The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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Goths will never admit of their obeying laws, and without laws a republic is not a republic. I have therefore chosen the safer course of aspiring to the glory of restoring and increasing the Roman name by Gothic vigour; and I hope to be handed down to posterity as the initiator of a Roman restoration, as it is impossible for me to change the form of the Empire.”
We can hardly be wrong in ascribing this change in the spirit and policy of Athaulf to the influence of Placidia, and conjecturing that his conversion to Rome was the condition of her consent to the marriage. We know too little of the personality of this lady who was to play a considerable part in history for thirty years. She was now perhaps in her twenty-sixth year, and she may have been younger.68 Her personal attractiveness is shown by the passion she inspired in Constantius, and the strength of her character by the incidents of her life. She can have been barely twenty years of age when she approved of the execution of her cousin Serena at Rome, and in defiance of her brother’s wishes in uniting herself to the Goth she displayed her independence. She was in later years to become the ruler of the West.
The friendly advances which were now made to Honorius by the barbarian, who had been forced upon him as a brother-in-law, were rejected. Athaulf then resorted to the policy of Alaric. He caused the old tyrant Attalus to be again invested with the purple. Constantius, the Master of Soldiers, went forth for a second time to Arles to suppress the usurper and settle accounts with the Goths. He prevented all ships from reaching the coast of Septimania, as the territory of Narbonensis was now commonly called. The Goths were deprived of the provisions which reached Narbonne by sea, and their position became difficult. Athaulf led them southward to Barcelona, probably hoping to establish himself in the province of Tarraconensis (early in A.D. 415). But before they left Gaul, the Goths laid waste southern Aquitaine and set Bordeaux on fire.69 Attalus was left behind and abandoned to his fate, as he was no longer of any use to the Goths. Indeed his elevation had been a mistake. He had no adherents in Gaul, no money, no army, no one to support him except the barbarians themselves.70 He escaped from Gaul in a ship, but was captured and delivered alive to Constantius.71 In A.D. 417, the eleventh consulship of Honorius and the second of Constantius, the Emperor entered Rome in triumph with Attalus at the wheels of his chariot. He punished the inveterate tyrant by maiming him of a finger and thumb, and condemning him to the fate which Attalus had once been advised to inflict upon himself. He had not forgotten how the friend of Alaric had demanded with an air of patronising clemency that the son of Theodosius should retire to some small island, and he banished his prisoner to Lipara.
At Barcelona a son was born to Athaulf and Placidia. They named him Theodosius after his grandfather, and the philo-Roman feelings of Athaulf were confirmed. The death of the child soon after birth was a heavy blow; the body was buried, in a silver coffin, near the city.72 Athaulf did not long survive him. He had been so unwise as to take into his service a certain Dubius, one of the followers of Sarus, who avenged his first by slaying his second master. The king had gone to the stable, as was his custom, to look after his own horses, and the servant, who had long waited for a favourable opportunity, stabbed him (September, A.D. 415).73 He did not die till he had time to recommend his brother, who he expected would succeed to the kingship, to send Placidia back to Italy. But his brother did not succeed him. Singeric, the brother of Sarus — who probably had been privy to the deed of Dubius — seized the royalty and put to death the children of the dead king by his first wife, tearing them from the arms of the bishop Sigesar to whose protection they had fled for refuge. Placidia he treated with indignity and cruelty, compelling her to walk on foot for twelve miles in the company of captives. But the reign of the usurper (for he had seized the power by violence without any legal election) endured only for seven days; he was slain, and Wallia was elected king.
For the moment Gaul was free from the presence of German invaders, with the exception of one region. The Burgundians, who had crossed the Rhine and occupied the province of Germania Superior, had been confirmed in their possession by the tyrant Constantine. After the fall of Jovinus, whom they had supported, Honorius was in no position to turn them out. He accepted them as Federates of the Empire;74 they were bound to guard the Rhine against hostile invaders. Thus in A.D. 413 was founded the first Burgundian kingdom in Gaul, the kingdom of Worms (Borbetomagus). It is the Burgundy of the Nibelungenlied, which also preserves the name of the king, Gundahar (Gunther), who had gained for his people a footing west of the Rhine.
The island of Britain, when many of the troops were withdrawn by Constantine in A.D. 407, was left to defend itself as best it could against Picts, Scots, and Saxons. For a while the Vicar of the Diocese and the two military commanders of the frontier forces, the Count of the Saxon Shore in the south-east, and the Duke of the Britains in the north, were doubtless in communication with Constantine and taking their orders from him. When a great Saxon invasion devastated the country in A.D. 408,75 the Emperor in Gaul was in no position to send troops to the rescue, and the inhabitants of Britain renounced his authority, armed themselves, and defended their towns against the invaders.76 The news reached Italy, and Honorius seized the opportunity of writing, apparently to the local magistrates, authorising them to take all necessary measures for self-defence.77 We have no information as to the attitude of the Imperial garrisons and their commanders to the revolution. It is possible that they sympathised with the provincials and shared in it; most of these troops had the tradition of association with Britain for centuries. In any case, when Constantine fell, and the tyrant Jovinus had been crushed and Honorius was again master in Gaul, there can be little doubt that he and Constantius took measures to re-establish his power in Britain.78 In the first place, it is not probable that the provincials would have been able to hold out against the Saxon foe for fifteen or sixteen years without regular military forces, and we know that the Saxon did not begin to get any permanent foothold in the island before A.D. 428.79 And, in the second place, we have definite evidence that in or not long after that year there was a field army there under the Count of the Britains.80 At this time the Empire was hard set to maintain its authority in Gaul and Spain and Africa, and it could not attempt to reinforce or keep up to strength the regiments in Britain. But there is no reason to suppose that during the last ten years of the reign of Honorius, and for some time after, Roman government in Britain was not carried on as usual. Its gradual collapse and final disappearance belong to the reign of Valentinian III.
In these years of agony many British provincials fled from the terror-stricken provinces and sought a refuge across the sea in the north-western peninsula of Gaul. Maritime Armorica received a new Celtic population and a new name, Brittany, the lesser Britain.81
§ 4. Settlement of the Visigoths in Gaul, and of the Vandals and Sueves in Spain (A.D. 415-423)
The Visigoths were far from sharing in the philo-Roman proclivities of Athaulf. Their new king Wallia was animated by a national Gothic spirit and was not disposed at first to assume a pacific attitude towards Rome. A Spaniard two years later82 informs us that “he was elected by the Goths just for the purpose of breaking the peace, while God ordained him for the purpose of confirming it.” Circumstances forced him into becoming a Federate of Rome, for he found his position in Spain untenable. The other barbarians had occupied most of the peninsula except Tarraconensis, and the Visigoths were unable to settle there because Roman ships blockaded the ports and hindered them from obtaining supplies. They were threatened by famine. To Wallia now, as to Alaric before, Africa seemed the solution of the difficulty, and he marched to the south of Spain (early in A.D. 416). But it was not destined that the Goths should set foot on African soil. As the fleet of Alaric had been wrecked in the straits of Sicily, even so some of the ships which Wallia had procured were shattered in the straits of Gades, and whether from want of troops or from superstitious fear he abandoned the idea. He decided that the best course was to make peace, and he entered into negotiations with Constantius.
Placidia, though still retained as a hostage, had been well treated, and her brother and lover were willing to treat with Wallia as they would not have treated with Athaulf. An agreement was concluded by which the Emperor undertook to supply the Goths with 600,000 measures of corn, and Wallia engaged to restore Placidia and to make war in the name of the Empire against the barbarians in Spain (before