in 305 he wearied of the splendid burden that he bore, and
abdicated the throne, unwillingly followed by his associate,
Maximian. The two Cæsars, Constantius and Galerius, were then
advanced to the imperial rank, and two new Cæsars were named.
Jealousies, quarrels, and civil war were soon rending the
Empire again. The details are unimportant.
Constantine and Christianity.
After nine years of struggle, two competitors emerged (A. D.
314) alone, and divided the Empire between them. They were
Constantine, son of Constantius, the Cæsar, and one Licinius.
After nine years more, Licinius had disappeared, defeated and
put to death, and Constantine (A. D. 323) shared the
sovereignty of Rome with none. In its final stages, the
contest had become, practically, a trial of strength between
expiring Paganism in the Roman world and militant
Christianity, now grown to great strength. The shrewd
adventurer Constantine saw the political importance to which
the Christian Church had risen, and identified himself with it
by a "conversion" which has glorified his name most
undeservedly. If to be a Christian with sincerity is to be a
good man, then Constantine was none; for his life was full of
evil deeds, after he professed the religion of Christ, even
more than before. "He poured out the best and noblest blood in
torrents, more especially of those nearly connected with
himself. ... In a palace which he had made a desert, the
murderer of his father-in-law, his brothers-in-law, his
sister, his wife, his son, and his nephew, must have felt the
stings of remorse, if hypocritical priests and courtier
bishops had not lulled his conscience to rest" (Sismondi).
But the so-called "conversion" of Constantine was an event of
vast import in history. It changed immensely, and with
suddenness, the position, the state, the influence, and very
considerably the character and spirit of the Christian Church.
The hierarchy of the Church became, almost at once, the
greatest power in the Empire, next to the Emperor himself, and
its political associations, which were dangerous from the
beginning, soon proved nearly fatal to its spiritual
integrity. "Both the purity and the freedom of the Church were
in danger of being lost. State and Church were beginning an
amalgamation fraught with peril. The State was becoming a kind
of Church, and the Church a kind of State. The Emperor
preached and summoned councils, called himself, though half in
jest, a 'bishop,' and the bishops had become State officials,
who, like the high dignitaries of the Empire, travelled by the
imperial courier-service, and frequented the ante-chambers of
the palaces in Constantinople." "The Emperor determined what
doctrines were to prevail in the Church, and banished Arius
to-day and Athanasius to-morrow." "The Church was surfeited
with property and privileges. The Emperor, a poor financier,
impoverished the Empire to enrich" it (Uhlhorn). That
Christianity had shared the gain of the Christian Church from
these great changes, is very questionable.
{1008}
By another event of his reign, Constantine marked it in
history with lasting effect. He rebuilt with magnificence the
Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus, transferred to it
his imperial residence, and raised it to a nominal equality
with Rome, but to official find practical superiority, as the
capital of the Empire. The old Rome dwindled in rank and
prestige from that day; the new Rome--the city of Constantine,
or Constantinople--rose to the supreme place in the eyes and
the imaginations of men.
Julian and the Pagan Revival.
That Constantine added the abilities of a statesman to the
unscrupulous cleverness of an adventurer is not to be
disputed; but he failed to give proof of this when he divided
the Empire between his three sons at his death (A. D. 337).
The inevitable civil wars ensued, until, after sixteen years,
one survivor gathered the whole realm under his scepter again.
He (Constantius), who debased and disgraced the Church more
than his father had done, was succeeded (A. D. 361) by his
cousin, Julian, an honest, thoughtful, strong man, who, not
unnaturally, preferred the old pagan Greek philosophy to the
kind of Christianity which he had seen flourishing at the
Byzantine court. He publicly restored the worship of the
ancient gods of Greece and Rome; he excluded Christians from
the schools, and bestowed his favor on those who scorned the
Church; but he entered on no violent persecution. His reign
was brief, lasting only two years. He perished in a hapless
expedition against the Persians, by whom the Empire was now
almost incessantly harassed.
Valentinian and Valens.
His successor, Jovian, whom the army elected, died in seven
months; but Valentinian, another soldier, raised by his
comrades to the throne, reigned vigorously for eleven years.
He associated his brother, Valens, with him in the
sovereignty, assigning the latter to the East, while he took
the administration of the West.
Until the death of Valentinian, in 375, the northern frontiers
of the Empire, along the Rhine and the Danube, were well
defended. Julian had commanded in Gaul, with Paris for his
capital, six years before he became Emperor, and had organized
its defence most effectively. Valentinian maintained the line
with success against the Alemanni; while his lieutenant,
Theodosius, delivered Roman Britain from the ruinous attacks
of the Scots and Picts of its northern region. On the Danube,
there continued to be peace with the Goths, who held back all
other barbarians from that northeastern border.
The Goths in the Empire.
But the death of Valentinian was the beginning of fatal
calamities. His brother, Valens, had none of his capability or
his vigor, and was unequal to such a crisis as now occurred.
The terrible nation of the Huns had entered Europe from the
Asiatic steppes, and the Western Goths, or Visigoths, fled
before them. These fugitives begged to be permitted to cross
the Danube and settle on vacant lands in Mœsia and Thrace.
Valens consented, and the whole Visigothic nation, 200,000
warriors, with their women and children, passed the river (A.
D. 376). It is possible that they might, by fair treatment,
have been converted into loyal citizens, and useful defenders
of the land. But the corrupt officials of the court took
advantage of their dependent state, and wrung extortionate
prices from them for disgusting food, until they rose in
desperation and wasted Thrace with fire and sword. Fresh
bodies of Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) and other barbarians came
over to join them (A. D. 378); the Roman armies were beaten in
two great battles, and Valens, the Emperor, was slain. The
victorious Goths swept on to the very walls of Constantinople,
which they could not surmount, and the whole open country,
from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, was ravaged by them at
will.
Theodosius.
In the meantime, the western division of the Empire had
passed, on the death of Valentinian, under the nominal rule of
his two young sons, Gratian, aged sixteen, and Valentinian
II., aged four. Gratian had made an attempt to bring help to
his uncle Valens; but the latter fought his fatal battle while
the boy emperor was on the way, and the latter, upon hearing
of it, turned back. Then Gratian performed his one great act.
He sought a colleague, and called to the throne the most
promising young soldier of the day. This was Theodosius, whose
father, Count Theodosius, the deliverer of Britain, had been
put to death by Valens, on some jealous accusation, only three
years before. The new Emperor took the East for his realm, having
Gratian and Valentinian II. for colleagues in the West. He
speedily checked the ravages of the Goths and restored the
confidence of the Roman soldiers. Then he brought diplomacy to
bear upon the dangerous situation, and succeeded in arranging
a peace with the Gothic chieftains, which enlisted them in the
imperial service with forty thousand of their men. But they
retained their distinctive organization, under their own
chiefs, and were called "fœderati," or allies. This concession
of a semi-independence to so great a body of armed barbarians
in the heart of the Empire was a fatal mistake, as was proved
before many years.
For the time being it secured peace, and gave Theodosius
opportunity to attend to other things. The controversies of
the Church were among the subjects of his consideration, and
by taking the side of the Athanasians, whom his predecessor
had persecuted, he gave a final victory to Trinitarianism, in
the Roman world. His reign was signalized, moreover, by the
formal, official abolition of paganism at Rome.
The weak but amiable Gratian, reigning at Paris, lost his
throne and his life, in 383, as the consequence of a revolt
which began in Britain and spread to Gaul. The successful
rebel and usurper, Maximus, seemed so strong that Theodosius
made terms with him, and acknowledged his sovereignty for a
number of years. But, not content with a dominion which
embraced Britain, Gaul and Spain, Maximus sought, after a
time, to add Italy, where the youth, Valentinian II., was
still enthroned (at Milan, not Rome), under the tutelage of
his mother. Valentinian fled to Theodosius; the Eastern
Emperor adopted his cause, and restored him to his throne,
defeating the usurper and putting him to death (A. D. 388).
Four years later Valentinian II. died; another usurper arose,
and again Theodosius (A. D. 394) recovered the throne.
{1009}
Final Division of the Empire.
Theodosius was now alone in the sovereignty. The Empire was
once more, and for the last time, in its full extent, united
under a single lord. It remained so for but a few months. At
the beginning of the year 395, Theodosius died, and his two
weak sons, Arcadius and Honorius, divided the perishing Empire
between them, only to augment, in its more venerable seat, the
distress of the impending fall.
Arcadius, at the age of eighteen, took the government of the
East; Hononus, a child of eleven, gave his name to the
administration of the West. Each emperor was under the
guardianship of a minister chosen by Theodosius before he
died. Rufinus, who held authority at Constantinople, was
worthless in all ways; Stilicho, who held the reins at Milan,
was a Vandal by birth, a soldier and a statesman of vigorous
powers.
Decay of the Western Empire.
The West seemed more fortunate than the East, in this
division; yet the evil days now fast coming near fell
crushingly on the older Rome, while the New Rome lived through
them, and endured for a thousand years. No doubt the Empire
had weakened more on its elder side; had suffered more
exhaustion of vital powers. It had little organic vitality now
left in it. If no swarms of barbaric invaders had been waiting
and watching at its doors, and pressing upon it from every
point with increasing fierceness, it seems probable that it
would have gone to pieces ere long through mere decay. And if,
on the other hand, it could have kept the vigorous life of its
best republican days, it might have defied Teuton and Slav
forever. But all the diseases, political and social, which the
Republic engendered in itself, had been steadily consuming the
state, with their virulence even increased, since it took on the
imperial constitution. All that imperialism did was to gather
waning energies in hand, and make the most of them for
external use. It stopped no decay. The industrial palsy,
induced by an ever-widening system of slave-labor, continued
to spread. Production decreased; the sum of wealth shrunk in
the hands of each succeeding generation; and yet the great
fortunes and great estates grew bigger from age to age. The
gulf between rich and poor opened deeper and wider, and the
bridges once built across it by middle-class thrift were
fallen down. The burden of imperial government had become an
unendurable weight; the provincial municipalities, which had
once been healthy centers of a local political life, were
strangled by the nets of taxation flung over them. Men sought
refuge even in death from the magistracies which made them
responsible to the imperial treasury for revenues which they
could not collect. Population dwindled, year by year.
Recruiting from the body of citizens for the common needs of
the army became more impossible. The state was fully
dependent, at last, on barbaric mercenaries of one tribe for
its defence against barbaric invaders of another; and it was
no longer able, as of old, to impress its savage servitors
with awe of its majesty and its name.
Stilicho and Alaric.
Stilicho, for a time, stoutly breasted the rising flood of
disaster. He checked the Picts and Scots of Northern Britain,
and the Alemanni and their allies on the frontiers of Gaul.
But now there arose again the more dreadful barbarian host
which had footing in the Empire itself, and which Theodosius
had taken into pay. The Visigoths elected a king (A. D. 395),
and were persuaded with ease to carve a kingdom for him out of
the domain which seemed waiting to be snatched from one or
both of the feeble monarchs, who sat in mockery of state at
Constantinople and Milan. Alaric, the new Gothic king, moved
first against the capital on the Bosphorus; but Rufinus
persuaded him to pass on into Greece, where he went pillaging
and destroying for a year. Stilicho, the one manly defender of
the Empire, came over from Italy with an army to oppose him;
but he was stopped on the eve of battle by orders from the
Eastern Court, which sent him back, as an officious meddler.
This act of mischief and malice was the last that Rufinus
could do. He was murdered, soon afterwards, and Arcadius,
being free from his influence, then called upon Stilicho for
help. The latter came once more to deliver Greece, and did so
with success. But Alaric, though expelled from the peninsula,
was neither crushed nor disarmed, and the Eastern Court had
still to make terms with him. It did so for the moment by
conferring on him the government of that part of Illyricum
which the Servia and Bosnia of the present day coincide with,
very nearly. He rested there in peace for four years, and then
(A. D. 400) he called his people to arms again, and led the whole
nation, men, women and children, into Italy. The Emperor,
Honorius, fled from Milan to Ravenna, which, being a safe
shelter behind marshes and streams, became the seat of the
court for years thereafter. Stilicho, stripping Britain and
Gaul of troops, gathered forces with which, at Eastertide in
the year 402, and again in the following year, he defeated the
Goths, and forced them to retreat.
He had scarcely rested from these exertions, when the valiant
Stilicho was called upon to confront a more savage leader,
Radagaisus by name, who came from beyond the lines (A. D.
405), with a vast swarm of mixed warriors from many tribes
pouring after him across the Alps. Again Stilicho, by superior
skill, worsted the invaders, entrapping them in the mountains
near Fiesole (modern Florence), and starving them there till
they yielded themselves to slavery and their chieftain to
death.
This was the last great service to the dying Roman state which
Stilicho was permitted to do. Undermined by the jealousies of
the cowardly court at Ravenna, he seems to have lost suddenly
the power by which he held himself so high. He was accused of
treasonable designs and was seized and instantly executed, by
the Emperor's command.
{1010}
Alaric and his Goths in Rome.
Stilicho dead, there was no one in Italy for Alaric to fear,
and he promptly returned across the Alps, with the nation of
the Visigoths behind him. There was no resistance to his
march, and he advanced straight upon Rome. He did not assail
the walls, but sat down before the gates (A. D. 408), until
the starving citizens paid him a great ransom in silver and
gold and precious spices and silken robes. With this booty he
retired for the winter into Tuscany, where his army was
swelled by thousands of fugitive barbarian slaves, and by
reinforcements of Goths and Huns. From his camp he opened
negotiations with Honorius, demanding the government of
Dalmatia, Venetia and Noricum, with certain subsidies of money
and corn. The contemptible court, skulking at Ravenna, could
neither make war nor make concessions, and it soon exhausted
the patience of the barbarian by its puerilities. He marched
again to Rome (A. D. 409), seized the port of Ostia, with its
supplies of grain, and forced the helpless capital to join him
in proclaiming a rival emperor. The prefect of the city, one
Attalus, accepted the purple at his hands, and played the
puppet for a few months in imperial robes. But the scheme
proved unprofitable, Attalus was deposed, and negotiations
were reopened with Honorius. Their only result was a fresh
provocation which sent Alaric once more against Rome, and this
time with wrath and vengeance in his heart. Then the great,
august capital of the world was entered, through treachery or
by surprise, on the night of the 24th of August, 410, and
suffered all that the lust, the ferocity and the greed of a
barbarous army let loose could inflict on an unresisting city.
It was her first experience of that supreme catastrophe of
war, since Brennus and the Gauls came in; but it was not to be
the last.
From the sack of Rome, Alaric moved southward, intending to
conquer Sicily; but a sudden illness brought his career to an
end.
The Barbarians Swarming in.
The Empire was now like a dying quarry, pulled down by fierce
hunting packs and torn on every side. The Goths were at its
throat; the tribes of Germany--Sueves, Vandals, Burgundians,
Alans--had leaped the Rhine (A. D. 406) and swarmed upon its
flanks, throughout Gaul and Spain. The inrush began after
Stilicho, to defend Italy against Alaric and Radagaisus, had
stripped the frontiers of troops. Sueves, Vandals, and Alans
passed slowly through the provinces, devouring their wealth
and making havoc of their civilization as they went. After
three years, they had reached and surmounted the Pyrenees, and
were spreading the same destruction through Spain.
The confederated tribes of the Franks had already been
admitted as allies into northwestern Gaul, and were settled
there in peace. At first, they stood faithful to the Roman
alliance, and valiantly resisted the new invasion; but its
numbers overpowered them, and their fidelity gave way when
they saw the pillage of the doomed provinces going on. They
presently joined the barbarous mob, and with an energy which
secured the lion's share of plunder and domain.
The Burgundians did not follow the Vandals and Sueves to the
southwest, but took possession of the left bank of the middle
Rhine, whence they gradually spread into western Switzerland
and Savoy, and down the valleys of the Rhone and Saone,
establishing in time an important kingdom, to which they gave
their name.
No help from Ravenna or Rome came to the perishing provincials
of Gaul in the extremity of their distress; but a pretender
arose in Britain, who assumed the imperial title and promised
deliverance. He crossed over to Gaul in 407 and was welcomed
with eagerness, both there and in Spain, to which he advanced.
He gained some success, partly by enlisting and partly by
resisting the invaders; but his career was brief. Other
pretenders appeared in various provinces, of the West; but the
anarchy of the time was too great for any authority,
legitimate or revolutionary, to establish itself.
The Visigoths in Gaul.
And, now, into the tempting country of the afflicted Gauls,
already crowded with rapacious freebooters, the Visigoths made
their way. Their new king, Ataulph, or Adolphus, who succeeded
Alaric, passed into Gaul, but not commissioned, as sometimes
stated, to restore the imperial sovereignty there. He moved
with his nation, as Alaric had moved, and Italy, by his
departure, was relieved; but Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and
the Aquitainian country at large, was soon subject to his
command (A. D. 412-419). He passed the Pyrenees and entered
Spain, where an assassin took his life. His successor, Wallia,
drove the Sueves into the mountains and the Vandals into the
South; but did not take possession of the country until a
later time. The Visigoths, returning to Aquitaine, found
there, at last, the kingdom which Alaric set out from the
Danube to seek, and they were established in it with the Roman
Emperor's consent. It was known as the kingdom of Gothia, or
Septimania, but is more commonly called, from its capital, the
kingdom of Toulouse.
The Eastern Empire.
Affairs in the Eastern Empire had never arrived at so
desperate a state as in the West. With the departure of
Alaric, it had been relieved from its most dangerous immediate
foe. There had been tumults, disorders, assassinations, court
conspiracies, fierce religious strifes, and every evidence of
a government with no settled authority and no title to
respect; but yet the Empire stood and was not yet seriously
shaken. In 408 Arcadius died. His death was no loss, though he
left an infant son to take his place; for he also left a
daughter, Pulcheria, who proved to be a woman of rare virtue
and talents, and who reigned in her brother's name.
Aetius and the Huns.
The imbecile Honorius, with whose name the failing sovereignty
of Rome had been so disastrously linked for eight and twenty
rears, died in 423. An infant nephew was his heir, and
Placidia, the mother, ruled at Ravenna for a fourth of a
century, in the name of her child. Her reign was far stronger
than her wretched brother's had been, because she gave loyal
support to a valiant and able man, who stood at her side.
Aetius, her minister, did all, perhaps, that man could do to
hold some parts of Gaul, and to play barbarian against
barbarian--Hun against Goth and Frank--in skilful diplomacy
and courageous war. But nothing that he won was any lasting
gain. In his youth, Aetius had been a hostage in the camps of
both the Goths and the Huns, and had made acquaintances among
the chieftains of both which served his policy many times.
{1011}
He had employed the terrible Huns in the early years of his
ministry, and perhaps they had learned too much of the
weakness of the Roman State. These most fearful of all the
barbarian peoples then surging in Europe had been settled, for
some years, in the region since called Hungary, under Attila,
their most formidable king. He terrorized all the surrounding
lands and exercised a lordship from the Caspian to the Baltic
and the Rhine. The imperial court at the East stooped to pay
him annual tribute for abstaining from the invasion of its
domain. But in 450, when the regent Pulcheria became Empress
of the East, by her brother's death, and married a brave old
soldier, Marcian, in order to give him the governing power, a
new tone was heard in the voice from Constantinople which
answered Attila's demands.
Defeat of Attila.
The Hun then appears to have seen that the sinking Empire of
the West offered a more certain victim to his terrors and his
arms, and he turned them to that side. First forming an
alliance with the Vandals (who had crossed from Spain to
Africa in 429, had ravaged and subdued the Roman provinces,
and had established a kingdom on the Carthaginian ground, with
a naval power in the Carthaginian Sea), Attila led his huge
army into suffering Gaul. There were Ostrogoths, and warriors
from many German tribes, as well as Huns, in the terrific
host; for Attila's arm stretched far, and his subjects were
forced to follow when he led. His coming into Gaul affrighted
Romans and barbarians alike, and united them in a common
defense. Aetius formed an alliance with Theodoric, the
Visigothic king, and their forces were joined by Burgundians
and Franks. They met Attila near Chalons, and there, on a day
in June, A. D. 451, upon the Catalaunian fields, was fought a
battle that is always counted among the few which gave shape
to all subsequent history. The Huns were beaten back, and
Europe was saved from the hopeless night that must have
followed a Tartar conquest in that age.
Attila threatening Rome.
Attila retreated to Germany, foiled but not daunted. The next
year (A. D. 452) he invaded Italy and laid siege to Aquileia,
an important city which stood in his path. It resisted for
three months and was then utterly destroyed. The few
inhabitants who escaped, with fugitives from neighboring
ports, found a refuge in some islands of the Adriatic coast,
and formed there a sheltered settlement which grew into the
great city and republican state of Venice. Aetius made
strenuous exertions to gather forces for another battle with
the Huns; but the resources of the Empire had sunk very low.
While he labored to collect troops, the effect of a pacific
embassy was despairingly tried, and it went forth to the camp
of Attila, led by the venerable bishop of Rome--the first
powerful Pope--Leo I., called the Great. The impression which
Leo made on the Hunnish king, by his venerable presence, and
by the persuasiveness of his words, appears to have been
extraordinary. At all events, Attila consented to postpone his
designs on Rome; though he demanded and received promise of an
annual tribute. The next winter he died, and Rome was troubled
by him no more.
Rome Sacked by the Vandals.
But another enemy came, who rivalled Attila in ruthlessness,
and who gave a name to barbarity which it has kept to this
day. The Vandal king, Genseric, who now swept the
Mediterranean with a piratical fleet, made his appearance in
the Tiber (A. D. 455) and found the Roman capital powerless to
resist his attack. The venerable Pope Leo again interceded for
the city, and obtained a promise that captives should not be
tortured nor buildings burned,--which was the utmost stretch
of mercy that the Vandal could afford. Once more, then, was
Rome given up, for fourteen days and nights, to pillage and
the horrors of barbaric debauch. "Whatever had survived the
former sack,--whatever the luxury of the Roman Patriciate,
during the intervening forty-five years, had accumulated in
reparation of their loss,--the treasures of the imperial
palace, the gold and silver vessels employed in the churches,
the statues of pagan divinities and men of Roman renown, the
gilded roof of the temple of Capitolian Jove, the plate and
ornaments of private individuals, were leisurely conveyed to
the Vandal fleet and shipped off to Africa" (Sheppard).
The Vandal invasion had been preceded, in the same year, by a
palace revolution which brought the dynasty of Theodosius to
an end. Placidia was dead, and her unworthy son, Valentinian
III., provoked assassination by dishonoring the wife of a
wealthy senator, Maximus, who mounted to his place. Maximus
was slain by a mob at Rome, just before the Vandals entered
the city. The Empire was now without a head, and the throne
without an heir. In former times, the Senate or the army would
have filled the vacant imperial seat; now, it was a barbarian
monarch, Theodoric, the Visigothic king, who made choice of a
successor to the Cæsars. He named a Gallic noble, Avitus by
name, who had won his esteem, and the nomination was confirmed
by Marcian, Emperor of the East.
Ricimer and Majorian.
But the influence of Theodoric in Roman affairs was soon
rivalled by that of Count Ricimer, another Goth, or Sueve, who
held high command in the imperial army, and who resented the
elevation of Avitus. The latter was deposed, after reigning a
single year; and Majorian, a soldier of really noble and
heroic character, was promoted to the throne. He was too great
and too sincere a man to be Ricimer's tool, and the same hand
which raised him threw him down, after he had reigned four
years (A. D. 457-461). He was in the midst of a powerful
undertaking against the Vandals when he perished. Majorian was
the last Emperor in the Western line who deserves to be named.
The last Emperors in the West.
Ricimer ruled Italy, with the rigor of a despot, under the
modest title of Patrician, until 472. His death was soon
followed by the rise of another general of the barbarian
troops, Orestes, to like autocracy, and he, in turn, gave way
to a third, Odoacer, who slew him and took his place. The
creatures, half a dozen in number, who put on and put off the
purple robe, at the command of these adventurers, who played
with the majesty of Rome, need no further mention.
{1012}
The last of them was Romulus Augustulus, son of Orestes, who
escaped his father's fate by formally resigning the throne. He
was the last Roman Emperor in the West, until Charlemagne
revived the title, three centuries and a quarter later. "The
succession of the Western Emperors came to an end, and the way
in which it came to an end marks the way in which the names
and titles of Rome were kept on, while all power was passing
into the hands of the barbarians. The Roman Senate voted that
one Emperor was enough, and that the Eastern Emperor, Zeno,
should reign over the whole Empire. But at the same time Zeno
was made to entrust the government of Italy, with the title of
Patrician, to Odoacer. ... Thus the Roman Empire went on at
Constantinople, or New Rome, while Italy and the Old Rome
itself passed into the power of the Barbarians. Still the
Roman laws and names went on, and we may be sure that any man
in Italy would have been much surprised if he had been told
that the Roman Empire had come to an end" (Freeman).
Odoacer.
The government of Odoacer, who ruled with the authority of a
king, though pretending to kingship only in his own nation,
was firm and strong. Italy was better protected from its
lawless neighbors than it had been for nearly a century
before. But nothing could arrest the decay of its
population--the blight that had fallen upon its prosperity.
Nor could that turbulent age afford any term of peace that
would be long enough for even the beginning of the cure of
such maladies and such wounds as had brought Italy low. For
fourteen years Odoacer ruled; and then he was overthrown by a
new kingdom-seeking barbarian, who came, like Alaric, out of
the Gothic swarm.
Theodoric the Ostrogoth.
The Ostrogoths had now escaped, since Attila died, from the
yoke of the Huns, and were prepared, under an able and
ambitious young king, Theodoric, who had been reared as a
hostage at Constantinople, to imitate the career of their
cousins, the Visigoths. Having troubled the Eastern Court
until it stood in fear of him, Theodoric asked for a
commission to overthrow Odoacer, in Italy, and received it
from the Emperor's hand. Thus empowered by one still
recognized as lawful lord on both sides of the Adriatic,
Theodoric crossed the Julian Alps (A. D. 489) with the
families of his nation and their household goods. Three
battles made him master of the peninsula and decided the fate
of his rival. Odoacer held out in Ravenna for two years and a
half, and surrendered on a promise of equal sovereignty with
the Ostrogothic king. But Theodoric did not scruple to kill
him with his own sword, at the first opportunity which came.
In that act, the native savagery in him broke loose; but
through most of his life he kept his passions decently tamed,
and acted the barbarian less frequently than the civilized
statesman and king. He gave Italy peace, security, and
substantial justice for thirty years. With little war, he
extended his sovereignty over Illyrium, Pannonia, Noricum,
Rhætia and Provence, in south-eastern Gaul. If the extensive
kingdom which he formed--with more enlightenment than any
other among those who divided the heritage of Rome--could have
endured, the parts of Europe which it covered might have fared
better in after times than they did. "Italy might have been
spared six hundred years of gloom and degradation." But
powerful influences were against it from the first, and they
were influences which proceeded mischievously from the
Christian Church. Had the Goths been pagans, the Church might
have turned a kindly face to them, and wooed them to
conversion as she wooed the Franks. But they were Christians,
of a heretic stamp, and the orthodox Christianity of Rome held
them in deadly loathing. While still beyond the Danube, they had
received the faith from an Arian apostle, at the time of the
great conflict of Athanasius against Arius, and were stubborn
in the rejection of Trinitarian dogma. Hence the Church in the
West was never reconciled to the monarchy of Theodoric in
Italy, nor to that of the Visigoths at Toulouse; and its
hostility was the ultimate cause of the failure of both.
The Empire in the East.
To understand the events which immediately caused the fall of
the Ostrogothic power, we must turn back for a moment to the
Empire in the East. Marcian, whom Pulcheria, the wise daughter
of Arcadius, made Emperor by marrying him, died in 457, and
Aspar, the barbarian who commanded the mercenaries, selected
his successor. He chose his own steward, one Leo, who proved
to have more independence than his patron expected, and who
succeeded in destroying the latter. After Leo I. came (474)
his infant grandson; Leo II., whose father, an Isaurian
chieftain, took his place when he died, within the year. The
Isaurian assumed a Greek name, Zeno, and occupied the
throne--with one interval of flight and exile for twenty
months--during seven years. When he died, his widow gave her
hand in marriage to an excellent officer of the palace,
Anastasius by name, and he was sovereign of the Empire for
twenty-seven years.
The reign of Justinian.
After Anastasius, came Justin I., born a peasant in Dacia
(modern Roumania), but advanced as a soldier to the command of
the imperial guards, and thence to the throne. He had already
adopted and educated his nephew, Justinian, and before dying,
in 527, he invested him with sovereignty as a colleague. The
reign of Justinian was the most remarkable in the whole
history of the Empire in the East. Without breadth of
understanding, or notable talents of any kind: without
courage; without the least nobility of character; without even
the virtue of fidelity to his ministers and friends,--this
remarkable monarch contrived to be splendidly served by an
extraordinary generation of great soldiers, great jurists,
great statesmen, who gave a brilliance to his reign that was
never rivalled while the Byzantine seat of Empire stood. It
owes, in modern esteem, its greatest fame to the noble
collection of Roman laws which was made, in the Pandects and
the Code, under the direction of the wise and learned
Tribonian. Transiently it was glorified by conquests that bore
a likeness to the march of the resistless legions of ancient
Rome; and the laurelled names of Belisarius and Narses claimed
a place on the columns of victory with the names of Cæsar and
Pompeius.
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But the splendors of the reign were much more than offset by
miseries and calamities of the darkest kind. "The reign of
Justinian, from its length, its glory and its disasters, may
be compared to the reign of Louis XIV., which exceeded it in
length, and equalled it in glory and disaster. ... He extended
the limits of his empire; but he was unable to defend the
territory he had received from his predecessors. Everyone of
the thirty-eight years of his reign was marked by an invasion
of the barbarians; and it has been said that, reckoning those
who fell by the sword, who perished from want, or were led
into captivity, each invasion cost 200,000 subjects to the
empire. Calamities which human prudence is unable to resist
seemed to combine against the Romans, as if to compel them to
expiate their ancient glory. ... So that the very period which
gave birth to so many monuments of greatness, may be looked
back upon with horror, as that of the widest desolation and
the most terrific mortality" (Sismondi). The first and longest
of the wars of Justinian was the Persian war, which he inherited
from his predecessors, and which scarcely ceased while the
Persian monarchy endured. It was in these Asiatic campaigns
that Belisarius began his career. But his first great
achievement was the overthrow and extinction of the Vandal
power in Africa, and the restoration of Roman authority (the
empire of the new Rome) in the old Carthaginian province (A.
D. 533-534). He accomplished this with a force of but 10,000
foot and 5,000 horse, and was hastily recalled by his jealous
lord on the instant of his success.
Conquests of Belisarius in Italy.
But the ambition of Justinian was whetted by this marvellous
conquest, and he promptly projected an expedition against the
kingdom of the Eastern Goths. The death of Theodoric had
occurred in 526. His successor was a child of ten years, his
grandson, whose mother exercised the regency. Amalsuentha, the
queen-regent, was a woman of highly cultivated mind, and she
offended her subjects by too marked a Romanization of her
ideas. Her son died in his eighteenth year, and she associated
with herself on the throne the next heir to it, a worthless
nephew of Theodoric, who was able, in a few weeks, to strip
all her power from her and consign her to a distant prison,
where she was soon put to death (A. D. 535). She had
previously opened negotiations with Justinian for the
restoration of his supremacy in Italy, and the ambitious
Emperor assumed with eagerness a right to avenge her
deposition and death. The fate of Amalsuentha was his excuse,
the discontent of Roman orthodoxy with the rule of the heretic
Goths was his encouragement, to send an army into Italy with
Belisarius at its head. First taking possession of Sicily,
Belisarius landed in Italy in 536, took Naples and advanced on
Rome. An able soldier, Vitiges, had been raised to the Gothic
throne, and he evacuated Rome in December; but he returned the
following March and laid siege to the ancient capital, which
Belisarius had occupied with a moderate force. It was defended
against him for an entire year, and the strength of the Gothic
nation was consumed on the outer side of the walls, while the
inhabitants within were wasted by famine and disease. The
Goths invoked the aid of the Franks in Gaul, and those fierce
warriors, crossing the Alps (A. D. 538), assailed both Goths
and Greeks, with indiscriminate hostility, destroyed Milan and
Genoa, and mostly perished of hunger themselves before they
retreated from the wasted Cisalpine country.
Released from Rome, Belisarius advanced in his turn against
Ravenna, and took the Gothic capital, making Vitiges a
prisoner (A. D. 539). His reward for these successes was a
recall from command. The jealous Emperor could not afford his
generals too much glory at a single winning. As a consequence
of his folly, the Goths, under a new king, Totila, were
allowed to recover so much ground in the next four years that,
when, in 544, Belisarius was sent back, almost without an
army, the work of conquest had to be done anew. Rome was still
being held against Totila, who besieged it, and the great
general went by sea to its relief. He forced the passage of
the Tiber, but failed through the misconduct of the commander
in the city to accomplish an entry, and once more the great
capital was entered and yielded to angry Goths (A. D. 546).
They spared the lives of the few people they found, and the
chastity of the women; but they plundered without restraint.
Rome a Solitude for Forty Days.
Totila commanded the total destruction of the city; but his
ruthless hand was stayed by the remonstrances of Belisarius.
After demolishing a third of the walls, he withdrew towards
the South, dragging the few inhabitants with him, and, during
forty days, Rome is said to have been an unpeopled solitude.
The scene which this offers to the imagination comes near to
being the most impressive in history. At the end of that
period it was entered by Belisarius, who hastily repaired the
walls, collected his forces, and was prepared to defend
himself when Totila came back by rapid marches from Apulia.
The Goths made three assaults and were bloodily repulsed.
End of the Ostrogothic Kingdom.
But again Belisarius was recalled by a mean and jealous court,
and again the Gothic cause was reanimated and restored. Rome
was taken again from its feeble garrison (A. D. 549), and this
time it was treated with respect. Most of Italy and Sicily,
with Corsica and Sardinia, were subdued by Totila's arms, and
that king, now successful, appealed to Justinian for peace. It
was refused, and in 552 a vigorous prosecution of the war
resumed, under a new commander--the remarkable eunuch Narses,
who proved himself to be one of the great masters of war.
Totila was defeated and slain in the first battle of the
campaign; Rome was again beleaguered and taken; and the last
blow needed to extinguish the Gothic kingdom in Italy was
given the following year (A. D. 553), when Totila's successor,
Teia, ended his life on another disastrous field of battle.
The Exarchate.
Italy was restored for the moment to the Empire, and was
placed under the government of an imperial viceroy, called
Exarch, which high office the valiant Narses was the first to
fill. His successors, known in history as the Exarchs of
Ravenna, resided in that capital for a long period, while the
arm of their authority was steadily shortened by the conquests
of new invaders, whose story is yet to be told.
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Events in the West.
Leaving Italy and Rome, once more in the imperial fold, but
mere provinces now of a distant and alienated sovereignty, it
is necessary to turn back to the West, and glance over the
regions in which, when we looked at them last, the
institutions of Roman government and society were being
dissolved and broken up by flood upon flood of barbaric
invasion from the Teutonic North.
Teutonic Conquest of Britain.
If we begin at the farthest West which the Roman dominion
reached, we shall find that the island of Britain was
abandoned, practically, by the imperial government earlier
than the year 410, when Rome was sinking under the blows of
Alaric. From that time the inhabitants were left to their own
government and their own defense. To the inroads of the savage
Caledonian Picts and Irish Scots, there were added, now, the
coast ravages of a swarm of ruthless pirates, which the tribes
of northwestern Europe had begun to launch upon the German or
North Sea. The most cruel and terrible of these ocean
freebooters were the Saxons, of the Elbe, and they gave their
name for a time to the whole. Their destructive raids upon the
coasts of Britain and Gaul had commenced more than a century
before the Romans withdrew their legions, and that part of the
British coast most exposed to their ravages was known as the
Saxon Shore. For about thirty years after the Roman and
Romanized inhabitants of Britain had been left to defend
themselves, they held their ground with good courage, as
appears; but the incessant attacks of the Picts wore out, at
last, their confidence in themselves, and they were fatally
led to seek help from their other enemies, who scourged them
from the sea. Their invitation was given, not to the Saxons,
but to a band of Jutes--warriors from that Danish peninsula in
which they have left their name. The Jutes landed at
Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet (A. D. 449 or 450), with two
chiefs, Hengest and Horsa, at their head. They came as allies,
and fought by the side of the Britons against the Picts with
excellent success. Then came quarrels, and presently, in 455,
the arms of Hengest and Horsa were turned against their
employers. Ten years later the Jutes had secure possession of
the part of Britain now called Kent, and Hengest was their
king, Horsa having fallen in the war. This was the beginning
of the transformation of Roman-Celtic Britain into the
Teutonic England of later history. The success of the Jutes
drew their cousins and piratical comrades, the Saxons and the
Angles, to seek kingdoms in the same rich island. The Saxons
came first, landing near Selsey, in 477, and taking gradual
possession of a district which became known as the kingdom of
the South Saxons, or Sussex. The next invasion was by Saxons
under Cerdic, and Jutes, who joined to form the kingdom of the
West Saxons, or Wessex, covering about the territory of modern
Hampshire. So much of their conquest was complete by the year
519. At about the same time, other colonies were established
and gave their names, as East Saxons and Middle Saxons, to the
Essex and Middlesex of modern English geography. A third tribe
from the German shore, the Angles, now came (A. D. 547) to
take their part in the conquest of the island, and these laid
their hands upon kingdoms in the East and North of England, so
much larger than the modest Jute and Saxon realms in the south
that their name fixed itself, at last, upon the whole country,
when it lost the name of Britain. Northumberland, which
stretched from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, Mercia, which
covered at one time the whole middle region of England, and
East Anglia, which became divided into the two English
counties of Norfolk (North-folk) and Suffolk (South-folk),
were the three great kingdoms of the Angles.
The Making of England.
Before the end of the sixth century, almost the whole of
modern England, and part of Scotland, on its eastern side, as
far to the north as Edinburgh, was in possession of the German
invaders. They had not merely subdued the former
possessors--Britons and Roman provincials (if Romans remained
in the island after their domination ceased),--but, in the
judgment of the best investigators of the subject, they had
practically swept them from all the parts of the island in
which their own settlements were established. That is to say,
the prior population was either exterminated by the merciless
swords of these Saxon and English pagans, or was driven into
the mountains of Wales, into the peninsula of Cornwall and
Devon, or into the Strathclyde corner of Scottish
territory,--in all which regions the ancient British race has
maintained itself to this day. Scarcely a vestige of its
existence remains elsewhere in England,--neither in language,
nor in local names, nor in institutions, nor in survivals of
any other kind; which shows that the inhabitants were effaced
by the conquest, as the inhabitants of Gaul, of Spain, and of
Italy, for example, were not.
The new society and the new states which now arose on the soil
of Britain, and began to shape themselves into the England of
the future, were as purely Germanic as if they had grown up in
the Jutish peninsula or on the Elbe. The institutions,
political and social, of the immigrant nations, had been
modified by changed circumstances, but they had incorporated
almost nothing from the institutions which they found existing
in their new home and which they supplanted. Broadly speaking,
nothing Roman and nothing Celtic entered into them. They were
constructed on German lines throughout.
The barbarism of the Saxons and their kin when they entered
Britain was far more unmitigated than that of most of the
Teutonic tribes which overwhelmed the continental provinces of
Rome had been. The Goths had been influenced to some extent
and for quite a period by Roman civilization, and had
nominally accepted Christian precepts and beliefs, before they
took arms against the Empire. The Franks had been allies of
Rome and in contact with the refinements of Roman Gaul, for a
century or two before they became masters in that province.
Most of the other nations which transplanted themselves in the
fifth century from beyond the Rhine to new homes in the
provinces of Rome, had been living for generations on the
borders of the Empire, or near; had acquired some
acquaintance, at least, with the civilization which they did
not share, and conceded to it a certain respect; while some of
them had borne arms for the Emperor and taken his pay. But the
Saxons, Angles and Jutes had thus far been remote from every
influence or experience of the kind.
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They knew the Romans only as rich strangers to be plundered
and foes to be fought. Christianity represented nothing to
them but an insult to their gods. There seems to be little
doubt, therefore, that the civilizing work which Rome had done
in western Europe was obliterated nowhere else so ruthlessly
and so wantonly as in Britain. Christianity, still sheltered
and strong in Ireland, was wholly extinguished in England for
a century and more, until the memorable mission of Augustine,
sent by Pope Gregory the Great (A. D. 597), began the
conversion of the savage islanders.
The Kingdom of the Franks.
In Gaul, meanwhile, and in southwestern Germany, the Franks
had become the dominant power. They had moved tardily to the
conquest, but when they moved it was with rapid strides. While
they dwelt along the Lower Rhine, they were in two divisions:
the Salian Franks, who occupied, first, the country near the
mouth of the river, and then spread southwards, to the Somme,
or beyond; and the Ripuarians, who lived farther up the Rhine,
in the neighborhood of Cologne, advancing thence to the
Moselle. In the later part of the fifth century a Roman
Patrician, Syagrius, still exercised some kind of authority in
northern Gaul; but in 486 he was defeated and overthrown by
Chlodvig, or Clovis, the chief of the Salian Franks. Ten years
later, Clovis, leading both the Salian and the Ripuarian
Franks in an attack upon the German Alemanni, beyond the Upper
Rhine, subdued that people completely, and took their country.
Their name survived, and adhered to the whole people of
Germany, whom the Franks and their successors the French have
called Allemands to this day. After his conquest of the
Alemanni, Clovis, who had married a Christian wife, accepted
her faith and was baptized, with three thousand of his chief
men. The professed conversion was as fortunate politically for
him as it had been for Constantine. He adopted the
Christianity which was that of the Roman Church--the Catholic
Christianity of the Athanasian creed--and he stood forth at
once as the champion of orthodoxy against the heretic Goths
and Burgundians, whose religion had been poisoned by the
condemned doctrines of Arius. The blessings, and the more
substantial endeavors, of the Roman Church were, therefore, on
his side, when he attacked the Burgundians and made them
tributary, and when, a few years later, he expelled the Goths
from Aquitaine and drove them into Spain (A.D. 500-508).
Beginning, apparently, as one of several chiefs among the
Salian Franks, he ended his career (510) as sole king of the
whole Frank nation, and master of all Gaul except a Gothic
corner of Provence, with a considerable dominion beyond the
Rhine.
The Merovingian Kings.
But Clovis left his realm to four sons, who divided it into as
many kingdoms, with capitals at Metz, Orleans, Paris, and
Soissons. There was strife and war between them, until one of
the brothers, Lothaire, united again the whole kingdom, which,
meantime, had been enlarged by the conquest of Thuringia and
Provence, and by the extinction of the tributary Burgundian
kings. When he died, his sons rent the kingdom again, and
warred with one another, and once more it was brought
together. Says Hallam: "It is a weary and unprofitable task to
follow these changes in detail, through scenes of tumult and
bloodshed, in which the eye meets with no sunshine, nor can
rest upon any interesting spot. It would be difficult, as
Gibbon has justly observed, to find anywhere more vice or less
virtue." But, as Dean Church has remarked, the Franks were
maintained in their ascendancy by the favor of the clergy and
the circumstances of their position, despite their divisions
and the worthless and detestable character of their kings,
after Clovis. "They occupied a land of great natural wealth,
and great geographical advantages, which had been prepared for
them by Latin culture; they inherited great cities which they
had not built, and fields and vineyards which they had not
planted; and they had the wisdom, not to destroy, but to use
their conquest. They were able with singular ease and
confidence to employ and trust the services, civil and
military, of the Latin population. ... The bond between the
Franks and the native races was the clergy. ... The forces of
the whole nation were at the disposal of the ruling race; and
under Frank chiefs, the Latins and Gauls learned once more to
be warriors." This no doubt suggests a quite true explanation
of the success of the Franks; but too much may easily be
inferred from it. It will not be safe to conclude that the
Franks were protectors of civilization in Gaul, and did not
lay destroying hands upon it. We shall presently see that it
sank to a very darkened state under their rule, though the
eclipse may have been less complete than in some other of the
barbarized provinces of Rome.
Rise of the Carolingians.
The division in the Frankish dominion which finally marked
itself deeply and became permanent was that which separated
the East Kingdom, or Austrasia, from the West Kingdom, or
Neustria. In Austrasia, the Germanic element prevailed; in
Neustria, the Roman and Gallic survivals entered most largely
into the new society. Austrasia widened into the Germany of
later history; Neustria into France. In both these kingdoms,
the Frankish kings sank lower and lower in character, until
their name (of Merwings or Merovingians, from an ancestor of
Clovis) became a byword for sloth and worthlessness. In each
kingdom there arose, beside the nominal monarch, a strong
minister, called the Major Domus, or Mayor of the Palace, who
exercised the real power and governed in the king's name.
During the last half of the seventh century, the Austrasian
Mayor, Pippin of Heristal, and the Neustrian Mayor, Ebroin,
converted the old antagonism of the two kingdoms into a
personal rivalry and struggle for supremacy. Ebroin was
murdered, and Pippin was the final victor, in a decisive
battle at Testry (687), which made him virtual master of the
whole Frank realm, although the idle Merwings still sat on
their thrones. Pippin's son, Charles Martel, strengthened and
extended the domination which his father had acquired. He
drove back the Saxons and subdued the Frisians in the North,
and, in the great and famous battle of Tours (732) he