BOOK III

THE HOUSE OF LEO THE GREAT

I

LEO   I

 

The Roman Empire never recognized explicitly the principle of hereditary succession; the title of Imperator or Augustus was always conferred by the army, with which the office had been originally so closely connected. At the same time a natural instinct led Emperors to wish that their sons or members of their own house should succeed them; and by adopting the plan of nominating a successor in their lifetime, and securing his recognition by the army as a Caesar or Augustus, Emperors could found a dynasty without violating the theory that the elevation to the throne was elective. Accordingly the Empire tended to become practically hereditary while it was theoretically elective; and the constant examples of claims to the crown founded on relationship prove that there was a feeling that heredity involved a right.

It was always a critical moment when a dynasty ended without a designated successor, or a member of the family who cared to claim the crown. Theodosius I had created his son Arcadius Augustus; Arcadius had given that title to his infant son Theodosius II; Theodosius had designated Martian as his successor before his death, Martian's title being sealed by his marriage with the Empress Pulcheria. On Martian's death the Theodosian dynasty had come to an end, and the choice of a new Emperor rested with the  army, whose consent was in every case necessary. The man of most authority in the army was the general Aspar (magister militum per orientem), an  Alan  by  descent, who   with  his  father  Ardaburius  had distinguished himself thirty-five years before in suppressing the usurper John  and  helping Valentinian III to his legitimate succession. Aspar's position  in  the East resembled that of Ricimer in the West. He and his three sons, being Arians and foreigners, could not hope to sit on the imperial throne; and thus the only course open to Aspar was to secure the eleva­tion of one on whose pliancy he might count. He chose Leo, a native of Dacia and an orthodox Christian, who was steward of his  own  household. Thus Aspar, like  Ricimer, was  a  king­maker. But when Leo assumed the purple (7th February)—on which occasion the ceremony of coronation by the Patriarch of Constantinople (then Anatolius), was first introduced—he did not prove as amenable to influence as Aspar had hoped; on the contrary, he took measures to reduce the resources of Aspar's family, which by its close relations with the  army had  considerable power, and was the centre of a large faction of Arians and  barbarians. In  fact Aspar, though  an Alan  and not a German, was the representative  of German influence in  the Empire, and the danger which had threatened the Empire in the reign of Arcadius through the power of Gainas was now repeated. Leo however firmly resisted the aggressiveness of this influence, and in order to neutralize the great fact which worked in Aspar’s favour, namely that the bulk and flower of the army consisted of Germans, he formed the plan of recruiting the line from native subjects.     For this purpose he chose the hardy race of Isaurian mountaineers, who lived almost like an independent   people,  little touched by the influence of Hellenism, in the wild regions of Mount Taurus. This is Leo's great original work, for which he deserves the title "Great", more than for his orthodoxy, for which he probably received it.     He conceived an idea, whose execution, begun by himself and carried out by his  successor, counteracted that danger of German preponderance which threatened the State throughout the fifth century.

Aspar appears to have possessed all the characteristics of an untutored barbarian. Brave and active in war, he was idle and frivolous in peace. During the reign of Martian, and doubtless also in the reign of Leo, while the Empire enjoyed rest, "he betook himself to relaxation and womanly ease. His pleasures consisted in actors and jugglers and all stage amuse­ments, and spending his time on these ill-famed occupations he lost all count of the things that make for glory".  But if he was no longer active as a warrior, he won repute in the humbler part of an energetic citizen or a competent policeman, for in the great fire which laid waste a large part of Constantinople in 465 it is recorded that Aspar exerted himself un­sparingly for the public interest.

Leo had made a promise, apparently at the time of his elevation, to raise one of Aspar’s sons to the rank of Caesar, and thereby designate him as his successor, in spite of the fact that he was a barbarian. When he delayed to perform this promise, Aspar is said to have seized him by his purple robe and said, "Emperor, it is not meet that he who wears this robe should speak falsely"; to which Leo replied, "Nor yet is it meet that he should be constrained and driven like a slave". This story, which may be true, shows the relations which existed between the king; and the kingmaker—the firmness of Leo, the persistence of Aspar. On this occasion, however, Leo yielded, and created one of Aspar’s sons Caesar; but the concession was displeasing to the senate and to the orthodox population of Byzantium, as it was a direct encouragement to the Arian party. It appears that a deputation of orthodox clergy and laymen waited on the Emperor, imploring him to appoint a Caesar who did not hold heretical views, and that there were riots and seditions in the city, a protest against the new Caesar. We may say that the chief political feature of the reign was a sort of duel between the Emperor and the general for power and popularity. When Leo undertook the great naval expedition, which but for the incapacity of the commander would have exterminated the kingdom of the Vandals and made his reign really glorious, Aspar was jealous of the fame that Leo might probably gain, and seems to have wished to thwart its  success by obtaining  the  nomination of Basiliscus, an incompetent commander, who was perhaps dis­loyal and certainly avaricious.

The struggle came to a critical point in some matter connected with two unknown persons (Tatian and Vivian), and it was then that Leo decided to have recourse to the Isaurians. In this project he was supported by the Isaurian Zeno, who became his son-in-law. Thereupon Ardaburius, the son of Aspar, attempted to gain over the Isaurians to his father's faction, but these intrigues were betrayed to Zeno. Leo then resorted to the abrupt measure of putting to death Aspar and his son Ardaburius (471 AD) In consequence of this act, which was probably unwise, the Emperor received the name of "Butcher". An attempt was also made to kill Patricius, the son of Aspar who had been created Caesar, but he recovered from his wounds; while a third son, Ermenaric, escaped, happening to be absent. It has been said that Leo's motive in removing Aspar and his sons was to secure the succession of his own infant grandson Leo; he may have feared that he would be unable to hold his own against the powerful barbarian family. But the whole drama has a deeper significance as a repetition of that struggle between Roman and barbarian elements in the Empire, which in the days of Arcadius was decided in favor of the former.

The most striking event of Leo's reign was the enormous "Armada", already referred to, which he organized against the kingdom of Gaiseric the Vandal, who had become a formidable foe of the Empire in the Mediterranean waters, but of this it will be more convenient to speak in the following chapter.

Leo was a man of no education, but of natural good sense. He pursued, as we already remarked, the policy of Anthemius and Marcian, and placed a limit on fiscal oppression. Malchus, the historian, who detested Leo and condemned his civil policy as ruinously rapacious, says that he was a sewer of all wickedness, but admits that his subjects, as well as foreigners, considered him "most fortunate", and we may conclude that his reign was on the whole prosperous, though his military operations were unsuccessful. In regard to Malchus’ accusations we must remember, on the one hand, that he hated Leo for his religious bigotry, and, on the other hand, that in spite of all alleviations the mode of collecting taxes, combined with the fatal growth of centralization, gradually wore away the resources of the provinces and affected disastrously their social and moral life. We must judge of an Emperor's civil policy relatively, not absolutely.

Like Marcian, Leo was solicitous to relieve provincial towns that had suffered disasters, and his clemency was celebrated by his admirers. He is reported to have said that a king should distribute pity to those on whom he looks, as the sun distributes heat to those on whom it shines.

A curious detail has survived regarding the manner in which petitioners addressed themselves to him. His unmarried sister resided in a house in the south-west corner of the Augusteum, close to the hippodrome. The Emperor used to pay her a visit with affectionate regularity every week, "because she was modest and a virgin". She erected a statue to him beside her house, and there seems to have been some contrivance in the pillar like a modern letter-box, in which petitioners used to place their memorials, and every week one of the imperial staff used to collect them.

Towards the end of his reign the commerce of the Empire met with a serious blow by the loss of Jotaba, an important depot on the Red Sea. This leads us to give an account of the Persian adventurer Amorkesos, who "whether he thought that he was not treated with due consideration in Persia, or for some other reason preferred Roman territory, migrated thence to the adjacent province of Arabia". There he supported himself as a brigand, making raids, not on the Romans, but on the Scenite Saracens. His power gradually increased, and he seized the island of Jotaba, which belonged to the Romans, and, driving out the Greek custom-officers, he instituted himself master of it, and soon became wealthy by receiving the dues from traders. He made himself ruler of some other communes in the neighbourhood, and conceived the desire of becoming a phylarch or satrap of the Saracens of Arabia Petraea, who were nominally dependent on the Roman Emperor. He sent an ecclesiastic to Leo to negotiate the matter, and Leo graciously signified his wish to have a personal interview with Amorkesos. When the latter arrived, he shared the imperial table, was admitted to the meetings of the senate, and even honoured with precedence over the patricians. The Byzantines, it appears, were much scandal­ized at these privileges accorded to a Persian fire-worshipper, and Leo seems to have been obliged to pretend that his guest intended to become a Christian. On his departure Leo gave him a valuable picture in mosaic, and compelled the members of the senate to present him with other gifts; and, what was more important, he transferred to him the permanent possession of Jotaba, and added more villages to those which he already governed, granting him also the coveted title of phylarch. Malchus finds fault with Leo severely for the invitation of Amorkesos to his court, on the principle that what is distant is most dazzling; and says that it was impolitic to allow the foreigner to see the towns, through which he had to travel, unarmed and defenceless.

One of the great conflagrations which so often destroyed the buildings of Constantinople broke out in 465. The fire ran both from east to west and from north to south, laying waste a wide area, and lasting for four days. The splendid senate house, which had been erected after the destruction of Julian's senate house by fire in the reign of Arcadius, was burnt down, and also the Nyraphaeum, directly opposite to it, a building in which those who had not houses of their own used to celebrate their weddings. Countless magnificent residences of private persons were destroyed. It is said that Aspar ran about the streets with a pail of water on his shoulders, urging the people to follow his example, and offering each a silver nummus (nomisma) as pay for his activity. There is no hint of the existence of a fire brigade at Constantinople.

There were still many pagans in the days of Leo, and we must not omit to notice the case of Isocasius, a native of Aegae in Cilicia and a citizen of Antioch, who was accused and tried on the charge of paganism. His case was to be judged by the governor of Bithynia, but Jacobus, the court physician, a remarkable man of that time, who was so much beloved by the higher classes that the senate erected a statue to him in the baths of Zeuxippus, and who, as well as a physician, was an excellent rhetor and philosopher, interfered in his behalf, and obtained Leo's consent that he should be tried in Byzantium by the praetorian prefect Pusaeus. "Do you see in what position you stand", asked the prefect. "I see, and am not surprised", was the reply, "for I am human, and human misfortunes have befallen me. But do you judge me with impartial justice, as you used to judge along with me". Then Isocasius was led away to the church of St. Sophia and baptized.

Leo died on the 3d of February 474, having previously nominated as his successor his grandson Leo, a young child. His wife, Verina, was an ambitious woman who played a considerable part in the Byzantine world after his death. He had two daughters, Ariadne, who married Zeno the Isaurian, and Leontia, the wife of Marcian, son of Anthemius.

II

RICIMER  THE  PATRICIAN

 

It was a critical moment in Italy after the death of Valentinian III (455), as there was no male heir of the house of Theodosius. There had been similar situations before, as in 68, when the Julian-Claudian house came to an end; as in 190, when Commodus had died without issue; as in 363, after the death of Julian. Military riots were inevitable, a civil war was possible; and we read in a trustworthy historian: "After this Rome was in a state of disturbance and confusion, and the military forces were divided into two factions, one wishing to elevate Maximus, the other supporting Maximian, a certain Egyptian merchant, who had been successful in Italy and become the steward of Aetius". A third possible candidate was Majorian, the brother-at-arms of Aetius, with whom he had fought against the Franks, and he had the good wishes of Eudoxia, the widowed Empress. Maximus’ command of money decided the event in his favour, even as Pertinax had won the Imperium in 190 by bribing the praetorian guards.

He endeavoured to secure himself on the throne by forcing Eudoxia to marry him, and if she had consented, it is just possible that his subjects might have rallied round him and that he might have reigned not brilliantly but securely like Honorius or Valentinian. But Petronius Maximus, though he was a member of the noble Anician house, was not like Marcian;  he was not one whom an Augusta would condescend to marry, even for cogent political reasons. If he was really related to British Maximus, who had been subdued by Theodosius, the great-granddaughter of Theodosius had perhaps not forgotten it; but the widow of Valentinian must have known or suspected the instigator of her lord’s murder. In any case, the new Augustus was a paltry person, and Eudoxia hated or despised him so much that she is said to have taken the bold and fatal step of summoning Gaiseric the Vandal to overthrow the tyrant—an act almost worthy of her sister-in-law Honoria. But in this crude shape we can hardly accept the story; John of Antioch mentions it in language which implies that he did not consider it well attested; it was "told by some".  The true account seems to be that Gaiseric came of his own accord, seeing that it was a good opportunity for attacking Italy, and considering that the death of Aetius and Valentinian released him from the treaty of 435, which he regarded as a contract made with them personally, not with the Roman Republic. The story of the invitation of Eudoxia will then reduce itself to the probability that, vexed by the importunities and threats of Petronius Maximus, she welcomed Gaiseric on his arrival in Italy as a deliverer from an abhorred oppressor.

On the approach of Gaiseric, Maximus, deserted by his supporters, determined to flee from Rome. His departure was attended with riots, and the tyrant was killed by a stone which a soldier cast at him as he was riding from the gates.

Three days later—it was in the first week of June 455— Gaiseric and his Vandals entered Rome. For fourteen days they abode in the city and plundered, but the intervention of Pope Leo and the Church, although it did not protect the city against pillage, violence, and vandalism3 seems at least to have preserved it from the evils of massacre and conflagration.

The monarch of the Vandals ravaged Campania, and loaded his ships with the precious things of Rome. He carried with him the Empress Eudoxia and her two daughters, Eudocia and Placidia. Gaiseric had conceived the idea of an alliance with the Theodosian house. It was no new idea; Athaulf the Visi­goth had married Placidia, and Attila had perhaps wished to marry Honoria. It was not strange that a marriage should be determined on between Huneric and Eudocia.

The question was, who was to be Emperor? At Rome things had come to a deadlock, but on this occasion Gaul intervened. Marcus Maecilius Avitus, the man who had fought by the side of Aetius, and had, in the great crisis of Europe, decided by his persuasions the king of Toulouse to march with the Romans against the Scythians, was proclaimed Emperor, first at Toulouse and then at Arelate (9th July 455). It is important to observe that it was by the united voices of the Visigoths and the Gallo-Romans that he was called to fill the vacant throne as the successor of Maximus, from whom he had received the appointment of master of soldiers. Of his short reign we hear little, though his son-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris the poet, has recorded many personal details about the man himself. We know, however, that it was marked by successes against German enemies, and here again it is import­ant to notice that the Visigoths identified themselves with the Empire.

The Suevian general, Count Ricimer, who now makes his entry on the stage, was sent by Avitus to Sicily to operate against the fleet of the Vandals. Marcian, who did not hesitate to recognise Avitus, had already sent an embassy to Gaiseric to remonstrate with him on his Italian expedition and on the captivity of the imperial ladies. The arms or skill of Count Ricimer now administered a blow to the Vandalic navy, accord­ing to one account in Sicilian waters, according to another statement in the neighbourhood of Corsica (456).

While Suevian Ricimer protected one part of the Empire against the Vandals, Theodoric II, king of the Visigoths, was protecting another part of the Empire against the Suevians. In conjunction with the Burgundians, and at the instance of Avitus, he invaded Spain; he defeated the dwellers in Gallaecia, who harried Roman territory, in the great battle  of Urbicus (near Astorga); he took the town of Bracara, where the Roman Count Asterius had in former days slaughtered the Vandals of Gunderic; and he put to death the Suevian king Rechiar. This was a mortal blow to Suevic power, and paved the way for Visigothic Hispania.

Avitus meanwhile had crossed the Alps. It seems to have been hardly a prudent step; it seems to have been hardly necessary. At all events it made his position untenable. We may well ask why he did not decide to add Arelate to the number of imperial capitals—the city where he had many friends, the city which had received him first, and which was not too far from friendly Toulouse. But Arelate, the capital of the illegitimate Constantine, did not seem a suitable residence to legitimate Avitus. He abandoned the city of the Rhone to take up his abode in the city of the Tiber. But there he was not welcome; he was looked upon as a sort of interloper, of insufficiently defined position. He was acceptable neither to the army nor to the senate, and his behaviour does not appear to have tended to make him popular. The circumstances of his fall are thus related by a historian, who, we are justified in suppos­ing, derived his facts from the contemporary writer Friscus:

"·When Avitus reigned at Rome there was famine in the city, and the people blaming Avitus compelled him to remove from the city of the Romans the allies from Gaul who had entered it along with him (that so there might be fewer mouths to feed). He also dismissed the Goths whom he had brought for the protection of Rome, having distributed among them money which he obtained by selling to merchants bronze stripped from public works, for there was no gold in the imperial treasury. This excited the Romans to revolt when they saw their city stripped of its adornments.

“But Majorian and Ricimer, no longer held in fear of the Goths, openly rebelled, so that Avitus was constrained—terrified on the one hand by the prospect of internal troubles, on the other hand by the hostilities of the Vandals—to withdraw from Rome and set out for Gaul. But Majorian and Ricimer attacked him on the road and forced him to flee into a sanctuary, where he abdicated the throne and put off his imperial apparel. But Majorian's soldiers did not cease to blockade him, until he died of starvation, after a reign of eight months; others say that he was strangled”.

According to another account Avitus reached Gaul safely, and there collected an army with which he crossed the Alps once more to assert his contemned authority, but Count Ricimer routed him at Placentia; he was deposed from the throne and made bishop of the city which witnessed his discomfiture (October 456).

The deposition of Avitus caused a new crisis. It is quite conceivable that at this juncture, or at the death of Valentinian in the year before, the western line of Emperors might have ceased to exist, as it ceased to exist twenty years later. In 476 the presence of the barbarian Odovacar was an essential element in the situation, but in 455 or in 456 the only barbarian whom we can conceive as acting the part of Odovacar was the Vandal Gaiseric. A temporary cessation of a separate imperial rule in the West did, however, take place on several occasions before the deposition of Romulus Augustulus. One of these temporary cessations followed on the overthrow of Avitus. These intervals are often called interregnums; it is natural to say that from October 456 to April 457 there was an interregnum in the West. And the expression really represents the actual situation; but we must not forget that, from a theoretical point of view, the expression is not correct. Legally, Marcian was the sole head of the Empire from the fall of Avitus to his own death at the end of January 457, and Leo was the sole head of the Empire from the death of Marcian to the elevation of Majorian.

It has often been remarked that at the beginning of 457 the situation in Italy was similar to the situation in Constantinople. In both cases the solution of the difficulty depended on the action of a military leader of barbarian birth; Aspar held a similar position to that of Ricimer. Both were the makers of Emperors; neither aspired to be an Emperor himself.

The elevation of Julius Valerius Majorian, the man who had  fought with Aetius,  the man who had been the chosen candidate of Eudoxia after the death of Valentinian, and who had combined with Ricimer to suppress Avitus, took place on the 1st April. This elevation rested on a very different combination from that which had crowned Avitus; it was initiated by the proposal of the Emperor Leo, and obtained the consent of Ricimer. It was also acceptable to the Roman senate, for Majorian was a thorough Roman. The laws which he passed during his reign for the preservation of the buildings of Rome were a direct reflection on his predecessor Avitus.

There were two tasks to be accomplished by the new Augustus, both necessary for the security of his seat on the throne. He must, in the first place, quell the Gallo-Roman and Visigothic opposition, and subdue or conciliate the provincials who had been roused to wrath by the death of Avitus. It was the reverse problem, the conciliation of Roman and Italian goodwill, that the Gallic Avitus had been called upon to solve, and it was because he failed therein that he had fallen. It is evident that at this period the enmity between the Romans and the Gallic provincials had an important influence on public affairs. Majorian entered Gaul with an army, and found the Burgundians—the friends of Avitus—in league with the citizens of Lugdunensis Prima against himself. A conciliation, however, was effected with the help of Avitus’ son-in-law Sidonius, and Majorian advanced to the relief of Arelate, which the Visigoths were besieging. As Aetius had driven Theodoric back thirty years before, so Aegidius, Majorian's general, drove back a new Theodoric from the walls; and most firm compacts of peace were made between the Augustus Majorian and the King Theodoric.

Majorian had accomplished the first task, but the other was harder. It was absolutely indispensable that an Emperor, whose reign was to be permanent, should win universal confidence by proving himself equal to the great emergency of the time; he must “preserve the state of the Roman world”.  And just at this moment the great emergency was the hostility of the Vandals, who in their ships harried the Roman provinces and infested the Mediterranean waters. It might have seemed that Avitus, under whose auspices Count Ricimer worsted the fleet of the foe at Corsica or at Sicily, had in some sense met the difficulty. But the blow was not decisive; it did not paralyze the hostilities of the Vandals. The words of an historian indicate that Avitus felt the necessity of facing this problem, and also his inability to grapple with it: "he was afraid of the wars with the Vandals".

Majorian prepared an expedition against Africa on a grand scale; his fleet numbered 300 ships, and was collected in a Spanish port, probably New Carthage. The hopes of the West were awakened, and their eyes were fixed on the preparations of Majorian. But a curious fatality attended all expeditions undertaken against the Vandals, whether they proceeded from Old Rome or from New Rome, or from both together. The expedition of Castinus had collapsed in 422, that of Aspar had failed in 430, the armament of Ardaburius had not even reached its destination in 441, and now the preparations of Majorian fell through in 460. Gaiseric ravaged the coasts of Spain, and incapacitated the Roman ships before they left the port. Yet another expedition, and one on a far larger scale, was to meet with discomfiture; and more than seventy years were, to elapse until the rise of the great Justinian, when the numerous failures were to be blotted out by the success of Belisarius.

This misfortune led to the fall of Majorian; he had forfeited confidence; it appeared that he was not able to "preserve the state of the Roman world". He returned from Spain to Gaul, and after a sojourn in Arles passed into Italy, without an army. At Tortona the officers of Count Ricimer, who had judged him unworthy of empire, seized him, stripped him of the imperial purple, and beheaded him (7th August 461). It is natural enough that only two alternatives could be entertained by the Suevian count, who had the army at his back; he could tolerate a strong Emperor, capable of defending the Empire, or he could tolerate a puppet-Emperor, who depended absolutely on his own will. But an Emperor who was just strong enough to assume an independent position, and was not strong enough, to contend with the enemies of the State—such an one was naturally not acceptable to the count. Ricimer himself seemed determined not to leave Italy, probably judging that its security against the Vandals depended on the constant presence of an able general with a strong army; and he did actually defend it in the north against the Ostrogoths of Pannonia and against the Alemanni of the Upper Rhine. He was determined to hold Italy at all costs; he associated himself with the foreign foederati, being himself a Sueve; and he cherished a bitter hatred against the Vandals;—these were the chief elements in his position. His hatred against the Vandals was due to a family feud. He was the nephew of Wallia, and Wallia had fought against the Vandals in Spain; wherefore Gaiseric hated him, and he reciprocated the hatred.

The death of Majorian was followed in less than four months by the election of Libius Severus, a Lucanian. He was elected by the senate with the consent of Ricimer and pro­claimed at Ravenna (19th November 461); and though he reigned four years—four months less than Majorian—he did nothing; he was only a figure-head; Ricimer was the true sovereign. Stilicho had guided the councils of Honorius, Aetius had guided the councils of Valentinian; but the personalities of Honorius and Valentinian, weak though they both were, influenced affairs to a certain extent; it would be going too far to say that either Aetius or even Stilicho was a virtual Emperor. Ricimer was the first German who had become a virtual king of Italy; he is the link between Stilicho and Odovacar.

It might seem that at this juncture Italy might have received another Augustus from Gaul, and that Aegidius, the general and friend of Majorian, might have crossed the Alps to avenge Majorian’s death. But Aegidius was occupied with the task of defending southern Gaul against the Visigoths, who, shaking themselves loose after the death of Avitus from the bond which attached them to the Empire, were attempting to extend their power in the province of Narbonensis. We find him in 463 winning a great battle at Orleans, and in the following year he died.

Another opponent of Ricimer in another quarter was the Count Marcellinus. We see him in Sicily in the year 461 in command of an army chiefly consisting of Hunnic auxiliaries (Scythians); he had been probably posted there by Majorian to protect the island against the Vandals. But Ricimer operated upon the cupidity of the Huns by bribes to induce them to leave the service of Marcellinus and enter his own. Then Marcellinus, fearing danger and conscious that he could not vie with Ricimer in riches, abandoned Sicily and returned to Dalmatia, where a few years later we find him ruling as if he were the king thereof, even as Ricimer ruled in Italy and as Aegidius and Syagrius ruled in Gaul. At this time Gaul, Italy, and Dalmatia were practically independent kingdoms. On the departure of Marcellinus, who seems to have defended the island ably, Gaiseric sent his Vandals and auxiliary Moors to ravage the island. A pacific embassy from Ricimer did not avail, but another embassy sent at the same time by the Emperor Leo induced Gaiseric to come to terms at last in regard to the ladies of the Theodosian house, whom he still retained at Carthage. He carried out his determination of uniting Eudocia in marriage with his son Huneric, but he sent her mother Eudoxia and her sister Placidia to Constantinople; in return he received a certain share of the property of Valentinian III as the dowry of Eudocia.

But now Gaiseric posed as the protector and champion of the Theodosian house against the upstart Emperors in Italy. Olybrius, a member of the noble Anician gens, had married Placidia, and Gaiseric demanded that he should be acknowledged as Emperor. The situation in 463 is described by Priscus as follows: "The western Romans were afraid concerning Mar­cellinus, lest, his power increasing, he should wage war against them; for they were involved in diverse difficulties on other sides; they were threatened by the Vandals, and they were threatened by Aegidius, a man of the western Galatians [we are reminded of Celtic reminiscences in the East], who had fought campaigns with Majorian and had a very large power around him, and was indignant on account of the slaying of the Emperor (Majorian). Hitherto dissensions with the Goths in Gaul withheld him from war against the Italiots. For he fought valiantly against them, contending for border-territory, and performed in that war the greatest deeds of prowess."

We see from this account that the cause of western Rome, the cause of Italy, and the cause of Ricimer were all closely bound together, and that the Italiots looked on Ricimer as their protector. "On these accounts the western Romans sent ambassadors to the eastern Romans, asking them to bring about a reconciliation with Marcellinus and with the Vandals. To Marcellinus was sent Phylarchus, who prevailed on him not to wage war against the Romans; but then having crossed over to the Vandals, he retired ineffectual". Gaiseric claimed all the inheritance left by Valentinian in Italy and also the inheritance of Aetius, whose son Gaudentius he retained in captivity. He led a great expedition against Italy and Sicily, ravaged the unprotected parts of the country, and took undefended towns. There was no efficient navy in Italy to operate against him; and as he was at peace with New Rome, Leo could send no ships to the assistance of Italy. It will be remembered how in the days of Valentinian III Attila was at peace with Ravenna and at war with Constantinople; now in regard to Gaiseric the position was reversed. Priscus makes the remark that the division of the Empire greatly injured "the affairs of the Romans in the West"; it was apparent that their great chance of safety lay in the support of the East.

Accordingly Ricimer, the foe of Gaiseric, begins to enter into closer relations with the Emperor Leo. For a year and six months after the death of Severus, in November 465, no successor was appointed, but at length Leo deigned to select Anthemius as his colleague, and Ricimer’s acceptance of an Emperor nominated by Leo indicated a close alliance of interests. The common interest was war against the Vandals; not only Italy and Sicily were threatened, but the entire com­merce of the Mediterranean; Africa was now what Illyria had been in the third century BC, or what Cilicia had been in the first.

Anthemius had married the daughter of Marcian; and thus he might be considered in some  sort connected with the house of Theodosius, and his pretensions might be set against those of Gaiseric’s candidate, the husband of Placidia. He was the grandson of that Anthemius who guided the Empire during the childhood of Pulcheria and Theodosius. The alliance between Ricimer and the new Emperor was sealed by a marriage of the Patrician with Anthemius’ daughter. The elder Placidia had married Athaulf, her granddaughter Eudocia had married Huneric, both indeed under a certain compulsion; yet An­themius afterwards professed to regard it as a great condescension to have surrendered his daughter to the barbarian count.

The expedition, which was organized to overthrow the monarchy of the Vandals, was on a grand and impressive scale, but it ended in a miserable failure. Its success was paralyzed by lukewarmness and even treachery both in the East and in the West.

The number of vessels that set sail from Constantinople is said to have been 1113, and the total number of men who embarked was calculated as exceeding 100,000. But unfortunately Leo, under the influence of his wife Verina and his friend Aspar, appointed as general a man who was both in­competent and untrustworthy, his wife's brother Basiliscus. Aspar, it appears, was not over-anxious that Leo's position should be strengthened by such an exploit as the subversion of the Vandal kingdom; he schemed therefore to procure the election of a general whose success was extremely improbable.

The western armament of Anthemius obeyed a more efficient commander. The pagan Marcellinus, who, in defiance of Emperors, ruled in Dalmatia as an independent prince, was reconciled with Leo, and he left the palace of Diocletian and the city of the tepid Jader to take the command of the Italian fleet. A Roman was now going forth from Illyria to subdue the pirates of Africa; seven hundred years before, the Romans, before their great conflict with the African power, had gone forth to subdue the pirates of Illyria. But here too lay a disturbing element. The participation of Marcellinus in the project alienated Ricimer, who was his enemy; and just as Aspar regarded the project with disfavour, Ricimer, who, as has been already remarked, held in the West a somewhat similar position to that of Aspar in the East, also stood aloof.

The plan of operations was that the eastern forces should be divided into two parts, and that thus the Vandals should be attacked at three points at the same time. Basiliscus himself was to sail directly against Carthage. Heraclius, another general, having taken up the forces of Egypt on his way, was to disembark at Tripolis, and having occupied that town was to march to Carthage by land. Marcellinus, with the Italian forces, was to surprise the Vandals in Sardinia, and sail thence to join the eastern armies at Carthage.

If the commander-in-chief had not been Basiliscus, and if the opponent had not been Gaiseric, the expedition would have easily succeeded. But Gaiseric, though physically the least, was mentally the greatest of the barbarians of his time. He was small in stature, ugly in countenance, but in cunning he was without an equal. He veiled the machinations of his thoughts under a silence that was rarely broken, and he despised luxury, although he was avaricious as well as ambitious. Even as it was, though Basiliscus had such a foe to cope with, success was within the grasp of his hand. The invaders were welcome to the Catholics of Africa, who were sorely persecuted by their Arian lords. Marcellinus accomplished his work in Sardinia without difficulty; Heraclius met no obstacle in executing his part of the project; and the galleys of Basiliscus scattered the fleet of the Vandals in the neighbourhood of Sicily.  On hearing of this disaster, Gaiseric gave up all for lost; the Roman general had only to strike a decisive blow and Carthage would not have resisted. But he let the opportunity slip, and, taking up his station in a haven at some distance from Carthage, he granted to the humble prayers of his wily opponent a respite of five days, of which Gaiseric made good use. He prepared a new fleet and a number of fireships. The winds favoured his designs, and he suddenly bore down on the Roman armament, which, under the combined stress of surprise, adverse wind, and the destructive ships of fire, was routed and at least half destroyed. Basiliscus fled with the remnant to Sicily, to join Marcellinus, whose energy and resources might have possibly retrieved the disaster; but the hand of an assassin, inspired perhaps by Ricimer, rendered this hope futile. Heraclius, who had not reached Carthage when he heard of the defeat of the fleet, retraced his steps, and Basiliscus returned to Constantinople, where amid popular odium he led a life of retirement at Heraclea on the Propontis, until he appeared on the scene of public life again after Leo’s death.

The failure of this expedition, organized on such a grand scale that it might have seemed invincible, must have produced a very great moral effect, somewhat like the moral effect produced in Europe by the collapse of the Spanish Armada. The Roman Empire had put forth all its strength and had signally failed, not against the combined powers of the barbarians, but against one barbaric nation. This must have not only raised the pretensions and arrogance of the Vandals themselves, but increased the contempt of other German nations for the Roman power; it was felt to be a humiliating disaster by the government at Constantinople, while the government in Italy was too habituated to defeat to be gravely affected. Immense sums of money had been laid out on equipping the armament, and its failure produced a state of bankruptcy in the imperial treasury, which lasted for about thirty years.

The idea was abroad that the arrival in Italy of Anthemius, the political son of Leo, if I may venture to use the expression, was the inauguration of a return to unity; and this formed the theme of the panegyric of Sidonius Apollinaris on the Emperor Anthemius. He hails Constantinople thus—

salve sceptrorum columen, regina orientis,

orbis Roma tui,

and describes the education of Anthemius in terms of the highest eulogy. Anthemius was suspiciously inclined to paganism, and the pagan character of the poem written by the future bishop of Clermont did not offend him; his predecessor Severus is described as having increased the number of the gods. Ricimer is introduced as

invictus Ricimer quem publica fata respiciunt.

The poet was made prefect of Rome.

But in Italy the Greek Anthemius was not popular. He was too fond of philosophy or thaumaturgy; he loved strange doctrines; he was inclined to be “Hellenic”, in the bad sense of the word. And in spite of his high standard of justice and honest attempts to administer the laws—in one of his own laws he states a fair ideal of equity—he does not seem to have been looked on with favor by the Italians. Soon his relations to Ricimer changed from friendliness or mutual tolerance to distrust and hostility; the father-in-law regretted that he had married his daughter Alypia to a barbarian; the son-in-law retorted with the contemptuous epithets Galatian and Greekling (Graeculus). And in this contest, in spite of the unpopularity of Anthemius, the senate and the people espoused his cause against the Suevian.

Thus it came to pass that in the year 472 Italy was practically divided into two kingdoms, the Emperor reigning at Home, the Patrician ruling at Milan. Epiphanius, the bishop of Pavia, was employed to bring about a reconciliation—a characteristic instance of the position of the Church at this period—but the army of Ricimer soon besieged Rome. Leo had overcome the power of Aspar in the East; was his "son" Anthemius to overcome the power of Ricimer in the West? For the two problems were similar; and there is a dark notice in a chronicle which suggests that the opposition of Aspar and his sons to Leo may have had hidden links of connection with the opposition of Ricimer to Anthemius.

The hostilities at Rome lasted for five months, the senate and people siding with the Emperor, while Ricimer headed the multitude of his own barbarians. Along with the besieger was the Scyrian Odovacar, the son of Edecon, destined soon to become famous. Ricimer guarded the Tiber and cut off the supplies; the Romans were soon pressed by hunger and resolved to fight. An army under Billimer had come from Gaul to assist them. The engagement resulted in heavy losses on the imperial side, and the victor subdued the rest by treachery.

Gaiseric, it will be remembered, had wished to have a voice in the election of an Emperor and to elevate Olybrius, the husband of the younger Placidia. At this time Olybrius was at Constantinople, and his Vandal connections made him a suspicious person in the eyes of Leo, who planned a curious stratagem. Hearing of the dangers of his colleague Anthemius at Rome, he employed Olybrius on a mission thither to com­pass the reconciliation of the two opponents. At the same time he sent a private messenger to Anthemius with a letter instructing him to put Olybrius to death. The artifice was frustrated, as Ricimer intercepted the letter.

This circumstance led to the consummation which Leo least wished. After the success gained in the battle, Ricimer invested Olybrius with the purple; and the new Emperor might claim with some fairness to be a member of the Theodosian house. As for Anthemius, when his adherents had surrendered to "the barbarians" and left him "naked", he disguised himself and mingled with the mendicants who begged in the church of St. Chrysogonus. There he was beheaded by Gundobad, Ricimer’s nephew (4th July 472).

The position of affairs was now the reverse of what it had been in the days of Honorius and Stilicho, or in the days of Valentinian and Aetius. When dissensions arose in 408 between the father-in-law and the son-in-law, the son-in-law had the upper hand; and when there was war in 472 between the father-in-law and the son-in-law, the son-in-law also had the upper hand. But in the earlier case the son-in-law was the Emperor, in the later case the son-in-law was the foreign general.

Ricimer did not survive his victim long; he died in less than six weeks; and the new Emperor whom he had created survived him by only two months.

The death of Ricimer, notwithstanding his anomalous position, was a blow to Italy of the same kind as the deaths of Stilicho and Aetius. While Stilicho lived, there was an able general to protect the peninsula against Alaric; when he died, Alaric entered and laid waste. While Aetius lived, there was a general formidable to Gaiseric; when he died, Gaiseric sailed over and plundered. While Ricimer lived, the barbarians did not venture to enter Italy; but four years after his death, they not only entered but they occupied. If Olybrius had lived longer and been a stronger man—he has no personality in history—his Theodosian connection might have aided him to stay the approach of the day when Italy would be ruled by a German king.

 

III

ZENO

 

Zeno the Isaurian had succeeded to the power and influence of Aspar and Ardaburius at Leo's court, and he was marked out by his marriage with Ariadne, the Emperor's daughter, as a probable successor. He was hardly less rude than Aspar, for the Isaurians were semi-barbarous freebooters, but he had the advantage of not being a German. When Leo I died in 474 his grandson Leo, the infant son of Zeno and Ariadne, was proclaimed Emperor, in accordance with his grandfather's wishes. The child conferred the imperial dignity on his father and died in the same year, leaving to Zeno nominally as well as actually the sole power.

Zeno was unpopular, and there was a strong spirit of public hatred against the Isaurians, who formed a portion of the army, and by their violence often irritated the inhabitants of Constantinople. Moreover, the elevation of Zeno was not pleasing to the Empress-mother Verina, a woman of great energy and capacity for intrigue. Her brother Basiliscus, who had lived in retirement since his conduct of the Vandalic expedition, aspired to the throne, and he was supported in his designs by the general Illus, a man of considerable influence and ability. The result was that Zeno’s position was so insecure that, in the face of a formidable conspiracy, he was obliged to flee to Isauria, with his wife Ariadne and his mother Lallis, at the end of the year 475 (November). Verina was scheming to place her paramour Patricius on the throne, but her endeavors turned to the profit of her brother Basiliscus, whom the ministers and senators elected to the purple after Zeno's flight. This change of power was an opportunity for the Byzantines to settle accounts of old standing with the obnoxious countrymen of Zeno, and a colossal massacre of Isaurians took place in the capital. War was carried on in Isauria against Zeno by Illus and his brother Trocundus, but they soon deserted the cause of Basiliscus, who had already made himself odious by his extortions, and went over to his rival. His nephew Harmatius, a young fop of whom I shall give some account hereafter, was then created magister militum per Thracias, and sent with an army against the forces of Zeno and Illus, which were advancing against Constantinople. Illus induced him also to desert the usurper, and this desertion decided the fall of Basiliscus and the restoration of Zeno (July 477). Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, and his Ostrogoths, who had been settled in Lower Moesia, had embraced the cause of Zeno.

In his reign of twenty months Basiliscus had made himself very unpopular. He favoured the heresy of monophysitism, he exacted money from bishops, and was only prevented by a crowd of monks from doing violence to Acacius the Patriarch of Constantinople. His fiscal rapacity was so great that he did not spare from severe taxation even the humblest mechanic, and it was said that the world was full of tears at his exac­tions. Yet we also hear that he contributed 50 lbs. of gold to restore Gabala in  Syria, which suffered from an earthquake in his reign. He and his family were banished by Zeno to a fortress in Cappadocia, where they were walled up and allowed to perish of hunger.

A public misfortune of a most deplorable nature, which has probably had manifold indirect results of a negative character, occurred in the reign of Basiliscus, and helped, as accidents in superstitious ages always help, to render his government unpopular. This was an immense conflagration, which, beginning in the bazaar of the bronzesmiths, spread far and wide, reducing to ashes the colonnades of the public square, with the adjoining houses. But more serious than this was the destruction of the Basilike, the library founded by Julian, which contained no fewer than 120,000 books. Among these rolls, the intestine of a serpent, 120 feet long, on which the Iliad and Odyssey were written in golden characters, is specially mentioned. A still greater disaster was the destruction of the palace of Lausus, which contained among its splendors some of the most beautiful works of Greek plastic art, the Cnidian Aphrodite, the Lindian Athene, and the Samian Here. But for this fire these precious works might possibly have been still in existence, and it reminds us that the chief cause of the loss of works of art was not Christian vandalism, but rather the love of art, which collected monuments from their original scattered homes and exposed them in a mass to increased dangers of destruction in a large town. How far the loss of the library influenced the condition of culture in the succeeding centuries, it would be hard to determine.

Zeno has never been a favourite with historians, and Finlay perhaps was the first who was ready to say a good word for him. "The great work of his reign", writes Finlay, "was the formation of an army of native troops to serve as a counter­poise to the barbarian mercenaries"; and he goes on to remark that the man who successfully resisted the schemes and forces of the great Theodoric cannot have been contemptible. Yet even from the pages of Malchus we can see that he was not so bad as he was painted, Malchus himself confessing that he was in some respects superior to Leo, especially less greedy. He was not popular, for his religious policy of conciliation did not find general favour; he was not personally brave; and he was an Isaurian. But he was inclined to be mild; he desired to abstain from employing capital punishment. In fiscal administration he was perhaps less successful than his pre­decessors and his successor Anastasius. Malchus states that Zeno wasted all that Leo left in the treasury by donatives to his friends and inaccuracy in checking his accounts. In 477 the funds were very low, hardly sufficient to supply pay for the army. But the blame of this may rather rest with Basiliscus, who, reigning precariously for twenty months, must have been obliged to incur large expenses, to supply which he was driven to extortion, and in the following years the Ostrogoths were an incubus on the exchequer; while we must further remember that since the enormous outlay incurred by Leo's naval expedition the treasury had been in financial difficulties, which only a ruler of strict economy and business habits, like the succeed­ing Emperor Anastasius, could have remedied. Zeno was not a man of business, lie was indolent and in many respects weak. But in defending him we need not go further than the admis­sion of Malchus (who throughout seems to censure in Zeno weakness rather than evil inclination), that his reign would have been a good one but for the influence of one Sebastian, who was like Eutropius or Chrysaphius, and introduced a system of venality. From an adverse witness this is an important admission. Of Sebastian we hear very little, and we may suppose that his influence was not permanent.

Malchus further states that Zeno had nothing of Leo's coarse nature, and that his wrath was not wont to be relentless. His attempt to unify the Church by his famous Henotikon, which raised up against him deadly ecclesiastical odium, has been spoken of in a former chapter, and we must remember this when we read the charges, preferred against him by eccle­siastical writers, of undisguised and almost obtrusive immorality. The favour shown by him to his countrymen the Isaurians, whom the Byzantines regarded as brutish clowns, was an ad­ditional cause of unpopularity; while the court intrigues and jealousies, which led to constant conspiracies and frequent bloodshed, throw another shadow over his rather obscure reign. The presence of the Ostrogothic pillagers in the Balkan provinces might be used by the Emperor's enemies to complete the gloomy picture.

I must give an account of some of the personages who played a part at the court of Zeno and were objects of interest in the streets of Byzantium. Harmatius, the nephew of Basiliscus, who has already been mentioned, was a young man of fashion, to whose name doubtless many scandals were attached. The most celebrated was his intrigue with Zenonis, his uncle's wife; their love is described by a historian in a passage worthy of a romance.

“Basiliscus permitted Harmatius, inasmuch as he was a kinsman, to associate freely with the Empress Zenonis. Their intercourse became intimate, and as they were both persons of no ordinary beauty they became extravagantly enamoured of each other. They used to exchange glances of the eyes, they used constantly to turn their faces and smile at each other; and the passion which they were obliged to conceal was the cause of dule and teen. They confided their trouble to Daniel a eunuch and to Maria a midwife, who hardly healed their malady by the remedy of bringing them together. Then Zenonis coaxed Basiliscus to grant her lover the highest office in the city”.

The preferment which he received from his uncle elated him beyond measure. He was naturally effeminate and cruel. Theodoric, the son of Triarius, despised him as a dandy who only cared for his toilet and the care of his body; and it was said that in the days of Leo he had punished a number of Thracian rebels by cutting off their hands. When he was exalted by his mistress's husband, he conceived the idea that he was a man of valor, and he manifested this idea by dressing himself as Achilles, in which guise he used to ride about and astonish or amuse the people in the hippodrome. The populace nicknamed him Pyrrhus, on account of his pink cheeks, but he took it as a compliment to his valour, and became still more inflated with vanity. "He did not", says the historian, "slay heroes like Pyrrhus, but he was a chamberer and a wanton like Paris".

Harmatius did not long survive the return of Zeno, and his death may be considered an instance of double ingratitude. Zeno, who owed his recovery of the crown to Harmatius, kept the promise he had made to appoint him magister militum in praesenti, and to proclaim his son Basiliscus Caesar. But Zeno did not trust the fidelity of the new magister, and he engaged a man, who had risen to high rank by the patronage of Har­matius, to assassinate his patron.

Illus the Isaurian was the most important minister in the Empire after Zeno’s return, but his position was surrounded by pitfalls on all sides. Not only was he the object of Verina’s enmity and machinations, but Zeno seems to have viewed him with fear and suspicion, and wished to rid himself of him. Only a month or two after his reinstallation on the throne, he was suspected of having suborned a servant to assassinate Illus. In 478 Illus was made consul, and the rebuilding of an imperial stoa devolved upon him. One day, while he was attending to matters connected with this work, an Alan, one of the scholarii under the master of offices, was found with a sword, which he plainly intended to use against Illus. He con­fessed under torture that the prefect Epinicus had suborned him. Zeno immediately deposed the prefect, confiscated his goods, and handed his person over to Illus, who despatched him to a place of safety in Isauria. Soon afterwards, Illus invented a pretext to leave the capital himself, and visiting the prison of Epinicus, induced him to confess that he had acted in con­cert with Verina, the Empress-mother. Zeno and the court met him on his return in the neighbourhood of Chalcedon, and Illus induced the Emperor to consign to him that danger­ous woman, while Epinicus might be allowed to return to Byzantium. Verina was then placed in confinement in an Isaurian castle, named Dalisandon, having previously taken the vows of a nun at Tarsus. At this period Isauria and Cappadocia were the recognized places for the banishment of political prisoners, and Illus, being a native of Isauria, had considerable influence there. Another captive, whom he kept immured in an Isaurian stronghold, was Longinus the Emperor's brother—for what reason we know not. But it is evident that the influence and power of Illus in those regions made him formid­able to Zeno.

It appears that in 483, Illus, whose life had been recently attempted, this time by the Empress Ariadne, withdrew to Asia Minor, on a plea of wishing for change of air, perhaps really feeling that his life was not safe in Constantinople. In the meantime a certain Leontius had raised the flag of revolt in Syria, with the intention, it was said, of reviving the forlorn cause of paganism. It seems that Illus was then appointed commander-in-chief of the eastern armies, and was sent against Leontius. But for some unknown reason he incurred Zeno's suspicions, and attached himself to the cause of the rebel. Zeno had delivered an oration against him as a public enemy, sold his property, and made a present of the proceeds to the cities of the Isaurians. The object of the last measure was, we may suspect, to bid for their adherence against Illus.

Illus and Leontius made use of the Empress Verina, who was living as a prisoner in the Isaurian castle, to give a semblance of legitimacy to their cause. She crowned Leontius at Tarsus, and issued in his interests a letter which was sent to various cities. Illus, moreover, put himself in communi­cation with Odovacar, the king of Italy, who, however, was unable to give active help, as well as with the Persians and the Armenians. Leontius entered Antioch on 27th June 484 and established there an imperial court. Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who afterwards conquered Italy, was sent to put down the revolt, and it was practically crushed very soon, although the two leaders held out for four years in the Isaurian castle of Papirius, where Verina died during the siege. The fortress was taken by the treachery of Illus’ sister-in-law, the wife of Trocundus, and Illus and Leontius were slain.

The most noteworthy circumstance about the revolt of Illus is that he was an Isaurian rebelling against an Isaurian Emperor. It is impossible to unravel the skein of events and see the motives of the two chief actors, Illus and Zeno, as our sources are mere fragments, but it is hardly justifiable to apprehend its chief significance as an attempt to revive paganism. It is possible that this conception may have guided Leontius, though he seems to have been an insignificant and incapable person, and was finally a mere figure-head, but it was the intimacy of Illus with a very remarkable philosopher named Pamprepius that gave the movement a pagan character. It need hardly be observed that such an idea as the revival of pagan religion had as little real danger for Christianity in the reign of Zeno, as the scheme of Pomponius Laetus for a similar revival in the fifteenth century.

Illus was a man with a taste for letters, as well as a good military captain, and he spent the long hours of the siege in the Isauric fort in study. At Constantinople he perhaps affected to be a patron of letters, but at all events he discovered Pamprepius of Panopolis in Upper Egypt, who became his friend, confidant, and spiritual adviser. The career of Pamprepius is worthy of record, as it illustrates life in the fifth century. He went in his youth from Egypt to the university of Athens, where he studied under the Neoplatonist Proclus, and was appointed professor of grammar (i.e. of philology); but he was not only a grammarian and a philosopher, he was also a poet, doubtless of the school of Nonnus, who was born in the same city. Obliged to leave Athens, in consequence of a quarrel with a magistrate, he sought his fortune in the capital, and won the patronage of Illus by a poem which he recited. The influential statesman procured him a professorship, and increased his stipend by a grant of his own. As a man of the highest intellectual ability, as the intimate friend of Illus, and as a pagan who gave bold and undisguised utterance to his unacceptable opinions in a city so religious as Byzantium, he was one of the observed and the dangerous, feared and disliked. In the eyes of the ordinary Christian a "Greek" or heathen was a nefarious individual who was probably a magician; and the mysticism of a Neoplatonist would naturally present many opportunities for charges of sorcery. During the absence of Illus (478) he was banished, but Illus brought his favorite back in triumph and procured him a seat in the senate and the quaestorship, a post which was especially appropriate to a learned man who could write in a good style. The philosopher accompanied Illus in his revolt, and perished with him.

The revolt of Illus was not the only trouble that tended to make Zeno feel insecure. Another rising took place at an earlier period in his reign which was very nearly successful, although Illus supported the throne. Anthemius, the Emperor of the West, had two sons, Marcian and Procopius. Marcian married Leontia, the second daughter of Leo, who could boast of the fact that she was born in the purple as a ground of superiority to her sister the Empress Ariadne. They conspired at the end of 479 to dethrone Zeno on account of the banishment of Verina, and they enlisted a number of citizens as well as barbarians in their cause. One of the brothers surprised the imperial guard in the palace, while everything was quiet in the midday heat, and the Emperor was only saved by escaping from the building. But time was wasted, and at night Illus conveyed Isaurian soldiers from Chalcedon in market boats, as Marcian had seized the ferries. On the following day the rebels were overpowered; Marcian was compelled to take orders and banished to Cappadocia; while Procopius found a refuge in the camp of the Ostrogoth Theodoric, the son of Triarius, who had approached the city with hostile intent.

Zeno had one son, of the same name, whose brief and strangely disreputable career must have been one of the chief scandals at the court. His father desired that he should be carefully trained in manly exercises, but unscrupulous young courtiers, who wished to profit by the abundant supplies of money which the boy could command, instructed him in all the vulgar excesses of luxury and voluptuousness. They introduced him to boys of his own age, who did not refuse to satisfy his desires, while their adulation flattered his vanity to such a degree that he treated all who came in contact with him as if they were servants. His excesses brought on an internal disease, and he died, still a boy, after lying for many days in a senseless condition.

In the declining years of Zeno his brother Longinus began to gain influence; he filled high official posts, and looked for­ward to succeeding his brother. Zeno, however, consulted a certain Maurianos, skilled in occult learning, who informed him that a silentiarius would be the next Emperor. This prophecy was unfortunate for a distinguished patrician of high fame named Pelagius, who had once belonged to the silentiarii, for Zeno, seized with alarm and suspicion, put him to death. The Emperor in his last days seems to have been a prey to suspicions, as was indeed not unnatural, seeing that so many rebellions had vexed his reign; and his unhappiness was increased by his bad health. An attack of epilepsy carried him off in April 491.

One act of Zeno's latter years deserves special notice, the suppression of the school of Edessa in 489. Edessa was a literary centre in western Mesopotamia, and exercised a vast influence in diffusing Hellenism in those regions. The teachers of Edessa, however, were Nestorians, and it is to this fact that we must ascribe Zeno's narrow-minded act, which was clearly designed to please the monophysites and Chalcedonians.

 

IV

THE OSTROGOTHS IN ILLYRICUM AND THRACE

 

We saw how in the reign of Arcadius the Visigoths of Alaric abode in the Illyrian peninsula, and almost formed a kingdom there, before they invaded Italy and established themselves in the West; we shall now see how in the reign of Zeno the same phenomenon was repeated in the case of the Ostrogoths of Theodoric, how they almost formed a kingdom in the land of Mount Haemus, before they went westward and founded a realm in Italy.

After the death of Attila in 453, the subject nations immediately threw off the yoke of the Huns, and asserted their independence on the field of Netad (454). Of these nations the chief was the Ostrogoths, over whom three brothers ruled jointly, Walamir, Theodemir, and Widemir. These brothers made an arrangement with the Emperor Valentinian, by which, probably as federate, they were allowed to occupy Pannonia. After  some  years,  during  which they  repulsed an attack of the remnant of the Huns, they came into collision with the Emperor Leo, on account of an unpaid allowance of gold, and ravished the Roman provinces; but peace was made in 461, in consequence of which Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, was sent as a hostage to Constantinople, where he remained for ten years, and had the advantage of a Roman training. This training, however, did not perhaps include letters, for it is said that he was never able to write. During these ten years his nation was engaged in wars with the Suevi and King Hunimund, in which Walamir, his uncle, whom contemporary Greek historians wrongly called the father of Theodoric, was killed.

In 471 (or 472) Theodoric returned to his people. He distinguished himself by a campaign against the Sarmatians, and a year or two later joined his father in an invasion of Illyricum, while Widemir attacked the Romans of Italy. The father and son marched, capturing cities as they went, as far as Thessalonica, and there the old treaty between the Romans and Goths was renewed, and certain towns (Pella, Methone, Pydna, Beroea) in the neighbourhood of the Thermaic Gulf were assigned to the Goths. But for some unrecorded reason they were soon transferred to Lower Moesia and Scythia, where we find them stationed during the usurpation of Basiliscus.

About the same time Theodoric (Strabo, "Squinter"), the son of Triarius, the chief of another tribe of Ostrogoths that was supported by the bounty of the Empire, comes into pro­minence. He could not boast the noble descent of his name­sake Theodoric, the son of Theodemir the Amal, from whom he must be carefully distinguished. War broke out between the Ostrogoths and Scyrians in 467, and both peoples applied to Leo for assistance. The general Aspar counselled the Emperor to remain neutral, but Leo determined to listen to the prayers of the Scyri. Aspar was on friendly terms with the Goths, and it was because he knew that there was no chance of Leo’s aiding them that he advised him to reject both requests. In 468 Leo rejected overtures of the sons of Attila, and in the following year the remnant of the Huns combined with the Goths against the Empire, but the campaign was unsuccessful because they quarrelled among themselves.

The Ostrogothic chief Theodoric, son of Triarius, aspired to succeed to the position of Aspar, and in 473 he sent an embassy to that effect to Constantinople. When Leo refused his demands, Theodoric, having divided his forces in two parts, with one division ravaged the territory of Philippi and with the other reduced Arcadiopolis by starvation. These energetic proceedings extorted concessions from Leo; he agreed to pay a yearly stipend of 2000 lbs. of gold to the Goths, to allot them a district in Thrace, to create Theodoric magister eq. et ped. praes. mil. Theodoric, on his part, was to fight for the Emperor against all enemies except the Vandals. He was, moreover, to be recognized as king of the Goths.

In the troubles that followed Leo's decease, the son of Triarius took the part of Basiliscus, while the son of Theodemir supported Zeno. The relations which existed between Zeno and the two Theodorics during the three years succeeding Zeno's restoration (477-479) may be divided into three stages. In the first stage Zeno and the son of Theodemir are combined against the son of Triarius; in the second stage the two Gothic chieftains join forces against the Emperor; in the third stage the son of Triarius and Zeno are allied against the son of Theodemir.

In 477 Zeno received an embassy from the son of Triarius and his federate Goths who were desirous to make a treaty with the successful Emperor. The ambassadors reminded Zeno of the injuries which the son of Theodemir had inflicted on the Empire, though he was called a Roman "general" and a friend. It appears that Theodoric the Amal, who was now stationed in Lower Moesia, had received the title of general in reward for his opposition to Basiliscus. Zeno called the senate, and it was concluded to be impossible to support the two generals and their armies, for the public resources were hardly sufficient to pay the Roman troops. The exchequer, it must not be forgotten, had not yet recovered from the failure of the Vandal expedition of 468. As the son of Triarius had always shown himself hostile at heart, was un­popular on account of his cruelty, and had assisted Basiliscus "the tyrant", it was determined to reject his offer. Yet, as Zeno for a time withheld a reply, three friends of Theodoric in Constantinople, Anthimus, a physician, and two others, wrote him an account of the course which matters were taking; but the letters were discovered, the affair was examined by a senatorial commission of three persons, in the presence of the magister officiorum, and the three friends of the Goths were punished by flogging and exile. It is not quite certain, but it is probable, that after the rejection of his request the son of Triarius harried Thrace up to the walls of the capital.

Soon after this, probably in 478, the Emperor, perceiving that while the son of Triarius was becoming stronger and consolidating forces, the son of Theodemir was becoming weaker, deemed it wise to come to terms with the former. He therefore sent an embassy proposing that the son of the chief should be sent to Byzantium as a hostage, and that Theodoric himself should pass the life of a private individual in Thrace, retaining what he had already secured by plunder, but binding himself to plunder no more. Theodoric refused, representing that it was impossible for him, having collected tribes together and formed an expedition, to withdraw now. Accordingly Zeno decided on war; troops were summoned from the dioceses of Pontus, Asia, and the East, and it was expected that Illus would assume the command. It seems, however, that Illus did not take the field, for we find Martinianus, his brother-in-law, conducting a campaign against the son of Triarius in the same year, and proving himself incompetent to maintain discipline in his own army. Then Zeno sent an embassy to the other Theodoric, whose headquarters were at Marcianopolis in Lower Moesia, calling upon him to fulfil the duties of a Roman general and advance against the enemy. He replied that the Emperor and senate must first swear that they will never make terms with the son of Triarius. The senators took an oath that they would not do so unless the Emperor wished it, and the Emperor swore that he would not break the contract if it were not first violated by Theodoric himself.

The son of Theodemir then moved southwards. The master of soldiers of Thrace was to meet him with two thousand cavalry and ten thousand hoplites at the passes of Mount Haemus; when he had crossed into Thrace another force was to join him at Hadrianople, consisting of twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse; and, if necessary, Heraclea and the cities in the neighbourhood were prepared to send additional troops. But the master of soldiers was not at the gates of Haemus, and when the Ostrogoths arrived on the banks of the Hebrus no troops met them there. At Mount Sondis they fell in with the army of the other Theodoric, and the antagonists plundered one another's flocks and horses. Then the son of Triarius, approaching his rival's tent, reviled him as a traitor to desert his own countrymen, and as a fool not to see through the plan of the Romans, who wished to rid themselves of the Goths, without trouble on their own part, by instigating them to mutual destruction, and were quite indifferent which party won. These arguments took effect, and the two Theodorics made peace. This is the second stage of alliance, which we noted above.

The reconciled Ostrogothic chieftains then sent ambassadors to Byzantium (in the beginning of 479). The son of Theodemir, upbraiding Zeno for having deceived him with false promises, demanded the concession of territory to his people, a supply of corn to support his army till harvest time, and also that the domestics, who collected the revenue, should be sent at once to give an account of what they had received; and he urged that, if these demands were not satisfied, he would be unable to restrain his soldiers from plundering, in order to support themselves. The son of Triarius demanded that the arrangements he had made with Leo (in 473) should be carried out, that the payment he had been accustomed to receive in former years should be continued, and that certain kinsmen of his, who had been committed to the care of Illus and the Isaurians, should be restored. We are not informed what answer Zeno made to the elder Theodoric, or whether he made any; to the son of Theodemir he replied, that if he consented to break with his namesake and make war upon him he would give him 2000 lbs. of gold and 10,000 lbs. of silver immediately, besides a yearly revenue of 10,000 aurei and an alliance with the daughter of Olybrius or some other noble lady. But his promises did not avail, and Zeno prepared for war, notifying his intention to accompany the army in person. This intention created great enthusiasm in the army, but at the last moment Zeno drew back, and the murmurs of the soldiers threatened a revolt, to prevent which the army was broken up and the regiments sent to their winter quarters.

When the army was disbanded, Zeno's only resort was to make peace on any terms with the son of Triarius. In the meantime Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, was engaged in ravaging the fairest parts of Thrace in the neighbourhood of Mount Rhodope, which divides Thrace from Macedonia; he not only ruined the crops, but extorted from the farmers or slew them. The son of Triarius, when he received Zeno's message—remarking that he was sorry that the innocent husbandmen, for whose welfare Zeno did not care in the least, suffered from the ravages of his rival—concluded a peace on the conditions that Zeno was to supply a yearly pay­ment sufficient to support thirteen thousand men selected by himself (Theodoric); that he was to be appointed to the command of two scholae and to the post of a master of soldiers in praesenti, and receive all the dignities which Basiliscus had bestowed upon him; that his kinsmen were to inhabit a city assigned by Zeno. The Emperor did not delay to execute this agreement; Theodoric, son of Theodemir, was deposed from the office of master of soldiers, and Theodoric, son of Triarius, appointed in his stead. This marks the third stage in these changeful relations.

In the meantime the son of Theodemir laid waste Macedonia, including Stobi, its chief city. He even threatened Thessalonica, and the inhabitants felt so little confidence in Zeno that they actually believed that the Emperor wished to hand their city over to the barbarians. A sedition broke out which ended in the transference of the keys of the city from the praetorian prefect to the archbishop, a remarkable evidence of the fact that the people looked on the ministers of the Church as defenders against imperial oppression. These suspicions of the Emperor’s intentions seem, however, in this case to have been unjust, and Zeno sent Artemidorus and Phocas to Theodoric, who was persuaded by their representations to stay his army and send an embassy to Byzantium. Theodoric demanded that a plenipotentiary envoy should be sent to treat with him. Zeno sent Adamantius, directing him to offer the Goths land in Pautalia, a district of Macedonia, on the borders of Thrace, and 200 lbs. of gold to supply food for that year, as no corn had been sown in the designated region. The motive of Zeno in choosing Pautalia was that if the Goths accepted it they would occupy a position between the Illyrian and Thracian armies, and so might be more easily controlled.

Meanwhile Theodoric had proceeded by the Egnatian way to Heraclea in Macedonia, and sent a message to Epirus to one Sidimund, an Ostrogoth who had been in the service of Leo and had inherited an estate near Dyrrhachium, where he was living peaceably. Theodoric induced him to make an attempt to take possession of that important city of New Epirus, and for this purpose Sidimund employed an ingenious device. He visited the citizens individually, informing each that the Ostrogoths were coming with Zeno’s consent to take possession of the city, and advising him to move his property with all haste to some other secure town or to one of the coast islands. The fact that his representations were listened to and that he managed to dispose of a garrison of two thousand men proves that he must have possessed considerable influence. Theodoric was at Heraclea when the messenger of Sidimund arrived with the news that the plan had been successfully carried out; and the Amal chief, having burnt a large portion of the town because its inhabitants could not supply him with provisions, set out for Epirus. This collusion of Sidimund, the Ostrogothic, subject of the Empire, with Theodoric, the Ostrogothic despoiler of the Empire, is an example of the manner in which the Germans within helped the Germans without, or more strictly, those who were half foes and half dependants, for Theodoric had been a Roman general, was still a Roman patrician, and had been educated at New Rome.

When he left Heraclea—the city now called Monastir, situated in that plain of Pelagonia which became famous on one occasion in the later history of the Roman Empire—the Gothic invader proceeded along the Egnatian way, crossing the range of the Scardus mountains, and arrived at Lychnidus, which is probably identical with Ochrida. Built in a strong situation on the shore of Lake Ochrida, and well provided with water and victuals, Lychnidus defied the assault of the bar­barians, who, unwilling to delay, hastened onwards, and having seized Scampa, the most important town between Lychnidus and Dyrrhachium, arrived at the goal of their journey.

It may be wondered whether at Dyrrhachium (the Calais of the south Adriatic passage if Brundusium was the Dover) it entered the mind of Theodoric to ship his people across to the western peninsula and attack the Italian kingdom of Odovacar in the south, as in old time the power of Rome and the Latin name was attacked by the Epeirot Pyrrhus. Adamantius, the ambassador who had been sent by Zeno to treat with him, seems to have thought it more likely that the Ostrogoths would employ vessels for the purpose of plundering the Epeirot or Dalmatian coasts, for he sent a post messenger to Dyrrhachium, to blame Theodoric for his hostile advance while negotiations were pending, and to exhort him to remain quiet and not to seize ships until he arrived himself.

Starting from Thessalonica, and passing Pella on the Via Egnatia, Adamantius came to Edessa, the modern Vodena, where he found the captain Sabinianus, and informed him that he had been appointed master of soldiers in Illyricum. The messenger, who had been sent to Dyrrhachium, returned in the company of a priest, to assure Adamantius that he might proceed confidently to the camp of Theodoric; and having issued a mandate to collect all the soldiers available, the general and the ambassador moved forward to Lychnidus. Here Sabinianus made difficulties about binding himself by oath to restore the hostages whom Theodoric was willing to deliver as a gage for the personal safety of Adamantius. This produced a deadlock; Theodoric naturally refused to give the hostages. Adamantius naturally refused to visit Theodoric.

Adamantius invented a simple solution of the difficulty, which led to a strange and striking scene. Taking with him a body of two hundred soldiers he climbed by an obscure and narrow path, where horses had never set hoof before, and reached by a circuitous route an impregnable fort, built on a high cliff, close to the city of Dyrrhachium. At the foot of the cliff yawned a deep ravine, through which a river flowed. A messenger was sent to inform Theodoric that the Roman ambassador awaited him, and, attended by a few horse-soldiers, the son of Theodemir rode to the bank of the river. The physical features, the cliff, the chasm, and the river, are sufficiently simple and definite to enable us to call up vividly this strange scene. The attendants of both Adamantius and Theodoric had retired beyond range of earshot; and "they twain, like a king with his fellow"—the representative of the Emperor standing on the edge of the cliff, and the Ostrogothic chieftain, whose name was in later years to become so great, on the opposite side of the ravine,—held "converse of desolate speech".

"I elected to live",  complained  Theodoric,  "beyond  the borders of Thrace, far away Scythia, deeming that if I abode there I should trouble no man, and should be able to obey all the behests of the Emperor. But ye summoned me as to war against Theodoric, and promised, firstly, that the master of soldiers in Thrace would meet me with his army, yet he never appeared; secondly, ye promised that Claudius, the steward of the Gothic contingent, would come with the pay for foreign troops, yet I never saw him; thirdly, ye gave me guides who, leaving the better roads that would have taken me to the quarters of the foe, led me by steep and precipitous rocky paths, where I wellnigh perished with all my train, advancing as I was with cavalry, wagons, and all the furniture of camp, and exposed to the attacks of the enemy. I was therefore constrained to come to terms with them, and owe them a debt of gratitude that they did not annihilate me, betrayed as I was by you and in their power".

"The Emperor", replied Adamantius, "bestowed upon you the title of Patrician, and created you a master of soldiers. These are the highest honors that crown the labours of the most deserving Roman officers, and nothing should induce you to cherish towards their bestower other than filial sentiments". Having endeavoured to defend or extenuate the treatment of which Theodoric complained, the envoy proceeded thus: "You are acting intolerably in seizing Roman cities, while you are expecting an embassy; and remember that the Romans held you at their mercy, a prisoner, surrounded by their armies, amid the mountains and rivers of Thrace, whence you could never have extricated yourself, if they had not permitted you to withdraw, not even were your forces tenfold as great as they are. Allow me to counsel you to assume a more moderate attitude towards the Emperor, for you cannot in the end overcome the Romans when they press on you from all sides. Leave Epirus and the cities of this region—we cannot allow such great cities to be occupied by you and their inhabitants to be expelled—and go to Dardania, where there is an extensive territory of rich soil, uninhabited, and sufficient to support your host in plenty".

To this proposal Theodoric replied that he would readily consent, but that his followers, who had recently endured many hardships, would be unwilling to leave their quarters in Epirus, where they had fully expected to pass the winter. He proposed a compromise, and engaged that if he were permitted to winter at Dyrrhachium he would migrate to Dardania in the ensuing spring. He added that he was quite ready to leave the unwarlike mass of his Ostrogoths in any city named by Zeno, and giving up his mother and sister as hostages, to take the field against the son of Triarius with six thousand of his most martial followers, in company with the Illyrian army; when he had conquered his rival he expected to succeed to the post of master of soldiers and to be received in New Rome as a Roman. He also observed that he was prepared, if the Emperor wished, "to go to Dalmatia and restore Julius Nepos". Adamantius was unable to promise that the wishes of the Goth would be acceded to; it was necessary to send a messenger to Byzantium to consult the Emperor. And thus the interview terminated.

Meanwhile the military forces, stationed in the Illyrian cities, had assembled at Lychnidus, around the standard of Sabinianus. It was announced to the general that a band of the Ostrogoths led by Theudimund, the brother of Theodoric, was descending in secure negligence from Mount Candaira, which separates the valley of the Genusus from that of the Drilo. This band had formed the rear of the Ostrogoths’ line of march, and had not yet reached Dyrrhachium. Sabinianus sent a few infantry soldiers by a circuitous mountain route, with minute directions as to the hour and place at which they were to appear; and himself with the rest of the army proceeded thither, after the evening meal, by a more direct way. Marching during the night he assailed the company of Theudimund at dawn of day. Theudimund and his mother, who was with him, fled with all speed into the plain, and, having crossed a deep gully, destroyed the bridge which spanned it to cut off pursuit. This act, while it saved them, sacrificed their followers, who turned at bay upon the Romans. Two thousand wagons and more than five thousand captives were taken, and a great booty.

After this the Emperor received two messages, one from Adamantius announcing the proposals of Theodoric, the other from Sabinianus exaggerating his victory, and dissuading from the conclusion of peace. War seemed more honourable to Zeno, and the pacific offers were rejected; Sabinianus was permitted or commanded to continue the war, which seems to have been protracted in these regions for more than two years longer. But the able general was murdered by an ungrateful master; and we hear that John the Scythian and Moschianus were sent to succeed him.

Of the events of the following years our notices are meagre. We find the son of Triarius assisting Illus in the suppression of the revolt of Marcian in the same year in which the campaign of Epirus took place. Soon afterwards we hear that he operated successfully against "Huns",  and we may be sure that these Huns were identical with the Bulgarians, who were now for the first time roused up by Zeno to make war against both the Theodorics. From another source we learn that Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, defeated an army of Bulgarians. Hence we may conclude that, in the year 480, the two Ostrogothic chieftains combined against the Empire, and that Zeno sought the alliance of the Bulgarians, who, in the movements that had ensued upon the dissolution of Attila’s power, had migrated westward from their homes near the Caspian and hovered on the lower Danube. Moreover, both the Theodorics gained victories over the Bulgarian forces.

In the following year (481) "the son of Triarius advanced against Constantinople itself, and he would easily have reduced it if Illus had not guarded the gates in time. Thence he passed to the so-called Sycae (a suburb), where he again failed in an attempt on the city. It remained for him to proceed to the place named Pros Hestiais and the so-called Losthenion, and endeavour to cross the straits to Bithynia. But he was de­feated in a sea-fight, and departed to Thrace. Thence he set forth for Greece (Hellas) with his son Recitach and his two brothers and his wife and about 30,000 Goths (Scythians). And when he was at the Stable of Diomede he was killed. Having mounted his horse in the morning he was thrown by it on a spear which was standing erect beside the wall of the tent. Others asserted that the blow was inflicted on him by his son Recitach because he had whipped him. His wife Sigilda buried him by night. Recitach succeeded to his authority over the people, his father's brothers sharing in the power. But he slew them afterwards, and reigned alone over the land of the Thracians, performing more outrageous acts than his father had performed. Recitach was soon afterwards slain by Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, whom Zeno instigated to the deed (483 or 484).

In 482 we find Theodoric—the name is no longer ambiguous—ravaging both the Macedonias and Thessaly and capturing the town of Larissa. For the ensuing six years (until 488) he continues to be a thorn in the side of the Roman Emperor, and a burden and menace to the lands of the Haemus, though, for the most part, he is not openly hostile, having been conciliated by honours and benefits. Parts of Moesia and Dacia were conceded to him (483), and he was appointed master of soldiers. In 484 he enjoyed the great dignity of giving his name to the year as consul, and he assisted Zeno against the rebel Illus. But three years later (487) he marched on Constantinople, laying waste the country as he went; Melantias was taken, and the capital was once more threatened by the Ostrogoths. But in 488 the land was delivered from their presence, and the Ostrogoths, like the Visigoths eighty years before, left Illyricum to seek a new home in the West.

V

ODOVACAR  THE  PATRICIAN AND  THEODORIC  THE  PATRICIAN

 

For more than four months after the death of Olybrius, Leo was the sole Roman Emperor, and during that time the power in Italy seems to have rested with the senate and Gundobad, the nephew of Ricimer. On 5th March 473 Glycerius, count of the domestics, was proclaimed Emperor at Ravenna, by the advice of Gundobad, even as Severus had been proclaimed Emperor at the same place by the advice of Ricimer. But Gundobad the Burgundian was not like Ricimer, and he soon disappears from the scene of Italian politics. One important public act is recorded of the Emperor Glycerius. Italy was threatened by an invasion of Ostrogoths, who were moving from Pannonia under the leadership of Widemir; Glycerius’ diplomacy averted the storm, so that it fell on Gaul.

The eastern Augustus did not approve of the new election, which was made without his consent; and he selected another as the successor of Anthemius. His candidate was the husband of his niece, Julius Nepos, the nephew of Marcellinus, who had ruled independently in Dalmatia. And the career of Julius Nepos partakes of two characters; at one moment we think of him as the successor of Anthemius, at another moment as the successor of Marcellinus.

Glycerius was  easily  deposed,  he  did  not fight; and in Portus, Porties Augusti et Trajani, the town at the mouth of the Tiber, he was ordained as bishop of Salona. It is not quite clear whether he ever reached the city of his episcopate, and lived in the vicinity of the palace, which another ex-Emperor, far different from him, had built for himself at the mouth of the Jader. He was ordained and he died, that is all we know. Nepos was proclaimed Emperor and ruled at Rome (24th June 474).

Once more an Augustus at Old Rome and an Augustus at New Rome reigned in unison. At this juncture Epiphanius, the old bishop of Pavia, who was adored in the land of Liguria, appears on the scene, and negotiates a peace between Nepos and Euric, the Visigothic king, as he had before negotiated a peace between Anthemius and Ricimer. Euric had taken advantage of the recent confusion to extend his dominions, and had attacked Auvergne, which was bravely defended by Ecdicius, the son of Avitus. Sidonius, his brother-in-law, celebrates the enthusiasm of his grateful fellow-citizens—"How they gazed at you from the walls of Arverni". But by the peace of Epiphanius, Arverni was ceded to Euric, in order to save Italy from invasion, and Sidonius breaks out into bitter complaints of this abandonment. What made the yoke of the Visigoths at this time especially intolerable, was the fact that King Euric, who had acceded in 466, was a fanatical Arian. He oppressed the Catholics in his realm; he refused to allow Catholic bishops to be elected at Burdigala, Lemovici (Limoges), and other cities; and Sidonius hesitated whether he should regard him as the leader of an Arian party or as the king of the Goths. Ennodius says that he ruled the "Getae" with an iron sway.

But it was not with Euric, nor yet with Gundobad, that Nepos had to measure swords; a general named  Orestes, of patrician rank, was to be his adversary. This was that Orestes who had been the secretary of Attila, and had married the daughter of a certain Count Romulus. He was, perhaps, employed as a general in Gaul by Julius Nepos; certain it is that he was in Italy in 475, and he disdained to submit to the rule of him whom the sovereign of New Rome had sent. He determined to do what Stilicho probably desired to do, what Aetius probably desired to do, what Gerontius probably did; he determined to elevate his son to the imperial throne, and thereby possess the supreme power himself.

We are told that Nepos went to Ravenna, and the Patrician Orestes pursued him with an army. And Nepos, fearing the coming of Orestes, embarked in a ship and fled to Salona. This was on the 28th of August 475; the same year that saw the flight of Zeno from Constantinople saw the flight of Nepos from Ravenna; but while in less than two years Zeno returned, the return of Nepos was not to be. He lived for five years at Salona, the third ex-Emperor who had bent his course thither; and if Glycerius really survived, he had the satisfaction of seeing the man who overthrew him overthrown in turn.

The Caesar Julius was succeeded by the Caesar Augustulus; for so young Romulus was nicknamed, whom his father invested with the imperial insignia (31st October 475). These names, Julius, Augustulus, Romulus, in the pages of the late chroniclers, meet us like ghosts re-arisen from past days of Roman history.

We now come to an event which is often presented in a wrong light, the resignation of Romulus Augustulus on 22d August 476. The immediate cause which led to the fall of Orestes was a mutiny of the foederati, as Gibbon clearly saw; Orestes’ own conduct in heading a mutiny against Nepos was "retorted against himself". The foreign soldiers in the army, consisting of Heruls, Rugians, Scyrians, and other obscure nationalities, demanded a third part of Italy for themselves; Orestes boldly refused the demand, and his shield-bearer, Odovacar, headed the mutineers. Pavia, to which Orestes retired, was easily taken, and the Patrician was slain at Placentia; his brother Paul was put to death in the pine-woods of Classis. "Entering Ravenna, Odovacar deposed Augustulus, but granted him his life, pitying his infancy, and because he was comely; and he gave him an income of six thousand solidi, and sent him to live in Campania with his relations".

These words of a chronicler represent what practically took place. Italy was now to be divided among the followers of Odovacar, as south-western Gaul more than fifty years ago had been divided among the followers of Wallia. But as Athaulf and Wallia did not break with the Empire, so Odovacar did not desire to break with the Empire; he aspired to govern Italy as a Patrician, nominally dependent on the Emperor, while he was king of his own Germans. For this purpose he made the deposition of Romulus Augustulus take the form of an abdication; he induced the Roman senate to endorse form­ally the permanent institution of a state of things which had often actually existed in the days of Ricimer; and ambassadors were sent to the Augustus of New Rome to signify the new order of things. In 477, when Zeno had been restored to the throne of which Basiliscus had robbed him, the messengers of the Roman senate appeared in Constantinople, and informed Zeno that they did not require a separate Emperor to govern them, but that his sole supremacy would be sufficient both for East and West; at the same time they had selected Odovacar as a person capable of protecting their interests, being both a warrior and a man endowed with political intelligence; and they now asked Zeno to confer upon him the rank of Patrician and entrust him with the administration of Italy.

At the same moment, messengers arrived from Nepos, to congratulate Zeno on his restoration, and to ask for his sympathy with one who had suffered the same misfortune, and for his aid in men and money to recover the imperial power. This message affected Zeno's reply to the envoys from Italy. To the representatives of the senate he said, that of the two Em­perors whom they had received from the East, they had slain one, Anthemius, and banished the other, Nepos; let them now take Nepos back. To Odovacar, who had also sent envoys, he replied that he would do well if he accepted the rank of the Patriciate at the hands of Nepos; he praised the respect for Rome and the observance of order which had marked his conduct; and bade him crown his goodness by acknowledging the rights of the exiled Emperor. The fact that Verina was a kinswoman of the wife of Nepos was a determining element in the situation. But Odovacar did not acknowledge the claim of Nepos, and Zeno was not in a position to do more than give him advice.

The unfortunate phrase "Fall of the Western Empire" has given a false importance to the affair of 476: it is generally thought that the date marks a great era of the world. But no Empire fell in 476; there was no western Empire to fall. There was only one Roman Empire, which sometimes was governed by two or more Augusti. If, on the death of Honorius in 423, there had been no Valentinian to succeed him, and if Theodosius II had assumed the reins of government over the western provinces, and if, as is quite conceivable, no second Augustus had arisen again before the western provinces had all passed under the sway of Teutonic rulers, no one would surely have spoken of the "Fall of the Western Empire". And yet this hypothetical case is formally the same as the actual event of 476. The fact that the union of East and West under Zeno’s name was accompanied by the rule of the Teuton in Italy, has disguised the true aspect. And in any case it might be said that Julius Nepos was still Emperor; he was acknowledged by Zeno, he was acknowledged in southern Gaul; so that one might just as legitimately place  the Fall of the West­ern Empire in 480, the year of his death. The Italian provinces were now, like Africa, like Spain, like the greater part of Gaul, practically an independent kingdom, but theoretically the Roman Empire was once more as it had been in the days of Theodosius the Great or in the days of Julian.

When the Count Marcellinus in his Chronicle wrote that on the death of Aetius "the Hesperian realm fell", he could justify his statement better than those who place 476 among the critical dates of the world's history. It is more profitable to recognize the continuity of history than to impose upon it arbitrary divisions; it is more profitable to grasp that Odovacar was the successor of Merobaudes, than to dwell with solemnity on the imaginary fall of an empire. Merobaudes, the German against whose influence in the western court the Britannic legions made a Roman manifestation, was succeeded by the semi-barbarian Stilicho, who at once encouraged and kept in check the barbarians, at once undermined and protected the Empire. After a short Roman reaction under Constantius, who, however, was constrained to do what Stilicho never did, and assign to the Goths lands within the Empire, arose the great Aetius, of German descent on his father's side and reared among barbarians, who now warred with the Teutons and now led them to battle. If Stilicho was a semi-barbarian, Aetius might be called a semi-Roman. His successor was the Suevian Ricimer; with him the opposition between the German element and the principles of the Roman Imperium appears; he will only have an Emperor whom he likes; the Emperor depends upon the Patrician, not the Patrician upon the Emperor. The next step is Odovacar the Patrician, not without an Emperor—for that would have been an absurdity in theory—but subject to an Emperor ruling, not at Ravenna or Rome, but at Constantinople, and therefore practically independent. Odo­vacar is likewise king of his own nation, and though he is not "King of Italy", Italy is virtually a Teutonic kingdom, like Spain and Africa. The administration of Odovacar therefore does not come within my scope. The significance of his reign is that it prepared for the kingdom of the Ostrogoths. The death of Gaiseric (477) was followed by the decline of the Vandalic power, and Odovacar had less difficulty than his pre­decessors in providing on that side for the safety of Italy. He annexed Dalmatia to his dominion in 481, after the death of Julius Nepos, and acted in every regard as an independent prince. It is noteworthy that the one extant coin, which may be probably attributed to  Odovacar, has no reference to the Emperor.

We may pass on to the circumstances which led to the overthrow of the Scyrian monarch and the establishment of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Theodoric in the Italian peninsula. The words of a chronicle, in which the events are clearly and simply related, may be quoted.

“And so Zeno recompensed Theodoric with benefits; he made him a Patrician and consul, gave him much and sent him to Italy. And Theodoric made a compact with him, that, in case Odovacar were conquered, he should, as a reward for his labours, rule in place of Odovacar, until Zeno came himself. Accordingly Theodoric the Patrician supervened from the city of Novae with his Gothic people, being sent by the Emperor Zeno from the east to win and keep Italy for him.

“When he came he was met by Odovacar at the river Sontius (Isonzo), and fighting there was conquered and fled. But Odovacar departed to Verona and fixed his camp in the Lesser Veronese plain on the 27th of September [489]. And Theodoric followed him there, and a battle was fought and people fell on both sides; but Odovacar being overcome fled to Ravenna on the last day of September.

“And Theodoric the Patrician marched on to Mediolanum, and the greater part of Odovacar’s army surrendered to him; especially Tufa, the Master of Soldiers, whom Odovacar with his chief men had ordained on the 1st April. In that year Tufa, the Master of Soldiers, was sent by Theodoric to Ravenna against Odovacar.

“Tufa, coming to Faventia, blockaded Odovacar with the army with which he had been sent; and Odovacar left Ravenna and came to Faventia. And Tufa delivered to Odovacar the "comrades" (comites) of the Patrician Theodoric, and they were put in irons and led to Ravenna.

“In the consulate of Faustus and Longinus [490], King Odovacar left Cremona and proceeded to Mediolanum. Then the Visigoths came to the assistance of Theodoric,  and a battle was fought on  the river Addua, and people fell on both sides. Pierius, the Count of Domestics, was slain on the 11th August, and Odovacar fled to Ravenna. Then the Patrician Theodoric followed him and came to the Pinewoods (Pineta) and pitched his camp. And he blockaded Odovacar, keeping him shut up in Ravenna for three years. And a bushel of corn reached the price of six solid! And Theodoric sent Faustus, the head of the senate, to the Emperor Zeno, hoping to receive at his hands and wear the royal apparel.

“In the consulate of Olybrius, vir clarissimus, [491] King Odovacar departed from Ravenna by night and entered the Pinewoods along with the Heruls and came to the camp of the Patrician Theodoric. And soldiers fell on both sides; and Levila, Odovacar's Master of Soldiers, fleeing was killed in the river Bedens. And Odovacar being vanquished fled to Ravenna on the 15th of July.

“Then [493] Odovacar, being constrained, gave his son Thelane as a hostage to Theodoric, having his pledge that his life would be spared. Thus Theodoric entered in (to Ravenna). And some days after, Odovacar was discovered to be plotting against him, but his design was anticipated; for Theodoric with his own hand slew him with a sword in the palace of Lauretum. On the same day all his soldiers were slain, wherever they could be found, and all his kin”.

Thus Theodoric "supervened" and succeeded Odovacar, as Odovacar had supervened and succeeded Orestes. Both for one and for the other it had been a political necessity to slay his rival; it would have been dangerous to accord him his freedom; and it was not the habit of German warriors to immure fallen adversaries in dungeons. The only possible compromise would have been to divide Italy; but Theodoric had come from the East to recover the whole land. The death of Odovacar was the most natural and simple alternative; confinement in an island was not a method likely to be adopted by a German king. The statement that Odovacar was found plotting against Theodoric has been doubted, though it is quite credible; and whether it is true or not, Theodoric could hardly escape the necessity of putting him to death.

But Zeno, who had given the commission of recovering Italy to Theodoric the Patrician, had meanwhile been succeeded by Anastasius; and the new Emperor had adopted an attitude of reaction against his Isaurian predecessor. Theodoric therefore could not be sure of imperial recognition. “He had sent Faustus Niger as an ambassador to Zeno. But having learned of his death before the embassy returned, the Goths confirmed Theodoric as their king, when he entered Ravenna and slew Odovacar, and did not wait for the order of the new Emperor”. It was not till five years later that he made peace with Anastasius (498) and “received all the ornaments of the palace which Odovacar had sent to Constantinople”." The Roman Emperor tardily recognized him, but looked upon Italy as the territory of an enemy rather than of a Patrician, and even sent ships to make a raid on the coast of Apulia (508).

Theodoric adopted Ravenna, the city of Honorius and Placidia and Valentinian, as his capital. The Emperors who reigned in the days of Ricimer had seldom resided in the palace of the Laurelwood, but Odovacar had adopted it as his home. Theodoric built a new palace in another part of the city, close to the church of St. Martin, in which his Arian Goths worshipped. This church, which is still extant, was afterwards dedicated to St. Apollinaris, and is now known as San Apollinare Nuovo. Of the Ostrogothic palace perhaps some relics still remain; but of the Lauretum, where Odovacar was slain, no trace is left.

While Italy was being ruled by the German Patricians Ricimer, Odovacar, and Theodoric, a new power was consolidating itself in Gaul. Aegidius was the successor of Aetius in the work of maintaining Roman authority and resisting Teutonic advance in Gaul; he opposed Frankish Childeric as Aetius had opposed Frankish Chlojo. It was Childeric who really founded the kingdom of the Franks; he acquired the cities of Koln and Imperial Trier; and at Tournai his tomb and corpse with his armour were found in the seventeenth century. If Childeric founded, his son Chlodwig reared and extended, the new kingdom, and achieved for it an important position in the political system of Europe. As the Patrician Aegidius was the adversary of Childeric, the Patrician Syagrius, his son, was the adversary of Chlodwig. Syagrius ruled at Augusta Suessionum (Soissons) as independently of the Empire as Odovacar ruled at Ravenna, yet as the representative of the Roman name. But Syagrius had no allies; his forces were not a match for the might of Chlodwig; and in the year 486 he fled vanquished from a field of battle. The Visigoths, with whom he sought refuge, did not dare to save him; he was delivered to the victor and put to death. This battle decided the predominance of the Franks in Gaul.

Among the German nations who settled in the Roman Empire the Franks had a peculiar position. In the first place, they were less imbued with Roman ideas, they were more-opposed to the Roman spirit, they represented more purely the primitive German man, with his customs and ways, than the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, or the Burgundians. In the second place, they had never served as foederati under a Roman Emperor, like the Visigoths under Alaric or the Ostrogoths under Theodoric; neither Chlojo nor Childeric had ever been Roman Patricians or masters of soldiers, nor had they received grants of territory from an Augustus; they won their kingdom by force, without the semblance of right. In the third place, while the Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals formed their kingdoms in countries where people of their races had never settled before, the kingdom of Childeric arose in lands where Franks had been settled for more than a hundred years. Yet another mark distinguished them from the neighbouring Teutonic kingdoms, when Chlodwig was converted to Christianity by the influence of his Burgundian wife Clotilda and embraced the Catholic creed (496 AD), whereas the other German kings and peoples had either been originally baptized or afterwards lapsed into the Arian doctrine. This act smoothed the relations between the Gallo-Roman subjects and their Frankish rulers, and was of vital consequence for the history of western Europe.

Chlodwig subdued the Alemanni in a great battle (about 492 AD), and rendered them tributary; he defeated the Arian Burgundians, and compelled them, too, to pay tribute; and he won a decisive victory over the Arian Visigoths on the Campus Vocladensis, where King Alaric the Second fell. But against the great Theodoric he could not contend as he had contended against Alaric and Gundobad; he besieged Arelate, but the forces of the Ostrogoths inflicted a terrible defeat on the Franks and Burgundians outside the walls of the Roman city. Provincia was incorporated in the Ostrogothic kingdom, and ruled by a vicar. Before the death of Theodoric its limits were increased to westward and northward, at the expense of Visigoths and Burgundians, and it was ruled by a praetorian prefect.

Chlodwig, meanwhile, who stood as the Catholic power of the West over against the Arian kings, was recognized as an ally by Anastasius. The Roman Emperor conferred upon the king of the Franks the dignity of the consulate. The geographical positions of the Empire and the kingdom of Chlodwig rendered the alliance natural, as their borders did not touch. The bestowal, however, of the consulship on Chlodwig implies the theory that, as his territory once belonged to the Empire, he was in a certain way still connected with, if not dependent on, the Emperor. Anastasius would hardly have thought of bestowing the consular rank on a German prince who lived in a district of central Europe which had never been an imperial province. Chlodwig was hereby recognized by the Emperor as his successor or vicegerent in Gaul.

Of the political administration of Theodoric something will be said in a future chapter. We may point out here that in relation to the Vandals he followed the policy of Odovacar, and allowed them to retain a small corner of Sicily, including the fortress of Lilybaeum, which had in old days belonged to the Carthaginians. Thus at the beginning of the sixth century the political geography of Europe was very different from its simple character at the beginning of the fifth, when civilized Europe and the Roman Empire were conterminous. Beside his possessions in Asia and Egypt, the Emperor exercised direct authority over Thrace and Illyricum, that is the prefecture of Illyricum; but the diocese of Illyricum or Western Illyricum, as it is sometimes called, including Rhaetia, Noricum, Pannonia, and Dalmatia, belonged to the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy. As the Ostrogothic king was a Roman Patrician, it might be said that the Emperor still ruled nominally over Italy. The rest of the old prefecture of Italy, that is, Africa, Sardinia, and Corsica, with a small part of Sicily, was held by the Vandals, whose kings accentuated their independence of the Empire by wearing the diadem on their coins. The old prefecture of the Gauls had been converted into four Teutonic kingdoms: (1) the small realm of the Suevians in north-western Spain; (2) the large realm of the Visigoths, which extended from the Loire to the Straits of Gades; (3) the kingdom of the Burgundians, on the Rhone; (4) the kingdom of the Franks, which comprised all northern Gaul, and extended east of the Rhine. In these kingdoms two corners are not included, the north-western corner, which was inhabited by Celtic Britons, and the south-eastern corner, Provincia, which passed into the hands of Theodoric when he protected it against the Franks. As for Britain, it was at this time experiencing the invasions of the Saxons and the Angles, and passing out of the remembrance of the Roman Empire.

 

V

Saint Severinus.

 

Before I conclude this chapter I must give some account of one of the strangest episodes in the his­tory of the dismemberment of the Empire in the West—the condition of the provinces of Noricum and Rhaetia under the dominion of a saint. These provinces formed a Roman island in the midst of a barbarian sea, for German nations had penetrated westward along the Julian Alps and formed a wedge dividing Noricum from Italy. They were exposed to constant invasions from the barbarians who encompassed them—the Ostrogoths, who, after the break-up of the Hun empire, had settled in the lands of the Save, the Thuringians in the north­west, the Alemanni and Suevi in the south-west, the Rugians to the north and north-east, with their dependants, the Turcilingi and Heruls. The Rugians proposed to protect these Roman provinces against the other barbarians, but such a pro­tectorate was a pretext for oppression.

The Rhaetian and Noric lands fell into a state of complete disorganization, political, military, and moral. The imperial officers abandoned their dangerous posts in this inhospitable country and departed to Italy, leaving the maintenance of order to the municipal magistrates. The soldiers quartered as garrisons in the strong towns had no means of maintaining communication, and as their pay became irregular, and finally ceased, owing to the interrup­tion of direct relations with Italy, they were more ready to quarrel with the provincials than to fight with the enemy. They reinforced the bands of brigands or scamars, who began to infest the wild mountainous regions and plunder the plains. The moral chaos is represented as appalling. While the distinction of right and wrong vanished, while prudence and pity were forgotten, the grossest superstitions prevailed. Human beings were actually sacrificed in a town of Noricum to appease some deity or fiend, to whom the miserable condition of the country was attributed. In Noricum and Rhaetia the pain which attended the great travail of the fifth century reached its highest degree, the darkness assumed its blackest hue.

Here, if anywhere, there was need of some divine intervention, of a prophet at least who believed himself divinely in­spired. A new social organization was required to render possible an adequate defense against the barbarians, and as joint action requires a certain minimum of unselfishness, some moral regeneration was a condition of success. Such a prophet,  "the   apostle   of  Noricum",  came  from  the  East.

It was in the year after Attila's death that Saint Severinus appeared in Pannonia. His past history was a secret that went to the grave with himself. It was only known that he was by birth an Italian, and that "he had set out to a solitude in the East, through a burning desire of the more perfect life", and that he had travelled much in oriental countries. He learned there the austerities of a monk. His life in the lands of the upper Danube makes us imagine him as a sort of mystic theosophist with strong practical energy.

He united the mission of John the Baptist with the mission of Christ; he preached repentance and loving-kindness. The first city to which he came was Astura, an important commer­cial centre in Pannonia. He bade the people repent and change their ways, prophesying that otherwise destruction would speedily come upon their city—a safe prophecy; but the people were froward. and looked upon the prophet as a common beggar. Having made only one convert, the porter of the city gate who had taken him in, he proceeded to another town, Comagenae. Soon afterwards Astura was surprised by barbarians, and the fulfilment of the prediction of Severinus, which was noised abroad by the porter, who escaped from the sack of the town, changed his position from that of an obtrusive mendicant impostor to that of a prophet and a saint. It was suddenly discovered that he was the one man capable of saving the imperilled countries, which God seemed to have abandoned.

And for this work Severinus proved well adapted. He was not merely an enthusiast capable of exciting enthusiasm in others, but he had a genius for organization and command. He was skilful in judging an actual situation, in planning a mode of defense or a sally, in dealing with individual men. He soon had an opportunity of displaying his talents at Faviana (now Mauer), where he was summoned on account of an impending famine, owing to the scarcity of corn, which, as the Inn was frozen, could not be obtained in the usual quantity. The disorganization and immoral tone in the town prevented its fair distribution, but Severinus restored order, and superintended the apportionment with complete effectiveness. In this town, on the borders of Rhaetia and Noricum, he took rip his abode, and made it, as it were, the centre of his administration.

Having led the people into the path of repentance, he proceeded to teach them charity. He imposed on all a tax of one-tenth of provisions and one-tenth of raiment for the benefit of the poor, who had always been the chief objects of his solicitude. This tax was enforced by his own moral influence. It is to be particularly observed that his charity was extended to barbarians and brigands as well as others. Misery was a sufficient recommendation.

But his practical activity had not subdued his passion for solitude and the life of the hermit. Suddenly he disappeared from Faviana, and made a cell for himself in a valley of Mount Cettius. And so he passed his life, meditating alternately in his mountain cell and in the monastery which he founded at Faviana.

The history of the intimacy of Severinus with Flaccitheus, king of the Rugians, whose territories reached the left bank of the Danube at Faviana; of his relations with that king's two sons, the feeble Feva and the crafty Frederick, and with Ghisa, Feva’s wife, whose nature was deadly and pestilential, might form the framework of a romance. It is a matter of interest that Odovacar visited the saint’s cell as he journeyed southward in search of a career, and that the saint prophesied his greatness; and further, that when he had attained the royal power in Italy, the saint predicted his downfall.

Severinus’ government in Noricum and Rhaetia lasted about thirty years (453-482). His task was hardest at the beginning and at the end. At the beginning he had to regenerate the inhabitants; at the end the barbarians pressed harder on the provinces. The Ostrogoths were indirectly the cause of this; for their movement from Pannonia into the Illyrian lands left a place for other nations to press in, and disturbed the existing equilibrium. We may attribute the peace that existed during the reign of Flaccitheus between the Rugians and the provincials of Noricum to the constant warfare that was waged between the Rugians and the Ostrogoths. We hear how the saint made the king of the Alemanni tremble in every limb under his glance; but he was  obliged  first to abandon Passau and retreat to Lauriacum (Lorch), and afterwards to yield to the determination of Feva that the provincials should be transported into the land of Lauriacum. The saint did not long survive this; he died in 482, the Rugian royal family standing at his bedside. His dying injunctions and menaces had little effect; Frederick pillaged his monasteries as soon as his eyes were closed.

Odovacar avenged the saint. He determined to win back the provinces of Noricum from the Rugians, with whom, though some said he was a Rugian himself, he had nothing in common. He set out for Italy in 487, and exterminated the Rugian nation. After adorning his triumph, Feva was put to death and Ghisa thrown into a dungeon. The provincials were trans­ported to Italy, and the remains of St. Severinus were conveyed to a monastery at the villa of Lucullus, at the request of a Neapolitan lady.

 

VI

ANASTASIUS   I

 

After the death of Zeno, Flavius Anastasius of Dyrrhachium was proclaimed Emperor (11th April 491) through the influence of the widowed Empress Ariadne, who married him about six weeks later. Anastasius, who held the not very distinguished post of a silentiarius or guardsman, was nevertheless a remarkable and well-known figure in Constantinople. He held unorthodox opinions, partly due, perhaps, to an Arian mother and a Manichaean uncle, and he was possessed by a sort of religious craze, which led him to attempt to con­vert others to his own opinions. He did this in a curiously public manner. Having placed a chair in the church of St. Sophia, he used to attend the services with unfailing regularity and give private heterodox instruction to a select audience from his cathedra. By this conduct he offended the Patri­arch Euphemius, who by Zeno’s permission expelled him from the church and pulled down his chair of instruction; but he gained golden opinions from the general public by his piety and liberality. It even appears that he may have at one time dreamt of an ecclesiastical career, for he was proposed for the vacant chair of Antioch. Euphemius, un­pleasantly surprised at the choice of the Empress, who was supported by the eunuch Urbicius, refused to crown Anastasius until he had signed a written   declaration  of  orthodoxy, which, in spite of his heretical tendencies, he did not hesitate to do.

The accession of Anastasius must have seemed to Byzan­tium a great and a welcome change. Instead of a man like Zeno, who in spite of considerable ability was very unpopular on account of the unfair favour shown to the Isaurians, and who scandalized propriety by his loose life, while he could not attract men by an imposing or agreeable exterior, a man of the highest respectability occupied the throne, a man with a strong religious turn, of slender stature and remarkable for his fine eyes, which differed in hue, a man to whom the people called out when he was proclaimed Emperor, "reign as you have lived", and to whom a bishop of Rome wrote, "I know that in private life you always strove after piety". He is characterized in general as a man of intelligence and good education, gentle and yet energetic, able to command his temper and generous in bestowing gifts, but with one weak point, a tendency to be unduly parsimonious.

But the accession of the new Emperor was not undisputed. Zeno’s brother Longinus, who was president of the senate, conceived that he had a claim to the crown, and he had actually a strong support in his countrymen the Isaurians, who saw that their privileges were endangered. Zeno, who knew his brother well, had with real patriotism refused to designate him as his successor, feeling that his elevation would be a disaster to the Empire; somewhat as Antipater the Macedonian refused to transmit his protectorate to his son Cassander. Longinus, supported by a magister militum of the same name, played much the same part against Anastasius that Basiliscus, the brother-in-law of Leo, had played against Zeno. He organized the numerous Isaurians who resided in the capital, and the year of Anastasius' elevation was marked for Constantinople by bloodshed and fatal street battles, in the course of which a large part of the town, including the hippodrome, was destroyed by a conflagration. Anastasius, however, succeeded in removing his rival to Alexandria, where he became a priest by compulsion, early in  492. Longinus, the master of soldiers, was deposed from his office and returned with many other Isaurians to his mountainous home in Asia Minor.

The tedious Isaurian war, of which this was the first scene, lasted for five years, 491-496. The events of the first years are often obscured by failing to understand clearly that hostilities were carried on in Constantinople and Isauria simultaneously; the war had begun in Isauria before the Isaurians were expelled from Constantinople. Longinus and his friends, who arrived, filled with indignation, in the regions of Mount Taurus, roused their excitable countrymen to revolt; and an understanding evidently existed between the rebels in Asia Minor and the rebels in Byzantium. Among the generals who led the Isaurians in conjunction with Longinus was Conon, the archbishop of Apamea. Their forces marched in a north-westerly direction towards the Propontis, but at Cotyaeum in Phrygia they were met by a small army which Anastasius had sent against them under the command of many experienced officers. The masses of the rebels were utterly routed and fled back to their mountains, while the imperial soldiers followed leisurely and took up winter quarters at the foot of the Taurus range.

In what relations the various generals in command of Ana­stasius’ small army stood to one another we do not know; but it would be unfair to suppose that Anastasius was adopting the policy of dividing the command from motives of jealousy or suspicion. The number of commanders is quite accounted for by the nature of the warfare to be expected in the defiles of Taurus, where it was necessary for small divisions to act in many places, and a large regiment under a single leader would have been of little use.

The news of Cotyaeum was followed by an edict (issued in the capital in 493) unfavourable to the Isaurians, who thereupon filled the streets with all the horrors of fire and sword, and hauled along with ropes the bronze statues  of the Emperor.

These scenes of indecent violence were with difficulty suppressed, and then a summary edict was issued banishing all Isaurians from the city, among the rest the family of Zeno, while the Isaurica or annual grant of 1000 lbs. of gold (which Zeno had instituted) was withdrawn.

The banished members of the obnoxious nationality, burning for revenge, reinforced their countrymen in the castles and hiding-places of the Taurus mountains, and for the next three years (493-496) a somewhat desultory but anxious war was carried on round the strong places of the country. Claudiopolis, a very important position, was taken in 493, and in 494 a considerable victory was won near the same city in a battle which was fatal to archbishop Conon. The following year saw the capture and execution (at Byzantium) of Longinus, one of the chiefs, not to be confounded with the ex-magister; and in 496 the last two surviving leaders, Longinus and Athenodorus, were taken, and the war was at an end.

It is important to note that the Isaurians were then removed from their Asiatic home and transported to Thrace, but it is hard to believe that this measure can have been carried out with any degree of completeness. The whole history of the Isaurian war indicates what an isolated position, from their sentiments, habits, and mode of life, the Isaurians held in the Empire, as we have already described. It was as natural for them to take up arms when an Isaurian did not succeed Zeno as it would have been for the Ostrogoths if by some extraordinary concurrence of circumstances Theodoric had become a Roman Emperor and on his death an Ostrogoth did not replace him.

Besides its disastrous effects on agriculture and industry in the south of Asia Minor, this long war led indirectly to other harmful consequences. It was a very unsuitable and unfortunate preparation for the serious Persian war which broke out  in  502,  and  was  only temporarily terminated  by the peace of 505. An account of this three years’ war will be given in the next chapter, but it may be here observed that the Isaurian warfare, which required operations in small divisions and introduced the practice of numerous independent commands, was a bad drill for the war in Mesopotamia, which demanded the united action of large bodies under one supreme general.

In the meantime the Balkan lands were becoming acquainted with new foes, who were destined to play a great part in the subsequent history of the Roman Empire. The departure of Theodoric the Ostrogoth to Italy left Thrace and Illyricum free for the Slaves, who dwelt beyond the Danube in the countries which are now called Siebenbürgen and Moldavia, to invade and plunder. The first invasion of which we have record took place in 493, on which occasion they severely defeated Julianus, the master of soldiers, and devastated Thrace. The next invasion that we hear of was in 517, when they penetrated into Macedonia and Thessaly; but it is highly probable that in the intervening years they were not idle, though we have no record. But other enemies had also laid waste the provinces and defeated the legions. These were the Bulgarians, a people of the Ural-Altaic or Ugro-Finnic race, who must not be confounded with the Slaves. They are first mentioned as having been employed by Zeno against Theodoric, by whom they were defeated. In 499 they crossed the Danube, and returned gorged with plunder, and crowned with the glory of a victory over a Roman army; and in 502 they repeated their successful expedition.

It seems clear to me that there must have been invasions, whether of Slaves or Bulgarians, between the years 502 and 512, which our scanty and brief notices have not recorded. For, in the first place, they had met with no repulse; invasion was  easy and inviting; nothing  except hostilities  among the barbarians themselves could have hindered them. In the second place, Anastasius built the Long Wall for protection against their hostilities in 512, and it is hardly conceivable that he would have built it then if, during the ten preceding years, the provinces had been exempted from the devastations of the heathen. It rather seems probable that in 510 or 511 a really dangerous invasion took place, and that this was the immediate cause of the erection of the wall. This wall, of which traces are still visible, stretched from the Sea of Mar­mora at Selymbria to the Black Sea. Its length was 420 stadia, its distance from the city was 280 stadia, and its effect was to insulate Constantinople.

Thus the arms of Anastasius were so unsuccessful in Europe that at last no serious attempt was made to protect Thrace; he confined himself to saving the capital by a massive fortification. This wall was really efficacious, and it is meaningless rhetoric to call it a "monument of cowardice", an expression which might be applied to all fortifications. On the other hand, in Asia some useful successes were gained in 498 against the Bedouin or Scenite Arabs, who had begun to invade Syria and Palestine. They were thoroughly defeated in two battles. But a success of still greater consequence was the recovery of the island of Jotaba, from which the Romans had been expelled in the reign of Leo. Jotaba was the centre of an important Red Sea trade; all the ships with cargoes from India put in there, and custom-house duties were collected by imperial officers. Its possession was thus extremely important for the Empire.

Anastasius' reign was signalized by many riots and disturbances in Constantinople. These often took the form of conflicts between the Blues and Greens, the latter of whom were favoured by Anastasius, as they identified themselves with the unorthodox monophysitic party. The religious disputes and the schism with Rome were noticed in a previous chapter; here I shall only call attention to the strained relations, already referred to, between the Emperor and the Patriarch Euphemius.

It happened that in 495 Anastasius informed the Patriarch that he was sick of the Isaurian war, and would willingly make easy conditions with the rebels, if he could thereby conclude it. Euphemius was treacherous enough to repeat these words to Johannes, a son-in-law of Athenodorus, one of the Isaurian leaders. We cannot determine to what extent Euphemius entertained a traitorous design; but Anastasius, when Johannes made him aware of the Patriarch’s communication, looked upon him, or chose to look upon him, as a traitor and accomplice of the rebels. He was banished, or fled, soon afterwards from Byzantium.

There was a strong party of opposition whose hostile machin­ations must have often made the Emperor feel insecure. How this party, which represented the orthodox faith, acted in regard to the Isaurian revolt we do not hear; but the incident of Euphemius, just related, might incline us to suspect their loyalty during those years. The measures adopted by Anastasius for the reform of abuses created much discontent among those who profited by them; he put down informers (delatores) with a firm hand. His conscientious scruples did not permit him to indulge the corrupt populace in the dissolute and barbarous amusements to which they were accustomed. He forbade the practice of contests with wild beasts, a relic of heathen Rome which was an anachronism in the Christian world.

We cannot be surprised at its survival so long when we remember that gladiatorial shows lasted for fifty years after Rome had become Christian; and we must also recollect that the Christian doctrine that animals have no souls hindered any strong sentiment on the subject. He also refused to allow the celebration of nocturnal feasts, which were the occasions of licentious orgies. The May feast of Bruta was on two occasions the scene of scandalous riots, resulting in the sacrifice of life, and the Emperor forbade its celebration for the future, thereby (says a contemporary) "depriving the city of the most beautiful dances". Thus his staid and frugal court, which his enemies might call shabby, his strict censorship of morals, which seemed, as we should  say, puritanical,  and  his   heretical  opinions  in theology, exposed Anastasius to constant odium, which culminated (511 AD) when he sanctioned the adoption of a monophysitic addition to the hymn called Trisagios ("thrice holy"). To quell the sedition Anastasius adopted a theatrical artifice, which was successful. He appeared before the people without a crown, and offered to resign the sovereignty in favour of another. The respect which his uniform conscientiousness had inspired in all predominated for the moment, and the multitude cried to him that he should resume the diadem. But discontent continued to prevail, and the opposition was so strong that it seemed a good opportunity for an ambitious man who had soldiers at his command to attempt to dethrone the Emperor.

In 514 such an attempt was made. The commissariat which had been supplied by the State to the corps of foreign foederati, who were stationed to defend Thrace and Scythia, had been withdrawn, and the discontent which ensued afforded a new pretext against the existing government. Vitalian, the son of a man who had been himself count of the foederati, fostered the ill-feeling. He was a man small in stature, and afflicted with a stammer, but he had associated constantly with Huns and Bulgarians, and could count on their co-operation. The brunt of the unpopularity of the government with the soldiers was borne by Hypatius, the Emperor's nephew, who was the master of soldiers in Thrace, and it was against him in the first instance that Vitalian directed his attack. By stratagem he compassed the death of the chief officers of his staff, he corrupted the governor of Lower Moesia, and then capturing Carinus, Hypatius’ trusted confidant, he granted him his life on the conditions that he should co-operate in the capture of Odessus and recognize himself as general. Hypatius seems to have escaped to Constantinople.

The rebel, or "tyrant", as he was called, then advanced on the capital with 50,000 soldiers, consisting partly of the foederati and partly of rustics, some of whom were perhaps Slaves settled in Moesia and Scythia. It was not merely as spokesman of the grievances of the army, and as protesting against the administration of Hypatius, that Vitalian posed;  he  also professed to be the champion of orthodoxy, indignant at the treatment of certain bishops whom Anastasius had banished. He took care to insist on this pretext; and we may confidently assume that he had established intimate relations with the disaffected party in the city.

The Emperor, inclined to he timorous on account of his recent experiences (that is, the revolt of 511), and vexed by the unexpectedness of these occurrences as well as by the fact that the adversaries who were advancing made a similar pretence of blaming his religion (as the rebels had done on the former occasion), commanded bronze crosses to be set up over the gates of the walls, setting forth in writing the real cause of the rebellion. He also reduced by one-quarter the tax on animals for the inhabitants of Bithynia and Asia, depositing the bill to that effect on the altar of the First Church (St. Sophia). He employed the officers and ministers as a garrison for the city.

But when Vitalian attacked the suburbs and marched round the walls, the Master of Soldiers, Patricius, was sent to him. Such missions devolved upon him in virtue of his office; moreover, he was distinguished by honour and dignities, and had considerably helped Vitalian himself in his successful career. He took Vitalian sharply to task, availing himself of the liberty permitted to a benefactor; and in reply Vitalian, as was to be expected, dwelled on many acts passed by the Emperor, and pointed out that the present object of himself and his party was (1) to rectify the injustices committed by the magister militum per Thracias (Hypatius), and (2) to obtain the recognition and sanction of the orthodox theological creed.

Next day the chief officers of Vitalian’s camp came, on the Emperor's invitation, without Vitalian, for he could not be persuaded to enter the city; and an interview was held in which the Emperor, having charged them and proved to them that they were not disdained or passed over, won them by presents and by promises that they would receive their dues, and undertook that the church of Old Rome would be allowed to arrange the religious questions at stake. When they had declared with oaths their future loyalty to him, he dismissed them. Having returned to Vitalian, they departed with him and the army.

Thus the first essay of Vitalian was frustrated by the desertion of his officers, whose confidence Anastasius won. Anastasius followed up his promises by appointing Cyrillus to the post of magister militum instead of his nephew, who was so unpopular with the army. Cyrillus proceeded to Lower Moesia, where he knew that he would find Vitalian actively engaged in new schemes. Vitalian was even more on the alert than he thought, and as the general was enjoying the society of his concubines a Hunnish assassin slew him. This act made it clear that the rebel was irreconcilable, and a decree of the senate was passed in old Roman style—the use of this formality is noteworthy — that Vitalian was an enemy of the republic.

A large army of 80,000 was collected, and while Alathar, a Hun, was appointed to succeed Cyrillus, the supreme command of the army was assigned to the unpopular Hypatius, who was accompanied by Theodorus, "steward of the sacred treasures". Vitalian's new army consisted of Huns, Bulgarians, and perhaps Slaves, recruited probably as before from rustics of the Haemus provinces. We have no hint that his former adherents, the officers whom Anastasius’ adroitness had won over, or their soldiers, fell back again from their allegiance, and we may assume that they joined the imperial army. The Emperor’s forces gained an inconsiderable victory, which was soon followed by serious reverses. Julian, a magister memoriae, was taken alive by the rebels, and carried about in a cage, as Bajazet was carried about by Timour, but was afterwards ransomed. Hypatius then fortified himself behind a rampart of wagons at Acris, on the Black Sea, near Odessa. In this entrenchment the barbarians attacked him, and, assisted by a sudden darkness, which a superstitious historian attributed to magic arts, gained a signal victory. The Romans, driven over precipices and into ravines, lost about 60,000 men. Hypatius himself ran into the sea, if perchance he might conceal himself in the waves, but his head betrayed him, for he was unable to practice the cunning trick of the Slaves, who were accus­tomed thus to elude the pursuit of their enemies, breathing under water through a long hollow reed, one end of which was held in their mouth while the other was just above the surface. Vitalian preserved him alive as a valuable hostage. This victory enabled him to pay his barbarian allies richly, and placed him in possession of all the cities and fortresses in Moesia  and  Scythia,  which  he ruled as  an  emperor.  The ambassadors whom Anastasius sent with 10,000 lbs. of gold to ransom his nephew were captured in an ambush at Sozopolis.

In the meantime a tumult, attended with loss of life, took place in Constantinople because the Emperor forbade the celebration of a festival on account of disorders in the circus which had occurred on the same day; among others the prefect of the watch was slain. This disturbance, along with the captivity of his nephew and the threatened siege, may have perhaps contributed to induce Anastasius to make a compromise with Vitalian. The conditions were that Vitalian should be made magister militum per Thracias, that he should receive 15,000 lbs. of gold, that the proclamation of the orthodox faith should be renewed, and that Hypatius should be liberated.

The following year (515) was troubled not only by the ravages of a horde of Sabir Huns, who entered Asia Minor through Armenia, and laid waste Cappadocia and the provinces of Pontus, penetrating as far as Lycaonia, whence they returned gorged with booty and laden with captives, but also by a fresh demonstration of hostility on the part of Vitalian. He marched on Constantinople, and took up his quarters at Sycae. He then embarked in a fleet which he had prepared, and was completely defeated off Scutari by Marinus the Lycian, some say with the help of chemicals prepared by a man of science named Proclus, an Archimedes of that day. This naval victory decided the war. Vitalian withdrew, probably to the neighborhood of the Danube, and we hear that a Hunnish leader named Tarrach was captured and burned at Chalcedon, and that many other prominent rebels were punished.

Although Anastasius did not accomplish anything that can be called brilliant, his reign was prosperous. His mild character and his beneficial reforms partially blotted out, in the eyes of contemporaries and of historians, the deadly taint of heterodoxy, and he appeared in a still more favourable light as he was directly contrasted with his unpopular Isaurian predecessor. Mildness is a trait on which his panegyrist Priscian more than once insists, comparing him to Nerva—and another eulogist represents him as a deus ex machina setting right the wrongs and lightening the burdens of the Empire. A member of the civil service, who began his career in this reign, asserts that Anastasius’ careful financial policy, and his strictness in supervising personally the details of the budget, really saved the State, which had first become financially involved by the money that was expended on Leo’s unsuccessful armament against the Vandals, and had been kept in a depressed condition by the short-sighted and "miserable" policy of Zeno.

The act which earned for him most glory and popularity was the abolition of the Chrysargyon, a tax on all receipts, to which the humblest labourer and the poorest prostitute were liable. It had been instituted by Constantine, and Anastasius abolished it in 498. The chief fault that the Church had to find with this tax was that it recognized vices forbidden by nature and the laws. Another abuse which the Emperor remedied was the unfairness of officers in paying rations to their soldiers, in order to make a private profit; this is not mentioned by any writer, but the facts are preserved in an inscription at Ptolemais in the Pentapolis. His donations to soldiers are perhaps another indication of his interest in the army. He was indefatigable in restoring "prostrate cities", and, besides the Great Wall, he executed an important public work which deserves mention, the construction of a canal connecting Lake Sophon with the Gulf of Astacus.

But the men of Dyrrhachium had the reputation of being avaricious, and even favourable writers say that Anastasius was no exception. Elegiac verses were posted up in the hippodrome by his foes, addressing him as "bane of the world".  His love of money, it was said, induced him to listen to the counsels of Marinus, a Syrian scriniarius, who wormed himself into his confidence by promising to raise large sums. It is very probable, however, that our authority, Johannes Lydus, had strong prejudices against the successful Syrian, and misrepresents his policy. There seem to have been a Marinus faction and an anti-Marinus faction in official circles.

The great innovation of Marinus was the abolition of the old curial system, by which the curiae or municipal corporation collected the moneys due to the State. A new farming system was introduced. Officers, named vindices, were ap­pointed to collect the revenue, which on the old system was often cheated through the collusion of the provincial magnates with the governors of the provinces and the tax-collectors (canonicarii). The enemies of Marinus said that the vindices treated the cities like foes, because the appointments were given by auction to those who promised most. The nature of the new system evidently involved this evil, but it is only fair to assume that Anastasius, whose mildness was so remarkable, took care to arrange a mode of checking this by increasing the influence of the defensores, and his panegyrist Priscian represents the measure as healing a flagrant abuse. It must be noted that this change involved an increase of centralization, which seems to have been an object of Anastasius’ policy. Henceforward even minute matters were referred to the Emperor, so that few steps could be taken in the provinces "without a divine command".

Anastasius is said to have never sent petitioners empty away, whether they represented a city, a fort, or a harbour. He was above giving offices by favor, and when his wife Ariadne requested him to appoint Anthemius to the prae­torian prefecture, he refused to make an exception to his principle that only men of forensic training were entitled to it. His saving policy necessarily involved a great reduction of the court expenditure, and he was probably on that account unpopular with the frivolous nobles and the court ladies, accustomed to the pageants and pleasures of Byzantine festivals. But the staid Anastasius did not care for pomp, and the result of his fiscal economy was that he not only righted the financial depression of the Empire, but that at his death 320,000 lbs. of gold were found in the treasury.

Anastasius died in July 518, more than eighty years old.

 

VII

THE  PERSIAN  WAR

 

The restored Persian empire under the sovereignty of the Sassanid dynasty rose on the ruins of the Parthian Arsacids in the reign of Alexander Severus (226 AD) During the third and fourth centuries, the eastern frontier was the scene of fatal wars, in the course of which two Roman Emperors, Valerian and Julian, perished. In 363 a treaty was concluded, by which Jovian ceded five provinces beyond the Euphrates, including Arzanene and Corduene, and the towns of Nisibis and Singara to Sapor, and this cession was followed by an emigration of the Greeks from those lands, because Sapor and the Magi afflicted the Christians with persecutions.

During the fifth century the relations of the Empire with Persia varied, but there were no protracted or considerable hostilities, although Armenia, the perpetual source of annoyance, was in a state of ferment, and a serious war seemed ever on the point of breaking out. This was in a great measure due to the circumstance that the Persian monarchs were fully occupied with dangerous and savage enemies on the north-east frontier of their kingdom—the Ephthalite Huns; while the Roman Emperors had enough to do in weathering the storms that were convulsing Europe.

When our period begins, in the reign of Arcadius, Varahran was on the throne, but was succeeded in 399 by Isdigerd, who was as much an object of veneration to Greek historians as he was an object of detestation to the chroniclers of his own kingdom. He did not take advantage of the childhood of Theodosius II to vex the Empire; and I do not see that there is sufficient reason to follow modern writers in rejecting the statement of Procopius, that Arcadius in his testament made Isdigerd the guardian of his son. There is nothing incredible in this, provided we regard it in the proper light, and recognize that it was only a way of paying a compliment to a royal brother. The guardianship was merely nominal; and Arcadius’ act of courtesy is not without a parallel in later Roman history. The fact that Procopius mentions it with no expression of amazement shows that it did not strike all men, who breathed in the atmosphere of the time, with surprise; and it is therefore arbitrary in modern writers to follow Agathias in pronouncing it improbable.

Isdigerd's successor, Yarahran II, was sufficiently amenable to the influence of the Magi to persecute the Christian residents in Persia. A cruel system of proselytizing was carried on in Persarmenia, and some outrages were committed on Roman merchants. The consequence was a war, which lasted for two years (420-421); the Persians held Nisibis against the siege of the Roman general Ardaburius (father of Aspar), and the Romans on their side defended Theodosiopolis against the attacks of the Persians. It is narrated that the war was decided by a sort of medieval single combat between a Persian, Ardazanes, and a Goth, Areobindus, in which the latter was victorious; but the tale should perhaps be relegated to the region of myth. A peace, however, was concluded for one hundred years. An interesting incident of this war, which deserves to be recorded, was the humanity of Acacius, the bishop of Amida, who ransomed 7000 Persian captives at his own and the Church's costs.

Varahran appointed a Parthian governor in Armenia in 422, but this governor’s personal character made him so unpopular that the Armenian nobles begged in 428 for a Persian satrap, and their petition was granted.

At this time began the struggles of Persia with the Haithal nation, known in Roman history as the Ephthalite Huns, whose abode was beyond the Oxus. They invaded Persia, but Varahran defeated them. Under Varahran Persia flourished. He was succeeded (440) by Isdigerd "the clement", who straightway declared war against the Empire, but circumstances, on which historians are silent, led to an almost immediate conclusion of peace. Isdigerd was soon engaged in a war with the Ephthalites, which lasted for nine years. He made energetic endeavours to convert Armenia to the religion of Zoroaster, but the Armenians were so tenacious of their Christianity that his efforts were expended in vain. The noble family of the Mamigonians was noted as singularly staunch in supporting the national faith.

Perozes succeeded Isdigerd II (453), having overthrown his rival Hormisdas with the assistance of the Ephthalites, who were the inveterate enemies of the Persian kingdom, but might be the temporary friends of a Persian aspirant. His reign was occupied in quelling serious revolts, which agitated Armenia, and in making war on the khan of the Ephthalites, by whose cunning stratagem of covered ditches he was defeated and slain in 483. Balas (Valakhesh), perhaps his brother, followed him, and enjoyed a shorter but more peaceable reign. He made a treaty with the Huns, consenting to pay them a tribute for two years. He pacified Armenia by granting unreserved freedom of religion, and ordaining that in future it should be governed directly by a king and not by a deputy. Soon afterward in­ternal conspiracies forced him to make yet further concessions; Vahan the Mamigonian was appointed governor of Armenia, and Christianity was fully reinstated. Balas died in 487.

The reign of his successor Kobad (Cabades), the son of Perozes, is remarkable for the rise of the communistic reformer Mazdak. The first principle of this teacher was that all men are naturally equal. It followed that the present state of society is contrary to nature and unjustifiable, and thence that the acts which society considers to be crimes are, as merely tending to overthrow an unjustifiable institution, themselves blameless. Community of property and wives was another deduction that naturally followed. The remarkable thing is that King Kobad himself embraced and actively helped to promulgate these doctrines, which the Persian lords and the orthodox Zoroastrians viewed with utter repugnance and contempt. Impatient of such a recreant monarch, the nobles immured him in the castle of Lethe, and proclaimed Zamasp king (498-501); while Mazdak was imprisoned, but forcibly released by his disciples. In the space of two or three years Kobad found means to escape, and with the help of the Huns was reinstated on the throne. In his attitude to Mazdakism and Zoroastrianism during his restored reign he adopted a compromise; as a king he was a fire-worshipper, as a man he was a follower of Mazdak.

It was at this point that hostilities were renewed between Persia and New Rome. In 442 it had been agreed that the Roman government was to contribute a certain sum to enable Persia to provide for the defense of the Caucasian pass of Derbend, close to the Caspian Sea, against trans-Caucasian tribes. Demands had been twice made of the Emperor Leo to fulfill the engagement, but he had refused. It is generally stated that Kobad pressed Anastasius for this payment; but it is more probable that the cause of the outbreak of the war was somewhat different. For their assistance in restoring him to his throne the Persian king owed the Ephthalites a large sum of money which he had promised them, and, finding difficulty in raising it, he applied to Anastasius. The Emperor, however, had no intention of lending it to him, and his refusal took the form of a demand for a written acknowledgment or cautio, as he knew well that to Kobad, unfamiliar with the usages of Roman law, such a mercantile transaction would appear contemptible and intolerable. Kobad replied by a hostile demonstration in Armenia, and thus the "hundred years" peace was broken, after a duration of exactly eighty (502 AD)

Martyropolis, Theodosiopolis, and Amida, the strong places of the great marchland, fell into the hands of the Sassanid monarch one after another. Martyropolis surrendered, Theodosiopolis was betrayed, and Amida, after a long and laborious winter siege, was surprised during a festival early in the year 503,  a   Persian   soldier   having    chanced to discover the issue of a mine. The besiegers had been so long baffled that the garrison and inhabitants ultimately yielded to the negligence of security, and they used to mock the Persians from the walls. A massacre commenced, but was stayed, perhaps by the persuasions of a priest, and Amida was left with a garrison of 1000 men. Thus in the course of a year the three most important frontier fastnesses of the Romans had been lost—Amida in Mesopotamia, Martyropolis and Theodosiopolis on the borders of Armenia.

Anastasius arrayed an army of 15,000 men to take the field, but, still influenced by the traditions of the Isaurian warfare, which had been waged some years before, he committed the grave mistake of dividing the command among several generals. First among these must be named Areobindus, the great-grandson of Aspar (on the mother's side) and husband of the daughter of the Emperor Olybrius; he was a man who seems to have loved dancing and flute-playing better than the serious things of life, and he exhibited slowness and slackness in his conduct of the war. Hypatius, a nephew of Anastasius, also received a general's commission, a post which his military inexperience did not deserve. Other commanders of less importance but more ability or energy were Justin, who afterwards became Emperor; Patriciolus, the father of Vitalian; Romanus.

The campaign of 503 opened with a success for the com­bined divisions of Areobindus and Romanus in the neighborhood of Nisibis; but the enemy soon mustered a stronger army and forced Areobindus from the position which he had occupied at Constantina in Arzanene. The jealousy of Hypatius induced him to keep back the assistance which the most moderate standard of duty and patriotism required him to send to Areobindus, and the latter, left unsupported, had almost decided to return to Constantinople. In the meantime, while the Roman generals were quarrelling, the Persians occupied Nisibis, and soon afterwards fell unexpectedly upon the troops of Hypatius and Patricius (a Phrygian commander) and destroyed a large number of their men.

At this juncture an event happened which changed the tide of fortune, but from which the Romans, had they been led by one able general, might have drawn far greater profit. The Huns invaded Persia, and numerous forces were demanded in the north-east of the kingdom; Kobad therefore desired to make peace. But he thought he could have peace and war simultaneously, and while he treated he devastated. Areobindus, however, defeated him near Edessa, and then he withdrew. The campaigns of 504 were advantageous to the Empire. Hypatius had been recalled, and a valiant Illyrian named Celer, the master of offices, was appointed as a new general. He invaded and devastated Arzanene, and his achieve­ments were followed by successes which the other generals gained elsewhere. Nisibis was wellnigh recovered, and Amida was blockaded. The Roman siege, like the Persian siege two years before, lasted throughout the winter (504-505), and the garrison finally consented to surrender, but on very favorable terms. This advantage was followed by the conclusion of a peace for seven years, by which Amida was left in possession of the Romans, who, however, on the whole had lost, while the Persians on the whole had gained, by this three years' war.

Some years later, probably in 507, Anastasius converted the little village of Daras in Mesopotamia into a splendid fortified town, provided richly with churches, corn magazines, and cisterns, and boasting two public baths. He named it after himself, Anastasiopolis, and it was henceforward one of the centres of frontier warfare. Kobad protested against the work, but, hampered as he was by hostile neighbors in the north­east, he was ready to yield to the diplomacy and accept the bribes of Anastasius, who at the same time strengthened the city of Theodosiopolis on the Armenian borders.