THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 207

Italy and the West, 410-476

14-1. Italy and the West, 410-476

THE process of history in the Western Empire, during the period which lies between the death of Alaric (410) and the fall of Romulus Augustulus (476), is towards the establishment of Teutonic kingdoms, partly displacing and partly embracing the old local administration within their boundaries, but as a rule remaining in some sort of nominal connexion with the imperial system itself. In the course of this process, therefore, the imperial scheme, in which the invading barbarians take a regular place under the name of foederati, still survives, along with much of the old provincial machinery, which they find too useful to be disturbed; but while much that is old survives, much is also added which is new. Germanic tribes, with their kings and their dooms, their moots and their fyrds, settle bodily on the soil, as new forces in the domain of politics and economics, of religion and of law. The Latinised provincial pays a new allegiance to the tribal king: the Roman possessor has to admit the tribesmen as his "guests" on part of his lands; the Catholic priest is forced to reconcile himself to the Arianism, which these tribes had inherited from the days of Ulfila; and the Roman jurist, if he can still occupy himself by reducing the Codex Theodosianus into a Breviarium Alaricianum, must also admit the entrance of strange Leges Barbarorum into the field of jurisprudence.

This process of history may be said to have entered on its effective stage in the West with Alaric's invasion of Italy. But it had been present, as a potentiality and a menace, for many years before Alaric heard the voice that drew him steadily towards Rome. The frontier war along the limes was as old as the second century. The pressure of the population of the German forests upon the Roman world was so ancient and inveterate, and so much of that population had in one way or another entered the Empire for so long a period, that when the barrier finally broke, the flood came as no cataclysm, but as something which was almost in the natural order of things. There may have been movements in Central Asia which explain the final breach of the Roman barriers; but even without invoking the Huns to our aid, we can see that at the beginning of the fifth century the Germans would finally have passed the limes, and the Romans at last have failed to stem their advance, owing to the simple operation of causes which had long been at work on either side.

Among the Germans population had grown by leaps and bounds, while subsistence had increased in less than an arithmetical ratio; and the necessity of finding a quieta patna, an unthreatened territory of sufficient size and productivity, with an ancient tradition of more intensive culture than they had themselves attained, had become for them a matter of life and death. Among the Romans population had decayed for century after century, and the land had gone steadily out of cultivation, until nature herself seemed to have created the vacuum into which, in time, she inevitably attracted the Germans. The rush begins with the passage of the Danube by the Goths in 376, and is continued in the passage of the Rhine by the Vandals, Alans, and Sueves in 406. A hundred years after the passage of the Danube the final result of the movement begins to appear in the West. The praefecture of Gaul now sees in each of its three former dioceses Teutonic kingdoms established — Saxons and Jutes in the Britains; Visigoths (under their great king Euric) in the Seven Provinces of Gaul proper; Sueves (along with Visigoths) in the Spains. In the praefecture of Italy two of the three dioceses are under powerful barbarian rulers: Odovacar has just made himself king of Italy, and Gaiseric has long been king of Africa; while the diocese of Illyricum is still in the melting pot.

If we regard the movement of events from 410 to 476 internally, and from a Roman point of view, we shall find in the domestic politics of the period much that is the natural correlative of the Volkerwanderung without. Already, in the very beginning of this period, and indeed long before, the barbarian has settled in every part of the Empire, and among every class of society. Masses of barbarians have been attached to the soil as cultivators (inquilini), to fill the gaps in the population and reclaim the derelict soil: masses, again, have entered the army, until it has become almost predominantly German. Barbarian cultivators and soldiers thus formed the basis of the pyramid; but barbarians might also climb to the apex. Under Theodosius I, who had made it his policy to cultivate the friendship of the barbarians, the Frank Arbogast already appears as magister militiae, and attempts, like Ricimer afterwards, to use his office for the purpose of erecting a puppet as emperor. He fell before Theodosius in the battle of the Frigidus (394); but the Vandal Stilicho (to whom he is said to have commended the care of his children and the defence of the Empire) was the heir of his position, and Stilicho had for successor Aetius — the "last of the Romans," but also the friend of the Huns — as Aetius was succeeded in turn by Ricimer the Sueve.

It is these barbaric or semi-barbaric figures vested with the office of commander-in-chief of the troops of the West, which form the landmarks in the history of the fifth century; and we should be most true to reality if we distinguished the divisions of this period not by the regna of an Honorius or a Valentinian, but by the magisteria of Constantius, Aetius, and Ricimer. These "empire-destroying saviours of the Western Empire" were in reality the prime ministers of their generation, prime ministers resting not on a parliament (though they might, like Stilicho, affect to rely on the Senate), but on their control of a barbarian soldiery. Their power depended, partly on their influence with this wild force, which the Empire at once needed and dreaded, partly on the fact that the nominal representatives of imperial rule were weaklings or boys, whose court was under the influence of women and eunuchs; but the de facto position which they held was also sanctioned, since the time of Theodosius, by something of a legal guarantee.

Treating the West, after the battle of the Frigidus, as a conquered territory, whose main problem was certain to be that of military defence, Theodosius had left it under the nominal rule of his son, but under the real government of Stilicho; and in his hands he had combined the two commands of infantry and cavalry, which in the East continued to remain distinct. In this position of magister utriusque militiae (already anticipated for a time by Arbogast), Stilicho, and his successors who inherited the title, controlled at once the imperial infantry and cavalry, along with the fleets on seas and on rivers: they supervised the barbaric settlements within the Empire; and they nominated the heads of the staffs of subordinate officers. As imperial generalissimo, in an age of military exigencies, the barbarian magister militiae was the ultimate sovereign; and the title of patricius, sometimes united with the name of parens, which in the fifth century came to be applied peculiarly to the "master of the troops," proclaimed his sovereignty to the world.

To obtain a deluxe leatherbound edition of COMMENTARII DE BELLO GALLICO by Julius Caesar, subscribe to Castalia History.

For questions about subscription status and billings: library@castaliahouse.com

For questions about shipping and missing books: shipping@castaliahouse.com