The Roman
Commonwealth, from the time of Marius to that of Julian, had borne the brunt of
the onset of various Teutonic peoples. The tribe which bore the distinctive
name of Teutones, the Suevi, the Cherusci, the
Nervii, the Marcomanni, and in later times the great confederacies which called
themselves Free-men and All-men (Franks and Alamanni), had wrestled, often not
ingloriously, with the Roman legions. But it was reserved for the Goths, whose
fortunes we are now about to trace, to deal the first mortal blow at the Roman
state, to be the first to stand in the Forum of Roma Invicta, and
prove to an amazed world (themselves half-terrified by the greatness of their
victory) that she who had stricken the nations with a continual stroke was now
herself laid low. How little the Gothic nation comprehended that this was its
mission; how gladly it would often have accepted the position of humble friend
and client of the great World-Empire, through what strange vicissitudes of
fortune, what hardships, what dangers of national extinction it was driven
onwards to this predestined goal, will appear in the course of the following
history.
The Gothic nation,
or rather cluster of nations, belonged to the great Aryan family of peoples,
and to the Low-German branch of that family. From the remains of their language
which have come down to us we can see that they were more nearly akin to the
Frisians, to the Hollanders, and to our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers than to any
other race of Modern Europe.
Ethnological
science is at present engaged in discussing the question of the original seat
and centre of the Aryan family, whether it should be placed—as almost all
scholars a generation ago agreed in placing it—in the uplands of Central Asia,
or whether it was situated in the North of Europe and in the neighbourhood of
the Baltic Sea. It is not likely that any great value ought to be attached to
the traditions of the Gothic people as to a matter so dim and remote as this:
but as far as they go, they favour the later theory rather than the earlier,
the Scandinavian rather than the Central-Asian hypothesis.
The information
which Jordanes gives us as to the earliest home and first migration of the
Goths is as follows:
“The island of Scanzia [peninsula of Norway and Sweden] lies in the Northern
Ocean, opposite the mouths of the Vistula, in shape like a cedar-leaf. In this
island, this manufactory of nations, dwelt the Goths with other tribes”. [Then
follows a string of uncouth names, now for the most part forgotten, though the
Swedes, the Fins, the Heruli are still familiar to
us.]
“From this island
the Goths, under their king Berig, first
set forth in search of new homes. They had but three ships, and as one of these
during their passage always lagged behind, they called her Gepanta, “the torpid one”. Their crew, whoever after
showed themselves more sluggish and clumsy than their companions, when they
became a nation bore a name derived from this quality, Gepidae, the
Loiterers.
“However, all came
safely to land at a place which was called ever after Gothi-scandza (South-East corner of the Baltic coast). From thence shore of the they moved
forward to the dwellings of the Ulmerugi by the
shores of the Ocean. These people they beat in pitched battle and drove from
their habitations, and then, subduing their neighbours the Vandals, they
employed them as instruments of their own subsequent victories”. So far
Jordanes.
This migration
from Sweden to East Prussia is doubted by many scholars, but, till it is
actually disproved, let it at any rate stand as that which the Gothic nation in
after days believed to be true concerning itself. An interesting passage in
Pliny’s Natural History gives us a date before which the migration (if it ever
took place) must have been made. According to this writer, Pytheas of Marseilles (the Marco Polo of Greek geography, who lived about the time of
Alexander the Great) speaks of a people called Guttones,
who lived by an estuary of the Ocean named Mentonomon,
and who apparently traded in amber. Seeing that the name Guttones closely corresponds with that of Gut-thiuda (Gothic
people), by which the Goths spoke of themselves, and seeing that amber is and
has been for 2000 years the especial natural product by which the curving
shores and deeply indented bays of the Gulf of Danzig have been made famous, it
seems reasonable to infer that in these amber-selling Guttones of Pytheas we have the same people as the Goths of
Jordanes, who must therefore have been settled on the South-East coast of the
Baltic at least as early as 330 before Christ.
Pliny himself
(writing about 70 AD) assigns to the Guttones a
position not inconsistent with that which apparently was given to them by Pytheas; and Tacitus, the younger contemporary of Pliny,
after describing the wide domain of the Ligii, who
dwelt apparently between the Oder and the Vistula, says that “behind [that is
Northwards of] the Ligii, the Gothones dwell, who are governed by their kings somewhat more stringently [than the
other tribes of whom he has been speaking] but not so as to interfere with
their freedom”. This valuable statement by Tacitus is all the information that
we possess as to the internal condition of the Goths for many centuries.
But within the
last few years the brilliant hypothesis of an English scholar as to the origin
of the Runic mode of writing has given an especial importance to the settlement
of the Goths at this South-East corner of the Baltic. If that hypothesis be
correct—and it appears to find considerable acceptance with those philologers
who are best qualified to decide upon its merits—we have not only a hint as to
the social condition of the Goths and their kindred tribes, but we have a
strong inducement to carry their settlement in East Prussia up to the sixth
century before the Christian Era, that is some 200 years before the early date
to which we were inclined to attribute it, by the authority of the navigator Pytheas.
Geographical
distribution of the Runes
It is well known
that all over the North of Europe there exists a class of monuments, chiefly
belonging to the first ten centuries of the Christian Era, which bear
inscriptions in what for convenience sake we call the Runic character, the name Rûn, which signifies a mystery, having doubtless been
assigned to them from some belief in their magical efficacy. Now these Runes
are practically the exclusive possession of the Low German races, the term
being used in that wide sense which was assigned to it at the beginning of the
Chapter. Runic inscriptions were often carved by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors :
they swarm in all Scandinavian lands : they were evidently in use among the
Goths and the tribes most nearly allied to them. But along the course of the
Rhine, upon the Northern slope of the Alps, by the upper waters of the Danube
they are unknown. Franks and Alamanni and Bavarians seem never to have known
the Runes. But where they were known, although many modifications were
introduced in the course of centuries, there is a remarkable general agreement
in all the early Runes, notwithstanding the wide geographical dispersion of the
nations by whom they were used. To quote the words of Dr. Isaac Taylor, the author of the hypothesis which we are about to consider “This
ancient and wide-spread Gothic alphabet is wonderfully firm, definite and
uniform. To decipher the inscription on the golden torque of the Moesian Goths by the help of the alphabet stamped on the
golden Bracteate from Swedish Gothland is as easy as
it would be to read an Australian tombstone by the aid of a spelling-book from
the United States. Distant colonies employ the common alphabet of the mother
country”.
The origin of this
widely spread Alphabet (or, to speak more correctly, of this Futhorc,
for it begins not to the with Alpha and Beta but with the six letters whose
combination makes the word Futhorc, and by that name it is generally called)
has been hitherto a Rûn as full of mystery as the
inscriptions themselves were to the unlettered warriors who gazed upon them
with fascinated fear. That the Futhorc could not have been invented by the
Northern tribes in absolute ignorance of the historic Alphabet of the nations
that dwelt round the Midland Sea, was clear from some of the letters contained
in it. Yet on the other hand the divergencies from Mediterranean Alphabets were
so many and so perplexing that it was difficult to understand how the Runes
could be descended from any of them.
Some years ago a
theory which had obtained considerable currency connected the Runes with the
Phoenician Alphabet, and suggested that they were the descendants of the
letters introduced to the nations of the North by the adventurous mariners of
Tyre. An earlier and perhaps more plausible theory was that the Runes represented
the Latin Alphabet as communicated to the Teutonic nations by Roman traders and
soldiers in the days of the Empire. An objection, apparently a fatal objection,
to this theory is that precisely in the countries where Roman influence
affected the Teutonic nations most strongly, in Gaul,
in Rhenish Germany, in Helvetia and Rhaetia, no Runes are to be found.
GREEKS AND GOTHS. A STUDY ON THE RUNES.
But in the year
1879 Dr. Isaac Taylor, in a little monograph
entitled The Greeks and Goths, advocated a solution of
the enigma which, though daring almost to rashness, may possibly hold the field
against all comers.
Examining the
forms of Greek letters which were in use among the colonists (chiefly Ionian
colonists) whose cities lined the Southern coast of Thrace and the shores of
the Aegean in the sixth century BC, he finds among them many remarkable
coincidences with the earliest forms of the Runic Futhorc. Differences many and
great still exist, but they appear to be only such differences as, in
accordance with the ascertained laws of the History of Writing, might well
creep in, between the sixth century before the Christian Era and the third
century after it, the earliest period to which we can with certainty refer an
extant Runic inscription.
To what conclusion
then do these enquiries point? To this, that during the interval from 540 to
480 BC there was a brisk commercial intercourse between the flourishing Greek
colonies on the Black Sea, Odessos, Istros, Tyras, Olbia and Chersonesos—places now approximately represented by Varna, Kustendji, Odessa, Cherson, and
Sebastopol—between these cities and the tribes to the Northward (inhabiting the
country which has been since known as Lithuania), all of whom at the time of
Herodotus passed under the vague generic name of Scythians. By this intercourse
which would naturally pass up the valleys of the great rivers, especially the
Dniester and the Dnieper, and would probably again descend by the Vistula and
the Niemen, the settlements of the Goths were reached, and by its means the
Ionian letter-forms were communicated to the Goths, to become in due time the
magical and mysterious Runes.
One fact which
lends great probability to this theory is that undoubtedly, from very early
times, the amber deposits of the Baltic, to which allusion has already been
made, were known to the civilized world; and thus the presence of the trader
from the South among the settlements of the Guttones or Goths is naturally accounted for. Probably also there was for centuries
before the Christian Era a trade in sables, ermines, and other furs, which were
a necessity in the wintry North and a luxury of kings and nobles in the
wealthier South. In exchange for amber and fur, the traders brought probably
not only golden staters and silver drachmas, but also bronze from Armenia with
pearls, spices, rich mantles suited to the barbaric taste of the Gothic
chieftains. As has been said, this commerce was most likely carried on for many
centuries. Sabres of Assyrian type have been found in Sweden, and we may hence
infer that there was a commercial intercourse between the Euxine and the
Baltic, perhaps 1300 years before Christ.
This stream of
trade may have had its ebbings as well as its flowings. Some indications seem to suggest by the traders
of the Euxine were less adventurous and “Scythia” less under the influence of
Southern civilization at the Christian Era than six centuries before it. But
however this may be, there can be no doubt that the route which had thus been
opened was never entirely closed; and when the most Eastern German tribes began
to feel that pressure of population which had sent Ariovistus into Gaul and had
dashed the Cimbri and Teutones against the legions of Marius, it was natural
that they should, by that route along which the traders had so long travelled,
pour forth to seek for themselves new homes by the great sea into which the
Dnieper and the Dniester flowed.
This migration to
the Euxine was probably made during the latter half of the second century of
our Era: for Ptolemy the geographer, who flourished in the middle of that
century, mentions the “Guthones” as still dwelling by
the Vistula and near the Venedae. It was most likely
part of that great Southward movement of the German tribes which caused the
Marcomanni to cross the Danube, and which wore out the energies of the noble
philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius in arduous, hardly-contested battles
against these barbarians. The memory of the migration doubtess lingered long in the heart of the nation, and it was, as Jordanes himself says,
from their old folk-songs, that the following account of it was derived.
Migration to the
Euxine
In the reign of
the fifth King after Berig, Filimer,
son of Gadariges, the people had so greatly increased
in numbers that they all agreed in the conclusion that the army of the Goths
should move forward with their families in quest of more fitting abodes. Thus
they came to those regions of Scythia which in their tongue are called Oium whose great fertility pleased them much.
But there was a bridge there by which the army essayed to cross a river, and
when half of the army had passed, that bridge fell down in irreparable ruin,
nor could anyone either go forward or return. For that place is said to be girt
round with a whirlpool, shut in with quivering morasses, and thus by her
confusion of the two elements, land and water, Nature has rendered it
inaccessible. But in truth, even to this day, if you may trust the evidence of
passers-by, though they go not nigh the place, the far-off voices of cattle may
be heard and traces of men may be discerned.
“That part of the
Goths therefore which under the leadership of Filimer crossed the river and reached the lands of Oium,
obtained the longed-for soil. Then without delay they came to the nation of the Spali, with whom they engaged in battle and therein
gained the victory. Thence they came forth as conquerors, and hastened to the
furthest part of Scythia which borders on the Pontic Sea. And so in their
ancient songs it is set forth almost in historic fashion”
Even from the
brief note-book of Jordanes we can see what a fateful moment was that in the
history of the Gothic nation, when, travel-worn and battle-weary, the heads of
the long column halted, beholding the monotonous horizon broken by a bit of
deeper blue. We can imagine the joyful cry “Marei!”
(Sea) passing from wagon to wagon, and the women and children clambering down
out of their dark recesses to see that little streak of sapphire which told
them that their wanderings were drawing near to a close. It was true. The journeyers from the Baltic had reached the Euxine, the same
sea which, centuries before, the ten thousand returning Greeks had hailed with
the glad cry, “Thalatta, Thalatta!”.
Well might the Gothic minstrels in the palaces of Toulouse and Ravenna preserve
the remembrance of the rapture of their forefathers at that first sight of the
Southern Sea.
The settlement of
so large a nation as the Goths (for a large nation they must still have been,
notwithstanding all their losses on the journey), cannot have been effected
without the forcible displacement of tribes already in possession of the
territory to which they migrated. No details of these wars of conquest have
come down to us; but, from what we know of the map of Scythia in the third
century, it may be conjectured that the Roxolani, the Bastarnae, and perhaps
the Jazyges, had to make room for the Gothic
invaders, after whose advent their names either disappear altogether or at
least occupy a much less prominent position than before. The names of these
tribes of barbarians probably convey little information to the reader’s mind;
but when we observe that they were probably of Slavonic extraction, while the
Goths were pure Teutons, we see that we have here an act in that great drama in
which Russia and Germany are at this day protagonists. Generally the Slav has
rolled westwards over the lands of the Teuton. Here we have one of the rare
cases in which the Eastward movement of the Teuton has ousted the Slav.
Ostrogoths
Thus then were the
Goths by the beginning of the third century after Christ seated upon the
Northern shores of the Euxine Sea. They appear to have soon become
differentiated into two great tribes, named from their relative positions to
the East and the West, Ostrogoths and Visigoths. It is curious to observe that
throughout their varied career of conquest and subjugation, from the third
century to the sixth, these relative positions continued unaltered. The two
tribes, which were perhaps at first severed only by a single river, the
Dniester or the Pruth, had for a time the whole
breadth of Europe between them, but still the Visigoth was in the West, while
reigning at Toulouse, and the Ostrogoth in the East, while serving in Hungary.
If we may trust Jordanes, each tribe had already its royal house, supposed to
be sprung from the seed of gods, to which it owed allegiance: the Visigoths
serving the Balthi, and the Ostrogoths the
illustrious Amals. Modern criticism has thrown some
doubt upon the literal accuracy of this statement: in fact, we discover from
the pages of Jordanes himself that Amals did not
always reign over the Eastern tribe, nor kings of any race uninterruptedly over
the Western. But, remembering the statement of Tacitus as to the stringent
character of the kingship of the Gothones, and
knowing that as a rule the prosperity of the German nations waxed and waned in
proportion to the vigor of the institution of royalty
among them, we may safely conjecture that, during the greater part of the two
centuries which followed the migration to the Euxine, the Goths were under the
dominion of kings whose daring leadership they followed in the adventurous
raids of which we have next to trace the history.
For the two
kindred peoples which were thus settled near the mouths of the great Scythian
rivers and by misty shores of the Cimmerian Sea knew that they were now within
easy reach of some of the richest countries in the world. Along the Southern coast
of that Euxine, the Northern coast of which was theirs, were scattered the
wealthy cities of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus, from Heraclea to
Trebizond. Through the narrow stream of the Bosphorus (not yet guarded and made
illustrious by the New Rome, Constantinople) lay the way to the famous
old-world cities of Greece and the temple-crowned islands of the Aegean.
Further North, on the right (that is the West) of the dwellings of the
Visigoths rose the long curving line of the Carpathian mountains. Few were the
passes which led between these broad beech-covered highlands; but it was well
known to the Visigothic dwellers by the Pruth and the Moldava that those passes led into a Roman land where
gold mines and salt mines were worked by chained slave-gangs, where great
breadths of cornland filled the valleys, and where stately cities like Apulum and Sarmizegetusa rose by
the banks of the Maros or under the shadow of the
Carpathians. This land was the province of Dacia, added to the Roman Empire by
Trajan, and still forming a part of that Empire, notwithstanding the
over-cautious policy of Hadrian, who dismantled the stone bridge which his
great predecessor had thrown across the Danube, and who seems to have at one
time dallied with the thought of abandoning so precarious an outpost of the
Empire.
Whatever may have
been the original extent of the Dacian province, there can be little doubt that
now, at any rate, it comprised only Transylvania and the Western half of
Hungary, with so much of Lesser (or Western) Wallachia as was necessary to
connect it with the Roman base of operations in Moesia on the Southern bank of
the Danube. Anyone who looks at the map and sees how Dacia, thus defined, is
folded away in the embrace of the Carpathian mountains, will understand why,
long after the barbarians on the Lower Danube had begun to move uneasily upon
the frontier, the Dacian outpost still preserved its fealty to Rome.
For one or two
generations the migrated Goths may and probably have remained in some sort of
peace and friendship with the Roman Empire. The wars with the nations whom they
found settled before them in Southern Russia had for a time exhausted their
energies, and as Rome was willing to pay to them (as also to others of her
barbarian neighbours) subsidies which she called stipendia,
and which she treated as pay, but the receiver might easily come to look upon
as tribute, the Goths on their part were willing to remain quiet, while nursing
the hope of an opportunity for proving their prowess in the rich lands beyond
the River and the Sea.
The Scythian War,
247-270
That opportunity
came at last, in the middle of the third century; but the “great Scythian war”,
as it was called, which lasted for a generation and filled the middle years of
that century with bloodshed, seems to have been begun, not by the Goths
themselves, but by a rival nation. The Carpi, a proud and fierce people, whose
dwellings bordered on the Gothic settlement, chafing at the thought that the
Goths received yearly stipendia from
the Empire, while they received none, sent ambassadors to Tullius
Menophilus, governor of Lower Moesia under Gordian III, to complain of this of
the inequality and to demand its removal. Menophilus treated the ambassadors
with studied insolence. He kept them waiting for days, while he inspected the maneuvers of his troops. When he at length condescended to
receive them he was seated on a lofty tribunal, and surrounded by all the
tallest soldiers of his legions. To show the ambassadors in how little account
he held them, he continually broke in upon their discourse to converse with his
staff on subjects foreign to their mission, thus making them feel how
infinitely unimportant in his eyes were the affairs of the Carpi. Thus checked
and humbled, the ambassadors could only stammer out a feeble remonstrance:
“Why do the
Goths receive such large moneys from the Emperor, and we nothing?”.
“The Emperor” said
Menophilus, “is lord of great wealth, and graciously bestows it upon the
needy”.
“But we too are in
need of his liberality, and we are much better than the Goths”.
“Come again” said
the governor, “in four months, and I will give you the Emperor’s answer”.
At the end of four
months they came, and were put off for three months more. When they again
appeared, Menophilus said, “The Emperor will give you not a denarius as a
matter of bargain, but if you will go to him, fall prostrate before his throne,
and humbly beg him for a gift, he may perchance comply with your request”. Sore
at heart, but humbled and overawed, the ambassadors left the presence of the
haughty governor. They did not venture to the distant court of the dreaded
Emperor, and for the three years that Menophilus administered the province they
did not dare to break out into insurrection.
At the end of that
time it seems that the Carpi took up arms, poured across the Danube into Moesia
and destroyed the once flourishing city of Histros (or Istros) at the mouth of the great river. We hear
nothing more of this invasion of the Carpi, but soon the Goths too began to
move. By this time the confusion in the affairs of the Empire under the men
whom I have styled the Barrack Emperors, had become indescribable. Civil war,
pestilence, bankruptcy, were all brooding over the doomed land. The soldiers
had forgotten how to fight, the rulers how to govern. It seemed as if the effete
and unwieldy Empire would break down under its own weight almost before the
barbarians were ready to enter into the vacant inheritance.
Philip, Emperor,
244-249.
One of the worst
of these Barrack Emperors was Philip the Arabian. He availed himself of his
position as Praetorian Prefect to starve the soldiers whom the young Emperor
Gordian was leading upon an expedition against Persia, and then used the mutiny
thus occasioned as a weapon for his master’s destruction and a lever for his
own elevation to the throne. Having gained the purple by treachery and deceit,
he stained it by cowardice and crime. Soon after his accession the Goths began
to complain that their annual stipendia were
being withheld from them, an omission which was probably due, not so much to
any deliberate change of policy, as to the utter disorganization into which the
finances of the administration of the Empire had fallen under the indolent
Arabian who bore the title of Augustus. This default turned them at once from
friends and foederati of the Empire into enemies and invaders.
Under their
king Ostrogotha (whose name perhaps
indicates that the Ostrogothic half of the nation took the lead in this
expedition) they crossed the Danube, and devastated Moesia and Thrace. Decius
the Senator, a man of stern and austere character, was sent by Philip to repel
the invasion. He fought unsuccessfully, and indignant at the slackness of his
troops, to whose neglect he attributed the Gothic passage of the Danube, he
dismissed large numbers of them from the army as unworthy of the name of
soldiers. The disbanded legionaries sought the Gothic camp, and Ostrogotha, who had probably retired across the Danube at
the end of his first campaign, formed a new and more powerful army, consisting
of 30,000 Goths, of the Imperial deserters, of 3000 Carpi, of Vandals, and Taifali, and Peucini from the
pine-covered island of Peucé at the mouth of the
Danube. To the second campaign Ostrogotha did not go
forth himself, but sent in his stead two able captains, by name Argaith and Guntheric. Again the
barbarians crossed the Danube, again they ravaged Moesia, but, as if this time
not mere booty but conquest was their object, they laid formal siege to Marcianople, the great city built by Trajan on the Northern
slope of the Balkans, named by him after his sister Marciana,
and now represented by the important city of Schumla.
But the fierce, irregular onset of the barbarians was ill adapted for the slow,
patient, scientific work of taking a Roman city. In their failure to capture Marcianople we have the first of a long series of
unsuccessful sieges which we shall meet with in the history of the next three
centuries, and which culminated in the great failure of the Ostrogoths to
re-capture Rome from Belisarius. On this occasion the Goths received a large
sum of money from the inhabitants of the untaken city, and returned to their
own land.
For some time the
further inroads of the Goths were delayed by a quarrel with the kindred tribe
of the Gepidae, the Torpids of the primaeval migration from Scandinavia.
This tribe, still lagging in the race, had not reached the shores of the
Euxine, and were apparently stationed by the upper waters of the Vistula,
perhaps in the region which we now call Gallicia.
Filled with envy at the successes of the Goths, and dissatisfied with their
narrow boundaries, they first made a furious, successful, and almost
exterminating raid upon their neighbours, the Burgundians, and then their king Fastida sent to Ostrogotha,
saying, “I am hemmed in with mountains and choked with forests; give me land or
meet me in battle”. “Deeply”, said Ostrogotha, “as I
should regret that tribes so nearly allied as you and we, should meet in
impious and fratricidal strife, yet land I neither can nor will give you”. They
joined battle “at the town of Galtis, past which
flows the river Auha”; the Gepidae were thoroughly
beaten, and Fastida fled humiliated to his home. So
many fell in the battle that, as Jordanes hints with a grim smile, “they no
longer found their land too strait for them”.
After this episode
the Goths returned to their more important business, the war with Rome. Cniva
was now their King, and Decius, the general in the previous campaign, was
Emperor of Rome. This man is unfavourably known to us in ecclesiastical history
as having set on foot one of the fiercest persecutions of the Christians, that
namely to which the illustrious Cyprian fell a victim. Yet Decius was no mere
tyrant and voluptuary, persecuting and torturing for the sake of a new
sensation. He had in him something of the heroic spirit of his great namesakes,
the Decii of the Samnite wars. He was willing, even
as they had been, to sacrifice himself for the glory of Rome, to which the
Goths without and the Christians within were, in his eyes, equally hostile; and
his calm readiness to accept death in the discharge of his duty, showed that he
shared the heroism of the martyrs whose blood he blindly shed.
Invasion of the
Empire, 249
King Cniva, with
70,000 of his subjects, crossed the Danube at the place (about thirty-four
miles above Bustchuk) which is still called Novograd, and was then known as Novae. In his first
campaign he fought with varying fortune against Gallus, the duke of Moesia, and
Decius the young Caesar, whose father the Emperor appears to have remained at
Rome during the first year of his reign. Nicopolis was besieged by the Goths, but of course not taken. Still Cniva moved
southwards, first lurking in the fastnesses of the Balkans, and afterwards
crossing that range and appearing before Philippopolis, now the capital of
Eastern Roumelia, then an important city at the intersection of the highways in
the Thracian plain. Hither vast numbers of panic-stricken provincials had
flocked for refuge, and the Roman generals were naturally anxious to raise the
siege. The young Decius led his legions over the rugged passes of the Balkans
(a serious barrier to the passage of troops, as the Russian generals found in
the campaign of 1877): and having surmounted these he gave his men and horses a
few days rest in the city of Beroa. Here Cniva with
his Goths fell upon him like a thunderbolt, inflicted terrible slaughter on the
surprised Roman soldiers, and forced Decius to flee with a few followers to
Novae, where Gallus with a large and still unshaken host was guarding the Danubian frontier of Moesia.
After this battle
the disheartened defenders of Philippopolis soon surrendered it to the
barbarians. Vast quantities of treasure were taken, 100,000 of the citizens and
refugees (so said the annalists) were massacred
within the walls of the city, and, what might have been yet more disastrous for
the Empire, Priscus, governor of Macedonia and brother of the late Emperor
Philip, having been taken prisoner, was persuaded to assume the Imperial
purple, or persuaded the Goths to allow him to do so, and declare himself a
rival Augustus to Decius. Thus early in their career were the Goths resorting
to the expedient of creating an Anti-Emperor.
The proclamation
of Priscus and the tidings of the Gothic successes drew the Emperor Decius to
the scene 0f action. He probably left Rome at the end of the year 250 or the
beginning of 251; and the persecution of the Christians seems to have abated
somewhat on his departure. Priscus, who had been declared a public enemy by the
Senate, was soon killed, and for a time the Gothic campaign went prosperously
for the Empire. In the North, Gallus, duke of the frontier, collected the
troops from Novae and Oiscus (each the depôt of a legion) into a powerful army. In the South the
Emperor provided for the safety of the rich and still unviolated province of
Achaia by sending a brave young officer named Claudius to hold the pass of
Thermopylae against the invaders, should they turn their steps southward. While
the Romans gained confidence from the arrival of the Emperor, the Goths, to
whom even their victories had been costly, and who were perhaps demoralized by
the sack of Philippopolis, lost theirs. They found themselves hard pressed by
Decius, and offered, we are told, to relinquish all their captives and all
their spoil if they might be allowed to return in peace to their own land.
Decius refused their request, and ordered Gallus and his army to obstruct the
line of their homeward march, while he himself pursued them from behind. If we
may trust a Roman historian (which is doubtful, since a beaten army is always
ready with the cry of treachery), Gallus, already coveting the Imperial crown,
opened negotiations with the barbarians, and these by a concerted arrangement
posted themselves near a very deep swamp, into which by a feigned flight they
drew Decius and his troops. The Romans, floundering in the bog, soon became a
disorderly multitude. Moreover, at this critical period, the younger Decius
fell, pierced by a Gothic arrow. The troops offered their rough and hasty
sympathy to the bereaved father, who answered with stoical calmness, “Let no
one be cast down: the loss of one soldier is no serious injury to the State”.
He himself soon after perished. With a vast multitude of his officers and men,
he was sucked in by that fatal swamp, and not even his corpse, nor those of
thousands of his followers, were ever recovered.
The date of this
disastrous battle can be fixed with considerable certainty in the last days of
the month of November, 251. The place was (says Jordanes) “Abrittus,
a city of Moesia”, the site of which has yet to be discovered, but which was
probably somewhere in the marshy ground near the mouth of the Danube. It is
interesting to note that the Gothic historian says that “even to his day it was
still called Ara Decii, because there, before the
battle, the Emperor had miserably offered sacrifice to his idols”.
The death of a
Roman Emperor and the loss of his army in battle with barbarians from out of
the Scythian wilderness was an event which sent a shudder through the whole
Roman world, and raised new and wild hopes in all the nations that swarmed
around the long circumference of the Empire. There were three great disasters
in the course of four centuries which seemed to indicate that the rule of Rome
over the world might not be so eternal as the legends upon her medals and the
verses of her poets declared to be its destiny. The first was the defeat of
Varus and his legions in the Saltus Teutoburgiensis;
the second was this catastrophe of Decius in the marshes of the Dobrudscha; the third was the similar calamity which will
be described in a future chapter, and which befell the Emperor Valens on the
plains of Hadrianople.
For the time
however the actual danger of invasion from the Goths was at an end. These
barbarians were still bent on plunder rather than on conquest, and being intent
on returning to their Scythian homes with the spoil of Thrace, they
condescended to fulfill the compact which they had
made—if indeed they had made it—with Gallus, late duke of Moesia and now wearer
of the purple and lord of the Roman world. The terms of the treaty were that
they should return to their own land with all their booty, with the multitude
of captives, many of them men of noble birth, whom they had taken at
Philippopolis and elsewhere, and that the Emperor should pay them a certain sum
of money every year. This yearly payment might be treated, according to the
nationality of the speaker, as a mere renewal of the Stipendia of
previous years (no doubt greatly increased in amount) or as an actual tribute
paid by the Roman Augustus to the Gothic king.
However, even this
ignominiously purchased peace with the barbarians was of short duration. The
time was one of the darkest in all that dark century; Emperors were rising and
falling in rapid succession (Gallus 251, Aemilian 253, Valerian 254); a terrible pestilence which was to last fifteen years, bred
in Ethiopia, had stalked down the valley of the Nile and was wasting the
Asiatic and Illyrian provinces, and on the Eastern frontier the
never-long-slumbering hostility of the Persian king was arousing itself for a
fresh attack on the exhausted Empire. It was apparently during these disasters
that the Goths crossed the Carpathians, and finally wrested Dacia from her
Roman rulers (circa 255), though this important event, recorded by no
historian, can only be inferred by us from the sudden cessation of Roman
inscriptions and coins in Dacia about this time
But the chief
feature of the “Scythian war” which soon followed, and one which brings the
Goths before us in a new capacity, as the forerunners of our own Saxon and
Scandinavian forefathers, was its maritime character. The
Scythians (under which generic name we have to include, not the Goths only, but
also the Carpi, Heruli, and other neighbouring
tribes) seem to have pressed down to the sea-shore and compelled the Roman and
Greek settlers in the Crimea, by the mouth of the Dnieper and along the shores
of the Sea of Azof, to supply them with ships, sailors, and pilots, for
buccaneering expeditions against the lands on the other side of the misty
Euxine. The chronology of these events is difficult and obscure, and it will
not be desirable to attempt to discuss it here, but the main outline of the
four chief expeditions may be sketched as follows. I shall use the generic name
“Scythians”, which I find in our Greek authorities, without attempting in each
case to say what was the share taken in them by the Goths, properly so called,
and what that of their allies.
Maritime
Expeditions.
The first voyage
of these new barbarian Argonauts was made to a city of that same Colchis from
which Jason brought back Medea and the Golden Fleece. Pityus (Soukoum Kaleh),
at the eastern end of the Euxine, once a flourishing Greek city, had been
destroyed by Caucasian highlanders, and rebuilt by the Romans, and was now
surrounded by a very strong wall and in the possession of a splendid harbour.
The Roman governor, Successianus, made a spirited
defence, and the barbarians after sustaining severe loss were compelled to
retire. Upon this the Emperor Valerian promoted Successianus to the high, the almost royal dignity of Praetorian Prefect, and removed him to
Antioch that he might assist him in rebuilding that city (ruined by the Persians)
and in preparing for a fresh campaign against the Persian king. Apparently the
loss of one man’s courage and skill was fatal to the defenders of Pityus: for when the barbarians, having made a feigned
attack on another part of the coast, rapidly returned, they took that
stronghold without difficulty. The ships in the harbour and the sailors
impressed into the Scythian service smoothed their way to further successes.
The great city of Trapezuntium (Trebizond), on
the southern shore of the Black Sea, being surrounded by a double wall and
strongly garrisoned, might have been expected to prove an insuperable obstacle.
But the Scythians, who had discovered that the defenders of the city kept a lax
watch, and passed their time in feasting and drunkenness, quietly collected a
quantity of wood which they heaped up one night against the lowest part of the
walls, and so mounted to an easy conquest. The demoralized Roman soldiers
poured out of the city by the gate opposite to that by which the Scythians were
entering. The barbarians thus came into possession of an untold quantity of
gold, and captives, and, after sacking the temple and wrecking the stateliest
of the public buildings, returned by sea to their own land.
Bithynia invaded,
259
Their success
stimulated a large neighbouring tribe of Scythians to undertake a similar
enterprise. These, however, dreading the uncertainties of the navigation of the
Euxine, marched by land from the mouths of the Danube to the little lake of Philea, about thirty miles north-west of Byzantium. There
they found a large population of fishermen, whom they compelled to render them
the same service with their boats which the men by the Sea of Azof had rendered
to their countrymen. Guided by a certain Chrysogonus,
whose Grecian name suggests that he was a deserter from the cause of
civilization, they sailed boldly through the Bosphorus, wrested the strong
position of Chalcedon at its mouth from a cowardly Roman army far superior to
them in numbers, and then proceeded to lay waste at their leisure Nicomedia,
Nicaea, and other rich cities of Bithynia. The men who had overcome so many
difficulties were, after all, stopped by the Rhyndacus,
an apparently inconsiderable stream which falls into the Sea of Marmora. Retracing
their steps, therefore, they tranquilly burned all the Bithynian cities which
they had hitherto only plundered, and piling their vast heaps of spoil on
wagons and on ships, they returned to their own land.
The foregoing
account of this inroad of the barbarians is given to us by Zosimus the Greek
historian. The Goth Jordanes, whose historical perspective is not extremely
accurate, informs us that during the expedition they also sacked Troy and
Ilium, which were just beginning to breathe again for a little space after that
sad war with Agamemnon. But neither Chalcedon nor Troy seems to have imprinted
itself so deeply in the barbarian memory as a certain town in Thrace named
Anchialus (Bourghaz), built just where the
range of the Balkans slopes down into the Euxine Sea. For at or near to
Anchialus there were certain warm springs renowned above all others in the
world for their healing virtues, and greatly did the Goths delight to wash
therein. One can imagine the children of the North, after the fatigue of sacking
so many towns, beneath the hot sun of Asia Minor, rejoicing in the refreshment
of these nature-heated baths.” And having tarried there many days they thence
returned home”.
The tidings of
these ravages reached the Emperor Valerian at Antioch, where he was still
engaged in deliberating whether he should arrest the onward movement of the
Persians by war or diplomacy. Sending a trusted counsellor, Felix, to repair
the fortifications of Byzantium, in the hope of thus making a repetition of the
Scythian raids impossible, Valerian at length marched eastwards against the
king of Persia. He marched to his own destruction, to the treachery of Macrianus, to the fatal interview with Sapor, to his long
and ignominious captivity at Persepolis. The story which was current fifty
years later, that the haughty Persian used the captive Emperor as a
horse-block, putting his foot on Valerian’s neck whenever he mounted his steed,
and remarking with a sneer that this was a real triumph, and not like the
imaginary triumphs which the Romans painted on their walls, may have been the
rhetorical invention of a later age : but it seems beyond question that the
aged Emperor was treated with studied insolence and severity, and that when he
died, his skin, painted in mockery the colour of Imperial purple, was
preserved, a ghastly trophy, in the temple of Persepolis.
His son Gallienus,
who had been associated with him in the Empire, and whose right to rule was
challenged by usurpers in almost every province of the Empire, was a man of excellent
abilities, but absolutely worthless character, a poco-curante on the throne of the world at a time when
all the strength and all the earnestness of the greatest of the Caesars would
hardly have sufficed for that arduous position. Gallienus accepted both his father’s
captivity and the Empire’s dismemberment with flippant serenity. “Egypt”, said
one of his ministers, “has revolted”. “What of that? Cannot we dispense with
Egyptian flax?”. “Fearful earthquakes have happened in Asia Minor, and the
Scythians are ravaging all the country”. “But cannot we do without Lydian
saltpetre?”. When Gaul was lost he gave a merry laugh, and said, “Do you think
the Republic will be in danger if the Consul’s robes cannot be made of the
Gaulish tartan?”.
Two or three years
after the commencement of the captivity of Valerian, a third expedition of the
Scythians, which must have been partly maritime, brought the barbarians to
another well-known spot, to the Ionic city of Ephesus, where they signalized
their sojourn by the destruction of that magnificent Temple of Diana, one of
the Seven Wonders of the World, of whose hundred marble columns, wreathed round
by sculptured figures in high relief, an English explorer has lately discovered
the pathetically defaced ruins.
But a holier
shrine of art than even Ephesus was to be visited by the unwelcome pilgrimage
of the Teutons. Four or five years later some warriors of the Herulian tribe (accompanied possibly by some of the Goths
properly so called), with a fleet which is said to have consisted of five
hundred ships—if they should not rather be called mere boats—sailed again
through the Bosphorus, took Byzantium, ravaged some of the islands of the
Archipelago, and landing in Greece, wasted not only Corinth, Sparta, and Argos,
but even Athens herself, with fire and sword. The soft and cultured Athenians,
lately immersed in the friendly rivalries of their professors of rhetoric, and
who had not for centuries seen a spear thrown in anger, were terrified by the
apparition of these tall, gaunt, skin-clothed barbarians under their walls.
They abandoned their beautiful city without a struggle, and as many as could do
so escaped to the demes, the little villages scattered along the heights of
Hymettus and Cithaeron. It was probably during the occupation of Athens by the
barbarians which followed this surrender that a characteristic incident
occurred. A troop of Teutonic warriors roaming through the city in search of
something to destroy, came to one of the great libraries which were the glory of
Athens. They began to carry out the parchment rolls, full of unintelligible
learning, and to pile them up in a great heap, intending to behold a
magnificent bonfire. “Not so, my sons”, said a gray-bearded
Gothic veteran; “leave these scrolls untouched, that the Greeks may in time to
come, as they have in time past, waste their manhood in poring over their
wearisome contents. So will they ever fall, as now, an easy prey to the strong
unlearned sons of the North”.
That the Gothic
veteran spoke only a half-truth when he uttered these words was soon shown by
the valiant and wisely planned onset, which was made upon the barbarians by Dexippus, rhetorician, philosopher, and historian, who at
the head of only 2000 men, co-operating apparently with an Imperial fleet,
succeeded in expelling the barbarians from Athens, and to some extent effaced
the stigma which their recent cowardice had brought upon the name of the
Greeks. Details as to the siege and counter-siege are alike wanting, but we
still have the speech, truly said to be not altogether unworthy of a place in
the pages of Thucydides, in which the soldier-sophist, while cautioning his
followers against rash and unsupported skirmishes, breathes a high heroic
spirit into their hearts, and appeals to them to show themselves fit inheritors
of the great traditions of their forefathers. “Thus shall we win from men now
living, and from those who are yet to be, the meed of
ever-to-be-remembered glory, proving in very deed that even in the midst of our
calamities the old spirit of the Athenians is not abated. Let us therefore set
our children and all our dearest ones upon the hazard of this battle for which
we now array ourselves, calling upon the all-seeing gods to be our helpers”.
When they heard these words, the Athenians were greatly strengthened, and
begged him to lead them on to battle, in which, as has been already said, they
appear to have won a complete victory.
The Emperor
Claudius II. Battle
of Naissus.
Gallienus himself
appears to have had some share in a further discomfiture of the Heruli, which was followed by the surrender of their leader Naulobates, who entered the Imperial service and
obtained the dignity of a Roman Consul. But the Emperor was soon recalled to
Italy by the news that his general Aureolus had
assumed the purple, apparently in the city of Milan. Gallienus hastened thither
and began the siege of the city, which lasted some months. Before its close, Aureolus, who found himself hard pressed, succeeded in
forming a conspiracy among the officers of Gallienus, which ended in the
assassination of that prince while he was engaged in repelling a sortie of the
besieged.
The Roman world
again awoke to hopefulness when the reign of the Imperial voluptuary was ended,
and when out of the nightmare-dream of plots, assassinations, and civil wars,
the strong and brave Illyrian soldier Claudius, who had already borne a leading
part in the defence of Moesia, emerged as sole ruler of the Empire. Aureolus was defeated and put to death; the Alamanni, who
from the lands of the Main and the Neckar had penetrated into Italy as far as
the Lake of Garda and menaced Verona were vanquished, and half of their host
were slain. After some months spent at Rome in restoring peace to the troubled
state, Claudius turned his steps towards his own native Illyricum, in order to
rescue that portion of the Empire from the avalanche of barbarism, which was
thundering over it. It was indeed time for Rome to put forth her whole strength.
The Goths with all their kindred tribes were pouring themselves upon Thrace and
Macedonia in vaster numbers than ever. The previous movement of these nations
had been probably but robber-inroads; this was a national immigration. The
number of the ships (or skiffs) which they prepared on the river Dniester, is
stated by Zosimus at 6000. This is probably an exaggeration or an accidental
corruption of the historian’s text; but 2000, which is the figure given by
Ammianus, is a sufficiently formidable number, even of the small craft to which
the estimate refers. And the invading host itself, including doubtless
camp-followers and slaves, perhaps some women and children, is said, with a
concurrence of testimony which we dare not disregard, to have reached the
enormous total of 320,000.
In order to obtain
any sense from the conflicting accounts of this campaign, we must suppose that
this vast Gothic horde made their attack partly by sea and partly by land.
While the 2000 ships sailed over the Euxine, and, after vainly attacking Tomi, Marcianople, and Byzantium, traversed the swift Bosphorus,
and again sought the pleasant islands of the Aegean, the rest of the host, with
women and children, with wagons and camp-followers, must have crossed the
Danube and pressed southwards across the devastated plains of Moesia. The
sea-rovers, who had suffered from storms and from collisions in the narrow
waters of the Sea of Marmora, reached at length, in diminished numbers, the
promontory of Athos, and there repaired their ships. They then proceeded to
besiege the cities of Cassandreia (once better known
under the name of Potidaea) and of Thessalonica. Strong as were the
fortifications of the latter important city, it would perhaps have yielded to
the barbarians, had not tidings reached them that Claudius was in Moesia, and that
their brethren of the Northern army were in danger. After a skirmish in the
valley of the Vardar in which they lost 3000 men, they crossed the Balkans and,
perhaps uniting with their Northern brethren, gathered round the army of
Claudius who was ascending the valley of the Morava and had reached the city of
Naissus. The battle which followed looked at first like a Roman defeat. After
great slaughter on both sides the Imperial troops gave way, but coming back by
unfrequented paths, they fell upon the barbarians in all the joy of their
victory, and slew of them 50,000 men. After this defeat the sea-rovers seem to
have returned to their ships, and abandoning the siege of Thessalonica, to have
wasted their energies in desultory attacks on Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus; but
partly from the ravages of the plague which was at this time desolating the
shores of the Levant, and partly from the energetic attack of the Alexandrian
fleet under the command of the valiant officer Probus (afterwards Emperor),
they suffered so severely that they were obliged to return home having done no
memorable deed.
As to their
brethren of the land army, they made a rampart of their wagons, behind which
for some time they kept the Romans at bay. They then turned southwards into
Macedonia, but so great was the pressure of hunger upon them that they killed
and ate the cattle that drew the wagons, thus abandoning their last chance of
returning to their northern homes. The Roman cavalry shut them up into the
passes of the Balkans; the too eager infantry attacking them were repulsed with
some loss. Claudius, or the generals whom he had left in command, resumed the
waiting game, and at length after the barbarians had endured the horrors of a
winter among the Balkan fastnesses, aggravated by the miseries of the
pestilence, which raged there as well as in the islands of the Aegean, their
stout Gothic hearts were broken and they surrendered themselves unconditionally
to their conqueror.
It was in the
following words, whose boastfulness seems to have been almost justified by the
facts, that Claudius, who received the surname Gothicus in celebration of his victory, announced the issue of the campaign to the
governor of Illyricum:
“Claudius to Brocchus.—We have destroyed 320,000 of the Goths; we
have sunk 2000 of their ships. The rivers are bridged over with shields; with
swords and lances all the shores are covered. The fields are hidden from sight
under the superincumbent bones; no road is free from
them; an immense encampment of wagons is deserted. We have taken such a number
of women that each soldier can have two or three concubines allotted to him”
Of the males in
the diminished remnant of the Gothic army who were admitted to quarter, some
probably entered the service of their vanquisher as foederati and many remained
as slaves to plough the fields which they had once hoped to conquer for their
own.
But the terrible
pestilence, which more than Roman sword had defeated the armies of the
barbarians, intensified by the unburied corpses strewn over the desolated land,
entered the Roman camp and demanded the noblest of the host as a victim. In the
spring of 270 Claudius Gothicus died, having reigned
only two memorable years. He was succeeded1 by another brave Illyrian, like
himself of humble origin, the well-known conqueror of Zenobia, Aurelian. This
Emperor, of whose exploits when still only a tribune marvellous stories were
told, who was reported to have slain in one day eight-and-forty Sarmatians, and
in the course of a campaign nine hundred and fifty; this soldier who had been
so fond of his weapons and so quick to use them that his surname in the army
had been “Hand-on-sword”, distinguished himself in the history of the Empire by
a wise stroke of peaceful policy, the final abandonment of Dacia.
This province,
which ever since the Marcomannic war at the close of the second century had
been a precarious possession of the Empire, had now been for fifteen years
freely traversed by the Goths and their kindred tribes. Aurelian saw that the
energies of the State would be over-taxed in the endeavour to retain an
isolated outwork such as Dacia had ever been, and that it would be wiser to
make the Lower Danube once more the limit of the Empire in this quarter.
Details are unfortunately not given us as to the manner in which the Romans
relinquished Dacia. Had they been preserved, they would probably have furnished
an interesting commentary on the yet more obscure abandonment of Britain a
century and a half later. But we are told that the Emperor withdrew his army
and left Dacia to the provincials (a strange expression for the new comers from
Scythia) despairing of being able to retain it, and the peoples led forth from
thence he settled in Moesia, and made there a province which he called his own
Dacia, and which now divides the two Moesias (Superior and Inferior). This new Dacia of Aurelian, a curious attempt to gloss
over the real loss of a province, consisted of the eastern half of Servia and
the western end of Bulgaria, and was eventually divided into two smaller provinces, Dacia Ripensis whose capital was the strong city
of Batiaria on the Danube, and Dacia Mediterranea whose capital Sardica became famous in the fourth century as the seat of an Ecclesiastical Council,
and under its modern name of Sofia is now again famous as the modern capital of
Bulgaria.
In abandoning the
old trans-Danubian Dacia to the Goths, Aurelian may
probably have made some sort of stipulation with them that they should not
again cross the great river, nor sail the Euxine Sea as enemies to Rome. The
recession of the Imperial frontier, by whatever conditions it was accompanied,
was undoubtedly a piece of real statesmanship. Could a similar policy have been
pursued, cautiously and consistently, all round the frontiers of the Roman
Empire, it is allowable to conjecture that that Empire, though in somewhat less
than its widest circumference, might still be standing.
After the reign of
Aurelian the Goths remained for nearly a century on terms of peace, though not
unbroken peace, with Rome. The skirmishes or battles which caused the Emperors
Tacitus and Probus to put “Victoria Gothica”
on their coins, and in right of which Diocletian and Maximian added “Gothici” to their other proud titles of conquest, were
probably but the heaving of the waves after the great tempest of Gothic
invasion had ceased to blow. In the Civil War between Constantine and Licinius,
Gothic foederati fought under the banners of Constantine, and at a later period
of his reign 40,000 of the same auxiliaries under their kings Ariaric and Aoric followed the
Roman eagles on various expeditions. But Constantine himself, intervening in
some quarrel between the Goths and their Sarmatian [Slavonic] neighbours, took
part with the latter, and conducted operations against the Goths, which are said
to have caused the death of near 100,000 of their number from cold and hunger.
Hostages were then given by the defeated barbarians, among them the son of king Ariaric, and the usual friendly relations between the
Goths and the Empire were resumed.
Recovery of the
Empire.
These hundred
years of nearly uninterrupted peace may have been caused partly by the
exhaustion resulting from the invasions in the reign of Gallienus and the
remembrance of the terrible defeat which the Goths had sustained at the hands
of Claudius. Some increasing softness of manners and some power of appreciating
the blessings of civilization, the result of their intercourse with Roman
provincials on both sides of the Danube, may have contributed to the same
result. But doubtless the main reason for this century of peace was the greatly
increased strength of the Empire, precisely upon her Danubian frontier. After the wars of Gallienus a series of brave and capable Illyrian
soldiers mounted the throne. Not only Claudius, but Aurelian, Probus,
Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius, Constantine, all deduced their origin from
Illyricum. Some of these men had risen to eminence in the terrible Gothic
struggle. All of them, with eyes quickened by affection for their own
fatherland, saw the necessity of strengthening this middle section of the
Empire’s long line of defence. It was in order to be near the vital point which
the Scythian marauders had penetrated that Diocletian took up his abode at the
Bithynian city of Nicomedia. It was in continuation of the same policy and by
one of the highest inspirations of statesmanship that the world has witnessed,
that Constantine planted his new Rome beside the Bosphorus. Thus the Scythian
invasions, the history of which we have been labouring to recover from the
discordant fragments of the chroniclers, hold a prominent position among the
causes which have brought about the endless “Eastern Question” of today. And,
without doubt, as the terrible Gothic invasions contributed to the foundation
of Constantinople, so the foundation of that city and the transference of so
much of the strength of the Empire from the Tiber to the Golden Horn, had the
effect of striking terror and despair into the hearts of the barbarians on the
northern shore of the Euxine, and had much to do with the century of
comparative peace between “Gothia” and “Romania”
Of this period of
Gothic sojourn in Dacia we have one interesting relic in the celebrated Buzeu Ring (sometimes called the Petrossa ring, Petrossa being the nearest town to the place of
discovery, or the Bucharest ring, from its being now deposited in the Museum at
Bucharest). This is a golden arm-ring, elastic and snake-shaped, and is part of
a large treasure of golden ornaments found at Buzeu in Little Wallachia, in the year 1838. Upon the flat surface of the ring is
carved, or rather stamped with a hammer and a sharp instrument, the following
Runic inscription, which may be translated either “Holy to the Temple of the
Goths”, or “Holy to the new Temple of the Goths”. There is some little
difficulty about the middle part of the inscription, but none as to its
beginning and end, which are admitted to contain the name of the Gothic people
and the Teutonic adjective for “holy”. From the heathen character of the
inscription it must be referred to a pretty early period in the Gothic
occupation of Dacia, say between 250 and 350. It has been suggested that the
great intrinsic value of the gold, forming the Buzeu hoard, points to the dedication of the spoils of some great triumph—the plunder,
it may be, of the camp of Decius, or the ransom of the wealthy city of Marcianople. But this is of course mere conjecture.
Civilization of
the Visigoths.
One result of the
settlement in Dacia was probably to broaden the line of demarcation between the
two nations of the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, if indeed it did not (as might
be argued with some probability) for the first time divide the Gothic people into
those two sections. Everything in the story of the barbarian migrations shows
us how powerful was the moral, we might almost say the spiritual, influence,
exercised by the stately fabric of Roman civilization upon the barbarians who :
“With straitened habits and with tastes starved small”, came to burrow in its
abandoned chambers. True, Aurelian had invited all the old inhabitants who
chose to do so to leave the old Dacia and become settlers in his new Dacia
south of the Danube, but many probably did not accept the invitation, and in
any event there was much Roman which could not migrate. The great roads, the
cities, the mines, the baths, the camps, the temples remained, to impress, to
fascinate, to attract the minds of the barbarians. Legends of the mysterious
people who had wrought these mighty works, tales of vast treasure-hoards,
guarded by dwarfs or by serpents, would be told by Gothic mothers to their
children. In some cases the ruined Roman city would be shunned as a
dwelling-place by the Teutonic settlers, oppressed by a nameless fear of the
spirits that might be haunting the spot. But even so, their own rude town would
inevitably grow up near to the ancient civitas for the sake of
the roads which led to it. The experience of all other German settlements
within the limits of the Empire warrants us in asserting a priori that the
influence of their settlement in Dacia must have been a civilizing one on the
Gothic warriors, that it must have instilled into them a certain
dissatisfaction with their own dull, unprogressive Past, and must have prepared their minds to admire, and in some measure to
desire, the great intellectual heritage of Rome. And, à posteriori,
we find precisely in the Visigothic nation a capacity for culture and for
assimilation with their Roman subjects, greater and earlier than that possessed
by any other of the barbarian invaders of the Empire; and we are surely
entitled to assume that the century passed in Roman Dacia had something to do
with this result.
But it is the
Visigothic branch alone of which we may think as thus silently transformed by
Roman influences. The Ostrogoths, dwelling in the vast plains of Lithuania and
Southern Russia, had no such trophies of civilization around them as those
which met the gaze unchanged of their Western brethren. Some little civilizing
influence may have been exerted upon the coast-dwellers and the inhabitants of
the Crimea by the Greek cities that were scattered helplessly among them: but
the greater part of the Ostrogothic people, having been “Scythians” of the
steppes for centuries, remained Scythians still, barbarous, illiterate,
untouched by the intellectual superiority of Rome.
Hermanric the Ostrogoth.
As far, however,
as we can trace anything of the political system of the Goths at this period,
the less cultured part of the nation maintained a sort of ascendency over their
Visigothic brethren. The kings, Ariaric and Aoric, whom we have met with as fighting for or against the
Emperor Constantine, may have belonged to either section. The reign of the next
king, Geberic, was chiefly distinguished by a
successful attack on the Vandals, whom he drove out from their settlements on
the western border of Dacia, and forced to take shelter under the Roman
supremacy in the province of Pannonia. Geberic also
may have been either Visigoth or Ostrogoth, though there is something in the
way in which his name is introduced by Jordanes which seems to make the latter
the more probable supposition. But after Geberic we
come to Hermanric, noblest of the Amals,
who subdued many warlike nations of the North and forced them to obey his laws,
and here we are undoubtedly upon Ostrogothic ground. Jordanes compares him to
Alexander the Great, and enumerates thirteen nations with barbarous names
(scarcely one of which corresponds to any that was ever mentioned by any
historian before or since), all of whom obeyed the mighty Hermanric.
There is a sort of mythical character about all the information that we receive
concerning this Ostrogothic conqueror; but as it is said, with some appearance
of truthfulness, that he extended his dominions even to the Aestii,
who dwelt upon the amber-producing shore of the Baltic, his kingdom, which evidently
included many Slavonic as well as Teutonic tribes, must have occupied the
greater part of Southern Russia and Lithuania, and was probably much the
largest dominion then governed by any single barbarian ruler.
Did the royal
power of Hermanric include any overlordship over the
Visigothic branch of the nation? It is difficult to answer this question
decisively; but, upon the whole, notwithstanding many traces of independent
action, it seems probable that the Visigoths were, however loosely, incorporated
in the great confederacy of barbarian tribes whereof Hermanric was the head. Their own immediate rulers bore some title of less commanding
import than that of King, which has been translated by the Roman historians
into the vague word Judex (Judge). The inferiority of the
title, and the fact that it was apparently borne by several persons at a time,
are clear indications that a disintegrating process was at work in the
Visigothic nation, and that the unity which a monarchical constitution gives
was beginning to disappear under the influence of peaceful contact with the
higher civilization of the Empire.
At a later period
the reader’s attention will be called to some of the interesting but difficult
questions connected with German kingship. Meanwhile it may be well that he
should note for himself how far the authority of the king was limited by the
necessity of obtaining for his decisions the approval of the armed nation, and
what was the effect of warlike and of peaceful intercourse with Rome, either in
consolidating or in loosening the regal power among the barbarians. These are
really the two most important points in the constitutional history of the
Germanic tribes; and while complete and well-rounded theories concerning them
are much more easily formed than solidly established, the careful observer of a
multitude of little facts which meet us in the course of
the narrative, will probably arrive at some general conclusion which
will not be far from the truth.
One thing may be
at once stated, that the invariable tendency of war, especially of war in
critical dangerous times, was to exalt the kingly office. The same national
necessities which led the United States of America to entrust almost despotic
authority, under the name of “the War-Power” to President Lincoln during the
late war of secession, led to the disappearance of many a Gothic and Frankish
kinglet, and to the concentration of supreme power in the hands of an Alaric, a
Theodoric, or a Clovis during the long struggle for victory with Rome.
On the other hand,
when “Romania” and “Barbaricum” were at peace one
with another, the influence of the Empire on barbarian royalty was, as has been
already said, disintegrating. The majesty of the Augustus at Rome or
Constantinople overshadowed the rude and barbarous splendour of the
Gothic Thiudans. His pretensions to be
descended from the gods were met with a quiet sneer by the Greek merchant who
brought his wares to sell in the Teutonic homestead. Touching at so many
points the great and civilized world-Empire, from which they were often
separated only by a ford or a ferry, and touching it in friendly and profitable
intercourse, the barbarians were ever in danger of losing that feeling of
national unity which both lent strength to the institution of kingship, and
received strength therefrom. The Governor of the province on the opposite side
of the river became more to the Teuton as his own distant and seldom-seen King
became less. The barbarian began to forget that he was a Goth or a Vandal or an Alaman, and to think of himself as a Moesian, a Pannonian, or a Gaulish provincial. Thus did
Rome during the long intervals of peace win many a bloodless victory over her
barbarian neighbors.
A process, which was
probably going on during all the first half of the fourth century, and
which seemed to foretell a very different result from that of which
actually came to pass, was powerfully aided as far as the Visigoths were
concerned, by two momentous changes which were being introduced among them. The
worship of Wodan and Thunor was being displaced by the religion of Christ, and
the Gothic language was giving birth to a literature. The chief agent in these
two events, full of importance even to the present day, was a man who a hundred
years ago would have been spoken of as an obscure ecclesiastic, but for whom in
our own day the new science of the History of Speech has asserted his rightful
position, as certainly “attaining to the first three” in the century in which
he lived. If the greatest name of that century be admitted to be Constantine,
and if the second place be yielded to Athanasius, at least the third may be
claimed for the missionary bishop of the Goths and the first translator of the
Bible into a barbarian tongue, the noble-hearted Ulfilas.
Bishop Ulfilas,
311-381
Ulfilas, who was
born probably in 311 was not of pure Teutonic extraction, but was descended
from Cappadocian ancestors who had been carried captive by the Goths, probably
during that raid into Asia Minor which ended at the baths of Anchialus. He was
however himself, in heart and by speech, a Goth, and in the course of his life
he became master both of the Greek and Latin languages. In the capacity either
of an ambassador or, more probably, a hostage, he was sent while still a young
man to Constantinople. During his stay there (which lasted apparently for about
ten years), if not at an earlier period, he embraced the Christian religion; he
was ordained Lector (Reader); and eventually, in the thirtieth year of his age,
he was consecrated bishop by the great Arian ecclesiastic, Eusebius of
Nicomedia. From this time onwards for forty years he was engaged in frequent
missionary journeys among his countrymen in Dacia, many of whom, having become
converts to Christianity, were persuaded by him to cross the frontier, in order
to escape the cruel persecutions of their heathen countrymen, and to settle
within the limits of the Roman Empire. These Christianized Gothic settlers were
called Gothi Minores, and their
dwellings were situated upon the northern slopes of the Balkans. Our
information as to these Lesser Goths is derived exclusively from the following
passage in Jordanes:
“There were also
certain other Goths, who are called Minores, an immense people,
with their bishop and primate Vulfila, who is said,
moreover, to have taught them letters: and they are at this day dwelling in
Moesia, in the district called Nicopolitana, at the
foot of Mount Haemus, a numerous race, but poor and unwarlike, abounding only
in cattle of divers kinds, and rich in pastures and forest timber, having
little wheat, though the earth is fertile in producing other crops. They do not
appear to have any vineyards : those who want wine buy it of their neighbours;
but most of them drink only milk”.
The result then of
this partial Christianization of the Visigoths by the labors of Ulfilas was, that by the middle of the fourth century a peaceful invasion of
Moesia had been made, and a colony of simple- hearted Gothic herdsmen was
settled between the Balkans and the Danube, near the modern city of Tirnova.
From a most
interesting MS. recently discovered at Paris, which contains a sketch of the
life of Ulfilas by a contemporary and devoted admirer, probably Auxentius, bishop of Dorostorus (the modern Silistria), we learn that it was the
persecuting policy of a Visigothic Judex that drove Ulfilas and his emigrants
across the Danube. “And when”, says Auxentius,
“through the envy and mighty working of the enemy, there was kindled a
persecution of the Christians by an irreligious and sacrilegious Judge of the
Goths, who spread tyrannous affright through the barbarian land, it came to
pass that Satan, who desired to do evil, unwillingly did good; that those whom
he sought to make deserters became confessors of the faith; that the persecutor
was conquered, and his victims wore the wreath of victory. Then, after the
glorious martyrdom of many servants and handmaids of Christ, as the persecution
still raged vehemently, after seven years of his episcopate were
expired, the blessed Ulfilas being driven from " Varbaricum with a great multitude of
confessors, was honourably received on the soil of Romania by
the Emperor Constantius of blessed memory. Thus as God by the hand of Moses
delivered his people from the violence of Faraoh and
the Egyptians, and made them pass through the Red Sea, and ordained that they
should serve Him [on Mount Sinai], even so by means of Ulfilas did God deliver
the confessors of His only-begotten Son from the Varbarian land,
and cause them to cross over the Danube, and serve Him upon the mountains [of
Haemus] like his saints of old”.
The comparison of
Ulfilas to Moses appears to have been a favourite one with his contemporaries.
We are told that the Emperor Constantius, who probably had met him face to
face, and who approved of his settlement of the lesser Goths in Moesia, called
him “the Moses of our day”. But if he was the Moses of the Gothic people he was
also their Cadmus, the introducer of letters, the father and originator of all
that Teutonic literature which now fills no inconsiderable space in the
libraries of the world. Let us briefly summaries what he did for his people as
author of their alphabet and translator of the Christian Scriptures into their
dialect.
As has been before
stated, the Goths and their kindred peoples already possessed an alphabet of a
rude and primitive kind, the Runic Futhorc. But this was best adapted, and
practically was only used, for short inscriptions on wood or stone, on metal or
horn, such as “Oltha owns this axe”, “This shield
belongs to Hagsi”, “Echlew made this horn for the dread forest-king”; or the already-mentioned Buzeu inscription, “Holy to the temple of the Goths”. In
fact, if any one looks at the shapes of the earlier Runic letters he will see
that they are just those shapes which an unskilful workman naturally adopts,
when carving even the letters of our own alphabet with a knife on the trunk of
a tree. All is straight lines and angles, and the circle, or any kind of curve,
is as much as possible avoided. It was not in this way or on this kind of
materials that a national literature could come into alphabet. Ulfilas
therefore, who was of course possessed of all the graphic appliances of a
Byzantine scribe of the fourth century, determined to free himself entirely, or
almost entirely, from the primaeval Runes of his forefathers, and to fashion
the new alphabet of his people mainly upon that which was most extensively used
upon the shores of the Euxine and the Aegean and in the holy city of
Constantinople, the venerable alphabet of Hellas. While referring the reader
who may be interested in this subject to a note in which it is more fully
discussed, it will be sufficient to say here that, both in the order and the
forms of the letters, the alphabet of Ulfilas is based upon the Greek, but that
it contains three letters which are unmistakably Runic (those which represent
J, U, and O), three in which a Runic influence is observable (B, R, and F), and
three in which a similar influence seems to have been exerted by the Latin
alphabet (Q, H, and S).
The grammar of the
Gothic tongue, as exhibited in the translation of Ulfilas, is, it need hardly
be said, of priceless value in the history of Human Speech. We here see, not
indeed the original of all the Teutonic languages, but a specimen of one of
them, three centuries earlier than any other that has been preserved, with many
inflections which have since been lost, with words which give us the clue to
relationships otherwise untraceable, and with phrases which cast a strong light
on the fresh and joyous youth of the Teutonic peoples. In short, it is not too
much to say, that the same place which the study of Sanscrit holds in the history of the development of the great Indo-European family of
nations is occupied by the Gothic of Ulfilas (Moeso-Gothic,
as it is sometimes not very happily named) in reference to the unwritten
history of the Germanic races.
But let us not, as
enthusiastic philologists, fancy that Ulfilas lived but to preserve for
posterity certain fast-perishing Gothic roots, and to lay the foundation for
“Grimm’s Law” of the transmutation of consonants. To Christianize and to
civilize the Gothic people was the one, chief and successfully accomplished,
aim of his life. It was for this that he undertook, amidst all the perils and
hardships of his missionary life, the labour, great because so utterly
unprecedented, of turning the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament into the
language of a barbarous and unlettered race; by the mere conception of such a
work showing a mind centuries in advance of its contemporaries. Nor was it a
portion only, the Gospels or the Psalms, as in the case of our own King Alfred
500 years later, which was thus rendered into a language “understanded of the
people”. The whole of the New Testament and much the larger part of the Old
were turned into Gothic by the good bishop, who, however, according to a
well-known story refrained from translating “the Books of Kings” (that is, of
course, the two Books of Samuel and the two of Kings), “which contain the
history of wars: because his nation was already very fond of war, and needed
the bit rather than the spur, so far as fighting was concerned”. One can
understand the wise economy of truth, which withheld, from these
fierce Dacian warriors, Sagas so exciting as the battle of Mount Gilboa, the
slaughter of Baal’s priests at the foot of Carmel, and the extermination of the
House of Ahab by Jehu son of Nimshi.
Ulfilas, who was
of course well acquainted with the Greek language, no doubt translated the Old
Testament from the Septuagint version and the New from the original Greek. His
translation has been appealed to for the last two centuries as a valuable
witness to the condition of the Greek text in the fourth century. It contains
however some singular traces of the influence of the old Latin text where that
differs from the Greek. This is generally explained as the result of
corrections in his version, made by some later hand during the residence of the
Ostrogoths in Italy. But considering the close connection which existed between
the Churches of Illyricum and those of Italy, it seems at least as probable
that Ulfilas himself worked with the old Latin version (the Itala) before him, and in these passages gave it the
preference over his Greek codices. This view of the matter is confirmed by the
express statement of Auxentius that he was conversant
with three languages, Greek, Latin, and Gothic.
Of the great work
thus accomplished by the Moesian bishop, fragments
only, but precious fragments, are left to us. Of the Old Testament we have two
or three chapters of Ezra and Nehemiah, and nothing else save scattered
quotations; but of the New Testament we have the greater part of the Epistles
of St. Paul in palimpsest; and above all, we have more than half of the Gospels
preserved in the splendid Codex Argenteus at Upsala; a MS. probably of the
fifth century, which is inscribed in silver and gold diameters upon a parchment
of rich purple colour, and which, both by the beauty of its execution, by the
importance of its text, and of the perished language in which it is written,
and by its own almost romantic history is certainly one of the greatest
palaeographical treasures in the world.
If it is often
hard in our own day to say whether a great man more moulds his age or is moulded
by it, we need not to be surprised that we find it difficult to decide with
certainty how far Ulfilas originated, and how far he merely represented, the
conversion of the Teutonic races to Christianity. Something had probably been
already done by the Greek dwellers in the cities on the Euxine to convert the
Ostrogoths of the Crimea to the orthodox faith; and hence it is that we find a
certain bishop Theophilus, who is called Bosporitanus (doubtless from the Cimmerian Bosphorus) appearing from among the Goths at the
Council of Nicaea, and subscribing its decrees. But this seems to have been a
feeble and exotic growth. The apostolate of Ulfilas among the Visigoths was, as
far as we can see, the efficient cause of the conversion, not of that nation
only, but of all the Teutonic tribes by whom they were surrounded. His was
evidently a most potent personality, and his book, carried by traders and
warriors from village to village, and from camp to camp of the barbarians, may
have been even more powerful than his living voice. Let the operating cause
have been what it may, nearly all the Teutonic nations of Eastern Europe who
came in contact with the Empire during the period upon which we are about to
enter, became Christian in the course of the fourth century and chiefly during
the lifetime of Ulfilas.
Gothic Arianism.
But the form of
Christianity taught by Ulfilas, and earnestly accepted by the Goth, the Vandal,
the Burgundian, and the Sueve, was one of the various
forms which passed under the common denomination of Arianism. Many have been
the stories, dishonouring to Ulfilas and the Goths, and quite inadequate to the
result that they profess to explain, which, probably without any untruthful
intent, the ecclesiastical historians have put into circulation in order to
explain this unacceptable triumph of heterodoxy. It has often been asserted
that the Goths were seduced into heresy by the Arian Emperor Valens, that their
profession of the form of Christianity which he professed was the price paid by
them for that settlement within the confines of the Empire which will shortly
have to be described, and that the broker in this unholy compact was their
revered bishop Ulfilas. A careful study of the whole subject proves the extreme
improbability, we may almost say, the absolute falsity of this account of the
matter. Some influence must probably be attributed to the previous religious
training of the Goths and the nations akin to them, when we seek to account for
the rapid diffusion of Arian Christianity among them. Accustomed as they were
to think of the All-father and his godlike sons, it was easy to accept the
teaching of the priests who told them of a second God, strong as Thunor, but
also gentle and beloved as Balder, who sat as it were on the steps of the
throne of the Most High, a God in his relation to the human family, but yet not
equal in power and majesty to the eternal Father. And it was the same kind of
thought, struggling with the philosophic conception of the unity of the Supreme
Being, which strove to find an utterance in the multitudinous creeds, Arian and
Semi-Arian, to which the Councils of the fourth century gave birth.
But after all,
though such considerations as these may account for the special fascination
which Arianism had for the Teutonic neighbours of the Empire, and for the
special dangers that attended a form of faith in which their old polytheism
perhaps still lingered, they are not necessary to explain the Arianism of their
greatest teacher and apostle. His religious career almost precisely corresponds
with those fifty years of reaction from Nicene orthodoxy which present so
difficult a problem in the history of the Eastern Church. The truth is
therefore that Ulfilas was an Arian because every considerable ecclesiastic
with whom he came in contact at Constantinople was an Arian; because that was
the form of faith (or so it seemed to him) which he had been first taught; because
he was consecrated bishop by the great Arian controversialist Eusebius of
Nicomedia, and received the kiss of peace from the prelates to whose ranks he
had just been admitted, at the great Arian synod of Antioch (341); because, in
short, during the whole time that his theological mind was being moulded,
Arianism, of one kind or another, was orthodoxy at Constantinople, and
Athanasius was denounced, as a dangerous heretic. He himself, when lying at the
point of death, prefaced his Arian confession of faith with these emphatic
words: “I, Ulfilas, bishop and confessor, have ever thus believed”, and there
is no reason to doubt that, as far as any man can speak accurately of his own
spiritual history, these words were true.
The form of
Arianism (for that battle-cry was uttered by many armies) which Ulfilas
professed was that generally known as the Homoion,
and agreed well with his lifelong devotion to the work of translating and
disseminating the Scriptures. While Athanasius was fighting, sometimes against
the world, for the mystic word Homoousion (The Son is of one
substance with the Father); while the Semi-Arian bishops were labouring
to reunite all parties and keep their own sees by means of the cunningly
devised word Homoi-ousion (of like
substance with the Father); while the controversy was passing book on to
niceties of speculation concerning “being” and — “substance” which only the
Greek language could express, and which probably not a single, even Greek
intellect really understood; the advocates of the Homoion tried
to recall the combatants to a more simple and more scriptural standing-ground,
and said: “Neither Homo-ousios nor Homoi-ousios is to be found in the archives of our faith.
Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, is like (Homoios)
to the Father who begat him according to the Scriptures”. This was the language
of the creed adopted at the Arian Synod of Constantinople, a creed which, as we
are expressly told, received the signature of Bishop Ulfilas. The confession of
faith already alluded to, which he composed when lying on his death-bed,
contains these words: “I Ulfilas, bishop and confessor, have ever thus
believed, and in this, the alone true faith, do I make my testament to my Lord.
I believe that there is one God the Father, alone unbegotten and invisible: and
in his only-begotten Son our Lord and our God, artificer and maker of every
creature, having none like unto himself... ; and in one Holy Spirit, an
illuminating and sanctifying power, neither God nor Lord, but the minister of
Christ, subject and obedient in all things to the Son, as the Son is subject
and obedient in all things to the Father”. In the account of the teaching of
Ulfilas given by his admirer Auxentius, it is said:
“By his sermons and his tracts he showed that there is a difference between the
divinity of the Father and the Son, of the God un-begotten and of the God
only-begotten: and that the Father is the Creator of the Creator, but the Son
the Creator of the whole creation; the Father, God of our Lord, but the Son the
God of every creature”.
This, it will at
once be seen, is not Trinitarian form of orthodoxy, but neither is it anything
like the views concerning the nature of Jesus Christ which are held in our own
time by the vast majority of those who would disdain for themselves the title
of Orthodox Christians. In order to understand the theological conditions of
the period before us, it is necessary that we should let the disputants speak
their own language, and should not attribute to those who are now classed as heretics,
either more or less deviation from the standard of faith which has now been
established in the Christian Church for fifteen centuries, than is disclosed to
us by their own creeds and anathemas, of which they have left us so copious a
provision.
But if the
theological chasm between the barbarian converts of Ulfilas and the party which
ultimately triumphed in the Church was somewhat less than our modern
prepossessions would have led us to suppose, from a political and historical
point of view the disastrous effect of the conversion of the Goths and their
kindred to the Arian form of Christianity can hardly be stated too strongly.
That conversion made the barbarians parties to the long law-suit between Arians
and Trinitarians, which had dragged on its weary length through the greater
part of the fourth century, and in which, up to the time that we are now
speaking of, the persecuting spirit, the bitterness, the abuse of court favour,
had been mainly on the side of the Arians. The tide was now soon to turn, and
the disciples of Athanasius were to be the dominant party, the favourites of
court and people. Into such a world, into the midst of a clergy and a laity
passionately attached to the Homoousian formula,
the Arian Teutons were about to be poured, not only to subdue and overturn, but
if possible to renew and to rebuild. In this work of reconstruction the
difference of creeds proved to be a great and often a fatal difficulty. The
Barbarian might be tolerated by the Roman; by the Catholic the Arian could not
but be loathed. Of even the Heathen there was hope, for he might one day
renounce his dumb idols and might seek admission, as did the Frank and the
Saxon, into the bosom of the One Catholic and Apostolic Church. But the
Schismatic would probably grow hardened in his sin, he would plant his false
bishops and his rival priests side by side with the officers of the true Church
in every diocese and every parish. There could be no amalgamation for the
faithful with the Arians. The only course was to groan under them, to conspire
against them, and as soon as possible to expel them.
Here then for the
present, having reached the seventh decade of the third century, we leave that
great confederacy of Teutonic peoples which went by the collective name of
Goths. They have wandered from the Baltic to the Euxine; they have engaged in
one terrible conflict with Rome, the result of which was all but fatal to the
Empire. They have since then been for the greater part of a century at peace
with their mighty neighbour; they have received her subsidies; they have served
under her eagles; they are rapidly embracing her newly adopted faith. It may be
that they will be altogether moulded according to her impress, and that Gothia will gradually become Romania. Not so however thinks
the keen analytic intellect of the philosopher on the throne. From under his
unkempt hair the piercing eye of Julian discerns the coming danger. When his
war against the Persians was coming to a head, either by some divine warning or
by the exercise 0f his reason, he perceived from afar the coming troubles among
the Goths like the ground-swell of a storm. For he said in one of his letters,
“The Goths are now at rest, but perhaps they will not always so continue”.
THE VISIGOTHS IN GAUL.
412-507
KING ATAULF had no
intention of establishing a permanent dominion in Italy. As an occupation of
Africa seemed hopeless he turned towards Gaul in the year 412, probably making
use of the military road which crossed Mt Genèvre via
Turin to the Rhone. Here he at first joined the anti-emperor Jovinus (set up in
the summer of 411) who had a sure footing, especially in Auvergne, but was
little pleased by the arrival of the Visigoths, which interfered with his plans
of governing the whole of Gaul. Hence the two rulers soon came to open strife,
especially as Jovinus had not named the Gothic king co-ruler, as he had hoped,
but his own brother Sebastian. Ataulf went over to the side of the Emperor
Honorius and promised, in return for the assurance of supplies of grain (and assignments
of land), to deliver up the heads of both usurpers and to set free Placidia,
the Emperor's sister, who was held as a prisoner by the Goths. He certainly
succeeded without much trouble in getting rid of the usurpers. As, however,
Honorius kept back the supply of grain and Ataulf, exasperated by this, did not
give up Placidia, hostilities once more began between the Goths and the Romans.
After an unsuccessful attempt to surprise Marseilles, Ataulf captured the towns
of Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux by force of arms (413). But a complete
alteration took place in the king's intentions, obviously through the influence
of Placidia, whom he took as his (second) wife in January (414). As he himself
repeatedly declared, he now finally gave up his original cherished plan of
converting the Roman Empire into a Gothic one, and rather strove to identify
his people wholly with the Roman State. His political programme was therefore
just the same as that of the Ostrogoth king Theodoric, later on, when he accomplished
the founding of the Italian kingdom. In spite of these assurances the Emperor
refused him every concession; influenced by the general Constantius, who
himself desired the hand of the beautiful princess, Honorius looked upon the
marriage of his sister with the Barbarian as a grievous disgrace to his house.
In consequence Ataulf was again compelled to turn his arms against the Empire.
He first appointed an anti-emperor in the person of Attalus, without however
achieving any success by this move, since Attains had not the slightest support
in Gaul. When Constantius then blockaded the Gallic ports with his fleet and
cut off supplies, the position of the Goths there became quite untenable, so
that Ataulf decided to seek a place of retreat in Spain. He evacuated Gaul,
after terrible devastation, and took possession of the Spanish province
of Tarraconensis (in the beginning of 415),
but without quite giving up the thought of a future understanding with the
imperial power. In Barcelona, Placidia bore him a son, who received the name of
Theodosius at his baptism, but he soon died. And not long afterwards death
overtook the king from a wound which one of his followers inflicted out of
revenge (in the summer of 415).
Wallia. 415-418
After Ataulf's death the anti-Romanizing tendencies among the
Visigoths, never quite suppressed, became active again. Many Pretenders
contended for the throne, but all, as it seems, were animated by the thought of
governing independently of Rome and not in subjection to it. At length Sigerich, brother of the Visigoth prince Sarus, murdered by
Ataulf, succeeded in getting possession of the throne. Sigerich at once had the children of Ataulf’s first marriage
slaughtered, and Placidia suffered the most shameful treatment from him.
However, after reigning for one week only he was murdered certainly by the
instigation of Wallia, who now became head of the Goths (autumn
415).
Wallia, although
no less an enemy to Rome than his predecessor, at once granted the imperial
princess a more humane treatment, and first tried to develop further the
dominion already founded in Spain. But as the imperial fleet again cut off all
supplies, and famine broke out, he determined to take possession of the Roman
granary in Africa. But the undertaking miscarried because of the foundering in
the Straits of Gibraltar of a detachment sent on in advance, which was looked
upon as a bad omen (416). The king, obliged by necessity, concluded a treaty
with Constantius in consequence of which the Goths pledged themselves, in
return for a supply of 600,000 measures of grain from the Emperor, to deliver
up Placidia, to free Spain from the Vandals, Alans, and Sueves, and to give
hostages. After fierce protracted fighting the Gothic army overcame first
the Silingian Vandals and then the Alans
(416-418). But when Wallia also wanted to advance against the Asdingian Vandals and the Sueves in Galicia he was
suddenly called back by Constantius, who did not wish the Goths to become too
powerful, and land for his people to settle upon was assigned to him in the
province of Aquitania Secunda and in
some adjoining districts by the terms of a treaty of alliance (end of 418).
Shortly after Wallia died, and was succeeded on the Visigoth throne
by Theodoric I, chosen by the people.
Theodoric and Aetius. 421-451
Historical
tradition is silent over the first years of Theodoric's reign; they were taken
up with the difficulties of devising and executing the partition of the land
with the settled Roman population. The Goths kept their national constitution
and were pledged to give military assistance to the Empire. Their king was
under the supreme command of the Emperor; he only possessed a real power over
his own people, while he had no legal authority over the Roman provincials.
Such an indeterminate situation, after the endeavours so long directed towards
the attainment of political independence, could not last long.
In 421 or 422
Theodoric fulfilled his agreement by sending a contingent to the Roman army
which was marching against the Vandals; but in the decisive battle these troops
fell upon the Romans from behind and so helped the Vandals to a brilliant
victory. In spite of this base breach of faith the Goths came off unpunished,
and even dared to advance southwards to the Mediterranean coast. In the year
425 a Gothic corps was before the important fortress of Arles, the coveted key
of the Rhone valley; but it was forced to retreat by the rapid approach of an
army under Aetius. After further fighting, about which unfortunately nothing
detailed is known to us, peace was made and the Goths were granted full
sovereignty over the provinces which had originally been assigned to them for
occupation only—Aquitanica Secunda and
the north-west corner of Narbonensis Prima—while
they restored all their conquests (c. 426).
This peace
continued for a considerable period and was only interrupted by the
unsuccessful attempt of the Goths to surprise Arles (430). But when in 435
fresh disturbances broke out in Gaul, Theodoric took up once more his plans for
the conquest of the whole of Narbonensian Gaul.
In 436 he appeared with a strong force before the town of Narbonne, which
however after a long siege was relieved by Roman troops (437). The Goths went
on fighting, but without success, and were at last driven back as far as
Toulouse. But in the decisive battle which was fought before the walls of this
town (439) the Romans suffered a severe defeat, and only the heavy loss of life
which the Goths themselves sustained could decide the king to agree to the
provisional restoration of the status quo.
Theodoric was
certainly not disposed to be satisfied with the narrow territory surrendered to
him. Therefore (c. 442) we find him again on the side of Rome's enemies. First
he entered into close relations with Gaiseric, the dreaded king of the Vandals;
but this coalition, which would have been so dangerous for the Roman Empire,
was broken up by the ingenious diplomacy of Aetius. He next tried to attach
himself to the powerful and rising kingdom of the Sueves by giving King Rechiar one of his daughters in marriage, and by
furnishing troops to assist his advance into Spain (449). It was only when
danger threatened the whole of the civilized West by the rise of the power of
the Huns under Attila, that the Goths again allied themselves with the Romans.
Invasion of Attila. 451
In the beginning
of the year 451 Attila's mighty army, estimated at half a million, set out from
Hungary, crossed the Rhine at Easter-time, and invaded Belgica.
It was only now that Aetius, who had been deceived by the false representations
of the king of the Huns, thought of offering resistance; but the standing army
at his command was absolutely insufficient to hold the field against such a
formidable opponent. He found himself, therefore, obliged to beg for help from
the king of the Visigoths, who although he had at first intended to keep
himself neutral and await the development of events in his territory, thought, after
long hesitation, that it would be to his own interest to obey the call.
Theodoric joined the Romans with a fine army which he himself led, accompanied
by his sons Thorismund and Theodoric. Attila had in the meantime
advanced as far as Orleans, which Sangiban, the
king of the Alans who were settled there, promised to betray to him. The
proposed treachery, however, was frustrated, for the allies were already on the
spot before the arrival of the Huns, and had encamped in strength before the
city. Attila thought he could not venture an attack on the strong
fortifications with his troops, which principally consisted of cavalry, so he
retreated to Troyes and took up a position five miles before that town on an
extensive plain near the place called Mauriacus,
there to await a decisive battle with the Gotho-Roman
army which was following him. Attila occupied the centre of the Hun array with
the picked troops of his people, while both the wings were composed of troops
from the subjected German tribes. His opponents were so arranged that Theodoric
with the bulk of the Visigoths occupied the right wing, Aetius with the Romans,
and a part of the Goths under Thorismund formed the left wing of the
army, while the untrustworthy Alans stood in the centre. Attila first tried to
get possession of a height commanding the battlefield, but Aetius and Thorismund were
beforehand and successfully repulsed all the attacks of the Huns on their
position. The king of the Huns now hurled himself with great force on the Visigothic main
body commanded by Theodoric. After a long struggle the Goths succeeded in
driving the Huns back to their camp; great losses occurred on both sides; the
aged king of the Goths was among the slain, as was also a kinsman of Attila's.
The battle however
remained drawn, for both sides kept the field. The moral effect, which told for
the Romans and their allies, was, however, very important, inasmuch as the
belief that the powerful king of the Huns was invincible had suffered a severe
shock. At first it was decided to shut up the Huns in their barricade of wagons
and starve them out. But when the body of Theodoric, who had been supposed up
till then to be among the survivors, had been found and buried, Thorismund,
who was recognized as king by the army, called upon his people to revenge and
to take the enemy's position by storm. But Aetius, who did not wish to let the
Goths become too powerful, succeeded in persuading Thorismund to
relinquish his scheme, advising his return to Toulouse, to prevent any attempt
on his brother's part to get possession of the crown by means of the royal
hoard there. Thus were the Goths deprived of the well-earned fruits of their
famous exploit; the Huns returned home unmolested (451).
Theodoric II. 451-467
Thorismund proved
himself anxious to develop the national policy adopted by his father, and in
the same spirit. After he had succeeded, for the time being, in keeping
possession of the throne, he subdued the Alans who had settled near Orleans and
thereby made preparations for extending the Gothic territory beyond the Loire.
Then he tried to bring Arles under his power, but without having attained his
object he returned once more to his country, where in the meanwhile his
brothers. Theodoric (II) and Friedrich had stirred up a rebellion. After
several armed encounters Thorismund was assassinated (453).
Theodoric II
succeeded him on the throne. The characteristic mark of his rule is the close
though occasionally interrupted connection with Rome. The treaty broken under
Theodoric I—which implied the supremacy of the Empire over the kingdom of
Toulouse—was renewed immediately after his accession to the throne. For the
rest, this connection was never taken seriously by Theodoric but was
principally used by him as a means towards the attainment of that end which his
predecessors had vainly striven for by direct means — the spread of the
Visigoth dominion in Gaul and more especially in Spain. Already, in the year
454, Theodoric found an opportunity for activity in the interest of the Roman
Empire; a Gothic army under Friedrich marched into Spain and pacified the
rebellious Bagaudae ex auctoritate Romana. After the murder of
Valentinian III (March 455) Avitus went as magister militum to Gaul to win over the most influential
powers of the country for the new Emperor, Petronius Maximus. In consequence of
his personal influence — he had formerly initiated Theodoric into the knowledge
of Roman literature - he succeeded in bringing the king of the Goths to
recognize Maximus. When, however, soon after this, the news of the murder of
the Emperor arrived (31 May), Theodoric requested him to take the imperium himself.
On 9 July, Avitus, who had been proclaimed Emperor, accompanied by Gothic
troops marched into Italy where he met with universal recognition. The close
relations between the Empire and the Goths came again into operation against
the Sueves. As the latter repeatedly made plundering expeditions into Roman
territory, Theodoric, with a considerable force to which the Burgundians also
added a contingent, marched over the Pyrenees in the summer of 456, decisively
defeated them, and took possession of a large part of Spain, nominally for the
Empire, but actually for himself.
But the state of
affairs changed at one stroke when Avitus, in the autumn of the year 456,
abdicated the purple. Theodoric had now no longer any interest in adhering to
the Empire. He had in fact required the promotion of Avitus because
he enjoyed a great reputation in Gaul and possessed there a strong support
among the resident nobility. Friendship with him could only be of use to the
king of the Goths in respect to the Roman provincials living in Toulouse. But
the elevation of the new Emperor Majorian, on 1 April 457, had occurred in
direct opposition to the wishes of the Gallo-Roman nobility to place one of
themselves upon the imperial throne. Taking advantage of the consequent discord
in Gaul, Theodoric appeared as the open foe of the imperial power of Rome. He
himself marched with an army into the Gallic province of Narbonne and once more
began with the siege of Arles; he also sent troops to Spain which, however,
only fought with varying success. But in the winter of 458 the Emperor appeared
in Gaul with considerable forces, quieted the rebellious Burgundians, and
obliged the Visigoths to raise the blockade of Arles and again conclude peace
(spring 459).
Although in the
year 461 yet another change took place on the imperial throne, Theodoric
thought it more advantageous for the time being to maintain, at least formally,
the imperial alliance. On the other hand the chief general Aegidius, a
faithful follower of Majorian, supported by a fine army, marched against
the new imperial ruler. In the conflict which then ensued Theodoric found a favourable
opportunity for resuming his policy of expansion in Gaul. At the call of
Count Agrippinus, who was commanding in Narbonne
and was hard pressed by Aegidius, he marched into the Roman territory and
quartered upon that important town Gothic troops under the command of his
brother Friedrich (462). Driven out of southern Gaul, Aegidius turned
northwards whither a Gothic army led by Friedrich followed him. A great battle
took place near Orleans in which the Goths suffered a severe defeat, chiefly
through the bravery of the Salian Franks, who were opposed to them and lost
their leader in the battle (463). Taking advantage of the victory, Aegidius now
began to press victoriously into the Visigoth territory, but sudden death
prevented him from carrying out his purposes (464).
Euric. 467-484
Theodoric, freed
from his most dangerous enemy, did not delay making good the losses he had
suffered; but he died in the year 466 at the hand of his brother Euric,
who was a champion of the anti-Roman national party and now ascended the
throne. Contemporaries agree in describing the new king as characterized by
great energy and warlike ability. We may venture to add from historical facts
that he was also a man of distinguished political talent. The leading idea in
his policy—the entire rejection of even a formal suzerainty of the Roman
Empire—came into operation on his accession to the throne. The embassy which he
then sent off to the Emperor of Eastern Rome can only have had for its object a
request for the recognition of the Visigoth sovereignty. As no agreement was
arrived at he tried to bring about an alliance with the Vandals and the Sueves,
but the negotiations came to nothing when a strong East-Roman fleet appeared in
African waters (467). Euric at first pursued a neutral course, but as
the Roman expedition, set on foot with such considerable effort against the
Vandal kingdom, resulted so lamentably (468), he did not hesitate to come
forward as assailant, while he simultaneously pushed forward his troops into
Gaul and Spain (469). He opened hostilities in Gaul with a sudden attack on the
Bretons whom the Emperor had sent to the town of Bourges; at Déols, not far from Chateauroux, a battle took place in
which the Bretons were overthrown. Yet the Goths did not succeed in pushing
forward over the Loire to the north. Count Paulus, supported by Frankish
auxiliaries, successfully opposed them here. Euric therefore
concentrated his whole strength partly on the conquest of the province of Aquitanica Prima, partly on the annexation of the
lower Rhone valley, especially the long-coveted Arles. The provinces of Novempopulana and (for the most part) Narbonensis Prima had been probably already occupied
by the Goths under Theodoric II. An army which the West-Roman Emperor Anthemius
sent to Gaul for the relief of Arles was defeated in the year 470 or 471, and
for the time being a large part of Provence was seized by the Goths. In Aquitanica Prima, also, town after town fell into the
hands of Euric's general Victorius; only Clermont, the capital city of Auvergne,
obstinately defied the repeated attacks of the barbarians for many years. The
moving spirits in the resistance were the brave Ecdicius,
a son of the former Emperor Avitus, and the poet Sidonius Apollinaris,
who had been its bishop from about 470. The letters of the latter give us a
clear picture of the struggle which was waged with the greatest animosity on
both sides. Euric is said to have stated that he would rather give up
the much more valuable Septimania than
renounce the possession of that town. The wholly impotent Western Empire was
unable to do anything for the besieged. In the year 475 peace was at last made
between the Emperor Nepos and Euric by the intervention of Bishop
Epiphanius of Ticinum (Pavia).
Unfortunately the conditions are not more accurately known, but there can be no
doubt that, besides the previously conquered territory in Spain, the district
between the Loire, the Rhone, the Pyrenees, and the two seas was relinquished
to Euric in sovereign possession. Thus Auvergne, so fiercely
contended for, was surrendered to the Goths.
But in spite of
this important success the king of the Goths had by no means reached the goal
of his desires; it may be seen from the line of policy he followed later that
the present moment seemed to him fit, for carrying out that subjection of the
whole of the West which had long since been the aim of Alaric I.
For this reason
peace only lasted for a year, which was spent in settling internal affairs. The
most important event under Euric’s government
at this time is the publication of a Code of Law which was intended to settle
the legal relations of the Goths, both amongst themselves and with the Romans
who had come under the Gothic dominion. The deposition of the last West-Roman
Emperor, Romulus, by the leader of the mercenaries, Odovacar (Sept. 476), gave
the king a welcome reason for renewing hostilities, as he looked upon the
treaty made with the Empire as dissolved. A Gothic army crossed the Rhone and
obtained final possession of the whole of southern Provence as far as the
Maritime Alps, together with the cities of Arles and Marseilles, after a
victorious battle against the Burgundians, who had ruled over this district
under Roman suzerainty. But when Euric also marched a body of troops
into Italy it suffered defeat from the officers of Odovacar. Consequently a
treaty was concluded by the East-Roman Emperor Zeno and the king of the
Burgundians whereby the newly conquered territory in Gaul (between the Rhone
and the Alps south of the Durance) was surrendered by Odovacar to the Goths,
while Euric evidently pledged himself to undertake no further
hostilities against Italy (c. 477).
Euric was
incessantly harassed by the difficulties of defending this mighty conquest from
foes without and within. In particular, very frequent cause for interference
was given by the conduct of the Catholic clergy, who openly showed their
disloyalty, and in the Vandal kingdom did not shrink from the most treacherous
actions. Yet they seem only in rare instances to have been answered by violence
and cruelty. The Saxon pirates who, according to old custom, infested the coast
of Gaul were vigorously punished by a fleet sent out against them. In the same
way it seems that an invasion of the Salian Franks was warded off successfully.
It is not strange that, owing to the prestige of the Visigoth power, Euric's help was repeatedly requested by other
peoples, as by the Heruli, Warni,
and Tulingi who, settled in the Netherlands,
found themselves threatened by the overwhelming might of the Franks and owed to
the intervention of the Gothic king the maintenance of their political
existence. The poet Sidonius Apollinaris has left behind a vivid
description of the way in which, at that time, the representatives of the most
diverse nations pressed round Euric at the Visigoth Court, even the
Persians are said to have formed an alliance with him against the Eastern
Empire. It seems that envoys from the Roman population of Italy also appeared
at Toulouse to ask the king to expel Odovacar, whose rule was only reluctantly
endured by the Italians.
We do not know
if Euric intended gratifying this last request, in any case he was
prevented from executing any such designs through death, which overtook him in
Arles in December 484. Under his son Alaric II the Visigoth power fell from its
height. To be sure, the beginning of the decline originated at a time further
back. Ataulf’s political programme, as already
observed, had originally contemplated the establishment of a national Gothic
State in the place of the Roman Empire. Yet not one of the Visigoth rulers, in
spite of honest purpose, could accomplish this task. It is to their credit that
they succeeded at last, after severe fighting, in freeing themselves from the
suzerainty of the Emperor and obtaining political autonomy, but the State which
thus resulted resembled a Germanic National State no more than it did a
Roman Imperium, and it could not contain the seeds of life because it was
in a great measure dependent on foreign obsolescent institutions. The Goths had
entered the world of Roman civilization too suddenly to be able either to
resist or to absorb the foreign influences which pressed on them from all
sides. It was fortunate for the progress of Romanization that the Goths, cut
off from the rest of the German world, could not draw thence fresh strength to
recuperate their nationality or to replace their losses, and moreover that
through the immense extension of the kingdom under Euric the
numerical proportion between the Roman and Gothic population had altered very
much in favour of the former. So under the circumstances it was a certainty
that the Gothic kingdom in Gaul must succumb to the rising and politically
creative power of the Franks. Neither the personality of Alaric, who was little
fitted for ruling, nor the antagonism between Catholicism and Arianism caused
the downfall, they only hastened it.
Alaric II. 484-502
Alaric ascended
the throne on 28 December 484. The king was of an indolent weak nature,
altogether the opposite of his father, and without energy or warlike capacity,
as immediately became evident. For example, he submitted to give up Syagrius,
whom he had received into his kingdom after the battle of Soissons (486), when
the victorious king of the Franks threatened him with war. The inevitable
settlement by arms of the rivalry between the two principal powers in Gaul was
of course only put off a little longer by this compliance. About 494 the war
began. It lasted for many years and was carried on with varying success on both
sides. Hostilities were ended through the mediation of the Ostrogoth king
Theodoric—who in the meanwhile had become Alaric's father-in-law —by the
conclusion of a treaty of peace on the terms of Uti possidetis (c. 502), but this condition could not
last long, for the antagonism was considerably aggravated by the conversion of
Clovis to the Catholic Church in the year 496 (25 Dec.). Consequently the
greatest part of Alaric's Roman subjects, with the clergy of course at their
head, adhered to the Franks, and jealously endeavoured to bring about the
subjection of the Visigoth kingdom to their rule. Alaric was obliged to adopt
severe measures in some instances against such treasonable desires, but usually
he tried by gentleness and the granting of favors to
win over the Romans to his support, an attempt which, in view of the prevalent
and insurmountable antagonism, was of course quite ineffectual and even
defeated its own ends, being regarded only as weakness. Thus he permitted the
bishoprics kept vacant under Euric to be again filled, he moreover
permitted the Gallic bishops to hold a Council at Agde in
September 506, and—of the ambiguous attitude of the clergy—it was opened with a
prayer for the prosperity of the Visigoth kingdom. The publication of the
so-called Lex Romana Visigothorum,
also named Breviarium Alaricianum, represented the most important act of
conciliation. This Code of Law, which had been composed by a commission of
lawyers together with prominent laymen and even clergy, and was drawn from
extracts and explanations of Roman law, was sanctioned by the king at Toulouse,
2 Feb. 506, after having received the approval of an assembly of bishops and
distinguished provincials, and was ordered to be used by the Roman population
in the Gothic kingdom.
Battle of Vouglé. 506-507
Why the explosion
was delayed until the year 507 is unknown. That the king of the Franks was the
aggressor is certain. He easily found a pretext for beginning the war as
champion and protector of Catholic Christianity against the absolutely just
measures which Alaric took against his treacherous orthodox clergy. Clovis had
sufficiently appreciated the by no means despicable power of the Visigoth
kingdom, and had summoned a very considerable army, one contingent of which was
furnished by the Ripuarian Franks. His allies, the Burgundians,
approached from the east in order to take the Goths in the flank. Among his
allies Clovis probably also counted on the Byzantines, who placed their fleet
at his disposal. On his part Alaric had not looked upon coming events idly, but
his preparations were hampered by the bad state of the finances of his kingdom.
In order to obtain the necessary funds he was obliged to coin gold pieces of
inferior value, which were soon discredited everywhere. Apparently the fighting
strength of the Gothic army was inferior to the army of Clovis, but if the
Ostrogoth troops, who had held out prospects of coming, should arrive at the
right time Alaric could hope to oppose his foe successfully. The king of the
Franks had to endeavour to bring about a decisive action before the arrival of
these allies. In the spring of 507 he suddenly crossed the Loire and marched
towards Poitiers, where he probably joined the Burgundians. On the Campus Vocladensis, ten miles from Poitiers, the Visigoths had
taken up their position. Alaric put off beginning battle because he was waiting
for the Ostrogoth troops, but as they were hindered by the appearance of a
Byzantine fleet in Italian waters he determined to fight instead of beating a
retreat, as it would have been wise to do. After a short engagement the Goths
turned and fled. In the pursuit the king of the Goths was killed, it was said
by Clovis' own hand (507). With this overthrow the rule of the Visigoths in
Gaul was ended forever.
The principal town
of the Gothic kingdom was Toulouse, where the royal treasure was also
kept; Euric from time to time also held court in Bordeaux, Alaric II
in Narbonne. The Gothic rule originally stretched, as has been already
mentioned, as far as the province of Aquitanica Secunda and some bordering municipalities, among which
was the district of Toulouse, but later on it extended not only over the whole
territory of the Gallic provinces, but in addition to several parts of the
provinces Viennensis, Narbonensis Secunda, Alpes Maritimae,
and Lugdunensis Tertia. The Gothic
possessions included also the greater part of the Iberian peninsula, i.e. the
provinces of Baetica, Lusitania, Tarraconensis, and Carthaginensis.
The provinces named were in Roman times, in so far as it was a question of
civil administration, governed by consulares or presides, and they were again divided into city-districts (civitates or municipia).
Under the sovereignty of the Goths this constitution was maintained in its
chief features.
The inhabitants of
the kingdom of Toulouse were composed of two races—the Goths and the Romans.
The Goths were regarded by the Romans as foreigners so long as the federal
connection remained in force, yet both peoples lived side by side, each under
its own law and jurisdiction: intermarriage was forbidden. This rigid line of
separation was adhered to even when the Goths had shaken off the imperial
suzerainty and the Gothic king had become the sovereign of the native
population of Gaul. Theoretically, the Romans had equal privileges in the
State; thus they were not treated as a conquered people without rights, as the
Vandals and Langobards (Lombards) dealt with the inhabitants of
Africa and Italy. That the Goths were the real rulers was clearly enough made
manifest to the Romans.
The domestic
condition of the Visigoths before the settlement in Gaul was undoubtedly on the
same level as in their original home; private property in land was unknown,
agriculture was comparatively primitive, and cattle-rearing provided the
principal means of subsistence. A national change began with the settlement in
Aquitaine. This was done on the principle of the Roman quartering of troops, so
that the Roman landowners were obliged to give up to the Goths in free
possession a portion of their total property together with the coloni, slaves, and cattle appertaining to it.
According to the oldest Gothic codes of law the Goth received two-thirds of the
tilled land and, it seems, one-half of the woods. The wood and the meadow land
which was not partitioned belonged to the Goths and the Romans for use in
common. The parcels of land subjected to partition were called sortes, the Roman share, generally, tertia,
their occupants hospites or consortes. The Gothic sortes were
exempt from taxation. As the invaders were very numerous compared with the
extent of the province to be apportioned, there is no doubt that not only the
large estates, but also the middle-sized and smaller properties were partitioned.
Nevertheless it is evident that not every Goth can have shared with a Roman
possessor, because there would certainly not have been estates enough; we must
rather assume that in the share given up larger properties were split up among
several families, as a rule among kinsmen. As the apportionment of the single
lots undoubtedly took place through the decisive influence of the king, it is
natural that the nobility (i.e. nobility by military service) was favoured in
the partition above the ordinary freemen. The landed property of the monarch’s favourites
must have gained considerably in extent, as elsewhere, through assignments from
state property. The very considerable imperial possessions, both crown and
private property, as a rule fell to the share of royalty.
Land partition in
the districts conquered later followed the same plan as in Aquitaine; seizures
of entire Roman estates certainly occurred, but they were exceptions and
happened under special circumstances. As a rule the Romans were protected by
law in the possession of their tertiae,
even if it were only for fiscal reasons. The considerably extended range of the
Gothic kingdom offered the people ample space for colonization, so it was not
necessary to encroach on the whole of the Roman territory as had been the case
in Aquitaine. It is to be assumed that in the newly won territories only the
superfluous element of the population had to be provided for; we are not to
suppose a general desertion of the home-land.
The social economy
proceeded, on the whole, on the same lines as before, i.e. through coloni and slaves, from whose toil the owners
derived their principal support, at least in so far as it was a question of
food. For the Goths, whose favourite occupations were warfare and the chase,
had no inclination to devote themselves to arduous agricultural toil. They only
wanted to control directly the rearing of cattle, as they did of old; animal
food seems to have been provided principally by means of large herds of swine.
The revolution which the partition of land brought about in the habits of the
Goths was too powerful not to exert the deepest influence on all the conditions
of life. The rich revenues led to the display of a wanton and indolent way of
living; the close contact with the Romans, who were for the most part morally
decadent, was bound to affect injuriously a people so famous in earlier times
for its austere manners. The old national bonds of union, besides having been
relaxed through the migration, now from the scattering of the mass in colonization
lost more and more of their original importance, since kinsmen need no longer
be companions on the farmstead in order to obtain a living. The adoption of the
Roman conditions of land-holding obliged the Goths to accept numerous legal
arrangements which were foreign to their national law and altered its
principles considerably. Nevertheless the national consciousness was strong
enough to prevent it from merging itself quickly and completely in the Roman
system; in contrast to the Ostrogoths who did nothing but carefully conserve
the Roman institutions which they found, the Visigoths are remarkable for an
attitude in many respects independent towards the foreign organization.
The entire power
of government lay in the hands of the king, but the several rulers did not
succeed in making their power absolute. Outwardly the Visigoth king was only
slightly distinguished from the other freemen; like them he wore the national
skin garment, and long curly hair. The raised seat as well as the sword appear
as tokens of royal power, the insignia such as the purple mantle and the crown
do not come till later. The succession to the throne follows the system
peculiar to the old German constitution of combined election and inheritance.
After the death of Alaric I his brother-in-law Ataulf was chosen king; thus a
kindred connection played an important part in this choice. Ataulf’s friendliness to Rome had placed him in opposition to the great mass of the
people; therefore his successor was not his brother, as he had wished, but
first Sigerich and then Wallia, who both
belonged to other houses. The elevation of Theodoric I is also an instance of
free election; the royal dignity remained in his house for over a
century. Thorismund was appointed king by the army; the succession of
Theodoric II, Euric, and Alaric II, on the other hand, was only confirmed
by popular recognition.
Just as the people
regularly took a part in the choice of the successor to the throne, so their
influence was often brought to bear on the sovereign's conduct of government.
After the settlement in Gaul there could certainly no longer be any question of
a national assembly in the old sense of the word, especially after the great
expansion of territory under Euric. Meetings of all the freemen had become
impossible on account of the expansion of the Gothic colonies. The circle of
those who could obey the call to assemble became, therefore, smaller and
smaller, while in carrying out the principal public functions, such as the
coronation of the king, only those of the people who happened to be present at
the place of election or who lived in the immediate neighbourhood, could as a
rule take part. The importance which the commonalty hereby lost was gained by
the nobility, an aristocracy founded on personal service to the king. It was
only in the army that the greater part of the people found opportunity of
expressing its will. It is certain that among the Visigoths, as among the
Franks, regular military assemblies were held, which at first served the
purpose of reviews and were under the command of the king. In these assemblies
important political questions were discussed but the decision of the
people was not always for the welfare of the State.
The kingdom was
subdivided very nearly on the lines of the previous Roman divisions into provinciae, and these again into civitates (territoria). At the head of the province was the dux
as magistrate for Goths and Romans. He was also, as his title implies, in the
first place the commander of the militia in his district, and he provided also
the final authority and appeal in matters of government, corresponding to the Praefectus Praetorio or vicarius of imperial times. The centre of
gravity of the government lay in the municipalities whose rulers were comites civitatum.
They took exactly the place of the Roman provincial governors, so that the
city-districts also appear under the title of provinciae.
Their authority extended even to the exercise of jurisdiction with the
exception of such cases as were reserved to the civic magistrates, and included
control of the police and the collection of taxes. The dux could
at the same time becomes of a civitas in his district. At the
head of the towns themselves were the curiales who,
as hitherto, were bound by oath to fill their offices; and they were personally
responsible for collecting the taxes. The most important official was the defensor, who was chosen from among the curiales by the citizens and only confirmed by the
king. He exercised, in the first instance, jurisdiction in minor matters, but
his activity extended over all the branches of municipal administration. Side
by side with this Roman magistrature existed the national
system which the Goths had brought with them. The Gothic people formed
themselves into bodies of thousands, five hundreds, hundreds, and tens, which
also remained as personal societies after the settlement. The millenarius, as of old, led the thousand in war and
ruled over it jointly with the heads of the hundreds both in war and in peace.
The comes civitatis and
his vicar originally only possessed jurisdiction over the
Romans of his own circuit, but in Euric's time
that had so far changed that he now possessed authority to judge the Goths as
well in civil suits in conjunction with the millenarius:
thus the later condition was prepared in which the millenarius appears
only as military official. On the other hand the defensor remained
a judiciary solely for the Romans.
We know but little
about the officers of the central government. The first minister of Euric and
of Alaric II was Leo of Narbonne, a distinguished man of varied talents. His
duty comprised a combination of the functions of the quaestor sacri palatii and
of the magister officiorum at the imperial Court; he drew
up the king's orders, conducted business with the ambassadors, and arranged the
applications for an audience. A higher minister of the royal chancery was Anianus, who attested the authenticity of the official
copies of the Lex Romana Visigothorum and
distributed them; he seems to have answered to the Roman primicerius notariorum or referendarius.
The Church
The organization
of the Catholic Church was not disturbed by the Visigoth rule: rather it was
strengthened. The ecclesiastical subdivision of the land as it had developed in
the last years of the Roman sway corresponded on the whole with the political:
the bishoprics, which coincided in extent with the town districts, were grouped
under metropolitan sees, which corresponded with the provinces of the secular
administration. Since the middle of the fifth century the authority of the
Roman bishop over the Church had been generally recognized. Next to the Pope
the bishop of Arles exercised over the Gallic clergy a theoretically almost
unlimited disciplinary power. A bishop was chosen by the laity and the clergy
of his see, and was ordained by the metropolitan bishop of the province
together with other bishops. Although the boundaries of the Visigoth kingdom
now in no way coincided with the old provincial and metropolitan boundaries,
the hitherto existing metropolitan connection was nevertheless not set aside,
nor were the relations of the bishops with the Pope interfered with. The Gothic
government as a rule showed great indulgence and consideration to the Catholic
Church, which only changed to a more severe treatment when the clergy were
guilty of treasonable practices, as happened under Euric. No organized and
general persecution of the Catholics from religious fanaticism ever took place.
The Catholic Church enjoyed particularly favourable conditions under Alaric II,
who in consideration of the threatening struggle with Clovis acknowledged the
formal legal position of the Roman Church according to the hitherto existing
rules.
Hardly anything is
known of the ecclesiastical organization of the Arians in the kingdom of
Toulouse. Probably in all the larger towns there were Arian bishops as well as
orthodox ones, and no doubt in earlier times they had been appointed by the
king. Under the several bishops were the different classes of subordinate
clergy; presbyters and deacons are mentioned as in the orthodox Church. The
endowment of the Arian Church was probably as a rule allowed for out of the
revenue; now and then confiscated Catholic churches as well as their endowments
were also made over to it. The church service was of course held in the
vernacular as it was in other German churches; the greater number of the clergy
were therefore of Gothic nationality. The opposition between the two creeds was
also certainly a very sharp one. Both sides carried on an active propaganda,
which on the Arian side not unfrequently seems to have been urged by
force, but such ebullitions scarcely had the support and approval of the Gothic
government.
Very scanty indeed
is our knowledge of the civilization of the kingdom of Toulouse. That the
Romance element was foremost in almost every department has already been
observed. The Goths however held to their national dress until a later period;
they wore the characteristic skin garment which covered the upper part of the
body, and laced boots of horse-hide which reached up to the calf of the leg;
the knee was left bare. There is no doubt that the Gothic tongue was spoken by
the people in intercourse with each other; unhappily no vestiges remain of it
except in proper names. It is certain however that a great part of the
nobility, especially the higher officials, understood Latin well. Most of the
Arian clergy undoubtedly were also masters of both languages. Latin was the
language of diplomatic intercourse and of legislation. Theodoric II was trained
in Roman literature by Avitus; Euric however understood so
little of the foreign language that he was obliged to use an interpreter for
diplomatic correspondence. Yet this king was in no way opposed to the knowledge
and significance of classical culture. The Visigothic Court therefore
formed a haven of frequent resort for the last representatives of Roman
literature in Gaul. And the kings, from various motives, but especially from a
fondness for Roman models, would employ the art of these men to celebrate their
own deeds. Here may be named in the first place the poet Sidonius Apollinaris who
for a long time lived, first in the Court of Theodoric II and then in that
of Euric. Euric’s minister Leo also is said to have
distinguished himself as a poet, historian, and lawyer, but no more of his
writings have been preserved than of the rhetorician Lampridius,
who sang the fame of the Gothic royal house at the Court of Bordeaux. But the
decay of literature and of culture in general, which had been for so long in
progress in spite of the support of the still existent schools of rhetoricians,
could assuredly not be stayed by the patronage of the Gothic kings.
