14-4. The Extinction of the Western Empire of the Roman Race
The figures in the drama of the last years of the Western Empire, which have perhaps had the greatest appeal for the imagination of the historian, are those of Galla Placidia and of Attila. Both figures have, indeed, a significance, which deserves some little consideration. Ravenna still testifies today to the fame of Placidia; and her name suggests the names of many others, her kinswomen and contemporaries, Pulcheria, Eudocia, Eudoxia, and Honoria, whose influence appears, in the pages of the Byzantine historians, to have largely determined the destinies of their age. "It is indeed," writes Gregorovius, "a remarkable historic phenomenon, that in periods of decadence some female figure generally rises into prominence"; and Professor Bury has also remarked that the influence of women was a natural result of the new mode of palatial life — a result which is obviously apparent in the attribution of the title of Augusta to Eudoxia in the East and to Placidia in the West.
Yet one cannot but feel that the Byzantine historians have been led by a certain "feminism," if it may be so called, which is characteristic of their historiography, to attribute to women, at any rate as regards the West, an excessive influence on the politics of the period. The fifth century was the age of the erotic novel — of Daphnis and Chloe, of Leucippe and Cleitophon, and it would almost appear as if Byzantine historians had infused into their history the eroticism of contemporary novels. It is therefore permissible to doubt whether Honoria was really responsible for the attack of Attila upon the West, or Eudoxia in the East and to Placidia in the West. Yet one cannot but feel that the Byzantine historians have been led by a certain feminism, if it may so be called, if not a play of fancy, and the story given by Joannes Antiochenus and Procopius of the seduction of the wife of Maximus by Valentinian III, which led Maximus to compass his death, is not equally fanciful.
The figure of Attila owes much of its fascination to the vivid descriptions which Priscus gives of his court and Jordanes of the great battle of the Mauriac plain; and the Nibelungenlied has added the attraction of legend to the appeal of history. Attila has, indeed, his significance in the history of the world. It matters little that he was vanquished in one of the so-called decisive battles of the world: if he had been the victor on the Mauriac plain, and had lived for twenty years afterwards, instead of two, he would none the less have fallen at last, if only the allies who stood together in that battle had continued their alliance.
The real significance of Attila lies in the fact, that the pressure of his Huns forced the Romans and the Teutons to recognise that the common interest of civilisation was at stake, and thus drove them to make the great alliance, on which the future progress of the world depended. The fusion of Romans and Teutons, of which the marriage of Ataulf and Placidia, as it is described in the pages of Olympiodorus, may seem to be a harbinger, is cemented in the bloodshed of the Mauriac plain.
Between the death of Alaric and the fall of Romulus Augustulus, the progress of events may be arranged in three definite stages. A period, which is marked by the patriciate of Constantius, begins in 410 and ends with the death of Honorius in 423; during this period there takes place the Visigothic settlement in the South of France. A second period, marked by the patriciate of Aetius, covers the reign of Valentinian III, and ends in 455: it is the period of the Vandal settlement in Africa, and of Hunnish inroads into Gaul and Italy. A final period, in which the patriciate is held by Ricimer, follows upon the extinction of the Theodosian house in the West: it ends, in the phrase of Count Marcellinus, who alone seems to have realised the importance of the event, with the "extinction of the Western Empire of the Roman race," and the settlement of Odovacar in Italy.
At the end of 410 Rufinus, as he wrote the preface to his translation of the homilies of Origen in a Sicilian villa which looked across to Reggio, saw the city in flames, and witnessed the gathering of the ships with which Alaric was preparing to invade Africa A little later, and he may have seen the ships destroyed by a tempest; a little later still, and he may have heard of Alaric's death and of his burial in the bed of the Busento. The Gothic king was succeeded by his brother-in-law Ataulf; and upon the doings of Ataulf, for the next two years, there rests a cloud of darkness. We know, indeed, that he stayed in Italy till the spring of 412; we learn from the Theodosian Code that he was in Tuscany in 411; and we are told by Jordanes that at this time he was spoiling Italy of public and private wealth alike, and that his Goths stripped Rome once more, like a flock of locusts, while Honorius sat powerless behind the walls of Ravenna — the one rock left to the Emperor in the deluge which at this time covered Italy, Gaul, and Spain.
But the story of Jordanes is probably apocryphal. Orosius and Olympiodorus, who are excellent contemporary authorities, both remark on the prosperity of Rome in the years that followed on the sack of 410: "recent as is the sack, we would think, as we look at the multitude of the Roman people, that nothing at all had happened, were it not for some traces of fire." In the face of this evidence, a second plundering of Rome by Ataulf is improbable; and it appears equally improbable, when we consider the character of the new Gothic king and the natural line of his policy. A Narbonese citizen, who had perhaps witnessed the marriage of Ataulf to Galla Placidia in 414 at Narbonne and heard the shouts of acclamation, from Romans and Goths alike, which hailed the marriage festivities, reported to St Jerome at Bethlehem, in the hearing of Orosius, the words which he had often heard fall from the lips of Ataulf. "I have found by experience, that my Goths are too savage to pay any obedience to laws, but I have also found, that without laws a State is never a State; and so I have chosen the glory of seeking to restore and to increase by Gothic strength the name of Rome. Wherefore I avoid war and strive for peace."
In 411 Ataulf had indeed already strong motives for seeking peace. He had abandoned the African expedition of Alaric, but he needed the supplies which that expedition had been meant to procure, and which he could now only gain from the Emperor; and he had in his train the captive Placidia, the sister of Honorius, whose hand would carry the succession to her brother's throne. To negotiate with Honorius for supplies and for formal consent to his marriage with Placidia was thus the natural policy of Ataulf; and in such negotiations the year 411 may have passed. But if there were negotiations, there was no treaty. Honorius had been strengthened by the arrival of a Byzantine fleet with an army on board; and he shewed himself obdurate. When Ataulf was driven from Italy into Gaul, apparently by lack of supplies, in the spring of 412, he did not come as the friend and ally of Honorius.
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