THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 223

The Last True Roman Emperor

14-17. The Last True Roman Emperor

Majorian belonged to an old Roman family with administrative traditions. His grandfather had been magister peditum et equitum on the Danube under Theodosius the Great; his father had been a fiscal officer under Aetius; and under Aetius he had himself served with distinction. If we can trust the evidence of his constitutions and the testimony of Procopius, Majorian has every title to be considered one of the greatest of the later Roman Emperors. Not only is the rescript in which he notifies his accession to the senate full of pledges of good government; he sought in the course of his reign to redeem his pledges, and by strengthening, for instance, the office of defensor civitatis to repeople and reinvigorate the declining municipia of the Empire. The constitution by which he sought to protect the ancient monuments of Rome is in marked contrast with the vandalism to which Avitus had been forced, and bears witness to the conservative and Roman policy which he sought to pursue. In his foreign policy he addressed himself manfully to the problems which faced him in Africa, in Gaul, and in Spain.

His first problem lay naturally in Gaul. The party which had stood for Avitus, and the Visigoths who had been its allies, were both inevitably opposed to the man who had joined in Avitus's deposition; and the reconciliation of Gaul to the new regime was thus of primary importance After issuing a number of constitutions for the reform of the Empire in the course of 458, Majorian crossed the Alps at the end of the year, with a motley army of Rugians, Sueves, and Ostrogoths.

The Gallo-Roman party received him without a struggle, and the litterateur of the party, Sidonius Apollinaris, pronounced a eulogy on the Emperor at Lyons With the Visigoths, who had been attacking Aries, there was a short but apparently decisive struggle: Theodoric II was beaten, and renewed his alliance with Rome. It remained for Majorian to regulate the affairs of Spain, and, using it as a base, to equip a fleet in its ports for a final attack on Gaiseric. In 460 he moved into the province. His victory over the Visigoths, themselves in occupation of much of Spain since 457, had made his path easy; and a fleet of 300 vessels, which had long been under preparation, was assembled at the port of Alicante for the expedition against the Vandals. But Gaiseric, aided by treachery, surprised the fleet and captured a number of ships; the projected expedition collapsed, like every expedition against Gaiseric, and Majorian had to acknowledge defeat.

He seems to have made a treaty with Gaiseric, recognising the new acquisitions which Gaiseric had made since 455; but the failure of the expedition proved nevertheless his ruin. Bicimer was jealous of an emperor who shewed himself too vigorous; and though Majorian had sought to conciliate him, as the language of his constitutions shews, he had failed to appease his jealousy. When he moved into Italy, in the summer of 461, perhaps to forestall an attack by Ricimer, he only came to meet with defeat and death in a battle near Tortona. With him indeed died the Roman name, and in his fall the barbarian party triumphed. His reign had been filled by a manly attempt at the renovatio imperia, both by administrative reforms within, and a vigorous policy without; but his reforms had aroused the opposition of a corrupt bureaucracy; his foreign policy had been defeated by the cunning of Gaiseric; and he fell before the jealousy of the barbarian whom he overshadowed.

The death of Majorian advanced the dissolution of the Western Empire a step further. The Visigoths and the Vandals both regarded themselves as absolved from the treaties which they had made with Majorian; and Gaiseric, hating Ricimer as the nephew of Wallia, the destroyer of part of his people, directed his piratical attacks once more against Sicily and Italy. Not only so, but when Ricimer raised to the imperial throne Severus (a puppet-emperor, on the reverse of whose coins he significantly placed his own monogram), two of the provincial governors of the Empire refused him allegiance, and ruled as independent sovereigns within their spheres — Aegidius in central Gaul, and Marcellinus in Dalmatia. Ricimer was almost powerless: he could only attempt an alliance with the Visigoths against Aegidius, and send his petitions to the Eastern Emperor Leo to keep Marcellinus and the Vandals in check. The policy had some success: Aegidius and Theodoric checked each other, until the death of the former in 464; and Marcellinus was induced by the Eastern Emperor to keep the peace.

But Gaiseric, though he consented to restore Eudoxia and one of her daughters to Leo, refused to cease from his raids upon Italy, until he had received the inheritances of Aetius and Valentinian III, which he claimed in the name of his captives — Gaudentius, the son of Aetius, and Eudoxia, the elder daughter of Valentinian, now married to his son Huneric. To these claims he soon added another. Placidia, the younger daughter of Valentinian, was married at Constantinople to a Roman senator, Olybrius; and Gaiseric demanded that Olybrius, now the brother-in-law of his own son, and therefore likely to be a friend of the Vandals, should be acknowledged as Emperor of the West. As Attila had demanded the church plate of Sirmium and the hand of Honoria, so Gaiseric now demanded the two inheritances and the succession of Olybrius; and it was to give weight to these demands that he continued to direct his annual raids against Italy.

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