18

THE END OF ROME

It’s like the Roman Empire. Wasn’t everybody running around just covered in syphilis? And then it was destroyed by the volcano.

Joan Collins, interviewed for Playboy (31 [1981] no. 4)

Those looking for a single cause for the downfall of Rome will be disappointed. Indeed, it can be argued that the Roman Empire in the East did not fall until Mehmet the Conqueror sacked Constantinople in 1453 CE. Like the rise of Rome, it’s fall was a gradual and complex process: environmental issues, disease, moral decadence, lead pipes, dysgenic breeding, war, manpower shortages and ‘race-suicide’ have all been cited, as have army discipline, dynastic problems, taxation, Christianity, overcentralization of power, inept foreign policy and weak frontier defence. But we can be certain that there was no volcano, and syphilis had not yet reached Europe. Many of these factors had already been in existence when Augustus became Rome’s first emperor in 27 BCE: dynastic in-fighting, civil wars, barbarian threats, religious conflicts, inflation, the overinfluential role of the army in politics, and so on were endemic problems throughout Rome’s history, and a devastatingly severe plague in the mid-third century CE caused a horrendous death-toll. Yet Rome did not fall.

In 293 CE the emperor Diocletian, the most vicious persecutor of the Christians, established the ‘tetrarchy’ (= four people sharing power), a collegium of emperors comprising two older Augusti as the decision makers and two younger Caesars as executives. Each man controlled soldiers and had a specific sphere of operation – Maximian, Italy and Africa; Constantius, Gaul and Britain; Galerius, the Danube region; and Diocletian, the East – and had his own residence in the part of the empire that he ruled (Milan, Trier, Sirmium and Nicomedia respectively). Rome itself was no longer the effective capital of the Empire.

Bad health caused Diocletian to abdicate on 1 May 305 CE, and chaos ensued the following year when Constantius died at York and the armies of Britain and Gaul proclaimed his son Constantine as Augustus. Maxentius, son of Maximian, had himself proclaimed Augustus in Rome, and ultimately there were seven people all laying claim to that title: Maximian, Galerius, Constantine, Maxentius, Maximinus Daia, Licinius and Domitius Alexander. The deaths of Maximian, Alexander and Galerius followed, the latter from gluttony:

The whole of his hulking body, thanks to over-eating, had been transformed … into a huge lump of flabby fat, which then decomposed and presented those who came near with a revolting and horrifying sight.¹

This left Constantine and Maxentius in the West, and Licinius and Maximinus Daia in the East. Constantine invaded Italy and fought with Maxentius. During the campaign Constantine had a vision of a lighted cross in the sky and declared himself a Christian. After his comprehensive victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge near Rome, he struck a deal with Licinius, and they garnered the support of the Eastern Christians by guaranteeing them freedom of worship under the Edict of Milan of 313 CE. When Maximinus Daia fell ill and died in the same year, Constantine and Licinius remained as the two leaders of the Empire.

It was a recipe for unrest: Constantine took the offensive in 316 CE; Diocletian died; a truce followed, under which Constantine and Licinius designated three potential Caesars from their infant sons (two of Constantine’s, one from Licinius), but there was still a huge gulf between the two: Constantine was pro-Christian; Licinius reintroduced persecutions; and in 324 CE war broke out again. Licinius was defeated and executed, along with his son; Constantine’s son Constantius was named Caesar, along with his elder brothers Crispus and Constantine the Younger. At this point Constantine founded Constantinople as the ‘New Rome’ on the site of Byzantium in 324 CE. It became the administrative capital of the empire.

When Constantine died on 22 May 337 CE, his sons divided the Empire among themselves and eradicated all other family members: Constantine II took the West; Constantius II the East; and Constans I got Italy, Africa, and Illyricum. In 340 CE Constantine II attacked Constans I, but got killed in the process, after which peace then broke out between him and Constantius II, until a mutiny occurred in 350 CE in which Constans was killed in Lugdunum (Lyons) by a British-born usurper called Magnentius. Magnentius defeated Constantius II in the titanic Battle of Mursa (351 CE), but eventually committed suicide. Constantius II’s administration was dominated by informers, spies and meddling bureaucrats. He named his cousins as Caesars: Gallus (cruel, incompetent and ultimately got rid of) in the East; and Julian (so dangerously successful that he was proclaimed Augustus in 361 CE, in spite of Constantius II’s opposition) in Gaul. However, Constantius II’s death in November 361 CE averted the inevitable civil war. Julian was in sole control.

Julian had studied rhetoric and philosophy at Ephesus and Athens, and had clandestinely apostatized (‘gone back to being a pagan’) some ten years before, so when he became Emperor he proclaimed his paganism, argued with Christian intellectuals, banned Christians from teaching, began rebuilding the temple at Jerusalem and restored many pagan shrines. The Christians regarded him as the Antichrist. Julian was intent on military glory against the Persians in the Mesopotamia region, but he was defeated near Ctesiphon and subsequently died in a skirmish in 363 CE in which he was shot by an arrow, possibly fired by an anti-pagan Christian soldier rather than an anti-Roman Persian. His successor Jovian was a moderate Christian: he restored religious tolerance, negotiated an unfavourable peace with the Persian king Shapur II and died early in February 364 CE from asphyxiation by fumes from a charcoal stove.

Valentinian I was now chosen as emperor. A moderate Catholic Christian who generally tolerated heretics and pagans, he governed the West and delegated the East to his brother Valens. This marks the definitive moment when the Roman Empire was split into East and West. Valentinian I successfully fought the Alemanni, Sarmatians and Quadi, while in Britain his general, Count Theodosius the Elder, put down the ‘barbarian conspiracy’ of Picts, Scots, Attacotti (Irish?), Saxons and Franks who had overrun Hadrian’s Wall, killed the Count of the Saxon Shore and overwhelmed Fullofaudes, Duke of Britain. Domestically Valentinian I embarked on a reign of terror, executing senators for magic or sex crimes.

Meanwhile Valens had survived an attempted usurpation by Procopius (365–6 CE). But Valens was an extremist subscriber to Arianism, a heresy which held that the Son or Word was a creature created before time, and therefore that the Father and the Son were totally unalike. This ran contrary to the council of Nicaea of 325 CE, which had affirmed that the Son was ‘of the same substance’ as the Father. The result was that the East descended into religious turmoil. Elsewhere the Ostrogoths and the Greutingi were being displaced by the Huns and appeared on the Danube frontiers in 375 CE, and the following year Valens allowed them to enter Thrace. But things went horribly wrong: the Goths raped and pillaged, and Valens got killed in the disastrous Battle of Adrianople on 9 August 378 CE.

Valentinian I became so angry with a deputation of insolent barbarians on 17 November 375 CE that he died of a stroke. His teenage son Gratian took over the West, although the army at Aquincum also promoted Gratian’s four-year-old half-brother, Valentinian II, who received Illyricum under Gratian’s guardianship. In 379 CE Gratian proclaimed Theodosius I (the Great), son of the recently executed Count Theodosius the Elder, as Augustus of the Eastern empire. It was no longer possible to expel the Goths, so Gratian and Theodosius I agreed to allow them into the Empire, and Gratian also admitted the Salian Franks. The barbarian takeover of the Roman Empire was well under way.

On 27 February 380 CE Theodosius I decreed that the faith professed by Pope Damasius and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, was the true Catholic faith, and deposed the Arian Bishop of Constantinople. Gratian also deprived the pagan priests and the Vestal Virgins of their privileges, thereby adding a number of disgruntled pagans to his opponents, and in 383 CE the army of Gaul and Britain elected its leader, Magnus Maximus, who appears in Welsh legend in The Mabinogion and The Dream of Macsen Wledig  as Emperor. He conquered Gaul; Gratian was killed; Valentinian II, who was now in Milan, expelled Maximus from Italy; but in the end Valentinian II was defeated and put to death by Theodosius I at Aquileia in 388 CE.

Theodosius I now ruled both West and East, and paganism’s days were numbered: possibly influenced by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, he issued an edict outlawing all forms of pagan worship. A short-lived pagan revival was nipped in the bud when the Christian-but-pagan-sympathetic Eugenius was proclaimed as Emperor, but then crushed at the Battle of the River Frigidus on 6 September 394 CE.

Theodosius the Great wanted to install his sons as rulers – Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East – but he died unexpectedly early in 395 CE. His armies had contained a barbarian majority, and the half-Vandal Stilicho, who had married Theodosius I’s niece Serena, now ruled as regent on behalf of Honorius. Stilicho temporarily checked the seaborne invasions into Britain in 396–8 CE, as Britannia herself tells us in a poem by Claudian:

Stilicho gave me aid when I was at the mercy of neighbouring tribes, when the Scots raised all Hibernia against me, and the sea foamed with hostile oars. Thanks to his care, I need not fear the weapons of the Scots or tremble at the Pict, or keep watch along my shores for the Saxon who would come whatever wind might blow.²

However, the Eastern leaders rejected Stilicho, and any plans he might have had to intervene in the affairs of Constantinople were stymied by having to deal with Alaric the Visigoth, Radagaisus the Ostrogoth and the great invasion of 31 December 407 CE. The Huns had driven the Vandals, Suebi, Alani, Burgundians and Alemanni across the Rhine into Gaul. Stilicho had intended to reunite the Empire by installing Theodosius II as Emperor in Constantinople, but found himself the victim of a coup d’état. Meanwhile Alaric moved on Rome itself, layed siege to it three times, and finally took it on 24 August 410 CE.

The effects of the barbarian invasions are vividly illustrated by the ramifications in Britain. Stilicho had to withdraw troops from there, and the incursion of the Vandals, Suebi, Alani and Burgundians severed Britain’s communications with Rome. The remaining British forces elected a Briton called Constantine III, who felt that the threat of invasion from the continent would best be met by a pre-emptive strike, crossed the Channel in 407 CE and achieved some successes. Unfortunately, his British general Gerontius rebelled, the barbarians got the upper hand and he had to surrender to Honorius, who executed him. In 410 CE the remaining Britons appealed to Honorius, but there was nothing he could do. It is not entirely clear whether the Britons actively sought independence from Rome in the end or simply slipped out of the Roman orbit, but the severance from Rome brought with it barbarism.

Honorius was succeeded by his son Valentinian III in 423 CE, and he ruled the western Empire until 455 CE, during which time the barbarians gradually consolidated their position in the West. The second half of the fifth century CE saw Attila the Hun invading Gaul and Italy, and, following Valentinian III’s death in 455 CE, the western emperors became mere puppets of various German chiefs. Emperor Majorian’s attempt to fight back ultimately ended in his defeat and assassination, and in 476 CE Attila’s follower Odoacer deposed the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus (who ironically bore the name of Rome’s founder and its first emperor, albeit in the diminutive ‘Little Augustus’). It was the end of the Roman Empire in the West, but by then it is unlikely that many people cared.

In the first book of Virgil’s Aeneid, Jupiter had prophesied the future of the Roman race: ‘For the empire of these people I impose neither limits of space nor time: I have given them power without end.’³ Odoacer’s coronation might seem to belie that prophetic vision, yet as T.S. Eliot very pertinently wrote:

We are all, so far as we inherit the civilization of Europe, still citizens

of the Roman Empire, and time has not yet proved Virgil wrong’.⁴

Rome’s history, in a sense, is our present; the foundations of modern Western civilization lie there; the saying goes that all roads lead to Rome, but it might be better to say that they lead from Rome.

Notes – Chapter 18

1. Eusebius, Historia Ecclestiastica 8.16.3 ff., trans. D. Miller, ‘How the Mighty Fall: The Fate of Roman Emperors’, Minerva 20.1 (2009), 52.

2. Claudian, De Consulatu Stilichonis, 2.250 ff., r. H.H. Scullard, Roman Britain: Outpost of the Empire, London: Thames & Hudson, 1979, 175.

3. Virgil, Aeneid I. 278 f., trans. S. Kershaw.

4. T.S. Eliot, ‘Virgil and the Christian World’, in On Poetry and Poets, London, 1959, 135.