Part 884

"On the whole, it is clear from the accounts of all the chroniclers that Gaiseric's [or Genseric's] pillage of Rome, though insulting and impoverishing to the last degree, was in no sense destructive to the Queen of cities. Whatever he may have done in Africa, in Rome he waged no war on architecture, being far too well employed in storing away gold and silver and precious stones, and all manner of costly merchandise in those insatiable hulks which were riding at anchor by Ostia. Therefore, when you stand in the Forum of Rome or look upon the grass-grown hill which was once the glorious Palatine, blame if you like the Ostrogoth, the Byzantine, the Lombard, above all, the Norman, and the Roman baron of the Middle Ages, for the heart-breaking ruin that you see there, but leave the Vandal uncensured, for, notwithstanding the stigma conveyed in the word 'vandalism,' he is not guilty here."

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 3, chapter 2 (volume 2)._

ROME: A. D. 455-476. Barbarian masters and imperial puppets. From Count Ricimer to Odoacer. The ending of the line of Roman Emperors in the West, called commonly the Fall of the Western Empire.

"After the death of Valentinian III., the unworthy grandson of the great Theodosius [March 16, A. D. 455], the first thought of the barbarian chiefs was, not to destroy or usurp the Imperial name, but to secure to themselves the nomination of the emperor. Avitus, chosen in Gaul under the influence of the West Gothic King of Toulouse, Theoderic II., was accepted for a time as the western emperor, by the Roman Senate and by the Court of Constantinople. But another barbarian, Ricimer the Sueve, ambitious, successful, and popular, had succeeded to the command of the 'federated' foreign bands which formed the strength of the imperial army in Italy. Ricimer would not be a king, but he adopted as a settled policy the expedient, or the insulting jest, of Alaric. … He deposed Avitus, and probably murdered him. Under his direction, the Senate chose Majorian. Majorian was too able, too public-spirited, perhaps too independent, for the barbarian Patrician; Majorian, at a moment of ill-fortune was deposed and got rid of." After Majorian, one Severus (A. D. 461-467), and after Severus a Greek, Anthemius (A. D. 467-472), nominated at Constantinople, wore the purple at the command of Count Ricimer. When, after five years of sovereignty, Anthemius quarreled with his barbarian master, the latter chose a new emperor—the senator Olybrius—and conducted him with an army to the gates of Rome, in which the imperial court had once more settled itself. Anthemius, supported by the majority of the senate and people, resisted, and Rome sustained a siege of three months. It was taken by storm, on the 11th of July, A. D. 472, and suffered every outrage at the hands of the merciless victors. Anthemius was slain and his enemy, Ricimer, died a few weeks later. Olybrius followed the latter to the grave in October. Ricimer's place was filled by his nephew, a refugee Burgundian king, Gundobad, who chose for emperor an unfortunate officer of the imperial guard, named Glycerius. Glycerius allowed himself to be deposed the next year by Julius Nepos and accepted a bishopric in place of the throne; but later circumstances gave the emperor-bishop an opportunity to assassinate his supplanter and he did not hesitate to do so. By this time, the real power had passed to another barbarian "patrician" and general, Orestes, former secretary of Attila, and Orestes proclaimed his own son emperor. To this son "by a strange chance, as if in mockery of his fortune, had been given the names of the first king and the first emperor of Rome, Romulus Augustus, soon turned in derision into the diminutive 'Augustulus.' But Orestes failed to play the part of Ricimer. A younger and more daring barbarian adventurer, Odoacer the Herule, or Rugian, bid higher for the allegiance of the army. Orestes was slain, and the young emperor was left to the mercy of Odoacer. In singular and significant contrast to the common usage when a pretender fell, Romulus Augustulus was spared. He was made to abdicate in legal form; and the Roman Senate, at the dictation of Odoacer, officially signified to the Eastern emperor, Zeno, their resolution that the separate Western Empire should cease, and their recognition of the one emperor at Constantinople, who should be supreme over West and East. Amid the ruin of the empire and the state, the dethroned emperor passed his days, in such luxurious ease as the times allowed, at the Villa of Lucullus at Misenum; and Odoacer, taking the Teutonic title of king, sent to the emperor at Constantinople the imperial crown and robe which were to be worn no more at Rome or Ravenna for more than three hundred years. Thus in the year 476 ended the Roman empire, or rather, the line of Roman emperors, in the West."

_R. W. Church, Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 1._

"When, at Odoacer's bidding, Romulus Augustulus, the boy whom a whim of fate had chosen to be the last native Cæsar of Rome, had formally announced his resignation to the senate, a deputation from that body proceeded to the Eastern court to lay the insignia of royalty at the feet of the Eastern Emperor Zeno. The West, they declared, no longer required an Emperor of its own; one monarch sufficed for the world; Odoacer was qualified by his wisdom and courage to be the protector of their state, and upon him Zeno was entreated to confer the title of patrician and the administration of the Italian provinces. The Emperor granted what he could not refuse, and Odoacer, taking the title of King ['not king of Italy, as is often said'—foot-note], continued the consular office, respected the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of his subjects, and ruled for fourteen years as the nominal vicar of the Eastern Emperor. {2736} There was thus legally no extinction of the Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East and West. In form, and to some extent also in the belief of men, things now reverted to their state during the first two centuries of the Empire, save that Byzantium instead of Rome was the centre of the civil government. The joint tenancy which had been conceived by Diocletian, carried further by Constantine, renewed under Valentinian I. and again at the death of Theodosius, had come to an end; once more did a single Emperor sway the sceptre of the world, and head an undivided Catholic Church."

_J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 3._

ALSO IN: _T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 3, chapters 4-8._

_J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, preface and book 3, chapter 5 (volume 1)._

ROME: A. D. 476. Causes of the decay of the Empire and the significance of its fall in the West.

"Thus in the year 476 ended the Roman empire, or rather, the line of Roman emperors, in the West. Thus it had become clear that the foundations of human life and society, which had seemed under the first emperors eternal, had given way. The Roman empire was not the 'last word' in the history of the world; but either the world was in danger of falling into chaos, or else new forms of life were yet to appear, new ideas of government and national existence were to struggle with the old for the mastery. The world was not falling into chaos. Europe, which seemed to have lost its guidance and its hope of civilization in losing the empire, was on the threshold of a history far grander than that of Rome, and was about to start in a career of civilization to which that of Rome was rude and unprogressive. In the great break-up of the empire in the West, some parts of its system lasted, others disappeared. What lasted was the idea of municipal government, the Christian Church, the obstinate evil of slavery. What disappeared was the central power, the imperial and universal Roman citizenship, the exclusive rule of the Roman law, the old Roman paganism, the Roman administration, the Roman schools of literature. Part of these revived; the idea of central power under Charles the Great, and Otto his great successor; the appreciation of law, though not exclusively Roman law; the schools of learning. And under these conditions the new nations—some of mixed races, as in France, Spain, and Italy; others simple and homogeneous, as in Germany, England, and the Scandinavian peninsula —begin their apprenticeship of civilization."

_R. W. Church, The Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 1._

"The simple facts of the fall of the Empire are these. The Imperial system had been established … to protect the frontier. This it did for two centuries with eminent success. But in the reign of Marcus Aurelius … there occurred an invasion of the Marcomanni, which was not repulsed without great difficulty, and which excited a deep alarm and foreboding throughout the Empire. In the third century the hostile powers on every frontier began to appear more formidable. The German tribes, in whose discord Tacitus saw the safety of the Empire, present themselves now no longer in separate feebleness, but in powerful confederations. We hear no more the insignificant names of Chatti and Chauci; the history of the third century is full of Alemanni, Franks, and Goths. On the eastern frontier, the long decayed power of the Parthians now gives place to a revived and vigorous Persian Empire. The forces of the Empire are more and more taxed to defend it from these powerful enemies. … It is evident that the Roman world would not have steadily receded through centuries before the barbaric, had it not been decidedly inferior in force. To explain, then, the fall of the Empire, it is necessary to explain the inferiority in force of the Romans to the barbarians. This inferiority of the Romans, it is to be remembered, was a new thing. At an earlier time they had been manifestly superior. When the region of barbarism was much larger; when it included warlike and aggressive nations now lost to it, such as the Gauls; and when, on the other hand, the Romans drew their armies from a much smaller area, and organized them much less elaborately, the balance had inclined decidedly the other way. In those times the Roman world, in spite of occasional reverses, had on the whole steadily encroached on the barbaric. … Either, therefore, a vast increase of power must have taken place in the barbaric world, or a vast internal decay in the Roman. Now the barbaric world had actually received two considerable accessions of force. It had gained considerably, through what influences we can only conjecture, in the power and habit of co-operation. As I have said before, in the third century we meet with large confederations of Germans, whereas before we read only of isolated tribes. Together with this capacity of confederation we can easily believe that the Germans had acquired new intelligence, civilization, and military skill. Moreover, it is practically to be considered as a great increase of aggressive force, that in the middle of the fourth century they were threatened in their original settlements by the Huns. The impulse of desperation which drove them against the Roman frontier was felt by the Romans as a new force acquired by the enemy. But we shall soon see that other and more considerable momenta must have been required to turn the scale. … We are forced, … to the conclusion that the Roman Empire, in the midst of its greatness and civilization, must have been in a stationary and unprogressive, if not a decaying condition. Now what can have been the cause of this unproductiveness or decay? It has been common to suppose a moral degeneration in the Romans, caused by luxury and excessive good fortune. To support this it is easy to quote the satirists and cynics of the imperial time, and to refer to such accounts as Ammianus gives of the mingled effeminacy and brutality of the aristocracy of the capital in the fourth century. But the history of the wars between Rome and the barbaric world does not show us the proofs we might expect of this decay of spirit. We do not find the Romans ceasing to be victorious in the field, and beginning to show themselves inferior in valor to their enemies. The luxury of the capital could not affect the army. … Nor can it be said that luxury corrupted the generals, and through them the army. On the contrary, the Empire produced a remarkable series of capable generals. … Whatever the remote and ultimate cause may have been, the immediate cause to which the fall of the Empire can be traced is a physical, not a moral, decay. {2737} In valor, discipline, and science, the Roman armies remained what they had always been, and the peasant emperors of Illyricum were worthy successors of Cincinnatus and Caius Marius. But the problem was how to replenish those armies. Men were wanting; the Empire perished for want of men. The proof of this is in the fact that the contest with barbarism was carried on by the help of barbarian soldiers. … It must have been because the Empire could not furnish soldiers for its own defence, that it was driven to the strange expedient of turning its enemies and plunderers into its defenders. … Nor was it only in the army that the Empire was compelled to borrow men from barbarism. To cultivate the fields whole tribes were borrowed. From the time of Marcus Aurelius, it was a practice to grant lands within the Empire, sometimes to prisoners of war, sometimes to tribes applying for admission. … The want of any principle of increase in the Roman population is attested at a much earlier time. In the second century before Christ, Polybius bears witness to it; and the returns of the census from the Second Punic War to the time of Augustus show no steady increase in the number of citizens that cannot be accounted for by the extension of citizenship to new classes. … Precisely as we think of marriage, the Roman of Imperial times thought of celibacy,—that is, as the most comfortable but the most expensive condition of life. Marriage with us is a pleasure for which a man must be content to pay; with the Romans it was an excellent pecuniary investment, but an intolerably disagreeable one. Here lay, at least in the judgment of Augustus, the root of the evil. To inquire into the causes of this aversion to marriage in this place would lead me too far. We must be content to assume that, owing partly to this cause and partly to the prudential check of infanticide, the Roman population seems to have been in ordinary times almost stationary. The same phenomenon had shown itself in Greece before its conquest by the Romans. There the population had even greatly declined; and the shrewd Polybius explains that it was not owing to war or plague, but mainly to a general repugnance to marriage, and reluctance to rear large families, caused by an extravagantly high standard of comfort. … Perhaps enough has now been said to explain that great enigma, which so much bewilders the reader of Gibbon; namely, the sharp contrast between the age of the Autonines and the age which followed it. A century of unparalleled tranquillity and virtuous government is followed immediately by a period of hopeless ruin and dissolution. A century of rest is followed, not by renewed vigor, but by incurable exhaustion. Some principle of decay must clearly have been at work, but what principle? We answer: it was a period of sterility or barrenness in human beings; the human harvest was bad. And among the causes of this barrenness we find, in the more barbarous nations, the enfeeblement produced by the too-abrupt introduction of civilization, and universally the absence of industrial habits, and the disposition to listlessness which belongs to the military character."

_J. R. Seeley, Roman Imperialism, pages 47-61._

"At no period within the sphere of historic records was the commonwealth of Rome anything but an oligarchy of warriors and slave-owners, who indemnified themselves for the restraint imposed on them by their equals in the forum by aggression abroad and tyranny in their households. The causes of its decline seem to have little connexion with the form of government established in the first and second centuries. They were in full operation before the fall of the Republic, though their baneful effects were disguised and perhaps retarded by outward successes, by extended conquests, and increasing supplies of tribute or plunder. The general decline of population throughout the ancient world may be dated even from the second century before our era. The last age of the Republic was perhaps the period of the most rapid exhaustion of the human race; but its dissolution was arrested under Augustus, when the population recovered for a time in some quarters of the empire, and remained at least stationary in others. The curse of slavery could not but make itself felt again, and demanded the destined catastrophe. Whatever evil we ascribe to the despotism of the Cæsars, we must remark that it was Slavery that rendered political freedom and constitutional government impossible. Slavery fostered in Rome, as previously at Athens, the spirit of selfishness and sensuality, of lawlessness and insolence, which cannot consist with political equality, with political justice, with political moderation. The tyranny of the emperors was … only the tyranny of every noble extended and intensified. The empire became no more than an ergastulum or barracoon [slave prison] on a vast scale, commensurate with the dominions of the greatest of Roman slaveholders. … We have noticed already the pestilence which befell Italy and many of the provinces in the reign of Aurelius. There is reason to believe that this scourge was no common disorder, that it was of a type new at least in the West, and that, as a new morbific agent, its ravages were more lasting, as well as more severe, than those of an ordinary sickness. … At another time, when the stamina of ancient life were healthier and stronger, such a visitation might possibly have come and gone, and, however fatal at the moment, have left no lasting traces; but periods seem to occur in national existence when there is no constitutional power of rallying under casual disorders. The sickness which in the youth of the commonwealth would have dispelled its morbid humours and fortified its system, may have proved fatal to its advancing years, and precipitated a hale old age into palsied decrepitude. The vital powers of the empire possessed no elasticity; every blow now told upon it with increasing force; the blows it slowly or impatiently returned were given by the hands of hired barbarians, not by the strength of its own right arm. Not sickness alone, but famines, earthquakes, and conflagrations, fell in rapid succession upon the capital and the provinces. Such casualties may have occurred at other periods not less frequently or disastrously; but these were observed, while the others passed unnoticed, because the courage of the nation was now broken no less than its physical vigour, and, distressed and terrified, it beheld in every natural disorder the stroke of fate, the token of its destined dissolution. Nor indeed was the alarm unfounded. These transient faintings and sicknesses were too truly the symptoms of approaching collapse. The long line of northern frontier, from Odessus to the island of the Batavi, was skirted by a fringe of fire, and through the lurid glare loomed the wrathful faces of myriads, Germans, Scythians, and Sarmatians, all armed for the onslaught in sympathy or concert."

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, chapter 18 (volume 7)._

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