THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 214
Uneasy Succession in the Western Empire and the Rise of Aetius
14-8. Uneasy Succession in the Western Empire and the Rise of Aetius
The death of Honorius marks the beginning of a new phase in the history of the Western Empire. For the next thirty years a new personality dominates the course of events within the Empire: Aetius fills the scene with his actions; while without the Barbaric background is peopled by the squat figures of the Huns. Aetius was a Roman from Silistria, born about the year 390, the son of a certain Gaudentius, a magister equitum, by a rich Italian wife. In his youth he had served in the office of the praetorian praefect; and twice he had been a hostage, once with Alaric and his Goths, and once with the Huns. During the years in which he lived with the Huns, some time between 411 and 423, he formed a connexion with them, which was to exercise a great influence on the whole of his own career and on the history of the Empire itself. The Huns themselves, until they were united by Attila under a single government after the year 445, were a loose federation of Asiatic tribes, living to the north of the Danube, and serving as a fertile source of recruits for the Roman army.
They had already served Stilicho as mercenaries in his struggle with Radagaisus, and some time afterwards Honorius had taken 10,000 of them into his service After 423 they definitely formed the bulk of the armies of the Empire, which was now unable to draw so freely on the German tribes, occupied as these were in winning or maintaining their own settlements in Gaul, in Spain, and in Africa. Valentinian III may thus almost be called Emperor "by the grace of the Huns"; and to them Aetius owed both his political position and his military success.
On the death of Honorius the natural heir to the vacant throne was the young Valentinian, the son of Constantius and Placidia. But Valentinian was only a boy of four, and he was living at Constantinople. When the news of Honorius's death came to the ears of Theodosius II, he concealed the intelligence, until he had sent an army into Dalmatia; and he seems to have contemplated, at any rate for the moment, the possibility of uniting in his own hands the whole of the Empire But meanwhile a step was taken at Ravenna — either in order to anticipate and prevent such a policy on the part of the Eastern Emperor, or independently and without any reference to his action — which altered the whole position of affairs.
A party, with which Castinus, the new magister militum, seems to have been connected, determined to assert the independence of the West, and elevated John, the chief of the notaries in the imperial service, to the vacant throne, Aetius took office under the usurper as Cura Palatii (or Constable), and was sent to the Huns to recruit an army; while all the available forces were despatched to Africa to attack Boniface, the foe of Castinus and the friend of Placidia and Valentinian. Theodosius found himself compelled to abandon any hopes he may have cherished of annexing the Western Empire, and to content himself with securing it for the Theodosian house, while recognising its independence. He accordingly sent Valentinian to the West in 424, with an army to enforce his claims; and as John was weakened by the despatch of his forces to Africa, and Aetius had not yet appeared with his Huns, the triumph of Valentinian was easy.
His succession was a vindication of the title of the Theodosian house; and, when we consider the anti-clerical policy pursued by John, who had attacked the privileges of the clergy, it may also be regarded as a victory of clericalism, a cause to which the Theodosian house was always devoted. A closer connexion between East and West may also be said to be one of the results of the accession of Valentinian, even if it finally prevented the union of the two which had for a moment seemed possible; and the hostile attitude which had characterised the relations of Byzantium and Rome during the reign of Honorius, both in the days of Stilicho and in those of Constantius, now disappears.
Three days after the execution of the defeated usurper, Aetius appeared in Italy with 60,000 Huns. Too late to save his master, he nevertheless renewed the fight; and he was only induced to desist, and to send his Huns back to the Danube, by the promise of the title of comes along with a command in Gaul. Here Theodoric, the king of the Visigoths, had taken advantage of the confusion which had followed on the death of Honorius to deliver an attack upon Aries. Aetius relieved the town, and eventually made a treaty with Theodoric, by which, in return for the cession of the conquests they had recently made, the Visigoths ceased to stand to the Western Empire in the dependent relation of foederati, and became autonomous.
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