Books: The Old Roman World

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[Sidenote: Genseric at Carthage.]

[Sidenote: Fate of the city.]

At last (439 A.D.), the storm burst out, and the world was thunderstruck
with the intelligence that Genseric had seized and plundered Carthage.
Suddenly, without warning, in a day looked not for, this magnificent
city was plundered, and her inhabitants butchered by the most faithless
and perfidious barbarians, who trampled out the dying glories of the
empire. Her doom was like that pronounced upon Tyre and Sidon. The
bitter cry which went up from the devastated city proclaimed the
retribution of God for sins more hideous than those of Antioch or
Babylon. Of all the cities of the world, Carthage was probably the
wickedest--a seething caldron of impurities and abominations, the home
of all the vices which disgraced humanity--so indecent and scandalous as
to excite the disgust of the barbarians themselves. According to one of
the authors of those times, as quoted by Sheppard, [Footnote: Salvian,
_De Gub. Dei_, vii. 251.] "they were notorious for drunkenness,
avarice, and perjury--the peculiar sins of degenerate commercial
capitals. The Goths are perfidious but chaste, the Franks are liars but
hospitable, the Saxons are cruel but continent; but the Africans are a
blazing fire of impurity and lust; the rich are drunk with debauchery,
the poor are ground down with relentless oppression, while other vices,
too indecent to be named, pollute every class. Who can wonder at the
fall of Roman society? What hope can there be for Rome, when barbarians
are more chaste and temperate than they?"

In the sack of Carthage, the voluminous writings of Augustine, then
breathing his last in prayer to God that the fate of Sodom might be
averted, were fortunately preserved, and have doubtless done more to
instruct, and perhaps civilize, the western nations, than all the arts
and sciences of the commercial metropolis. It is singular how little
remains of the commercial cities of antiquity, which we value as
trophies of civilization. A few sculptured ruins are all that attest
ancient pride and glory. The poems of a blind schoolmaster at Chios, and
the rhapsodies of a wandering philosopher on the hills of Greece, have
proved greater legacies to the world than the combined treasures of
Africa and Asia Minor. Where is the literature of Carthage, except as
preserved in the writings of Augustine, the influence of which in
developing the character of the barbarians cannot be estimated.

[Sidenote: Renewed dangers of Rome.]

The cry of agony which went from Carthage across the Mediterranean,
announced to Rome that her turn would come. She looked in vain to every
quarter for assistance. Every city and province had need of their own
forces. Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, was contending with Aetius; in
Spain the Sueves were extending their ravages; Attila menaced the
eastern provinces; the Emperor Valentinian was forced to hide in the
marshes of Ravenna, and see the second sack of the imperial capital, now
a prostrate power--a corpse in a winding-sheet.

[Sidenote: The Vandals in Italy.]

The Vandals landed on the Italian coast. They advanced to the Tiber's
banks. The Queen of Cities wrapped around her the faded folds of her
imperial purple, rent by faction, pierced with barbaric daggers, and
trampled in the dust. Yet not with the dignity of her great Julius did
she die. She begged for mercy, not proud and stately amid her
executioners, but like a withered hag, with the wine-cup of sorceries in
her hand, pale, haggard, ghastly, staggering, helpless.

[Sidenote: Sack and fall of Rome.]

The last hope of Rome was her Christian bishop, and the great Leo, who
was to Rome what Augustine had been to Carthage, in his pontifical
robes, hastened to the barbarians' camp. But all he could secure was the
promise that the unresisting should be spared, the buildings protected
from fire, and the captives from torture. Even this promise was only
partially fulfilled. The pillage lasted fourteen days and fourteen
nights, and all that the Goths had spared was transported to the ships
of Genseric. Among the spoils were the statues of the old pagan gods
which adorned the capitol, the holy vessels of the Jewish temples which
Titus had brought away from Jerusalem, and the shrines and altars of the
Christian churches enriched by the liberality of popes and emperors. The
gilding of the capitol had cost Domitian twelve million dollars, or
twelve thousand talents, but the bronze on which it was gilt was carried
away. The imperial ornaments of the palace, the magnificent furniture
and wardrobe of senatorial mansions, and the sideboards of massive
plate, gold, silver, brass, copper, whatever could be found, were
transported to the ships. The Empress Eudoxia herself was stripped of
her jewels, and carried away captive with her two daughters, the only
survivors of the great Theodosius. Thousands of Romans were forced upon
the fleet, while wives were separated from their husbands, and children
from their parents, and sold into slavery. [Footnote: Gibbon, chap.
xxxvi.]

[Sidenote: The doom of Rome.]

[Sidenote: The heroism of the Pope.]

Such was the doom of Rome, A.D. 455, forty-five years after the Gothic
invasion. The haughty city had met the fate she had inflicted upon her
rivals. And she never would probably have arisen from her fall, but
would have remained ruined and desolate, had not her great bishop,
rising with the greatness of the crisis, and inspired with the old
imperishable idea of national unity, which had for three hundred years
sustained the crumbling empire, exclaimed to the rude spoliators, now
converted to his faith, while all around him were desolation and ruin,
weeping widows, ashes, groans, lamentations, bitter sorrows--nothing
left but recollections, nothing to be seen but the desolation spoken of
by Jeremy the prophet, as well as the Cumean Sybil; all central power
subverted, law and justice by-words, literature and art crushed, vice
rampant multiplying itself, the contemplative hiding in cells, the rich
made slaves, women shrieking in terror, bishops praying in despair, the
heart of the world bleeding, barbarians everywhere triumphant--in this
mournful crisis, did Leo, the intrepid Pontiff, alone and undismayed,
and concentrating within himself all that survived of the ambition and
haughty will of the ancient capital, exclaim to the superstitious
victors, in the spirit if not in the words of Hildebrand, "Beware, I am
the successor of St. Peter, to whom God has given the keys of the
kingdom of heaven, and against whose church the gates of hell cannot
prevail; I am the living representative of divine power upon the earth;
I am Caesar, a Christian Caesar, ruling in love, to whom all Christians
owe allegiance; I hold in my hands the curses of hell, and the
benedictions of heaven; I absolve all subjects from allegiance to kings;
I give and take away, by divine right, all thrones and principalities of
Christendom--beware how you desecrate the patrimony given me by your
invisible king, yea, bow down your necks to me, and pray that the anger
of God may be averted." And the superstitious conquerors wept, and bowed
their faces to the dust, in reverence and in awe, and Rome again arose
from her desolation--the seat of a new despotism more terrible than the
centralized power of the emperors, controlling the wills of kings,
priests, and people, and growing more majestic with the progress of
ages; a vital and mysterious power which even the Reformation could not
break, and which even now gives no signs of decay, and boldly defies, in
the plenitude of spiritual power, a greater prince than he who stood in
the winter time three days and nights before the gates of the castle of
Canossa, bareheaded and barefooted, in abject submission to Gregory VII.

[Sidenote: Renewed invasion of barbarians.]

[Sidenote: The Huns.]

While the Vandals were thus plundering Rome, a still fiercer race of
barbarians were trampling beneath their feet the deserted sanctuaries of
the empire. The Huns, a Slavonic race, most hideous and revolting
savages, Tartar hordes, with swarthy faces, sunken eyes, flat noses,
square bodies, big heads, broad shoulders, low stature, without pity, or
fear, or mercy--equally the enemies of the Romans and the Germans--races
thus far incapable of civilization, now spread themselves from the Volga
to the Danube, from the shores of the Caspian to the Hadriatic. They
were a nomadic people, with flocks and herds, planting no seed, reaping
no harvest, wandering about in quest of a living, yet powerful with
their horses and darts. For fifty years after they had invaded Southern
Europe, their aid was sought and secured by the rash court of
Constantinople, as a counterpoise to the power of the Goths and other
Germanic tribes. They were obstinate pagans, and had an invincible
hatred of civilization. They had various fortunes in their migrations
and wars, and experienced some terrible defeats. But they had their eyes
open to the spoil of the crumbling empire--"ripe fruit" for them to
pluck, as well as for the Goths and Vandals.

[Sidenote: Attila.]

The leader of the Huns at this period was Attila--a man of great
astuteness and military genius, who succeeded in conquering, one after
another, every existing tribe of barbarians beyond the Danube and the
Rhine, and then turned his arms against the eastern empire. This was in
the year 441. They ravaged Pannonia, routed two Roman armies, laid
Thessaly in waste, and threatened Constantinople. The Emperor
Theodosius, A.D. 446, purchased peace by an ignominious tribute, so
great as to reduce many leading families to poverty. "The scourge of God"
then turned his steps to the more exhausted fields of the western
provinces, and invaded Gaul. The Visigoths had there established a
kingdom, hostile to the Vandal power. The Huns and the Vandals united,
with all the savage legions which could be collected from Lapland to the
Indus, against the Goths and imperial forces under the command of Aetius.
"Never," says Thierry, [Footnote: _Histoire d'Attilla_, vol. i.
p. 141] "since the days of Xerxes, was there such a gathering of nations
as now followed the standard of Attila, some five hundred thousand
warriors--Huns, Alans, Gepidae, Neuvi, Geloni, Bastarnae, Heruli,
Lombards, Belloniti, Rugi, some German but chiefly Asiatic tribes, with
their long quivers and ponderous lances, and cuirasses of plaited hair,
and scythes, and round bucklers, and short swords." This heterogeneous
host, from the Sarmatian plains, and the banks of the Vistula and
Niemen, extended from Basle to the mouth of the Rhine. Attila directed
it against Orleans, on the Loire, an important strategic position. Aetius
went to meet him, bringing all the barbaric auxiliaries he could
collect--Britons, Franks, Burgundians, Sueves, Saxons, Visigoths. It was
not so much Roman against barbarian, as Europe against Asia, which was
now arrayed upon the plains of Champagne, for Orleans had fallen into
the hands of the Huns. There, at Chalons, was fought the most decisive
and bloody battle of that dreadful age, by which Europe was delivered
from Asia, even as at a later day the Saracens were shut out of France
by Charles Martel. "_Bellum atrox, multiplex, immane, pertinax, cui
simile nulla usquam narrat antiquitas._" [Footnote: Jordanes.] Attila
began the fight; on his left were the Ostrogoths under Vladimir, on his
right were the Gepidae, while in the centre were stationed the Huns, with
their irresistible cavalry. Aetius stationed the Franks and Burgundians,
whose loyalty he doubted, in the centre, while he strengthened his
wings, and assumed the command of his own left. The Huns, as expected,
made their impetuous charge; the Roman army was cut in two; but the
wings of Aetius overlapped the cavalry of Attila, and drove back his
wings. Attila was beaten, and Gaul was saved from the Slavonic invaders.
It is computed that three hundred thousand barbarians, on both sides,
were slain--the most fearful slaughter recorded in the whole annals of
war. The discomfited king of the Huns led back his forces to the Rhine,
ravaging the cities and villages through which he passed, and collected
a new army. The following year he invaded Italy.

[Sidenote: The Roman general Aetius.]

[Sidenote: Retreat of Attila.]

Aetius alone remained to stem the barbaric hosts. He had won one of the
greatest victories of ancient times, and sought for a reward. And
considering the brilliancy of his victory, and the greatness of his
services, the marriage of his son with the princess Eudoxia was not an
unreasonable object of ambition. But his greatness made him unpopular
with the debauched court at Ravenna, and he was left without a
sufficient force to stem the invasion of the Huns. Aquileia, the most
important and strongly fortified city of Northern Italy, for a time
stood out against the attack of the barbarians, but ultimately yielded.
Fugitives from the Venetian territory sought a refuge among the islands
which skirt the northern coast of the Adriatic--the haunts of fishermen
and sea-birds. There Venice was born, which should revive the glory of
the West, and write her history upon the waves for a thousand years.
Attila had spent the spring in his attack on Aquileia, and the summer
heats were unfavorable for further operations, and his soldiers clamored
for repose; but, undaunted by the ravages which sickness produced in his
army, he resolved to cross the Apennines and give a last blow to Rome.
Leo again sought the barbarians' camp, and met with more success than he
did with the Vandals. Attila consented to leave Italy in consideration
of an annual tribute, and the promise of the hand of the princess
Honoria, sister of the Emperor Valentinian, who, years before, in a fit
of female spitefulness for having been banished to Constantinople, had
sent her ring as a _gage d'amour_ to the repulsive barbarian. He
then retired to the Danube by the passes of the Alps, where he spent the
winter in bacchanalian orgies and preparations for an invasion of the
eastern provinces. But his career was suddenly cut off by the avenging
poniard of Ildigo, a Bactrian or Burgundian princess, whom he had taken
for one of his numerous wives, and whose relations he had slain.

[Sidenote: Disasters of the Huns.]

On his death, the German tribes refused longer to serve under the
divided rule of his sons, and after a severe contest with the more
barbarous Huns, the empire of Attila disappeared as one of the great
powers of the world, and Italy was delivered forever from this plague of
locusts. The battle of Netad, in which they suffered a disastrous
defeat, was perhaps as decisive as the battle of Chalons. They returned
to Asia, or else were gradually worn out in unavailing struggles with
the Goths.

[Sidenote: The Avars.]

The Avars, a tribe of the great Turanian race, and kindred to the Huns,
a few years after their retreat, crossed the Danube, established
themselves between that river and the Save, invaded the Greek empire,
and ravaged the provinces almost to the walls of Constantinople. It
would seem from Sheppard that the Avars had migrated from the very
centre of Asia, two thousand miles from the Caspian Sea, fleeing from
the Turks who had reduced them to their sway. [Footnote: Sheppard, Lect.
iv.] In their migration to the West, they overturned every thing in
their way, and spread great alarm at Constantinople. Justinian, then an
old man, A.D. 567, purchased their peace by an annual tribute and the
grant of lands. In 582, the Avar empire was firmly established on the
Danube, and in the valleys of the Balkan. But it was more hostile to the
Slavic tribes, than to the Byzantine Greeks, who then occupied the
centre and southeast of Europe, and who were reduced to miserable
slavery. With the Franks, the Avars also came in conflict, and, after
various fortunes, were subdued by Charlemagne. Their subsequent history
cannot here be pursued, until they were swept away from the roll of the
European nations. Moreover, it was not until _after_ the fall of
Rome, that they were formidable.

[Sidenote: Final disasters of the empire.]

[Sidenote: Imbecile emperors.]

The real drama of the fall of Rome closes with the second sack of the
city by the Vandals, since the imperial power was nearly prostrated in
the West, and shut up within the walls of Ravenna. But Italy was the
scene of great disasters for twenty years after, until the last of the
emperors--Augustulus Romulus; what a name with which to close the series
of Roman emperors!--was dethroned by Odoacer, chief of the Heruli, a
Scythian tribe, and Rome was again stormed and sacked, A.D. 476. During
these twenty years, the East and the West were finally severed, and
Italy was ruled by barbaric chieftains, and their domination permanently
secured. Valentinian, the last emperor of the race of Theodosius, was
assassinated in the year 455 (at the instigation of the Senator Maximus,
of the celebrated Anician family, whose wife he had violated), a man who
had inherited all the weaknesses of his imperial house, without its
virtues, and under whose detestable reign the people were so oppressed
with taxes and bound down by inquisitions that they preferred the
barbarians to the empire. The successive reigns of Maximus, Avitus,
Majorian, Severus, Anthemius, Olybrius, Glycerius, Nepos, and
Augustulus, nine emperors in twenty--one years, suggests nothing but
disorder and revolution. The murderer of Valentinian reigned but three
months, during which Rome was sacked by the Vandals. Avitus was raised
to his vacant throne by the support of the Visigoths of Gaul, then ruled
by Theodoric, a majestic barbarian, and the most enlightened and
civilized of all the leaders of the Gothic hosts who had yet appeared.
He fought and vanquished the Suevi, who had established themselves in
Spain, in the name of the emperor whom he had placed upon the throne,
but he really ruled on both sides of the Alps, and Avitus was merely his
puppet, and distinguished only for his infamous pleasures, although, as
a general, he had once saved the empire from the Huns.

[Sidenote: Last days of Rome.]

He was in turn deposed by Count Ricimer, a Sueve, and generalissimo of
the Roman armies, and Majorian, whom Ricimer thought to make a tool, was
placed in his stead. But he was an able and good man, and attempted to
revive the traditions of the empire, and met the fate of all reformers
in a hopeless age, doubtless under the influence of Ricimer, who
substituted Severus, a Lucanian, who perished by poison after a reign of
four years, so soon as he became distasteful to the military
subordinate, who was all-powerful at Rome, and who ruled Italy for six
years without an emperor with despotic authority. During these six years
Italy was perpetually ravaged by the Vandals, who landed and pillaged
the coast, and then retired with their booty. Ricimer, without ships,
invoked the aid of the court of Constantinople, who imposed a Greek upon
the throne of Italy. Though a man of great ability, Anthemius, the new
emperor, was unpopular with the Italians and the barbarians, and he,
again, was deposed by Ricimer, and Olybrius, a senator of the Anician
house, reigned in his stead, A.D. 472. It was then that Rome for the
third time was sacked by one of her own generals. Olybrius reigned but a
few months, and Glycerius, captain of his guard, was selected as his
successor--an appointment disagreeable to the Greek Emperor Leo, who
opposed to him Julius Nepos--a distinguished general, who succeeded in
ejecting Glycerius. The Visigoths, offended, made war upon Roman Gaul.
Julius sent against them Orestes, a Pannonian, called the Patrician, who
turned a traitor, and, on the assassination of Julius, entered Ravenna
in triumph. His son, christened Romulus, the soldiers elevated upon a
shield and saluted Augustus; but as he was too small to wear the purple
robe, they called him Augustulus--a bitter mockery, recalling the battle
of Actium, and the foundation of Rome. He was the last of the Caesars. It
was easier to make an emperor than keep him in his place. The bands of
Orestes clamored for lands equal to a third of Italy. Orestes hesitated,
and refused the demand. The soldiers were united under Odoacer--chief of
the Heruli, a general in the service of the Patrician--one of the
boldest and most unscrupulous of those mercenaries who lent their arms
in the service of the government of Ravenna. The. standard of revolt was
raised, and the barbarian army marched against their former master.
Leaving his son in Ravenna, Orestes, himself an able general trained in
the service of Attila, went forth to meet his enemy on the Lombard
plains. Unable to make a stand, he shut himself up in Pavia, which was
taken and sacked, and Orestes put to death. The barbarians then marched
to Ravenna, which they took, with the boy who wore the purple, who was
not slain as his father was, but pensioned with six thousand crowns, and
sent to a Campanian villa, which once belonged to Sulla and Lucullus.
The throne of the Caesars was hopelessly subverted, and Odoacer was king
of Italy, and portioned out its lands to his greedy followers, A.D. 476.
He was not unworthy of his high position, but his kingdom was in a sad
state of desolation, and after a reign of fourteen years he was in turn
supplanted by the superior genius of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths,
under whom a new era dawned upon Italy and the West, A.D. 490.

[Sidenote: Dismemberment of the empire.]

The Roman empire was now dismembered, and the various tribes of
barbarians, after a contest of two hundred years were fairly settled in
its provinces.

[Sidenote: The settlement of the Ostrogoths in Italy.]

In Italy we find the Ostrogoths as a dominant power, who, migrating from
the mouth of the Danube, with all the barbarians they could enlist under
the standard of Theodoric, prevailed over Odoacer, and settled in Italy.
The Gothic kingdom was assailed afterward by Belisarius and Narses, the
great generals of Justinian, also by the Lombards under Alboin, who
maintained themselves in the north of Italy.

[Sidenote: The settlement of the franks in Gaul.]

Gaul was divided among the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Visigoths,
whose perpetual wars, and whose infant kingdom, it is not my object to
present.

[Sidenote: The settlement of the Saxons in Britain.]

Britain was possessed by the Saxons, Spain by the Vandals, Suevi, and
Visigoths, and Africa by the Vandals, while the whole eastern empire
fell into the hands of the Saracens, except Constantinople, which
preserved the treasures of Greek and Roman civilization, until the
barbarians, elevated by the Christian religion, were prepared to ingraft
it upon their own rude laws and customs.

It would be interesting to trace the various fortunes of these Teutonic
tribes in the devastated provinces which they possessed by conquest. But
this would lead us into a boundless field, foreign to our inquiry. It is
the fall of Rome, not the reconstruction by the new races, which I seek
to present. It would also be interesting to survey the old capital of
the world in the hands of her various masters, pillaged and sacked by
all in turn; but her doom was sealed when Alaric entered the gates which
had been closed for six hundred years to a foreign enemy, and the empire
fell, virtually, when the haughty city, so long a queen among the
nations, yielded up her palaces as spoil. The eastern empire had a
longer life, but it was inglorious when Rome was no longer the superior
city.

[Sidenote: Reflections on the fall of the empire.]

The story of the fall of the grandest empire ever erected on our earth
is simple and impressive. Genius, energy, and patience led to vast
possessions, which were retained by a uniform policy which nothing could
turn aside. Prosperity and success led to boundless self-exaggeration
and a depreciation of enemies, while the vices of self-interest
undermined gradually all real strength. Society became utterly
demoralized and weakened, and there were no conservative forces
sufficiently, strong to hold it together. Vitality was destroyed by
disproportionate fortunes, by slavery, by the extinction of the middle
classes, by the degradation of woman, by demoralizing excitements, by
factitious life, by imperial misrule, by proconsular tyranny, by
enervating vices, by the absence of elevated sentiments, by an all-
engrossing abandonment to money-making and the pleasures it procured, so
that no lofty appeal could be made to which the degenerate people would
listen, or which they could understand. The empire was rotten to the
core--was steeped in selfishness, sensuality, and frivolity, and the
poison pervaded all classes and orders, and descended to the extremities
of the social system. What could be done? There was no help from man.
The empire was on the verge of dissolution when the barbarians came.
They only gave a shock and hastened the fall. The empire was ripe fruit,
to be plucked by the strongest hand.