[I was asked to write a chapter on this topic for a volume coming out in Spain in association with an exhibition, for which I think it will be translated. Because of that I offer the English version here. It's essentially a potted narrative of the period between 376 and 533 and not really any sort of big deal, especially if you are an aficionado of the period or familiar with my other works. On the other hand there are some subtle differences /developments between this reading and the narrative in Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, of which I am working on a second edition, which you may or may not find interesting. Or you may want a short narrative overview for some purpose or other, in which case I hope this is of use.]
Introduction
It is traditional to trace the origins of medieval –
and even modern – Europe to the end of the Western Roman Empire and the
so-called Barbarian Migrations. The ruling classes of much of Europe claimed
descent from the barbarians who were believed to have conquered and supplanted
the Roman Empire. Conquest of the Roman
Empire was necessary for the medieval to come into existence: the ‘Middle Age’
lay between the demise of the classical world and its supposed rediscovery in
the Italian Renaissance. For centuries,
any debate focused upon whether the collapse of the Empire had been a good
thing or a tragedy rather than upon whether Rome’s fall was really caused by
barbarian invasion. The notion that the
Middle Ages were created by ‘Germanic migrations’ from east of the Rhine was
not much challenged before the modern period and doubts about the issue only
gained historiographical momentum from the very end of the nineteenth
century. Historians like N.D. Fustel de
Coulanges and of course Henri Pirenne proposed that the ‘Barbarian Migrations’
played no significant role in crucial areas, such as governmental or
administrative institutions or economic structures. These largely remained the same throughout
the migration period and sometimes beyond.[1]
Crucial for the modern disciplines of History and
Archaeology was the development of the notion of Late Antiquity after the
Second World War, culminating in Peter Brown’s classic, The World of Late Antiquity.[2] The idea of Late Antiquity combined numerous
strands of historical research, some with quite deep roots, around the idea
that there was much similarity between the third-century Mediterranean World
and that of the seventh century. The
fifth-century ‘fall’ of the western Roman Empire and the Barbarian Migrations
did not, therefore, mark a great historical rupture. This view stresses continuity and a much more
gradual evolution of the western
Roman Empire into we might call ‘Medieval Europe’.
There is much debate about the ‘Late Antique’ interpretation.[3] Is ‘Late Antiquity’ a Mediterranean as well
as an imperial Roman phenomenon? Important
work about Late Antiquity has often concerned Mediterranean, particularly
eastern Mediterranean, society? Do
places outside the Empire have a late antique phase of history?[4] Can
they have such a period? The classic
studies of Late Antiquity have also focused on religious and cultural
history. Were changes that took place in
the spheres of political, military or economic history, or in the history of
social structures unduly neglected? The
late antique paradigm has, moreover, never seemed to know what to do with the
phenomenon of barbarian migration that concerns this chapter.
Relationships
between Empire and barbaricum
In traditional accounts, the imperium Romanum and the barbarian lands formed two separate worlds
in perpetual confrontation. Barbarians
were believed to have an insatiable desire to conquer the Empire so that the limes had constantly to be reinforced to
keep them out. In this view of the Fall
of the Roman Empire, the Huns caused this pressure to become irresistible. The frontiers collapsed and barbarians
‘flooded’ into the provinces. All these
ideas are questionable.
Wars between Romans and barbarians could be very
damaging, for Roman provinces ravaged by barbarian warbands and for areas of barbaricum harried by larger Roman
armies in reprisal. Young warriors raided imperial territory to acquire loot
and captives for many reasons but warlike relations were not the only ones that
existed between the Empire and its northern neighbours and it is unlikely that
they formed the most common, let alone the usual, situation. The frontier was heavily defended, it is true
– even in the late fourth century, but this was not simply to hold back hordes
of invaders. Indeed, that might have
been one of the less important reasons for the Romans’ concentration of troops,
and expenditure of resources, on the frontier.
The military balance of power was overwhelmingly in the Romans’
favour. With at least 400,000
well-equipped, -armoured and -supplied soldiers to draw upon, with its network
of solid, stone fortifications, its expertise in siege warfare and its complex
logistical organisation, there was no way that the Empire’s existence could
have been threatened by even the largest barbarian confederacy. Roman reports of barbarian armies numbering
tens of thousands of warriors cannot be taken seriously.[5]
The Roman obsession with the limes was produced by imperial ideology and politics.[6] Good imperial rulership involved devoting
time and energy to the frontiers, ensuring that the barbarians were kept
out. It also involved winning victories
over neighbouring peoples. These ideas
required the stationing of armies along the frontier. Keeping a large army at the centre of the
Empire was dangerous. First, such a
display would look very much like tyranny to the Empire’s political classes;
second, troops on the frontiers, far from direct control, were likely – as
second- and third-century history had repeatedly shown – to raise their
commanders to the purple; and third, by staying with a large military force in
the centre of the Empire an emperor abandoned the notions of ‘good rulership’,
which required campaigning on the frontiers.
It made sense, therefore, for fourth-century emperors to move their
political capitals to towns like Trier or Sirmium, close to the limes, and to keep a large body of their
best troops under their immediate control, ostensibly to fight the barbarians
but actually to counter threats to their authority from the within the Empire, like rebellions and
usurpations. This ‘inside-out’ Empire,
with the political centres on the fringes of imperial territory, was vital to
the cohesion of the imperium. The ‘barbarian threat’ was thus magnified in
imperial ideology to proportions far greater than those it really
presented.
Late antique Romano-Barbarian relations took many
forms other than those of raid and counter-attack. The Romans used the barbarians and
vice-versa. The logistical needs of
large concentrations of Roman troops and civil servants on the frontiers were
partly met through commerce with the frontier peoples. This trade was a motor for barbarian social
development. The stability of the limes
was maintained through alliance networks with barbarian rulers.[7] The recruitment of barbarian warriors
constantly topped up the ranks of the army’s élite regiments, especially, and
simultaneously deprived barbarian leaders of manpower. As the size of the Roman army grew while that
of the imperial population did not, this was particularly important.
The Empire was, if anything, even more important to
the barbarians. Roman gifts and
diplomatic patronage were vital to barbarian politics.[8] In fourth-century Germania Magna, Roman culture and political ideas dominated. Roman material is found in lavish inhumations
and elements of Roman uniform in cremation burials; Alemannic leaders
apparently copied Roman official metalwork to give to their followers as badges
of rank. An Alamannic king even named
his son Serapio! It is hard to know
exactly how the inhabitants of barbaricum
used imperial symbols, how they adapted them and what was ‘lost in
translation’ but, clearly, Roman expressions of power dominated political
discourse. By AD 300 it is difficult to
identify an entirely non-Roman vocabulary of power. The Empire was a world power which, in
political, military, economic or cultural terms, had dominated the lands east
of the Rhine for nearly four centuries.
It is entirely to be expected that when barbarians thought of power they
thought of the imperium romanum and
its ruler.
The Empire presented other prospects. In the later fourth century, developments in
imperial administration meant that non-Romans could reach the very highest
military ranks and play a dominant political role. The Empire also accepted immigrants from barbaricum and their families,
especially when this brought lands back into cultivation and yielded extra
fiscal income.
Successful raids produced booty that barbarian
leaders could distribute to followers to cement their loyalty but this could be
risky; because Roman forces were larger and better equipped, imperial reprisals
were far more ferocious and damaging than barbarian raids. Some raids, therefore, seem to have
represented ‘bargaining’. The Alamans
attacked the Empire when they received less valuable diplomatic gifts than
expected.[9] A
raid demonstrated power or at least ‘nuisance-value’, which the Romans might
want to neutralise through diplomatic payments or political support. Romans encouraged barbarian leaders to attack
their Roman rivals during civil wars, authorising the acquisition of the loot
that oiled the cogs of barbarian politics.
This was a dangerous strategy nonetheless. Romans always prioritised the
threat posed by imperial rivals over that presented by barbarian attackers – a
Roman enemy’s military capacities were far greater than any invader’s. The first task of the victors in civil war,
however, was to make an example of any barbarians who had taken the opportunity
of that strife to attack imperial territory.
This restored peace and order and demonstrated the winners’ ability to
conduct proper imperial activity, in line with the ideology discussed
above. It is most important point to
remember that the Roman frontier was emphatically not a zone of constant
military tension, wherein the slightest weakening of the imperial defences
would lead to the ‘dam’ breaking and the barbarians ‘flooding’ in. The limes
were no more like that than a modern border between nations necessarily is.[10]
A key aspect of frontier relations was that losers
in barbarian politics, especially factions supported by the Romans, habitually
fled for refuge in the Empire. This had
happened since Republican times. The
Romans accepted their friends’ surrender and settled them inside the limes.
This cycle continued to repeat through late antiquity and beyond. The so-called ‘Great Migrations’ of the late
fourth to sixth centuries can be seen to have fitted the pattern. There were recognised routes to the limes, points of entry, and organised
mechanisms by which appeals to enter were adjudicated. There were means of receiving immigrants into
imperial society and communities to which newcomers could be assigned. Because much migration into the Empire was
cyclical – barbarians entered the empire, served it or worked in it for some
time and then returned home – and because of the arteries of trade, information
about the possibilities for migration could spread into non-Roman
territory. Inhabitants of Germania Magna knew of specific opportunities and communities into which
they could fit inside the Empire. It is
important to remember that there were specific routes and mechanisms for
migration. None of this represented a
primeval surge towards the Mediterranean, a general ‘flooding’ over the
frontiers or a chaotic set of random population movements, no matter how it may
have seemed to the Romans at times.[11]
The
Gothic Crisis[12]
The crisis that broke in 376 must be seen in this
context. Traditionally the migrants are
supposed to have represented the Tervingian Gothic people, fleeing from the
Huns, a terrible new force who had already defeated the Alans and Greuthungian
Goths. The Romans could not keep this
horde out and so had to admit them, but in disorganised and corrupt
fashion. The Goths kept their weapons
and local Roman officials exploited them for their own ends. The result was a Gothic uprising. Joined by other Goths and Huns from across
the Danube, they ravaged the northern Balkan provinces until a large Roman army
confronted them near Adrianople in 378.
The Eastern Roman army was destroyed and the emperor Valens killed. The Goths were unable to capture
Constantinople but plundered the Balkans for four more years until Valens’
successor Theodosius signed a treaty recognising the Goths as a
semi-independent people within Roman territory.
Nearly three decades of scholarship and close
analysis of the evidence have questioned almost all the elements of this
story. Rather than a bolt from the blue,
a deus ex machina in the drama of
Roman-barbarian relationships, the Huns had probably been neighbours of the
Greuthungians for a decade or more prior to 376. Ammianus’ celebrated picture of them is a
patchwork of standard Roman ethnographic depictions of ‘extreme barbarians’
rather than an accurate description of new, terrible steppe nomads.[13] An overlooked cause is Valens’ war against
the Goths in 367-9. Ostensibly a
reprisal for Gothic support of a rival three years previously, this was Valens’
attempt to win the great victory over barbarians required by the ideology of
good imperial rule. Valens failed and,
in 369, trouble on the Persian frontier compelled him to make peace with
Athanaric, the Tervingian iudex
(judge) or leading ruler. This was not
the triumphal outcome Valens wanted and in some ways a rather embarrassing
failure but it was hardly a victory for the Goths either. The Romans had ravaged their territory for
two of the past three years. Athanaric
had failed to defend his people. Defeats
had been suffered by all the trans-Danubian barbarians: Tervingians,
Greuthungians and Alans. Furthermore,
the Romans ceased the traditional diplomatic gifts to the Tervingians and
restricted the number of markets where the Goths could trade with the
Empire. This dramatically reduced access
to the Roman goods so important in barbarian politics. Athanaric’s authority was questioned and in
response he persecuted the Gothic Christians.
Civil war broke out, with the Romans apparently supporting one faction.[14] The Greuthungians were probably similarly
destabilised by Valens’ war. This
turmoil enabled the Huns to intervene – the sources mention that they allied
with some Gothic groups. Athanaric was
defeated and withdrew with his followers into the mountains. His enemies, grouped around Fritigern and
Alaviv, alongside a losing Greuthungian faction, fled to the imperial border
and asked for admittance. This process,
as noted, had happened many times over the centuries. The scale of the Gothic receptio (admitting a barbarian group) was unusual but not
unprecedented.
Crucially Valens was far from the scene of the
action, trying (and again failing) to find his great victory over barbarians,
this time Persians. Communication was
slow and he was badly informed. Roman
forces could have kept the Goths out but could not, as they were evidently
ordered to do, admit the Tervingians but exclude the Greuthungians, disarm the
former and escort them into the interior.
Far from the emperor’s gaze, local officials were able to exploit the
starving Goths. The situation got out of
hand and when Valens extricated himself from his Persian war the Gothic
rebellion was in full flow. The
catastrophe at Adrianople also resulted from Valens’ need for a triumphal
victory to bolster his rule. Rather than
await the arrival of Gratian, his nephew and co-emperor, and thus share the
glory, the eastern army hastened into battle without a plan, to disaster.
Adrianople ended the Eastern Empire’s ability to raise
an effective field army for perhaps a decade. The Goths were worn down through
attrition and starvation. The end of the
crisis was clearly a relief to Theodosius but there was no triumphal
celebration. Nonetheless, the Goths had
been beaten and had surrendered, as all contemporary sources agree. The first author to mention a foedus or treaty was Jordanes, nearly
two hundred years after the event. The Goths were split up and settled. Many joined the army, where, after
Adrianople, the Romans were only too happy to employ them. The idea of a semi-independent Gothic polity
inside the Roman Empire is a myth based upon Jordanes’ questionable account and
upon modern historians attempting to reconstruct the terms of the supposed foedus from particular readings of what
later Gothic leaders wanted from their dealings with the Romans. The Goths who crossed the Danube in 376
ceased to exist as a unified group after 382.
The group which emerged in the 390s was quite different.
The
‘Perfect Storm’: The West, 383-421
In 383, the western emperor Gratian was overthrown
by Magnus Maximus, commander of the British army. Maximus soon controlled all the West except
for Italy and North Africa. Gratian’s
young half-brother Valentinian II remained in control there, protected by his
brother-in-law Theodosius. Gratian had
moved the court from Trier to Milan in 381, causing resentment amongst the
Gallic aristocracy, which had been prominent in his government, and threatening
the efficient distribution of patronage that maintained social stability in the
north-west. Maximus ruled at Trier for
five years. In 387, however, he expelled
Valentinian II, who fled to Constantinople.
Maximus perhaps thought that his links with Theodosius – they were both
Spaniards and had served together – would lead the latter to acquiesce in his
invasion. He was wrong. Theodosius invaded the West and, after two
heavy defeats in the Balkans, Maximus was beheaded.
Imperial government never properly returned to northern
Gaul after Maximus’ suppression.
Valentinian II reigned from Vienne in southern Gaul. In 392, Arbogast, his Frankish Master of the
Soldiers, either murdered Valentinian II or drove him to suicide. He put a rhetorician called Eugenius on the
throne and civil war was again inevitable. Theodosius’ army destroyed the
western field army at the River Frigidus (5-6 September 394) but died in Milan
in January 395, leaving the two halves of the empire to his sons, the East to
Arcadius and the West to Honorius.
At this point several factors came together to undermine
the ‘inside-out Empire’. The political
history of the period between 395 and 421 is extremely complicated and there is
no space here to do more than sketch its principal features. These two decades were of critical importance,
however, not simply for creating the geo-political situation which defined the
parameters of fifth-century military and political history but also for
establishing crucial precedents. Perhaps
the single most important factor that led to the break-down of the
fourth-century system of government was the youth of the emperors Arcadius and
Honorius, and their political inability even after they came of age. The effective operation of the Roman Empire
after the third-century crisis had relied upon an able adult emperor to
distribute and redistribute imperial patronage and thus keep the Empire’s most
important interest-groups content and in balance. After Theodosius’ death, in the eastern and
western courts different factions competed for the regency control of the
palace and the emperors. The courts also
squabbled with each other over crucial territories in the Balkans and over the
fact that the western regent, Stilicho, claimed to have been given regency over
the East as well. Although Stilicho clung to power for thirteen years, the
politics of regency required constant attention to court intrigue. The empire looked inwards and, as a result,
the management of imperial patronage and the checks and balances between regional
aristocratic groups was neglected. So
too was the maintenance of imperial frontier policy. This had devastating results, which can be
discussed in turn: rebellion and usurpation; barbarian invasion; and federate
revolt. Occurring together, they created
a ‘perfect storm’.
Northern Gaul and Britain had relied, in different
ways, upon the presence of the heart of imperial government on or near the
Rhine frontier.[15] Involvement in imperial bureaucracy, tax-collection
and the supply of the frontier armies appears to have been essential to maintaining
Britain’s stability and prosperity. The northern
Gaulish landscape had, after the third century, been harnessed to the supply of
the large armies and the concentration of imperial civil servants on the
Rhine. The state and its officials
appear to have been the most important landowners north of the Paris basin.[16] The removal of the heart of imperial
government to southern Gaul and then, definitively, to Italy plunged both areas
into crisis, visible archaeologically in the abandonment of villas, the decline
of towns and signs of local stress and competition in the furnishing of
graves. In southern Gaul, aristocrats
had become used, during the later third and fourth centuries, to having an
emperor close to them and indeed to taking a prominent role in imperial
government. The imperial court’s
departure for Milan and then Ravenna threatened to end this. It is unsurprising, therefore, that rebellion
broke out in Britain in 406 and quickly spread to Gaul, then Spain and,
briefly, North Africa. For the next
eight years a series of usurpations created disunity and damaging civil war
beyond the Alps.[17] Apart from underlining and exacerbating the
effective withdrawal of government from the areas north of the Loire, this
warfare further prevented the recreation of a coherent, effective western field
army as different western armies tore each other apart in repeated
battles. This feature cannot be stressed
too strongly.
The consequences of the end of properly-managed
frontier policy were unsurprising. The
empire’s system of alliances and diplomatic payments was essential to social
and political stability throughout barbaricum,
but especially in the heart of Germania
Magna. Around 400, archaeological
signs of socio-economic crisis are found along the North Sea Coast, occupied by
the Saxon confederacy, which might have fragmented. Political strife broke out in barbaricum. North of the Danube, destabilised by Valens’
war in the 360s and by the Gothic crisis after that, a new hegemonic power
emerged: the Huns. Leaders who had
relied upon their links with Rome found that imperial support for their
position was now unreliable, their power was threatened, and their rivals seem
to have sided with the Huns in the ensuing civil strife. The old cycle was repeated with yet more
dramatic results. Another faction of
Goths, led by one Radegaisus, invaded Italy before being defeated by
Stilicho. An even worse consequence was
the so-called ‘Great Invasion’ by groups from various peoples of central Germania: Vandals, ‘Sueves’ (possibly an
Alamannic faction; possibly a group from the interior of Germania Magna) and Alans.
They crossed the Rhine at the end of 405 or 406, followed shortly
afterwards by the Burgundians. The Rhine
frontier appears to have been largely unguarded by the Romans (the troops
seemingly having been removed to fight in the various civil wars), its defence
having been given over to the Frankish kings, who fought hard to stop the
invasion. The invaders rampaged through
northern Gaul. By 420 the surviving
elements of the invasion formed two groups: the Sueves, in north-western
Iberia, and the Vandals and Alans, at that point operating in southern Spain.
The third element of the ‘perfect storm’ was
federate revolt. As noted, the
destruction of the eastern field army at Adrianople had led to the recruitment
of large numbers of experienced Gothic warriors. Entire armies seem to have been composed of
Goths, formed into regiments of a new sort, called foederati.[18] The most famous federate leader, Alaric, was
only one of several powerful Gothic commanders active around 400: others were
Gaïnas, Fravitta, Tribigild and Sarus.
The number of Goths in the army was clearly a problematic issue for some
Roman political factions and could be used as an effective rallying cry – a
political manipulation of suspicions about immigrants that is all-too
familiar. There were two massacres of
barbarians in the first decade of the fifth century, one in Constantinople in
400, and another, including the wives and children of Gothic recruits, in Italy
in 408. Even faithful soldiers like
Fravitta found that in this climate his Gothicness counted for more than his
loyalty: he was murdered shortly after defeating a rebel Gothic commander,
Gaïnas. Whether Gothic soldiers and their leaders were more mutinous than their
Roman counterparts is disputable but the anti-barbarian ethnographic rhetoric projected
against them doubtless added a very specific element to their actions. It certainly raised the stakes involved in
any participation in high politics.
Perhaps this made the bond between Gothic soldiers and their commanders
even closer than was usually the case in the Roman army.
The late fourth century had seen several non-Roman
army officers rise to the very highest positions in western Roman politics:
Arbogast, Bauto and Stilicho are only three examples. These officers appear, unlike so many
powerful generals of Roman birth, to have had no ambition to seize the imperial
throne. Bauto and Stilicho nevertheless
married into the imperial royal family; perhaps their imperial ambitions were
deferred to their offspring. In the
meantime, the exercise of enormous power at court more than sufficed. Alaric seems to have wanted to emulate these
officers.[19]
As mentioned earlier, the courts in Ravenna and
Constantinople disagreed about the control of Illyricum, which passed back and
forth between them. When Alaric acquired
an official military command in the region, all too often this was undermined
by a change of regime in Constantinople or by the transfer to the other half of
the Empire of the region where he was stationed. Such events removed the legitimacy of his
command. Alaric’s desire for a high
command and repeated frustrations at the hands of court factions led him to a
series of revolts, first in the Balkans and then in Italy. When various other strategies failed, he even
made common cause with the Roman senate and raised his own emperor to the
throne: Priscus Attalus. As early as
409, then, it was not unthinkable even for the grand old families of the Roman
nobility to ally with a ‘barbarian’ general.
This too failed to give Alaric what he wanted, as did deposing Attalus
in order to treat with Honorius, and he famously sacked Rome itself (24 August,
410). Even the fall of the ‘eternal
city’ failed to move Honorius and Alaric died the same year.
Importantly, when he had no legitimate Roman title
or office, Alaric called himself King of the Goths. This gave him a title which the Romans viewed
as legitimate, for non-Romans, and enabled him to negotiate with the
court. After Alaric’s death, his successor
Athaulf pursued most of the same strategies and even briefly married into the
imperial family. The repeated failure of
the Goths to gain a stable position within the imperial system led, however, to
their use of the title king becoming almost constant.
Eventually, even a storm as perfect as that of
Honorius’ reign blew over. By 416
Honorius’ skilful general Constantius had defeated all of the usurpers, brought
the Goths to heel and used them to inflict serious defeats on the Vandals and
Alans in Spain.[20] He then withdrew them from Spain and stationed
them on the Garonne in Aquitaine.
Constantius’ armies campaigned successfully in northern Gaul, winning
victories over local rebels and Frankish invaders. When Orosius finished his History Against the Pagans in 417 he
thought that the crisis that had reached its nadir with the sack of Rome had been
surmounted, like all the others that had beset the Res Publica since its creation.[21] By 420 that view must have seemed even more
convincing and, to cement his successes, Constantius became co-emperor and
married into the imperial family, as commanders like Bauto, Stilcho and Athaulf
had done before him. He wed Honorius’
sister (and Athaulf’s widow), Galla Placidia.
The Reign of
Valentinian III[22]
Constantius died suddenly in 421 and that promising
picture rapidly disintegrated as rival generals competed to succeed him as
overall commander and dominant figure at court.
One result was a defeat at the hands of the Vandals in Spain. When the ineffectual Honorius died in 423 his
nephew and successor, Valentinian III, young son of Constantius and Galla, was
deposed in yet another usurpation, this time by a certain Johannes. With Johannes’ suppression in 426,
Valentinian was restored to the western throne but, not least because he was
still a child, the strife for control of the palace continued, between the main
western generals: Felix, Boniface and Aëtius.
By 434, Aetius had disposed of his rivals but the situation for the
Ravennate court had deteriorated.[23]
In imperial politics, Roman rivals were always
prioritised over barbarians for good reasons; Roman armies posed a more serious
threat. But the constant civil warfare
since the battle of the Frigidus (395), in addition to one or perhaps two
serious defeats at the hands of the Vandals, had serious results. The western field army had never been given
the chance to be rebuilt after its late fourth-century defeats. Forces assembled from remaining field army
regiments and troops drawn away from the frontiers had repeatedly fought each
other, inflicting heavy losses on each other.
Even Johannes’ suppression had seen the defeat of the Eastern
expeditionary force by Aëtius’ Hunnic auxiliaries. Civil strife meant that imperial government
had been unable to be restored in the north-west, although Aëtius campaigned in
northern Gaul in the late 420s. Imperial
control over Spain appears to have been lost.
The Vandals, after defeating the Sueves, who had begun to expand from
their base in Gaelicia, crossed into Africa. Eventually the Ravenna government
recognised their control over Mauretania and Numidia. With the Vandals’ departure and the defeat of
significant Roman forces, the Sueves now seemed likely to dominate the Iberian
Peninsula. The loss of imperial authority
in Britain, northern Gaul, Spain and Africa had in every case been brought
about to some extent (usually decisively) by Roman civil war and palace
politics.
Valentinian’s reign marked an important shift in
western politics. The failure of the
numerous usurpations of Honorius’ reign and of Johannes at the start of
Valentinian’s appears to have convinced participants in Roman politics that the
imperial dynastic ‘card’ trumped all others.
The competing generals – in this period entirely of Roman origin – strove for the same things as Stilicho,
Alaric and Athaulf had before them: domination of the imperial court, supreme
control of the armies and an incorporation, via the marriage of their children,
into the royal house.
Aëtius set about restoring governmental power but the
shortage of good troops meant that he could not wage war on more than one
front. Concentrating upon Gaul, he defeated the rebellious Goths and campaigned
successfully in the north against Franks and rebels. Disaster struck, however, when the Vandals
captured Carthage in 439 and, the same year, the Goths defeated and killed
Aëtius’ subordinate, Litorius, at Toulouse.
These events changed the picture dramatically. Aëtius abandoned his northern Gaulish
campaigns because his southern base was now threatened. Troops were also needed to defend Italy
against Vandal attacks. In Spain, the
Sueves entered upon a period of domination, under their kings Hermeric and
Rechila.
Aëtius again responded energetically. A treaty was made with the Goths – possibly
the first to recognise some sort of autonomy for the group – bringing them back
into the imperial fold. Soon Gothic
troops were employed in attempts to restore imperial authority in Spain. In
Gaul, while no territory was abandoned, militarily Aëtius seems to have
withdrawn to a line roughly along the Loire.
He settled the Burgundians in Sapaudia
in 443 to strengthen that line, alongside an Alan settlement at Auxerre. It is noteworthy that the shortage of good
soldiers was forcing the Empire to rely on ‘barbarian’ armies, like the Goths,
Burgundians and Alans.
Nonetheless we must consider what we mean by
‘Barbarian’ when discussing mid-fifth-century wars. The ‘Barbarian’ groups most heavily involved
in imperial politics had all entered the Empire many years earlier: the
Aquitanian Goths (we can now call them Visigoths) in 376, the Sueves, Vandals
and Alans (now in Gaelicia and North Africa) in 406 and the Rhône-valley
Burgundians by 413. By 440 the warriors and leaders whom we are
accustomed to think of as ‘Barbarians’ were men who had grown up or –
increasingly – had been born inside the Roman Empire. This is crucial: most historians write as
though Rechila of the Sueves, Theoderic of the Visigoths and Geiseric of the
Vandals were warriors fresh from across the Rhine or Danube. Yet the culture that impinged upon them as
children, adolescents and young adults was not that of the forests or steppes
of barbaricum: it was that of the
western provinces, especially Gaul and Spain.
The younger men likely had provincial Roman mothers. These were the ‘barbarians’ who played the
most important roles in imperial politics and history. What differentiated these people from other
provincial Romans is difficult to know.
By contrast, throughout this period, actual barbarian invasion from
across the frontier (by Franks and Alamans for example) was rare, small-scale
and usually swiftly defeated. The great
exception to this was Attila the Hun’s attack on the west in 451.[24]
Attila’s invasion wrecked a situation that was again
looking promising for the Roman. In 445
a treaty with the Vandal leader Geiseric, which betrothed his son Huneric to
Valentinian III’s daughter, incorporated the Vandals within the régime. Once more we see how ‘barbarian’ leaders
sought legitimation, involvement in government and marriage into the imperial
dynasty. Offensives involving Gothic and
Vandal forces were launched in Spain against the Sueves, although the Sueves
had defeated these by 446. In Gaul, Aëtius’
forces were again waging successful campaigns against local rebels and Frankish
invaders, so that a restoration of the Rhine frontier might not have looked
impossible. Attila’s attack ended this
possibility.
The Hunnic attack in 451 destroyed the remnants of
Roman Rhine defences (if there was anything left at all). Aëtius’ brought together the different Gallic
factions and some barbarian allies to defeat the Hunnic forces but his (possibly
deliberate) failure to inflict a decisive reverse on Attila was crucial. Aëtius could not oppose the Huns’ devastating
attack on Italy in 452, which was eventually turned back by disease and by an
East Roman offensive across the Danube.
Famously, Pope Leo I garnered contemporary praise for halting Attila’s
march on Rome; any military laurels fell to an Eastern general confusingly also
called Aëtius. Attila died in 453 and,
with his threat removed, in 454 Valentinian attempted to profit from Aëtius’
temporary military discrediting and rid himself of his mighty generalissimo; he
assassinated him in person. In 455, two
of Aëtius’ former bodyguards killed Valentinian in revenge. The early sixth-century chronicler
Marcellinus Comes considered this
event to have marked the end of the western Roman Empire (a significance he
also, more famously, ascribed to the events of 476) and his assessment is
justifiable.[25]
Ephemeral
Emperors, 455-76
The extent to which the dynastic ‘card’ had become
decisive in Roman politics since 425-6 is more than amply demonstrated by the
history of the succeeding twenty-one years, when no fewer than nine emperors
attempted to govern the ever-shrinking territory that accepted rule from
Ravenna. The last eastern emperor of the Valentianic-Theodosian dynasty,
Theodosius II, died in 450. Without dynastic legitimacy, no western ruler could
automatically obtain recognition from the factions that held power in other
regions of the West. Indeed, without
dynastic legitimacy, eastern emperors also found it difficult to bring the West
into line with their policies. All the western regional factions now had armed
forces: the Visigoths acted entirely in line with the Aquitanian senatorial
nobility; the Rhône valley nobles made common cause with the Burgundians
settled in their region from the start; the Roman army of Dalmatia formed
another interest group and one reason why the heretical Vandals in Carthage
attracted such contemporary opprobrium was, it has been suggested,[26]
their success in convincing North African Romans to support their
leadership. The situation looks
different in Spain. The Sueves seem to
be the only barbarian group not to have formed a regional alliance with the
local Roman nobility, although even by the 450s the difference between
‘provincial Roman’ and ‘barbarian’ was one of nuance. Any Sueve who could remember life before the
‘Great Invasion’ would have been very old. Nonetheless in 453 a treaty was signed
between the Sueves and two Roman commanders, Mansuetus and Fronto, which seems
to have returned Carthaginensis to Roman authority while recognising Suevic
control over other territories.[27] That the Suevic king Rechiar had campaigned
in Tarraconensis in 449 alongside a Roman rebel (Bacauda) called Basilius further suggests that, despite the
impression given by Hydatius, the Sueves also forged alliances with provincial
leaders.
Valentinian III’s murder dissolved two critical
alliances. One was with the Sueves, who
resumed their attacks on Carthaginensis and Tarraconensis. The other, more important, was with the
Vandals, in many ways the faction with the strongest hand in 455. Huneric, heir to the Vandal throne, was
betrothed to Valentinian III’s daughter; the Vandals were the only group who
could play the ‘dynastic card’. This was
made clear immediately, when Geiseric – possibly summoned by Valentinian’s
widow – led the Vandal fleet against Rome and Petronius Maximus, who had
plotted Valentinian’s murder and had himself made emperor. Petronius was killed by an angry mob and the
Vandal sack of Rome was far more serious than Alaric’s. Geiseric brought Valentinian’s widow and
daughters back to Carthage, where Huneric finally married his fiancée. Their offspring would be descendants of the
Valentinianic-Theodosian dynasty and thus have a strong claim to the imperial
throne. Geiseric wanted one Olybrius,
married to Valentinian’s other daughter, the sister of Huneric’s wife, on the
imperial throne. To support this claim,
the Vandals waged a destructive twenty-year war of raiding around the
Mediterranean.
The history of the final twenty years of the western
Empire’s formal existence is tortuous and confusing. [28] Any emperor faced severe difficulties. The diminishing extent of the territory under
direct control by Ravenna (the empire had now effectively lost control over
Britain, most of Gaul north of the Loire, large areas of Spain, and its Balkan
and North African provinces) reduced his ability to raise taxes and raising
armies. This led to increasing reliance
on recruits from beyond the frontier and to their payment in delegated taxation
and settlement on some forms of land.[29] After two generations, these mechanisms bound
troops like the Visigoths and Burgundians closely into provincial society,
further strengthening links between regional armies and aristocracies.
Several problems demanded the attention of every
occupant of the throne. One of the most pressing
was how to bind the Gallic and Italian aristocracies into the regime. The Gauls resented their exclusion from the
centre of politics while the Italians, having lost their pre-eminence in the
third and – especially – fourth centuries, were unlikely to acquiesce in a
return to the ‘inside-out Empire’. The
tricky African situation compounded this.
With the Vandals opposed to the Ravennate government, the grain fleet
necessary to feed Rome was always in danger of being withheld, causing riots.[30] The threat of Vandal attack also demanded the
presence of a significant army in Italy, giving military muscle to the Italian
faction. Countering the Vandals required
one or more of three options: risky naval operations from Sicily, land-based
invasion from Tripolitania or attack from across the Straits of Gibraltar. The second (and in practice probably the
first) required the Eastern Empire’s support; the third necessitated the
nullification or incorporation of the Sueves, control of the route through
Provence and Tarraconensis at least, and ideally of Carthaginensis and Baetica
too. Given the difficulties of military
recruitment and waging war on two fronts, campaigning in Spain required the
Gothic and/or Burgundian armies, underlining the need to incorporate the Gallic
factions into a regime. Command of the Italian army and thus de facto the role of the most important
political-military figure at court was held by Ricimer for over fifteen years
between 456/7 and 472.[31] Apart from possibly providing the military
backing to the claims of the Italian aristocratic faction, Ricimer, like Aëtius
before him, clung viciously to power. He
was opposed to any reduction of the military presence in Italy. As time passed, in any case, barbarian
soldiers came to be as incorporated into Italian society and politics as the
Goths and Burgundians in Gaul, the Sueves in Spain or the Vandals in Africa.[32] Ricimer, unsurprisingly, was wholly or partly
responsible for the downfall of three emperors.
Each change of Emperor potentially added to these problems by alienating
the individuals or factions that had supported his predecessor. Thus, when Ricimer had the capable Majorian
executed, Aegidius, Majorian’s commander of the (largely Frankish) Roman army
on the Loire, took his troops (and thus defence of the Gallic frontier) into
rebellion for three years. Invasion by
barbarians from beyond the frontier continued to be the least of an emperors’
worries. As always, internal politics
and warfare dominated the imperial outlook.
These problems would be difficult for even the best
general and politician to surmount, and most of the emperors about whom we have
any information, and who reigned for long enough to attempt to accomplish
anything, seem to have been capable. The
difficulties got the better of them all.
All the different factions seem to have managed a turn at controlling
the throne: the Aquitanians and Goths with Avitus (455-6); the Italians and
their army with Majorian (456-61), Libius Severus (461-5) and Romulus (475-6);
the Dalmatian army and its supporters with Julius Nepos (474-5), the
Vandals/North Africans with Olybrius (472) and (possibly) the Burgundians/Rhône
valley senators with Glycerius (473-4).
Anthemius (467-72) was the appointee of the Eastern Empire. Anthemius could additionally play the
dynastic card, being related to the Constantinian and Valentinianic/Theodosian
houses. He worked hard to solve the
West’s difficulties for five years before falling victim to them and Ricimer. A key feature of politics in this period was
the use of the title rex (king) by
leaders of ‘barbarian’ forces not incorporated in the imperial regime. Thus, when his imperial candidate Glycerius
was deposed by Julius Nepos and the Dalmatians in 473, the general Gundobad
left Italy and returned to his people, the Burgundians, among whom he became
king. The rebel general Aegidius appears
to have taken the title of rex francorum
(King of the Franks) when he rebelled against Ricimer and Libius Severus.[33] By contrast, the barbarian soldier and
emperor-maker Ricimer never took a royal title.
The Undead Empire,
476-533
When Odoacer, the Italian army’s commander, deposed
Romulus ‘Augustulus’ (little emperor) in 476, no faction had the power to
defeat the others and create a lasting imperial regime. The West had endured three interregna after
455, after the deaths of Avitus, Libius Severus and Olybrius, totalling over
three years (a seventh of the total period between Valentinian III’s murder and
Romulus’ deposition). The different
regions could govern themselves via the imperial bureaucracy, especially as
even the ‘barbarian’ kings also had legitimate Roman titles, whether there was
a western emperor or not. Odoacer’s
return of the western regalia to Constantinople in 476, simply recognised this
fact. After Emperor Zeno refused his
request for the title of patrician, Odoacer did what others like Aegidius and
Gundobad had done before him: he took the title king.
The various regional factions of the Western Empire
thus crystallised into a network of kingdoms: the Vandals in North Africa, the
Burgundians on the Rhône, the Visigoths in Aquitaine and, eventually, Spain,
the Sueves in north-west Spain and Odoacer’s kingdom in Italy. In northern Gaul, the leaders of Aegidius’
old army on the Loire carved out a Frankish realm while Britain and much of
southern and eastern Spain saw competition between warlords of all sorts. All recognised (in theory) imperial rule from
Constantinople, legitimising their government.
Although contemporaries clearly recognised that there was no functioning
Western Empire or reigning Western Emperor, and that this made a real
difference, there is no evidence that they thought the Empire had definitively
ended or ‘fallen’. The one possible
exception to this was Hydatius, the Gaelician bishop-chronicler, but it is
probably not coincidental that he lived in an area where barbarian rule,
unsanctioned by any imperial regime, was being imposed by force.
This new order did not end the fighting and
struggles for mastery, however. The
Goths expanded their power into Spain, defeating local leaders, while also fighting
the Franks to their north. Most
importantly, in 493 the Ostrogothic king Theoderic completed his
imperially-sanctioned conquest of Italy.
Now controlling Italy and the formerly western territories in Illyricum,
he defeated the Vandals and drove them out of Sicily. In 507 the Frank Clovis defeated and killed
Alaric II of the Visigoths and conquered Aquitaine. Theoderic took the opportunity to take over
Provence and by 510 he controlled the Visigothic territories in Spain. At this point he had overlordship over much
of the former Western Empire. Meanwhile, Clovis eliminated rival Frankish
leaders and extended his domination over the trans-Rhenan peoples – Saxons, Alamans
and Thuringians. It probably seemed as
though the old rivalry between Gaulish and Italian factions could explode back
into open warfare. Both Theoderic and
Clovis acquiesced in being called augustus
by their subjects even if they never took the title.[34] If one had managed to subdue the other it is
reasonable to posit that they might well have revived the western Empire under
their own leadership. Clovis died in
511, ending the threat of war between the two overlords, but Theoderic
continued to dominate the west, seemingly bringing Burgundy and Vandal Africa
into his web of alliances and promoting an ideology of an ancient Ostrogothic
power (virtus) equal to Rome’s.[35]
This self-confident Gothic ideology provoked a
response from Constantinople, where the new Emperor Justin I and his nephew and
successor Justinian began to proclaim that the West had been ‘lost’ to
barbarians. The West, they said, had
fallen and needed to be reconquered.[36] It was no longer part of the Roman
Empire. In 533, Justinian turned these
words into action and invaded Vandal Africa.
Over the next twenty years, Justinian’s troops put an end to the Vandal
and Ostrogothic kingdoms and conquered a swathe of territory in Spain. The destruction they wrought, however, and
the fact that they failed to reconquer the whole of the old pars occidentalis, meant that a new
frontier came into being between the imperium
romanum and the kingdoms beyond.
Because of Justinian’s ideological pronouncements, those kingdoms could
no longer claim even the fiction of being part of the Roman Empire. They needed new forms of legitimacy and a new
phase of western European history came into being. The imperium
that had once unified the west had now formally dissolved into the series of
diverse, regional kingdoms of medieval Europe.
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[1] For this historiography, see Wood
2013; James 2009
is the best guide to debates about the barbarians.
[2] Brown 1971.
[3] James 2008 and other articles in
the same issue of the journal; Rousseau (ed.) 2009.
[4] Halsall 2012a.
[5] For a general survey of the
frontier and Romano-Barbarian relations see Halsall 2007:138-62, with
references.
[6] Drinkwater 1996; 1997; Elton
1996; Whittaker 1994.
[7] Heather 2001.
[8] For an overview of barbarian
society and politics, see Halsall 2007:118-36.
[9] Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 26.5.7.
[10] Halsall 2014.
[11] Halsall 2014.
[12] There are many studies of this
crisis: Burns 1994; Halsall 2007:170-85; Heather 1991:122-56; 1996:98-102,
130-8; Kulikowski 2006:123-53 ; Lenski 1995; 2002:320-67; Wolfram 1988:
[13] Ammianus, Res Gestae 31.2.1-12; Halsall 2007:171-2.
[14] Lenski 1995.
[15] Two classic studies of late of
Roman Britain are Esmonde-Cleary 1989 and Gerrard 2014.
[16] For this interpretation, see
Halsall 2012b and references.
[17] Kulikowski 2000.
[18] Liebeschuetz 1991: 34-6.
[19] For studies of Alaric’s career,
see Burns 1994; Halsall 2007:194-206, 214-7; Heather 1991:193-218; 1996:138-48;
Kulikowski 2006:154-77; 2014; Liebeschuetz 1992.
[20] On Constantius see Lütkenhaus
1998.
[21] Orosius, History against the Pagans 7.43.16-17.
[22] For different narratives of this
period, see Halsall 2007:234-56; Heather 2005:251-348, 369-75.
[23] On Aëtius, see Stickler 2002.
[24] On Attila, see Kelly 2008; Maas
(ed.) 2014.
[25] Marcellinus Comes, Chronicle, sub anno 454.
[26] Conant 2012:130-86.
[27] Hydatius, Chronicle 147.
[28] For narratives, see Halsall 2007:
257-83; Heather 2005:375-430.
[29] On which see Goffart 1980; 2014;
Halsall 2007:422-47 for discussion of the debate; Halsall 2016.
[30] Sidonius Apollinaris’ panegyric
to Majorian (Poems 5) makes this very
clear.
[31] On Ricimer see MacGeorge 2002.
[32] Halsall 2016.
[33] Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.12.
[34] Theoderic: McCormick
1986:278-80; Clovis: Gregory of Tours, Histories
2.38.
[35] Amory 1997:59-71.
[36] Croke 1983.
