Part 2 — CHAPTER IV. Concerning the infallible teaching of the Roman Pontiff: (continued 18)

See GOTHS: A. D. 376, and 378.

"The forces of the East were nearly annihilated at the terrible battle of Adrianople. … The Goths … advanced, ravaging all around them, to the foot of the walls of Constantinople; and, after some unimportant skirmishes, returned westward through Macedonia, Epirus, and Dalmatia. From the Danube to the Adriatic, their passage was marked by conflagration and blood. … No general in the East attempted to take advantage of the anarchy in favour of his own ambition; no army offered the purple to its chief; all dreaded the responsibility of command at so tremendous a crisis. All eyes were turned on the court of Treves, the only point whence help was hoped for. But Gratian, eldest son of Valentinian, and emperor of the West, was only 19. He … marched upon Illyricum with his army, when he learned the event of the battle of Adrianople, and the death of Valens, who had been so eager to secure the undivided honours of victory, that he would not wait for his arrival. Incapable of confronting such a tempest, he retreated to Sirmium. The news of an invasion of the Allemans into Gaul recalled him to the defence of his own territory. Danger started up on every hand at once. The empire stood in need of a new chief, and one of approved valour. Gratian had the singular generosity to choose from among his enemies, and from a sense of merit alone. Theodosius, the Spaniard, his father's general, who had successively vanquished the Scots and afterwards the Moors, and who had been unjustly condemned to the scaffold at the beginning of Gratian's reign, had left a son 33 years of age, who bore his name. The younger Theodosius had distinguished himself in the command he held in Mœsia, but was living in retirement and disgrace on his estates in Spain, when, with, the confidence of a noble mind, Gratian chose him out, presented him to the army on the 19th of January, 379, and declared him his colleague, and emperor of the East."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, The Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 5 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, introduction, and book 1, chapter 1.

ROME: A. D. 378. Gratian's overthrow of the Alemanni in Gaul.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 378.

ROME: A. D. 379-395. Theodosius and the Goths. His Trinitarian Edict. Revolt of Maximus. Death of Gratian. Overthrow of Maximus by Theodosius. Usurpation of Eugenius, and his fall. Death of Theodosius.

"The first duty that Theodosius had to undertake was to restore the self-confidence and trust in victory of the Roman army, terribly shaken as these qualities had been by the disastrous rout of Hadrianople. This he accomplished by waging a successful guerilla war with the Gothic marauders. Valens had played into the hands of the barbarians by risking everything on one great pitched battle. Theodosius adopted the very opposite policy. He outmanoeuvred the isolated and straggling bands of the Goths, defeated them in one skirmish after another that did not deserve the name of a battle, and thus restored the courage and confidence of the Imperial troops. By the end of 379 he seems to have succeeded in clearing the territory south of the Balkan range of the harassing swarms of the barbarians. In February, 380, he fell sick at Thessalonica (which was his chief basis of operations throughout this period), and this sickness, from which he did not fully recover for some months, was productive of two important results, (1) his baptism as a Trinitarian Christian, (2) a renewal of the war against fresh swarms of barbarians. (1) Theodosius appears up to this point of his career not to have definitively ranged himself on either side of the great Arian controversy, though he had a hereditary inclination towards the Creed of Nicaea. Like his father, however, he had postponed baptism in accordance with the prevalent usage of his day: but now upon a bed of sickness which seemed likely to be one of death, he delayed no longer, but received the rite at the hands of Ascholius, the Catholic Bishop of Thessalonica. Before he was able to resume his post at the head of the legions, he published his celebrated Edict: 'To the people of Constantinople.—We desire that all the nations who are governed by the rule of our Clemency shall practise that religion which the Apostle Peter himself delivered to the Romans, and which it is manifest that the pontiff Damasus, and Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of Apostolic sanctity, do now follow: that according to the discipline of the Apostles and the teaching of the Evangelists they believe in the one Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in equal Majesty, and in the holy Trinity. We order all who follow this law to assume the name of Catholic Christians, decreeing that all others, being mad and foolish persons, shall bear the infamy of their heretical dogmas, and that their Conventicles shall not receive the name of Churches: to be punished first by Divine vengeance, and afterwards by that exertion of our power to chastise which we have received from the decree of heaven.' Thus then at length the Caesar of the East was ranged on the side of Trinitarian orthodoxy. Constantine in the latter part of his reign, Constantius, Valens, had all been Arians or semi-Arians, some of them bitter in their heterodoxy. Julian had been a worshipper of the gods of Olympus. Thus for nearly two generations the influence of the Court of Constantinople had been thrown into the scale against the teaching of Athanasius, which was generally accepted throughout the Western realm. Now by the accession of Theodosius to the Trinitarian side, religious unity was restored to the Empire: but at the same time a chasm, an impassable chasm, was opened between the Empire itself and its new Teutonic guests, nearly all of whom held fast to the Arian teaching of their great Apostle Ulfilas. (2) The other consequence of the sickness of Theodosius was, as I have said, a fresh incursion of barbarian hordes, swarming across the Danube and climbing all the high passes of the Balkans. {2726} The work of clearing the country of these marauders had to be all done over again. … At length, in the closing months of 380, the provinces south of the Balkans (Macedonia and Thrace) were once more cleared of their barbarian intruders. Peace, in which Gratian concurred, was concluded with the Goths who still doubtless abounded in Moesia. …

See GOTHS: A. D. 379-382.

The insurrection at Antioch [A. D. 387] displayed the character of Theodosius in a favourable light, as a strong but merciful and magnanimous ruler of men. Very different was the effect on his fame of the insurrection which broke out three years later (390) in the Macedonian city of Thessalonica. …

See THESSALONICA: A. D. 390.

In the year 383 a military revolt broke out in Britain against the young Emperor Gratian. … The army revolted and proclaimed Magnus Clemens Maximus, Emperor. He was, like Theodosius, a native of Spain, and though harsh and perhaps rapacious, a man of ability and experience, not unworthy of the purple if he had come to it by lawful means. Gratian on his side had evidently given some real cause for dissatisfaction to his subjects. … Hence it was that when Maximus with the army of Britain landed in Gaul, he shook down the fabric of his power without difficulty. Gratian, finding himself deserted by his troops, escaped from the battle-field, but was overtaken and killed at Lyons. For more than four years, Maximus, satisfied with ruling over the three great Western provinces which had fallen to the share of Gratian, maintained at any rate the appearance of harmony with his two colleagues. … At length, in the autumn of 387, Maximus deemed that the time had come for grasping the whole Empire of the West. Lulling to sleep the suspicions of Valentinian and his mother by embassies and protestations of friendship, he crossed the Alps with an army and marched towards Aquileia, where the young Emperor was then dwelling in order to be as near as possible to the dominions of his friendly colleague and protector. Valentinian did not await the approach of his rival, but going down to the port of Grado, took ship and sailed for Thessalonica, his mother and sisters accompanying him. The Emperor and the Senate of Constantinople met the Imperial fugitives at Thessalonica, and discussed the present position of affairs. … What the entreaties of the mother might have failed to effect, the tears of the daughter [Galla] accomplished. Theodosius, whose wife Flaccilla had died two years before (385), took Galla for his second wife, and vowed to avenge her wrongs and replace her brother on the throne. He was some time in preparing for the campaign, but, when it was opened, he conducted it with vigour and decision. His troops pressed up the Save valley, defeated those of Maximus in two engagements, entered Aemona (Laybach) in triumph, and soon stood before the walls of Aquileia [July, 388], behind which Maximus was sheltering himself. … A mutiny among the troops of Maximus did away with the necessity for a siege," and the usurper, betrayed and delivered to Theodosius, was speedily put to death. Theodosius "handed over to Valentinian II. the whole of the Western Empire, both his own especial share and that which had formerly been held by his brother Gratian. The young Emperor was now 17 years of age; his mother, Justina, had died apparently on the eve of Theodosius's victory, and he governed, or tried to govern alone." But one of his Frankish generals, named Arbogast, gathered all the power of the government into his hands, reduced Valentinian to helpless insignificance, and finally, in May, 392, caused him to be strangled. "The Frankish general, who durst not shock the prejudices of the Roman world by himself assuming the purple, hung that dishonoured robe upon the shoulders of a rhetorician, a confidant, and almost a dependent of his own, named Eugenius. This man, like most of the scholars and rhetoricians of the day, had not abjured the old faith of Hellas. As Arbogast also was a heathen, though worshipping Teutonic rather than Olympian gods, this last revolution looked like a recurrence to the days of Julian, and threatened the hardly-won supremacy of Christianity." Again Theodosius was summoned to the rescue of the West, and, after two years of careful preparation, marched against Eugenius by the same route that he had taken before. The two armies met at a place "half-way between Aemona and Aquileia, where the Julian Alps are crossed, and where a little stream called the Frigidus (now the Wipbach) burst suddenly from a limestone hill." The battle was won by Theodosius after a terrible struggle, lasting two days (September 5-6, A. D. 394). Eugenius was taken prisoner and put to death; Arbogast fell by his own hand. "Theodosius, who was still in the prime of life, had now indeed 'the rule of the world,' without a rival or a colleague except his own boyish sons. … Had his life been prolonged, as it well might have been for twenty or thirty years longer, many things might have gone differently in the history of the world. But, little more than four months after the victory of the Frigidus, Theodosius died [January 17, A. D. 395] of dropsy, at Milan."

T. Hodgkin, The Dynasty of Theodosius, chapter 4.

ALSO IN: F. W. Farrar, Lives of the Fathers, chapter 15: Ambrose and Theodosius (volume 2).

R. Thornton, St. Ambrose, chapters 6-14.

ROME: A. D. 388. Formal establishment of Christianity.

Until the year 384, "paganism was still the constitutional religion of the [Roman] senate. The hall or temple in which they assembled was adorned by the statue and altar of Victory. … The senators were sworn on the altar of the goddess to observe the laws of the emperor and of the empire; and a solemn offering of wine and incense was the ordinary prelude of their public deliberations. The removal of this ancient monument was the only injury which Constantius had offered to the superstition of the Romans. The altar of Victory was again restored by Julian, tolerated by Valentinian, and once more banished from the senate by the zeal of Gratian. But the emperor yet spared the statues of the gods which were exposed to the public veneration: four hundred and twenty-four temples or chapels still remained to satisfy the devotion of the people, and in every quarter of Rome the delicacy of the Christians was offended by the fumes of idolatrous sacrifice. But the Christians formed the least numerous party in the senate of Rome." The senate addressed several petitions to Gratian, to the young Valentinian, and to Theodosius for the restoration of the altar of Victory. {2727} They were supported by the eloquence of the orator Symmachus, and opposed by the energy of Ambrose, the powerful Archbishop of Milan. The question is said to have been, in the end, submitted to the senate, itself, by the Emperor Theodosius (A. D. 388)—he being present in person—"Whether the worship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans? The liberty of suffrages, which he affected to allow, was destroyed by the hopes and fears that his presence inspired. … On a regular division of the senate, Jupiter was condemned and degraded by the sense of a very large majority."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 28.

ROME: A. D. 391-395. Suppression of Paganism.

"The religious liberty of the Pagans, though considerably abridged by Gratian, was yet greater than had been allowed by the laws of Constantine and his immediate successors. The priests and vestals were deprived of their immunities; the revenues of the temples were confiscated for the service of the State; but the heathen rites of their forefathers were still allowed to those who were conscientiously attached to them, provided they abstained from nocturnal sacrifices and magical incantations. But when Theodosius, in the early part of his reign, prohibited the immolation of victims, their superstition was attacked in its most vital part, and, in the course of a few years, the success of his measures against heresy, and his triumph over Maximus, emboldened him to proceed to steps of a still more decisive kind, and to attempt the entire subversion of the already tottering fabric of paganism. A commission was issued to the præfect of the East, directing him to close all heathen temples within his jurisdiction; and while the imperial officers were engaged in this task, assisted by the clergy, and especially by the monks, with a vigour not always strictly legal, Theodosius gradually increased the rigour of his legislative prohibitions. A law was passed in the year 391, declaring that to enter a heathen temple, with a religious purpose, was an offence liable to a fine of fifteen pounds of gold; and in the following year, not only all public, but even all private and domestic, exercise of heathen rites was interdicted under the severest penalties. In some few instances, the intemperate and tumultous proceedings of the monks in destroying the temples, excited the opposition of the fanatical heathen peasantry, and at Alexandria a serious commotion, fatal to many Christians, was occasioned by the injudicious measures of the patriarch Theophilus. But, generally speaking, the pagans showed little disposition to incur the rigorous penalties of the laws, still less to become martyrs for a religion so little calculated to inspire real faith or fortitude. Some show of zeal in the cause of paganism was made at Rome, where the votaries of the ancient superstition still had a strong party, both among the senate and populace. But the eloquent exertions of Symmachus, the champion of heathenism, were easily baffled by Ambrose, who encountered him with equal ability, better argument, and a confident reliance on the support of his sovereign; and not long after, a more important victory was gained, in an enactment by the senate, carried, through the influence of Theodosius, by an overwhelming majority, that Christianity should for the future be the sole religion of the Roman State. This decisive measure sealed the ruin of paganism in Rome and its dependencies. The senators and nobles hastened to conform, nominally at least, to the dominant religion; the inferior citizens followed their example, and St. Jerome was in a little while able to boast that every heathen altar in Rome was forsaken, and every temple had become a place of desolation."

J. B. S. Carwithen and A. Lyall, History of the Christian Church, page 63-65.

ALSO IN: P. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, period 3, chapter 1, section 7 (volume 2).

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 28.

ROME: A. D. 394-395. Final division of the Empire between the sons of Theodosius. Arcadius in the East, Honorius in the West. Ministries of Rufinus and Stilicho. Advent of Alaric the Visigoth.

"The division of the Empire between East and West on the accession of the sons of Theodosius [A. D. 395], though it was possibly meant to be less complete than some preceding partitions, proved to be the final one. It is worth while to indicate the line of division, which is sufficiently accurately traced for us in the Notitia. In Africa it was the well-known frontier marked by 'the Altars of the Philaeni,'. which separated Libya (or Cyrenaica) on the East from Africa Tripolitana on the West. Modern geographers draw exactly the same line (about 19° E. of Greenwich) as the boundary of Barca and Tripoli. On the Northern shore of the Mediterranean the matter is a little more complicated. Noricum, Pannonia, Savia, and Dalmatia belonged to the West, and Dacia—not the original but the later province of Dacia—to the East. This gives us for the frontier of the Western Empire the Danube as far as Belgrade, and on the Adriatic the modern town of Lissa. The inland frontier is traced by geographers some 60 miles up the Save from Belgrade, then southwards by the Drina to its source, and so across the mountains to Lissa. Thus Sclavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia in the Austrian Empire, and Croatia, most of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro in the state which was lately called Turkey in Europe, belonged to the Western Empire. The later province of Dacia, which fell to the Eastern share, included Servia (Old and New), the south-east corner of Bosnia, the north of Albania, and the west of Bulgaria. By this partition the Prefecture of Illyricum, as constituted by Diocletian, was divided into two nearly equal parts. … What makes the subject somewhat perplexing to the student is the tendency to confuse Illyricum the 'province' and Illyricum the 'prefecture,'" the latter of which embraced, in modern geographical terms, Servia, Western Bulgaria, Macedon, Epirus and Greece.

T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 1, chapter 4, note C, and chapter 3 (volume 1).

"This decree for a partition, published by Theodosius shortly before his death, appears to have been generally expected and approved. The incapacity of Arcadius and Honorius, of whom the former had only attained his 18th and the latter his 11th year, had not then been discovered. These princes showed more and more clearly, as time went on, that they inherited no share of their father's abilities, their weakness being such as to render their sovereignty little more than nominal. … It was never intended that the two jurisdictions should be independent of each other, but rather that the Emperors should be colleagues and coadjutors, the defenders of one commonwealth. … {2728} At the time of the decree, belief in the unity and immortality of the 'Sancta Respublica Romana' was universal. … Enactments were invariably made in the names of both Emperors; and, so often as a vacancy of either throne occurred, the title of the Caesar elect remained incomplete until his elevation had been approved and confirmed by the occupant of the other. … Theodosius left the Roman world in peace, and provided with a disciplined army sufficient, if rightly directed, for its defence; but his choice of the men to whom he confided the guidance of his sons was unfortunate. Rufinus, to whom the guardianship of Arcadius was entrusted, by birth a Gascon, owed his advancement to his eloquence as an advocate, and his plausible duplicity had so far imposed on the confiding nature of Theodosius as to obtain for him the prefecture of the East. Stilicho, the guardian of Honorius, was by descent a Vandal, and is styled by St. Jerome a semi-barbarian. … His military abilities, combined with a prepossessing exterior, induced Theodosius to confer upon him the chief command of the imperial forces, and the hand of his niece, Serena."

R. H. Wrightson, The Sancta Respublica Romana, chapter 1.

"Stilicho … was popular with the army, and for the present the great bulk of the forces of the Empire was at his disposal; for the regiments united to suppress Eugenius had not yet been sent back to their various stations. Thus a struggle was imminent between the ambitious minister who had the ear of Arcadius, and the strong general who held the command and enjoyed the favour of the army. … It was the cherished project of Rufinus to unite Arcadius with his only daughter. … But he imprudently made a journey to Antioch, in order to execute vengeance personally on the count of the East, who had offended him; and during his absence from Byzantium an adversary stole a march on him. This adversary was the eunuch Eutropius, the lord chamberlain. … Determining that the future Empress should be bound to himself and not to Rufinus, he chose Eudoxia, a girl of singular beauty, the daughter of a distinguished Frank, but herself of Roman education. … Eutropius showed a picture of the Frank maiden to the Emperor, and engaged his affections for her; the nuptials were arranged by the time Rufinus returned to Constantinople, and were speedily celebrated (27th April 395). This was a blow to Rufinus, but he was still the most powerful man in the East. The event which at length brought him into contact with Stilicho was the rising of the Visigoths, who had been settled by Theodosius in Moesia and Thrace. … Under the leadership of Alaric they raised the ensign of revolt, and spread desolation in the fields and homesteads of Macedonia, Moesia, and Thrace, even advancing close to the walls of Constantinople. …

See GOTHS: A. D. 395.

It was impossible to take the field against the Goths, because there were no forces available, as the eastern armies were still with Stilicho in the West. Arcadius therefore was obliged to summon Stilicho to send or bring them back immediately, to protect his throne. This summons gave that general the desired opportunity to interfere in the politics of Constantinople; and having, with energetic celerity, arranged matters on the Gallic frontier, he marched overland through Illyricum, and confronted Alaric in Thessaly, whither the Goth had traced his devastating path from the Propontis. … It seems that before Stilicho arrived, Alaric had experienced a defeat at the hands of garrison soldiers in Thessaly; at all events he shut himself up in a fortified camp and declined to engage with the Roman general. In the meantime Rufinus induced Arcadius to send a peremptory order to Stilicho to despatch the eastern troops to Constantinople and depart himself whence he had come; the Emperor resented, or pretended to resent, the presence of his cousin as an officious interference. Stilicho yielded so readily that his willingness seems almost suspicious. … He consigned the eastern soldiers to the command of a Gothic captain, Gainas, and himself departed to Salona, allowing Alaric to proceed on his wasting way into the lands of Hellas." When Gainas and his army arrived at the gates of Constantinople, the Emperor came out to meet them, with Rufinus by his side. The troops suddenly closed round the latter and murdered him. "We can hardly suppose that the lynching of Rufinus was the fatal inspiration of a moment, but whether it was proposed or approved of by Stilicho, or was a plan hatched among the soldiers on their way to Constantinople, is uncertain."

J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1).

ROME: A. D. 396-398. Commission of Alaric under the Eastern Empire. Suppression of the revolt of Gildo in Africa. Commanding position of Stilicho.

"For the next five or six years the chief power over the feeble soul of Arcadius was divided between three persons, his fair Frankish Empress Eudoxia, Eutropius, the haggard old eunuch who had placed her on the throne, and Gainas the Goth, commander of the Eastern army. Again, in the year 306, did Stilicho, now commanding only the Western forces, volunteer to deliver Greece from the Visigoths. The outset of the campaign was successful. The greater part of Peloponnesus was cleared of the invader, who was shut up in the rugged mountain country on the confines of Elis and Arcadia. The Roman army was expecting soon to behold him forced by famine to an ignominious surrender, when they discovered that he had pierced the lines of circumvallation at an unguarded point, and marched with all his plunder northwards to Epirus. What was the cause of this unlooked-for issue of the struggle? … The most probable explanation … is that Fabian caution co-operated with the instinct of the Condottiere against pushing his foe too hard. There was always danger for Rome in driving Alaric to desperation: there was danger privately for Stilicho if the dead Alaric should render him no longer indispensable. Whatever might be the cause, by the end of 396 Alaric was back again in his Illyrian eyrie, and thenceforward whatever threats might be directed towards the East the actual weight of his arms was felt only by the West. Partly, at least, this is to be accounted for by the almost sublime cowardice of the ministers of Arcadius, who rewarded his Grecian raids by clothing him with the sacred character of an officer of the Empire in their portion of Illyricum.

See GOTHS: A. D. 395.

{2729}

The precise title under which he exercised jurisdiction is not stated. … During an interval of quiescence, which lasted apparently about four years, the Visigothic King was using the forms of Roman law, the machinery of Roman taxation, the almost unbounded authority of a Roman provincial governor, to prepare the weapon which was one day to pierce the heart of Rome herself. The Imperial City, during the first portion of this interval, was suffering the pang's of famine. … Since the foundation of Constantinople … Egypt had ceased to nourish the elder Rome. … Rome was thus reduced to an almost exclusive dependence on the harvests of Africa proper (that province of which Carthage was the capital), of Numidia, and of Mauretania. … But this supply … in the year 397 was entirely stopped by the orders of Gildo, who had made himself virtual master of these three provinces." The elder Theodosius had suppressed in 374 a revolt in Mauretania headed by one Firmus. "The son of a great sheep-farmer, Nabal, he [Firmus] had left behind him several brothers, one of whom, Gildo, had in the year 386 gathered up again some portion of his brother's broken power. We find him, seven years later (in 393), holding the rank of Count of Africa in the Roman official hierarchy. … He turned to his own account the perennial jealousy existing between the ministers of the Eastern and Western Courts, renounced his allegiance to Rome, and preferred to transfer it to Constantinople. What brought matters to a crisis was his refusal to allow the grain crops of 397 to be conveyed to Rome. … The Roman Senate declared war in the early winter months of 398 against Gildo. Stilicho, who, of course, undertook the fitting out of the expedition, found a suitable instrument for Rome's chastisement in one who had had cruel wrongs of his own to avenge upon Gildo. This was yet another son of Nabal, Mascezel." Mascezel, at the head of nearly 40,000 men, accomplished the overthrow of his brother, who slew himself, or was slain, when he fell into Roman hands. "Thus the provinces of Africa were for the time won back again for the Empire of the West, and Rome had her corn again. … The glory and power of Stilicho were now nearly at their highest point. Shortly before the expedition against Gildo he had given his daughter Maria in marriage to Honorius, and the father-in-law of the Emperor might rightly be deemed to hold power with a securer grasp than his mere chief minister."

T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, book 1, chapter 4 (volume 1).

ROME: A. D. 400-403. First Gothic invasion of Italy under Alaric. Stilicho's repulse of the invaders.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 400-403.

ROME: A. D. 400-518. The Eastern Empire. Expulsion of Gothic soldiery from Constantinople. Conflict of John Chrysostom and the Empress Eudoxia. Reigns of Theodosius II., Pulcheria, Marcianus, Leo I., Zeno, and Anastasius. Persistent vitality of the Byzantine government.

"While Alaric's eyes were turned on Italy, but before he had actually come into conflict with Stilicho, the Court of Constantinople had been the seat of grave troubles. Gainas, the Gothic 'Magister militum' of the East, and his creature, the eunuch Eutropius, had fallen out, and the man of war had no difficulty in disposing of the wretched harem-bred Grand Chamberlain. … The Magister militum now brought his army over to Constantinople, and quartered it there to overawe the emperor. It appeared quite likely that ere long the Germans would sack the city; but the fate that befell Rome ten years later was not destined for Constantinople. A mere chance brawl put the domination of Gainas to a sudden end [July, A. D. 400]. … The whole population turned out with extemporized arms and attacked the German soldiery. … Isolated bodies of the Germans were cut off one by one, and at last their barracks were surrounded and set on fire. The rioters had the upper hand; 7,000 soldiers fell, and the remnant thought themselves lucky to escape. Gainas at once declared open war on the empire, but … he was beaten in the field and forced to fly across the Danube, where he was caught and beheaded by Uldes, king of the Huns. … The departure of Alaric and the death of Gainas freed the Eastern Romans from the double danger that [had] impended over them. … The weak Arcadius was enabled to spend the remaining seven years of his life in comparative peace and quiet. His court was only troubled by an open war between his spouse, the Empress Ælia Eudoxia, and John Chrysostom, the Patriarch of Constantinople. John was a man of saintly life and apostolic fervour, but rash and inconsiderate alike in speech and action. … The patriarch's enemies were secretly supported by the empress, who had taken offence at the outspoken way in which John habitually denounced the luxury and insolence of her court. She favoured the intrigues of Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, against his brother prelate, backed the Asiatic clergy in their complaints about John's oppression of them, and at last induced the Emperor to allow the saintly patriarch to be deposed by a hastily-summoned council, the 'Synod of the Oak,' held outside the city. The populace rose at once to defend their pastor; riots broke out, Theodosius was chased back to Egypt, and the Emperor, terrified by an earthquake which seemed to manifest the wrath of heaven, restored John to his place. Next year, however, the war between the empress and the patriarch broke out again. … The Emperor, at his wife's demand, summoned another council, which condemned Chrysostom, and on Easter Day, A. D. 404, seized the patriarch in his cathedral by armed force, and banished him to Asia. That night a fire, probably kindled by the angry adherents of Chrysostom, broke out in St. Sophia, which was burnt to the ground. From thence it spread to the neighbouring buildings, and finally to the Senate-house, which was consumed with all the treasures of ancient Greek art of which Constantine had made it the repository. Meanwhile the exiled John was banished to a dreary mountain fastness in Cappadocia, and afterwards condemned to a still more remote prison at Pityus on the Euxine. He died on his way thither. … The feeble and inert Arcadius died in A. D. 408, at the early age of thirty-one; his imperious consort had preceded him to the grave, and the empire of the East was left to Theodosius II., a child of seven years, their only son. … The little emperor was duly crowned, and the administration of the East undertaken in his name by the able Anthemius, who held the office of Praetorian Praefect. History relates nothing but good of this minister; he made a wise commercial treaty with the king of Persia; he repelled with ease a Hunnish invasion of Moesia; he built a flotilla on the Danube, where Roman war-ships had not been seen since the death of Valens, forty years before; he reorganized the corn supply of Constantinople; and did much to get back into order and cultivation the desolated north-western lands of the Balkan Peninsula. … {2730} The empire was still more indebted to him for bringing up the young Theodosius as an honest and god-fearing man. The palace under Anthemius' rule was the school of the virtues; the lives of the emperor and his three sisters, Pulcheria, Arcadia, and Marina, were the model and the marvel of their subjects. Theodosius inherited the piety and honesty of his grandfather and namesake, but was a youth of slender capacity, though he took some interest in literature, and was renowned for his beautiful penmanship. His eldest sister, Pulcheria, was the ruling spirit of the family, and possessed unlimited influence over him, though she was but two years his senior. When Anthemius died in A. D. 414, she took the title of Augusta, and assumed the regency of the East. Pulcheria was an extraordinary woman: on gathering up the reins of power she took a vow of chastity, and lived as a crowned nun for thirty-six years; her fear had been that, if she married, her husband might cherish ambitious schemes against her brother's crown; she therefore kept single herself and persuaded her sisters to make a similar vow. Austere, indefatigable, and unselfish, she proved equal to ruling the realms of the East with success, though no woman had ever made the attempt before. When Theodosius came of age he refused to remove his sister from power, and treated her as his colleague and equal. By her advice he married in A. D. 421, the year that he came of age, the beautiful and accomplished Athenaïs, daughter of the philosopher Leontius. … Theodosius' long reign passed by in comparative quiet. Its only serious troubles were a short war with the Persians, and a longer one with Attila, the great king of the Huns, whose empire now stretched over all the lands north of the Black Sea and Danube, where the Goths had once dwelt. In this struggle the Roman armies were almost invariably unfortunate. The Huns ravaged the country as far as Adrianople and Philippopolis, and had to be bought off by the annual payment of 700 lbs. of gold [£31,000]. … The reconstruction of the Roman military forces was reserved for the successors of Theodosius II. He himself was killed by a fall from his horse in 450 A. D., leaving an only daughter, who was married to her cousin Valentinian III., Emperor of the West. Theodosius, with great wisdom, had designated as his successor, not his young son-in-law, a cruel and profligate prince, but his sister Pulcheria, who at the same time ended her vow of celibacy and married Marcianus, a veteran soldier and a prominent member of the Senate. The marriage was but formal, for both were now well advanced in years: as a political expedient it was all that could be desired. The empire had peace and prosperity under their rule, and freed itself from the ignominious tribute to the Huns. Before Attila died in 452, he had met and been checked by the succours which Marcianus sent to the distressed Romans of the West. When Marcianus and Pulcheria passed away, the empire came into the hands of a series of three men of ability. They were all bred as high civil officials, not as generals; all ascended the throne at a ripe age; not one of them won his crown by arms, all were peaceably designated either by their predecessors, or by the Senate and army. These princes were Leo I. (457-474), Zeno (474-491), Anastasius (491-(18). Their chief merit was that they guided the Roman Empire in the East safely through the stormy times which saw its extinction in the West. While, beyond the Adriatic, province after province was being lopped off and formed into a new Germanic kingdom, the emperors who reigned at Constantinople kept a tight grip on the Balkan Peninsula and on Asia, and succeeded in maintaining their realm absolutely intact. Both East and West were equally exposed to the barbarian in the fifth century, and the difference of their fate came from the character of their rulers, not from the diversity of their political conditions."

C. W. C. Oman, Story of the Byzantine Empire, chapters 4-5.

"In spite of the dissimilarity of their personal conduct, the general policy of their government [i. e. of the six emperors between Arcadius and Justinian] is characterised by strong features of resemblance. … The Western Empire crumbled into ruins, while the Eastern was saved, in consequence of these emperors having organised the system of administration which has been most unjustly calumniated, under the name of Byzantine. The highest officers, and the proudest military commanders, were rendered completely dependent on ministerial departments and were no longer able to conspire or rebel with impunity. The sovereign was no longer exposed to personal danger, nor the treasury to open peculation. But, unfortunately, the central executive power could not protect the people from fraud with the same ease as it guarded the treasury; and the emperors never perceived the necessity of intrusting the people with the power of defending themselves from the financial oppression of the subaltern administration."

G. Finlay, Greece under the Romans, chapter 2, section 11.

ROME: A. D. 404-408. The Western Empire: The last gladiatorial show. Retreat of Honorius and the imperial court to Ravenna. Invasion of Radagaisus. Alliance with Alaric the Goth. Fall and death of Stilicho.

"After the retreat of the barbarians, Honorius was directed to accept the dutiful invitation of the senate, and to celebrate in the imperial city the auspicious era of the Gothic victory and of his sixth consulship. The suburbs and the streets, from the Milvian bridge to the Palatine mount, were filled by the Roman people, who, in the space of a hundred years, had only thrice been honoured with the presence of their sovereigns [whose residence had been at Constantinople, at Treves, or at Milan]. … The emperor resided several months in the capital. … The people were repeatedly gratified by the attention and courtesy of Honorius in the public games. … In these games of Honorius, the inhuman combats of gladiators polluted for the last time the amphitheatre of Rome. … The recent danger to which the person of the emperor had been exposed in the defenceless palace of Milan urged him to seek a retreat in some inaccessible fortress of Italy, where he might securely remain, while the open country was covered by a deluge of barbarians; … and in the 20th year of his age the Emperor of the West, anxious only for his personal safety, retired to the perpetual confinement of the walls and morasses of Ravenna. {2731} The example of Honorius was imitated by his feeble successors, the Gothic kings, and afterwards the exarchs, who occupied the throne and palace of the emperors; and till the middle of the 8th century Ravenna was considered as the seat of government and the capital of Italy. The fears of Honorius were not without foundation, nor were his precautions without effect. While Italy rejoiced in her deliverance from the Goths, a furious tempest was excited among the nations of Germany, who yielded to the irresistible impulse that appears to have been gradually communicated from the eastern extremity of the continent of Asia [by the invasion of the Huns, which Gibbon considers to have been the impelling cause of the great avalanche of barbarians from the north that swept down upon Italy under Radagaisus in 406. …

See RADAGAISUS.

Many cities of Italy were pillaged or destroyed; and the siege of Florence by Radagaisus is one of the earliest events in the history of that celebrated republic, whose firmness checked and delayed the unskilful fury of the barbarians." Stilicho came to the relief of the distressed city, "and the famished host of Radagaisus was in its turn besieged." The barbarians, surrounded by well guarded entrenchments, were forced to surrender, after many had perished from want of food. The chief was beheaded; his surviving followers were sold as slaves. Meantime, Alaric, the Gothic king, had been taken into the pay of the Empire. "Renouncing the service of the Emperor of the East, Alaric concluded with the Court of Ravenna a treaty of peace and alliance, by which he was declared master-general of the Roman armies throughout the præfecture of Illyricum; as it was claimed, according to the true and ancient limits, by the minister of Honorius." This arrangement with Alaric caused great dissatisfaction in the army and among the people, and was a potent cause of the fall and death of Stilicho, which occurred A. D. 408. He was arrested and summarily executed, at Ravenna, on the mandate of his ungrateful and worthless young master, whose trembling throne he had upheld for thirteen years.

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 30 (volume 3).

ROME: A. D. 406-500. The breaking of the Rhine barrier. The great Teutonic invasion and occupation of the Western Empire.

"Up to the year 406 the Rhine was maintained as the frontier of the Roman Empire against the numerous barbarian races and tribes that swarmed uneasily in central Europe. From the Flavian Emperors until the time of Probus (282), the great military line from Coblenz to Kehlheim on the Danube had been really defended, though often overstepped and always a strain on the Romans, and thus a tract of territory (including Baden and Würtemberg) on the east shore of the Upper Rhine, the titheland as it was called, belonged to the Empire. But in the fourth century it was as much as could be done to keep off the Alemanni and Franks who were threatening the provinces of Gaul. The victories of Julian and Valentinian produced only temporary effects. On the last day of December 406 a vast company of Vandals, Suevians, and Alans crossed the Rhine. The frontier was not really defended; a handful of Franks who professed to guard it for the Romans were easily swept aside, and the invaders desolated Gaul at pleasure for the three following years. Such is the bare fact which the chroniclers tell us, but this migration seems to have been preceded by considerable movements on a large scale along the whole Rhine frontier, and these movements may have agitated the inhabitants of Britain and excited apprehensions there of approaching danger. Three tyrants had been recently elected by the legions in rapid succession; the first two, Marcus and Gratian, were slain, but the third Augustus, who bore the auspicious name of Constantine, was destined to play a considerable part for a year or two on the stage of the western world.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 407.

It seems almost certain that these two movements, the passage of the Germans across the Rhine and the rise of the tyrants in Britain, were not without causal connection; and it also seems certain that both events were connected with the general Stilicho. The tyrants were elevated in the course of the year 406, and it was at the end of the same year that the Vandals crossed the Rhine. Now the revolt of the legions in Britain was evidently aimed against Stilicho. … There is direct contemporary evidence … that it was by Stilicho's invitation that the barbarians invaded Gaul; he thought that when they had done the work for which he designed them he would find no difficulty in crushing them or otherwise disposing of them. We can hardly avoid supposing that the work which he wished them to perform was to oppose the tyrant of Britain—Constantine, or Gratian, or Marcus, whoever was tyrant then; for it is quite certain that, like Maximus, he would pass into Gaul, where numerous Gallo-Roman adherents would flock to his standards. Stilicho died before Constantine was crushed, and the barbarians whom he had so lightly summoned were still in the land, harrying Gaul, destined soon to harry and occupy Spain and seize Africa. From a Roman point of view Stilicho had much to answer for in the dismemberment of the Empire; from a Teutonic point of view, he contributed largely to preparing the way for the foundation of the German kingdoms."

J. B. Bury, A History of the Later Roman Empire, book 2, chapter 6 (volume 1).

"If modern history must have a definite beginning, the most convenient beginning for it is the great Teutonic invasion of Gaul in the year 407. Yet the nations of modern Europe do not spring from the nations which then crossed the Rhine, or from any intermixture between them and the Romans into whose land they made their way. The nations which then crossed the Rhine were the Vandals, Suevians, and Alans. … None of these nations made any real settlements in Gaul; Gaul was to them simply the high road to Spain. There they did settle, though the Vandals soon forsook their settlement, and the Alans were soon rooted out of theirs. The Suevian kept his ground for a far longer time; we may, if we please, look on him as the Teutonic forefather of Leon, while we look on the Goth as the Teutonic forefather of Castile. Here we have touched one of the great national names of history; the Goth, like the Frank, plays quite another part in Western Europe from the Alan, the Suevian, and the Vandal. … Now both Franks and Goths had passed into the Empire long before the invasion of 407. One branch of the Franks … was actually settled on Roman lands, and, as Roman subjects, did their best to withstand the great invasion. {2732} What then makes that invasion so marked an epoch? … The answer is that the invasion of 407 not only brought in new elements, but put the existing elements into new relations to one another. Franks and Goths put on a new character and begin a new life. The Burgundians pass into Gaul, not as a road to Spain, but as a land in which to find many homes. They press down to the south-eastern corner of the land, while the Frank no longer keeps himself in his north-eastern corner, while in the south-west the Goth is settled as for a while the liegeman of Cæsar, and in the north-west a continental Britain springs into being. Here in truth are some of the chiefest elements of the modern world, and though none of them are among the nations that crossed the Rhine in 407, yet the new position taken by all of them is the direct consequence of that crossing. In this way, in Gaul and Spain at least, the joint Vandal, Alan, and Suevian invasion is the beginning of the formation of the modern nations, though the invading nations themselves form no element in the later life of Gaul and only a secondary element in the later life of Spain. The later life of these lands, and that of Italy also, has sprung of the settlement of Teutonic nations in a Roman land, and of the mutual influences which Roman and Teuton have had on one another. Roman and Teuton lived side by side, and out of their living side by side has gradually sprung up a third thing different from either, a thing which we cannot call either Roman or Teutonic, or more truly a thing which we may call Roman and Teutonic and some other things as well, according to the side of it which we look at. This third thing is the Romance element in modern Europe, the Romance nations and their Romance tongues."

E. A. Freeman, The Chief Periods of European History, pages 87-90.

"The true Germanic people who occupied Gaul were the Burgundians, the Visigoths, and the Franks. Many other people, many other single bands of Vandals, Alani, Suevi, Saxons, &c., wandered over its territory; but of these, some only passed over it, and the others were rapidly absorbed by it; these are partial incursions which are without any historical importance. The Burgundians, the Visigoths, and the Franks, alone deserve to be counted among our ancestors. The Burgundians definitively established themselves in Gaul between the years 406 and 413; they occupied the country between the Jura, the Saone, and the Duranee; Lyons was the centre of their dominion. The Visigoths, between the years 412 and 450, spread themselves over the provinces bounded by the Rhone, and even over the left bank of the Rhone to the south of the Durance, the Loire, and the Pyrenees: their king resided at Toulouse. The Franks, between the years 481 and 500, advanced in the north of Gaul, and established themselves between the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Loire, without including Brittany and the western portions of Normandy; Clovis had Soissons and Paris for his capitals. Thus, at the end of the fifth century, was accomplished the definitive occupation of the territory of Gaul by the three great German tribes. The condition of Gaul was not exactly the same in its various parts, and under the dominion of these three nations. There were remarkable differences between them. The Franks were far more foreign, German, and barbarous, than the Burgundians and the Goths. Before their entrance into Gaul, these last had had ancient relations with the Romans; they had lived in the eastern empire, in Italy; they were familiar with the Roman manners and population. We may say almost as much for the Burgundians. Moreover, the two nations had long been Christians. The Franks, on the contrary, arrived from Germany in the condition of pagans and enemies. Those portions of Gaul which they occupied became deeply sensible of this difference, which is described with truth and vivacity in the seventh of the 'Lectures upon the History of France,' of M. Augustin Thierry. I am inclined, however, to believe that it was less important than has been commonly supposed. If I do not err, the Roman provinces differed more among themselves than did the nations which had conquered them. You have already seen how much more civilized was southern than northern Gaul, how much more thickly covered with population, towns, monuments, and roads. Had the Visigoths arrived in as barbarous a condition as that of the Franks, their barbarism would yet have been far less visible and less powerful in Gallia Narbonensis and in Aquitania; Roman civilization would much sooner have absorbed and altered them. This, I believe, is what happened; and the different effects which accompanied the three conquests resulted rather from the differences of the conquered than from that of the conquerors."

F. Guizot, History of Civilization, volume 2, lecture 8.

"The invasion of the barbarians was not like the torrent which overwhelms, but rather like a slow, persistent force which undermines, disintegrates, and crumbles. The Germans were not strangers to the Roman Empire when they began their conquests. … It is well known that many of the Roman Emperors were barbarians who had been successful soldiers in the Imperial army; that military colonies were established on the frontiers composed of men of various races under the control of Roman discipline; that the Goths, before they revolted against the authority of the Emperor, were his chosen troops; that the great Alaric was a Roman general; that the shores of the Danube and the Rhine, which marked the limits of the Empire, were lined with cities which were at the same time Roman colonies and peopled with men of the Teutonic races. When the barbarians did actually occupy the territory their movement seems at first to have been characterized by a strange mixture of force with a sentiment of awe and reverence for the Roman name. In Italy and in Gaul they appropriated to themselves two-thirds of the lands, but they sought to govern their conquests by means of the Roman law and administration, a machine which proved in their hands, by the way, a rather clumsy means of government. They robbed the provincials of all the movable property they possessed, but the suffering they inflicted is said not to have been as great as that caused by the exactions of the Roman taxgatherer. The number of armed invaders has doubtless been exaggerated. The whole force of the Burgundian tribe, whose territory, in the southeast of modern France, extended to the Rhone at Avignon, did not, it is said, exceed sixty thousand in all, while the armed bands of Clovis, who changed the destinies not only of Gaul but of Europe, were not greater than one-tenth of that number. {2733} The great change in their life was, as I have said, that they ceased to be wanderers; they became, in a measure at least, fixed to the soil; and in contrast with the Romans, they preferred to live in the country and not in the towns. In this they followed their Teutonic habits, little knowing what a mighty change this new distribution of population was to cause in the social condition of Europe. They retained, too, their old military organization, and, after attempts more or less successful to use the Roman administration for the ordinary purposes of government, they abandoned it, and ruled the countries they conquered by simple military force, under their Dukes and Counts, the Romans generally being allowed in their private relations to govern themselves by the forms of the Roman law."

C. J. Stillé, Studies in Mediæval History, chapter 2.

"The coming in of the Germans brought face to face the four chief elements of our civilization: the Greek with its art and science, much of it for the time forgotten; the Roman with its political institutions and legal ideas, and furnishing the empire as the common ground upon which all stood; the Christian with its religious and moral ideas; and the German with other political and legal ideas, and with a reinforcement of fresh blood and life. By the end of the sixth century these all existed side by side in the nominal Roman empire. It was the work of the remaining centuries of the middle ages to unite them into a single organic whole—the groundwork of modern civilization. But the introduction of the last element, the Germans, was a conquest—a conquest rendered possible by the inability of the old civilization any longer to defend itself against their attack. It is one of the miracles of history that such a conquest should have occurred, the violent occupation of the empire by the invasion of an inferior race, with so little destruction of civilization, with so complete an absorption, in the end, of the conqueror by the conquered. It must be possible to point out some reasons why the conquest of the ancient world by the Germans was so little what was to be expected. In a single word, the reason is to be found in the impression which the world they had conquered made upon the Germans. They conquered it, and they treated it as a conquered world. They destroyed and plundered what they pleased, and it was not a little. They took possession of the land and they set up their own tribal governments in place of the Roman. And yet they recognized, in a way, even the worst of them, their inferiority to the people they had overcome. They found upon every side of them evidences of a command over nature such as they had never acquired: cities, buildings, roads, bridges, and ships; wealth and art, skill in mechanics and skill in government, the like of which they had never known; ideas firmly held that the Roman system of things was divinely ordained and eternal; a church strongly organized and with an imposing ceremonial, officered by venerable and saintly men, and speaking with an overpowering positiveness and an awful authority that did not yield before the strongest barbarian king. The impression which these things made upon the mind of the German must have been profound. In no other way can the result be accounted for. Their conquest was a physical conquest, and as a physical conquest it was complete, but it scarcely went farther. In government and law there was little change for the Roman; in religion and language, none at all. Other things, schools and commercial arrangements for instance, the Germans would have been glad to maintain at the Roman level if they had known how. Half unconsciously they adopted the belief in the divinely founded and eternal empire, and in a vague way recognized its continuance after they had overthrown it."

G. B. Adams, Civilization During the Middle Ages, chapter 5.

See, also, GAUL: A. D. 406-409, 5-8TH CENTURIES, and 5-10TH CENTURIES.

ROME: A. D. 408-410. The three sieges and the sacking of the Imperial city by Alaric. Death of the Gothic chieftain.

Having rid himself of the great minister and general whose brain and arm were the only hope of his dissolving empire, Honorius proceeded to purge his army and the state of barbarians and heretics. He "removed all who professed religious opinions different from his own, from every public office; … and, to complete the purification of his army, ordered a general massacre of all the women and children of the barbarians, whom the soldiers in his service had delivered up as hostages. In one day and hour these innocent victims were given up to slaughter and their property to pillage. These hostages had been left in all the Italian cities by the barbarian confederates, as a guarantee for their fidelity to Rome; when they learned that the whole had perished, in the midst of peace, in contempt of all oaths, one furious and terrific cry of vengeance arose, and 30,000 soldiers, who had been the faithful servants of the empire, at once passed over to the camp of Alaric [then in Illyria], and urged him to lead them on to Rome. Alaric, in language the moderation of which Honorius and his ministers ascribed to fear, demanded reparation for the insults offered him, and strict observance of the treaties concluded with him. The only answer he obtained was couched in terms of fresh insult, and contained an order to evacuate all the provinces of the empire." On this provocation, Alaric crossed the Alps, in October, A. D. 408, meeting no resistance till he reached Ravenna. He threatened that city, at first, but the contemptible Emperor of the West was safe in his fen-fastness, and the Goth marched on to Rome. He "arrived before Rome [in the autumn of A. D. 408] 619 years after that city had been threatened by Hannibal. During that long interval her citizens had never looked down from her walls upon the banner of an enemy [a foreign invader] waving in their plains. … Alaric did not attempt to take Rome by assault: he blockaded the gates, stopped the navigation of the Tiber, and soon famine took possession of a city which was eighteen miles in circumference and contained above a million of inhabitants. … At length, the Romans had recourse to the clemency of Alaric; and, by means of a ransom of five thousand pounds of gold and a great quantity of precious effects, the army was induced to retire into Tuscany." The standard of Alaric was now joined by 40,000 barbarian slaves, who escaped from their Italian masters, and by a large reinforcement of Goths from the Danube, led by the brother-in-law of Alaric, Ataulphus, or Athaulphus (Adolphus, in its modern form) by name. The Visigothic king offered peace to the empire if it would relinquish to him a kingdom in Noricum, Dalmatia and Venetia, with a yearly payment of gold; in the end his demands fell until they extended to Noricum, only. {2734} But the fatuous court at Ravenna refused all terms, and Alaric marched back to Rome. Once more, however, he spared the venerable capital, and sought to attain his ends by requiring the senate to renounce allegiance to Honorius and to choose a new emperor. He was obeyed and Priscus Attalus, the præfect of the city, was formally invested with the purple. This new Augustus made Alaric and Ataulphus his chief military officers, and there was peace for a little time. But Attalus, unhappily, took his elevation with seriousness and did not recognize the commands that were hidden in the advice which he got from his Gothic patron. Alaric found him to be a fool and stripped his purple robe from his shoulders within less than a year. Then, failing once more to negotiate terms of peace with the worthless emperor shut up in Ravenna, he laid siege to Rome for the third time—and the last. "On the 24th of April, 410, the year 1163 from the foundation of the august city, the Salarian gate was opened to him in the night, and the capital of the world, the queen of nations, was abandoned to the fury of the Goths. Yet this fury was not without some tinge of pity; Alaric granted a peculiar protection to the churches, which were preserved from all insult, together with their sacred treasures, and all those who had sought refuge within their walls. While he abandoned the property of the Romans to pillage, he took their lives under his protection; and it is affirmed that only a single senator perished by the sword of the barbarians. The number of plebeians who were sacrificed appears not to have been thought a matter of sufficient importance even to be mentioned. At the entrance of the Goths, a small part of the city was given up to the flames; but Alaric soon took precautions for the preservation of the rest of the edifices. Above all, he had the generosity to withdraw his army from Rome on the sixth day, and to march it into Campania, loaded, however, with an immense booty. Eleven centuries later, the army of the Constable de Bourbon showed less veneration." Alaric survived the sack of Rome but a few months, dying suddenly in the midst of preparations that he made for invading Sicily. He was buried in the bed of the little river Bisentium, which flows past the town of Cozenza, the stream being diverted for the purpose and then turned back to its course.

J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 6.

ALSO IN: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 31.

T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 1, chapter 7.

ROME: A. D. 409-414. Invasion of Spain by the Vandals, Sueves and Alans.

See SPAIN: A. D. 409-414.

ROME: A. D. 410. Abandonment of Britain.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 410.

ROME: A. D. 410-419. Treaty with the Visigoths. Their settlement in Aquitaine. Founding of their kingdom of Toulouse.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 410-419.

ROME: A. D. 410-420. The barbarian attack on Gaul joined by the Franks.

See FRANKS: A. D. 410-420.

ROME: A. D. 412-453. Mixed Roman and barbarian administration in Gaul.

See GAUL: A. D. 412-453.

ROME: A. D. 423-450. Death of Honorius. Reign of Valentinian III. and his mother Placidia. Legal separation of the Eastern and Western Empires.

The disastrous reign of Honorius, emperor of the West, was ended by his death in 423. The nearest heir to the throne was his infant nephew, Valentinian, son of his sister Placidia. The latter, after being a captive in the hands of the Goths and after sharing the Visigothic throne for some months, as wife of king Ataulphus, had been restored to her brother on her Gothic husband's death. Honorius forced her, then, to marry his favorite, the successful general, Constantius, whom he raised to the rank of Augustus and associated with himself on the throne of the West. But Constantius soon died, leaving his widow with two children—a daughter and a son. Presently, on some quarrel with Honorius, Placidia withdrew from Ravenna and took refuge at Constantinople, where her nephew Theodosius occupied the Eastern throne. She and her children were there when Honorius died, and in their absence the Western throne was usurped by a rebel named John, or Joannes, the Notary, who reigned nearly two years. With the aid of forces from the Eastern Empire he was unseated and beheaded and the child Valentinian was invested with the imperial purple, A. D. 425. For the succeeding twenty-five years his mother, Placidia, reigned in his name. As compensation to the court at Constantinople for the material aid received from it, the rich province of Dalmatia and the troubled provinces of Pannonia and Noricum, were now severed from the West and ceded to the Empire of the East. At the same time, the unity of the Roman government was formally and finally dissolved. "By a positive declaration, the validity of all future laws was limited to the dominions of their peculiar author; unless he should think proper to communicate them, subscribed with his own hand, for the approbation of his independent colleague."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 33.

ALSO IN: J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, chapters 6-8.

ROME: A. D. 428-439. Conquests of the Vandals in Spain and Africa.

See VANDALS: A. D. 428; and 429-439.

ROME: A. D. 441-446. Destructive invasion of the Eastern Empire by the Huns. Cession of territory and payment of tribute to Attila.

See HUNS: A. D. 441-446.

ROME: A. D. 446. The last appeal from Britain.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 446.

ROME: A. D. 451. Great invasion of Gaul by the Huns. Their defeat at Chalons.

See HUNS: A. D. 451.

ROME: A. D. 452. Attila's invasion of Italy. The frightful devastation of his hordes. Origin of Venice.

See HUNS: A. D. 452; and VENICE: A. D. 452.

ROME: A. D. 455. Pillage of the city by the Vandals.

"The sufferings and the ignominy of the Roman empire were increased by a new calamity which happened in the year of Valentinian's death [murdered by an usurper, Petronius Maximus A. D. 455]. Eudoxia, the widow of that emperor, who had afterwards become [through compulsion] the wife of Maximus, avenged the murder of her first husband by plotting against her second; reckless how far she involved her country in the ruin. She invited to Rome Genseric, king of the Vandals, who, not content with having conquered and devastated Africa, made every effort to give a new direction to the rapacity of his subjects, by accustoming them to maritime warfare, or, more properly speaking, piracy. {2735} His armed bands, who, issuing from the shores of the Baltic, had marched over the half of Europe, conquering wherever they went, embarked in vessels which they procured at Carthage, and spread desolation over the coasts of Sicily and Italy. On the 12th of June, 455, they landed at Ostia. Maximus was killed in a seditious tumult excited by his wife. Defence was impossible; and, from the 15th to the 29th of June, the ancient capital of the world was pillaged by the Vandals with a degree of rapacity and cruelty to which Alaric and the Goths had made no approach. The ships of the pirates were moored along the quays of the Tiber, and were loaded with a booty which it would have been impossible for the soldiers to carry off by land."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 8 (volume 1).

"On the whole, it is clear from the accounts of all the chroniclers that Gaiseric's [or Genseric's] pillage of Rome, though insulting and impoverishing to the last degree, was in no sense destructive to the Queen of cities. Whatever he may have done in Africa, in Rome he waged no war on architecture, being far too well employed in storing away gold and silver and precious stones, and all manner of costly merchandise in those insatiable hulks which were riding at anchor by Ostia. Therefore, when you stand in the Forum of Rome or look upon the grass-grown hill which was once the glorious Palatine, blame if you like the Ostrogoth, the Byzantine, the Lombard, above all, the Norman, and the Roman baron of the Middle Ages, for the heart-breaking ruin that you see there, but leave the Vandal uncensured, for, notwithstanding the stigma conveyed in the word 'vandalism,' he is not guilty here."

T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 3, chapter 2 (volume 2).

ROME: A. D. 455-476. Barbarian masters and imperial puppets. From Count Ricimer to Odoacer. The ending of the line of Roman Emperors in the West, called commonly the Fall of the Western Empire.

"After the death of Valentinian III., the unworthy grandson of the great Theodosius [March 16, A. D. 455], the first thought of the barbarian chiefs was, not to destroy or usurp the Imperial name, but to secure to themselves the nomination of the emperor. Avitus, chosen in Gaul under the influence of the West Gothic King of Toulouse, Theoderic II., was accepted for a time as the western emperor, by the Roman Senate and by the Court of Constantinople. But another barbarian, Ricimer the Sueve, ambitious, successful, and popular, had succeeded to the command of the 'federated' foreign bands which formed the strength of the imperial army in Italy. Ricimer would not be a king, but he adopted as a settled policy the expedient, or the insulting jest, of Alaric. … He deposed Avitus, and probably murdered him. Under his direction, the Senate chose Majorian. Majorian was too able, too public-spirited, perhaps too independent, for the barbarian Patrician; Majorian, at a moment of ill-fortune was deposed and got rid of." After Majorian, one Severus (A. D. 461-467), and after Severus a Greek, Anthemius (A. D. 467-472), nominated at Constantinople, wore the purple at the command of Count Ricimer. When, after five years of sovereignty, Anthemius quarreled with his barbarian master, the latter chose a new emperor—the senator Olybrius—and conducted him with an army to the gates of Rome, in which the imperial court had once more settled itself. Anthemius, supported by the majority of the senate and people, resisted, and Rome sustained a siege of three months. It was taken by storm, on the 11th of July, A. D. 472, and suffered every outrage at the hands of the merciless victors. Anthemius was slain and his enemy, Ricimer, died a few weeks later. Olybrius followed the latter to the grave in October. Ricimer's place was filled by his nephew, a refugee Burgundian king, Gundobad, who chose for emperor an unfortunate officer of the imperial guard, named Glycerius. Glycerius allowed himself to be deposed the next year by Julius Nepos and accepted a bishopric in place of the throne; but later circumstances gave the emperor-bishop an opportunity to assassinate his supplanter and he did not hesitate to do so. By this time, the real power had passed to another barbarian "patrician" and general, Orestes, former secretary of Attila, and Orestes proclaimed his own son emperor. To this son "by a strange chance, as if in mockery of his fortune, had been given the names of the first king and the first emperor of Rome, Romulus Augustus, soon turned in derision into the diminutive 'Augustulus.' But Orestes failed to play the part of Ricimer. A younger and more daring barbarian adventurer, Odoacer the Herule, or Rugian, bid higher for the allegiance of the army. Orestes was slain, and the young emperor was left to the mercy of Odoacer. In singular and significant contrast to the common usage when a pretender fell, Romulus Augustulus was spared. He was made to abdicate in legal form; and the Roman Senate, at the dictation of Odoacer, officially signified to the Eastern emperor, Zeno, their resolution that the separate Western Empire should cease, and their recognition of the one emperor at Constantinople, who should be supreme over West and East. Amid the ruin of the empire and the state, the dethroned emperor passed his days, in such luxurious ease as the times allowed, at the Villa of Lucullus at Misenum; and Odoacer, taking the Teutonic title of king, sent to the emperor at Constantinople the imperial crown and robe which were to be worn no more at Rome or Ravenna for more than three hundred years. Thus in the year 476 ended the Roman empire, or rather, the line of Roman emperors, in the West."

R. W. Church, Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 1.

"When, at Odoacer's bidding, Romulus Augustulus, the boy whom a whim of fate had chosen to be the last native Cæsar of Rome, had formally announced his resignation to the senate, a deputation from that body proceeded to the Eastern court to lay the insignia of royalty at the feet of the Eastern Emperor Zeno. The West, they declared, no longer required an Emperor of its own; one monarch sufficed for the world; Odoacer was qualified by his wisdom and courage to be the protector of their state, and upon him Zeno was entreated to confer the title of patrician and the administration of the Italian provinces. The Emperor granted what he could not refuse, and Odoacer, taking the title of King ['not king of Italy, as is often said'—foot-note], continued the consular office, respected the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of his subjects, and ruled for fourteen years as the nominal vicar of the Eastern Emperor. {2736} There was thus legally no extinction of the Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East and West. In form, and to some extent also in the belief of men, things now reverted to their state during the first two centuries of the Empire, save that Byzantium instead of Rome was the centre of the civil government. The joint tenancy which had been conceived by Diocletian, carried further by Constantine, renewed under Valentinian I. and again at the death of Theodosius, had come to an end; once more did a single Emperor sway the sceptre of the world, and head an undivided Catholic Church."

J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 3.

ALSO IN: T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 3, chapters 4-8.

J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, preface and book 3, chapter 5 (volume 1).

ROME: A. D. 476. Causes of the decay of the Empire and the significance of its fall in the West.

"Thus in the year 476 ended the Roman empire, or rather, the line of Roman emperors, in the West. Thus it had become clear that the foundations of human life and society, which had seemed under the first emperors eternal, had given way. The Roman empire was not the 'last word' in the history of the world; but either the world was in danger of falling into chaos, or else new forms of life were yet to appear, new ideas of government and national existence were to struggle with the old for the mastery. The world was not falling into chaos. Europe, which seemed to have lost its guidance and its hope of civilization in losing the empire, was on the threshold of a history far grander than that of Rome, and was about to start in a career of civilization to which that of Rome was rude and unprogressive. In the great break-up of the empire in the West, some parts of its system lasted, others disappeared. What lasted was the idea of municipal government, the Christian Church, the obstinate evil of slavery. What disappeared was the central power, the imperial and universal Roman citizenship, the exclusive rule of the Roman law, the old Roman paganism, the Roman administration, the Roman schools of literature. Part of these revived; the idea of central power under Charles the Great, and Otto his great successor; the appreciation of law, though not exclusively Roman law; the schools of learning. And under these conditions the new nations—some of mixed races, as in France, Spain, and Italy; others simple and homogeneous, as in Germany, England, and the Scandinavian peninsula —begin their apprenticeship of civilization."

R. W. Church, The Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 1.

"The simple facts of the fall of the Empire are these. The Imperial system had been established … to protect the frontier. This it did for two centuries with eminent success. But in the reign of Marcus Aurelius … there occurred an invasion of the Marcomanni, which was not repulsed without great difficulty, and which excited a deep alarm and foreboding throughout the Empire. In the third century the hostile powers on every frontier began to appear more formidable. The German tribes, in whose discord Tacitus saw the safety of the Empire, present themselves now no longer in separate feebleness, but in powerful confederations. We hear no more the insignificant names of Chatti and Chauci; the history of the third century is full of Alemanni, Franks, and Goths. On the eastern frontier, the long decayed power of the Parthians now gives place to a revived and vigorous Persian Empire. The forces of the Empire are more and more taxed to defend it from these powerful enemies. … It is evident that the Roman world would not have steadily receded through centuries before the barbaric, had it not been decidedly inferior in force. To explain, then, the fall of the Empire, it is necessary to explain the inferiority in force of the Romans to the barbarians. This inferiority of the Romans, it is to be remembered, was a new thing. At an earlier time they had been manifestly superior. When the region of barbarism was much larger; when it included warlike and aggressive nations now lost to it, such as the Gauls; and when, on the other hand, the Romans drew their armies from a much smaller area, and organized them much less elaborately, the balance had inclined decidedly the other way. In those times the Roman world, in spite of occasional reverses, had on the whole steadily encroached on the barbaric. … Either, therefore, a vast increase of power must have taken place in the barbaric world, or a vast internal decay in the Roman. Now the barbaric world had actually received two considerable accessions of force. It had gained considerably, through what influences we can only conjecture, in the power and habit of co-operation. As I have said before, in the third century we meet with large confederations of Germans, whereas before we read only of isolated tribes. Together with this capacity of confederation we can easily believe that the Germans had acquired new intelligence, civilization, and military skill. Moreover, it is practically to be considered as a great increase of aggressive force, that in the middle of the fourth century they were threatened in their original settlements by the Huns. The impulse of desperation which drove them against the Roman frontier was felt by the Romans as a new force acquired by the enemy. But we shall soon see that other and more considerable momenta must have been required to turn the scale. … We are forced, … to the conclusion that the Roman Empire, in the midst of its greatness and civilization, must have been in a stationary and unprogressive, if not a decaying condition. Now what can have been the cause of this unproductiveness or decay? It has been common to suppose a moral degeneration in the Romans, caused by luxury and excessive good fortune. To support this it is easy to quote the satirists and cynics of the imperial time, and to refer to such accounts as Ammianus gives of the mingled effeminacy and brutality of the aristocracy of the capital in the fourth century. But the history of the wars between Rome and the barbaric world does not show us the proofs we might expect of this decay of spirit. We do not find the Romans ceasing to be victorious in the field, and beginning to show themselves inferior in valor to their enemies. The luxury of the capital could not affect the army. … Nor can it be said that luxury corrupted the generals, and through them the army. On the contrary, the Empire produced a remarkable series of capable generals. … Whatever the remote and ultimate cause may have been, the immediate cause to which the fall of the Empire can be traced is a physical, not a moral, decay. {2737} In valor, discipline, and science, the Roman armies remained what they had always been, and the peasant emperors of Illyricum were worthy successors of Cincinnatus and Caius Marius. But the problem was how to replenish those armies. Men were wanting; the Empire perished for want of men. The proof of this is in the fact that the contest with barbarism was carried on by the help of barbarian soldiers. … It must have been because the Empire could not furnish soldiers for its own defence, that it was driven to the strange expedient of turning its enemies and plunderers into its defenders. … Nor was it only in the army that the Empire was compelled to borrow men from barbarism. To cultivate the fields whole tribes were borrowed. From the time of Marcus Aurelius, it was a practice to grant lands within the Empire, sometimes to prisoners of war, sometimes to tribes applying for admission. … The want of any principle of increase in the Roman population is attested at a much earlier time. In the second century before Christ, Polybius bears witness to it; and the returns of the census from the Second Punic War to the time of Augustus show no steady increase in the number of citizens that cannot be accounted for by the extension of citizenship to new classes. … Precisely as we think of marriage, the Roman of Imperial times thought of celibacy,—that is, as the most comfortable but the most expensive condition of life. Marriage with us is a pleasure for which a man must be content to pay; with the Romans it was an excellent pecuniary investment, but an intolerably disagreeable one. Here lay, at least in the judgment of Augustus, the root of the evil. To inquire into the causes of this aversion to marriage in this place would lead me too far. We must be content to assume that, owing partly to this cause and partly to the prudential check of infanticide, the Roman population seems to have been in ordinary times almost stationary. The same phenomenon had shown itself in Greece before its conquest by the Romans. There the population had even greatly declined; and the shrewd Polybius explains that it was not owing to war or plague, but mainly to a general repugnance to marriage, and reluctance to rear large families, caused by an extravagantly high standard of comfort. … Perhaps enough has now been said to explain that great enigma, which so much bewilders the reader of Gibbon; namely, the sharp contrast between the age of the Autonines and the age which followed it. A century of unparalleled tranquillity and virtuous government is followed immediately by a period of hopeless ruin and dissolution. A century of rest is followed, not by renewed vigor, but by incurable exhaustion. Some principle of decay must clearly have been at work, but what principle? We answer: it was a period of sterility or barrenness in human beings; the human harvest was bad. And among the causes of this barrenness we find, in the more barbarous nations, the enfeeblement produced by the too-abrupt introduction of civilization, and universally the absence of industrial habits, and the disposition to listlessness which belongs to the military character."

J. R. Seeley, Roman Imperialism, pages 47-61.

"At no period within the sphere of historic records was the commonwealth of Rome anything but an oligarchy of warriors and slave-owners, who indemnified themselves for the restraint imposed on them by their equals in the forum by aggression abroad and tyranny in their households. The causes of its decline seem to have little connexion with the form of government established in the first and second centuries. They were in full operation before the fall of the Republic, though their baneful effects were disguised and perhaps retarded by outward successes, by extended conquests, and increasing supplies of tribute or plunder. The general decline of population throughout the ancient world may be dated even from the second century before our era. The last age of the Republic was perhaps the period of the most rapid exhaustion of the human race; but its dissolution was arrested under Augustus, when the population recovered for a time in some quarters of the empire, and remained at least stationary in others. The curse of slavery could not but make itself felt again, and demanded the destined catastrophe. Whatever evil we ascribe to the despotism of the Cæsars, we must remark that it was Slavery that rendered political freedom and constitutional government impossible. Slavery fostered in Rome, as previously at Athens, the spirit of selfishness and sensuality, of lawlessness and insolence, which cannot consist with political equality, with political justice, with political moderation. The tyranny of the emperors was … only the tyranny of every noble extended and intensified. The empire became no more than an ergastulum or barracoon [slave prison] on a vast scale, commensurate with the dominions of the greatest of Roman slaveholders. … We have noticed already the pestilence which befell Italy and many of the provinces in the reign of Aurelius. There is reason to believe that this scourge was no common disorder, that it was of a type new at least in the West, and that, as a new morbific agent, its ravages were more lasting, as well as more severe, than those of an ordinary sickness. … At another time, when the stamina of ancient life were healthier and stronger, such a visitation might possibly have come and gone, and, however fatal at the moment, have left no lasting traces; but periods seem to occur in national existence when there is no constitutional power of rallying under casual disorders. The sickness which in the youth of the commonwealth would have dispelled its morbid humours and fortified its system, may have proved fatal to its advancing years, and precipitated a hale old age into palsied decrepitude. The vital powers of the empire possessed no elasticity; every blow now told upon it with increasing force; the blows it slowly or impatiently returned were given by the hands of hired barbarians, not by the strength of its own right arm. Not sickness alone, but famines, earthquakes, and conflagrations, fell in rapid succession upon the capital and the provinces. Such casualties may have occurred at other periods not less frequently or disastrously; but these were observed, while the others passed unnoticed, because the courage of the nation was now broken no less than its physical vigour, and, distressed and terrified, it beheld in every natural disorder the stroke of fate, the token of its destined dissolution. Nor indeed was the alarm unfounded. These transient faintings and sicknesses were too truly the symptoms of approaching collapse. The long line of northern frontier, from Odessus to the island of the Batavi, was skirted by a fringe of fire, and through the lurid glare loomed the wrathful faces of myriads, Germans, Scythians, and Sarmatians, all armed for the onslaught in sympathy or concert."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, chapter 18 (volume 7).

{2738}

"Under the humane pretext of gratifying the world with a flattering title, an Antoninus, in one of his edicts, called by the name of Roman citizens the tributaries of the Roman empire, those men whom a proconsul might legally torture, flog with rods, or crush with labour and taxes. Thus the power of that formerly inviolable title, before which the most shameless tyranny stopped short, was contradicted; thus perished that ancient safety-cry which made the executioners fall back; I am a Roman citizen. From that period Rome no longer existed; there was a court and provinces: we do not understand by that word what it now signifies in the vulgar languages, but what it signified primitively in the Roman language, a country conquered by arms; we mean to say, that the primitive distinction between conquering Rome and those it had conquered, then became established between the men in the palace and those out of the palace; that Rome itself lived only for one family, and a handful of courtiers, as formerly the nations it had conquered had only lived by it. It was then that the name of subjugated, subjecti, which our language has corrupted into that of subjects, was transported from the conquered inhabitants of the East or Gaul, to the victorious inhabitants of Italy, attached in future to the yoke of a small number of men, as these had been attached to their yoke; the property of those men, as well as the others, had been their property, worthy, in a word, of the degrading title of subjects, subjecti, which must be taken literally. Such was the order of things which had been gradually forming since the time of Augustus; each emperor gloried in hastening the moment of its perfection; Constantine gave it the finishing stroke. He effaced the name of Rome from the Roman standards, and put in its place the symbol of the religion which the empire had just embraced. He degraded the revered name of the civil magistrature below the domestic offices of his house. An inspector of the wardrobe took precedence of the consuls. The aspect of Rome importuned him; he thought he saw the image of liberty still engraved on its old walls; fear drove him thence; he fled to the coasts of Byzantia, and there built Constantinople, placing the sea as a barrier between the new city of the Cæsars and the ancient city of the Brutus. If Rome had been the home of independence, Constantinople was the home of slavery; from thence issued the dogmas of passive obedience to the Church and throne; there was but one right—that of the empire; but one duty—that of obedience. The general name of citizen, which was equivalent, in language, to men living under the same law, was replaced by epithets graduated according to the credit of the powerful or the cowardice of the weak. The qualifications of Eminence, Royal Highness, and Reverence, were bestowed on what was lowest and most despicable in the world. The empire, like a private domain, was transmitted to children, wives, and sons-in-law; it was given, bequeathed, substituted; the universe was exhausting itself for the establishment of the family; taxes increased immoderately; Constantinople alone was exempted; that privilege of Roman liberty was the price of its infamy. The rest of the cities and nations were treated like beasts of burden, which are used without scruple, flogged when they are restive, and killed when there is cause to fear them. Witness the population of Antioch, condemned to death by the pious Theodosius; and that of Thessalonica, entirely massacred by him for a tax refused, and an unfortunate creature secured from the justice of his provosts. Meanwhile savage and free nations armed against the enslaved world, as if to chastise it for its baseness. Italy, oppressed by the empire, soon found pitiless revengers in its heart. Rome was menaced by the Goths. The people, weary of the imperial yoke, did not defend themselves. The men of the country, still imbued with the old Roman manners and religion, those men, the only ones whose arms were still robust and souls capable of pride, rejoiced to see among them free men and gods resembling the ancient gods of Italy. Stilico, the general to whom the empire entrusted its defence, appeared at the foot of the Alps; he called to arms, and no one arose; he promised liberty to the slaves, he lavished the treasures of the fisc; and out of the immense extent of the empire, he only assembled 40,000 men, the fifth part of the warriors that Hannibal had encountered at the gates of free Rome."

A. Thierry, Narratives of the Merovingian Era and Historical Essays, essay 13.

"It was not the division into two empires, nor merely the power of external enemies, that destroyed the domination of Rome. Republican Rome had ended in monarchy by the decadence of her institutions and customs, by the very effect of her victories and conquests, by the necessity of giving to this immense dominion a dominus. But after she had begun to submit to the reality of a monarchy, she retained the worship of republican forms. The Empire was for a long time a piece of hypocrisy; for it did not dare to give to its rulers the first condition of stability, a law of succession. The death of every emperor was followed by troubles, and the choice of a master of the world was often left to chance. At length the monarchy had to be organized, but thenceforth it was absolute, without restraint or opposition. Its proposed aim was to exploit the world, an aim which in practice was carried to an extreme. Hence it exhausted the orbis romanus."

E. Lavisse, General View of the Political History of Europe, chapter 1.

ROME: A. D. 486. The last Roman sovereignty in Gaul.

See GAUL: A. D. 457-486.

ROME: A. D. 488. Theodoric the king of the Ostrogoths authorized and commissioned by the Emperor Zeno to conquer a kingdom in Italy.

See GOTHS (OSTROGOTHS): A. D. 473-488.

ROME: A. D. 488-526. The Ostrogothic kingdom of Theodoric.

It was in the autumn of the year 488 that Theodoric, commissioned by the Eastern Emperor, Zeno, to wrest Italy from Odoacer (or Odovacar), broke up his camp or settlement on the Danube, in the neighborhood of Sistova, and moved towards the west. The movement was a national migration—of wives and children as well as of warriors—and the total number is estimated at not less than 200,000. Following the course of the Danube, the Gothic host met with no opposition until it came to Singidunum, near the junction of the Save. There, on the banks of a stream called the Ulca, they fought a great battle with the Gepidæ, who held possession of Pannonia, and who disputed their advance. {2739} Victorious in this encounter, Theodoric pushed on, along the course of the Save; but the movement of his cumbrous train was so slow and the hardships of the march so great, that nearly a year passed before he had surmounted the passes of the Julian Alps and entered Italy. He found Odoacer waiting to give him battle on the Isonzo; but the forces of the latter were not courageous enough or not faithful enough for their duty, and the invading Goths forced the passage of the stream on the 28th of August, 489. Odoacer retreated to Verona, followed by Theodoric, and there, on the 30th of September, a great and terrible battle was fought, from which not many of the Rugian and Herulian troops of Odoacer escaped. Odoacer, himself, with some followers, got clear of the rout and made their way to the safe stronghold of Ravenna. For a time, Odoacer's cause seemed abandoned by all who had supported him; but it was a treacherous show of submission to the victor. Theodoric, ere long, found reactions at work which recruited the forces of his opponent and diminished his own. He was driven to retreat to Ticinum (Pavia) for the winter. But having solicited and received aid from the Visigoths of southern Gaul, he regained, in the summer of 490 (August 11) in a battle on the Adda, not far from Milan, all the ground that he had lost, and more. Odoacer was now driven again into Ravenna, and shut up within its walls by a blockade which was endured until February in the third year afterwards (493), when famine compelled a surrender. Theodoric promised life to his rival and respect to his royal dignity; but he no sooner had the old self-crowned king Odoacer in his power than he slew him with his own hand. Notwithstanding this savagery in the inauguration of it, the reign of the Ostrogothic king in Italy appears to have been, on the whole, wise and just, with more approximation to the chivalric half-civilization of later mediæval times than appears in the government of any of his Gothic or German neighbors. "Although Theoderic did not care to run the risk of offending both his Goths and the Court of Constantinople by calling himself Cæsar or Emperor, yet those titles would have exactly expressed the character of his rule—so far at least as his Roman subjects were concerned. When the Emperor Anastasius in 497 acknowledged him as ruler of Italy, he sent him the purple cloak and the diadem of the Western emperors; and the act showed that Anastasius quite understood the difference between Theodoric's government and that of Odovacar. In fact, though not in name, the Western empire had been restored with much the same institutions it had under the best of the Cæsars." The reign of Theodoric, dating it, as he did, from his first victory on Italian soil, was thirty-seven years in duration. When he died, August 30, A. D. 526, he left to his grandson, Athalaric, a kingdom which extended, beyond Italy, over Rhætia, Noricum, Pannonia and Illyricum (the modern Austrian empire south and west of the Danube), together with Provence in southern Gaul and a district north of it embracing much of modern Dauphiné. His government extended, likewise, over the Visigothic kingdom, as guardian of its young king, his grandson. But this great kingdom of the heroic Ostrogoth was not destined to endure. One who lived the common measure of life might have seen the beginning of it and the end. It vanished in one quarter of a century after he who founded it was laid away in his great tomb at Ravenna, leaving nothing to later history which can be counted as a survival of it,—not even a known remnant of the Ostrogothic race.