Part 886

But now they chose a new king, Ildibad, who reigned promisingly for a year and was slain; then another, who wore the crown but five months; and, lastly, they found a true royal chief in the knightly young warrior Baduila, or Totila, by whose energy and valor the Gothic cause was revived. Belisarius had been recalled by his jealous master, and the quarrels of eleven generals who divided his authority gave every opportunity to the youthful king. Defeating the Roman armies in two battles, at Faenza and in the valley of Mugello, near Florence, he crossed the Apennines, passed by Rome, besieged and took Naples and Cumæ and overran all the southern provinces of Italy, in 542 and 543, finding everywhere much friendliness among the people, whom the tax-gatherers of Justinian had alienated by their merciless rapacity. In 544, Belisarius, restored to favor and command only because of the desperate need of his services, came back to Italy to recover what his successors had lost; but he came almost alone. Without adequate troops, he could only watch, from Ravenna, and circumscribe a little, the successes of his enterprising antagonist. The latter, having strengthened his position well, in central as well as in southern Italy, applied himself to the capture of Rome. In May, 546, the Gothic lines were drawn around the city and a blockade established which soon produced famine and despair. An attempt by Belisarius to break the leaguer came to naught, and Rome was betrayed to Totila on the 17th of December following. He stayed the swords of his followers when they began to slay, but gave them full license to plunder. When the great city had been stripped and most of its inhabitants had fled, he resolved to destroy it utterly; but he was dissuaded from that most barbarous design by a letter of remonstrance from Belisarius. Contenting himself, then, with throwing down a great part of the walls, he withdrew his whole army—having no troops to spare for an adequate garrison—and took with him every single surviving inhabitant (so the historians of the time declare), so that Rome, for the space of six weeks or more (January and February, 547), was a totally deserted and silent city. At the end of that time, Belisarius threw his army inside of the broken walls, and repaired them with such celerity that Totila was baffled when he hastened back to expel the intruders. Three times the Goths attacked and were repulsed; the best of their warriors were slain; the prestige of their leader was lost. But, once more, jealousies and enmities at Constantinople recalled Belisarius and the Goths recovered ground. In 549 they again invested Rome and it was betrayed to them, as before, by a part of the garrison. Totila now made the great city—great even in its ruins—his capital, and exerted himself to restore its former glories. His arms for a time were everywhere successful. Sicily was invaded and stripped of its portable wealth. Sardinia and Corsica were occupied; the shores of Greece were threatened. But in 552 the tide of fortune was turned once more in favor of Justinian,—this time by his second great general, the eunuch Narses. In one decisive battle fought that year, in July, at a point on the Flaminian Way where it crosses the Apennines, the army of the Goths was broken and their king was slain. The remnant which survived crowned another king, Teias; but, he, too, perished, the following March, in a battle fought at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, and the Ostrogothic kingdom was at an end. Rome was already recovered—the fifth change of masters it had undergone during the war—and one by one, all the strong places in the hands of the Goths were given up. The restoration of Italy to the Empire was complete.

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 4, chapter 16; book 5, chapters 1-24._

"Of all ages in history the sixth is the one in which the doctrine that the Roman Empire came to an end at some time in the fifth sounds most grotesque. Again the Roman armies march to victory, to more than victory, to conquest, to conquests more precious than the conquests of Cæsar or of Trajan, to conquests which gave back Rome herself to her own Augustus. We may again be met with the argument that we have ourselves used so often; that the Empire had to win back its lost provinces does indeed prove that it had lost them; but no one seeks to prove that the provinces had not been lost; what the world is loth to understand is that there was still life enough in the Roman power to win them back again. {2742} I say the Roman power; what if I said the Roman commonwealth? It may startle some to hear that in the sixth century, nay in the seventh, the most common name for the Empire of Rome is still 'respublica.' No epithet is needed; there is no Deed to say that the 'respublica' spoken of is 'respublica Romano.' It is the Republic which wins back Italy, Africa, and Southern Spain from their Teutonic masters. … The point of the employment of the word lies in this, that it marks the unbroken being of the Roman state; in the eyes of the men of the sixth century the power which won back the African province in their own day was the same power which had first won it well-nigh seven hundred years before. The consul Belisarius was the true successor of the consul Scipio."

_E. A. Freeman, The Chief Periods of European History, lecture 4._

ALSO IN: _E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapters 41 and 43._

_J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, book 4, chapters 5-7 (volume 1)._

_R. H. Wrightson, The Sancta Respublica Romana, chapters 5-7._

_Lord Mahon, Life of Belisarius._

ROME: A. D. 541. Extinction of the office of Consul.

See CONSUL, ROMAN.

ROME: A. D. 554-800. The Exarchate of Ravenna.

On the final overthrow and annihilation of the Gothic monarchy in Italy by the decisive victories of the eunuch Narses, its throne at Ravenna was occupied by a line of vice-royal rulers, named exarchs, who represented the Eastern Roman emperor, being appointed by him and exercising authority in his name. "Their jurisdiction was soon reduced to the limits of a narrow province; but Narses himself, the first and most powerful of the exarchs, administered above fifteen years the entire kingdom of Italy. … A duke was stationed for the defence and military command of each of the principal cities; and the eye of Narses pervaded the ample prospect from Calabria to the Alps. The remains of the Gothic nation evacuated the country or mingled with the people. … The civil state of Italy, after the agitation of a long tempest, was fixed by a pragmatic sanction, which the emperor promulgated at the request of the pope. Justinian introduced his own jurisprudence into the schools and tribunals of the West. … Under the exarchs of Ravenna, Rome was degraded to the second rank. Yet the senators were gratified by the permission of visiting their estates in Italy, and of approaching without obstacle the throne of Constantinople: the regulation of weights and measures was delegated to the pope and senate; and the salaries of lawyers and physicians, of orators and grammarians, were destined to preserve or rekindle the light of science in the ancient capital. … During a period of 200 years Italy was unequally divided between the kingdom of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna. … Eighteen successive exarchs were invested, in the decline of the empire, with the full remains of civil, of military and even of ecclesiastical power. Their immediate jurisdiction, which was afterwards consecrated as the patrimony of St. Peter, extended over the modern Romagna, the marshes or valleys of Ferrara and Commachio, five maritime cities from Rimini to Ancona, and a second inland Pentapolis, between the Adriatic coast and the hills of the Apennine. Three subordinate provinces—of Rome, of Venice, and of Naples—which were divided by hostile lands from the palace of Ravenna, acknowledged, both in peace and war, the supremacy of the exarch. The duchy of Rome appears to have included the Tuscan, Sabine, and Latin conquests of the first 400 years of the city, and the limits may be distinctly traced along the coast, from Civita Vecchio, to Terracina, and with the course of the Tiber from Ameria and Narni to the port of Ostia. The numerous islands from Grado to Chiozza composed the infant dominion of Venice; but the more accessible towns on the continent were overthrown by the Lombards, who beheld with impotent fury a new capital rising from the waves. The power of the dukes of Naples was circumscribed by the bay and the adjacent isles, by the hostile territory of Capua, and by the Roman colony of Amalphi. … The three islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily still adhered to the empire. … Rome was oppressed by the iron sceptre of the exarchs, and a Greek, perhaps a eunuch, insulted with impunity the ruins of the Capitol. But Naples soon acquired the privilege of electing her own dukes; the independence of Amalphi was the fruit of commerce; and the voluntary attachment of Venice was finally ennobled by an equal alliance with the Eastern empire."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapters 43 and 45.

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[IMAGE: EUROPE AT THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR JUSTINIAN 565 A. D. EAST ROMAN EMPIRE RACE DIVISIONS CELTIC PEOPLES. SLAVIC PEOPLES. LITHUANIAN PEOPLES. URAL ALTAIC PEOPLES. SCANDINAVIANS. ANGLES, SAXONS, JUTES ETC. THE GERMANIC STATES AND PEOPLES ALL APPEAR IN DIFFERENT SHADES OF PINK.]

ROME: A. D. 565-628. Decline of the Eastern Empire. Thickening calamities. Reigns of Justinus II., Tiberius Constantinus, Maurice, and Phocas. Brief brightening of events by Heraclius. His campaigns against the Persians.

"The thirty years which followed the death of Justinian are covered by three reigns, those of Justinus II. (565-578), Tiberius Constantinus (578-582), and Maurice (582-602). These three emperors were men of much the same character as the predecessors of Justinian; each of them was an experienced official of mature age, who was selected by the reigning emperor as his most worthy successor. … Yet under them the empire was steadily going down hill: the exhausting effects of the reign of Justinian were making themselves felt more and more, and at the end of the reign of Maurice a time of chaos and disaster was impending, which came to a head under his successor. … The misfortunes of the Avaric and Slavonic war [see AVARS] were the cause of the fall of the Emperor Maurice. … Maurice sealed his fate when, in 602, he issued orders for the discontented army of the Danube to winter north of the river, in the waste marshes of the Slavs. The troops refused to obey the order, and chased away their generals. Then electing as their captain an obscure centurion, named Phocas, they marched on Constantinople. Maurice armed the city factions, the 'Blues' and 'Greens,' and strove to defend himself. But when he saw that no one would fight for him, he fled across the Bosphorus with his wife and children, to seck refuge in the Asiatic provinces, where he was less unpopular than in Europe. Soon he was pursued by orders of Phocas, whom the army had now saluted as emperor, and caught at Chalcedon. The cruel usurper had him executed, along with all his five sons, the youngest a child of only three years of age. … For the first time since Constantinople had become the seat of empire the throne had been won by armed rebellion and the murder of the legitimate ruler. … {2743} Phocas was a mere brutal soldier—cruel, ignorant, suspicious, and reckless, and in his incapable hands the empire began to fall to pieces with alarming rapidity. He opened his reign with a series of cruel executions of his predecessor's friends, and from that moment his deeds of bloodshed never ceased. … The moment that Phocas had mounted the throne, Chosroës of Persia declared war on him, using the hypocritical pretext that he wished to revenge Maurice, for whom he professed a warm personal friendship. This war was far different from the indecisive contests in the reigns of Justinian and Justin II. In two successive years the Persians burst into North Syria and ravaged it as far as the sea; but in the third they turned north and swept over the hitherto untouched provinces of Asia Minor. In 608 their main army penetrated across Cappadocia and Galatia right up to the gates of Chalcedon. The inhabitants of Constantinople could see the blazing villages across the water on the Asiatic shore. … Plot after plot was formed in the capital against Phocas, but he succeeded in putting them all down, and slew the conspirators with fearful tortures. For eight years his reign continued. … Africa was the only portion of the Roman Empire which in the reign of Phocas was suffering neither from civil strife nor foreign invasion. It was well governed by the aged exarch Heraclius, who was so well liked in the province that the emperor had not dared to depose him. Urged by desperate entreaties from all parties in Constantinople to strike a blow against the tyrant, and deliver the empire from the yoke of a monster, Heraclius at last consented." He sent his son—who bore the same name, Heraclius—with a fleet, to Constantinople. Phocas was at once abandoned by his troops and was given up to Heraclius, whose sailors slew him. "Next day the patriarch and the senate hailed Heraclius [the younger] as emperor, and he was duly crowned in St. Sophia on October 5, A. D. 610. … Save Africa and Egypt and the district immediately around the capital, all the provinces were overrun by the Persian, the Avar and the Slav. The treasury was empty, and the army had almost disappeared, owing to repeated and bloody defeats in Asia Minor. Heraclius seems at first to have almost despaired. … For the first twelve years of his reign he remained at Constantinople, endeavouring to reorganize the empire, and to defend at any rate the frontiers of Thrace and Asia Minor. The more distant provinces he hardly seems to have hoped to save, and the chronicle of his early years is filled with the catalogue of the losses of the empire. … In 614 the Persian army appeared before the holy city of Jerusalem, took it after a short resistance and occupied it with a garrison. But the populace rose and slaughtered the Persian troops, when Shahrbarz had departed with his main army. This brought him back in wrath: he stormed the city and put 90,000 Christians to the sword, only sparing the Jewish inhabitants. Zacharias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was carried into captivity, and with him went what all Christians then regarded as the most precious thing in the world—the wood of the 'True Cross'. …

See JERUSALEM: A. D. 615.

The horror and rage roused by the loss of the 'True Cross' and the blasphemies of King Chosroës brought about the first real outburst of national feeling that we meet in the history of the Eastern Empire. … Heraclius made no less than six campaigns (A. D. 622-627) in his gallant and successful attempt to save the half-ruined empire. He won great and well-deserved fame, and his name would be reckoned among the foremost of the world's warrior-kings if it had not been for the misfortunes which afterwards fell on him in his old age. His first campaign cleared Asia Minor of the Persian hosts, not by a direct attack, but by skilful strategy. … In his next campaigns Heraclius endeavoured to liberate the rest of the Roman Empire by a similar plan: he resolved to assail Chosroës at home, and force him to recall the armies he kept in Syria and Egypt to defend his own Persian provinces. In 623-4 the Emperor advanced across the Armenian mountains and threw himself into Media. … Chosroës … fought two desperate battles to cover Ctesiphon. His generals were defeated in both, but the Roman army suffered severely. Winter was at hand, and Heraclius fell back on Armenia. In his next campaign he recovered Roman Mesopotamia. … But 626 was the decisive year of the war. The obstinate Chosroës determined on one final effort to crush Heraclius, by concerting a joint plan of operations with the Chagan of the Avars. While the main Persian army watched the emperor in Armenia, a great body under Shahrbarz slipped south of him into Asia Minor and marched on the Bosphorus. At the same moment the Chagan of the Avars, with the whole force of his tribe and of his Slavonic dependents, burst over the Balkans and beset Constantinople on the European side. The two barbarian hosts could see each other across the water, and even contrived to exchange messages, but the Roman fleet, sailing incessantly up and down the strait, kept them from joining forces. … In the end of July 80,000 Avars and Slavs, with all sorts of siege implements, delivered simultaneous assaults along the land front of the city, but they were beaten back with great slaughter." They suffered even more on trying to encounter the Roman galleys with rafts. "Then the Chagan gave up the siege in disgust and retired across the Danube." Meantime Heraclius was wasting Media and Mesopotamia, and next year he ended the war by a decisive victory near Nineveh, as the result of which he took the palace of Dastagerd, "and divided among his troops such a plunder as had never been seen since Alexander the Great captured Susa. … In March, 628, a glorious peace ended the 26 years of the Persian war. Heraclius returned to Constantinople in the summer of the same year with his spoils, his victorious army, and his great trophy, the 'Holy Wood.' … The quiet for which he yearned was to be denied him, and the end of his reign was to be almost as disastrous as the commencement. The great Saracen invasion was at hand, and it was at the very moment of Heraclius' triumph that Mahomet sent out his famous circular letter to the kings of the earth, inviting them to embrace Islam."

_C. W. C. Oman, The Story of the Byzantine Empire, chapters 9-10._

ALSO IN: _J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, book 4, part 2, and book 5, chapters 1-3 (volume 2)._

See, also, PERSIA: A. D. 226-627.

ROME: A. D. 568-573. Invasion of the Lombards. Their conquest of northern Italy. Their kingdom.

See LOMBARDS: A. D. 568-573; and 573-754.

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ROME: A. D. 590-640. Increasing influence and importance of the Bishop of Rome. Circumstances under which his temporal authority grew.

"The fall of the shadowy Empire of the West, and the union of the Imperial power in the person of the ruler of Constantinople, brought a fresh accession of dignity and importance to the Bishop of Rome. The distant Emperor could exercise no real power over the West. The Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy scarcely lasted beyond the lifetime of its great founder Theodoric. The wars of Justinian only served to show how scanty were the benefits of the Imperial rule. The invasion of the Lombards united all dwellers in Italy in an endeavour to escape the lot of servitude and save their land from barbarism. In this crisis it was found that the Imperial system had crumbled away, and that the Church alone possessed a strong organisation. In the decay of the old municipal aristocracy the people of the towns gathered round their bishops, whose sacred character inspired some respect in the barbarians, and whose active charity lightened the calamities of their flocks. In such a state of things Pope Gregory the Great raised the Papacy [A. D. 590] to a position of decisive eminence, and marked out the course of its future policy. The piety of emperors and nobles had conferred lands on the Roman Church, not only in Italy, but in Sicily, Corsica, Gaul, and even in Asia and Africa, until the Bishop of Rome had become the largest landholder in Italy. To defend his Italian lands against the incursions of the Lombards was a course suggested to Gregory by self-interest; to use the resources which came to him from abroad as a means of relieving the distress of the suffering people in Rome and Southern Italy was a natural prompting of his charity. In contrast to this, the distant Emperor was too feeble to send any effective help against the Lombards, while the fiscal oppression of his representatives added to the miseries of the starving people. The practical wisdom, administrative capacity, and Christian zeal of Gregory I. led the people of Rome and the neighbouring regions to look upon the Pope as their head in temporal as well as in spiritual matters. The Papacy became a national centre to the Italians, and the attitude of the Popes towards the Emperor showed a spirit of independence which rapidly passed into antagonism and revolt. Gregory I. was not daunted by the difficulties nor absorbed by the cares of his position at home. When he saw Christianity threatened in Italy by the heathen Lombards, he boldly pursued a system of religious colonisation. While dangers were rife at Rome, a band of Roman missionaries carried Christianity to the distant English, and in England first was founded a Church which owed its existence to the zeal of the Roman bishop. Success beyond all that he could have hoped for attended Gregory's pious enterprise. The English Church spread and flourished, a dutiful daughter of her mother-church of Rome. England sent forth missionaries in her turn, and before the preaching of Willibrod and Winifred heathenism died away in Friesland, Franconia, and Thuringia. Under the new name of Boniface, given him by Pope Gregory II., Winifred, as Archbishop of Mainz, organised a German Church, subject to the successor of S. Peter. The course of events in the East also tended to increase the importance of the See of Rome. The Mohammedan conquests destroyed the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, which alone could boast of an apostolical foundation. Constantinople alone remained as a rival to Rome; but under the shadow of the Imperial despotism it was impossible for the Patriarch of Constantinople to lay claim to spiritual independence. The settlement of Islam in its eastern provinces involved the Empire in a desperate struggle for its existence. Henceforth its object no longer was to reassert its supremacy over the West, but to hold its ground against watchful foes in the East. Italy could hope for no help from the Emperor, and the Pope saw that a breach with the Empire would give greater independence to his own position, and enable him to seek new allies elsewhere."

_M. Creighton, History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation, introduction, chapter 1 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN: _T. W. Allies, The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, chapter 5._

See, also, CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 553-800; and PAPACY: A. D. 461-604, and after.

ROME: A. D. 632-709. The Eastern Empire. Its first conflicts with Islam. Loss of Syria, Egypt, and Africa.