Part 11 (1/2)
Political instability was another problem: in 68 CE, there were four different emperors; in 238 CE, eight different men either held or shared the t.i.tle. The Roman Army became the single biggest influence on who was in charge, and the army itself was often fragmented into warring camps. It's something of a tribute to the Roman bureaucracy that the government continued to sputter along, given the turnover at the top.
From time to time emperors tried to make the empire a little less unwieldy by sharing control. In 293 CE, the emperor Diocletian appointed himself and one of his generals as emperors of the Eastern and Western halves of the empire, respectively. Each had the t.i.tle ”Augustus,” and each had a vice-ruler with the t.i.tle ”Caesar.” (Luckily for Diocletian, his rule occurred after 253 CE, so he wasn't murdered or killed in battle-he retired after pa.s.sing rule on to his successors, and died peacefully.)
IT'S DANGEROUS AT THE TOP Being emperor of Rome wasn't all toga parties and throwing out the first Christian on Opening Day at the Colosseum.For one thing, there was no actual t.i.tle of ”emperor” attached to the job during the period 1500 CE. Instead, the guys we think of today as emperors held t.i.tles such as ”princeps senatus” (”lead senator”) or ”pontifex maximus” (”greatest bridge-maker,” or ”chief priest of the Roman religion”), or ”pater patriate” (”father of the fatherland”). Emperors were known as ”imperators,” designating them as commanders of the army, and ”augustus,” which basically meant ”majestic” or ”venerable.”Moreover, there were no specific powers inherent in the job beyond what the emperor could a.s.sert on his own. A strong leader with good political sense, firm control of the army, and intimate knowledge of his enemies and potential enemies could make it a pretty good job, with a lot of fringe benefits. But a weak, lazy, or timid emperor was almost always in for a very short reign.Getting the job wasn't easy. Some emperors took office because their dads or granddads named them as successors. Some were adopted by the inc.u.mbent and groomed to take over. Some were elected by the Senate or whichever part of the army they commanded. Some were forced to take the job as puppets for various factions. More than a few got it by killing a relative or two.However the job was secured, the pension plan was generally lousy, mainly because your chances of living to collect a pension were about the same as being hit by lightning. (Actually, the emperor Carus was found dead in his tent in 283 CE, reportedly the result of his tent being hit by lightning, but more likely the result of poisoning.)Consider this: Of the nineteen guys who served either as emperor or co-emperor between 218 and 253 CE, all but one were either murdered or died in battle. The one guy who wasn't? He died of plague.
This ”tetrarchy” lasted until 324 CE, when one of Diocletian's successors, Constantine, decided he could handle things on his own. When Constantine died in 337 CE, co-ruling was tried on and off until 395 CE, when the empire was formally divided in two.
By then it was too late. Various groups of ”barbarians” had been invading and sacking various parts of the empire for a century, and in 410 CE, the city of Rome itself was sacked. Alliances between the remnants of the Western Roman Empire and some of the invaders postponed the inevitable until 476 CE.
In that year, however, a mutiny of Germanic troops under Roman employ-who felt they had been cheated out of a land deal with the empire-took place. They forced the last Western Roman emperor to quit and turn over the reins to the Germanic leader Odoacer.
Irony lovers will revel in the fact that the last emperor was Romulus Augustus-named after both the legendary founder of Rome, and its first and possibly greatest emperor.
And sentimentalists will be happy to know that Romulus Augustus, who was probably no more than a teenager, was allowed to retire to Naples with an annual pension of six thousand gold pieces.
The last Roman emperor wasn't even important enough to execute.
The Barbarians: MOVING ON UP MOVING ON UP
The popular image of the different groups of people who fought on and off with the Roman Empire is of a bunch of giant hairy lunatics who lived for nothing but looting, raping, and pillaging, followed by heavy drinking.
Actually, such life goals aside, most of these groups, such as the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, and Vandals, had very different motives for clas.h.i.+ng with Rome. Originating in Northern Europe, the Germanic tribes were pushed west and south by overpopulation, the need for new food sources-and fear of the Huns, who in turn had been pushed west out of Central Asia.
They were stuck with the common label ”barbarian,” which is a word the Greeks came up with because the Europeans' language sounded to them like nothing but a repet.i.tive ”bar-bar-bar.”
The Romans actually began prodding the Germanic tribes first, seeking to conquer areas of present-day Germany that had been settled by some of the other groups. The Roman army won most of the key battles, but the Germanic tribes kept coming back for more.
Eventually, the empire began to enlist different tribes as confederates, or foederati, foederati, to help Rome fight the Huns, or other ”barbarians.” In return, the tribes enjoyed the protection of the empire and were sometimes granted territory to call their own. to help Rome fight the Huns, or other ”barbarians.” In return, the tribes enjoyed the protection of the empire and were sometimes granted territory to call their own.
TWO MEN AND A LADY.
The wedding customs of having a ”best man” and of carrying the bride across the threshold probably date from the third-century practice of Germanic men abducting brides from neighboring villages and carrying them home, with the aide of a loyal companion.
Things came to a head, however, in the late fourth century, when a group of as many as eighty thousand Visigoths pushed across the Danube River into the empire to seek refuge from marauding Huns. The Roman emperor Valens allowed the immigration, but reneged on promises of food and land, and tried to disarm the Visigoths.
Bad idea. Valens was killed and the Roman army defeated. The defeat sparked the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire. In 410 CE, the Visigoths sacked Rome. (While they stole a lot of stuff, they burned relatively few buildings and generally treated the city's inhabitants humanely.) In 439 CE, the Vandals took Carthage and cut off the empire's Northern Africa breadbasket. In 452 CE, the Huns swept through Italy and would have sacked Rome again except for the personal plea to their leader, Attila, from Pope Leo I. No matter-the Vandals sacked it three years later.
By the beginning of the sixth century, various Germanic tribes had carved up the Western Roman Empire into kingdoms that roughly paralleled the nations in modern Europe: the Vandals in North Africa; the Visigoths in Spain; the Franks and Burgundians in France, and the Ostrogoths in Italy, Germany, and Austria.
Not bad for a lot of people limited to ”bar-bar-bar.”
The Huns: UP, DOWN, WHO CARES? UP, DOWN, WHO CARES?
(As Long as We Can Break Something) Okay, there was at least one group in the Late Cla.s.sic Age that fits anyone's definition of ”barbarians.”
The Huns were a nomadic people who originated in north central Asia and generally received bad press wherever they went. As early as the third century BCE, they made the Chinese nervous enough to erect a big section of the Great Wall.
Ferocious warriors, the Huns basically lived in the saddle. They didn't farm; they didn't trade. They just rode around and terrorized people.
IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED...
One thing you could say about Alaric: He didn't give up easily. Alaric was a Visigoth leader born around 370 CE in what is now Romania. In 395 CE he led an a.s.sault on the Eastern Empire and plundered his way through Greece before being defeated by a Roman force and forced to retreat.In 401, he invaded Italy, lost a few battles, and retreated again. In 408, after Roman soldiers had killed thousands of ”barbarian” wives and children, Alaric led a confederation of tribes and besieged the city of Rome itself.He made it clear he didn't want to bring down the Empire, but would settle for a guarantee of peace and a chunk of land for the Visigoths.But the deal fell apart, and in 410, Alaric laid siege to Rome again. This time, his troops burst into the city itself-and for the first time in eight hundred years, the heart of the Roman Empire had fallen.
After some internal feuding and a defeat at the hands of a Chinese army, the Huns gradually began moving west in the decades before 1 CE. By the time they got to Europe in the last half of the fourth century, they had developed an effective infantry to go with a killer cavalry.
The Huns were the scourge of the continent. They were fast, ferocious, and merciless. They didn't fight to conquer territory; they kicked booty to win booty. The Huns literally triggered a ma.s.s migration of Germanic tribes up to and into the Roman Empire.
In 434, command of the Huns pa.s.sed jointly to a man named Bleda and his brother, a man named Attila, who quickly earned the nickname ”Scourge of G.o.d.” By then, the Huns were sometimes extracting huge sums of money simply for not attacking.
The power might have gone to Attila's head. He killed his brother, set up a headquarters city (in what is now, naturally, Hungary), and invaded Italy. In 453, however, Attila died. On his wedding night. Of a nosebleed. Really.
After Attila's death, his many sons quarreled among themselves. In 455, they were defeated by an alliance of Germanic tribes, and the Huns' run as world terrors was over.
THEY MILK HORSES, DON'T THEY?