The young Theodoric, who was now in
his nineteenth year, was sent back by Leo to his father
with large presents, and both the recovered son and
the tokens of Imperial favour brought joy to the heart
of the father. There had been some changes in
the Ostrogothic kingdom during the boy’s absence.
There had been vague and purposeless wars with the
savage nations around them,Swabians, Sarmatians,
Scyribesides one final encounter with
their old lords, the Huns. These last, we are
told, they had driven forth so hopelessly beaten from
their territory, that for a century from that time
all that was left of the Hunnish nation trembled at
the very name of the Goths. But in a battle with
another people of far less renown, the barbarous Scyri
beyond the Danube, Walamir, while cheering on his
men to the combat, was thrown from his horse and being
pierced by the lances of the enemy was left dead on
the field. His death, it is said, was avenged
most ruthlessly on the Scyri, and Theudemir, the brother
who was next him in age, became chief king of the
Ostrogoths.
Scarcely had Theodoric returned to
his home when, without communicating his purpose to
his father, he distinguished himself by a gallant deed
of arms. On the south-east of the Ostrogothic
kingdom, in the country which we now call Servia,
there reigned at this time a Sclavonic chief called
Babai, who was full of pride and self-importance because
of a victory which he had lately gained over the forces
of the Empire. Theodoric had probably heard at
Constantinople the other side of this story: on
his journey to the north-west he had passed through
those regions, and marked the pride of the insolent
barbarian. Sympathy with the humiliated Empire,
but, far more, the young warrior’s desire at
once to find “a foeman worthy of his steel”,
and to win laurels for himself wherewith he might
surprise his father, drove him into his new enterprise.
Having collected some of his father’s guardsmen,
and those of his people with whom he was personally
popular, or who were dependent upon him, he thus mustered
a little army of six thousand men, with whom he crossed
the Danube. Falling suddenly upon King Babai,
he defeated and slew him, took his family prisoners,
and returned with large booty in slaves and the rude
wealth of the barbarian to his surprised but joyful
father. The result of this expedition was the
capture of the important frontier city of Singidunum
(whose site is now occupied by Belgrade), a city which
Babai had wrested from the Empire, but which Theodoric,
whatever may have been his inclination to favour Constantinople,
did not deem it necessary to restore to his late host.
This incident of the early manhood
of Theodoric is a good illustration of the Teutonic
custom which Tacitus describes to us under the name
of the comitatus, a custom which was therefore
at least four centuries old (probably far older) in
the days of Theodoric, and which, lasting on for several
centuries longer, undoubtedly influenced if it did
not actually create the chivalry of the Middle Ages.
The custom was so important that it will be better
to translate the very words of Tacitus concerning
it, though they occur in one of the best-known passages
of the “Germania”.
“The Germans transact no business
either of a public or private nature except with arms
in their hands. But it is not the practice for
any one to begin the wearing of arms until the State
has approved his ability to wield them. When
that is done, in the great Council of the nation one
of the chiefs, perhaps the father or some near relation
of the candidate, equips the youth with shield and
spear. This is with them like the toga virilis
with us, the first dignity bestowed on the young man.
Before this he was looked upon as part of his father’s
householdnow he is a member of the State.
Eminently noble birth, or great merit on the part
of their fathers, assigns the dignity of a chief
even to very young men. They are admitted to the
fellowship of other youths stronger than themselves,
and already tried in war, nor do they blush to be
seen among the henchmen. There is a gradation in
rank among the henchmen, determined by the judgment
of him whom they follow, and there is a great emulation
among the henchmen, who shall have the highest place
under the chief, and among the chiefs who shall have
the most numerous and the bravest henchmen. This
is their dignity, this their strength, to be ever
surrounded by a band of chosen youths, an honour in
peace, a defence in battle. And not only in his
own nation, but among the surrounding states also,
each chief’s name and glory are spread abroad
according to the eminence of his ’train of henchmen’
in number and valour. Chiefs thus distinguished
are in request for embassies, are enriched with costly
presents, and often they decide a war by the mere
terror of their name”.
“When they stand on the battle-field,
it is held a disgraceful thing for the chief to be
surpassed in bravery by his henchmen, for the henchmen
not to equal the valour of their chief. Now too
it will mark a man as infamous, and a target for the
scorn of men for all the rest of his life, if he escapes
alive from the battle-field where his chief needed
his help. To defend him, the chief; to
guard his person; to reckon up one’s
own brave deeds as enhancing his glory:
this is the henchman’s one great oath of fealty.
The chiefs fight for victory, the henchmen for their
chief. If the state in which they are born should
be growing sluggish through ease and a long peace,
most of the noble young men seek of their own accord
those nations which are then waging war, both because
a quiet life is hateful to this people, and because
they can more easily distinguish themselves in perilous
times, nor can they keep together a great train of
henchmen, except by war and the strong hand.
For it is from the generosity of their chief that each
henchman expects that mighty war-horse which he would
bestride, that gory and victorious spear, which he
would brandish. Banquets, too, and all the rough
but plentiful appliances of the feast are taken as
part of the henchman’s pay; and the means of
supplying all this prodigality must be sought by war
and rapine. You would not so easily persuade them
to plough the fields and wait in patience for a year’s
harvest, as to challenge an enemy and earn honourable
wounds; since to them it seems always a slow and lazy
process to accumulate by the sweat of your brow what
you might win at once by the shedding of blood”.
These words of Tacitus, written in
the year 98 after Christ, describe with wonderful
exactness the state of Ostrogothic society in the year
472. We are not expressly told of Theodoric’s
assumption of the shield and spear in the great Council
of the nation, but probably this ceremony immediately
followed his return from Constantinople. Then
we see the gathering together of the band of henchmen,
the sudden march away from the peaceful land, growing
torpid through two or three years of warlessness,
the surprise of the Sclavonic king, the copious effusion
of blood which was the preferred alternative to the
sweat of the land-tiller, the return to the young
chief’s own land with spoils sufficient to support
perhaps for many months the “generosity”
expected by the henchmen.
There is one point, however, in which
the description of the Germans given by Tacitus is
probably not altogether applicable to the Goths of
the fifth century: and that is, their invincible
preference for the life of the warrior over that of
the agriculturist. There are some indications
that the Germans, when Tacitus wrote, had not long
exchanged the nomadic life of a nation of shepherds
and herdsmen (such as was led by the earlier generations
of the Israelitish people) for the settled life which
alone is consistent with the pursuits of the tiller
of the soil. Hence the roving instinct was still
strong within them, and this roving instinct easily
allied itself with the thirst for battle and the love
of the easy gains of the freebooter. Four centuries,
however, of agriculture and of neighbourhood to the
great civilised stable Empire of Rome had apparently
wrought some change in the Goths and in many of the
other Teutonic nations. The work of agriculture
was now not altogether odious in their eyes; they
knew something of the joys of the husbandman as well
as of the joys of the warrior; they began to feel something
of that “land-hunger” which is the passion
of a young, growing, industrious people. Still,
however, the songs of the minstrels, the sagas
of the bards, the fiery impulses of the young princeps
surrounded by his comitatus pointed to war
as the only occupation worthy of freemen. Hence
we can perceive a double current in the ambitions of
these nations which often perplexes the historian
now, as it evidently then perplexed their mighty neighbour,
the Roman Augustus, and the generals and lawyers who
counselled him in his consistory. Sometimes the
Teutonic king is roused by some real or imagined insult;
the minstrels sing their battle-songs; the fiery henchmen
gather round their chief; the barbarian tide rolls
over the frontier of the Empire: it seems as if
it must be a duel to the death between civilisation
and its implacable foes. Then suddenly
“he
sinks
To ashes who was very fire
before”.
Food, not glory, seems to be the supreme
object of the Teuton’s ambition. He begs
for land, for seed to sow in it, for a legal settlement
within the limits of the Empire. If only these
necessary things are granted to him, he promises,
and not without intending to keep his promise, to
be a peaceable subject, yes and a staunch defender,
of the Roman Augustus. Had the Imperial statesmen
truly understood this strange duality of purpose in
the minds of their barbarian visitors, and had they
set themselves loyally and patiently to foster the
peaceful agricultural instincts of the Teuton, haply
the Roman Empire might still be standing. As
it was, the statesmen of the day, men of temporary
shifts and expedients, living only as we say “from
hand to mouth”, saw, in the changing moods of
the Germans, only the faithlessness of barbarism,
which they met with the faithlessness of civilisation,
and between the two the Empirewhich no
one really wished to destroywas destroyed.
Even such a change it was which now
came over the minds of the Ostrogothic people.
There was dearth in Pannonia, partly, perhaps, the
consequence of the frequent wars with the surrounding
nations which had occurred during the twenty years
of the Ostrogothic settlement. But even the cessation
of those wars brought with it a loss of income to the
warrior class. As the Gothic historian expresses
it: “From the diminution of the spoils
of the neighbouring nations the Goths began to lack
food and clothing, and to those men to whom war had
long furnished all their sustenance peace began to
be odious, and all the Goths with loud shouts approached
their king Theudemir praying him to lead his army
whither he would, but to lead it forth to war”.
Here again it can hardly be doubted
that Jordanes, writing about the fifth century, describes
for us the same state of things as Tacitus writing
about the first, and that this loudly shouted demand
of the people for war was expressed in one of those
national assembliesthe “Folc-motes”
or “Folc-things” of Anglo-Saxon and German
historywhich formed such a real limitation
to the power of the early Teutonic kings. “Concerning
smaller matters”, says Tacitus, “the
chiefs deliberate; concerning greater matters, the
whole nation; but in such wise that even those things
which are in the power of the commonalty are discussed
in detail by the chiefs. They come together,
unless any sudden and accidental emergency have arisen,
on fixed days determined by the new or full moon;
for these times they deem the most fortunate for the
transaction of business. An ill consequence flowing
from their freedom is their want of punctuality in
assembling; often two or three days are spent in waiting
for the loiterers. When the crowd chooses, they
sit down, arrayed in their armour (and commence business).
Silence is called for by the priests, who have then
the power even of keeping order by force. Then
the king or one of the chiefs begins to speak, and
is listened to in right either of his age, or his
noble birth, or his glory in the wars, or his eloquence.
In any case, he rather persuades than commands; not
power, but weight of character procures the assent
of his hearers.”
“If they mislike his sentiments
they express their contempt for them by groans, if
they approve, they clash their spears together.
Applause thus expressed by arms is the greatest tribute
that can be paid to a speaker”.
Before such an assembly of the nation
in arms, the question, not of Peace or War? but of
War with whom? was debated. It was decided that
the Empire should be the victim, and that East and
West alike should feel the heavy hand of the Ostrogoths.
The lot was cast (so said the national legend),
and it assigned to Theudemir the harder but, as it
seemed, more profitable task of warring against Constantinople,
while his younger brother Widemir was to attack Rome.
Of Widemir’s movements there
is little to tell. He died in Italy, not having
apparently achieved any brilliant exploits, and his
son and namesake was easily persuaded to turn aside
into Gaul, where he joined his forces to those of
the kindred Visigoths, and became absorbed in their
flourishing kingdom. This branch of Amal royalty
henceforward bears no fruit in history.
More important, at any rate in its
ultimate consequences, was the march of Theudemir
and his people into the dominions of the Eastern Cæsar.
They crossed the Save, and by their warlike array terrified
into acquiescence the Sclavonic tribes which were
settled in the neighbourhood of Belgrade.
Having pushed up the valley of the
Morava, they captured the important city of Naissus
(now Nisch), “the first city of Illyricum”.
Here Theudemir tarried for a space, sending on his
son with a large and eager comitatus farther
up the valley of the Morava. They reached the
head of that valley, they crossed the watershed and
the plain of Kossova, and descended the valley of
the Vardar. Monastir in Macedonia, Larissa in
Thessaly were taken and sacked; and a way having thus
been made by these bold invaders into the heart of
the Empire, a message was sent to Theudemir, inviting
him to undertake the siege of Thessalonica. Leaving
a few guards in Naissus, the old king moved southward
with the bulk of his army, and was soon standing with
his men before the walls of the Macedonian capital.
The Patrician Hilarianus held that city with a strong
force, but when he saw it regularly invested by the
Goths and an earthen rampart drawn all round it, he
lost heart, and, despairing of a successful resistance,
opened negotiations with the besiegers. The result
of these negotiations (accompanied by handsome presents
to the king) was that Theudemir abandoned the siege,
resumed the often adopted, perhaps never wholly abandoned,
position of a foederatus or sworn auxiliary
of the Empire, and received for himself and his people
the unquestioned possession of six towns and the
surrounding country by the north-east corner of the
AEgean, where the Vardar discharges itself into the
Thermaic Gulf.
Thus ingloriously, thus unprofitably
ended the expedition into Romania, which had been
proposed amid such enthusiastic applause at the great
Council of the nation, and pressed with such loud acclamations
and such brandishing of defiant spears upon the perhaps
reluctant Theudemir. The Ostrogoths in 472 were
an independent people, practically supreme in Pannonia.
Those broad lands on the south and west of the Danube,
rich in corn and wine, the very kernel of the Austrian
monarchy of to-day, were theirs in absolute possession.
Any tie of nominal dependence which attached Pannonia
to the Empire was so merely theoretical, now that the
Hun had ruled and ravaged it for a good part of a century,
that it was not worth taking into consideration; it
was in fact rather an excuse for claiming stipendia
from the Emperor than a bond of real vassalage.
But now in 474 this great and proud nation, crowded
into a few cities of Macedonia, with obedient subjects
of the Empire all round them, had practically no choice
between the life of peaceful provincials on the
one hand and that of freebooters on the other.
If they accepted the first, they would lose year by
year something of their old national character.
The Teutonic speech, the Teutonic customs would gradually
disappear, and in one or two generations they would
be scarcely distinguishable from any of the other
oppressed, patient, tax-exhausted populations of the
great and weary Empire. On the other hand, if
they accepted (which in fact they seem to have done)
the other alternative, and became a mere horde of
plunderers wandering up and down through the Empire,
seeking what they might destroy, they abandoned the
hope of forming a settled and stable monarchy, and,
doing injustice to the high qualities and capacities
for civilisation which were in them, they would sink
lower into the depths of barbarism, and becoming like
the Hun, like the Hun they would one day perish.
Certainly, so far, the tumultuous decision of the
Parliament on the shores of Lake Pelso was a false
step in the nation’s history.