The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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This city defied him, but it is possible, though not certain, that he occupied Lilybaeum.68 His fleet, however, returned to Africa, perhaps on account of the considerable preparations which were on foot at Constantinople.69 The government of Theodosius had made ready a large naval squadron which sailed in the following year (A.D. 441), with the purpose of delivering Carthage from the Vandals.70 The expedition arrived in Sicily, and Gaiseric was alarmed. He opened negotiations, pending which the Imperial fleet remained in Sicilian waters. These diplomatic conversations were protracted by the craft of Gaiseric, and in the meantime an invasion of the Huns compelled Theodosius to recall his forces. The Emperors were thus constrained to make a disadvantageous peace.
By the treaty of A.D. 442 Africa was divided anew between the two powers. This division nearly reversed that of A.D. 435, and was far more advantageous to the Vandals. The Empire retained the provinces of Tripolitania, Mauretania Sitifensis, Mauretania Caesariensis, and part of Numidia; while the Vandals were acknowledged masters of the rest of that province, of Byzacena, and of the Proconsular province or Zeugitana.71 Mauretania Tingitana was probably not mentioned in the treaty.72 It was part of the diocese of Spain, not of the diocese of Africa, and it is probable that the Vandals never occupied it effectively. In any case it now belonged to the Empire, which, since the departure of the Vandals, had been in possession of all Spain, except the Suevian kingdom in the north-western corner.
This settlement was an even greater blow to the Empire than that which necessity had imposed upon Constantius of settling the Visigoths in Aquitaine. The fairest provinces of Africa were resigned to barbarians who had an even worse reputation than the Goths. But it was worth while to attempt to secure that the settlement, such as it was, should be permanent. Aetius saw that the best policy was to cultivate good relations with Gaiseric and to give that ambitious and unscrupulous monarch no pretext for attacking Sicily, or Sardinia, or Italy itself. And so he prevailed upon Valentinian to consent to a betrothal between his elder daughter, Eudocia, and Gaiseric’s son, Huneric. It is probable that this arrangement was considered at the time of the treaty, though it may not have been definitely decided.73 But Huneric was already married. The Visigothic king Theoderic had bestowed upon him his daughter’s hand. Such an alliance between Vandals and Goths could not have been welcome to Aetius; it was far more in the interest of his policy to keep alive the hostility between these two peoples which seems to have dated from the campaigns of Wallia in Spain. The existence of the Gothic wife was no hindrance to Gaiseric, and a pretext for repudiating her was easily found. She was accused of having plotted to poison him.74 She was punished by the mutilation of her ears and nose, and in this plight she was sent back to her father. The incident meant undying enmity between Visigoth and Vandal. Theoderic soon sought a new ally by marrying another daughter to Rechiar, king of the Suevians (A.D. 449).75 Huneric was free to contract a more dazzling matrimonial alliance with an Imperial princess.
We are not informed whether in the treaty of A.D. 442 any provision was made for supplying Italy with the corn of Africa on which the Romans had subsisted for centuries. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we may safely assume that, throughout the duration of the Vandal kingdom, the surplus of the corn production of Africa was consumed as of old in Italy (except, perhaps, in the few years in which there were open hostilities); only now instead of being a tribute it was an export.76 It was obviously to the interest of the Vandal proprietors to send the grain they did not want to Italian markets.
The Vandals themselves settled in Zeugitana, and made Carthage their capital. They appropriated the lands of the proprietors in this province, who, unless they migrated elsewhere, were probably degraded to the position of serfs. The Vandals, as Arians, had from the very beginning assumed a definitely hostile attitude to the Catholic creed. When Carthage was taken the Catholic clergy were banished, and all the churches of the city were given up to Arian worship. The independent attitude of the Vandals towards the Empire is reflected in their adopting a chronological era of their own, beginning on October 19, A.D. 439, the date of the capture of Carthage.
It is to be observed that the Vandals now held a position of vantage in regard to the Empire that none of the other Teutonic nations ever occupied. In relation to the foreign peoples of northern Europe, the front of the Roman Empire was the Rhine and the Danube. And so we may say that the Vandals had come round to the back of the Empire and were able to attack it from behind. Another exceptional feature in their position was that, in the language of a chronicler, the sea was made pervious to them: they created a fleet of small light cruisers and attacked the Empire by sea, as no other Teutonic people had done or was to do in the Mediterranean, though the Saxons and other men of the north used ships to harry it in the northern and western oceans. Thus they were able to follow in the track of the Carthaginians of old, and extend their dominion over the western islands.
Till after the death of Valentinian (A.D. 455) the naval expeditions of the Vandals seem to have been simply piratical,77 though Gaiseric may have definitely formed the design of conquering Sicily. But soon after that year he seems to have occupied without resistance the two Mauretanian provinces which the Empire had retained under the treaty of A.D. 442, and to have annexed Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands.78 Sicily itself was to pass somewhat later under his dominion.
The military and diplomatic successes of Gaiseric encouraged and enabled him to encroach on the liberties of his people. Among all the ancient Germanic peoples, the sovran power resided in the assembly of the folk, and in the case of those which formed permanent states on Imperial soil, like the Franks and the Visigoths, it was only by degrees that the kings acquired great but not absolute power. In the Vandal state alone the free constitution was succeeded by an autocracy, without any intermediate stages. The usurpation by the king of unconstitutional powers occasioned a conspiracy of the nobles, and it was bloodily suppressed.79 The old aristocracy seems to have been superseded by a new nobility who owed their position, not to birth, but to appointments in the royal service. It is probable that the assembly of the folk ceased to meet. Before his death Gaiseric issued a law regulating the succession to the throne,80 thus depriving the people of the right of election, and the royal authority was so firmly established that his will was apparently accepted without demur. By this law the kingship was treated as a personal inheritance and was confined to Gaiseric’s male descendants, of whom the eldest was always to succeed.
The policy of Gaiseric differed entirely from that of the Goths in Gaul. He aimed at establishing a kingdom which should be free, so far as possible, from Roman influence, and he saw that, for this purpose, it was necessary above all to guard jealously the Arian faith of his people, and not expose them to the danger of being led away by the propaganda of the Catholics. He was therefore aggressively Arian, and persecuted the Catholic clergy.81 He imposed the Arian creed on all persons who were in his own immediate environment. After the capture of Carthage he seized the Donatist bishop Quodvultdeus and other clergy, set them on board old and untrustworthy ships, and committed them to the mercy of the sea. They reached Italy safely. Throughout the proconsular province the bishops were expelled from their sees and stripped of their property. It was not till A.D. 454 that a new bishop was allowed to be ordained at Carthage, and some churches were reopened for Catholic worship. But after the death of Deogratias, at the end of three years, the old rigorous suppression was renewed; the sees were left vacant throughout the province, and the priests were forced to surrender their books and sacred vessels. The monasteries, however, were not suppressed. And the persecution was not general or ubiquitous. Particular persons were singled out and dealt with by the express order of the king. He did not give a free hand to his officers, and there were probably few cases of death or personal violence.
It was no less important for the ends of Gaiseric’s policy to eliminate the power of the senatorial aristocracy. He did this by such drastic measures that a contemporary chronicler observed, “It is impossible to say whether his hostility to men or to God was the more bitter.” He deprived of their domains the nobles of the proconsular province, and told them to betake themselves elsewhere. They were not to be suffered to remain lords of the soil to organise an opposition to the king, and gradually to recover political influence under his successors. If they remained in the land they were threatened with perpetual slavery. After the capture of