reign of Domitian. Domitian was not so fortunate in his other great
enterprise. This was the invasion of Dacia. Agricola was still alive,
but Domitian was too jealous of his abilities and his renown to entrust
to him the management of the campaign. He found a substitute in the
person of Cornelius Fuscus, Prefect of the Prætorians, who had at least
the recommendation of being a subservient courtier. Juvenal includes
Fuscus among the counsellors who were summoned to discuss the important
question of how the gigantic turbot which a fisherman had presented to
the Emperor should be cooked. He seems to have been a student of the
military art, for he is described as "planning battles in his marble
halls." Possibly he wrote a book on the subject. In the field he seems
to have had little or no capacity. The Dacian chief, Decebalus by name,
enticed the Roman general to cross the Danube, turned on him when
the opportunity came, and defeated him with the loss of at least one
legion and its exile. We have absolutely no record of the battle. It
came within the period of events covered by the histories of Tacitus,
but the book which contained the narrative is lost. Even did we possess
it, we should still be ignorant of one important detail, for Orosius,
who had the narrative before him, tells us that Tacitus held it to be
the part of a good citizen to conceal the losses suffered by the armies
of Rome. The whole story is wrapped in obscurity. It is said that the
defeat of Fuscus was retrieved in the next campaign by his successor
Julianus. But again we have no details. There is even to be found
the statement, whether well or ill-founded we cannot say, that the
Dacians exacted from Rome an annual sum of money as the price of their
forbearance.

It was to Dacia then that Trajan turned his thoughts when he found
himself seated on the imperial throne. Trajan had many reasons for
undertaking the enterprise. It was much to his taste. He was a soldier,
who had already distinguished himself in the field. And he had to
justify his elevation to the throne. The Empire really rested on
the swords of the soldiers, and no man who could not count on the
respect of the army could feel himself safe. And there was also the
cogent reason that it was easier to attack than to defend, that the
barbarians, if left to themselves, would sooner or later invade the
Empire, and that the wisest plan would be to assume the offensive.

Trajan was busied with protecting the German frontier of the Empire
when he received the news that he had been adopted by the aged Nerva.
He spent a year, after receiving the tidings, in completing the
preparation for its defence. Then he went to take up his new dignity.
Home affairs settled, he started for the Danube. Of the campaigns which
followed we know little in one way, and much in another. We know, from
the sculptures on Trajan's Column, exactly what arms and armour, and
what engines of war were used by the soldiers of Rome. But as to the
strategy of the campaign, and its chief incidents, we are almost wholly
in the dark.

[Illustration: Trajan besieging a Dacian Fort.]

Trajan crossed the Danube at two places without molestation. At first
it seemed as if the Dacians were going to give in without a struggle.
An embassy arrived to beg for peace, offering surrender without
conditions. But this was a palpable imposture. The envoys were men
of low rank--so much Trajan knew from the habits of the country--for
they were bareheaded. The next envoys were certainly nobles, but they
had no real authority to treat. The Dacian king, Decebalus by name, was
simply trying to gain time. Not long after he fell upon the legions
as they marched. A fierce battle followed, in which the Dacians were
defeated, but at a heavy cost. The Romans still advanced; when they
were near his chief stronghold, Decebalus again gave battle. This
time he was beaten even more decisively than before. For the time his
spirit was broken. The envoys whom he now sent were nobles of the
highest rank, who came into Trajan's presence with their hands bound
behind their backs in token of absolute submission. Decebalus himself
consented to pay his homage to Trajan in person, and to send deputies
to Rome to arrange conditions of peace. This was in 102 A.D.

Scarcely had Trajan turned his back--his presence being much wanted at
Rome--when the Dacians were in arms again. Decebalus's own hereditary
kingdom lay far to the east, in what is now called Transylvania, but
nothing could stop the march of the Roman legions. They made their way
over river and mountain, and stormed stronghold after stronghold.
At last Decebalus, in despair, put an end to his own life. The new
province of Dacia was thoroughly organised, for Trajan was as great an
administrator as a soldier. To this day the remains of the great works
which his engineers and architects raised at his bidding remain to
testify to the completeness with which the work was done. For more than
a century and a half it remained one of the most orderly and civilised
of the Roman provinces. It was not till 275 A.D. that Aurelian withdrew
the legions to the southern bank of the Danube.

During the time of the Good Emperor[42] Rome kept her dominions
unimpaired. Even under their weaker successors, though decay was at
work within, her power for awhile was not visibly shaken. It was with
the appearance of the Goths upon the scene that the end began.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: It began with Nerva in 96 A.D. and ended with the death
of Marcus Aurelius in 180.]




_BOOK VI_

ROME AND THE BARBARIANS THE DECLINE




I. A CENTURY OF DISGRACE


One of the strangest facts in history is the rapid decline of Roman
power that set in immediately after the Empire had enjoyed such a
succession of good rulers as had never before fallen to its lot. The
period of eighty-four years which began with the accession of Nerva
and ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius has always been regarded,
and rightly regarded, as the golden age of Rome. Trajan was, it is
true, a warlike Emperor by choice, and Marcus Aurelius the same by
necessity, but Rome had never had since its founding any but the
briefest intervals of peace. War, in short, was its natural condition,
and it had seldom been carried on with more success than it was by
Trajan in Dacia and by Aurelius against the Quadi and the Marcomanni.
On the other hand, the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius (117-161)
made up together forty-four years, considerably more than what is
usually reckoned as a generation, of almost unbroken peace. Yet the
good effects of nearly a century of wise rule seemed to vanish almost
immediately when the last of the "Good Emperors" passed away. It is
true that Aurelius had a deplorably weak and vicious successor.[43] But
Commodus was not more contemptible than Caligula, Nero, or Domitian,
and Rome had survived their rule without much apparent injury. Some
writers have found a cause in a succession of plagues which raged
throughout the Empire with an almost unexampled severity, and it is
true that the century which followed the year 165[44] was terribly
distinguished by this visitation, but no external calamities are
sufficient to account for a nation's decay. These causes are to be
sought elsewhere, within rather than without, in the life of men more
than in the calamities which years of famine or of pestilence inflict
upon them. And it is clearly beyond my province to do more than
indicate them in the very briefest way. We see signs of what was going
on in days when to all appearance the Empire was most flourishing,
while it was certainly still pursuing its career of conquest. Virgil
writes a great poem to commend the honest healthy toil of a country
life to a generation which had ceased to care for it. The cities were
more and more crowded, for the luxuries which they put within the
reach of even the poorest were more and more sought after, but the
country was passing into a desert or a pleasure ground. The farmers or
peasants who had formed the backbone of Roman armies had ceased to be;
their fields, where they had not gone out of cultivation, were tilled
by huge gangs of slaves. Provincial towns which in old days had been
strong enough to make treaties on equal terms with Rome were now half
in ruins, with a scanty population that barely contrived to exist. With
every year things grew worse and worse. And the Empire aggravated the
evils which at first it had done much to palliate if not to remedy. It
had superseded the Republic, because this had become utterly corrupt;
but in time it became as corrupt itself, and for the corruption of a
despotism there is no cure. A succession of able rulers put off the
end for a time, but it had to come. And when it came there came with
it more vigorous races out of whom was to be formed by degrees, not
without help of the old order which they swept away, a new civilisation.

Commodus, the unworthy son and successor of the good Aurelius, reigned
but for a short time. He was assassinated in his thirty-second year.
With his death began, it may be said, the rule of the sword. His
successor, indeed, Pertinax by name, was chosen by the Senate, and well
deserved his election, but he reigned for something less than ninety
days, and the Prætorians, the soldiers of the capital, murdered him and
sold the throne openly to the highest bidder. To this arrogance the
legions in the provinces refused to submit. The principal armies put
up candidates of their own. We need not follow the succession of these
short-lived rulers. It will suffice to say that in the hundred and five
years which intervened between the death of Aurelius and the accession
of Diocletian (180-285) there were no less than twenty Emperors,
not to mention innumerable Pretenders--it was said that at one time
thirty[45] claimed the throne.

For a time the spectacle of the Roman armies engaged in almost
incessant struggles with each other does not seem to have produced
the effect which might have been expected on the tribes outside the
frontiers of the Empire. No movement of any importance among the
barbarians is recorded during the fifty years which followed the murder
of Pertinax by the Prætorians. In 209, indeed, the Britons of the north
attacked the Roman province, and were punished, without any lasting
effect, by Septimius Severus. But the event was of no particular
importance, for the North Britons were not powerful enough, even if
they had succeeded, to seriously affect the course of events. Causes
with which we are not exactly acquainted kept the far more formidable
tribes of Germany inactive. We hear of a combination among them in
the reign of Aurelius which might well have become dangerous, if,
to use the language of Gibbon, it included all the nations from the
mouth of the Rhine to the mouth of the Danube. But it came to nothing.
The tribes which first took the field were defeated. Discouragement
and dissension kept the others inactive. Dissension, indeed, was
the most potent influence which worked in favour of the Romans. In
his remarkable treatise on Germany and its tribes Tacitus gives a
description of the people which emphasises their superiority in many
important respects to the degenerate sons of Rome. But he speaks with
satisfaction of the internal strife which prevented them from becoming
formidable, mentioning one great conflict in which one tribe had been
wholly destroyed by its neighbours, and adds, "While the destinies of
Empire hurry us on, fortune can give us no greater boon than discord
among our foes."

But this state of things naturally would not last. It would cease when
some chief of commanding ability and strong personal influence should
come to the front, or when some tribe should become so powerful as to
attract or compel its neighbours to unite with it. Such a tribe came
upon the scene later on in the first half of the third century of our
era. The _Gothi_, to use the most common of the various forms of their
name, are first mentioned many centuries before the time of which I am
now speaking. Pytheas, of Marseilles, who travelled in Northern Europe
about the time of Alexander the Great, speaks of them as inhabiting
the coasts of the Baltic, and Tacitus, writing about 90 A.D., locates
them in much the same district. A hundred years or so after this date,
however, they are spoken of as dwelling near the Black Sea. We need not
trouble ourselves, however, with their place of abode, nor yet with
the question of their race. Some writers hold that they were of the
Slavonic family, not the Teutonic. That there were some Slavs in the
great multitude which the Romans knew by the common name of Goths is
more than probable. In just the same way there was a Celtic element in
the great Teutonic swarm which had so nearly overrun Italy at the close
of the second century B.C. But all that we know about them, whether as
regards their habits or their appearance, would lead us to think that
they were Germans.

Some time, therefore, about 247 A.D., the Goths invaded and overran
the province of Dacia. Crossing the Danube into Mœsia[46] (Bulgaria)
they besieged its capital town, now known by the name of Pravadi
(twenty-five miles to the west of Varna). The town was ill-protected,
for with the whole province of Dacia between it and the frontier of the
Empire it anticipated no danger. The inhabitants saw nothing better
to do than to buy off the enemy by the payment of a large ransom. Such
a policy is seldom successful, as we know from the history of our own
island, where the plan of buying off the Danes was tried again and
again to very little purpose. The Goths departed, and before long came
back again.

Decius, who had by this time supplanted Philip the Arabian on the
imperial throne, on receiving the news of this second invasion,
marched to the relief of the provinces attacked. He found the
barbarians besieging Nicopoli (on the southern bank of the Danube).
On his approach they promptly raised the siege, marched across Mœsia
and made their way over the Balkans with the intention of attacking
Philippopolis. Decius followed them, without apparently taking due
precautions against surprise, for the Goths turned upon him, and routed
his army. His forces were so shattered that he could not attempt to
help Philippopolis, which not very long afterwards was taken by storm
and sacked.

Decius, though he had made a disastrous mistake, was a brave and
capable soldier. He took prompt measures to retrieve his defeat,
guarding the places where the Danube could be crossed and the Balkan
passes so as to prevent reinforcements from reaching the Goths. These,
on their part, had suffered severely. The siege and storms had cost
them many lives; their supplies were running short, for they carried no
stores with them, and could draw but little sustenance from a country
which they had wasted. And they were much alarmed at the prospect of
having their retreat cut off. Under these circumstances they offered
to surrender all their booty and all their prisoners, if they were
permitted to return unharmed to their own country. Decius refused
to accept the offer. He probably thought, and had some reason for
thinking, that no agreement could be profitably made with barbarians.
The only way to deal with the Goths was to deal with them as Marius had
dealt with the Cimbri and Teutones. The invaders prepared to fight.
The battle that followed was obstinately contested. The Goths were
drawn up in three lines--we may observe from the first indications
of a certain military skill and training in the tribe--the third of
which was protected by a morass. The first and the second of these
were broken; the third stood firm, and repulsed all the attacks of the
legions. The Emperor's son had fallen early in the day; of the fate
of Decius himself nothing was ever known. What is certain is that the
army was almost annihilated. The Goths were able to make their way
home without losing their spoil or their prisoners. They even received
a great sum for promising not to molest again the provinces of Rome,
till, of course--for such must have been the proviso understood on
both sides--they should find it convenient to do so. This battle lacks
a name, for the place where it was fought cannot be identified, but
it was an event of the greatest importance. Rome had suffered worse
disasters before, but never one that entailed so great a loss of
credit. A barbarian army destroys a provincial capital, defeats two
armies, slays the Emperor himself, and returns home, not only with all
its booty, but with a heavy bribe with which its forbearance had been
purchased. Clearly this was the beginning of the end.

For some years after their campaigns in the region of the Danube,
the Goths occupied themselves with expeditions which bear a curious
resemblance to those made by their kinsmen of later times, the Vikings
and Northmen. They do not seem to have had any seamanship of their
own, but they lured or compelled the maritime population of the Black
Sea coast-line to assist them. Their first voyage was eastward. They
sailed along the northern coast of the Black Sea, taking Pitsunda on
their way, rounded the eastern end, and finally captured Trebizond,
the wealthiest city in northern Asia Minor, where they possessed
themselves of a vast quantity of spoil and a multitude of prisoners.
Their next voyage had a westerly direction. They overran the province
of Bithynia. The famous towns of Nicala and Nicomedia, among others,
fell into their hands, almost without any attempt at resistance. It was
more than three centuries since these regions had known the presence
of a foreign enemy. They had no troops of their own, except, possibly,
some local levies which certainly had had no experience of warfare,
and the legions which should have defended them had sadly degenerated
both in courage and in discipline. The third expedition of the Goths
took them outside the Black Sea into the Ægean. Their fleet sailed into
the Piræus. Athens, which had not attempted, possibly had not been
permitted, to repair its walls, demolished more than three hundred
years before by Sulla, was taken and plundered. Greece could offer no
resistance. It had neither means nor men. The invaders still advanced
westwards, and threatened Italy itself. Here, however, their progress
was stayed. But from this expedition also, audacious as it was, they
returned in safety. It gave another proof, not less significant than
the death of Decius, how low the Empire had already fallen.

While the Goths were evading the south-eastern provinces of the Empire,
other enemies were busy in the north and west. The Franks now make
their first appearance in history. The name which meets us frequently
in the modern world, notably in France, and in such terms as Franconia,
Frankfort, Frankenthal, means the "free," and probably originated in a
combination of the tribes who inhabited the eastern bank of the Rhine,
and who assumed this title by way of distinguishing themselves from
the subjects of Rome on the opposite side of the river. The Franks
laid waste the province of Gaul, crossed the Pyrenees and desolated
Spain. We know very little of the details of their invasion. One of the
so-called "Thirty Tyrants," Postumus by name, is said to have checked
their progress, and done something to protect the Roman provinces of
the West. Postumus was slain in 267 A.D.

This date belongs to the period of extreme depression which coincides
with the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus. Valerian was a favourite
lieutenant of the Emperor Decius, and seems to have been a man of high
character and ability. But circumstances were too strong for him. Great
as were the dangers that threatened the European provinces of the
Empire, it was on the Asiatic frontier that he found his presence more
imperatively demanded. A revolution in Parthia had restored the ancient
dynasty of the Persian kings, or, at least, a family that claimed that
character. The new line of kings was now represented by a certain
Shapar, or, as the Romans spelt it, Sapor. Armenia, long a bone of
contention between Rome and Parthia, was overrun; the garrisons on the
Euphrates were forced to surrender. Valerian hastened to meet the new
enemy, encountered him near Edessa, and suffered a crushing defeat. We
know next to nothing of what happened except that the legions were led,
by the folly of their chief or the treachery of those whom he trusted,
into a hopeless situation; that their attempt to cut their way through
the hosts of the enemy was repulsed with great loss; and that in the
end Valerian had to surrender himself to Sapor, and that the legions
laid down their arms. There was nothing now to stop the Parthian king.
The splendid city of Antioch was taken and plundered or burnt. He even
crossed the Taurus range, and captured the wealthy city of Tarsus.
It is impossible to say where he would have stopped, had it not been
for the courage and ability of Odenathus, the governor of Palmyra and
his wife Zenobia. It was they, not the Roman arms that compelled the
Parthians to make their way back to their own country.

Valerian was never released from captivity. Stories--whether true or
no it is impossible to say--were told of the humiliations to which he
was subjected by the Persian king. Whenever Sapor mounted his horse, he
used to put his foot on the neck of his captive. And when the unhappy
man was released by death, his skin was stuffed with straw, and the
figure preserved in one of the Persian temples, "a more real monument
of triumph," remarks Gibbon, "than the fancied trophies of brass and
marble so often erected by Roman vanity." Whatever may be the truth
about this or that fact, it is certain that this period witnessed the
infliction of two unprecedented humiliations on the dignity of Rome,
one Emperor slain in battle, another kept in a dishonourable captivity.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 43: It is remarkable that the most philosophic of the "Good
Emperors" departed from the rule of adoption which had apparently been
so beneficial to Rome, and left the succession to his son, of whose
real character he could hardly have been ignorant. Gibbon, however,
thinks that the want of the hereditary principle was one of the great
causes of the troubles of the Empire.]

[Footnote 44: In 165 the legions returning from the East are said to
have brought the Oriental plague into Europe.]

[Footnote 45: Gibbon reduces the number to _nineteen_.]

[Footnote 46: The Eastern division of the province.]




II

A CENTURY OF REVIVAL


An observer of the calamities and disgraces which overtook the Empire
in what I have called "A Century of Disgrace," might have supposed that
the end was at hand. But an ancient institution does not perish so
easily. The Empire still possessed a great prestige, an organisation of
government which had been worked out by a succession of able statesmen
and rulers, and an army with numberless traditions of victory. Given
an able leader, there would certainly be a revival of vigour, or, to
say the least, a check to the progress of decay. A better time began
with the death of Gallienus, the son of Valerian, in A.D. 268. He
perished, it is doubtful whether by treachery or accident, in one of
the numberless conflicts that occurred during this period between
the possessor of the imperial throne and the numerous pretenders who
aspired to it. His successor was a soldier of humble origin, though
he bore the old patrician name of Claudius. He had soon an opportunity
of showing his qualities as a soldier. In the year after his accession
to the throne a huge army of Goths and of other tribes who were
accustomed to fight under their standard invaded the provinces south
of the Danube. Claudius hastened to encounter them, and fought a great
battle at Nissa in Servia in which 50,000 of the barbarians are said
to have perished. Little is known of the details of this or indeed of
any of the conflicts of the time; the chronicles of the age are wanting
in the power of description and, indeed, in all literary gift, but
we gather that the legions were beginning to give way when Claudius
brought up reinforcements to their help. These fresh troops fell upon
the barbarian rear, and wholly changed the fortunes of the day. But
the victory of Nissa did not put an end to the war. Nor, indeed, did
Claudius live to finish it. He did enough, it is true, to win the
title of Gothicus, and to deserve it better than was sometimes the
case with Emperors who were similarly honoured.[47] But he died--the
victim, it was said, of a plague which had originated in the barbarian
camp--after a reign of little more than two years, and left the
completion of the war to his successor Aurelian.

Aurelian's reign was but little longer than that of Claudius. It began
in August, 270, and was ended in March, 275, by assassination; but this
brief period was crowded with great achievements. In dealing with the
Goths he showed that he was a statesman as well as a soldier. After
conclusively proving to them that he could vanquish them in the field,
he turned them, by a seasonable generosity, from enemies into friends.
It had become evident that the province which Trajan had added to the
Empire could no longer be held with advantage; Dacia, accordingly, was
given up to the Goths, and a tribe associated with them, of whom we
shall hear again, the Vandals. The Goths remained loyal to Rome, till,
as we shall see, they were forced into hostility. They even furnished a
body of auxiliary cavalry to the imperial army.

But while Aurelian was thus engaged, Italy and even Rome were
endangered by the attack of another multitude of the same German
race. The Alemanni, a people of which we know next to nothing except
the stock to which they belonged,[48] suddenly crossed the Roman
frontier, and made their way as far as the north of Italy. The armies
of the Empire were engaged elsewhere, and the invaders plundered the
country without hindrance. They had even made their way back to the
Danube when Aurelian encountered them. It is not easy to understand the
story of what followed. The Emperor outmanœuvres the barbarians, and
reduces them to such extremities that they beg for peace. When their
envoys are introduced to the presence of Aurelian, there is a sudden
change of circumstances. The Alemanni, instead of imploring pardon,
dictate conditions. They must have a subsidy, if Rome would have them
as allies. The Emperor dismisses them with an indignant refusal,
and we expect to hear of the severest punishment being inflicted on
them. Nothing of the kind occurs. Aurelian, called elsewhere by some
demand which he cannot refuse, disappears from the scene, and leaves
the completion of the business to his lieutenants. They neglect their
duty or fail to perform it; the Alemanni take the opportunity, break
through the _cordon_ of troops which had been formed round them, and
make their way back to Italy. We next hear of them as ravaging the
territory of Milan. Aurelian orders the legions to follow them with
all the speed that they could manage, and hastens himself to defend
Italy with a quickly moving force, partly composed, it is interesting
to observe, of auxiliary cavalry levied from the new settlers in Dacia.
The struggle that followed is not what we should have expected after
hearing of the straits to which the Alemanni had been reduced at the
Danube. At Piacenza the Roman army came perilously near to destruction.
The barbarians fall unexpectedly upon the legions as they march
carelessly through a wooded defile. Only by the greatest exertions does
Aurelian rally them. But though the army is saved from destruction, it
cannot arrest the progress of the enemy. When we next hear of them the
barbarians have advanced more than a hundred miles nearer to Rome. Near
the Metaurus, and not far from the spot where Hasdrubal had perished,
the Emperor overtook them. This time they must have suffered a serious
defeat, for their third and last appearance in Northern Italy, near
Pavia (the ancient _Ticinum_). Historians relate that they were
exterminated, and this is probably true, for it was the fate that would
naturally overtake unsuccessful invaders of Italy.

I may mention in the very briefest way that Aurelian restored the Roman
power in the East by overthrowing Zenobia, who, since the death of her
husband Odenathus, had remained independent at Palmyra, and in the West
by putting an end to the usurpation of Tetricus, who had maintained his
independence in Gaul and Britain for several years. To all appearance,
the Empire was restored to what it had been at the death of Marcus
Aurelius.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 47: Domitian, for instance, was styled _Germanicus_, though
his campaigns against the Germans were marked by disaster rather than
by victory.]

[Footnote 48: The historians of the time do not give them the same
name.]




III

THREE DEADLY BLOWS


To tell the story of the last century of the Roman Empire in any
fullness of detail would be impossible in any space that I can command.
I must limit myself to a narrative of what may truly be called the
three most significant incidents in that period.

The first of the fatal blows which may be said to have brought the
Empire of Rome to an end was dealt almost against the will of those
from whom it came. The policy of Aurelian in ceding Dacia to the Goths
had been, on the whole, successful. They had been contented and even
friendly, finding sufficient employment for their arms in extending
their power among their barbarous neighbours, and furnishing not a few
recruits to the imperial armies. In 375 they were disturbed by reports
of an invading host which was advancing from the north and east. These
reports pictured the new-comers as hideous in appearance and cruelly
savage in character. We are now used to the Tartar countenance, but
to Europe in the fourth century the broad, almost beardless face,
flat nose, eyes set wide apart, and squat figure, were as frightful
as they were strange. As for the savagery of the Huns--for so the
new-comers were called--rumours were scarcely exaggerated. The Goths
had themselves in former times been scarcely less ferocious in their
manners, but they had now for several generations been in contact with
civilisation, and the Christian faith had begun to find its way among
them. Both divisions of the nation, known by the names of Ostrogoths
and Visigoths, were successively defeated by the invading host, which
showed military skill as well as courage. The Ostrogoths submitted, as
a body, to the invaders, though a considerable minority contrived to
escape, taking with them their infant king. The Visigoths resolved to
throw themselves on the protection of Rome. They sent envoys to the
Emperor (Valens), and begged that they might be permitted to cross
the frontier. After some delay Valens gave his consent, and the whole
nation--a few scattered companies excepted--was transported across the
Danube. The numbers of the refugees may be calculated at a million,
as there were no less than two hundred thousand males of the military
age. It had been stipulated that all weapons should be given up. But
this condition was very generally evaded. The corrupt officials of the
Empire were ready, for a consideration, to permit the Gothic warriors
to keep their arms. Having thus allowed them to remain formidable, they
proceeded, with almost incredible folly, to insult and oppress them
in every possible way. They robbed them of their wives and children,
and sold at extortionate prices the food which the Imperial Government
was bound to provide without cost. Meanwhile the generals of Valens
neglected to maintain the defences of the Danube, and a large body of
Ostrogoths who had been refused a passage over the river, took the
matter into their own hands, and crossed over into the province. The
two branches of the nation were not long in coming to an understanding,
and making common cause against their oppressors. It was not long
before the smouldering fire burst into flame. The first battle took
place not far from Pravadi,[49] where Claudius had defeated the Goths
many years before. We know little about this conflict except its
result, which, as the historian of the Goths (or, as he calls them,
Getæ) puts it, was to bring about a state of things in which the Goths
were no longer strangers and foreigners, but members of the State and
lords of the country which they occupied. An indecisive engagement
followed at a spot called _Salices_ ("The Willows") in the low land
near the mouth of the Danube, but the great battle of the war was
fought at Hadrianople. Valens, who had spent a considerable time, with
little profit to the Empire, at Antioch, returned in the early summer
of 378 A.D. to Constantinople. After a brief rest in that city, where
he made some changes in the chief commands of his army, he marched
northwards and fortified a camp under the walls of Hadrianople. It
was debated between the Emperor and his chief advisers whether or no
they should fight at once. There were many reasons for delay. Valens
occupied a strong position, and had the command of unlimited supplies.
The barbarians, on the other hand, were ill-provided in every respect,
and would most certainly grow weaker the longer they were compelled to
keep the field. Another powerful consideration was, or should have
been, the approach of Gratian, Emperor of the West, to whom Valens
had appealed for help, and who was now advancing eastward by forced
marches. Gratian had, indeed, sent a special messenger imploring Valens
not to risk a battle before his arrival. Unfortunately this request had
an effect exactly opposed to what had been intended. Valens was anxious
to secure for himself all the glory which would come from the victory
which he confidently expected, and when Gratian begged for delay, he at
once resolved to fight.

It was the height of summer, and Valens was scarcely acting with
judgment when he moved out of his position under the walls of
Hadrianople, and commenced a march which could not be expected to be
accomplished under four hours--the distance to be traversed was ten
miles--with the intention of attacking the enemy. In any case the men
would have been not a little wearied or exhausted; as it was, one wing
of the army considerably out-marched the other, and that which had
lagged behind was forced to hurry that it might take its proper place
in the line. Even after this time was wasted, for Valens was amused
with proposals for a truce or cessation of arms which the enemy had
no intention of acting on. One of the imperial generals, possibly
impatient of the delay, made an attack which was easily repulsed. The
Gothic cavalry, in reply, charged with fatal effect. The Roman horsemen
fled before them, and the legions, left alone in an open plain to face
an enemy superior in force, were practically destroyed. The fate of
Valens is uncertain; but the more generally received account was that,
having been severely wounded, he was carried off the field to a cottage
in the neighbourhood. Before any way of escape could be discovered,
before even his wound could be dressed, the cottage was surrounded by
the enemy. The inmates did their best to defend it, and the Goths,
impatient of delay, set fire to it and burnt it to the ground. Valens,
anyhow, was never seen again. The army of Rome was swept from the earth
at Hadrianople as completely as it had been at Cannæ, but Rome had lost
in the five centuries that separated these two great disasters her
power of recovery.

The next great blow received by Rome came also from Gothic hands. The
first mention of Alaric shows us a significant change in Roman policy.
The Gothic chief holds a high command in the armies of the Empire,
and was employed by the ruler in possession in his struggle against a
pretender. When he turned against his employer it was because he was
disappointed in his ambition of filling a yet higher post. There is no
need to describe his career at length. A brief outline shows plainly
enough, not only his genius, for he was certainly a statesman and a
soldier of great ability, but the deplorable weakness of the Empire.
At first, indeed, he had an antagonist who was more than his match. In
396 he openly revolted, and marched into Greece, which he plundered
without meeting with any resistance, for the country had long since
passed into a condition of helpless servitude. But he was pursued by
Stilicho, himself a barbarian by birth--a soldier who was equal to any
of the great commanders of the past. The Goths found themselves shut
up in the Peloponnesus. Their leader, however, contrived to extricate
himself from his difficulties, transporting his army across the western
end of the Gulf of Corinth, and occupying Epirus. The next thing in his
extraordinary career was that he was appointed by the Emperor of the
East--the Eastern and Western Empires had been finally severed four
years before[50]--to be the Governor of the province of Illyricum. Here
he was able to plan and prepare his schemes for the final conquest of
Rome. That the opportunity for so doing should have been given by the
power that should have been Rome's closest ally was a sure sign of the
approaching ruin.

A few years after his establishment in Illyricum, Alaric, who had
been in the meantime saluted king by his countrymen, felt himself
equal to the task of invading Italy. Stilicho, however, was still in
command of the Roman armies--now almost wholly recruited from barbarian
tribes--and he proved himself more than a match for the Gothic king.
The great battle of Pollentia (in Northern Italy) was contested with
more than usual stubbornness. Fortune changed sides more than once.
Stilicho's genius prevailed, however, in the end; the Goths were driven
from the field; their camp was taken, and Alaric's wife fell into the
hands of the conquerors. But the great leader was not yet beaten. His
cavalry, the principal strength of his forces, had not been broken,
and he formed the bold scheme of marching upon Rome. This, however,
was given up; he accepted, in preference, the offer of Stilicho, who
proposed to allow him to depart unharmed from Italy, on condition of
his becoming for the future an ally of Rome. He did not, however,
intend to perform his part of the bargain. On the contrary, he formed
a scheme for possessing himself of Gaul. But his plans were betrayed
to Stilicho, and he suffered another defeat in the neighbourhood of
Verona which was not less disastrous than that of Pollentia. Even then,
however, he was a formidable enemy, and Stilicho allowed him to retire
from Italy, rather than drive him to extremities.

After four years, years of incessant drain upon the resources of the
Empire, Alaric prepared to renew his attempt on Rome. Stilicho was
dead. Possibly he had deserved his fate, for he had certainly cherished
ambitions which did not become a loyal subject. But there was no one to
take his place at the head of the legions. Certainly Alaric met with
no opposition as he marched through Italy, finally pitching his camp
under the walls of Rome. Resistance was impossible; it only remained
to see what was the smallest price at which the enemy could be bought
off. Two envoys from the Senate approached the king. They began by
counselling prudence. It would be well, they said, if Alaric did not
drive a brave and numerous people to despair. "The thicker the hay,
the easier to mow," was the king's answer. When asked to name the
ransom which he was willing to accept, he declared that he must have
all the gold and silver that they possessed, all their valuables, and
all the slaves of barbarian birth. "What then do you leave us?" was
the question which the envoys in their consternation put to him. "Your
lives," he answered. In the end, however, he consented to a compromise,
by which he was to receive five thousand pounds of gold, thirty
thousand pounds of silver, and a quantity of precious articles, silk,
cloth, and spices.

The respite thus purchased was but brief. The ministers of the Emperor,
safe themselves in the fortress of Ravenna, behaved with a strange
mixture of weakness and treachery. Their crowning act of folly was to
permit a barbarian chief in their pay to make an unprovoked attack on
a detachment of Goths. This was indeed destroyed, but the victory was
dearly purchased. Alaric, justly indignant at such behaviour, broke
off all negotiations, and marched on Rome. The Senate prepared to make
all the resistance possible. But nothing was really done. Some traitors
within the city opened one of the gates, and the Goths made their way
into the city, which was given over to slaughter and plunder for six
days. Rome may be said to have thus lost for ever her claim to rule the
world. But her cup of humiliation was not yet full.

Alaric did not long survive the conquest of Rome. He died in the same
year, and was buried--so, indeed, the story runs--in the channel of
a stream whose waters had been diverted for the time, the labourers
who performed the work being slaughtered to keep the secret of his
resting-place from being ever divulged.

But Rome was to fall into the power of a conqueror yet more powerful
and more ferocious. Attila was a Hun, and is said to have even
exaggerated in his personal appearance all the characteristic
deformities of his race. The boundaries of the Empire can hardly be
defined, but it is certain that it was of enormous extent. It is
scarcely an exaggeration to say that it reached from China to the
Rhine. The hosts that followed him were almost beyond counting. For
once the incredible numbers in which the historians of antiquity
delight were no exaggeration. It is probably a modest estimate of his
host to say that it consisted of half a million combatants.

[Illustration: Attila and Leo.]

Powerful as he was, the king of the Huns was not permitted to pursue
his course without opposition. Rome could still produce or rather adopt
great soldiers--Aëtius, the great antagonist of Attila, was a Scythian
by birth as Stilicho was a Vandal--and great soldiers can always find
men to follow them. In the earlier part of Attila's reign,[51] his
operations were carried on within the limits of the Eastern Empire. In
450 he attacked the West, one of his pretexts being the refusal of the
Emperor Valentinian III. of his proposals for the hand of the Princess
Honoria. He crossed the Rhine with a huge army at Strasburg, and
marched on Orleans. But Aëtius was prepared for him. A great battle was
fought at Châlons-sur-Marne, the last successful effort of the Roman
arms. One of the notable features of the battle is the division of the
Goths, the Ostrogoths following the standard of Attila, while the
Visigoths fought for Rome. The loss of men amounted to between two and
three hundred thousand, but it was not unequally divided. Aëtius could
not prevent the retreat of Attila, who retired into Eastern Europe,
where he spent some months in recruiting his army.

Early in the following year he crossed the Alps, descended into Italy,
and after capturing and totally destroying the city of Aquileia,
marched Romewards. He never reached the city, indeed. Not far from
Mantua he was met by three ambassadors, one of them the bishop of
Rome known as Leo the Great. They brought the offer of a complete
submission. The Emperor no longer refused the condition which he had
before peremptorily rejected. The Hunnish king was to have the hand of
the Princess Honoria, and with her, as Gibbon epigrammatically puts it,
"an immense ransom or dowry." The marriage never took place, for Attila
died in the following year, but he had inflicted on Rome a humiliation
even greater than that which she had suffered at the hand of Alaric.

One more event I must record, because in a way it completes this great
period of history. In 475 a youth who bore the name of Romulus and the
nickname of Augustulus was raised to the throne by his father Orestes,
who secured for a time control of such armies as still obeyed the
Empire. In the following year Orestes was defeated and slain, and his
son permitted to abdicate. Italy passed into the hands of Odoacer, king
of the Heruli. The Old World had passed away and the New had begun.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 49: See p. 349.]

[Footnote 50: When the Emperor Theodosius died (394 A.D.) his two
sons Honorius and Arcadius became emperors of the West and East
respectively.]

[Footnote 51: He succeeded to the throne in 434 in partnership with his
brother, and by this brother's death, or murder, as some said, became
the ruler of the nation in 445.]




EPILOGUE


I take it for granted that none of my readers doubt the existence of
a definite purpose--some may prefer to call it a tendency--in human
history. Writers on this subject have often been accused of dwelling
too much on war. But war is the ultimate expression of human will,
and war, with all its horrors and losses, has worked, we are glad to
believe, for the general good. The fittest among the nations have
survived. We cannot estimate the loss which mankind would have suffered
if the great military monarchies of the East had crushed out of
existence the insignificant tribe which was to be the world's teacher
in righteousness. Something of the same kind may be seen in what is
called secular history.

Greece struggled bravely, against what must have seemed almost hopeless
odds, to preserve herself from Persian domination. If the eleven
thousand "Men of Marathon" had been trodden under foot by the hosts
of Persia, the Athens of the fifth century, with its free political
life and unrivalled intellectual development, would not have existed.
A sterile despotism, without literature or art, would have taken its
place, and the world would have been incalculably the poorer for the
exchange.

What is true of the struggle between Greece and Persia is true also of
the great conflict, lasting for more than two centuries, in which the
Sicilian Greeks, with now and then a little help from the motherland,
held their own against Carthage. Persia and Carthage, though differing
much from each other, were equally hostile to the essential principles
of Western civilisation.

Little need be said as to the issue of the wars between Rome and
Carthage. Rome, indeed, took up the cause for which Greece had
contended. It is impossible to conceive a Carthaginian Empire
exercising a worldwide sway with anything like the beneficial results
for which the world has to thank the dominion of Rome. Carthaginian
politics and morals, as far as we have any knowledge of them, seem to
have been narrow and inhuman.

When we come to the conquests of Alexander, we are not able, it must
be confessed, to see our way so plainly. We may perceive, however,
in it the spread of Greek influence over Western Asia. That influence
had already been at work. Greek colonies had been planted far to the
east; the Oriental nations had been much affected by Greek thought and
manners. Alexander's brief career--it lasted but eleven years--did much
to promote this Hellenizing process. The empire of the great conqueror
fell to pieces at his death, but two Greek kingdoms, to speak only of
his Eastern dominion, were built out of the ruins. It was in these
kingdoms that some of the earliest victories of Christianity were won.
Given to the world by a Semitic tribe, our faith used largely for
its spread Greek means, of which a common Greek language is the most
obvious.

We need not prove that it was for the lasting good of the world that
Rome was not crushed by the Celtic invaders of 390 B.C. or the Teutonic
swarm of 112 B.C. It is equally plain that the development of the human
race was largely helped by the subsequent spread of the Empire, till
it embraced all Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Danube, all
Northern Africa, and Asia west of the Euphrates. It is enough to say
that Roman law is a dominating power in most of the codes of modern
Europe, and an important element in all.

Finally, we have the overthrow of the Roman Empire by barbarians from
the north and east. This overthrow may seem at first to be "chaos come
again." So doubtless many thought at the time. Yet out of the turmoil
of the fourth and the fifth centuries there came a new order, the order
which we see in the Europe of to-day. The subject lies outside my
province. I can only indicate the fact.


UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON

Transcribers note: "Text enclosed by underscores is in italics
(_italics_)."





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