The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (14 page)

manner won him a personal popularity such as no predecessor of his had enjoyed for a century or more. The two Augusti then returned to Milan, remaining there all through the following year - the year of that famous confrontation between Theodosius and Ambrose for which both of them, perhaps unfairly, are best remembered.

The incident that set the two on a collision course was one at which neither was personally present: the murder, at Thessalonica, of the captain of the imperial garrison. For some years already, resentment had been building up among the citizens over the billeting of troops: Roman soldiers, they pointed out, had been bad enough in the past, but these new barbarian ones were a good deal worse. Flash-point was reached when the captain - himself a Goth, by the name of Botheric - ignoring all their protests, imprisoned the city's most popular charioteer on charges of gross immorality. Suddenly and, it seemed, spontaneously, the mob attacked the garrison headquarters, smashed their way into the building and cut down Botheric where he stood. When the incident was reported to Theodosius in Milan, he flew into an ungovernable rage. In vain Ambrose pleaded with him not to take vengeance on the many for the crimes of a few; he ordered the troops in the city to show it no mercy, and to reassert their authority in whatever way they saw fit. A short while afterwards he repented and countermanded the order, but too late. It had already been received, and the soldiers were only too eager to obey. They deliberately waited until the people were all gathered in the Hippodrome for the games; then, at a given signal, they fell on them with unbridled brutality. Seven thousand were dead by nightfall.

Reports of the massacre at Thessalonica spread rapidly through the Empire - losing, we may be sure, nothing in the telling. The disturbances at Antioch three years before had been insignificant in comparison. On that occasion, in any case, the responsibility had rested with the local authorities; this time the guilt fell on the Emperor himself - an Emperor, moreover, who had always enjoyed a reputation for humanity and justice. A crime on such a scale could not be overlooked; certainly, Ambrose was not the man to overlook it.

At this time, it must be remembered, Ambrose was the most influential churchman in Christendom - more so by far than the Pope in Rome, by reason not only of the greater importance of Milan as a political capital but also of his own background. Member of one of the most ancient Christian families of the Roman aristocracy, son of a Praetorian Prefect of Gaul and himself formerly a
consularis,
or governor, of Liguria and Aemilia, he had never intended to enter the priesthood; but on the death
in 374 of the previous bishop, the Arian Auxentius, an acrimonious dispute had arisen between the orthodox and Arian factions in the city over which he, as governor, was obliged to arbitrate. Only when it finally emerged that he alone possessed sufficient prestige to make him equally acceptable to both parties did he reluctantly allow his name to go forward. In a single week he was successively a layman, catechumen, priest and bishop.

Once enthroned, Ambrose had started as he intended to go on, distributing his entire personal fortune among the poor and adopting an extreme asceticism in his private life. Since first hearing of the murder of Botheric he had done everything in his power to urge Theodosius towards moderation; when he saw that he had failed, he withdrew from the city rather than meet the Emperor and then wrote him a letter in his own hand, telling him that, despite his continuing high regard, he must regretfully withhold communion from him until he should perform public penance for his crime.

And Theodosius submitted - less, we may be sure, for reasons of political expediency than for those of genuine remorse. His handling of the affair had been not only unworthy of him; it had also been uncharacteristic. Almost certainly, he had allowed himself to be persuaded by his military entourage. At all events it seems to have been an immense relief to his spirit when, bare-headed and dressed in sackcloth, he presented himself in the cathedral of Milan to acknowledge his misdeeds and humbly beg forgiveness. But it was also something more. It was a turning-point in the history of Christendom - the first time that a minister of the Gospel had had the courage to assert the rights of the spiritual power over the temporal, and the first time that a Christian prince had publicly submitted to judgement, condemnation and punishment by an authority which he recognized as higher than his own.

Early in 391 the two Emperors left Milan - Theodosius to return to Constantinople, Valentinian to accept the transference of power in Gaul, where Arbogast the Frank had been ruling as
Comes
in his absence. On his arrival at Vienne, however, it soon became clear to him that Arbogast had no intention of handing over the reins as he was morally obliged to do. Instead, he was governing just as he always had, ignoring the Emperor completely and not even making a show of consulting him on important issues. Determined to assert his authority, Valentinian one day handed the Frank a written order, demanding his immediate resignation. Arbogast looked at it for a moment and then, slowly and contemptuously, tore it to pieces. At that moment war between the two was declared; and a few days later, on 15 May 392, the young Emperor, now just twenty-one, was found dead in his apartment. Much trouble was taken to suggest that his death was the result of suicide, and indeed foul play was never conclusively proved: Valentinian may well have taken his own life in the despairing knowledge that if he did not do so, someone else unquestionably would. Neither was murder hinted at by Ambrose in his subsequent funeral oration - unless some inference can be drawn from the bishop's assurances to the sorrowing princesses that their brother's soul had been carried up instantly to heaven, a reward not in theory accorded to those who had died by their own hand.1

Arbogast - a non-Roman and, incidentally, a pagan - knew that he could not assume the diadem himself; but he was perfectly content with the role of kingmaker. He therefore named his henchman Eugenius, a middle-aged Christian grammarian who had formerly served as head of the imperial chancery, as the new Augustus. Eugenius is unlikely to have had much appetite for the honour, but he was in no position to refuse. Ambassadors were dispatched to Theodosius, informing him of his brother-in-law's unfortunate demise and notifying him of the unanimous acclamation of Eugenius as his successor. But Theodosius would have none of it. The right of designating his fellow-Emperor belonged to him, and to him alone. Nine years before, receiving a similar embassy on behalf of Maximus, he had been forced to temporize (though he had dealt with Maximus later, all the same); this time he felt stronger, knowing that for the moment at any rate both his northern and eastern frontiers were secure. He sent an evasive reply and began to make his preparations.

All through the year 393 those preparations continued, while Arbogast succeeded, despite the vehement opposition of Ambrose, in having his protege acclaimed in Italy also. For his principal support he relied on the pagan old guard in Rome and the other ancient cities; though they knew Eugenius to be a Christian, they were happy to welcome an Emperor who proclaimed universal toleration and who willingly permitted the re-erection of the ancient altars. By the middle of the year, Rome was undergoing a full-scale pagan revival. The sky above the newly restored temples was cloudy with the smoke of sacrifice, while in their dark recesses aged augurs peered anxiously into the entrails of the still-steaming victims. Garlanded processions once more threaded their way through the streets; matrons and maidens were terrorized as of old

1 Ambrose,
De Obitu V
alentiniani; Optra,
Vol. vii.

by the frenzied devotees of the Floralia, Lupercalia and Saturnalia. Thus, when in the early summer of
394
Theodosius marched for the second time against an upstart pretender, he was aware that he was fighting not just for legitimacy but also for his faith. He was well equipped to do so since, apart from the Roman legionaries, his army contained some 20,000 Goths - many of them serving under their own chieftains, among whom there was included a brilliant young leader named Alaric. As second-in-command he had appointed a Vandal, Sti-licho, who had recently married his niece Serena. But however sanguine he may have felt over the outcome of the campaign, his heart was heavy within him: on the eve of his departure his beloved second wife, Galla, had died, probably in childbirth. She had been the love of his life, and the few years they had spent together had been idyllically happy. Fortunately, they already had one child of their own, a daughter, whom they had called Galla Placidia and on whom he doted; we shall hear more of her as the story goes on.

The army of Arbogast and Eugenius was roughly similar in strength when it set out from Lombardy in late July. Eugenius in particular was troubled; for Ambrose, who had pointedly absented himself from Milan during the pseudo-Emperor's stay, had openly condemned him as a betrayer of his faith, ordering the local clergy to refuse communion to him and all his Christian followers. As they rode out of the city, Arbogast vowed that on his victorious return he would stable his horses in the basilica; and it may have been as much as a gesture of defiance as anything else that the army carried before it as it marched not the holy
labarum
of the Christian Emperor but a crude representation of Hercules Invictus.

The two forces met on
5
September a little north of Trieste, on the little tributary of the Isonzo known then as the Frigidus but now as the Wipbach or Vipacco. The first day ended in near-disaster, with the slaughter of at least half the Goths and the disorderly withdrawal of the remainder of the army; but the following morning began somewhat more auspiciously, with the arrival of a sizeable detachment whom Arbogast had sent to cut off the Emperor's retreat but who now declared themselves prepared, for a price, to transfer their loyalties. The battle was rejoined with a new optimism; and further confirmation of divine benevolence was afforded when a violent tempest blew up from the east, accompanied by winds of hurricane force. Theodosius and his men had these winds behind them; the soldiers of Arbogast and Eugenius, on the other hand, found themselves blinded by clouds of dust and battered with such violence that they could barely stand upright; the throwing of spears, even the loosing of arrows, was out of the question. The gods, it seemed, were against them after all. Exhausted and demoralized, they soon surrendered. Eugenius was beheaded as he grovelled at the Emperor's feet; Arbogast escaped, but after a few days' wandering in the hills found the old Roman solution for his troubles and fell on his sword.

The triumphant Theodosius passed on to Milan, where his first action was to pardon all the surviving adherents of Eugenius. He then turned his mind to the question of the succession. Valentinian having died unmarried and childless, the obvious course was to divide the Empire between his own two sons, giving to the elder, Arcadius, the East and to the younger, Honorius, the West. Both were at the time in Constantinople, but instructions were sent to Honorius to come at once to Milan. By the time the imperial envoys delivered their message, winter had set in; and it was mid-January before the ten-year-old prince -escorted by his cousin Serena, the wife of Stilicho - could make his way through the snows to Milan. Once there, he was horrified to find that his father had fallen seriously ill. Theodosius's joy at seeing his son acted on him briefly like a tonic: he was actually able to attend the start of the games in the Hippodrome which he had ordered in celebration of the boy's safe arrival. Half-way through, however, he suddenly collapsed; and the following night - that of 17 January 395 - he died in his fiftieth year. For forty days his embalmed body lay in state on its purple-covered bier in the atrium of the Palace; on 25 February it was brought to the Cathedral, where High Mass was sung and Bishop Ambrose delivered his funeral oration - the text of which still survives. Only then did the cortege set off, under heavy escort, on the long homeward journey to Constantinople.

The reign of Theodosius had been, on the face of it, unspectacular. He had made no major conquests, had instigated no radical or far-reaching reforms. In all the years that he had wielded the supreme power, he had never impressed his Empire - as Julian had done in a fraction of the time - with the stamp of a huge and dominating personality. On the contrary, he had been quiet, cautious almost to a fault, and totally without flamboyance. Readers of this brief account of his career may well find themselves wondering, not so much whether he deserved the title of 'the Great' as how he ever came to acquire it in the first place. If so, however, they may also like to ask themselves another question: what would have been the fate of the Empire if, at
that critical moment in its history after the battle of Adrianople, young Gratian had not called him from his Spanish estates and put the future of the East into his hands?

Such questions, of course, can never be satisfactorily answered. It is conceivable that some other leader might have emerged, possessed of that same remarkable combination of generalship and diplomacy required to transform the Goths, in little more than two years, from an implacable enemy into a peaceful, even valuable, community within the Empire. But it is unlikely - and unlikelier still that he could have achieved his result with the same smoothness and sureness of touch. Had such a figure failed to appear, the probability is that the whole Empire of the East would have been lost, swallowed up in a revived Gothic kingdom, with effects on world history that defy speculation. At best, the Goths would have become to the East what the Alemanni had long been - and what they themselves were soon to become - to the West: a perpetual threat to imperial security, a steady drain on manpower and a brake on progress, forever holding down the Emperor and his army when their presence was required elsewhere.

Here, surely, was Theodosius's most important single legacy to the Empire. But it was not the only one. So far in these pages we have seen him only when on campaign, or visiting Milan or Rome; it is easy to forget that, of the sixteen years of his reign, well over half were spent in Constantinople, working tirelessly in the twin causes of good government and religious orthodoxy. In his civil legislation he showed, again and again, a consideration for the humblest of his subjects that was rare indeed among rulers of the fourth century. What other prince would have decreed that any criminal, sentenced to execution, imprisonment or exile, must first be allowed thirty days' grace to put his affairs in order? Or that a specified part of his worldly goods must go to his children, upon whom their father's crimes must on no account be visited? Or that no farmer should be obliged to sell his produce to the State at a price lower than he would receive on the open market?

Where religious matters were concerned, Theodosius's interest had showed itself as early as February 380, only thirteen months after his elevation, while he was still based at Thessalonica. We know that he fell seriously ill at that time and, in the belief that he was dying, had himself baptised. It may well have been this that prompted him, even before his complete recovery, to issue on the last day of the month an edict proclaiming that only those who professed the consubstantiality of the Trinity (in other words the Nicene Creed) could be considered
Catholic
Christians - a designation that appears here for the first time. 'All others,' the edict continues, 'we pronounce to be mad and foolish, and we order that they shall bear the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to bestow on their conventicles the title of churches: these are to be visited first by the divine vengeance, and secondly by the stroke of our own authority, which we have received in accordance with the will of heaven.' Further confirmation was given in the following year by the first Council of Constantinople, at which some 150 bishops from Thrace, Egypt and Asia Minor, meeting in the Church of St Irene, formally condemned the Arian heresy and its related sects - decreeing,
inter alia,
that the see of Constantinople should thenceforth come second in honour and dignity only to that of Rome itself. At this time, too, the Arians were expressly forbidden to congregate in cities, while all church buildings were ordered to be returned immediately to the orthodox faith. As for the pagans, they also found the Emperor's attitude hardening against them. In 385 he strengthened the existing legislation against sacrifices; in 391 he forbade all non-Christian ceremonies in Rome and Egypt; and in 392 he outlawed every form of pagan worship, public and private, throughout the Empire.

This steadily increasing religious intolerance has not, over the years, enhanced Theodosius's reputation. But we must remember that he was fighting, every moment of his reign, to keep the Empire strong and united against the barbarian menace; and that in those anxious times, when religion was as constant a preoccupation in men's lives as politics might be today, it could prove a uniquely powerful force for unification or division. And even Theodosius never attempted to change his subjects' convictions: never were they required to recant, or to abjure their faith. Nor did he ever sink to persecution. His chief fault was that ferocious temper of his - a temper that he tried, but all too frequently failed, to govern, and that led him time and again to words and actions which he later bitterly regretted; but once the fit was past, he was always quick to apologize, to remit or reduce punishments hastily ordered or even, when the occasion demanded, to do public penance.

Had he earned his title? Not, perhaps, in the way that Constantine had done or as Justinian was to do. But, if not ultimately great himself, he had surely come very close to greatness; and had he reigned as long as they did his achievements might well have equalled theirs. He might even have saved the Western Empire. One thing only is certain: it would be nearly a century and a half before the Romans would look upon his like again.