The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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of gladiators were finally forbidden, it must have been soon afterwards. Possibly it is not a mere legend that the immediate occasion of the abolition of these spectacles was the act of an aged monk named Telemachus, who rushed into the arena of the Colosseum to separate two combatants and was killed by the indignant populace with showers of stones.156
The occasion of the Imperial visit to Rome was celebrated by Claudian with his unflagging enthusiasm. He had already, in a poem on the Gothic War, sung the repulse of Alaric at Pollentia —
o celebranda mihi cunctis Pollentia saeclis!—
and united the name of Stilicho with that of Marius as the protectors of Italy, imagining the bones of Cimbrians and Goths laid under a common trophy with the inscription
‘hic Cimbros fortesque Getas, Stilichone peremptos
et Mario claris ducibus, tegit Itala tellus.
discite uesanae Romam non temnere gentes.’
The campaign of Verona was celebrated in the poem which he composed at the end of the year for the Sixth Consulship of Honorius, immediately after the triumph. This was his last work. Our records are silent as to his fate, but the most probable conjecture is that death cut short his career and that he did not live to see the second consulship of his patron (A.D. 405), a theme which he could not have neglected.157
Great allowances as the historian has to make for Claudian’s partiality and rhetoric, he owes him an appreciable debt and would give much to have his guidance for the last obscure and critical five years of Stilicho’s career. But apart from the information which he gives us, his poetry is one of the most interesting facts of the age. He was born at Alexandria,158 and his earliest literary work was in Greek, but we may take it that he had learned Latin as a child. He saturated himself in the poetical literature of Rome from Ennius to Juvenal, and his verses abound in echoes and reminiscences. His Roman feeling for Roman traditions is not compromised or embarrassed by any allegiance to the new religion; and the statement of his contemporary Augustine that he was a stranger to the name of Christ159 is borne out by his poems, from which, if they were the sole monument of the time, we should not suspect the existence of Christianity.160 In talent and technical skill he is incomparably superior to the Christian poets of the day, Prudentius and Paulinus, and through his genuine feeling for the dignity and majesty of the Empire he has succeeded in shedding a certain lustre over the age of Stilicho and Alaric.
§ 7. Last Years and Fall of Stilicho (A.D. 405-408)
The provinces of the Upper Danube, Raetia, Noricum, and Pannonia, were at this time still under the effective control of Roman governors, and the principal towns still flourishing centres of Roman civility. In Pannonia indeed considerable districts had been occupied by Ostrogoths, Huns, and Alans, whom Gratian and Theodosius had settled after their victories over the Gothic invaders of A.D. 380. Of these the Ostrogoths had perhaps been settled in the north-western of the four Pannonian provinces, Pannonia Prima,161 and it is probable that the north-eastern, Valeria, was occupied by the Huns.162
The line of division between Pannonia and Noricum ran from the neighbourhood of Tulln on the Danube to Pettau, while the course of the Aenus (Inn) formed the western boundary of Noricum, separating it from Raetia.163 The most northerly point in the course of the Danube, which was the northern border of Raetia, was marked by Batava Castra (Ratisbon), and the province extended westward to the source of that river.164 The most important highway from Italy to Raetia was the Via Claudia Augusta, which led through the Tirol by Meran and Vintschgau to Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg); the Brenner road was less used. Aquileia was the great centre of roads leading from Italy into Noricum, Pannonia, and the Balkan lands. The traveller to Pannonia would proceed from Aquileia to Celeia (Cilly) and Poetovio (Pettau), whence the high road continued to Savaria (Stein-am-Anger) where several roads met, one leading northward to Carnuntum (Petronell), a second north-eastward, and a third south-eastward to Sopianae (Fünfkirchen). Three roads led from Aquileia over the Julian Alps: (1) to Aguntum (near Lienz); (2) to Virunum (Maria Saal near Klagenfurt), whence roads led to Juvavum (Salzburg) and to Lauriacum (Lorsch) and other places on the Danube, and (3) to Emona (Laibach), which belonged administratively to Venetia and was itself connected by a road over the mountains to Virunum. Here at Emona the two roads met of which one led into northern Pannonia, as we saw, by Celeia, and other through southern Pannonia along the valley to the Save, by Siscia (Siszek) to Sirmium (Mitrovica) and Singidunum (Belgrade), and thence to Constantinople. It should be observed that Pannonia was bounded on the south by the province of Dalmatia, for Dalmatia then included not only the coastlands of the Hadriatic as far south as Alessio, but also the lands which were afterwards to be known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a part of Istria, west of the river Arsia.
During the early years of Honorius, the defence of the Pannonian frontier was almost abandoned, and the Pannonian provinces suffered both from the barbarians who were within,165 and from those who were without. Of all this devastation we have no regular story; we have only the vague complaints and hints of contemporary writers.166 But the alarm, even in those much tried lands, must have been great when in the last months of A.D. 405 a vast host of Germans, principally Ostrogoths, descended upon Italy.167 They were led by the adventurer Radagaisus, who had been repulsed from Raetia by Stilicho a few years before. As the home of the Ostrogothic people was still in the neighbourhood of the river Dniester, they had a long march by whatever route they came, and it may be presumed that they crossed the Danube on the Pannonian frontier. We are told nothing of their doings in the Danubian provinces, or by what roads they reached Aquileia, and its seems probable that Radagaisus, wishing to surprise Italy, did not tarry on his way to plunder the cities of Pannonia and Noricum. But we are told that the inhabitants of the districts through which they passed fled before them, seeking the refuge of Italy.168 Italy was entered without resistance, and the barbarian host overran the northern provinces. After some time it is said that they divided into three companies,169 of which the chief under Radagaisus attacked Florence. Stilicho, who had collected his forces at Ticinum, numbering perhaps less than 20,000 comitatenses,170 reinforced by Alans and Huns from beyond the Danube,171 compelled him to withdraw to Fiesole. The Romans were able to cut off the supplies of the barbarians and then massacre them at their pleasure.172 Radagaisus was captured and executed (Aug. 23, A.D. 406), and the victory, which was fondly declared to have extinguished the Gothic nation for ever, was celebrated by a triumphal arch in Rome.173 But Italy must have suffered terribly, for the barbarians had been six months in the land.
It is clear from the meagre records of this invasion that when Radagaisus surprised Italy, the field army at the disposal of Stilicho was so small that he could not venture on a battle with the superior forces of the enemy until he had obtained help from the Huns. It is possible that some of the troops which had come from Gaul and Britain to oppose Alaric had been sent back, but, if so, the Gallic legionaries of the Rhine frontier must have again been summoned to fight against Radagaisus, and must have been retained. For the Rhine was virtually undefended at the end of A.D. 406, when hosts of Germans crossed the river and began a progress of destruction through Gaul. This event was decisive for the future history of Western Europe, though the government of Ravenna had little idea what its consequences would be. But Stilicho was at least bound to hasten to the rescue of the Gallic provincials. Instead of doing this, he busied himself (A.D. 407) with his designs on Illyricum which the invasion of Radagaisus had compelled him to postpone. The unfriendliness which had long existed between the eastern and western courts came to a crisis when the ecclesiastics whom Honorius had sent to remonstrate with his brother on the treatment of Chrysostom were flung into prison.174 It was a sufficient pretext for Stilicho to close the Italian ports to the ships of the subjects of Arcadius and break off all intercourse between the two realms.175 Alaric was warned to hold Epirus for Honorius; and Jovius was appointed, in anticipation, Praetorian Prefect of Illyricum.176 Stilicho was at Ravenna, making ready to cross the Hadriatic, when a report reached him that Alaric was dead. It was false, but it caused delay; and then came the alarming news that a certain Constantine,