Part 4 (2/2)

They had been heretofore regarded as savages, either to be driven back by main force, or tempted to enlist in the Roman ranks. Theodosius regarded them as a nation, and one which it was his interest to hire, to trust, to indulge at the expense of his Roman subjects.

Theodosius has received the surname of Great--seemingly by comparison; 'Inter caecos luscus rex;' and it was highly creditable to a Roman Emperor in those days to be neither ruffian nor villain, but a handsome, highbred, courteous gentleman, pure in his domestic life, an orthodox Christian, and sufficiently obedient to the Church to forgive the monks who had burnt a Jewish synagogue, and to do penance in the Cathedral of Milan for the ma.s.sacre of Thessalonica. That the morals of the Empire (if Zosimus is to be at all believed) grew more and more effeminate, corrupt, reckless; that the soldiers (if Vegetius is to be believed) actually laid aside, by royal permission, their helmets and cuira.s.ses, as too heavy for their degenerate bodies; that the Roman heavy infantry, which had conquered the world, ceased to exist, while its place was taken by that Teutonic heavy cavalry, which decided every battle in Europe till the English yeoman, at Crecy and Poictiers, turned again the balance of arms in favour of the men who fought on foot; that the Goths became the 'foederati' or allies of the Empire, paid to fight its battles against Maximus the Spaniard, and Arbogast the Frank, the rebels who, after the murder of young Gratian, attempted to set up a separate empire in the west; that Stilicho the Vandal was the Emperor's trusted friend, and master of the horse; that Alaric the Balth, and other n.o.ble Goths, were learning to combine with their native courage those Roman tactics which they only needed to become masters of the world; that in all cities, even in the Royal Palace, the huge Goth swaggered in Roman costume, his neck and arms heavy with golden torcs and bracelets; or even (as in the case of Fravitta and Priulf) stabbed his enemy with impunity at the imperial table; that [Greek text], to disturb the Goths, was a deadly offence throughout the Empire: all these things did not prevent a thousand new statues from rising in honour of the great Caesar, and excited nothing more than grumblings of impotent jealousy from a people whose maxim had become, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'

Three anecdotes will ill.u.s.trate sufficiently the policy of Theodosius toward his inconvenient guests. Towards the beginning of his reign, when the Goths, after the death of the great Fridigern, were broken up, and quarreling among themselves, he tempted a royal Amal, Modar by name, by the t.i.tle of Master-General, to attack and slaughter in their sleep a rival tribe of Goths, and carry off an immense spoil to the imperial camp. To destroy the German by the German was so old a method of the Roman policy, that it was not considered derogatory to the 'greatness' of Theodosius.

The old Athanaric, the Therving--he who had sworn never to set foot on Roman soil, and had burnt them who would not fall down and wors.h.i.+p before Woden's waggon, came over the Danube, out of the forests of 'Caucaland,'

and put himself at the head of the Goths. The great Caesar trembled before the heathen hero; and they made peace together; and old Athanaric went to him at Constantinople, and they became as friends. And the Romani nominis umbra, the glamour of the Roman name, fell on the old man, too feeble now to fight; and as he looked, says Jornandes, on the site of the city, and on the fleets of s.h.i.+ps, and the world-famous walls, and the people from all the nations upon earth, he said, 'Now I behold what I have often heard tell, and never believed. The Kaiser is a G.o.d on earth, and he who shall lift his hand against him, is guilty of his own blood.'

The old hero died in Constantinople, and the really good-natured Emperor gave him a grand funeral, and a statue, and so delighted the simple Goths, that the whole nation entered his service bodily, and became the Emperor's men.

The famous ma.s.sacre of Thessalonica, and the penance of Theodosius, immortalized by the pencil of Vand.y.k.e, is another significant example of the relation between Goth and Roman. One Botheric (a Vandal or other Teuton by his name) was military commandant of that important post. He put in prison a popular charioteer of the circus, for a crime for which the Teutonic language had to borrow a foreign name, and which the Teutons, like ourselves, punished with death, though it was committed with impunity in any Roman city. At the public games, the base mob clamoured, but in vain, for the release of their favourite; and not getting him, rose on Botheric, murdered him and his officers, and dragged their corpses through the streets.

This was indeed [Greek text]; and Theodosius, partly in honest indignation, partly perhaps in fear of the consequences, issued orders from Milan which seem to have amounted to a permission to the Goths to avenge themselves. The populace were invited as usual to the games of the circus, and crowded in, forgetful of their crime, heedless of danger, absorbed in the one greed of frivolous, if not sinful pleasure. The Gothic troops concealed around entered, and then began a 'murder grim and great.' For three hours it lasted. Every age and s.e.x, innocent or guilty, native or foreigner, to the number of at least 7,000, perished, or are said to have perished; and the soul of Botheric had 'good company on its way to Valhalla.'

The Goths, doubtless, considered that they were performing an act of public justice upon villains: but the Bishops of the Church looked at the matter in another light. The circ.u.mstances of treachery, the confusion of the innocent with the guilty, the want of any judicial examination and sentence, aroused their sense of humanity and justice. The offence was aggravated by the thought that the victims were Roman and orthodox, the murderers barbarians and Arians; St. Ambrose, with a n.o.ble courage, stopped the Emperor at the door of the Basilica of Milan, and forbad him to enter, till he had atoned for the fatal order by public penance. The Caesar submitted n.o.bly to the n.o.ble demand; and the repentance of Theodosius is the last scene in the downward career of the Caesars, which can call forth a feeling of admiration and respect.

In January 395 Theodosius died; and after him came the deluge.

The Empire was parted between his two worthless sons. Honorius had the west, Arcadius the east; while the real master of the Empire was Stilicho the Vandal, whose virtues and valour and mighty stature are sung (and not undeservedly) in the pompous verses of Claudian. Of the confusion which ensued; of the murder (well-deserved) of Rufinus, the infamous minister whose devout hypocrisy had so long cajoled Theodosius; of the revolt and atrocities of Gildo in Africa, you must read in the pages of Gibbon.

These lectures confine themselves, at present, to the history of the Goths.

In January 395, I said, Theodosius died. Before the end of the winter the Goths were in arms, with Alaric the Balth at their head. They had been refused, at least for the time, the payment of their usual subsidy.

He had been refused the command of the Roman armies. Any excuse was sufficient. The fruit was ripe for plucking. The wrongs of centuries were to be avenged. Other tribes crost the Danube on the ice, and joined the Goths; and the mighty host swept down through Greece, pa.s.sing Thermopylae unopposed, ransoming Athens (where Alaric enjoyed a Greek bath and a public banquet, and tried to behave for a day like a Roman gentleman); sacking Corinth, Argos, Sparta, and all the cities and villages far and wide, and carrying off plunder inestimable, and troops of captive women.

Stilicho threw himself into the Peloponnese at Corinth to cut off the Goths, and after heavy fighting, Alaric, who seems to have been a really great general, out-manoeuvred him, crost the Gulf of Corinth at Rhium, with all his plunder and captives, and got safe away into northern Greece.

There Arcadius, the terrified Emperor of the East, punished him for having devastated Greece, by appointing him Master-General of the very country which he had ravaged. The end was coming very near. The Goths lifted him on the s.h.i.+eld, and proclaimed him King of the West Goths; and there he staid, somewhere about the head of the Adriatic, poised like an eagle in mid-air, watching Rome on one side, and Byzant on the other, uncertain on which quarry he should swoop.

He made up his mind for Rome. He would be the man to do the deed at last. There was a saga in which he trusted. Claudian gives it in an hexameter,

'Alpibus Italiae ruptis penetrabis ad urbem.'

Yes, he would take The City, and avenge the treachery of Valens, and all the wrongs which Teutons had endured from the Romans for now four centuries. And he did it.

But not the first time. He swept over the Alps. Honorius fled to Asta, and Alaric besieged him there. The faithful Stilicho came to the rescue; and Alaric was driven to extremities. His warriors counselled him to retreat. No, he would take Rome, or die. But at Pollentia, Stilicho surprised him, while he and his Goths were celebrating Easter Sunday, and a fearful battle followed. The Romans stormed his camp, recovered the spoils of Greece, and took his wife, decked in the jewels in which she meant to enter Rome. One longs to know what became of her.

At least, so say the Romans: the Goths tell a very different story; and one suspects that Pollentia may be one more of those splendid paper victories, in which the Teutons were utterly exterminated, only to rise out of the ground, seemingly stronger and more numerous than ever. At least, instead of turning his head to the Alps, he went on toward Rome.

Stilicho dared not fight him again, and bought him off. He turned northward toward Gaul, and at Verona Stilicho got him at an advantage, and fought him once more, and if we are to believe Rosino and Claudian, beat him again. 'Taceo de Alarico, saepe victo, saepe concluso, semperque dimisso.' 'It is ill work trapping an eagle,' says some one.

When you have caught him, the safest thing very often is to let him go again.

Meanwhile poured down into Italy, as far as Florence (a merely unimportant episode in those fearful days), another wave of German invaders under one Radogast, 200,000 strong. Under the walls of Florence they sat down, and perished of wine, and heat, and dysentery. Like water they flowed in, and like water they sank into the soil: and every one of them a human soul.

Stilicho and Honorius went to Rome, and celebrated their triumph over the Goths, with (for the last time in history) gladiatorial sports. Three years past, and then Stilicho was duly rewarded for having saved Rome, in the approved method for every great barbarian who was fool enough to help the treacherous Roman; namely, by being murdered.

Alaric rose instantly, and with him all the Gothic tribes. Down through Italy he past, almost without striking a blow. Ravenna, infamous, according to Sidonius, for its profligacy, where the Emperor's court was, he past disdainfully, and sat down before the walls of Rome. He did not try to storm it. Probably he could not. He had no such machines, as those with which the Romans battered walls. Quietly he sat, he and his Goths, 'as wolves wait round the dying buffalo;' waiting for the Romans within to starve and die. They did starve and die; men murdered each other for food; mothers ate their own babes; but they sent out emba.s.sies, boasting of their strength and numbers. Alaric laughed,--'The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed.' What terms would he take? 'All your gold, all your silver, the best of your precious things. All your barbarian slaves.' That last is significant. He would deliver his own flesh and blood. The Teuton man should be free. The trolls should drag no more of the forest children into their accursed den. 'What then will you leave us?' 'Your lives.'

They bought him off with a quaint ransom: 5000 pounds weight of gold, 30,000 of silver, 4000 robes of silk, 3000 pieces of scarlet cloth, and 3000 lbs. of pepper, possibly spices of all kinds. Gold, and finery, and spices--gifts fit for children, such as those Goths were.

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