Chapter 5

This man is another Stilicho, another Aetius, a great and heroic soldier, but of a sinister and subtle policy without loyalty or scruple. His is a figure that often appears about the death-bed of dying states, but his genius has not so often been matched. The son of a Suevic father, his mother the daughter of Wallia, the successor and avenger of Ataulfus the Visigoth, he was the champion of the empire against the Vandal, that is to say, against her most relentless foe. His success in this was the secret of his power. Pondering the fate of his predecessors he determined he would not end as they did. Therefore he determined to make whom he would emperor and to depose him when he had done with him; in a word, he meant to be the master as well as the saviour of Italy. In this he was successful. He deposed Avitus and caused him to be consecrated bishop of Placentia. In his place he set a man of his own choice, Majorian, whom he raised to the empire on April 1, 457, in the camp at Columellae, at the sixth milestone, it seems, from Ravenna; and upon August 2,461, he caused him to be put to death near Tortona.

He chose Libius Severus to fill the place of Majorian and had him proclaimed in Ravenna upon November 19, 461; and upheld him for nearly four years till he died in Rome on August 15, 465, poisoned, men said, by Ricimer. Then the "king-maker" allied himself with Constantinople and placed Anthemius, son-in-law of Marcian, upon the throne of the West, in 467, kept him there till 472, and then proclaimed Olybrius, another Byzantine, emperor; laid siege to Anthemius in Rome, took the City, slew Anthemius, and forty days later himself died, leaving the command of his army to his nephew Gundobald, one of the princes of the Burgundians. Seven months later Olybrius died.

The alliance Ricimer had made with Constantinople, though he repented it, was the one hope of the future, and as a fact the future belonged to it. For a moment Gundobald was able to place an obscure soldier Glycerius upon the throne, but he soon exchanged the purple for the bishopric of Salona, and the nominee of Constantinople, Julius Nepos, reigned in Ravenna in his stead. But though the future belonged to Constantinople, the present did not. The barbarian confederates, discontented and unwilling to give their allegiance to this Greek, rebelled and under Orestes their general marched upon Ravenna. Julius Nepos fled by ship to Dalmatia and Orestes in Ravenna proclaimed his young son Romulus Augustulus emperor. But those barbarian mercenaries were not to be so easily satisfied. Of the new emperor they demanded a third of the lands of all Italy, and when this was refused them they flocked to the standard of that barbarian general in the Roman service whom we know as Odoacer. "From all the camps and garrisons of Italy" the barbarian confederates flocked to the new standard and Orestes was compelled to shut himself up in Pavia while Paulus, his brother, held Ravenna for the boy emperor. Upon August 23, 476, Odoacer was raised like the barbarian he was, upon the shield, as Alaric had been, and his troops proclaimed him king. Five days later Orestes, who had escaped from Pavia, was taken and put to death at Placentia, and on September 4 Paulus his brother was taken in the Pineta outside Classis by Ravenna and was slain. The gates of Ravenna were open, Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor in the West, was forced to abdicate and was sent by Odoacer to the famous villa that Lucullus had built for himself long and long ago in Campania, and was granted a pension of six thousand _soldi_, and Odoacer reigned as the first king of Italy; the western empire, as such, was at an end.

And the senate addressed, by unanimous decree, to the emperor Zeno in Constantinople an epistle, in which they disclaimed "the necessity, or even the wish, of continuing any longer the imperial succession in Italy, since, in their opinion, the majesty of a sole monarch is sufficient to pervade and protect at the same time both East and West. In their own name and in the name of the people they consent to the seat of universal empire being transferred from Rome to Constantinople, and they renounce the right of choosing their master. They further state that the republic (they repeat that name without a blush) might safely confide in the civil and military virtues of Odoacer; and they humbly request that the emperor would invest him with the title of patrician and the administration of the _diocese_ of Italy."

And Odoacer sent the diadem and the purple robe, the imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the throne and palace to Byzantium and received thence the title of patrician.

VI

THEODORIC

We may well ask what was the condition of Ravenna when the western empire fell and Odoacer made himself king of Italy. And by the greatest of good fortune we can answer that question. For we have a fairly vivid account of Ravenna from the hand of Sidonius Apollinaris who passed through the city on his way to Rome in 467.

Ravenna had been the chief city of Italy during the seventy years of revolution and administrative disaster and decay which had followed the incursion of Alaric. For the greater part of that period she had been the seat of the emperors and of their government, and it is perhaps for reasons such as these that we find, after all, but little change in her condition. She does not seem to have suffered much decay since Honorius retreated upon her.

"It is difficult," Sidonius tells us, "to say whether the old city of Ravenna is separated from the new port or joined to it by the Via Caesaris which lies between them. Above the town the Po is divided into two streams, of which one washes its walls and the other passes through its streets. The whole river has been diverted from its true channel by means of large mounds thrown across it at the public expense, and being thus drawn off into channels marked out for it, so divides its waters, that they offer protection to the walls which they encompass and bring commerce into the city which they penetrate. By this route, which is most convenient for the purpose, all kinds of mechandise arrive, and especially food. But against this must be set the fact that the supply of drinking water is wretched. On the one side you have the salt waves of the sea dashing against the gates, on the other the canals, filled with sewage of the consistency of gruel, are being constantly churned up by the passage of the barges; and the river itself, here gliding along with a very slow current, is made muddy by the poles of the bargemen which are being continually thrust into its clayey bed. The consequence was that we were thirsty in the midst of the waves, since no wholesome water was brought to us by the aqueducts, no cistern was flowing, no well was without its mud."[1]

[Footnote 1: Sidonius Apoll. _Ep_. 1 5. Cf. Hodgkin, _op. cit_. vol. 1. p. 859.]

In another letter we have a rather more fantastic picture. "A pretty place Cesena must be if Ravenna is better, for there your ears are pierced by the mosquito of the Po and a talkative mob of frogs is always croaking round you. Ravenna is a mere marsh where all the conditions of life are reversed, where walls fall and waters stand, towers flow down and ships squat, invalids walk about and their doctors take to bed, baths freeze and houses burn, the living perish with thirst and the dead swim about on the surface of the water, thieves watch and magistrates sleep, priests lend at usury and Syrians sing psalms, merchants shoulder arms and soldiers haggle like hucksters, greybeards play at ball and striplings at dice, and eunuchs study the art of war and the barbarian mercenaries study literature."[2]

[Footnote 2: _Idem. Ep_. 1. 8. Cf. Hodgkin, _op cit_ vol. 1. p. 860.]

Such was the Ravenna of the barbarian who called himself king of Italy.

We have seen Ravenna since her incorporation into the Roman administrative system fulfilling the various reasons of her existence; as the fortress which held the gate into Italy from Cisalpine Gaul, as the second naval port of the West, and as the great impregnable fortress of Italy in the barbarian invasions. Odoacer, also, chose it as his chief seat of government for similar advantages. Ravenna strongly held gave him, as strongly held she had given every one of her masters, Italy and Cisalpine Gaul; while as the gate of the eastern sea, Ravenna was his proper means of communication with his over-lord and the eastern provinces of what was, rightly understood, the reunited empire.

That, theoretically at least, is how Odoacer regarded the state in which, by the good pleasure of the emperor Zeno, he held the title of patrician. He was an unlettered man, an Arian, as were all the barbarians, and he held what he held by permission of Constantinople, though he had won it by his own strength in the weakness and misery of the time. He never aspired, it would seem, to make himself emperor. Certainly for the first four years of his rule in Ravenna that great office was filled by Julius Nepos in exile at Salona, whose deposition at the hands of Orestes had never been recognised by Constantinople. Thereafter, the western and the eastern empire were in theory reunited, with New Rome upon the Bosphorus for their true capital; and both before and after that event Odoacer ruled in Italy with the title of patrician conferred upon him by Constantinople. When that consent was withdrawn, as it was immediately Odoacer showed signs of ambition, he fell.

Odoacer had ruled in Ravenna from 476 to 493, when he fell in that city after sustaining a siege of three years. He ruled well and strongly and by the laws of the empire. He was compelled by the barbaric confederates, who had placed him where he was, to grant them a third of the lands, certainly, of the great Italian landowners; but he created nothing new; like all the barbarians he was sterile, his only service was a service of destruction. With him even this service was small.

His fall was curious and is exceedingly significant.

In 481, after the murder of the emperor Julius Nepos in Salona, Odoacer led an expedition into Dalmatia to chastise the murderers and seized the opportunity to make himself master of Dalmatia. This action at once renewed the suspicion of Constantinople; but when in 484 Odoacer entered into negotiations with Illus, the last of the insurgents who disturbed the reign of Zeno, Constantinople decided that he must be broken; therefore Feletheus, king of the Rugians upon the Danube, was stirred up against him, and when that failed, for Odoacer defeated him, Constantinople sent Theodoric and his Ostrogothic host into Italy to dispose of Odoacer the patrician[1].

[Footnote 1: Cf. Anon. Valesii, "Missus ab imperatore Zenone de partibus orientis ad defendendam sibi Italiam...."]

Theodoric, another unlettered barbarian and heretic, but a man of a great and noble character, set out for Italy from Nova on the southern bank of the Danube, where he had been a constant danger to the Eastern provinces, in the autumn of 488. His purpose, set forth in his own words to the Emperor Zeno, was as follows: "Although your servant is maintained in affluence by your liberality, graciously listen to the wishes of my heart. Italy, the inheritance of your predecessors, and Rome itself, the head and mistress of the world, now fluctuate under the violence and oppression of Odoacer the mercenary. Direct me with my national troops to march against this tyrant. If I fall, you will be delivered from an expensive and troublesome friend; if, with the Divine permission, I succeed, I shall govern, in your name and to your glory, the Roman senate and the part of the republic delivered from slavery by my victorious arms."

That march was an exodus. Procopius tells us that, "with Theodoric went the people of the Goths, putting their wives and children and as much of their furniture as they could take with them into their waggons," and as Ennodius, bishop of Ticinum, asserts, it was "a world that migrated" with Theodoric into Italy, "a world of which every member is nevertheless your kinsman." "Waggons," says he, "are made to do duty as houses, and into these wandering habitations all things that can minister to the needs of the occupants are poured. Then were the tools of Ceres, and the stones with which the corn is ground, dragged along by the labouring oxen. Pregnant mothers, forgetful of their sex and of the burden which they bore, undertook the toil of providing food for the families of thy people. Followed the reign of winter in thy camp. Over the hair of thy men the long frost threw a veil of snowy white; the icicles hung in a tangle from their beards. So hard was the frost that the garment which the matron's persevering toil had woven had to be broken before a man might fit it to his body. Food for thy marching armies was forced from the grasp of the hostile nations around, or procured by the cunning of the hunter."[1] It has been supposed by Mr. Hodgkin that not less than 40,000 fighting men and some 200,000 souls in all thus entered Italy. To us it might seem that no such number of people could have lived without commissariat during that tremendous march of seven hundred miles through some of the poorest land of Europe in the depth of winter. However that may be, Theodoric after many an encounter with barbarians wilder than his own descended from the Julian Alps into Venetia in August 489, after a march of not less than ten months.

[Footnote 1: Ennodius, _Panegyricus_, p. 173. Trs. by Hodgkin, _op. cit_. iii. 179-80.]

Odoacer was waiting for him. He met him near the site of the old fortress of Aquileia, which Attila had annihilated, that once held the passage of the Sontius (Isonzo). He was defeated and all Venetia fell into the hands of the Ostrogoth. Odoacer retreated to Verona, that red fortress on the Adige; once more and more certainly he was beaten. He retreated to Ravenna,[2] while Theodoric advanced to Milan, to Milan which now led nowhere.

[Footnote 2: "Et Ravennam cum exercitu fugiens pervenit." Anon. Valesii, 50.]

After Verona, Theodoric had received the submission of a part of Odoacer's army under Tufa. When he had possessed himself of Milan, he sent these renegades and certain nobles with their men from his own army, apparently under the leadership of Tufa, to besiege Ravenna. They came down the Aemilian Way as far as Faventia (Faenza). There no doubt a road left the great highway for the impregnable city of the marshes. At Faventia, then, Theodoric expected to begin to blockade Ravenna. In this he was mistaken. Suddenly Tufa deserted his new master, was joined by Odoacer, who came to Faventia, and certain of the Ostrogothic nobles, if not all of them, were slaughtered. The expedition was lost and not the expedition alone: Milan was no longer safe. Therefore Theodoric evacuated that city, always almost indefensible, and occupied Ticinum (Pavia), which was naturally defended by the Ticino and the Po. There he established himself in winter quarters.

A new diversion from the west, a frustrated attack of Gundobald and his Burgundians, kept Theodoric busy for a year. Meantime Odoacer appeared in the plain, retook and held all the country between Faventia and Cremona and even visited Milan, which he chastised. Then in August 490 Theodoric met him on the Adda, and again Odoacer was defeated, and again he fled back to Ravenna. All over Italy his cause tottered, was betrayed, or failed. A general massacre of the confederate troops throughout the peninsula seems to have occurred. And by the end of the year there remained to him but Ravenna, his fortress, and the two cities that it commanded, Cesena upon the Aemilian Way and Rimini in the midst of the narrow pass at the head of the Via Flaminia. Theodoric himself began the siege of Ravenna.

This siege, the first that Ravenna had ever experienced, endured for near three years, from the autumn of 490 to the spring of 493. "_Et mox_" says a chronicle of the time, "_subsecutus est eum patricius Theodoricus veniens in Pineta, et fixit fossatum, obsidiens Odoacrem clausum per trienum in Ravenna et factus est usque ad sex solidos modicus tritici_...."[1] Theodoric established himself in a fortified camp in the Pineta with a view to preventing food or reinforcements arriving to his enemy from the sea. Ravenna was closed upon all sides and before the end of the siege corn rose in the beleaguered city to famine price, some seventy-two shillings of our money per peck, and the inhabitants were forced to eat the skins of animals and all sorts of offal, and many died of hunger.

[Footnote 1: Anon. Valesii.]

In 491, according to the same chronicler,[1] a sortie was made by Odoacer and his barbarians, but after a desperate fight in the Pineta this was repelled by Theodoric. In 492, another chronicle tells us,[2] Theodoric took Rimini and from thence brought a fleet of ships to the Porto Leone, some six miles from Ravenna, thus cutting off the city from the sea. Till at last in the beginning of 493 Odoacer was compelled to open negotiations for surrender. He gave his son Thelane as a hostage, and on the 26th February Theodoric entered Classis, and on the following day the treaty of peace was signed. Upon the 5th March 493, according to Agnellus, "that most blessed man, the archbishop John, opened the gates of the city which Odoacer had closed, and went forth with crosses and thuribles and the Holy Gospels seeking peace, with the priests and clergy singing psalms, and prostrating himself upon the ground obtained what he sought. He welcomed the new king coming from the East and peace was granted to him, not only with the citizens of Ravenna, but with the other Romans for whom the blessed John asked it."

[Footnote 1: Anon. Valesii.]

[Footnote 2: Agnellus, _Liber Pontificalis Rav_.]

The terms of that treaty are extraordinarily significant of the importance of Ravenna in the defence of Italy. It would seem that Theodoric had possessed himself of everything but Ravenna easily enough, yet without Ravenna everything else was nothing. The city was, in spite of blockade and famine, impregnable, and it commanded so much, was still indeed, as always, the key to Italy and the plain and the very gate of the West, that not to possess it was to lose everything. Its surrender was necessary and Theodoric offered extraordinary terms to obtain it. Odoacer was not only to keep his life but his power. He was to rule as the equal of Theodoric. This mighty concession shows us at once what Ravenna really was, what part she played in the government of Italy, and how unique was her position in the military scheme of that country.

Theodoric had certainly no intention of carrying out the terms of his treaty. In the very month in which he signed it, he invited Odoacer to a feast at the Palace "in Lauro" to the south-east of Ravenna. When the patrician arrived two petitioners knelt before him each clasping one of his hands, and two of Theodoric's men stepped from hiding to kill him. Perhaps they were not barbarians: at any rate, they lacked the courage and the contempt alike of law and of honour necessary to commit so cold a murder. It was Theodoric himself who lifted his sword and hewed his enemy in twain from the shoulder to the loins. "Where is God?" Odoacer, expecting the stroke, had demanded. And Theodoric answered, "Thus didst thou to my friends." And after he said, "I think the wretch had no bones in his body."

The barbarian it might seem had certainly nothing to learn from the worst of the emperors in treachery and dishonour.

Theodoric set up his seat in the city he had so perfidiously won, and for the next thirty years appears as the governour of Italy. He had set out, it will be remembered, as the soldier of Constantinople, had asked for leave to make his expedition, and had protested his willingness to govern in the name of the emperor and for his glory. It is not perhaps surprising that a barbarian, and especially Theodoric who knew so well how to win by treachery what he could not otherwise obtain, should after his victory forget the promise he had made to his master. After the battle of the Adda he had the audacity to send an embassy to the emperor to request that he might be allowed to clothe himself in the royal mantle. This was of course refused. Nevertheless the Goths "confirmed Theodoric to themselves as king without waiting for the order of the new emperor Anastasius."[1] This "confirmation," whatever it may have meant to the Goths, meant nothing to the Romans or to the empire. For some years Constantinople refused all acknowledgment to Theodoric, till in 497 peace was made and Theodoric obtained recognition, much it may be thought as Odoacer had done, from Constantinople; but the ornaments of the palace at Ravenna, which Odoacer had sent to New Rome, were brought back, and therefore it would seem that the royalty of Theodoric was acknowledged by the empire; but we have no authority to see in this more than an acknowledgment of the king of the Goths, the vicegerent perhaps of the emperor in Italy. What Theodoric's title may have been we have no means of knowing: _de jure_ he was the representative of the emperor in Italy: _de facto_ he was the absolute ruler, the _tyrannus_, as Odoacer had been, of the country; but he never ventured to coin money bearing his effigy and superscription and he invariably sent the names of the consuls, whom he appointed, to Constantinople for confirmation. He ruled too, as Odoacer had done, by Roman law, and the Arian heresy, which he and his barbarians professed as their religion, was not till the very end of his reign permitted precedence over the Catholic Faith. For the most part too he governed by means of Roman officials, and to this must be ascribed the enormous success of his long government.

[Footnote 1: Anon. Valesu, 57.]

For that he was successful, that he gave Italy peace during a whole generation, is undeniable. In all the chronicles there is little but praise of him. The chief of them[1] says of him: "He was an illustrious man and full of good-will towards all. He reigned thirty-three years[2] and during thirty of these years so great was the happiness of Italy that even the wayfarers were at peace. For he did nothing evil. He governed the two nations, the Goths and the Romans, as though they were one people. Belonging himself to the Arian sect, he yet ordained that the civil administration should remain for the Romans as it had been under the emperors. He gave presents and rations to the people, yet though he found the treasury ruined he brought it by hard work into a flourishing state. He attempted nothing against the Catholic Faith. He exhibited games in the circus and amphitheatre, and received from the Romans the names of Trajan and Valentinian, for the happy days of those most prosperous emperors he did in truth seek to restore, and at the same time the Goths rendered true obedience to their valiant king according to the edict which he had given them.

[Footnote 1: Anon. Valesii. This was probably Bishop Maximian, a Catholic bishop of Ravenna. I follow, with a few changes, Mr. Hodgkin's translation.]

[Footnote 2: Thirty-two years and a half from the death of Odoacer; thirty-seven from his descent into Italy.]