ITALY AND HER INVADERS
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER VI.
THE DEATH-GRAPPLE.
In the preceding chapter we saw that Frederic, Theodoric the last scion
of the Rugian stock, after his unsuccessful revolt fled before the army
commanded by the brother of Odovacar, and sought refuge at the Court of
Theodoric. Perhaps the injury done to one who was certainly an ally, and who
may have been a kinsman, quickened the preparations of Theodoric. Or perhaps
his bargain with the Byzantine Court having been concluded, he had been given
to understand that he and his foederati, who had now received a commission to
invade Italy, must look for no more rations or pay from the imperial treasury.
Certain it is that, at what seems to us a most unseasonable time for such a
march, in the late autumn of 488, he broke up his court or camp or settlement
at Sistova, that high fortress on the south of the
Danube overlooking what is now the flat and marshy Wallachian shore, and
started with his nation-army on the long and difficult journey to Italy.
Seldom, since Moses led the Children of Israel through the wilderness,
has a more ill-compacted host tempted to penetrate through hostile countries
and to win, by the edge of the sword, a new possession. In the case of Alaric,
and of others of the great Teutonic chiefs, we have already had our attention
called, by Claudian and other authorities, to the family aspect of their
marches, migrations rather than campaigns. But of this journey of Theodoric the
emphatic language of contemporaries justifies us in saying, that it was pre-eminently
a nation, in all its strength and all its helplessness, that accompanied him.
His own family, mother, sisters, nephews, evidently were with him, as before on
the march to Dyrrhachium. And as with the chief, so with the people. Procopius
says, “With Theodoric went the people of the Goths, putting their wives and
children and as much of their furniture as they could take with them into their
waggons”. Somewhat more minutely, but with too much of his usual vapid
rhetoric, says Theodoric’s panegyrist, Ennodius, “Then, after you had summoned
all your powers far and wide, the people, scattered through countless tribes,
come together again as one nation, and a world migrates with you to the
Ausonian land, a world every member of which is nevertheless your kinsman.
Waggons are made to do duty as houses, and into those wandering habitations all
things that can minister to the needs of the occupants are poured. Then were
the tools of Ceres, and the stones with which the corn is ground, dragged along
by the labouring oxen. Pregnant mothers, forgetful of their sex and of the
burden which they bore, undertook the toil of providing food for the families
of thy people. Followed the reign of winter in thy camp. Over the hair of thy
men the long frost threw a vail of snowy white; the icicles hung in a tangle
from their beards. So hard was the frost that the garment which the matron's
persevering toil had woven (for her husband) had to be broken before he could
fit it to his body. Food for thy marching armies was forced from the grasp of
the hostile nations around, or procured by the cunning of the hunter”.
The question has been often asked, what must we suppose to have been the
number of this moving multitude? The calculation can be only conjectural, but
the data that we have point to a high figure. In the campaign in Epirus, as the
reader may remember, the defeat of the mere rearguard of the Ostrogothic army
led to the capture of 5000 prisoners (a yet larger number having been cut to
pieces), and put 2000 waggons at the disposal of the Byzantine host. In the
same campaign a body of 6000 men, the most valiant in the army, are spoken of
by Theodoric as a sort of flying column with which he was willing to march into
Thrace and annihilate the forces of the son of Triarius; while that rival, on
making his peace with the Empire, had obtained the promise of rations and pay
for 13,000 men, to be selected by himself from the number of his followers.
Looking at these facts, remembering that probably many of the Triarian Goths had joined Theodoric's standard after the
extinction of the family of their leader, and that some, perhaps many, Rugians
must have followed the fugitive Frederic into his camp, we shall probably be
safe in estimating the fighting strength of Theodoric's army at 40,000 men, and
the total number of the nation on its travels at 200,000If anything, this conjecture
is too low, since we find it stated that the Gothic army which besieged Rome
only fifty years later (but they had been years of peace and unexampled
prosperity) consisted of not less than 150,000 fighting men.
Accepting the moderate computation here suggested, we can imagine, or
rather we cannot imagine, the anxiety which must have gnawed the soul of
Theodoric when he had cut himself loose from his communications in Moesia, when
his progress was barred by enemies upon whose neutrality he had, perhaps
rashly, reckoned, when weeks lengthened into months, winter months, and still
his long array, with all the sick, the children, the delicate women, with
200,000 mouths needing daily food, stood upon the snow-covered Illyrian
uplands, and could not yet descend into the promised land, could not yet even
see their final foe.
The first 300 miles were probably much the easiest part of the journey.
They would be travelling along the great Danubian highway, perhaps the most important of all the roads connecting the eastern
and western portions of the Roman Empire, and one which, even in those days of
feebleness and decay, and after all the ravages of Goth and Hun, was still
probably kept in a fair state of repair. Possibly too, as Theodoric was still
in the territory of the now friendly empire, supplies for his followers would
be forthcoming, if not from the imperial magazines, at any rate on moderate
terms in the markets of the provincials. But when he reached Singidunum
(Belgrade), the scene of that boyish victory of his over the Sarmatian king,
his difficulties began, if they had not begun before. It is pretty clear from
the facts, even if it were not expressly stated by Procopius, that, after the
Ostrogoths performed their celebrated march to the Aegean under Theudemir (in
473), the Gepidae moved across the Danube (from Dacia into Pannonia) and
occupied either the whole of the broad lands thus evacuated, or at any rate the
south-eastern corner of them, including the important and still not utterly
ruined cities of Singidunum and Sirmium. Now, into
this corner of the land, this long strip of country (the modern province of
Slavonia) between the rivers Drave and Save, Theodorics road led him, and through it he must lead his way-worn and hungering followers;
but the Gepid barred the way. An embassy was sent, we may imagine, with such an
appeal as Moses made to Sihon king of the Amorites which dwelt at Heshbon: “Let
me pass through thy land : we will not turn into the fields, or into the
vineyards; we will not drink of the waters of the well: but we will go along by
the king's high way, until we be past thy borders”. Like that appeal, however,
this of Theodoric's, though it might have been based on the claims of kindred
and on memories of the far-distant days when the Gepids manned one boat and the Goths two in the first migration, if made, was
disregarded, and the nation-army, all encumbered as it was with baggage and
diluted with non-combatants, had to fight for its right of way.
The decisive engagement came off at the river Ulca,
concerning which we are told that “it is the defence of the Gepidae which
protects them like a mound, gives them an audacity which they would otherwise
lack, and strengthens the frontier of the province with a wall that no
battering rams can crumble”. It is not easy from this description to identify
the river in question. The Save, which at this time must have formed the
southern boundary of the Gepid territory, would have seemed a probable
suggestion, but we have no hint that it ever was called by any name like Ulca. On the whole, the least improbable conjecture seems
to be that we have here to do with the Hiulca Talus,
a great sheet of water (possibly connected with streams above and below, and
therefore not quite incorrectly termed a river) which, according to the
striking description of Zosimus, mirrored the towers of the high hill-city of Cibalis, an important place, the exact site of which has
not yet been discovered, but which was 101 Roman miles higher up the valley of
the Save than Singidunum. If this identification be correct, the landscape on
which Theodoric and his countrymen looked on this day of unwelcome conflict,
was one which had already been the theatre of great events, for here it was
that Constantine the Great fought the first battle in that long duel with his
brother-in-law Licinius which finally gave to the Christian Emperor the
undisputed mastery of the Eastern and Western worlds. Here too, only seven
years later, was born one of the ablest of his successors, the ferocious but
statesmanlike Valentinian.
The ambassadors who were sent to the Gepid king, Traustila,
returned with an unfavourable reply. No passage through his dominions would be
conceded to the Ostrogoths; if they still desired it they must fight for it
with the unconquered Gepidae. Then indeed was the distress of the wandering
nation at its height. Famine, and the child of famine, pestilence, urged them
on : behind them lay the frozen road marked by their blood-stained footprints,
before them a yet worse and steeper road, one which even a fugitive would have
shunned, leading over a quivering morass and up to the frowning ranks of their
enemies. The Gothic vanguard charged across the morass; many were swallowed up
in its muddy waters; those who reached the opposite side were falling fast
beneath the shower of lances which the mighty arms of the Gepidae hurled
against their frail wicker-work breastplates. In that apparent shipwreck of the
fortunes of a noble nation, the calm valour of Theodoric saved his people. Like
Henry IV at Ivri, he shouted, “Whoso will fight the enemy let him follow me.
Look not to any other leader, but only charge where you see my standard
advancing. The Gepids shall know that a king attacks
them : my people shall know that Theodoric saves them”. Then he called for a
cup, and performed with it some old Teutonic rite by way of augury, the nature
of which is not described to us, and on he dashed, urging his horse to a
gallop. We may conjecture that his keen eye had discerned some causeway of
solid ground through the morass, along which he led his followers. However this
may be, his charge was completely successful. “As a swollen river through the
harvest-field, as a lion through the herd”, so did Theodoric career through the
Gepid ranks, which everywhere melted away before him. In a moment the fortune
of the day was turned. They who a little while ago were vaunting victors were
now fugitives, wandering without cohesion over the plain, while the Amal king
moved proudly on, no longer now at the head of his troops, but encompassed by
thousands of stalwart guards.
A great multitude of the enemy were slain, and only the approach of
night saved the trembling remnant. What was more important, the store waggons
of the Gepidae fell into the hands of the Goths; and so well were they supplied
with corn from all the cities of the neighbourhood, that the satisfied
wanderers congratulated themselves on the pugnacity of their hosts, which
provided them a feast such as they could never have obtained from their
hospitality.
How long the campaign against the Gepids other
lasted we know not. We hear vaguely from the panegyrist of innumerable other
combats with the Sarmatians and others, the mention of which may or may not be
due to some confusion with Theodoric's boyish exploits in the same region. What
seems certain is, that either in this guerilla warfare, or in mere foraging
expeditions through a country which was of course perfectly familiar to the
chief and to all but the mere striplings in his army (since they had migrated
thence only sixteen years before), winter, spring, and the greater part of
summer wore away. It was not till the month of August that the Ostrogoths who
may perhaps have marched by different routes, some up the valley of the Save,
others by that of the Drave, and who may then have concentrated at Aemona (Laybach), finally crossed
the Julian Alps, and descended by the road trodden by so many conquerors—Theodosius,
Alaric, Attila —past the Pear-tree and the Frigid Stream, into the plains of
that Italy which they were to win by bloody battle, to hold for sixty-six
years, to love so fondly, and to lose so stubbornly.
We are told that the flocks and herds which accompanied them on their
march, soon showed, by their improved condition, the superiority of the tender
pastures of Italy over the scanty herbage of the Alpine uplands.
At the eleventh mile-stone from Aquileia (Ad Undecimum)
the host reached the confluence of the river Frigidus with the Sontius (Isonzo), and here probably it was
that Odovacar and his army stood ready to meet them and dispute their passage.
South-westwards, in the sea-like plain, rose the ghostly ruins of Aquileia,
over which near forty years of desolation had passed. No fleets of merchantmen
lined her broken wharves; no workman's hammer resounded in her ruined Mint; the
Baths, the Amphitheatre, the Forum, were all silent. Only, perhaps, a few
black-robed priests and monks still clustered round the repaired basilica,
keeping warm the embers of religious life in the province of Venetia, asserting
the continuity, and preparing the way for the revival, of the power of the
Patriarchate of Aquileia.
Odovacar had taken a strong post on the Isonzo, and had fortified it
strongly. In his well-defended camp a large army of various nationalities was
mustered under his orders. Ennodius speaks of ‘so many kings' trooping to the
war under Odovacar's banners. Pompous and inflated as his style is, it is
difficult to suppose that this detail is absolutely devoid of truth. Perhaps,
in the motley host who first acclaimed Odovacar as king, there may have been
chiefs and princelings who retained some of their old semi-royal position
towards their followers, while towards him they were but generals under a
generalissimo. Perhaps also the nations on the Danube, Alamanni, Thuringians,
Gepidae, had sent their contingents to defend the menaced throne of the
conqueror of the Rugians.
Of the battle of the Isonzo, which was fought on the 28th of August, we
have no details. Odovacar had all the advantages of position, of preparation,
and of a force which must surely have been more easily handled than the long
train, encumbered with women and with waggons, which emerged from under the
shadow of the Tarnovaner Wald. But it is probably
true, as Ennodius declares, that the vast mass of the defending armament wanted
a soul. Its leader, who throughout this war shows not a single instinct of generalship nor trace of that soldierly dash which first
made him conspicuous among his fellows, had probably grown torpid during his
thirteen years of royalty, amid such animal delights as Italy could offer to a
barbarian autocrat. And on the other side were three powerful champions, Youth
in the leader, Loyalty in the led, and Despair in both. The deep river was
crossed, the vallum climbed, the camp taken: a crowd of fugitives scattered
over the plain announced to the villages of Venetia that the day of Odovacar's
supremacy was drawing to a close.
Odovacar fled from the Isonzo to the line of the Adige, thus abandoning
the whole modern province of Venetia to the invader. So large and so fair a
slice of Northern Italy owning his sway, justified that invader in looking on
himself as from that day forward a ruler in Italy, not the mere leader of a
wandering host. Near the close of his reign, when a question arose how far back
the judge might go in enquiring into the wrongful ouster of a Roman from his
farm, Theodoric made his ‘Statute of Limitations' commence with the victory of
the Isonzo. ‘If,' he said, ‘the expropriation took place after the time when by
the favour of God we crossed the streams of the Sontius,
when first the Empire of Italy received us, then let the farm be restored to
its former owner, and that whether thirty years have since elapsed or not.
Further back than that, into the wrongs inflicted at the time of the Herulo-Rugian land settlement, Theodoric did not consider
himself bound to travel or to enquire.
Odovacar’s next stand was to be made at Verona; and here ‘in the Campus
Minor,’ as before at the Isonzo, he entrenched himself in a fossatum,
a large square camp, doubtless surrounded with those deep fosses of which the
archaeologist who has studied the Roman military works in Britain and Germany
can form some not wholly inadequate conception. On the top of the mound, formed
of the earth thrown up out of the ditch, would probably be planted a line of
sharp stakes. Here the attacked king stood at bay, having the line of the deep
and rapid Adige behind him, to compel his followers to fight by the
impossibility of escape. There had been some vaunting words uttered by Odovacar
in the parleys which preceded the combat; and ‘if the tongue could have
achieved victory instead of the right arm' says Ennodius, ‘his array of words
would have been invincible'. But in truth his army was a very formidable one in
point of numbers: and when Theodoric, on the night before the battle, pacing up
and down, saw the wide extent of the camp-fires gleaming like earthly
constellations upon the hills between him and Verona, his heart well-nigh died
within him. But, as his panegyrist truly says, there was a certain calm and
noble stability in the nature of the Ostrogothic king. He was not easily elated
by good, nor depressed by adverse fortune, and his serene assurance of victory
communicated itself to his countrymen.
At dawn of the 30th of September the trumpets of the two armies sounded
for battle. While Theodoric was arming himself with breastplate of steel, was
buckling on his greaves, and hanging to his side that sword which his Roman
admirer calls ‘the champion of freedom,' his mother Erelieva and his sister
Amalfrida came to him, not to depress his courage by womanly lamentations, but,
anxious as to the result of the day, to try to read in his beloved face the
omens of victory. He reassured their doubting hearts with cheering words :
“Mother, this day it behoves me to show to the world that it was indeed
a man-child whom you bore on that great day of the victory over the Huns. I
too, in the play of lances, have to show myself worthy of my ancestors' renown
by winning new victories of my own. Before my soul's eye stands my father, the
mighty Theudemir, he who never doubted of victory, and therefore never failed
to achieve it. Bring forth, oh my mother and my sister, my most splendid robes,
those on which your fingers have worked the most gorgeous embroidery. I would
be more gaily dressed on this day than on any holiday. If the enemy do not
recognise me, as I trow they shall, by the violence
of my onset, let them recognise me by the brilliancy of my raiment. If Fortune
give my throat to the sword of the enemy, let him that slays me have a grand
reward for his labour. Let them at least say, “How splendid he looks in death,”
if they have not the chance to admire me fighting”.
With these words of joyous confidence, instinct with the life of the
coming age of chivalry, Theodoric leaped on his charger and was soon in the
thickest of the fray. It was time for him to make his appearance. Even while he
was saying his farewells, the Ostrogoths were slightly wavering under the onset
of the enemy. The charge of Theodoric and his chosen troops restored the
fortunes of the day. There are indications, however, that the victory, perhaps
owing to the position of the Rugo-Herulian troops
which made escape all but impossible, was more stubbornly contested than that
of the Isonzo, and that the Ostrogothic loss was heavy. Before the end of the
day, however, the troops of Odovacar were all cut to pieces, or whelmed beneath
the swift waves of the Adige, save a few bold swimmers who may have escaped,
Horatius-like, by swimming the stream. In these fierce battles of Teuton
against Teuton, we hear nothing of quarter asked or night of granted.
Apparently Odovacar, in order to urge his troops to more desperate efforts,
must have broken down the bridge behind them leading to Verona. He himself
escaped, but not westward. He sped across the plain, towards the south-east,
and took refuge in the impregnable Ravenna. One authority, of a late date, says
that he first fled to Rome, and finding the gates of the city closed against
him, wasted the surrounding country with fire and sword. In the face, however,
of the clear testimony of the contemporary writer, whom scholars call the
Chronographer of Ravenna, and who evidently watched the successive acts of the
bloody drama with minute and eager interest, it seems safer to affirm that the
beaten king fled at once from the battle-field to the secure shelter of Ravenna
and her dykes.
Theodoric meanwhile repaired to Mediolanum, that great city which had
been so often in the third and fourth centuries the residence of emperors, and
which was still the most important city of the Province of Liguria, as its
successor, Milan, is of the modern Lombardy. Here he received the submission of
a large part of the army of his rival. Great as had been the number of the
slain, it was still a goodly host which stood before him, their arms bright and
dazzling as a German's arms were bound to be on a day of parade, and which,
probably by the clash of spear on shield, acclaimed him as victor and lord. The
Amal's heart may well have beat high at the sight, and it doubtless seemed to
him that the labour of conquest was over and that he was undisputed lord of
Italy.
But this early success was a delusion. Easily as these Teutonic bands
turned about from one lord to another, there was still too much vitality in the
cause of Odovacar for him to be abandoned so utterly by his followers as seemed
to be the case at Milan in October 489. Treason to the new lord was already
preparing itself in the hearts of the surrendered army, and the manager, for a
time the successful manager, of this treasonable movement, which seemed likely
to change the whole course of the war, was Tufa. This man, evidently a person
of mark in the Rugo-Herulian army, perhaps one of the
‘kings’ whom Ennodius describes as commanding it, had been solemnly, in an
assembly of the chiefs, appointed Magister Militum by
Odovacar on the 1st of April in this year (489). The part which he now played,
whether it were the result of deep and calculated treachery or simply of
unreasoning impulse, vibrating backwards and forwards between the old master
and the new, reminds a modern reader of the conduct of Marshal Ney in 1815,
setting forth from Paris with the assurance to Louis XVIII that he would in a
week bring back the Corsican usurper in an iron cage, and, before the week was
over, deserting to Napoleon with all his troops. But assuredly, if Tufa may
pair off with Ney, we are under no temptation to carry the parallel further.
The glorious young Amal king is as much above the gouty Bourbon epicure, as the
incapable resourceless Odovacar is below the mighty Napoleon.
Theodoric, who seems to have been thoroughly blinded by his confidence
in Tufa, sent him, probably within a few days after the interview at Milan, to
besiege his old master at Ravenna. Tufa advanced along the great Emilian Way,
as far as Faventia, about eighteen miles from that
city. There he began the blockade of the capital, but when Odovacar came forth,
came to Faventia itself, and had an interview with
his former subordinate, Tufa changed again, abandoned the cause of Theodoric,
and had the baseness to surrender the ‘Comites Theodorici,' probably some Ostrogothic nobles, members of
the Comitatus of Theodoric, into the hands of Theodoric's enemy. They were
loaded with chains and brought into Ravenna, and there it is but too probable
that they were foully murdered by Odovacar, an event which, more than any
other, embittered the contest of the two rivals.
This defection of Tufa, accompanied probably by a large part 01 the
troops committed to his charge, caused a violent revulsion in the fortunes of
Theodoric. The Ostrogoth, who had been dreaming of dominion, now found himself
again called upon to plan for the mere safety and subsistence of himself and
his people. Milan seemed to him too exposed, too accessible from Ravenna, to be
safely selected as his winter-quarters. He chose instead the city of Ticinum (Pavia), which resting on two rivers, the Ticino
and the Po, would offer more difficulties to an advancing army. Here too still
dwelt the saintly bishop Epiphanius, towards whom, notwithstanding the
difference of his creed, the young Ostrogoth seems to have been drawn, as
Ricimer and Euric had been drawn, by the transparent beauty and holiness of his
character. He said at once, ‘Here is a bishop who in all the East has not his
equal, whom even to have seen is a high privilege.' And, according to the
biographer, he added that the city must be safe where such a good man dwelt,
that here was a wall which no soldiers could storm, no Balearic slingers could
over-shoot. Whether he indulged in quite such soaring flights of rhetoric or
not, it is clear that he did select Pavia not only for his own quarters in the
winter of 489-490, but also as a place of safe deposit where he might leave his
venerable mother, and where all the other non-combatants of the Gothic army
might be collected, for what remained to them of the war, a period, as it
turned out, of three years. During this period, Epiphanius played his difficult
part with that success and which is sometimes the reward of a perfectly simple
and unselfish character, surrounded by unscrupulous and greedy men. Though he
evidently inclined to the side of Theodoric, he succeeded in maintaining
friendly relations with Odovacar. He obtained from both princes the one boon on
which his heart was set, the liberation of prisoners and captives, and this
not for his own Roman compatriots only. Often did an Ostrogoth or a Turcilingian, whose wife and children had fallen into the
hands of the enemy, obtain, through the prayers of the Bishop, that redemption
which gold would have been powerless to procure. To the not overwelcome guests
in his own city the generosity of Epiphanius was conspicuous. It was a singular
state of affairs, as his biographer truly, if somewhat bombastically, points
out. “Those forces of Theodoric, which the whole East had scarcely been able to
support, were now contracted within the limits of a single town. You saw that
town swarming with the gatherings of tribesmen, the heads of mighty clans
cooped up in narrow hovels. Whole homesteads seemed to have migrated from their
foundations, and scarcely was there standing room for the new inhabitants”. In
these strangely altered circumstances of his diocese the Bishop applied himself
to relieve, to the utmost of his ability, the bodily needs of the new-comers,
forgetting, or teaching himself to forget, that it was by them and such as them
that the estates of his bishopric had been laid waste, and his own income
pitiably diminished. And living, as he had now to live, for three years,
constantly under the eyes of “a most clever people, quickly touched by the
lightest breath of suspicion, in troublous times such
as make even gentle hearts cruel through fear”, he showed himself so uniformly
kind and true that he retained their unwavering esteem and confidence. As has
been already said, the princes, who were at deadly war with one another, agreed
in venerating Epiphanius.
The campaign of the year 490 was marked by the formation of great
transalpine alliances which, though we hear but vaguely concerning them, must
have exercised an important influence on the fortunes of the war. Gundobad,
king of the Burgundians, of whom we have heard nothing since, sixteen years
before, he left his client Glycerius defenceless against Nepos and stole back
to his own kingdom by the Rhone, now seeing the tide apparently on the turn
against Theodoric, and fearing probably that, if he conquered, the Ostrogoth of
Italy and the Visigoth of Gaul would join hands and the Burgundian would have
an evil time between them, invaded Liguria with a large army. Whether he came
as an ally of Odovacar to effect a seasonable diversion in his favour, or
simply to rob and ravage on his own account, is not clear from history, very
possibly was not altogether clear to the mind of the Burgundian. What is
undoubted, is that Theodoric, in some way, either by force or favour, caused
him to abandon his opposition, that a treaty was concluded between them which
in after years was ripened into a firm and lasting friendship, but that, in the
meantime, Gundobad, in returning across the Alps, took with him a long train of
captives who were to languish in exile for at least four years, while their
native fields in Liguria were well-nigh relapsing into a wilderness for lack of
cultivators.
The natural counterpoise to the Burgundians in the political scale was
the power of the Visigoths, and those remote kinsmen of the people of Theodoric
interfered on his behalf in this campaign. Odovacar seems to have occupied the
months of spring and early summer in winning back the country between Ravenna
and Cremona, aided perhaps by the attacks of Gundobad on Liguria which called
all Theodoric's energies to the western end of the valley of the Po. Milan was
then visited by Odovacar, and roughly handled by him in retribution for the
readiness with which its bishop, Laurentius, and its principal citizens had
welcomed Theodoric in the preceding year. At length, on the river Addua (Adda), ten miles east of Milanthe great battle of the year was fought. We only know that in it Theodoric was
helped by his Visigothic kinsmen, and that, after another terrible slaughter on
both sides, victory again rested on the standards of Theodoric. In this battle
Odovacar lost his Count of the Domestics, the officer who had superintended the
emigration of the provincials from Noricum to Campania, and to whom he had
given the lands in Melita and Syracuse, his faithful friend and counsellor Pierius. Odovacar himself fled, and again shut himself up
by the lagoons of Ravenna, never more to emerge from their shelter.
It is apparently to the same year, 490, that we must refer a mysterious
movement against the followers of Odovacar all over Italy, of which we have
some dark intimations in the Panegyric of Ennodius. He speaks of it as in some
sort a counter-blow to the treachery of Tufa.
“It pleased them [Tufa and his confederates] to promise a kingdom to
Odovacar when he again stretched out a peaceful hand towards them. But, as soon
as their deed was brought to light, the miscalculation which their hostile
minds had made became apparent. You [Theodoric] appealed to that Providence
which watched over all your steps, and, that the greed of those deserters might
not go unpunished, you unfurled the banners of revenge and made the people,
whose friendship to you was now thoroughly proved, the confidant of your secret
designs. Not one of your adversaries got scent of the scheme, though more than
half the world had to share it with you. Over the most widely severed districts
[of Italy] was arranged a sacrificial slaughter. What but the will of the Most
High can have brought this to pass, that in one instant of time the score which
had been so long accumulating against the slaughterers of the Roman name should
be wiped away?”. It has been truly pointed out by the best of our German
guides, that these words point to a kind of ‘Sicilian Vespers' of the followers
of Odovacar all over Italy: and, from the sanctimonious manner in which the
Bishop claims Heaven as an accomplice in the bloody deed, we may perhaps infer
that the Roman clergy generally were privy to the plot.
The action of the drama for the next three years is almost entirely
confined to Ravenna, which city, Caesena and Rimini,
were the only places in Italy that still held out for Odovacar. Theodoric seems
to have recognised the impossibility of taking Ravenna by assault. His only
hope was to reduce it by blockade, and that was a slender hope, so long as he
was not master of the Adriatic and vessels could enter the harbour of Clapis, bringing provisions to the besieged king. However,
he occupied a position ‘in the Pineta,’ in that
magnificent pine-wood which every traveller to Ravenna knows so well, skirting
its eastern horizon and shutting out the sight of the sea. Here, at three miles
distance from the city, he entrenched himself with a deep and widely extended fossatum, and waited for events. His taking up this
position, eastward, that is seaward of the city, probably implied a
determination to cut off, as much as possible, all succours from the sea, while
his flying squadrons no doubt blocked the communications with the Emilian Way
and effectually prevented assistance by land. The blockade, by one means or
other, must have been a tolerably one, since corn, in the markets of Ravenna,
rose to the famine price of six solidi per modius, equivalent to seventy-two
shillings a peck, or £115 4s. a quarter. This was, it is true, not quite equal
to the price (£192 a quarter) paid in the camp of Jovian during the disastrous
retreat of the Roman army from Persia. But, on the other hand, in the good days
that were coming for Italy under the peaceful reign of that very Theodoric
whose fossatum now caused such terrible
distress to the Queen of the Adriatic, the ordinary price of one modius of
wheat was to be not six solidi but one-sixtieth of a solidus, equivalent to 6s.
4d. a quarter.
Before the year 490 ended, Theodoric, considering himself now de facto
lord of Italy, sent Faustus, a Roman noble, chief of the Senate and Consul for
the year, to claim from Zeno the imperial robes, perhaps also the imperial
diadem, which Odovacar, in his politic modesty, had sent to Constantinople
after the downfall of Augustulus. Faustus, however, probably arrived only in
time to stand by the wretched and crime-polluted death-bed of the Emperor, to
hear his ravings about the guardsman who was to be his successor, and to behold
his remorse for the murder of Pelagius. In April of the next year Zeno was a
corpse, and Anastasius the Silentiary reigned in his stead. From him Theodoric
was one day to receive the recognition which he desired, but he was not to receive
it yet.
The chief event of the year 491 was a desperate sally made from Ravenna
by the besieged king. Odovacar had by some means or other procured a
reinforcement of Heruli fresh from their Carpathian homes. With these recruits,
seeing that Theodoric was dwelling securely behind his fossatum,
and believing him to have relaxed his guard, he one night issued forth from
Ravenna and attacked the entrenchment of the Goths. The battle was long, and
great was the number of the slain on both sides. But, at length, Odovacar had
again to acknowledge himself defeated. His Magister Militum,
a certain Libila (or Levila), was slain, perhaps
drowned in attempting to cross the sluggish and slimy Ronco. The Heruli, as
Ennodius exultingly remarks1, after making proof of Theodoric's
prowess in their own home, had now an opportunity of repeating the experience
on Italian soil. This engagement occurred about the 10th (or 15th) of July.
Odovacar again retired into his lair; and Theodoric, a month later, returned to
his temporary capital at Pavia. It is possible that the Burgundian invader was
not yet finally disposed of: and no doubt the home-loving Ostrogoth longed
again to behold the faces of his mother and his children. Of course, the
blockade was continued with unabated vigour.
In the year 492 we have again a strange dearth of events in the early
part of the year; the only incident which our careful diarists at Ravenna have
to record being that, on the 26th of May, ‘an earthquake took place at night
before the crowing of the cocks'. Possibly both parties sought to strengthen
themselves for each campaign by drawing fresh recruits from beyond the Alps, in
which case the difficulty of crossing the snow-covered passes might well
postpone the conflict of the year till June or July. Theodoric, however, now
took a step, which probably should have been taken before, in order to make his
blockade perfect. He went southward to Ariminum,
about thirty miles distant (one sees the Rock of S. Marino which overhangs
Rimini, cutting the horizon as one looks southward from the church towers of
Ravenna), and he appears to have reduced that town to his obedience. What was
more important, he made himself master of a fleet of cutters (called dromones, ‘runners,' in the Latin of that age). With these
he arrived at the Lions Harbour, a port about six miles from Ravenna, where in
later days he built a small palace—perhaps a country retreat—in a camp which,
probably from this circumstance, was called Fossatum Palatioli. Here we must leave him, watching with ships and
soldiers against the entrance of any provisions into Ravenna, while the scene
shifts for a moment to the banks of the Ticino and the Adige.
Few men, one would think, in the Ostrogothic army had more powerful
motives for loyalty than Frederic prince of the Rugians. His father and mother
had been led into captivity by the armies of Odovacar, he himself, twice
defeated and expelled by the same armies, had sought the palace of Theodoric a
helpless fugitive. As a member of Theodoric's Comitatus, he had now entered
Italy, and had fought by his side in three, perhaps in four, bloody battles. He
was, if he could exercise patience and fidelity for a few months longer, about
to taste delicious and long-delayed vengeance on the enemy of his race. Yet,
with characteristic fickleness, at this crisis, or perhaps some months earlier,
Frederic deserted the standards of Theodoric and entered into a treasonable
correspondence with the double traitor Tufa, who, with some sort of army under
his orders, was still roving about the plains of Lombardy. Perhaps some
remembrance of their common Rugian nationality working in the mind of Frederic
drew him away from the Ostrogothic chief, and towards the followers of
Odovacar. Perhaps Theodoric had not assigned a sufficiently high place in his
counsels to the son of a king whose word had once been the mightiest in all the
regions of the Middle Danube. More probably, Frederic saw simply a better
chance of plunder and of eventual kingship, by fighting for his own hand, and
with barbarian naturalness went straight towards what seemed to be his own
interests, without troubling himself for fine words to justify his treason.
The Rugians occupied Pavia ; this we know from the distress which they
caused to the soul of the saintly Epiphanius. Possibly enough, they may have
laid their hands on some of the moveable property of the Ostrogoths in that
City of Refuge: but the women and children and the rest of the non-combatants
must have escaped unharmed, for we should certainly have heard of it had there
been any general massacre. For nearly two years the Rugians made Pavia their
headquarters. “A race”, says Ennodius, “hideous by every kind of savagery,
whose minds, full of cruel energy, prompted them to daily crimes. In fact, they
thought that a day was wasted which had passed unsignalised by any kind of outrage”. The sweet discourses of the prelate, however, softened
even these wild men's hearts. “Who could hear without astonishment that the
Rugians, who will scarcely condescend to obey even kings, both feared and loved
a bishop, a Catholic and a Roman? Yet so it was; and when the time for their
departure came, they left him even with tears, although they were returning to
their parents and families.”
The mention of a period of nearly two years for the stay of the Rugians
at Pavia, coming as it does after the description of three years of Gothic
tarriance in that city, brings us down nearly to the end of 494 for the date of
their final expulsion. As we shall see, Odovacar had disappeared from the scene
before that date. The Rugians therefore probably continued fighting on their
own account, and required a separate castigation from Theodoric. But of all
this we have no record.
We do know however that, in the year with which we are now dealing
(492), the two traitors Tufa and Frederic quarrelled about the division of the
spoil. A battle ensued between them in the valley of the Adige, betwixt Trient and Verona. After many thousands of men had been
killed on both sides, the death of Tufa put an end to the battle. Frederic, as
has been said above, probably remained to trouble his benefactor some little
time longer, but henceforth he disappears from history. Ennodius is jubilant,
and not without cause, over this merciful arrangement of Providence, by which
the two traitorous enemies of the King were made to counter-work one another’s
evil designs, and Frederic first earned, at the expense of Tufa, the triumph
which his own defeat was afterwards to yield to Theodoric.
The year 493, the fifth year of the war, the fourth of the siege, the
second of the complete blockade of Ravenna, opened upon a terrible state of
things in the hunger-stricken capital. Men were staying the gnawing of their
stomachs by eating hides and all kinds of unclean and horrible victuals, and
still they were dying fast of famine.
At length the stubborn heart of Odovacar was quelled. He commenced
negotiations for a surrender, and on the 25th of February he handed over his
son as a hostage for his fidelity. On the following day Theodoric entered Clapis in state, that seaport being probably assigned to
the Ostrogothic army for their head-quarters. On the next day, 27th of
February, peace was formally made between Theodoric and Odovacar, John the
Archbishop of Ravenna acting as mediator.
The life of the defeated king was to be safe. Nay more, he and his
conqueror were, at any rate in appearance, to be joint rulers of the Western
Empire. The arrangement was so obviously destitute of any of the elements of
stability, so sure to breed plots and counter-plots, so impotent a conclusion
to the long blockade of Ravenna, that we might hesitate to accept its accuracy,
but that a recently-discovered fragment of the well-informed John of Antioch
confirms the statement of Procopius too emphatically to allow us to reject it.
It was not till the 5th of March that the victorious Ostrogoth rode
through the gates of Ravenna, and took possession of the city which for the
remaining thirty-three years of his life was to be his home. Before he entered
the Archbishop went forth to meet him, ‘with crosses and thuribules and the Holy Gospels’ and with a long train of priests and monks. Falling
prostrate on the ground, while his followers sang a penitential psalm, he
prayed that ‘the new King from the East' would receive him into his peace. The
‘request was granted, not only for himself and the citizens of Ravenna, but for
all the Roman inhabitants of Italy. The terms of the real peace had no doubt
been strenuously debated with the Teutonic comrades of Odovacar; but a ceremony
like this, pre-arranged in all probability between the King and the Archbishop,
was judged proper, in order to impress vividly on the minds both of Italians
and Ostrogoths that Theodoric came as the friend of the Catholic Church and of
the vast population which, even in accepting a new master, still clung to the
great name of Roman.
For ten days there were frequent interviews between the two chieftains;
then, on the 15th of March, the Ostrogoth invited his rival to a banquet in the
Palace of the Laurel-Grove, at the south-east corner of the city. Odovacar came
attended by his faithful comitatus, but was probably led to a seat of honour
and thus separated from his friends. Two men knelt before him to prefer some
pretended request, and clasped his hands in the earnestness of their entreaty.
Then rushed forth some soldiers who had been placed in ambush in two alcoves on
either side of the banquet-hall. But when they came in sight of the victim
something in his aspect, either his kingly majesty or possibly his white hairs,
or simply the fact that he was defenceless, struck such a chill into their
hearts that they could not attack him. Then strode forth Theodoric and raised
his sword to strike him. “Where is God?”, cried Odovacar in a vain
appeal to Divine justice. “This is what thou didst to my friends”, shouted
Theodoric, kindling his rage by the remembrance of his comrades, slain by his
rival after their base betrayal by Tufa. The blow descended on Odovacar's
collar-bone, and stayed not till the sword had reached his loin. Theodoric
himself was surprised at the trenchancy of his stroke, and said with a brutal
laugh, “I think the wretch had never a bone in his body”.
The assassinated king was at once buried in a stone coffin close by the
Hebrew synagogue. His comitatus, powerless to save him, fell in the same fatal
banquet-hall. His brother (possibly Onoulf) was shot
down with arrows while attempting to escape through the palace garden. Sunigilda, the wife of Odovacar, was closely imprisoned,
and died of hunger. Their son Thelane, whom his father in prosperous days had
designated as Caesar, and who had more recently been given over as a hostage
for his fidelity, was sent off to Gaul, doubtless to Theodoric’s Visigothic
ally King Alaric, and, having subsequently escaped thence to Italy, was put to
death by order of the conqueror. So did the whole brood perish, and Italy had
but one undoubted master, the son of Theudemir.
“No! It was not well done by thee, descendant of so many Amal kings!
Whatever a mere Roman emperor, a crowned upstart of yesterday, might do in
breaking faith with his rivals, a Basiliscus or an Armatius,
thou shouldest have kept thy Teutonic truth inviolate. And so, when we enter
that wonderful cenotaph of the Middle Ages, the church of the Franciscans at
Innsbruck, and see thee standing there, in size more than human, beside the
bearers of the greatest names of chivalry, Frankish Charles and British Arthur,
and Godfrey with the Crown of Thorns; one memory, and hardly more than one,
prevents our classing thee with the purest and the noblest of them,—the memory
of thy assassinated rival Odovacar”.
