The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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nation.”111 The principal hope of those Gallo-Romans of the south, who clung passionately to the Roman connexion, lay in the Burgundian power, which had itself in recent years made large encroachments on the Imperial provinces. King Chilperic ruled in Lyons and Vienne in the west, and at Geneva in the east; the provinces of Lugdunensis Prima and Maxima Sequanorum were almost entirely under his sway. His Arianism was not like that of Euric; he was tolerant and on friendly terms with Catholic bishops; he was glad to enjoy the breakfasts of Patiens, the rich and hospitable archbishop of Lyons.112 The higher clergy, who were mostly men of means and good family, played prominent parts in the politics of the time, and did a great deal to preserve the Roman tradition.113 In the north the Imperial cause depended much on the attitude of the Salian Franks, who, under their king Childeric, seem to have been consistently loyal to their federal obligations. But in the Belgic provinces Roman civilisation was gradually declining.114 The lands of the Moselle and the Somme had never recovered from the shocks they had experienced in the days of Honorius. As for north-western Gaul, the province of the Third Lugdunensis, which was at this time generally called Armorica, it seems since some years before Valentinian’s death to have been virtually independent.
The first important success that Euric won was a victory over the Bretons on the Indre. This enabled him to seize Bourges and the northern part of Aquitanica Prima, which, under their king Riothamus, they had come to defend at the request of the Emperor Anthemius. But he was unable to advance beyond the Loire, which was bravely defended by a count Paulus. Soon afterwards he laid siege to Arles, and defeated an Imperial army which had advanced to relieve it under Anthemiolus, the Emperor’s son. Arles he appears to have occupied and then to have marched up the valley of the Rhone, burning the crops, and taking the towns of Riez, Orange, Avignon, Viviers and Valence.115 He did not hold these places, for he was not prepared to go to war with the Burgundians, but he left the land ruined, and the people would have starved if the archbishop Patiens had not collected supplies of corn at his own expense, and sent grain carts through the ravaged districts.
Euric was determined to annex the rich country of Auvergne, and here he met a stout and protracted resistance, of which Ecdicius,116 son of the Emperor Avitus, was the soul. He was supported by his brother-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris, now bishop of Clermont, which held out for nearly four years against repeated sieges. But no help came either from Italy or from Burgundy, and finally the Emperor Julius Nepos arranged a peace with Euric, which surrendered Auvergne and recognised the conquests which the Goths had already made in Spain as well as in Gaul (A.D. 475).117 The Gallic portion of the Gothic kingdom was now bounded by the Loire, the Rhone, and the Pyrenees, and seems to have included Tours.
Sidonius was taken prisoner and confined in fort Livia, near Carcassonne.118 Here he employed his time in editing or translating the life of Apollonius of Tyana, by Philostratus, and was so well treated that the worst he had to complain of was that when he lay down to sleep “there were two old Gothic women established quite close to the window of my chamber who at once began their chatter — quarrelsome, drunken, and disgusting creatures.”119 He was finally released through the influence of Leo, the principal minister of Euric and his own good friend.
The peace lasted for little more than a year. Then Euric found a pretext for denouncing it, invaded Provence, and seized Arles and Marseilles. Then a new arrangement was made, and southern Provence, with the consent of the Emperor Zeno, was conceded to the Goths.120
Euric was now the most powerful of the German kings. The Burgundians hastened to make peace with him. Ostrogoths, Heruls, Saxons, Franks were to be seen at Toulouse or Bordeaux paying court to him. Even the Persian king thought it worth while to send envoys to his court.121 When he died in A.D. 484 the Spanish peninsula, except the Suevian kingdom in the north-west, was entirely under his dominion.122
For the Gallic provincials the change of masters probably made very little difference. They and the Goths lived side by side, each according to their own law. The Roman magnate had to surrender a part of his estates, but he could live with as much freedom and ease, and in just the same way, under the Goth as under the Emperor. Some of these men were enlisted in the royal service, such as Leo of Narbonne; Namatius, who commanded the Gothic fleet in the Atlantic to guard the coasts against Saxon pirates;123 Victorius, who was made governor of Auvergne. Latin was the language of intercourse. It is probable that very few provincials learned any of the German tongues which were spoken by their masters. Syagrius, a man of letters, who lived much at the Burgundian court, mastered the Burgundian language, to the amazement of his friends. Sidonius bantered him on his feat. “You can hardly conceive how amused we all are to hear that, when you are by, not a barbarian but fears to perpetuate a barbarism in his own language. Old Germans bowed with age are said to stand astounded when they see you interpreting their German letters; they actually choose you for arbiter and mediator in their disputes. You are a new Solon in the elucidation of Burgundian law. In body and mind these people are as stiff as stocks and very hard to form; yet they delight to find in you, and equally delight to learn, a Burgundian eloquence and a Roman spirit.”124 In this connexion it is significant that the early German codes of law were composed in Latin. The earliest that we know of was the code of Euric, of which some fragments are preserved;125 a little later come the Burgundian laws of Gundobad. It is legitimate to guess that the Visigothic law-book was drawn up under the supervision of Euric’s minister Leo, who was a notable jurist.
Sidonius gives us occasional glimpses of the life and habits of the Germans, who were then moulding the destinies of Gaul. Writing to a friend, for instance, he describes the wedding of a Burgundian princess: the bridegroom,126 walking amid his guards “in flame-red mantle, with much glint of ruddy gold, and gleam of snowy silken tunic, his fair hair, red cheeks and white skin according with the three hues of his equipment.” The chiefs who accompanied him were in martial accoutrement. “Their feet were laced in boots of bristly hide reaching to the heels; ankles and legs were exposed. They wore high tight tunics of varied colour, hardly descending to the bare knees, the sleeves covering only the upper arm. Green mantles they had with crimson borders; baldrics supported swords hung from their shoulders, and pressed on sides covered with cloaks of skin secured by brooches. No small part of their adornment consisted of their arms; in their hands they grasped barbed spears and missile axes; their left sides were guarded by shields which flashed with tawny golden bosses and snowy silver borders, betraying at once their wealth and their good taste.”
Sidonius confesses that he did not like Germans,127 and it is the society of his own fellows, the country gentlemen of southern Gaul, among whom he had a wide acquaintance, that is mainly depicted in his correspondence. The life of these rich members of the senatorial class went on its even and tranquil way, little affected by the process which was gradually substituting Teuton for Roman power.128 They had generally town mansions, as well as country estates on which they lived, well provided with slaves, and amusing themselves by hunting, hawking, and fishing, ball-games, and dice. But the remarkable feature of the life of these Gallo-Roman magnates was that they did not confine themselves to the business of looking after their domains and the outdoor pursuits of country gentlemen, but were almost all men of literary tastes and culture. There were many poets and trained rhetoricians among them; they circulated their verses; and mutually admired one another’s accomplishments. It is probable that in literary achievement Sidonius was considerably superior to his friends, but in any case his works show us the sad decadence in style to which the tendencies of the rhetorical schools of the Empire, in Gaul as elsewhere, had brought literary prose. Of his epistolary style it is enough to say that it gains in a good modern translation. He could write good verses, occasionally approaching Claudian, and bad verses, which remind us of Merobaudes.
Of the last thirty years of Imperial rule in northern Gaul we know virtually nothing. Childeric, the principal king among the Salian Franks, seems to have loyally maintained the federal bond with the Empire.129 The blue-eyed Saxons, who were at this time the scourge of the coasts of Gaul, in the west as well as in the north, had sailed up the Loire and seized Angers. We find Childeric aiding the Imperial commander Paul in his operations against this foe.130 We have already