14-3. The Last Act of the Roman Senate
The new importance assumed by the Senate in the course of the fifth century is evident both at Constantinople and at Rome, During the minority of Theodosius II it is chiefly the Senate of Constantinople which aids the regent Pulcheria and her minister Anthemius, the praetorian praefect, in the conduct of affairs; and though the Roman Senate hardly exerts any continuous influence, again and again in times of crisis it helps to determine the course of events. The autocracy consolidated by Diocletian begins to revert to the original dyarchy of princeps arid senatus which Augustus had founded. In the early years of the fifth century, partly in the later years of Stilicho, who made it his policy to favour the Senate, and partly during the interregnum in the effective exercise of the office of magister militiae, which lasted from the fall of Stilicho till the appearance of Constantius (411), it had shewn considerable activity; but the period of its greatest influence covers the last twenty-five years of the Western Empire.
It was with two of the chief senators that Pope Leo went to meet Attila in 451. It was before the Senate that Valentinian defended himself for the assassination of Aetius in 454. The assassination of Valentinian himself was followed by the accession of Maximus, a member of the great senatorial family of the Anicii; and it has even been suggested that the accession of Maximus perhaps indicates an attempt of the Anicii to establish a new government in the West, independent of Constantinople and resting on the support of the Senate. Maximus fell; but his successor, Avitus, who came to the throne by the support of a Gallo-Roman party, was resisted by the Senate, and fell in his turn. The accession of the next emperor, Majorian, is at any rate in form a triumph for the Senate; in his first constitution Majorian thanks the Senate for letting its choice fall upon him, and promises to govern by its advice.
But the reign of Anthemius (467-472) seems to mark the zenith of senatorial power. It was the appeal of the Senate to Constantinople which led to his accession; during his reign the Senate is powerful enough to try and condemn Arvandus, the praetorian praefect of Gaul, on a charge of treason; and in the civil war which precedes his fall, the Senate takes his side against his adversary Ricimer. Thus, in the paralysis of the imperial authority, the Senate stands side by side, and sometimes face to face, with the military power, as the representative of public authority and civil order. Its effective power is indeed little; the sword is too strong and too keen for that; but at any rate, in the agonies of the Empire, it behaves not unworthily of its secular tradition. And indeed in still other ways one cannot but feel that the end of Rome was not unworthy of herself.
Her last work in her age-long task of ruling the peoples was to give into the hands of the Teutonic tribes her structure of law and her system of administration: to the one, as late as 438, the Codex Theodosianus had just been added, while the other was being reformed and purified as late as the days of the last real Emperor of the West, Majorian. So Rome handed on the torch, as it were, newly trimmed; and though we must admit that in fact the imperial government of the fifth century suffered from the impotence of over-centralisation, we must also allow that she was in intention, as Professor Dill has well said, "probably never so anxious to check abuses of administration, or so compassionate for the desolate and the suffering, as in the years when her forces were being paralysed."
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