The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (17 page)

Shortly before his departure, Chrysostom had appealed to Pope Innocent I in Rome, protesting against his unjust sentence and demanding a formal trial at which to confront his accusers. The Pope summoned a synod of Latin bishops, which unanimously declared the previous synod invalid and, through Innocent and Honorius, called on Arcadius to restore Chrysostom to his see; a general assembly of Greek and Latin bishops, they suggested, could then meet in Thessalonica and settle the question once and for all. Meanwhile Honorius had addressed a stern letter to his brother, deploring the various disturbances which his mishandling of the affair had brought upon the capital and chiding him for the indecent haste with which the sentence of exile had been implemented without papal approval. To this letter a deeply offended Arcadius sent no reply, and there was a pause while the parties considered their next moves. At last, in
406,
a delegation was sent jointly by Honorius and Innocent to Constantinople. Including as it did no less than four senior bishops, it could not be ignored; but once again
Arcadius made his attitude plain enough. The envoys were not even permitted to enter the city. Instead, they were clapped into a Thracian castle, where they were interrogated and their letters snatched from them; only then, insulted and humiliated, were they allowed to return to Italy.

Thus, when St John Chrysostom died in a remote region of Pontus -possibly as a result of ill-treatment by his guards - in September
407,
he left the Roman Empire profoundly split; and Stilicho decided that the time had come to put his long-cherished designs on Illyricum into effect. Alaric, 'he knew, was standing by to help him, awaiting only the signal to march. His first step was to order a blockade on the Eastern Empire, closing all Italian ports to Arcadius's ships. It was, in effect, a declaration of war; but Stilicho was still in Ravenna preparing the army for the coming campaign when a messenger arrived from Honorius, who was then in Rome, with news that stopped him in his tracks. Alaric, it appeared, was dead. Meanwhile the Roman Governor of Britain, Constantinus, had declared himself Augustus, crossed to Gaul and raised the standard of revolt. Clearly, Illyricum would have to wait a little longer; there was more urgent business to attend to. Leaving the army at Ravenna, Stilicho hastened to confer with Honorius in Rome.

On his arrival, he found that the first half of the message had been based on a false rumour. Alaric was alive and well in Illyricum, but greatly displeased that the enterprise which he and Stilicho had planned together was still further postponed. His preparations, he pointed out, had cost him much time and considerable expense, for which he expected compensation:
4,000
pounds of gold, to be paid at once. The members of the Roman Senate, to whom this demand was addressed, were predictably horrified; but Stilicho realized that the sum must be found and, taking full advantage of his special prestige as the Emperor's father-in-law, finally succeeded in persuading them. Only one senator had the courage to protest. 'This is not a peace,' he cried; 'it is a commitment to slavery.' But even he seems to have regretted his words, for it is recorded that as soon as the session broke up he sought refuge from Stilicho's wrath in a Christian church.

Early in May
408,
the Emperor Arcadius died aged thirty-one, leaving the throne to his seven-year-old son, named Theodosius after his grandfather. For Stilicho, there could hardly have been better news. If he played his cards right, he would now be able to achieve everything he wanted in the East without bloodshed or even expense; there would certainly be no need for Alaric and his Goths, who would be left free to
deal with the usurper Constantinus in Gaul. He easily dissuaded Honorius from his i
ntention of going in person to Constantinople, pointing out that the arrival of a Western Emperor in the capital of the East would create more problems than it could possibly solve; far better that he should remain at Ravenna, where he had permanently established his court after the battle of Pollentia six years before. As
magister mil
itum,
he himself would have no difficulty in arranging everything satisfactorily on his son-in-law's behalf.

But, for the second time in two years, his plans came to nothing. Perhaps his personal ambition was growing a little too obvious; many Christians, certainly, had been shocked by the speed with which, on the death of his daughter the Empress Maria earlier that year, he had induced Honorius to marry her younger sister Thermantia almost before the body was cold. Perhaps, too, he had incurred more disapproval than he knew by insisting on the huge payment to Alaric. Or possibly the old jealousies were slowly coming to the surface again: he was, after all, not a Roman but a Vandal, and Vandals were expected to know their place. Moreover the unrelenting severity of his discipline had caused serious dissatisfaction in the army: twice in the past year, at Bologna and again at Pavia, there had been minor mutinies. In short, he had become dangerously unpopular. At the court of Ravenna, the hostility to him was most marked in a certain minister named Olympius; and it was he, while travelling through Italy with Honorius in Stilicho's absence, who had managed to persuade the Emperor that his father-in-law was plotting treason against him.

We do not know the precise nature of the accusations, nor can we tell whether or not they had any foundation. The one certain fact of the story is that Stilicho was arraigned, accused, tried, found guilty and, at Ravenna on
23
August
408,
put to death. His son Eucherius fled to Rome, where he managed to prolong his life by a few months; his sister Thermantia was removed from the imperial palace - still, it was said, as virginal as Maria had been before her - and sent back to her mother Serena. Serena herself was spared, but some months later was strangled by order of the Roman Senate on a charge of impiety. (Years before, visiting Rome in the company of her uncle Theodosius, she had entered the Temple of Rhea, Mother of the Gods, snatched a necklace from the statue of the goddess and mockingly put it round her own neck. The incident had never been forgotten.)
1

1
'We
may observe,' snorts Gibbon, 'the bad taste of the age, in dressing their statues with such awkward finery."

With the execution of Stilicho, all the pent-up hatred of Roman for barbarian suddenly found its release. In garrison after garrison throughout the Empire, the Roman legionaries sprang to arms and fell upon the Gothic, Hunnish or Vandal auxiliaries, sparing neither them nor their families. The massacres were terrible; so, however, were the consequences. Those barbarians who escaped death formed themselves into bands for their own safety, wandered through the countryside looting and pillaging, and finally found their way to Alaric, swelling his army by some
30,000.
Previously loyal to the Empire, they had now become its implacable enemies, determined not to rest until they had taken vengeance on the murderers of their brothers, wives and children. For much of the tribulation that the Romans were to suffer in the next two years, they had only themselves and their countrymen to blame.

They also found, at one of the most critical moments in their history, that they lacked a commander. Whatever dark designs Stilicho may have harboured against the Eastern Empire, he had always remained a faithful servant of the West; had he been anything else, he would have had no difficulty in eliminating the idiotic Honorius years before. In such an event, his close connections with the imperial house would probably have outweighed the disadvantage of his barbarian origin and enabled him to assume the purple; even had they not, he could surely have arranged for a successor both capable and trustworthy. As it was -unless we are to accept as true the accusations of Olympius (described by Zosimus as one who, 'behind an outward appearance of deep Christian piety, concealed the most consummate villainy') - his loyalty never wavered. Stilicho was one of those barbarians who believed in the Empire; and for all his severity and occasional deviousness, he was a fine leader of men. Only when he had gone did the Romans realize just how irreplaceable he was.

Alaric too believed in the Empire - in his fashion. But he did not believe in Honorius. Still less did he trust the Roman Senate who, having reluctantly agreed to pay him the compensation he had asked, now tried to fob him off with only part of it. To do so, as they should have seen, was tantamount to an open invitation to invade; yet even now they made no attempt to mobilize the army - which had been stood down after Stilicho's death - or to strengthen their defences. So Alaric invaded; and in September
408
he found himself before the walls of Rome, his huge army of Goths drawn up behind him. Now at last the Romans began to understand the sheer magnitude of the catastrophe that they had brought upon themselves. They had never really believed that what they still persisted in seeing as an undisciplined horde of skin-clad savages could constitute a serious danger to the greatest city of the civilized world; even now there were those who maintained that the Goths lacked the patience and endurance required for successful siege warfare, and that within a few days they would turn their attention somewhere else.

A few days, however, were all that were needed for Alaric to establish a stranglehold. Every road, every bridge, every footpath, every inch of the walls was kept under constant watch, while patrols along the Tiber ensured that no provisions or supplies could be smuggled in by water. Inside the city, strict rationing was introduced. Soon the daily ration was cut to a half, soon afterwards to a third. By now, several cases of cannibalism had been reported. Daily, as winter approached, the weather grew colder, and before long the combination of cold and undernourishment brought the inevitable disease. Still the watch-towers were manned to the north-east, in the hope that an army of relief might appear from Ravenna to save the city in the nick of time; but gradually it became clear that there was no such relief to be expected: Honorius was not lifting a finger to save the old capital.

As Christmas approached, the defenders knew that they could hold out no longer. Ambassadors were dispatched to Alaric, and a ransom was agreed:
5,000
pounds of gold,
30,000
of silver,
4,000
silken tunics,
3,000
hides dyed scarlet and
3,000
pounds of pepper. The first two items involved the stripping of statues and their adornments from churches and pagan temples alike, and the melting down of countless works of art. This time, however, there were no renegations, no half-measures; the Romans had learnt their lesson, and the ransom was paid in full.

But the future remained uncertain, and Alaric still wanted a home for his people. Returning northward from Rome he stopped at Rimini, where he met the Praetorian Prefect, Jovius, with some new proposals. Honorius would make available the provinces of Venetia, Dalmatia and Noricum
1
which, while remaining part of the Empire, would be allotted to the Goths as their permanent home, and would also grant them annual subsidies of money and corn to enable Alaric to keep them under arms; in return, Alaric would agree to a solemn military alliance, under the terms of which he would be the effective defender and champion of

1
Noricum roughly consisted of eastern Austria south of the Danube, plus the present Yugoslav Republic of Slovenia. The total area covered by the three provinces demanded by Alaric amounts to some
30,000
square miles, enclosed by a line drawn through Passau, Vienna, Dubrovnik and Venice.

Rome and the Empire against any enemy whatever. To many a Roman, the offer seemed not unreasonable; Jovius himself certainly did not reject it out of hand, forwarding it to the Emperor only with the suggestion that Alaric might be prepared to moderate his demands if he were offered the title of
magister utriusque militiae
-'master of both militias', i.e. cavalry and infantry - that Stilicho had borne before him.

Honorius, however, would have none of it. The grant of lands he refused point-blank; as for the title, he had no intention (he replied to Jovius) 'that such an honour should ever be held by Alaric, or by any of his race'. It was, so far as we know, the first time he had shown a trace of spirit, or of anything resembling a will of his own; but he could hardly have chosen a more inopportune moment to do so. His army was demoralized and rudderless; it would not stand the faintest chance against Alaric when the Goths renewed their attack, as sooner or later they inevitably must. The Eastern Empire to which he had appealed for help could in no way be relied upon, being in a state of turmoil after the succession to the throne of a child of seven; to the west, Gaul, Britain and Spain were in the hands of a usurper against whom a single half-hearted expedition had ended in failure and who could at any moment march into Italy. If he did so, Alaric and his Goths might well prove an invaluable bulwark.

Thus Honorius, effectively defenceless, insisted on defiance; while Alaric, who could have crushed him with hardly an effort, still strove for peace. Jovius's mistake - and we can only hope it was a mistake - of reading the Emperor's letter aloud to the Goth did not improve the latter's temper; so anxious was he to reach an agreement, however, that a few weeks later he sent a delegation of bishops to Ravenna to use their influence with Honorius, while substantially reducing his own requirements. He would forget Venetia and Dalmatia; all that he now asked for his people was Noricum on the Danube - a province already so devastated by barbarian invasions as to be practically worthless - and enough of a subsidy to allow him to feed his men.

In the circumstances, the generosity of these terms was astonishing; besides, the Emperor can hardly have been unaware of the consequences of another rejection. And yet, once again, he set his face against any compact with the Goths. Alaric's patience was finally exhausted. For the second time in twelve months, he marched on Rome and immediately set up a blockade; on this occasion, however, he changed his tactics. His purpose, he told the Romans, was not to put their city to fire and the sword but simply to overthrow Honorius, now the single obstacle to peace in Italy. If they agreed, they must declare their Emperor deposed and elect a more reasonable successor; he, for his part, would lift the siege forthwith.

The Roman Senate, meeting in emergency session, did not take long to decide. No one could contemplate the prospect of another siege, with all the horrors that it brought in its train. Besides, it was pointed out, Honorius had shown no concern for his people, either now or in the previous year; so long as he personally was safe behind the dikes and ditches of Ravenna, he seemed oblivious to the fate of anyone else. He had, in short, forfeited their allegiance. They wanted no more of him. So the gates were opened, and Alaric entered Rome in peace; Honorius was declared deposed, and it was agreed that he should be succeeded as Augustus by the Prefect of the City, an Ionian Greek named Priscus Attalus.

It was not, on the face of it, a bad choice. Attalus was an intelligent man of pronounced artistic tastes, himself a Christian but acceptable to the pagans on account of his tolerant views and his love of antique literature and culture. Fortunately, too, he had been baptised by an Arian Gothic bishop and thus enjoyed the support of all the Christian Goths, Arians to a man. Appointing Alaric his
magister militum,
he at once prepared to march on Ravenna; but, before he could leave, there was one major problem to be settled. Africa, the small but vital province (roughly corresponding to what is now Northern Tunisia) on which Rome was entirely dependent for its corn, was then governed by Her-aclian, the officer who had been responsible for the execution of Stilicho and who was expected to remain loyal to Honorius. For Alaric, there was only one solution: the immediate dispatch to Carthage, the capital, of an army which would depose Heraclian and ensure continued supplies. Attalus, on the other hand, preferring a more diplomatic approach, sent over a young man named Constans with instructions to take over the province peaceably in his name. This done, he set off with his
magister militum
for Ravenna.

With the news of events in Rome and the imminent approach of his enemies, Honorius had finally abandoned his sang-froid and had entered a state bordering on panic. He sent messages to Attalus, agreeing to his rule in Rome on condition that he himself might continue as Augustus in Ravenna; meanwhile he ordered ships to be made ready at the neighbouring port of Classis, to take him and his entourage to safety in Constantinople. Just as they were about to sail, however, there arrived at the same port six Byzantine legions - some
40,000
men, if Zosimus is to be
believed - sent in the name of young Theodosius II, who had received his uncle's appeal and had responded at once. The appearance of reinforcements on such a scale restored the Emperor's courage. He would, he declared, hold out in Ravenna, at least until he heard the news from Africa: if Heraclian had stood firm, all might not yet be lost.

Nor was it; a few days later there came a report that was all Honorius could have wished: Heraclian had dealt with the unfortunate Constans just as effectively, and in much the same manner, as he had dealt with Stilicho less than two years before. To Alaric, this was a serious blow. It meant, first of all, that he could no longer hope to oust the Emperor from Ravenna; more worrying still, perhaps, it pointed to a serious lack of political acumen on the part of Attalus. Again he pressed for the forcible removal of the African governor, but Attalus was stubborn: as Augustus, he maintained, he could not send an army of Goths against a Roman province. And the Senate agreed with him. Something, on the other hand, would have to be done, and quickly: Heraclian had already cut off the grain supply and famine was again beginning to threaten. One day, it was said, when Attalus was attending the Circus, the cry was heard from the topmost tiers:
'Pretium pone carni humanae
-
'Put a price on human flesh!'

Alaric had had enough. In the early summer of
410
he summoned Attalus to Rimini and, in a broad open space just outside the walls, publicly stripped him of the diadem and the purple. Then, after one more unsuccessful attempt to reach an agreement with Honorius, he marched back to Rome and besieged it for the third time. Maddeningly, we know little of the details: Zosimus, that most irritating of chroniclers, gives up at this critical moment, and such other sources as have been preserved are pitifully sketchy. But, with food already short, the city did not hold out for long. Some time towards the end of August, the Goths burst in by the Salarian Gate in the northern wall, just at the foot of the Pincian Hill.

After the capture, there were the traditional three days of pillage; but this early sack of Rome seems to have been a good deal less savage than the school history-books would have us believe - quite restrained, in fact, when compared with the havoc wrought by the Normans in
1084
or the armies of Charles V in
15
27.
Alaric himself, devout Christian that he was, had given orders that no churches or religious buildings were to be touched, and that the right of asylum was everywhere to be respected. Yet a sack, however decorously conducted, remains a sack; the Goths were far from being saints and, despite occasional exaggerations, there is probably all too much truth in the pages that Gibbon devotes to the atrocities committed: the splendid edifices consumed by the flames, the multitudes of innocents slain, of matrons ravished and of virgins deflowered.
1

When the three days were over, Alaric moved on to the south, intending to sail his army over to Africa, deal once and for all with Heraclian and deliver Italy from famine. But he had got no further than Cosenza when he was attacked by a sudden violent fever, and within a few days he was dead. He was still only forty. His followers carried his body to the river Busento, which they dammed and temporarily deflected from its usual channel. There, in the stream's dry bed, they buried their leader; then they broke the dam, and the waters came surging back and covered him.

i
The
Decline and Pall of the Roman Empire,
Chap.
XXXI.

7

Of Heresies and Huns

[410
-
4
53]

If you ask a man for change, he will give you a piece of philosophy concerning the Begotten and the Unbegotten; if you enquire the price of a loaf, he replies: 'The Father is greater and the Son inferior'; or if you ask whether the bath is ready, the answer you receive is that the Son was made out of nothing.

St Gregory of Nyssa

It is one of the cliches of Constantinople that it should, ideally, be approached from the sea. Only then, we are told, can the uniqueness of its geographical position be properly appreciated, to say nothing of that famous skyline of dome and minaret which has symbolized, for as long as any of us can remember, the Mysterious East. With this opinion we cannot easily disagree; but, for those of us on whom Byzantium will always cast a more powerful spell than Islam, there is another approach every bit as satisfying and very nearly as spectacular. No one, surely, whose first arrival has been by road from Edirne, can ever forget that first astonishing sight of the Land Walls, looming up from the surrounding plain, their huge russet-striped towers splintered and occasionally shattered, magnificent witnesses to the bludgeonings - by attacking armies and, more recently, by Turkish traffic - that they have endured for nearly sixteen centuries. Running just over four miles from the Marmara to the upper reaches of the Golden Horn - and thus enclosing a far greater area than those earlier fortifications traced by Constantine -they totally close off the city by land; only once, after more than a thousand years, were they ever breached - a breach that was to spell the end of the Byzantine Empire.

But that was over
500
years ago; they are still standing today, and still known as the Theodosian Walls after Theodosius II, in whose reign they were first built. And yet, although this tremendous construction remains the only achievement of his forty-two-year reign for which the name of Theodosius is generally remembered, the sad truth is that he can take little of the credit. Those walls - a single line of them, rather than the triple fortification that we see today - were begun in
413,
when the Emperor was still a boy of twelve; they were conceived and carried to their completion not by him but by his Praetorian Prefect Anthemius, who for the first six years of his reign was his guardian and the effective Regent of the East.

Anthemius was the first highly-placed layman at Constantinople since the days of Theodosius the Great to combine ability with high principle. Apart from the Walls, he was also responsible for a new peace treaty with Persia; for a much strengthened Danube fleet after a damaging but ultimately unsuccessful invasion by the Hun King Uldin; for improvements in the corn supply from Alexandria; and for the restoration of good relations with the Western Empire after the death of Arcadius. But he did not last long. After
414
he disappears from view, to be succeeded as the power behind the throne by the Emperor's own sister, the princess Pulcheria; and with this faintly awesome figure there is inaugurated a period of thirty-six years - the remainder of her brother's reign - during which virtually all the effective influence in the state was concentrated in female hands.

Pulcheria had been born only two years before Theodosius; she was thus still barely fifteen when she was proclaimed Augusta and took over the reins of government. By now it must have been generally apparent that her brother would be no improvement on Arcadius: he was weak, vacillating and easily led. She herself, by contrast, was strong and determined, with a love of power for its own sake; but she was also excessively, extravagantly pious, taking a particular pleasure in the rebuilding of the ruined St Sophia. Under her influence, her two younger sisters Arcadia and Marina developed similar inclinations: the prevailing mood in the imperial palace, it was said, was more that of a cloister than a court, thronged from morning till night with priests and monks while the princesses, all three of whom had vowed themselves to perpetual virginity, stitched away at their altar-cloths and chasubles to the sound of hymns, psalmodies and muttered prayers. It was all a far cry, people somewhat wistfully observed, from what it had been in Eudoxia's day.

How far Theodosius allowed himself to be drawn into his sister's devotions is a matter for conjecture. Born in the purple
1
and proclaimed co-Augustus at his birth, he had in fact granted his first petition

1
Porphyroginit
us,
or born in the purple, was a title used exclusively of a prince who was bom after his father had become Emperor - theoretically at least, in the Purple Chamber of the Great Palace.