ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
CHAPTER VI.
SUPREMACY Of
RICIMER (continued). SEVERUS II, THE LUCANIAN, A.D. 461465. ANTHEMIUS, THE CLIENT BYZANTIUM, A.D. 467-472.
LIBIUS SEVERUS
, a Lucanian by nation, was the man whom Ricimer had selected to wear the
diadem snatched from the head of the murdered Majorian. He was proclaimed
Emperor at Ravenna, on the nineteenth of November, 461. He died at Rome on the
fifteenth of August, 465. These two dates sum up in truth the whole of our
knowledge respecting this faint shadow of an Emperor. It should, perhaps, be
added that one authority states that he ‘lived religiously’.
To one who is
familiar with the name of the Lucanians, and who remembers the part which this
stern Sabellian tribe, dwelling in the extreme south of Italy, played in three
of Rome's greatest wars (the Pyrrhic, Second Punic, and Social), it seems
strangely incongruous that the only contribution which Lucania furnished to the
list of Roman Emperors should have been this meek inoffensive cipher-Augustus,
who lived religiously, and died quietly at Rome after four years of
sovereignty, neither by his life nor by his death making a ripple on the
downward stream of the Empire's fortunes.
The only
question which can raise a momentary interest in connection with this Emperor
is as to the manner of his death. Was it due to the ordinary course of nature
or to the hand of Ricimer? Cassiodorus, who is a good authority, and who wrote
about half a century after these events, says cautiously, as some aver, by the
hand of Ricimer, Severus was taken off by poison in the palace at Rome. On the
other hand, all the other chroniclers, one or two of whom are yet nearer in
date than Cassiodorus, tell us simply that ‘ Lord Severus died'; and Sidonius,
in a poem recited in the presence of Ricimer and his next succeeding puppet,
says,
‘August Severus
now by Nature's Law
Hath mingled
with the company of gods.’
Though it is
hazardous to determine what a poet bent on praising Power will not say, it
seems probable that had the common voice of fame in the year 467 connected the
death of Severus with the poison-cup in the hand of Ricimer, that subject would
have been judiciously evaded by Sidonius.
The four years
of the nominal reign of Severus seem to have been a time of desultory and
exhausting strife. The rule of Ricimer, if accepted as a disagreeable necessity
by the inhabitants of Italy, was regarded with aversion by their neighbors, and
we may infer that the hatefulness of the man more than counterbalanced the
undeniable capacity of the general and the statesman. To understand the course
of events during this obscure time, we must look at the relations existing
between the court of Ravenna and those of the four following cities,
Constantinople, Carthage, Soissons, and Spalato.
1. Leo, ‘the Emperor of the Eastern Romans,'
beheld, evidently with deep displeasure, the downfall and murder of Majorian, a
kindred spirit to his own, and the substitution of the puppet-Emperor Severus.
The chronicler, who most faithfully represents the sympathies of the Byzantine
Court, uses such expressions as these : ‘Severus invaded the place of
Majorian,' ‘Severus, who snatched the sovereignty of the West,' and refuses to
insert him in his proper year in the list of Consuls. When the ‘Romans of the West'
applied for ships to replace the three hundred destroyed at Carthagena, the
loss of which left them at the mercy of Gaiseric's invasions, Constantinople
coldly replied that the existing treaties with the Vandals would not allow of
its rendering this assistance. It dispatched indeed during this interval one or
two embassies to the court of Gaiseric, exhorting him to abstain from invading
Sicily and the Italian provinces; but an embassy more or less was a matter of
no concern to the Vandal monarch, and he continued his depredations unmoved by
the Byzantine rhetoric.
2. Gaiseric himself had his reasons for viewing
the course of events at Rome with displeasure, he had a candidate of his own
for the Imperial Purple, and was deeply offended at that candidate's rejection.
It will be remembered that after the sack of Rome he carried the Empress
Eudoxia and her two daughters as state-prisoners to Carthage. Incessant
embassies from Byzantium had prayed for the surrender of these royal ladies
whose captivity, like that of Placidia half a century before, was felt to be an
especial insult to the majesty of an Augustus. At length, in the seventh year
of their exile, Gaiseric sent the widowed Empress with one daughter to
Constantinople, and this was no doubt the occasion of that treaty of alliance
between Africa and the East which Leo refused to endanger when the Romans
applied to him for help. The other daughter, Eudocia, Gaiseric had already
given in marriage to his son Hunneric—an ill-assorted
union, for the lady was a devout Catholic and her husband a most bitter Arian.
Placidia, the sister who was allowed to retire to Constantinople, was the wife
of a Roman Senator, named Olybrius, and it was this man, bound to him by a
somewhat loose tie of affinity, as being his son's brother-in-law, whom
Gaiseric desired to place, and as we shall see, eventually did place for a few
months on the Western throne.
Here then was
one grievance of the Vandal against Ricimer. Another was the refusal to comply
with his claim to have all the property of Valentinian III and Aetius given up
to him. The claim to the late Emperor's wealth of course rested on the alliance
between his daughter and the Vandal prince. The more preposterous demand for
the property of Aetius was probably in some way connected with the fact that
his son Gaudentius had been also carried captive to Carthage. But, whatever the
foundation for them, these two demands were urged by the Vandal king with
insolent pertinacity, and were the occasion of countless embassies. As they
were not complied with, and as the friendship now established between Carthage
and Constantinople forbade him to molest the coasts of Greece, Gaiseric decided
that ‘the nation with whom God was angry' was the Italian. Every year, with the
return of spring, he sailed his piratical fleet to the coasts of Campania, or
Sicily, or Apulia. He avoided the large towns, fearing to find there sufficiently
large bodies of troops to check his advance, and fell by preference on the
villages and unwalled towns, carrying off all the moveable wealth, and making
slaves of the inhabitants. This man's instincts were essentially those of the
robber rather than the conqueror. He was, so to speak, the representative of
that brood of pirates whom Pompey exterminated, the forerunner of those
countless spoilers of the sea, Saracen, Moorish, Algerian, by whom the
Mediterranean coasts have been wasted, almost down to our own day.
3. The romantic and mysterious career of
Aegidius, comrade of Majorian, Master of the Roman Soldiery, voluntarily chosen
king of the Franks during the exile of an unpopular chieftain, lies beyond our
proper limits, and some of its chief events rest on too doubtful authorities to
make it desirable here to describe it at length. But we are fully warranted in
saying that he ruled as an independent governor, possibly with the title of
king, at Soissons (in Belgic Gaul), that he bitterly resented the death of his
old companion-in-arms, Majorian, and was preparing to avenge it upon Italy—
that is, upon Ricimer—that, probably in order to further these purposes of
revenge, he sent ambassadors ‘across the Ocean to the Vandals,' and that Rome
remained for a considerable time in the greatest terror and distress in
anticipation of this new Gaulish invasion. Eventually however he was ‘drawn off
from war with the Italians by a difference with the Visigoths respecting
frontiers, which led to a campaign, in which Aegidius performed acts of the
greatest heroism.' In this war Frederic, brother of the Visigothic king, was
killed, and apparently Aegidius himself died (or was treacherously slain) soon
after.
The Visigoths
annexed a large part of his territory, but the city of Soissons and his strange
ill- defined power descended to his son Syagrius,
whose acquaintance we have already made as a correspondent of Sidonius, and
with whose overthrow by Clovis every student of French history is familiar, as
one of the earliest incidents in the career of the young Merovingian.
Possibly the
English reader is more familiar with the name of Aegidius than he is aware of.
For some unaccountable reason the French have modified that name into Gilles.
Saint Gilles, the hermit of Languedoc, who lived about a hundred years after
Count Aegidius, attained great renown both in France and England. The parish of
St. Giles' in London and the name Giles, once so common, especially in the
rural districts of England, are thus linked certainly, if somewhat obscurely,
with the memory of the ‘Tyrannus' of Soissons and the friend of Majorian.
4. We pass from Soissons by the Aisne to the long
arcades of Spalato, among the bays and islands of the
Dalmatian coast. Here, in the vast palace of Diocletian, lived and reigned
Marcellinus, ‘Patrician of the East,' ‘ruler of Dalmatia and of the Epirote
Illyrians'. The pupil of Aetius and the counsellor of Majorian, he had in the
deaths of those two men a double reason for withdrawing from the blood-stained
circle of Roman politics. Yet he does not seem, like Aegidius, to have broken
with Ricimer immediately upon the death of his friend. He fought in Sicily at
the head of the Imperial troops, and achieved some considerable successes over
the Vandals. Finding however that Ricimer was endeavoring, by bribes, to steal
away the hearts of his soldiers, and knowing that he could not hope to vie in
wealth with the Suevic Patrician, he retired to Dalmatia, and there founded an
independent and hostile principality. ‘A reasonable and noble man,' we are
told, ‘learned, courageous, and statesmanlike, keeping his government free, not
serving the Roman Emperor, nor any prince or nation, but ruling his own
subjects in righteousness.' Apparently one of the few men in high office who
still clung to the old Pagan religion and worshipped Jupiter Capitolinus, while
all the rest of the world was ranging itself for or against the Council of
Chalcedon practising divination and holding long
conversations with a certain philosopher Sallust, who shared his most secret
counsels and dwelt in his palace; this relic of an earlier world, deposited by
the vicissitudes of the times upon the shores of Dalmatia, is one of the most
unique figures of the age, and we would gladly know more of his history. What
concerns our present purpose however is the settled hostility which he
displayed for some years to the domination of Ricimer, and the constant fear which
pervaded Italy during that time of an invasion from the opposite coast of the
Adriatic. At length (probably about 465) the good offices of Byzantium were
asked and obtained; an ambassador was sent by the Eastern Emperor to entreat
Marcellinus to lay aside his plans of revenge; he complied with the request,
and, as we shall soon see, even cooperated once more with Rome against the
Vandals.
Neither of
these two men, Aegidius and Marcellinus, founded any enduring monarchy out of
the fragments of the Empire; nor did any other Roman succeed in the attempt.
All the political reconstruction was the work of barbarian hands. Yet on the
dissolution of Alexander's Empire, states and monarchies innumerable were
established throughout Asia and Africa by Greek adventurers. When the Caliphate
fell, Saracen chiefs profited by the ruin. When the Mogul Empire of Delhi lost
its vitality, Mohammedan as well as Hindoo Rajahs founded sovereignties which
endured for many generations. In the early part of this century the Ali Pasha
of Egypt entirely succeeded, and the Ali Pasha of Albania all but succeeded, in
rendering themselves virtually independent of the Ottoman Porte. Reasons might
probably be easily assigned why no such success was attainable by a Roman
Prefect of the Praetorium, or Master of the Soldiery, but we cannot wonder that
the experiment was made, nor should we have been surprised if it had been made more
frequently.
Other enemies
besides those whom we have enumerated were probably making Ricimer’s position at the helm of the Commonwealth a difficult one. In the year 464 Beorgor, king of the Alans, was routed and killed by the
Patrician, ‘at Bergamo, at the foot of the mountains.' We hear nothing more
about this descent of the savage half-Tartar tribe into the plains of Lombardy.
Possibly Beorgor was the successor of Sangiban, king of the Alans, who fought, with doubtful
fidelity, under Aetius on the Mauriac Plains, and he may have forced his way
over the Splugen from Coire to Chiavenna,
and thence to Bergamo. For one invasion of this kind, leading to a pitched
battle, which has claimed a place in the meagre pages of the chroniclers, there
were probably many lesser inroads and skirmishes of which no record has been
preserved.
It was in
August, 465, as was before said, that the unnoticeable Severus died. For a year
and eight months from that time no man was saluted as Augustus in the Western
half of the Roman Empire. This absolute vacancy of the Imperial office tells a
far more striking tale in a pure autocracy, such as the Roman Government had
become, than in a constitutional state, where the powers of the sovereign may
be, so to speak, ‘put in commission.' During all those twenty months, the
Patrician must have been avowedly the sole source of power, legislative,
military, judicial, and the question must have forced itself on many minds,
‘What is the use of wasting the dwindling income of the state on the household
of an Emperor, when all the work of ruling is done by the Patrician?' Thus the
interregnum of 465-467 prepared the way for the abolition of the dignity of
Augustus in 476. It is doubtful, however, whether Ricimer at this period
entertained any thoughts of dispensing with the ‘faineant' Emperors. It seems
more probable that he was balancing in his mind the respective advantages to be
derived from an alliance with Carthage or with Constantinople, the isolated
position which Italy had occupied for the last six years being obviously no
longer tenable. If this view be correct, there is perhaps a slightly greater
probability of his innocence of the death of Severus. An inoffensive and almost
useful tool would hardly have been removed by force, if his employer had not
decided how he was to be replaced.
However this
may be, the interregnum was terminated by a decision in favor of
Constantinople. Not Olybrius, the brother-in-law of the son of Gaiseric, but
Anthemius, the son-in-law of the deceased Emperor Marcian, was selected by
Ricimer to be the wearer of the purple; and great was the Vandal's rage in
consequence. The equivalent which the Eastern Empire was to pay for the
still-coveted honors of giving an Augustus to Rome was hearty support against
the African enemy, with whom it is probable that her own relations had for some
months been growing less friendly. A great combined campaign of 468 against the
Vandals—a campaign in which Leo, Marcellinus, and Ricimer all joined their
forces—was the fruit of this alliance, and it will be well first to describe
this campaign, postponing for the moment the merely complimentary proceedings
connected with the new Emperor's accession to the Western throne.
The Court of
Constantinople must have been at this time a curious study for any unprejudiced
observer who could keep his head cool in the whirlpool of its contending
factions. Passions and ambitions as old as humanity were there, striving side
by side with special theological formulae whose very names are almost forgotten
among men. While the mob of Constantinople were eagerly discussing Bishop
Timothy the Weasel's revolt against the Council of Chalcedon, or Bishop Peter
the Fuller's addition of four words to the Trisagion, wife, and Zeno, the
husband of the Emperor's daughter, were playing their stealthy, remorseless,
bloody game for the succession to the throne of the Emperor, Leo.
When Ricimer’s proposals for an alliance reached Constantinople,
power was slipping from the hands of the general who had for forty years been
the most powerful man in the Eastern Court—Aspar, the son of Ardaburius. An Alan by extraction, he, with his father, had
been sent as long ago as 424 on the expedition to Italy, which overthrew the
usurper Joannes and established the young Valentinian on the throne of his
uncle Honorius. Since then he had been a consul (434), and the father of
consuls (447, 459, 465). He was called ‘First of the Patricians'; he stood on
the very steps of the throne, and might have been Emperor himself, but he was
an Arian. Being therefore by his theological tenets, which he had probably
inherited from his barbarian ancestors, and was too proud to forego,
disqualified from himself reigning over ‘the orthodox Romans,' he made it his
care that the purple should at least be always worn by men subservient to his
interests. The brave young soldier who stretched himself to sleep in the
courtyard of Gaiseric's palace, whom the hovering eagle overshadowed, and whom
the Vandal dismissed with a true presage of his future greatness, was Marcian,
‘domesticus' of Aspar. So long as he reigned
(450-457) the influence of his patron appears to have remained unshaken. On his
death there seems to have been some expectation that his son-in-law, Anthemius,
would succeed him, but the predominant influence of Aspar and his son Ardaburius again secured the election of a dependant, their curator, Leo.
But, whatever
might be the manner of a man's elevation to the supreme dignity of the state,
even though, as in the cases of Marcian and Leo, something like domestic
service might be the ladder of his promotion, when once he was hailed Augustus,
the elaborate courtceremonial of Byzantium enveloped
him in the eyes of acclaiming crowds and literally adoring courtiers with all
‘the divinity that doth hedge a king.' We have an apt illustration of this in
one of those anecdotes with which the chroniclers so curiously diversify their
otherwise meagre pages. A few years after Leo's accession, 462, as we are
informed by Marcellinus, he fell sick of a fever. Jacobus, a man of Greek
nationality and Pagan faith, and one in whom a great natural genius for the
healing art had been enriched by a long course of study, was called in to
prescribe for the Imperial patient. When he entered ‘the sacred bed-chamber,'
he presumed to take a seat by the Emperor's bedside without having received any
sign that he was at liberty to do so, and then proceeded to make his diagnosis
of the case. When he returned at noon to ‘the sacred couch,' he found the
possibility of such impertinence averted by the removal of the chair. He
perceived the meaning of the hint, and at once, with awful ‘intrepidity,' sat
down upon the Imperial couch itself, explaining to the sick Emperor that he did
so in conformity with the rules laid down by the old masters of his art, and
not out of any disrespect to him.
To Leo the
servility of the Byzantine Court was perhaps useful, as giving him courage to
resist the too imperious mandates of his old master. It happened, apparently in
the first year of his reign, that Aspar asked him to appoint one of his brother
Arians to the post of Prefect of the City. Cowed by his long habit of deference
Leo assented, but regretted his compliance the moment afterwards. That night he
sent for an orthodox senator, and installed him, stealthily and with haste, in
the vacant office. Great was Aspar’s wrath when he
heard of this act of disobedience on the part of his sovereign. He came
black-browed into the purple presence chamber, and grasping the Emperor's
robe, said to him, ‘Emperor! it is not fitting that he who is wrapped in this
purple should tell lies!'. To which Leo replied, ‘Yea, rather, it is not
fitting that the Emperor should be bound to do the bidding of any of his
subjects, especially when by his compliance he injures the state.’
For thirteen
years the breach between the First of the Patricians and his late curator went
on widening. Yet Aspar was still a great power in the State, and it seemed not
improbable that one of his three sons, Ardaburius,
Patricius, or Hermenric, would succeed the sonless
Leo who was already passing the prime of life. To strengthen himself against
the anger of his former friendship of some of the Isaurian adventurers who at
that time abounded in Constantinople, wild, rugged, unpopular men from the
highlands of Asia Minor, but men who were not likely to fail him ‘when hard
came to hard'. One of these men, who was known by the barbarous Zeno the
appellation Tarasicodissa, son of Rusumbladeotus,
changed his name to Zeno, and received the Emperor's daughter Ariadne in
marriage. Thenceforward it was understood that Zeno was the head of the party
opposed to Aspar, and that he would, if possible, compass for himself, or at
least for the younger Leo, his son by Ariadne, the succession to the Imperial
throne.
On the other
hand, a powerful counterpoise to the influence of Zeno was found in Basiliscus,
the brother of the Emperor's wife Verina. This man's craving to wear one day
the Imperial diadem was so passionate and so ill-concealed, that it made him
almost the laughingstock of the Court; but it was well-known that he was the
confidant of the still influential Aspar, and that in the fierce resentment of
himself and his party against the Council of Chalcedon, they were willing to
accept help even from the Arians in order to annul its decrees. Basiliscus, the
Monophysite, practically denied the true Manhood of Jesus Christ; Aspar, the
Arian, denied his true Godhead; but they were ready to co-operate in order to
drive out of Church and State the men who, in obedience to the Council of
Chalcedon, maintained the combined Manhood and Godhead of the Saviour.
Such was the
state of parties at Constantinople when in the spring of 468 Leo dispatched his
long prepared armament against the Vandals. It was meant to deal a crushing
blow. The Western Empire contributed probably some supplies both of men and
money; Marcellinus left his Dalmatian palace and his independent principality
to serve as a general under the orders of the Roman Emperors; but the chief
weight of the preparations fell, as was natural, on the comparatively
unexhausted Empire of the East. Leo, who was a man of courage and capacity, was
determined to spare neither trouble nor expense on this great enterprise. A
thousand ships, a hundred thousand men, a hundred and thirty thousand pounds'
weight of gold (£5,850,000 sterling), had been collected at Constantinople. All
seemed to promise well for the success of the armament, but all was ruined by
the selection of its head. Basiliscus was appointed Generalissimo : and showed
such miserable weakness in his command that later generations believed that
Vandal gold, or the secret orders of Aspar, anxious that his Arian
fellow-believers should not be too hardly pressed, caused his failure. Either
hypothesis may be true, but historians are too apt to forget the infinite
depths of simple human stupidity.
Marcellinus
sailed to Sardinia, and expelled the Vandals from that island. Heraclius,
another Byzantine general, made a successful descent on Tripoli's, took the
cities of the Vandals in that region, and marched from thence westwards to the
city of Carthage. The proceedings of Basiliscus and the main body of the host
shall be told in the very words of the historian Procopius, who is here our
only authority. Though he wrote more than half a century after the event, yet
as he was an Eastern Roman, and served in that very campaign against Carthage,
in which Belisarius did what Basiliscus failed to do, we may listen to his
story with some confidence in its general correctness.
‘Basiliscus
meanwhile, with his whole force, sailed for a town about thirty-five miles from
Carthage, called Mercurion, from an old temple of
Hermes there; and if he had not with evil purpose lingered at that place, but
had at once commenced his march to Carthage, he would have taken the city at
the first shout, annihilated the strength of the Vandals, and reduced them to
slavery; so thoroughly was Gaiseric now alarmed at the irresistible might of
the Emperor Leo, who had taken from him Sardinia and Tripolis,
and had sent against him such an armament under Basiliscus as all men said the
Romans had never fitted out before. All this was now hindered by the general's
procrastination, which was due either to cowardice or treachery. Profiting by
the supineness of Basiliscus, Gaiseric armed all his subjects as well as he
could, and put them on board troop-ships. Other ships, fast-sailors and
carrying no soldiers, he held in reserve. Then sending ambassadors to
Basiliscus he begged for a delay of five days, pretending that if this were
granted him he would consider how he might best comply with the wishes of the
Emperor. And some say that he sent a large sum of money to Basiliscus, unknown
to his soldiers, in order to purchase this armistice. He devised this scheme in
the expectation, which was justified by the event, that in the meantime a wind
would spring up which would be favorable to his purposes. Basiliscus then,
either in obedience to the recommendation of Aspar, or as having been bribed to
grant this truce, or because he really believed that it would be better for the
army, stayed quietly in his camp waiting the convenience of the enemy. But the
Vandals, as soon as ever the wind arose which they had been patiently
expecting, unfurled their sails, and, taking the empty ships in tow, sailed
against the enemy. As soon as they came near they set the empty ships on fire,
and sent them with bellying sails full against the anchorage of the Romans. The
ships of the latter, being tightly packed together in the quarter to which the
fire-ships were directed, soon caught fire, and readily communicated it to one
another.
‘When the fire
was thus kindled, great terror naturally seized the Roman host. Soon, the
whistling of the wind, the roar of the fire, the shouts of the soldiers to the
sailors, and of the sailors to the soldiers, the strokes of the poles with
which they strove to push off the fireships or their own burning companions,
created a wild hubbub of discordant noises. And now were the Vandals upon them,
hurling javelins, sinking ships, or stripping the fugitive soldiers of their
armor. Even in this crisis there were some among the Romans who played the man,
most of all Joannes, second in command to Basiliscus, and quite guiltless of
all his treachery. For when a great multitude of the enemy surrounded his ship,
he from the deck killed numbers of them with his furious blows right and left;
and when he saw that the ship was taken, he sprang in full armor from the
quarter-deck into the sea. Then did Genzo, the son of Gaiseric, earnestly
importune him to surrender, offering him assistance and promising him safety, but
he none the less committed his body to the sea, with this one cry, “Never will
Joannes fall into the hands of dogs.”
‘With this the
war was ended. Heraclius returned home. Basiliscus, when he arrived at
Byzantium, seated himself as a suppliant in the temple which is dedicated to
the great Christ and God, and which is called Sophia [Wisdom] because the
Byzantines think that epithet the most appropriate to God. On the earnest
entreaty of his sister, the Empress Verina, he escaped death, but his hopes of
the throne, for the sake of which he had done all these things, were for the
present dashed by the soon following fall of Aspar and Ardaburius.
Truly in
reading Procopius' account of all the valour and
treasure wasted in this campaign, one can heartily echo the saying of a more
recent Byzantine historian, ‘Better is an army of stags led by lions than an
army of lions led by a stag.’
In some
mysterious manner the close of this campaign was connected with the fall of the
brilliant and courageous Marcellinus. We are told that he perished by the
treachery of one of his colleagues, that he was killed in Sicily, that while
bringing aid and succor to the Romans fighting against the Vandals near
Carthage, he was guilefully struck down by the very men whom he was coming to
help. We know that the Dalmatian palace was left empty, that there were no more
talks by the shore of the plashing Adriatic between the general and his
philosopher friend Sallust, concerning the nature of the gods and the causes of
the ruin of this perplexing world. But why or by whom Marcellinus died remains
a mystery.
The
unsuccessful campaign against Carthage occurred, as has been said, in the
spring and summer of 468. We return to the events of the preceding spring in
Italy. On the 12th of April 467, the population of Rome poured forth to meet
the new Emperor who was henceforth to rule over them in firm alliance with his
brother Augustus of Constantinople. At the third milestone from the city
Anthemius was solemnly proclaimed Emperor of Rome in the presence probably of a
brilliant escort from Byzantium, including his wife Euphemia, daughter of an
Emperor, and now Empress herself, of his three sons, Marcian, Romulus, and
Procopius, and a daughter, Alypia, who was to play an important part in
cementing the new alliance between East and West. The Patrician Ricimer was there
doubtless, scanning the features of the new sovereign, and endeavoring to find
an answer to the question, ‘To rule or to be ruled'. There too were the Senate,
the copious German guards, the dwindled ranks of the legionaries, and the Roman
populace, those jaded and dissipated sons of slaves who still called themselves Quirites, and talked of Father Mars and the
She-Wolf's nurslings.
The new Emperor
was not merely son-in-law of Marcian, but in his own right a great Byzantine
noble. On his father's side he was descended from that Procopius, whose revolt
against Valentinian and whose short-lived sovereignty were described at the
beginning of this history. On his mother's side he traced his descent from
Anthemius, Praetorian Prefect of the East, and virtual Regent during the early
years of the minority of Theodosius II. Both this Anthemius (his maternal
grandfather) and Procopius (his father) had been employed in important
embassies to the Persian Court. He himself, aided no doubt by his fortunate
marriage to Euphemia, had in early manhood attained the successive dignities of
Count of Illyricum, Master of the Soldiery, Consul (455), and Patrician. The
expectation of some of the courtiers had marked him out as a probable successor
of Marcian, but when the all-powerful voice of Aspar decreed the diadem to Leo,
Anthemius sensibly took the disappointment in good part, attached himself
loyally to the fortunes of the new Emperor, and was soon entrusted by him with
an important command on the Lower Danube. Walamir the
Ostrogoth, and Hormidac the Hun, were apparently both
threatening the Roman inhabitants of the country which we now call Bulgaria.
The populous city of Sardica (now Sofia), upon the
northern slope of the Balkans, was in especial danger. Anthemius distinguished
himself by the strict discipline which he maintained among his troops—often in
those degenerate days more terrible to friend than foe—and in a pitched battle
with Hormidac, he obtained, we are told, a decisive
victory, notwithstanding the treacherous conduct of a subordinate—probably a
barbarian—officer, who in the very crisis of the battle drew off all his
cavalry, and left the Imperial flank exposed. After the victory the Roman
general imposed one indispensable condition of peace upon the conquered
Huns—the surrender of his traitorous colleague, who was put to death in the
sight of both armies.
Such was the
past history of the richly-clothed Byzantine official who, in the spring of
467, rode proudly in through the gate of Rome, amidst the acclamations of
soldiery and populace. Long live Anthemius Augustus! Long live Ricimer, the
Patrician! Long live the Concord of the Emperors!
When the
tidings of these Roman pageants reached the banks of the Rhone, one can imagine
what envy they raised in the heart of Sidonius. ‘An Emperor acclaimed, and I
not there to weave his praises into panegyric, hexameters!', was a bitter
reflection for the Gaulish poet. He had still some unused metaphors in his
head; the necessary compliments to the Eastern Empire would give a motive
entirely different from those of his two previous panegyrics; there was always
the possibility of turning a few chapters of Livy into sonorous verse, and, in
short, he resolved to resume the ‘useful toil' of a Panegyrist. A deputation of
citizens of Auvergne was appointed to congratulate Anthemius on his accession,
perhaps to solicit the redress of grievances, or help against the Visigoths;
but it is plain from Sidonius' letters that the message entrusted to the
deputation was the last thing in his thoughts; the real business to him was the
Panegyric.
His errand
having received the sanction of ‘the sacred autograph,' he was entitled to
travel at the public charge, by that admirably-organized postal service (the
cursus) which was probably about the last to perish of the Imperial
institutions. In a letter to a friend, he describes his journey with a few
life-like touches, though some sentences reveal the rhetorician. But the
friendly aspect of the well-known villas by the Rhone, the short climb up the
torrent-beds and over the snows of the Alps, the voyage from Ticinum (Pavia) down the Ticino and the Po, past cities
which recalled the honored name of Virgil, and through woods of oak and maple
alive with the sweet song of birds, are all vividly brought before us. He
admired the situation of Ravenna, so strong for defence,
so convenient for commerce, and was in doubt whether to say that the city and
the harbor (Classis) were connected or divided by the long ‘Street of Caesar'
which passed between them. But, though provisions of all kinds were to be had
at Ravenna in abundance, he found, as other poets had found before him, that
water fit for drinking was an unattainable luxury in that city, and he suffered
the pangs of thirst though surrounded by streams. Across the historic Rubicon
and Metaurus, through the plains of Picenum and the valleys of Umbria, the Gaulish poet
journeyed, no doubt with the lines of the fateful Panegyric churning in his
head. But either the Sirocco blowing over the plains, or (as was probably the
case) the imperfect drainage of Ravenna, had by this time touched him with a
fever. Alternately burning and shivering, he quaffed, but in vain, the waters
of every stream and fountain near which his journey led him; and when the
towers of Rome appeared upon the horizon, his feeling was that all the
aqueducts of the City, and all the mimic seas of the amphitheatres,
would be insufficient to quench his thirst.
However, before
entering the city he visited the tombs of the Apostles, and after he had
prostrated himself there, he felt that the languor of the fever departed from
his limbs. He found the whole city in an uproar, on account of the wedding
between the Patrician Ricimer and the daughter of the Ever-August Emperor; an
union which, while it reversed the relations between ‘the Father of the
Emperor' and his new father-in-law, was avowedly based on state considerations,
and was looked upon as affording a new guarantee for the public tranquility by
cementing the alliance between Byzantine legitimacy and the rough strength of Ricimer's barbarians. Theatres, markets, temples, were all
resounding with the Fescennine verses in which the populace, sometimes not too
decorously, expressed their congratulations to the wedded pair.
The bridegroom,
with a crown upon his head, and the flowered robe (palmata)
of the Consular upon his shoulders, went to fetch the bride from the house of
her father. In the universal hubbub, no one had any ears for the Gallic
deputation, and the Transalpine poet, seeking the comparative quiet of his inn,
drew, for the benefit of his correspondent at Lyons, an amusing picture of the
‘earnest holiday' of the humming city.
When he next
took up the pen he was able to announce a brilliant success. The great poem had
been recited on New Year's Day (468), and had earned for its author applause
and a high office in the state. As soon as the wedding turmoil was over, and
the riches of two empires had been sufficiently displayed to public view, the
affairs of the state resumed their ordinary course. The Gallic deputies met
with entertainment and a courteous reception at the house of one Paulus, a
venerable man and an ex-prefect. Sidonius describes with amusing naivete how he
then set to work to attach himself to a patron, Paulus being presumably too old
to give him efficient assistance. The choice lay between two men, both of
consular rank, and confessedly the most influential persons in the state after
the Emperor, ‘always excepting the predominant power of the military party’—a
most significant exception, which probably included Ricimer and all his
immediate followers.
These two
possible patrons were Gennadius Avienus and Caecina Basilius. Avienus had
obtained the consulship in 450, and had been congratulated by all his friends
on his early promotion. Basilius had been made consul in 463, and all the City
had said, ‘Why was not so good a man raised to the office before?'. Either
nobleman saw his gate thronged with suitors, and was followed through the forum
by a crowd of obsequious clients; but the composition of the two bands of
retainers was very different, and so was the nature of their hopes. Avienus was most successful in pushing the fortunes of his
sons, his sons-in-law, and his brothers: when all this had been accomplished,
there was not much court-influence left for more distant clients, whom he
accordingly charmed with his affable demeanor, but who somehow found that they were
not drawing any nearer to the goal of their wishes, notwithstanding all the
hours that they spent at their patron's vestibule. Basilius had far fewer of
his own friends to provide for, and his manner with those whom he admitted into
the circle of his dependents was much more reserved, almost haughty; but when
he did accept the homage of a client, he was almost certain to obtain for him
the fulfillment of his desires. Upon this estimate of their respective
characters, Sidonius wisely decided to attach himself to the clientele of
Basilius, while not omitting to pay frequent visits of ceremony at the door of Avienus.
Favoured by the
efficient help of Basilius, the affairs of the Arvernian deputation were soon in good train for settlement. One day the Patron said to
the Poet, ‘Come, my Sollius! The Kalends of January
are at hand, and the name of our Emperor is to be inscribed on the Fasti of
this New Year. Though I know that you are weighed down with the responsibility
of your deputation, can you not call upon your old Muse to inspire you with
some lines in honors of the new consul? It is true that in so short a time they
will have to be almost the result of improvisation, but I can promise you a
hearing for your verses, and at least my hands for their applause.'
It needs not to
be said that the suggestion of Basilius was eagerly accepted, and that upon the
morning of the first day of 468 Sidonius was ready with an ‘impromptu' of 547
lines in praise of Anthemius. There is no need to describe this poem with any
fullness of detail, since the reader can easily imagine its character from the
two similar performances by the same hand in praise of Avitus and Majorian.
There is an eloquent passage in praise of Constantinople and a graphic account
of the manners of the Huns, very closely corresponding with the pictures drawn
by Jordanes and Ammianus. The lineage of Anthemius is described; the
conventional prodigies which marked his birth and infancy; the events of his
military and official career; and great stress is laid on his
unwillingness—real or imaginary—to accept the Western Crown, till commanded to
do so by Leo. The real interest of the poem for us lies in its hints as to the
course of contemporary politics, in its portraiture of Gaiseric and Ricimer.
Each Emperor
that on Western soil is born
Fails from the
helm and perishes forlorn.
Here the stern
Vandal spreads his thousand sails
And yearly for
our ruin courts the gales.
Strange fate!
Upon our shores swart Africa throws
The nations
reared amid Caucasian snows.
Alone, till
now, with Mars his only friend,
He on whose arm
the fates of Rome depend,
Unconquered
Ricimer has held at bay
The Freebooter
who makes our fields his prey.
Who skulks from
battle, yet can still contrive
To reap the
victor's spoils, a fugitive.
Whose strength
by such a foe would not be spent
Who gives nor
Peace nor War's arbitrament?
"No peace
with Ricimer," his watchword dire,
And this the
cause that fills his veins with fire.
He knows
himself the offspring of a slave.
The sire he
knows not who his being gave.
Hence envy
gnaws him, that his rival springs,
Great Ricimer,
on either side from kings.
His sire a Sueve, a royal Gothic dame
His mother, who
of Walia's lineage came;
The noble
Walla, whose redoubted sword
Drove forth
from Spain the motley, mongrel horde
Of Vandals,
Alans, worsted in the fray,
And with their
corpses covered Calpe's bay.
But Ricimer
alone, says the poet, can no longer ward off the perils of the Empire. There is
need of an Emperor of the old type, one who can not only order wars, but wage
them. Such an Emperor the East can furnish, and, on the intercession of Rome,
she does furnish, in the bronzed veteran Anthemius. He and his son-in-law have
prepared fleets and armies which will surely reduce Africa to its ancient
obedience. In some future year, when Anthemius shall be consul for a third, or
Ricimer for a second time, Sidonius promises himself the delight of again
appearing before them to chant the fall of Gaiseric.
The florid
Panegyric was received, its author tells us, with rapturous applause. Shouts of
‘Sophos! Sophos'(the Greek equivalent of ‘bravo') resounded from the benches
where sat the senators conspicuous by their purple laticlaves, and from the
higher tiers of seats where swarmed the common people, the representatives of
the once omnipotent Roman tribes. A more striking proof of approbation was
given by the Emperor, who, on the recommendation of Basilius, named Sidonius
Prefect of the City of Rome. Thus, as he himself piously expresses it, 'I have
now, by the help of Christ and an opportune use of my pen, arrived at the
Prefecture.' In modern states (China and the great American Republic alone
excepted) it would be hard to find an instance of honors such as this conferred
on the votaries of literature.
Sidonius was
now in theory the third personage in the Empire, on a level with the Praetorian
Prefects of Italy and Gaul, inferior only to the Emperor and the Patrician. In
practice, however, it is probable that many a rude Herulian centurion or tribune counted for more than the versatile thin-minded poet.
Besides his presidency over the Senate, the aqueducts, the marketplaces, the
fore-shores, the harbor, the statues, were all under his care. But his chief
business—an infinitely harassing one in those dying days of the Empire—was the
care of the provisioning of the City, which rested upon him and his
subordinate, the Commissary General (Praefectus Annonae), as the Earthly Providence of Rome. It is curious to read a letter
from the new Prefect to a Gaulish friend, in which he expresses his fear lest,
when he next visits the amphitheatre, he should hear
a harsh cry of rage from the assembled multitude, imputing their hunger to his
incapacity.
A gleam of hope
shines upon him when he is informed that five ships, laden with corn and honey,
have arrived at Ostia from Brindisi, and he dispatches his Praefectus Annonae with all speed, to receive and distribute the precious cargoes.
Sidonius
retained his new dignity only for one year, but on laying it down he probably
received the title of Patrician—a title which was in his case purely honorary,
conferring no power and imposing no responsibility. The short tenure of his
office does not exactly imply disgrace, but it may probably be asserted that if
the Gaulish man of letters had shown any conspicuous ability in his Prefectorate, his office would have been renewed to him at
least for two or three years. He quitted Rome in the year 469, never to return
to that scene of petty intrigues and worn-out—splendors pigmies masquerading in
the armor of giants—a scene which must have filled a thoughtful man with
sadness and a cynic with a rapture of scorn.
But before he
went he witnessed the commencement of a process which attracted his deepest
interest, and filled him with varied emotions—the trial and condemnation of
Arvandus. This man, a fellow-countryman of Sidonius, had for five years held
the office of Praetorian Prefect of Gaul. The popularity which marked his
earlier years of office had utterly deserted him before its close. He had
become involved in debt, from which he sought to free himself by the most
unjust exactions from the provincials; he had grown moody, suspicious,
implacable; and finally, knowing the universal disfavor with which the Roman
population regarded him, he had commenced a traitorous correspondence with the
Visigothic king. Three Gaulish noblemen were sent as a deputation to Rome to
impeach Arvandus before the Senate on charges of extortion and high treason.
The arrival of
this deputation, and of the accused governor, placed Sidonius in an awkward
position. The deputies were all of them acquaintances of his, and one (Tonantius Ferreolus) was his relative and intimate friend.
On the other hand, Arvandus had been long known, though never liked by him, and
he says that he would have thought it base and barbarous to desert him in the
day of his calamity. This difficulty however was soon solved by the accused
himself, who, when Sidonius and a fellow-noble ventured to give him some hints
as to the necessity of tact and moderation in the conduct of his case, flamed
out upon them with the words, ‘Away with you, ye degenerate sons of Prefects!
Who wants your fussy anxiety on my behalf? Arvandus' conscience suffices for
Arvandus. I can scarcely bring myself even to hire an advocate to defend me
from the charge of extortion.’
All the rest of
his conduct was of a piece with this outburst of petulance. While the Gaulish
deputies were walking about in sad-colored garments, with downcast faces, as
men who had a painful duty to perform on behalf of the oppressed, Arvandus, in
a white toga, with scented hair and pumice-stoned face, gaily promenaded the
Forum, nodding to his friends as if his salutation were still of the highest
value, frequenting the jewelers' shops, chaffering over the price of
fashionable knick-knacks, and all the while keeping up a running fire of
complaints against the Emperor, the Senate, and the laws, for allowing a person
of his quality to be subjected to the indignity of a trial.
The eventful
day arrived. The Senate-house was crowded. The defendant, fresh from the
hair-dresser's hands, walked boldly up to the benches of the ‘prefectorians,' and took his seat, as if of right, in the
most honorable place among his judges. Ferreolus, on the contrary, equally
entitled to a seat among the ‘prefectorians,' placed
himself, along with his fellow-deputies, on one of the lowest benches of the
Senate-house. The deputation set forth their case, and read the mandate which
they had received from their fellow-citizens.
Instead of
lingering over the outworks of the indictment, the charges of peculation and
extortion, they went rapidly to the heart of the matter, the accusation of
treasonable intrigues with the Barbarians. A letter was produced, in the
handwriting of the amanuensis of Arvandus, addressed to the Visigothic king. It
tended to dissuade him from making peace with ‘the Greek Emperor' (Anthemius),
suggested that he should attack the Bretons, who were allies of the Empire, and
recommended that ‘the Visigoths and the Burgundians should divide Gaul between
them, according to the law of nations.' There might have been some difficulty
in tracing the composition of this letter to Arvandus, but the infatuated
culprit aimed the weapon against himself by at once boldly proclaiming that he
was the author. ‘Then you are guilty of high-treason' (laesa majestas), said every voice in the assembly. He then
tried to retract and to qualify his previous admissions, for with incredible
folly he had hitherto supposed that nothing short of the actual assumption of
the Imperial purple would have justified a condemnation for high-treason. But
it was too late; his guilt was manifest. He was stripped of all his dignities,
and the delicately-dressed and scented culprit was hurled, with every mark of
disgrace, into a squalid dungeon on the Insula Tiberina,
sentenced to be there killed by the executioner, to have his body dragged by an
iron hook through the streets, and then to be cast into the Tiber.
By the wise and
merciful legislation of Theodosius, due to the suggestion of Ambrose, an
interval of thirty days necessarily elapsed between the utterance and the
execution of a capital sentence. This interval Sidonius employed in pleading
for a mitigation of the punishment of the fallen Prefect, though, as he
contemptuously remarked, ‘No greater calamity can befall him than that he
should wish to live, after all the ignominy that has been heaped upon him.’ An entry
in one of the Chroniclers seems to justify the inference that the intervention
of Sidonius was successful, and that the capital sentence was commuted into one
of perpetual exile.
It is not
improbable that one cause of Sidonius' departure from Rome may have been that
he saw the political horizon darkening with the impending rupture between
Ricimer and Anthemius. The great enterprise against Carthage, which should have
united them, had failed, as was before stated (468); and thus, both Rome and
the Suevic chief had humbled themselves before Byzantium for nothing. Anthemius
was hot-tempered, and probably felt himself by intellect as well as by birth
fitted for something better than to be the mere puppet of a barbarian. We have
no hint as to the part taken by his daughter, in soothing or in exciting the
combatants, but we can imagine that she let the middle-aged Patrician, her
husband, see too plainly how vast she considered her condescension in becoming
the wife of a barbarian. In 470 another event added fuel to the fire. The
Emperor, who found his health failing him, believed that he was the victim of
magical arts, and arrested many persons upon the charge of thus compassing his
death. A certain Romanus, an adherent of Ricimer, himself bearing the title of
Patrician as well as that of Master of the Army, was among the persons put to
death on this accusation. Thereat Ricimer, in a fury, flung out of Rome and
called to his standards 6000 men who had served under him in the Vandal war.
In the spring
of the year 471 Ricimer was at Milan, surrounded, no doubt, by the Teutonic
auxiliaries, and leaning perhaps somewhat on the aid of his brother-in-law, the
king of the Burgundians, who held all the northern passes of the Western Alps,
since he ruled in Valais and Savoy, in Dauphine and the Lower Valley of the
Rhone. Anthemius was not at Ravenna, but in Rome, relying on the favour with which he was regarded by the populace of the
City, on the sympathies of the official class, and on the patriotism of
whatsoever purely Roman and Italian elements might be left in the legions.
Between these two men, all Italy perceived with horror that war was inevitable.
Such being the
state of things, the nobles of Liguria assembled at the palace of Ricimer, and
adoring the Suevic Patrician with self-prostration, after the manner of the
Orientals, besought him to consent to an accommodation with his father-in-law.
Ricimer was, or professed to be, mollified by their arguments. ‘But whom will
ye send as mediator?' said he; ‘Who can bring this hot-headed Galatian prince
to reason? If you ask him for the smallest favor he bubbles over with fury, and
there is not a man living who can remain in a passion so long as he.' ‘There is
a person in this province' said the nobles, ‘to whom you may safely entrust
this commission; a man to whom even wild beasts would bow their necks; a man
whom a Catholic and a Roman must venerate, and whom even the little Greek
Emperor cannot help loving if he is privileged to behold him'. And then they
proceeded to sketch the life and recount the virtues of Epiphanius, the saintly
young Bishop of Pavia, in somewhat similar words possibly to those in which
they are now recorded for us by his admiring disciple Ennodius,
from whom we derive our knowledge of this incident.
In the life of
Epiphanius we meet of course with of many incidents and traits of character
common to a saint of that period of the Church. A supernatural light shone
round his cradle when he was still busy with the rattle and the baby's-bottle.
On the strength of this omen he was at eight years old received into the
Ministry of the Church as a Reader (lector), and before long distinguished
himself by the rapidity and accuracy with which he practised the art of an ecclesiastical short-hand writer (exceptor).
Ordained a Deacon at twenty, Priest at twenty-eight, and almost immediately
afterwards elected Bishop of Pavia, he was already in his early manhood marked
out for the veneration of his contemporaries. ‘He knew not that he was a man,'
says his biographer, ‘except by his power of enduring toil; he forgot that he
was in the flesh except when he meditated on his mortality.’ No great miracles
are recorded of his earlier years, but the saintly patience and dignity with
which he, a young Ligurian of noble blood, endured the cudgelling administered to him by a rustic boor named Burco, who had a dispute with the
Church of Pavia about boundaries, endeared him to his fellow-citizens, and
enabled him to plead successfully for the life of his antagonist when the
indignant populace clamored for his execution. Altogether, though the robes of
these ecclesiastical personages are beginning to fall stiffly, and though the
fifth-century type of holiness lacks, to our thinking, the freshness of a true
humanity, we cannot but feel that Epiphanius was one of those men to whom mere
goodness gives a wonderful magnetic power over all who come in contact with
them. His sweet and pure figure is a refreshing contrast to the wild passions
and base treacheries with which his age is filled.
Such was the
man who, on the invitation of the Ligurians, with the assent of Ricimer, while
greatly doubting his own sufficiency for the task, undertook the mission to
Anthemius. When he reached Rome, the officers of the household went forth to
meet him without the gates. They brought him into the Imperial hall of
audience, where the flash of gems and the sombre magnificence of the purple still, as in the mightiest days of the Empire,
attested the presence of Augustus. But all eyes were fixed, not on the Emperor,
but on the tall ecclesiastic, with brow of marble whiteness and delicately
formed limbs, who, sparing of words in his ordinary conversation, was about to
speak on behalf of Italy and Peace.
‘Dread
sovereign!’ he began, ‘we recognize the hand of God in calling to the highest
place in this commonwealth you who have shown yourself a faithful adherent to
the teaching of the Catholic faith, in permitting you to eclipse the triumphs
of war by the arts of peace, and to restore the interrupted harmony of the
Roman world. Be this still your glory, oh Emperor! Still blend gentleness with
force, and thereby make your rule a copy of the heavenly kingdom. Remember how
David, by sparing King Saul when he was in his power, earned more glory than
would have accrued from the most righteous vengeance. This is the request of
Italy, this the message which Ricimer has entrusted to the mouth of my
Littleness. Earn for yourself a bloodless victory, overcome even this proud
Goth by your benefits. Or, if you are still in doubt, consider all the chances
of war, war in which you may be defeated, and in which even victory must lessen
the resources of your Empire, while by a peaceful compact with Ricimer you
might have enjoyed them undiminished.’
He ended, and
Anthemius, raising his eyes, saw that the hearts of all the by-standers were
won by the words of peace. With a deep sigh he said, ‘Holy Bishop! The causes
of my anger against Ricimer are such as cannot be fully set forth in words. I
have loaded him with benefits; I have not even spared my own flesh and blood,
but have given my daughter to this skin- clothed Goth, an alliance which I
cannot think upon without shame for myself, my family, and my kingship. But the
more I have distinguished him with my gifts, the more bitterly has he become
mine enemy. He has stirred up foreign nations to war against the Commonwealth;
where he could not himself hurt, he has suggested to others schemes for hurting
me. I myself believe that it is better to treat such a man as an open foe. To
feel your enemy is the first step towards overcoming him, and anything is
better than the machinations of secret hatred. But since you interpose your
venerable office and your holy character as a pledge for his sincere desire for
peace, be it so. I cannot resist anything which such a man as you pleads for.
If your perceptions have been deceived, and if he still have war in his heart,
on him shall rest the guilt of renewing the combat. I commit and commend myself
and the commonwealth, whose pilot I am, entirely into your hands, and I grant
to you the pardon which Ricimer himself should not have obtained, no, not if he
had been grovelling in the dust before my feet.’
The Bishop
thanked God for having put these peaceful counsels into the heart of him whom
he had chosen as the Vicar of his supreme power among men; he then took a
solemn oath from Anthemius to hold fast the newly recemented alliance, and
departed in all haste for Liguria. He travelled so rapidly, although his
strength was reduced by a rigorous Lenten fast, that he returned to Pavia on
the sixth day after he had quitted it, and the joyful shouts of the people
surrounding his house, and learning from his own mouth the news of the ratified
treaty of peace, were the first intimation to Ricimer that his messenger had
quitted Rome.
However, the
peace between the two rival Powers in the State was of short duration. Some
expressions in the narrative would lead us to suppose that the position of
Anthemius, at the time of the embassy, was slightly the stronger of the two,
and that Ricimer showed his usual cunning in accepting the good offices of the
Bishop. Within fourteen months (possibly within two months) after the
negotiations at Milan, we find the two parties again in arms against one
another. Ricimer proclaimed Olybrius Emperor, thereby conciliating the support
of the Vandal king, and perhaps neutralizing the opposition of the friends of
Anthemius at Constantinople, for Olybrius was also a Byzantine, and also allied
to the Imperial family. He marched to the outskirts of Home and pitched his
camp near a bridge over the Anio, probably the Ponte Salaro.
Within the walls opinion was divided, some even of the citizens ranging
themselves on the side of Ricimer, though the majority no doubt adhered to
Anthemius. For five months the siege lasted, Ricimer keeping a strict watch
upon the upper and lower waters of the Tiber, and suffering no provisions to
enter the city. The pressure of the famine was so great that (as Theophanes
tells us) the soldiers were reduced to feed upon leather and other unusual
articles of food. Then an unexpected auxiliary appeared upon the scene. ‘Bilimer, ruler of the Gauls’ (we
have no clue to the true character of this mysterious personage), ‘hearing of
the conspiracy against Anthemius, came to Rome earnestly desiring to give him
assistance. He joined battle with Ricimer by the bridge of Hadrian (the bridge
leading to the castle of S. Angelo) and was immediately overcome and slain. On
his death Ricimer entered the city as conqueror, and slew Anthemius with the
sword. Another authority (Joannes Antiochenus) tells
us that ‘the followers of Anthemius opened the gates to the barbarians, leaving
their master defenseless, that he mixed with the crowd of mendicants, and
sought refuge at the tomb of the martyr Chrysogonus,
and being there discovered was instantly beheaded by Gundobad, the nephew of
Ricimer. He received a royal burial at the hands of his enemies.' Anthemius
perished on the 11th July, 472; and only five weeks afterwards his turbulent
son-in-law followed him to the grave. On the 18th August, Ricimer, the
Patrician, who had held supreme power in Italy for sixteen years, died of a
sudden hemorrhage, and thus the stage was left clear for new actors. What they
will make of the defence or extension of the Roman
Empire we shall see in the following chapter.
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