14-11. The Final Cession of the Western Empire
During the absence of Aetius in Gaul, Valentinian III had gone to the East, and married Eudoxia, the daughter of Theodosius II, thus drawing closer that new connexion of East and West, which had begun on the death of Honorius, and had been testified by the despatch of Eastern troops to the aid of the Western Empire against the Vandals in 431. One result of Valentinian's journey to the East was the reception at Rome by the senate in 438. The reception is described in an excerpt from the acts of the Senate which precedes the code of the Codex Theodosianus, a collection of imperial constitutions since the days of Constantine, which had just been compiled in Byzantium at the instance of Theodosius.
Though the reception of the Codex Theodosianus in the West may be taken as a symptom of the connexion of East and West at this date, its issue nevertheless marks an epoch in the history of the separation of the two. After 438 the East and the West legislate independently, the validity of a law made in the East is restricted to the East, unless it has been specifically adopted, after due communication, by the ruler of the West. The independence vindicated for the West in 425 was thus maintained in 488.
Another result was the final cession by the Western Empire of part of Dalmatia, one of the provinces of the diocese of Illyricum, the debatable land which Stilicho had so long disputed with the East. The cession was perhaps the price paid by the West in order to gain the aid of the East against the Vandals of Africa, and, more especially, to secure the services of the fleet which was still maintained in Eastern waters. In spite of the treaty of 435, the encroachments of the Vandals in Africa had still continued, and they had even begun to make piratical descents on the coasts of the Western Mediterranean.
In the first years of his conquest of Africa, Gaiseric must have put himself in possession of a small fleet of swift cruisers (liburnae), which was maintained in the diocese of Africa for the defence of its coasts from piracy. To these he would naturally add the numerous transports belonging to the navicularii, the corporation charged with the duty of transporting African corn to Rome. In 439 he was able, by the capture of Carthage, to provide himself with the necessary naval base; and henceforth he enjoyed the maritime supremacy of the Western Mediterranean. Like many another sovereign of Algeria since his time, Gaiseric made his capital into a buccaneering stronghold. Even before 435, he had been attacking Sicily and Calabria: in 440 he resumed the attack, and not only ravaged Sicily, but also besieged Panormus, from which, however, he was forced to retire by the approach of a fleet from the East.
In the face of this peril Italy, apparently destitute of a fleet, could do no more for itself than repair the walls of its towns, and station troops along the coasts — measures which are enjoyed by the novels of Valentinian III for the years 440 and 441; but Theodosius II determined to use the Eastern fleet to attack Gaiseric in his own quarters. The expedition of 441 proved, however, an utter failure, as indeed all expeditions against the Vandals were destined to prove themselves till the days of Belisarius. Gaiseric, a master of diplomacy, was able to use his wealth to induce both the Huns of the Danube and the enemies of the Eastern Empire along the Euphrates to bestir themselves; and Theodosius, finding himself hard pressed at home, was forced to withdraw his fleet, which Gaiseric had managed to keep idle in Sicily by pretence of negotiation. The one result of the expedition was a new treaty, made by Theodosius and confirmed by Valentinian in 442, by which Gaiseric gained the two rich provinces of Africa Proconsularis and Byzacena, and retained possession of part of Numidia (possibly as full sovereign and no longer as foedratus), while he abandoned to the Empire the less productive provinces of Mauretania on the west.
But the treaty could not be permanent; and the two dangers which had shewn themselves between 439 and 442 were fated to recur. On the one hand the piratical inroads of Gaiseric were destined to sap the resources and hasten the fall of the Western Empire; on the other, Gaiseric was to continue with fatal results the policy, which he had first attempted in 441, of uniting the enemies of the Roman name by his intrigues and his bribes in a great league against the Empire. It is of these two themes that the history of the Western Empire is chiefly composed in the few remaining years of its life.
The loss of Africa thus counterbalanced, and indeed far more than counterbalanced, Aetius's arduous recovery of Gaul. Elsewhere than in Gaul and Italy, the Western Empire only maintained a precarious hold on Spain. Britain was finally lost: a Gaulish chronicler notes under the years 441-442 that "the Britains, hitherto suffering from various disasters and vicissitudes, succumb to the sway of the Saxons." The diocese of Illyricum was partly ceded to the Eastern Empire, partly occupied by the Huns. Gaul itself was thickly sown with barbarian settlements: there were Franks in the north, and Goths in the southwest; there were Burgundians in Savoy, Alemanni on the upper Rhine, and Alans at Valence and Orleans; while the Bretons were beginning to occupy the north-west.
In Spain the disappearance of the Vandals in 429 left the Sueves as the only barbarian settlers; and they had for a time remained entrenched in the northwest of the peninsula, leaving the rest to the Roman provincials. But the accession of Rechiar in 438 marked the beginning of a new and aggressive policy. In 439 he entered Merida, on the southern boundary of Lusitania; in 441 he occupied Seville, and conquered the provinces of Baetica and Carthagena. The Roman commanders, who in Spain, as in Gaul, had to face a Jacquerie of revolted peasants as well as the barbarian enemy, were impotent to stay his progress; by his death in 448 he had occupied the greater part of Spain, and the Romans were confined to its northeast corner.
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