The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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Empire had put forth all its strength and had signally failed against one barbarian nation. This event must have not only raised the pretensions and arrogance of the Vandals themselves, but increased the contempt of other German nations for the Roman power; it was felt to be a humiliating disaster by the government at Constantinople, while the government of Italy was too habituated to defeat to be gravely affected.
The cost of the armament was immense. Leo had found in the treasury a reserve of 100,000 lbs. of gold (over £4,500,000).94 This was exceeded by the expenses of equipping the ill-omened expedition,95 and the consequence is said to have been that the treasury hovered on the brink of bankruptcy for more than thirty years.
§ 4. Anthemius and Ricimer (A.D. 467-474)
The conciliation of Gaul was a problem which was no less important for Anthemius than it had been for Majorian. The situation there had changed for the worse. The Visigothic crown had passed to Euric, who had murdered his brother Theoderic in A.D. 466. Euric was perhaps the ablest of all the Visigothic kings, and he aimed at extending his rule over all Gaul. The Gallo-Romans felt themselves now in greater danger, and they looked to Anthemius for protection with an eagerness which they had not shown in the case of Majorian. They sent a deputation to the new Emperor at Rome, both to petition him to remedy some administrative abuses and to stimulate him to take adequate measures for the defence of the Gallic provinces. The most distinguished member of the deputation was Sidonius Apollinaris.96 The panegyrist of Avitus and Majorian was now called upon to compose a panegyric of a third Emperor, on the occasion of his consulship.97 It was publicly recited on the kalends of January A.D. 468. The poet emphasised the fact that the elevation of Anthemius was a restoration of the unity of the Empire. He hailed Constantinople in these words:
Salve sceptrorum columen, regina orientis,
orbis Roma tui,
and praised the Byzantine education of the new Augustus of the West. He was rewarded by the Prefecture of Rome. The appointment was much more than a recognition of his personal merit; it was intended to conciliate Gallo-Roman sentiment.98
The pleasure of Sidonius in holding this high office was somewhat marred by the sensational trial of Arvandus, the Praetorian Prefect of Gaul, with whom he was on terms of friendship. Arvandus had sunk deeply into debt and had peculated public funds. His prosecution was decided by the Council of the Seven Provinces, and he was brought to trial before the Roman Senate. If malversation had been the only charge, he might have escaped through the influence of his friends, but he had been guilty of treasonable communications with the enemy, and there was clear proof of this in a letter in his own handwriting to King Euric, on which his accusers had managed to lay hands. Sidonius did all he could to help him, but the confidence of Arvandus himself, who was unable till the last moment to believe that he could be condemned, refused the advice of his friends and frustrated their efforts to save him. His confidence indeed was so strange that it has been conjectured that his communications with Euric had been secretly prompted by Ricimer, and that he was trusting in the protection of the Emperor’s son-in-law.99 He was condemned to death “and flung into the island of the Serpent of Epidaurus (Island of the Tiber). There,” writes Sidonius, “an object of compassion even to his enemies, his elegance gone, spewed as it were by Fortune out of the land, he now drags out by benefit of Tiberius’ law his respite of thirty days after sentence, shuddering through the long hours at the thought of hook and Gemonian stairs, and the noose of the brutal executioner.”100
Anthemius made large concessions to the Burgundians in Gaul to ensure their aid against the Goths, but he was not successful in resisting the aggression of Euric.101 In Italy he was not popular. He was a Greek; he was too fond of philosophy or thaumaturgy; he was inclined to paganism.102 His high standard of justice and honest attempts to administer the laws impartially did not overcome the prejudices of the Italians, and the failure of the Vandal expedition did not heighten his prestige. His relations to Ricimer gradually changed from mutual tolerance to distrust and hostility; the father-in-law regretted that he had given his daughter to a barbarian; the son-in-law retorted with the epithets Galatian and Greekling (Graeculus). In this contest the Senate and people of Rome preferred the Greek Emperor to the Suevian patrician.103 The question of “Roman” or German ascendancy, which had underlain the situation for fifteen years, was now clearly defined.
As a result of these dissensions, Italy in A.D. 472 was practically divided into two kingdoms, the Emperor reigning at Rome, the Patrician at Milan. The venerated Epiphanius, bishop of Ticinum, attempted in vain to bring about a reconciliation. It will be remembered that Gaiseric had wished to elevate to the Imperial throne Olybrius, the husband of the younger Placidia. At this time Olybrius was at Constantinople, and his Vandal connexion made him a suspicious person in the eyes of Leo, who is said to have planned a treacherous device to remove him. He sent Olybrius to Rome for the ostensible purpose of reconciling Anthemius and Ricimer. But he also sent a messenger to Anthemius with a letter instructing him to put Olybrius to death. Ricimer intercepted the letter, and Leo’s stratagem led to the result which he least wished.104 Ricimer invested Olybrius with the purple (April).
The army of Ricimer soon besieged Rome. Leo had overcome the power of Aspar; was Anthemius to overcome the power of Ricimer? In the camp of the besiegers was the Scirian soldier Odovacar, son of Edecon, destined soon to play a more memorable rôle in Italian history than Ricimer himself. The Tiber was guarded and supplies were cut off; and the Romans pressed by hunger resolved to fight. An army under Bilimer, who was perhaps Master of Soldiers in Gaul, had come to assist them. The Imperial forces lost heavily in the battle, and Ricimer completed his victory by treachery.105 Anthemius, when his adherents had surrendered to the barbarians, disguised himself and mingled with the mendicants who begged in the church of St. Chrysogonus.106 There he was found by Gundobad, Ricimer’s nephew, and beheaded (July 11, A.D. 472).107
But the days of Ricimer were numbered. He survived his father-in-law by six weeks,108 and the last Emperor he created died two months later.109 He is not an attractive figure, and it would be easy to do him injustice. Barred by his Arian faith as well as by his German birth from ascending the throne, Ricimer had the choice of two alternative policies — to maintain an Imperial succession in Italy or to recognise the sole authority of the Emperor at Constantinople. It would probably have been repugnant to the ideas and traditions of his training to have cast off all allegiance to the Empire and created in Italy a government on German foundations, formally as well as practically independent. His choice of the first of the two policies was doubtless decided by public opinion and the influence of the Roman Senate, perhaps also by his own attachment to the system under which he was the successor of the great Masters of Soldiers, Stilicho and Aetius. But Italy had a taste of the other alternative in those sometimes long intervals between the puppet Emperors, when Leo was its only legitimate ruler. The success of Ricimer in maintaining this system for so many years was partly due to his diplomatic skill in dealing with Leo. But it worked badly. For it was based on the assumption that the Emperor was to be a nonentity like Honorius and Valentinian, and except in the case of Severus (whom Leo never acknowledged) circumstances hindered Ricimer from choosing a man who was suited to the rôle. In the matter of the expedition against the Vandals he had shown but lukewarm loyalty to the interests of the Empire, but Italy owed much to him for having defended her shores, and for having kept in strict control the German mercenaries on whom her defence depended. The events which followed his death will be the best commentary on the significance of his rule and enable us to appreciate his work.
§ 5. Extension of German Rule in Gaul and Spain
The accession of Euric to the Visigothic throne, which he won by murder, meant the breaking of the last weak federal links which attached the Visigoths to the Empire.110 Euric was probably the ablest of their kings. He aimed at extending his power over all Gaul and Spain, and he accomplished in the eighteen years of his reign a large part of his programme. He was a fanatical Arian. “They say that the mere mention of the name of Catholic so embitters his countenance and heart that one might take him for the chief priest of his Arian sect rather