The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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him to save her from hunger. Are the labours and triumphs of her glorious history to be all in vain? Is the amplitude of her Empire to be her doom? Ipsa nocet moles. “I am excluded from my granaries, Libya and Egypt; I am abandoned in my old age.”
Nunc quid agam? Libyam Gildo tenet, altera53 Nilum
ast ego, quae terras umeris pontumque subegi,
deseror; emeritae iam praemia nulla senectae.
The supplications of Rome are reinforced by the sudden appearance of Africa, who burst into the divine assembly with torn raiment, and in wild words demands that Neptune should submerge her continent rather than it should have to submit to the pollution of Gildo’s rule.
Si mihi Gildonem nequeunt abducere fata,
me rape Gildoni.
Jupiter dismisses the suppliants, assuring them that “Honorius will lay low the common enemy,” and he sends Theodosius the Great and his father, who are both deities in Olympus, to appear to the two reigning Emperors in the night. Arcadius is reproached by his father for the estrangement from his brother, for his suspicions of Stilicho, for entertaining the proposals of Gildo; and he promises to do nothing to aid Gildo. Honorius is stimulated by his grandfather to rise without delay and smite the rebel. He summons Stilicho and proposes to lead an expedition himself. Stilicho persuades him that it would be unsuitable to his dignity to take the field against such a foe, and suggests that the enterprise should be committed to Mascezel. This is the only passage in which Mascezel is mentioned, and Claudian does not bestow any praise on him further than the admission that he does not resemble his brother in character (sed non et moribus isdem), but dwells on the wrongs he had suffered, and argues that to be crushed by his injured brother, the suppliant of the Emperor, will be the heaviest blow that could be inflicted on the rebel.
The military preparations are then described, and an inspiriting address to the troops, about to embark, is put into the mouth of Honorius, who tells them that the fate of Rome depends on their valour:
caput insuperabile rerum aut ruet in vestris aut stabit Roma lacertis.
The fleet sails and safely reaches the African ports, and the first canto of the poem ends.54
It is all we have: a second canto was never written. Claudian evidently intended to sing the whole story of the campaign as soon as the story was known. The overthrow of “the third tyrant,” whom he represents as the successor of Maximus and Eugenius, deserved an exhaustive song of triumph. But it would have surpassed even the skill of Claudian to have told the tale without giving a meed of praise to the commander who carried the enterprise through to its victorious end. We need have little hesitation in believing that the motive which hindered the poet from completing the Gildonic War was the knowledge that to celebrate the achievements of Mascezel would be no service to his patron.55
While the issue of the war was still uncertain, in the spring of A.D. 398,56 Stilicho’s position as master of the west was strengthened by the marriage of his daughter Maria with the youthful Emperor. Claudian wrote an epithalamium for the occasion, duly extolling anew the virtues of his incomparable patron. We may perhaps wonder that, secured by this new bond with the Imperial house, and his prestige enhanced by the suppression of Gildo,57 Stilicho did not now make some attempt to carry out his project of annexing the Prefecture of Illyricum. The truth is that he had not abandoned it, but he was waiting for a favourable opportunity of intervention in the affairs of the east. It seems safe to infer his attitude from the drift of Claudian’s poems, for Claudian, if he did not receive express instructions, had sufficient penetration to divine the note which Stilicho would have wished him to strike. In the Gildonic War he had announced the restoration of concord between east and west: concordia fratrum plena redit; it was the right thing to say at the moment, but the strain in the relations between the two courts had only relaxed a little. The discord broke out again, with more fury than ever, in the two poems in which he overwhelmed Eutropius with rhetoric no less savage than his fulminations against Rufinus four years before. The first was written at the beginning of A.D. 399, protesting against the disgrace of the Empire by the elevation of Eutropius to the consulate, the second in the summer, after the eunuch’s fall. The significant point is that in both poems the intervention of Stilicho in eastern affairs is proposed.58 Stilicho did not overtly intervene; but it seems probable that he had an understanding with Gaïnas, the German commander in the east, who had been his instrument in the assassination of Rufinus. It is a suggestive fact that in describing the drama which was enacted in the east Claudian brings the minor characters on the stage but does not even pronounce the name of Gaïnas, who was the principal actor, or betray that he was aware of his existence. We must now pass to the east and follow the events of that drama.
§ 4. Fall of Eutropius and the German Danger in the East (A.D. 398-400)
In these years, in which barbarians were actively harrying the provinces of the Illyrian peninsula and the eastern provinces of Asia Minor, concord and mutual assistance between east and west were urgently needed. Unfortunately, the reins of government were in the hands of men who for different reasons were unpopular and in all their political actions were influenced chiefly by the consideration of their own fortunes. The position of Eutropius was insecure, because he was a eunuch; that of Stilicho, because he was a German. So far as the relation between the two governments was concerned the situation had been eased for a time after the fall of Rufinus, and it was doubtless with the consent and perhaps at the invitation of Eutropius that Stilicho had sailed to Greece in A.D. 397. For the eastern armies were not strong enough to contend at the same time against Alaric and against the Huns who were devastating in Asia. The generals who were sent to expel the invaders from Cappadocia and the Pontic provinces seem to have been incompetent, and Eutropius decided to take over the supreme command himself. It was probably in A.D. 398 that he conducted a campaign which was attended with success. The barbarians were driven back to the Caucasus and the eunuch returned triumphant to Constantinople.59 His victory secured him some popularity for the moment, and he was designated consul for the following year.
The brief understanding between the courts of Milan and Byzantium had been broken as we saw by the attitude of the eastern government during the revolt of Gildo. There was an open breach. When the news came that Eutropius was nominated consul for A.D. 399, the Roman feelings of the Italians were deeply scandalised. A eunuch for a consul — it was an unheard-of, an intolerable violation of the tradition of the Roman Fasti.
Omnia cesserunt eunucho consule monstra
wrote Claudian in the poem in which, at the beginning of the year, he castigated the minister of Arcadius.60 The west refused to recognise this monstrous consulship.61 It was perhaps hardly less unpopular in the east.
The Grand Chamberlain, confidently secure through his possession of the Emperor’s ear, had overshot the mark. His position was now threatened from two quarters. Gaïnas, the German officer who under the direction of Stilicho had led the eastern army back to Constantinople, had risen to the office of a Master of Soldiers.62 It is probable that he maintained communications with Stilicho, and his first object was to compass the downfall of Eutropius.
Less dangerous but not less hostile was the Roman party, which was equally opposed to the bedchamber administration of Eutropius and to the growth of German power. It consisted of senators and ministers attached to Roman traditions, who were scandalised by the nomination of the eunuch to the consulship in A.D. 399 and alarmed by the fact that some of the highest military commands in the Empire were held by Germans. The leader of the party was Aurelian, son of Taurus (formerly a Praetorian Prefect of Italy), who had himself filled the office of Prefect of the City.
Gaïnas had some supporters among the Romans. The most powerful of his friends was an enigmatical figure, whose real name is unknown but who seems to have been a brother of Aurelian. Of this dark person, who played a leading part in the events of these years, we derive all we know from a historical sketch which its author Synesius of Cyrene cast into the form of an allegory and entitled Concerning Providence or the Egyptians. This distinguished man of letters, who was