THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 220
An Imperial Murder and the Fall of the House of Theodosius
14-14. An Imperial Murder and the Fall of the House of Theodosius
The death of Attila was followed, in the next year, by the assassination of Aetius (454); and the assassination of Aetius was followed, a year afterwards, by the assassination of his master, Valentinian III.
The death of Attila, and the subsequent collapse of the Hunnish Empire, which had rested entirely on his personality, deprived Aetius of any prospect of support from the Huns, if his position were once again challenged. Nor was there, after the end of the war with Attila, any pressing danger which made the services of the great soldier indispensable.
He had never enjoyed the confidence of the Theodosian house: he had simply forced himself on Placidia and her son Valentinian, both in 425 and in 433. Placidia, a woman of ambitious temper, must have chafed under his domination; and she must equally, as a zealous Catholic and the friend of the Roman party in the Empire, have resented the supremacy of a man who rested on barbarian support and condoned, if he did not share, the paganism of supporters like Litorius and Marcellinus.
She had died in 450; but the eunuch Heraclius had succeeded to her policy and influence, and in conjunction with the senator Maximus he instigated his master to the ruin of Aetius. The ambition of Aetius made Valentinian the more ready to consent to his ruin. No son had been born to Valentinian from his marriage with Eudoxia; and Aetius apparently aspired to secure the succession for his own family, by gaining the hand of one of the two imperial princesses for his son Gaudentius.
One of the few things, however, which stirred the pusillanimity of the Theodosian house to action was a dynastic question; and as Theodosius II had been ready to go to war rather than admit the elevation of Constantius to the dignity of Augustus in 419, so Valentinian III nerved himself to assassinate Aetius with his own hand, rather than permit the marriage of one of his daughters to the son of a subject. At the end of September 454, as the minister and his master sat together over the accounts of the Empire, Valentinian suddenly sprang up from the table, and after hot words drew his sword on Aetius. Heraclius hurried to his aid, and the two together cut him down. Thus he fell, atque cum ipso Hesperium cecidit regnum.
Of his character and real magnitude we know little. Gregory of Tours preserves a colourless eulogy from the pages of a contemporary prose writer; and the panegyrics of Merobaudes are equally colourless. That he was the one prop and stay of the Western Empire during his life is the unanimous verdict of his contemporaries; but whether or not he was really great as a general or a statesman we cannot tell. He was beaten by Boniface; and it was not he, but the Goths and their king, who really triumphed on the Maurioc plain; yet he recovered Gaul in a series of campaigns, and he kept the Visigoths in check. As a statesman he may be blamed for neglect of Africa, and a too-ready acquiescence in its occupation by Gaiseric; yet it may be doubted whether the Roman hold on the allegiance of Africa was not too weak to be maintained, and in any case he kept Italy comparatively free from the ravages of the Vandals so long as he lived.
If he was less Roman than his predecessor Constantius, he was far more Roman than his successor Ricimer; and if he had occasionally used the arms of the Huns for his own ends, he had also used them to maintain the Empire. One merit he had which must count for much — the merit of recognising and encouraging men of ability. Majorian and Marcellinus, two of the finest figures in the history of the falling Empire, were men of his training.
A wit at Court, when asked by Valentinian III what he thought of the death of Aetius, replied — “Sir, you have used your left hand to cut off your right.” In truth, Valentinian signed his own death warrant, when he joined in the murder of his minister. He had hastened, immediately after the murder, to send explanations to the barbarian foederati, with whom Aetius had been allied; but vengeance was to come upon him within his own Court. Maximus, the senator who had joined with Heraclius in compassing the ruin of Aetius, had hoped to succeed to the position and office of his victim. Disappointed in his hopes, he resolved to procure the assassination of Valentinian, and to seize for himself the vacant throne.
Two of Aetius' followers, whose names, Optila and Thraustila, suggest a Hunnish origin, were induced to revenge their master; and in March 455 Valentinian was assassinated on the Campus Martii, in the sight of his army, while he stood watching the games. Heraclius fell with him; but not a hand was raised to punish the assassins. With Valentinian III the Theodosian house was extinguished in the West, as it had already come to an end in the East on the death of Theodosius II in 450. Though he had ruled for thirty years, Valentinian had influenced the destinies of his Empire even less than his uncle Honorius. Procopius, if his evidence is worth consideration, tells us that Valentinian had received an effeminate education from his mother Placidia, and that, when he became a man, he consorted with quacks and astrologers, and practised immorality. He only once flashed into action, when, piqued by the presumption of Aetius in aspiring to connect himself with the imperial family, he struck him down.
He thought he had slain his master; he found that he had slain his protector; and he fell a helpless victim to the first conspiracy which was hatched against his throne.
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