, and a defeat for the barbarian
party. Once more, as in the days of Anthemius, an emperor ruled at
Rome who was the real colleague and ally of the Emperor of Constanti-
nople; and Nepos, unlike Anthemius, had the advantage of having no
master of troops at his side. With the aid of the Eastern Empire, and
in the absence of any successor to Ricimer, Nepos might possibly hope
to secure the permanent triumph of the Roman cause in the West.
But the aid of the Eastern Empire was destined to prove a broken
reed, and Ricimer was fated to find his successor. In 475 a revolt,
headed by Basiliscus, drove Zeno, who had succeeded to Leo in 474,
from Constantinople, and disturbed the East until 477. The West was
thus left to its own resources during the crisis of its fate; and taking
their opportunity the barbarian mercenaries found themselves new
leaders, and under their guidance settled its fate at their will. For the
first few months of his reign Nepos was left undisturbed; but even so he
was compelled to make a heavy sacrifice, and to buy peace with Euric at
the price of the formal surrender of Auvergne, to the great grief of its
bishop Sidonius? In 475, however, there appeared a new leader of the
.
barbarian mercenaries. This was Orestes, a Roman of Pannonia, who
had served Attila as secretary, and had been entrusted by his master
with the conduct of negotiations with the Roman Empire. On the
death of Attila, he had come to Italy, and having married a daughter
of Romulus, an Italian of the rank of comes, who had served under
Aëtius as ambassador to the Huns, he had had a successful career in
the imperial service. He had risen high enough by 475 to be created
magister militiae by Nepos ; and in virtue both of his official position and
of a natural sympathy which his previous career must have inspired he
became the leader of the barbarian party. Once at the head of the
army he instantly marched upon Rome. Nepos, powerless before his
adversary, fled to Ravenna, and unable to maintain himself there,
· Perhaps the first instance of this method of political extinction.
2 Schmidt (Geschichte der deutschen Stämme, p. 265) believes that the treaty
meant the cession to Euric in full sovereignty of all the territories between the
Loire on the north, the Atlantic on the west, the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean
on the south, and the Rhone on the east.