The imagination of a boy is healthy,
and the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but
there is a space of life between, in which the soul
is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way
of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted.(KEATS,
Preface to “Endymion".)
The sentence thus written by the sensitive
young poet, a child of London of the nineteenth century,
was eminently exemplified in the history of the martial
chief of the Ostrogoths. The next fourteen years
in the life of Theodoric, which will be described
in this chapter, were years of much useless endeavour,
of marches and countermarches, of alliances formed
and broken, of vain animosities and vainer reconciliations,
years in which Theodoric himself seems never to understand
his own purpose, whether it shall be under the shadow
of the Empire or upon the ruins of the Empire, that
he will build up his throne. Take the map of what
is now often called “the Balkan peninsula”,
the region in which these fourteen years were passed;
look at the apparently purpose, less way in which
the mountain ranges of Haemus, Rhodope, and Scardus
cross, intersect, run parallel, approach, avoid one
another; look at the strange entanglement of passes
and watersheds and table-lands which their systems
display to us. Even such as the ranges among which
he was manoeuvringperplexed, purposeless,
and sterilewas the early manhood of Theodoric.
About 474, soon after the great Southward
migration, Theudemir died at Cyrrhus in Macedonia,
one of the new settlements of the Ostrogoths.
When he was attacked by his fatal sickness he called
his people together and pointed to Theodoric as the
heir of his royal dignity. Kingship at this time
among the Germanic nations was not purely hereditary,
the consent of the people being required even in the
most ordinary and natural cases of succession, such
as that of a first-born son, full grown and a tried
soldier succeeding to an aged father. In such
cases, however, that consent was almost invariably
given. Theodoric, at any rate, succeeded without
disputes to the doubtful and precarious position of
king of the Ostrogoths.
Almost at the same time a change was
being made by death in the wearer of the Imperial
diadem. In order to illustrate the widely different
character of the Roman and the Gothic monarchies it
will be well to cease for a little time to follow
the fortunes of Theodoric and to sketch the history
of Leo, the dying Emperor, and of Zeno, who succeeded
him.
Leo I., who reigned at Constantinople
from 457 to 474, and who was therefore Emperor during
the whole time that Theodoric dwelt there as hostage,
was not, as far as we can ascertain, a man of any great
abilities in peace or war, or originally of very exalted
station. But he was “curator” or
steward in the household of Aspar, the successful
barbarian adventurer who has been already alluded to.
As an Arian by religion, and a barbarian, or the son
of a barbarian, by birth, Aspar could not himself
assume the diadem, but he could give it to whom he
would, and Leo the steward was the second of his dependants
whom he had thus honoured. Once placed upon the
throne, however, Leo showed himself less obsequious
to his old master than was expected. The post
of Prefect of the City became vacant; Aspar suggested
for the office a man who, like himself, was tainted
with the heresy of Arius. At the moment Leo promised
acquiescence, but immediately repented, and in the
dead of night privately conferred the important office
on a Senator who professed the orthodox faith.
Aspar in a rage laid a rough hand on the Imperial
purple, saying to Leo: “Emperor! it is not
fitting that one who wears this robe should tell lies”.
Leo answered with some spirit: “Neither
is it fitting that an Emperor should be bound to do
the bidding of any of his subjects, and so injure
the State”.
After this encounter there were thirteen
years of feud between King-maker and King, between
Aspar and Leo. At length in 471 Aspar and his
three valiant sons fell by the swords of the Eunuchs
of the Palace. The foul and cowardly deed was
perhaps marked by some circumstances of especial cruelty,
which earned for Leo the title by which he was long
after remembered in Constantinople, “The Butcher".
In order to strengthen himself against
the adherents of Aspar, Leo cultivated the friendship
of a set of wild, uncouth mountaineers, who at this
time played the same part in Constantinople which the
Swiss of the Middle Ages played in Italy. These
were the Isaurians, men from the rugged highlands
of Pisidia, whose lives had hitherto been chiefly spent
either in robbing or in defending themselves from robbery.
At their head was a man named Tarasicodissa,probably
well born, if a chieftain from the Isaurian highlands
could be deemed to be well born by the contemptuous
citizens of Constantinople, no soldier, for we are
told that even the picture of a battle frightened
him, but a man whom the other Isaurians seem to have
followed with clannish loyalty, like that which the
Scottish Camerons showed even to the wily and unwarlike
Master of Lovat.
With Tarasicodissa therefore the Emperor
Leo entered into a compact of mutual defence.
The Isaurian dropped his uncouth name and assumed the
classical and philosophical-sounding name of Zeno;
he received the hand of Ariadne, daughter of the Emperor,
in marriage, and as Leo had no male offspring, the
little Leo, offspring of this marriage and therefore
grandson of the aged Emperor, was, in this monarchy
which from elective was ever becoming more strictly
hereditary, generally accepted as his probable successor.
As it had been planned so it came
to pass. Leo the Butcher died (3d Fe;
the younger Leo, a child of seven years old, was hailed
by Senate and People as his successor: Zeno came
at the head of a brilliant train of senators, soldiers,
and magistrates, to “adore” the new Emperor,
and the child, carefully instructed by his mother
in the part which he had to play, placed on the bowed
head of his father the Imperial diadem. This
act of “association” as it was called,
generally practised upon a son or nephew by a veteran
Emperor anxious to be relieved from some of the cares
of reigning, required to be ratified by the acclamations
of the soldiery; but no doubt these acclamations,
which could generally be purchased by a sufficiently
liberal donative, were not wanting on this occasion.
Zeno, otherwise called Tarasicodissa the Isaurian,
was now Emperor, and nine months after, when his child-partner
died, he became sole ruler of the Roman world, except
in so far as his dignity might be considered to be
shared by the phantom Emperors of the West, who at
this time were dethroning and being dethroned with
fatal rapidity at Rome and Ravenna.
Thus mean and devious were the paths
by which an adventurer could climb in the fifth century
to that which was still looked upon as the pinnacle
of earthly greatness. For however unworthy a man
might feel himself to be, and however unworthy all
his subjects might know him to be of the highest place
in the Empire, when once he had obtained it his power
was absolute and the honours rendered to him were
little less than divine. All laws were passed
by his “sacred providence”; all officers,
military and civil, received their authority from
him. In the edicts which he put forth to the
world he spoke of himself as “My Eternity”,
“My Mildness”, “My Magnificence”,
and of course these expressions, or, if it were possible,
expressions more adulatory than these, were used by
his subjects when they laid their petitions at the
footstool of “the sacred throne”.
He lived, withdrawn from vulgar eyes, in the innermost
recesses of the palace, a sort of Holy of Holies behind
the first and the second veil. A band of pages,
in splendid dress, waited upon his bidding; thirty
stately silentiarii, with helmets and brightly
burnished cuirasses, marched backwards and forwards
before the second veil, to see that no importunate
petitioner disturbed the silence of “the sacred
cubicle”. On the comparatively rare occasions
when he showed himself to his subjects, he wore upon
his head the diadem, a band of white linen, in which
blazed the most precious jewels of the Empire.
Hung round his shoulders and reaching down to his
feet was that precious purple robe, for the sake of
which so many crimes were committed, and which often
proved itself a very “garment of Nessus”
to him who dared to assume it without force sufficient
to render his usurpation legitimate. On the feet
of the Emperor were buskins which, like the diadem,
were studded with precious stones, and like the robe
were dyed with the Imperial purple. Thus gorgeously
arrayed he took his place in the podium, the
royal box in the Amphitheatre, and from thence, while
gazed upon by his subjects, gazed himself upon the
savage beast-fight, or in the Hippodrome, with difficulty
restraining his eagerness for the success of the Blue
or the Green faction, gave the sign for the chariot
races to begin. Or he sat surrounded by his court
in the purple presence-chamber to consult upon public
affairs with his Consistory, a sort of Privy Council,
composed of the great ministers of state. Conspicuous
among these were the fifteen officers of highest rank,
Generals, Judges, Grand Chamberlains, Finance Ministers,
who had each the right to be addressed as “Illustrious”.
When any subject of the Emperor, were it one of these
Illustrious ones himself, were it the son or brother
of his predecessor, were it even a former patron,
like Aspar, by whose favour he had been selected to
wear the purple, was admitted to an audience of “Augustus”
(that great name went as of right with the diadem),
the etiquette of the court required that he should
not merely bow nor kneel, but absolutely prostrate
himself before the Sacred Majesty of the Emperor, who,
if in a gracious mood, then with outstretched hand
raised him from the earth and permitted him to kiss
his knee or the fringe of his Imperial mantle.
To this dizzy height of greatnessfor
such, however small Marcian or Leo or Zeno may now
seem to us by the lapse of centuries, it was felt to
be by the contemporary generationsit was
possible under the singular combination of election
and inheritance which regulated the succession to
the throne, for almost any citizen of the Empire, if
not of barbarian blood or heretical creed, to aspire.
Diocletian, the second founder of the Empire, was
the son of a slave; Justinianan even greater
namewas the nephew of a Macedonian peasant,
who with a sheepskin bag containing a week’s
store of biscuit, his only property, tramped down from
his native highlands to seek his fortune in the capital
Zeno, as we have seen, though perhaps better born
than either Diocletian or Justinian, was only a little
Isaurian chieftain. Thus the possibilities open
to aspiring ambition were great in the Empire of the
Caesars. As any male citizen of the United States,
born between the St. Lawrence and the Rio Grande,
may one day be installed in the White House as President,
so any “Roman” and orthodox inhabitant
of the Empire, whether noble, citizen, or peasant,
might flatter himself with the hope that he too should
one day wear the purple of Diocletian, be saluted
as Augustus, and see Prefects and Masters of the Soldiery
prostrating themselves before “His Eternity”.
This was, in a sense, the better, the democratic side
of the Roman monarchy. Power which was supposed
to be conveyed by the will of the people (as expressed
by the acclamations of the army) might be wielded
by the arm of any member of that people. On the
other hand there was an evil in the habit thus engendered
in men’s minds, of humbling themselves before
mere power without regard to the manner of its acquirement.
When we compare the polity of Rome or Constantinople,
where a century was a long time for the duration of
a dynasty, with the far simpler polities of the Teutonic
tribes which invaded the Empire, almost all of whom
had their royal houses, reaching back into and even
beyond the dawn of national history, supposed to be
sprung from the loins of the gods, and rendered illustrious
by countless deeds of valour recorded in song or saga,
we see at once that in these ruder states we are in
presence of a principle which the Empire knew not,
but which Mediaeval Europe knew and glorified, the
principle of Loyalty. This principle, the same
that bound Bayard to the Valois, and Montrose to the
Stuart, has been, with all the follies and even crimes
which it may have caused, an element of strength and
cohesion in the states which have arisen on the ruins
of the Roman Empire. The self-respecting but loving
loyalty, with which the Englishman of to-day cherishes
the name of the descendant of Cerdic, of Alfred, and
of Edward Plantagenet, who wields the sceptre of his
country, is utterly unlike the slavish homage offered
by the adoring courtiers of Byzantium to the pinchbeck
divinity of Zeno Tarasicodissa.
Raised as Zeno had been to the throne
by a mere palace intrigue, and destitute as he was
of any of the qualities of a great statesman or general,
it is no wonder that his reign, which lasted for seventeen
years, was continually disturbed by conspiracies and
rebellions. In most of these rebellions his mother-in-law,
Verina, widow of Leo, an ambitious and turbulent woman,
played an important part.
It was only a year after Zeno’s
accession to sole power by the death of his son (Nov.,
475) when he was surprised by the outbreak of a conspiracy,
hatched by his mother-in-law, the object of which was
to place her brother Basiliscus on the throne.
Zeno fled by night, still wearing the Imperial robes
which he had worn, sitting in the Hippodrome, when
the tidings reached him, and crossing the Bosphorus
was soon in the heart of Asia Minor, safe sheltered
in his native Isauria.
From thence,(July, 477) after nearly
two years of exile, he was by a strange turn of the
wheel of Fortune restored to his throne. Religious
bigotry (for Basiliscus did not belong to the
party of strict orthodoxy) and domestic jealousies
and perfidies all contributed to this result.
Zeno, who had fled twenty months before from the Hippodrome,
returned to the Amphitheatre, and there, having commanded
that the linen curtain should be drawn over the circus
to exclude the too piercing rays of the July sun,
gave the signal for the games to begin, while the populace
shouted in Latin the regular official congratulations
on his elevation and prayers for his continued triumph.
Meanwhile his fallen rival, less fortunate
than Zeno himself in planning an escape, was crouching
in the baptistery of the great Church of Saint Sophia,
whither with his wife and children he had fled for
refuge. After all the emblems of Imperial dignity
had been rudely stripped from them, Basiliscus
was induced, by a promise from Zeno, “that their
heads should be safe”, to come forth with his
family from the sacred asylum. The Emperor “kept
the word of promise to the ear”, since no executioner
with drawn sword entered the chamber of his rival.
Basiliscus and they that were with him were sent
away to a remote fortress in Cappadocia. The
gate of the fortress was built up, a band of wild Isaurians
guarded the enclosure, suffering no man to enter or
to leave it, and in that bleak stronghold before long
the fallen Emperor and Empress with their children
perished miserably of cold and hunger.
Theodoric, who was at this time settled
with his people, not on the shores of the AEgean,
but in the region which we now call the Dobrudscha,
between the mouths of the Danube and the Black Sea,
had zealously espoused the cause of the banished Zeno,
and lent an effectual hand in the counter-revolution
which restored him to the throne (478). For his
services in this crisis he was rewarded with the dignities
of Patrician and Master of the Soldiery, high honours
for a barbarian of twenty-four; and probably about
this time he was also adopted as “filius in
arma” by the Emperor. What the precise
nature of this adopted “sonship-in-arms”
may have been we are not able to say. It reminds
us of the barbarian customs which in the course of
centuries ripened into the mediaeval ceremony of knighthood,
and the whole transaction certainly sounds more Ostrogothic
than Imperial. Zeno’s own son and namesake
(the offspring of a first marriage before his union
with Ariadne) was apparently dead before this time;
and possibly therefore the title of son thus conferred
upon Theodoric may have raised in his heart wild hopes
that he too might one day be saluted as Roman Emperor.
Any such hopes were probably doomed to inevitable
disappointment. Any other dignity in the State,
the “Roman Republic”, as it still called
itself, was practically within reach of a powerful
barbarian, but the diadem, as has been already said,
could in this age of the world, only be worn by one
of pure Roman, that is, non-barbarian, blood.
At this time, and for the next three
years, the position of our Theodoric, both towards
the Emperor and towards his own people, was sorely
embarrassed by the position and the claims of the other,
the squinting Theodoric (son of Triarius), whom
we met with seventeen years ago, and whose receipt
of stipendia from the court of Constantinople,
at the very time when their own were withheld, raised
the wrath of Walamir and Theudemir. This Theodoric,
it will be remembered, was of unkingly, perhaps of
quite ignoble, birth, had risen to greatness by clinging
to the skirts of Aspar, and had, so far as the Emperor’s
favour was concerned, fallen with his fall. Shortly
before the death of Leo he had appeared in arms against
the Empire, taking one city and besieging another,
and had forced the Emperor to concede to him high rank
in the army (that of General of the Household Troops,)
a subsidy of; L80,000 a year for himself and his people,
and lastly a remarkable stipulation, “that he
should be absolute ruler of the Goths, and that
the Emperor should not receive any of them who were
minded to revolt from him”. This strange
article of the treaty shows us, on the one hand, how
thoroughly fictitious and illegitimate was this
Theodoric’s claim to kinship; since assuredly
neither Alaric, nor Ataulfus, nor Theudemir, nor any
of the genuine kings of the Goths, ever needed to
bolster up their authority over their subjects by any
such figment of an Imperial concession; and on the
other hand, as it coincides in date with the time
of Theudemir’s and his Theodoric’s
entrance into the Empire, it shows us the distracting
influences to which the large number of Gothic settlers
south of the Danube, settled there before Theudemir’s
migration, were exposed by that event. There
can be little doubt that the Goths who were minded
to revolt from the son of Triarius and who were
not to be received into favour by the Emperor, were
Ostrogoths, still dimly conscious of the old tie which
bound them to the glorious house of Amala, and more
than half disposed to forsake the service of their
squinting upstart chief in order to follow the banners
of the young hero, son of Theudemir.
Then came the death of Leo (478),
Zeno’s accession and the insurrection of Basiliscus,
in which the son of Triarius took part against
the Isaurian Emperor. Soon after this insurrection
was ended and Zeno was restored to his precarious
throne, there came an embassy from the foederati
(as they called themselves) that is, from the unattached
Goths who followed the Triarian standard, begging Zeno
to be reconciled to their lord, and hinting that he
was a truer friend to the Empire than the petted and
pampered son of Theudemir. After a consultation
with “the Senate and People of Rome”,
in other words, with the nobles of Constantinople
and the troops of the household, Zeno decided that
to take both the Theodorics into his pay would
be too heavy a charge on the treasury; that there
was no reason for breaking with the young Amal, his
ally, and therefore that the request of his rival must
be refused. Open war followed, consisting chiefly
of devastating raids by the son of Triarius into
the valleys of Moesia and Thrace. A message was
sent to Theodoric the Amal, who was dwelling quietly
with his people by the Danube. “Why are
you lingering in your home? Come forth and do
great deeds worthy of a Master of Roman Soldiery”.
“But if I take the field against the son of
Triarius”, was the answer, “I fear
that you will make peace with him behind my back”.
The Emperor and Senate bound themselves by solemn
oaths that he should never be received back into favour,
and an elaborate plan of campaign was arranged, according
to which the Amal marching with his host from Marcianople,
(Shumla) was to be met by one general with
twelve thousand troops, on the southern side of the
Balkans, and by another with thirty thousand in the
valley of the Hebrus (Maritza).
But the Roman Empire, in its feeble
and flaccid old age, seemed to have lost all capacity
for making war. Theodoric the Amal performed his
share of the compact; but when with his weary army,
encumbered with many women and children, he emerged
from the passes of the Balkans he found no Imperial
generals there to meet him, but, instead, Theodoric
the Squinter with a large army of Goths encamped on
an inaccessible hill. Neither chief gave the
signal for combat; perhaps both were restrained by
a reluctance to urge the fratricidal strife; but there
were daily skirmishes between the light-armed horsemen
at the foraging grounds and places for watering.
Every day, too, the son of Triarius rode round
the hostile camp, shouting forth reproaches against
his rival, calling him “a perjured boy, a madman,
a traitor to his race, a fool who could not see whither
the Imperial plans were tending. The Romans would
stand by and look quietly on while Goth wore out Goth
in deadly strife”. Murmurs from the Amal’s
troops showed that these words struck home. Next
day the son of Triarius climbed a hill overlooking
the camp, and again raised his voice in bitter defiance.
“Scoundrel! why are you leading so many of my
kinsmen to destruction? why have you made so many Gothic
wives widows? What has become of that wealth
and plenty which they had when they first took service
with you? Then they had two or three horses apiece;
now without horses and in the guise of slaves, they
are wandering on foot through Thrace. But they
are free-born men surely, aye, as free-born as you
are, and they once measured out the gold coins of
Byzantium with a bushel”. When the host
heard these words, all, both men and women, went to
their leader Theodoric the Amal, and claimed from
him with tumultuous cries that he should come to an
accommodation with the son of Tnarius. The proposal
must have been hateful to the Amal. To throw
away the laboriously earned favour of the Emperor,
to denude himself of the splendid dignity of Master
of the Soldiery, to leave the comfortable home-like
fabric of Imperial civilisation and go out again into
the barbarian wilderness with this insolent namesake
who had just been denouncing him as a perjured boy:
all this was gall and wormwood to the spirit of Theodoric.
But he knew the conditions under which he held his
sovereignty“king”, as a recent
French monarch expressed it, “by the grace of
God and the will of the people”, and he did not
attempt to strive against the decision of his tumultuary
parliament. He met his elderly competitor, each
standing on the opposite bank of a disparting stream,
and after speech had, they agreed that they would wage
no more war on one another but would make common cause
against Byzantium.
The now confederated Theodorics sent
an embassy to Zeno, bearing their common demands for
territory, stipendia and rations for their
followers, and, in the case of Theodoric the Amal,
charged with bitter complaints of the desertion which
had exposed him to such dangers. The Emperor
replied with an accusation (which appears to have been
wholly unfounded) that Theodoric himself had meditated
treachery, and that this was the reason why the Roman
generals had feared to join their forces to his.
Still the Emperor was willing to receive him again
into favour if he would relinquish his alliance with
the son of Triarius, and in order to lure him
back the ambassadors were to offer him 1,000 pounds’
weight of gold (L40,000), 10,000 of silver (L35,000),
a yearly revenue of 10,000 aurei (L6,000),
and the daughter of Olybrius, one of the noblest-born
damsels of Byzantium, for his wife. But the Amal
king, having stooped so low as to make an alliance
with the son of Triarius, was not going to stoop
lower by breaking it. The ambassadors returned
to Constantinople with their purpose unaccomplished,
and Zeno began seriously to prepare for the apparently
inevitable war with all the Gothic foederati
in his land, commanded by both the Theodorics.
He summoned to the capital all the troops whom he
could muster, and delivered to them a spirited oration,
in which he exhorted them to be of good courage, declaring
that he himself would go forth with them to war, and
would share all their hardships and dangers. For
nearly a hundred years, ever since the time of the
great Theodosius, no Eastern Emperor apparently had
conducted a campaign in person; and the announcement
that this inactivity was to be ended and that a Roman
Imperator was again, like the Imperators of old time,
to march with the legions and to withstand the shock
of battle, roused the soldiers to extraordinary enthusiasm.
The very men who, a little while before, had been bribing
the officers to procure exemption from service, now
offered larger sums of money in order to obtain an
opportunity of distinguishing themselves under the
eyes of the Emperor. They pressed forward past
the long wall which at about sixty miles from Constantinople
crossed the narrow peninsula and defended the capital
of the Empire; they caught some of the forerunners
of the Gothic host, the Uhlans, if we may call them
so, of Theodoric: everything foreboded an encounter,
more serious and perhaps more triumphant than any
that had been seen since the days of Theodosius.
Then, as in a moment, all was changed. Zeno’s
old spirit of sloth and cowardice returned. He
would not undergo the fatigue of the long marches
through Thrace, he would not look upon the battle-field,
the very pictures of which he found so terrible; it
was publicly announced that the Emperor would not
go forth to war. The soldiers, enraged, began
to gather in angry groups, rebuking one another for
their over-patience in submitting to be ruled by such
a coward. “How? Are we men, and have
we swords in our hands, and shall we any longer bear
with such disgraceful effeminacy, by which the might
of this great Empire is sapped, so that every barbarian
who chooses may carve out a slice from it?”
These clamours were rapidly growing
seditious, and in a few days an anti-Emperor would
probably have been proclaimed; but Zeno, more afraid
of his soldiers than even of the Goths, adroitly moved
them into their widely-scattered winter-quarters,
leaving the invaded provinces to take care of themselves
for a little time, while he tried by his own natural
weapons of bribery and intrigue to detach the other
and older Theodoric from the new confederacy.
On this path he met with unmerited
success. The son of Triarius, who had lately
been uttering such noble sentiments about Gothic kinship,
and the folly of Gothic warriors playing into the
hands of their hereditary enemies, the crafty courtiers
of Constantinople, soon came to terms with the Emperor,
and on receiving the command of two brigades of household
troops,(Scholse) his restoration to all the dignities
which he had held under Basiliscus, the military
office which his rival had forfeited, and rations
and allowances for 13,000 of his followers, broke his
alliance with Theodoric the Amal, and entered the
service of the Emperor of New Rome.
Theodoric the Amal, who was now in
his own despite (479) an outlaw from the Roman State,
burst in fierce wrath into Macedonia, into the region
where he and his people had been first quartered five
years before. Again he marched down the valley
of the Vardar, he took Stobi, putting its garrison
to the sword, and threatened the great city of Thessalonica.
The citizens, fearing that Zeno would abandon them
to the barbarians, broke out into open sedition, threw
down the statues of the Emperor, took the keys of
the city from the Prefect and entrusted them to the
safer keeping of their Bishop. Zeno sent ambassadors
reproaching the Amal for his ungrateful requital of
the unexampled favours and dignities which had been
conferred upon him, and inviting him to return to
his old fidelity. Theodoric showed himself not
unwilling to treat, sent ambassadors to Constantinople,
and ordered his troops to refrain from murder and
conflagration, and to take only the absolute necessaries
of life from the provincials. He then quitted
the precincts of Thessalonica and moved westwards
to the city of Heraclea (Monastir), which lies
at the foot of the great mountain range that separates
Macedonia from Epirus. While talking of peace
he was already meditating a new and brilliant stroke
of strategy, but he was for some time hindered from
accomplishing it by the illness of his sister, who,
perhaps fatigued by the hardships of the march, had
fallen sick in the camp before Heraclea. This
time of enforced delay was occupied by negotiations
with the Emperor. But the Emperor had really nothing
to offer worth the Ostrogoth’s acceptance.
A settlement on the Pantalian plain, a bleak upland
among the Balkans, about forty miles south of Sardica
(Sofia), and a payment of two hundred pounds’
weight of gold (L8,000) as subsistence-money for the
people till they should have had time to till the
land and reap their first harvest, this was all that
Zeno offered to the chief, who already in imagination
saw the rich cities of the Adriatic lying defenceless
at his feet. For during this time of inaction
the Amal had opened communications with a Gothic landowner,
named Sigismund, who dwelt near Dyrrhachium (Durazzo),
and was a man of influence in the province of Epirus;
and Sigismund, though nominally a loyal subject of
the Emperor, was doing his best to sow fear and discouragement
in the hearts of the citizens of Dyrrhachium and to
prepare the way for the advent of his countrymen.
At length the Gothic princess died,
and her brother, the Amal, having vainly sought to
put Heraclea to ransom (the citizens had retired to
a strong fortress which commanded it), burned the
deserted city, a deed more worthy of a barbarian than
of one bred up in the Roman Commonwealth. Then
with all his nation-army he started off upon the great
Egnatian Way, which, threading the rough passes of
Mount Scardus, leads from Macedonia to Epirus, from
the shores of the AEgean to the shores of the Adriatic.
His light horsemen went first to reconnoitre the path;
then followed Theodoric himself with the first division
of his army. Soas, his second in command, ordered
the movements of the middle host; last of all came
the rear-guard, commanded by Theodoric’s brother,
Theudimund, and protecting the march of the women,
the cattle, and the waggons. It was a striking
proof both of their leader’s audacity and of
his knowledge of the decay of martial spirit among
the various garrisons that lined the Egnatian Way,
that he should have ventured with such a train into
such a perilous country, where at every turn were narrow
defiles which a few brave men might have held against
an army.
The Amal and his host passed safely
through the defiles of Scardus and reached the fortress
of Lychnidus overlooking a lake now known as Lake
Ochrida. Here Theodoric met with his first repulse.
The fortress was immensely strong by nature, was well
stored with corn, and had springing fountains of its
own, and the garrison were therefore not to be frightened
into surrender. Accordingly, leaving the fortress
untaken, Theodoric with his two first divisions pushed
rapidly across the second and lower range, the Candavian
Mountains, leaving Theudimund with the waggons and
the women to follow more slowly. In this arrangement
there was probably an error of judgment which Theodoric
had occasion bitterly to regret. For the moment,
however, he was completely successful. Descending
into the plain he took the towns of Scampae (Elbassan)
and Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), both of which, probably
owing to the discouraging counsels of Sigismund, seem
to have been abandoned by their inhabitants.
Great was the consternation at Edessa
(a town about thirty miles west of Thessalonica and
the headquarters of the Imperial troops) when the news
of this unexpected march of Theodoric across the mountains
was brought into the camp. Not only the general-in-chief,
Sabinianus, was quartered there, but also a certain
Adamantius, an official of the highest rank, who had
been charged by Zeno with the conduct of the negotiations
with Theodoric, and whose whole soul seems to have
been set on the success of his mission. He contrived
to communicate with Theodoric, and advanced with Sabinianus
through the mountains as far as Lychnidus in order
to conduct the discussion at closer quarters.
Propositions passed backwards and forwards as to the
terms upon which a meeting could be arranged.
Theodoric sent a Gothic priest; Adamantius in reply
offered to come in person to Dyrrhachium if Soas and
another Gothic noble were sent as hostages for his
safe return. Theodoric was willing to send the
hostages if Sabinianus would swear that they should
return in safety. This, however, for some reason
or other, the general surlily and stubbornly refused
to do, and Adamantius saw the earnestly desired interview
fading away into impossibility. At length, with
courageous self-devotion, he succeeded in finding
a by-path across the mountains, which brought him
to a fort, situated on a hill and strengthened by a
deep ditch, in sight of Dyrrhachium. From thence
he sent messengers to Theodoric earnestly soliciting
a conference; and the Amal, leaving his army in the
plain, rode with a few horsemen to the banks of the
stream which separated him from Adamantius’
stronghold. Adamantius, too, to guard against
a surprise, placed his little band of soldiers in
a circle round the hill, and then descended to the
stream, and with none to listen to their speech, commenced
the long-desired colloquy. How Adamantius may
have opened his case we are not informed, but the
Ostrogoth’s reply is worth quoting word for
word: “It was my choice to live altogether
out of Thrace, far away towards Scythia, where I should
disturb no one by my presence, and yet should be ready
to go forth thence to do the Emperor’s bidding.
But you having called me forth, as if for war against
the son of Tnarius, first of all promised that the
General of Thrace should immediately join me with
his forces (he never appeared); and then that Claudius,
the Steward of the Goth-money, should meet me with
the pay of the mercenaries (him I never saw); and
thirdly, you gave me guides for my journey, but what
sort of guides? Men who, leaving untrodden all
the easier roads into the enemy’s country, led
me by a steep path and along the sharp edges of cliffs,
where, had the enemy attacked us, travelling as we
were bound to do with horsemen and waggons and all
the lumber of our camp, it had been a marvel if I and
all my folk had not been utterly destroyed. Hence
I was forced to make such terms as I could with the
foes, and in fact I owe them many thanks that, when
you had betrayed and they might have consumed me, they
nevertheless spared my life”.
Adamantius went over the old story
about the great benefits which the Emperor had bestowed
on Theodoric, the Patriciate, the Mastership, the
rich presents, and all the other evidences of his fatherly
regard. He attempted to answer the charges brought
by Theodoric, but in this even the Greek historian
who records the dialogue thinks that he failed.
With more show of reason he complained of the march
across the mountains and the dash into Epirus, while
negotiations were proceeding with Constantinople.
He recommended him to make peace with the Empire while
it was in his power, and assuring him that he would
never be allowed to lord it over the great cities
of Epirus nor to banish their citizens from thence
to make room for his people, again pressed him to accept
the Emperor’s offer of “Dardania”
(the Pantalian plain), “where there was abundance
of land, beside that which was already inhabited, a
fair and fertile territory lacking cultivators, which
his people could till, so providing themselves in
abundance with all the necessaries of life”.
Theodoric refused with an oath to
take his toil-worn people who had served him so faithfully,
at that time of year (it was now perhaps autumn) into
Dardania. No! they must all remain in Epirus for
the winter; then if they could agree upon the rest
of the terms he might be willing in spring to follow
a guide sent by the Emperor to lead them to their
new abode. But more than this, he was ready to
deposit his baggage and all his unwarlike folk in
any city which the Emperor might appoint, to give
his mother and his sister as hostages for his entire
fidelity, and then to advance at once with ten thousand
of his bravest warriors into Thrace, as the Emperor’s
ally. With these men and the Imperial armies
now stationed in the Illyrian provinces, he would undertake
to sweep Thrace clear of all the Goths who followed
the son of Triarius. Only he stipulated
that in that case he should be clothed with his old
dignity of Master of the Soldiery, which had been taken
from him and bestowed on his rival, and that he should
be received into the Commonwealth and allowed to liveas
he evidently yearned to liveas a Roman
citizen.
Adamantius replied that he was not
empowered to treat on such terms while Theodoric remained
in Epirus, but he would refer his proposal to the
Emperor, and with this understanding they parted one
from the other.
Meanwhile, important, and for the
Goths disastrous, events had been taking place in
the Candavian mountains. Over these the rear-guard
of Theodoric’s army, with the waggons and the
baggage, had been slowly making its way, in a security
which was no doubt chiefly caused by the facility
of the previous marches, but to which the knowledge
of the negotiations going forward between King and
Emperor may partly have contributed. In any case,
security was certainly insecure with such a fort as
Lychnidus untaken in their rear. The garrison
of that fort had been reinforced by many cohorts of
the regular army who had flocked thither at the general’s
signal, and with these Sabinianus prepared a formidable
ambuscade. He sent a considerable number of infantry
round by unfrequented paths over the mountains, and
ordered them to take up a commanding but concealed
position, and to rush forth from thence at a given
signal. He himself started with his cavalry from
Lychnidus at nightfall, and rode rapidly along the
Egnatian Way. At dawn the pursuing horsemen attacked
the Goths, who were just descending the last mountain
slopes into the plain. Theudimund, with his mother,
was riding near the head of the long line of march.
Too anxious perhaps for her safety, and fearing to
meet the reproachful looks of Theodoric if aught of
harm happened to her, he hurried her across the last
bridge, spanning a deep defile, which intervened between
the mountains and the plain, and then broke down the
bridge behind him to prevent pursuit. Pursuit
was indeed rendered impossible, and the mother of
Theodoric was saved, but at what a cost! The
Goths turned back to fight, with the courage of despair,
the pursuing cavalry. At that moment the infantry
in ambush, having received the signal, began to attack
them from the rocks above. The position was a
terrible one, and many brave men fell in the hopeless
battle. Quarter, however, was given by the Imperial
soldiers, for we are told that more than five thousand
of the Goths were taken prisoners. The booty was
large; and all the waggons of the barbarians, two thousand
in number, were of course captured, but the soldiers,
misliking the toil of dragging them back over all
those jagged passes to Lychnidus, burned them there
as they stood upon the Candavian mountains.
I have copied with some minuteness
the account given us by the Greek historian of this
mountain march of Theodoric, because it brings before
us with more than usual vividness the conditions under
which the campaigns of the barbarians were conducted.
It will have been noticed that the Gothic army is
not only an army but a nation, and that the campaign
is also a migration. The mother and the sister
of Theodoric are accompanying him. There is evidently
a long train of non-combatants, old men, women, and
children, following the army in those two thousand
Gothic waggons. The character attributed by Horace
to the
Campestres Scythae,
Quorum plaustra vagas rite
trahunt domos
still survives.
“The waggon holds the
Scythian’s wandering home”.
The Goth, a terrible enemy to those
outside the pale of his kinship, is a home-lover at
heart, and even in war will not separate himself from
his wife and children. This makes his impact slow,
his campaigns unscientific. It prepares for him
frequent defeats, such as that of the Candavian mountains,
which a celibate army would have avoided. But
it makes his conquests, when he does conquer, more
enduring, while it explains those perpetual demands
for land, for a settlement within the Empire, almost
on any terms, with which, as was before shown, the
barbarian inroads so often close. We need not
follow the tedious story of the negotiations with
Adamantius, which were interrupted by this sudden
success of the Imperial arms. In fact at this
point our best authority, who has been unusually
full and graphic for the events of 478 and 479, suddenly
fails us, and we have scarcely anything but dry and
scanty annalistic notices for the next nine years of
the life of Theodoric. He seems not to have maintained
his footing in Epirus, but to have returned to the
neighbourhood of the Danube, where he fought and conquered
the king of the Bulgarians, a fresh horde of barbarians
who at this time made their first appearance in “the
Balkan peninsula” Whether the much desired reconciliation
with the Empire took place we know not. It seems
probable that this may have been the case, as in the
year 481 we find his rival, the other Theodoric, in
opposition, and planning an invasion of Greece.
But the career of the son of Triarius was about
to come to an untimely close. Marching westwards,
he had reached a station on the Egnatian Way, near
the frontiers of Thrace and Macedonia, called “The
Stables of Diomed”, and there pitched his camp.
One morning he would fain mount his horse for a gallop
across the plain, but before he was securely seated
in the saddle the horse reared. The rider, afraid
to grasp the bridle firmly lest he should pull the
creature over upon him, clung tightly to his seat,
but could not guide the horse, which, in its dancing
and prancing, came sidling past the door of the tent.
There was hanging, in barbarian fashion, a spear fastened
by a thong. The horse shied up against the spear,
whose point gored his master’s side. He
was not killed on the spot, but died soon after of
the wound. After some domestic dissensions and
bloodshed, the leadership of his band passed to his
son Recitach, apparently a hot-tempered and tyrannical
youth.
Three years after his father’s
death (484), Recitach, now an enemy of the Empire,
was put to death by Theodoric the Amal, acting under
the orders of Zeno. The band of Triarian Goths,
thirty thousand fighting men in number, was joined
to the army of Theodoric, an important addition to
his power, but also to his cares, to the ever-present
difficulty of finding food for his followers.
(481-487) Backwards and forwards between
peace and war with the Empire, Theodoric wavered during
the six years which followed his rival’s death.
The settlement of his people at this time seems to
have been on the southern shore of the Danube, in
part of the countries now known as Servia and Wallachia,
with Novae (Sistova) for his headquarters.
One year (482) he is making a raid into Macedonia
and Thessaly and plundering Larissa. The next
(483) he is again clothed with his old dignity of
Master of the Soldiery and keeps his Goths rigidly
within their allotted limits. The next (484)
he is actually raised to the Consulate, an office
which, though devoid of power, is still so radiant
with the glory of the illustrious men who have held
it for near a thousand years, from the days of Brutus
and Collatinus, that Emperors covet the possession
of it and the mightiest barbarian chiefs in their
service long for no higher reward.
Two years after this (486) he is again
in rebellion, ravaging Thrace; the next year (487)
he has broken through the Long Walls and penetrates
within fourteen miles of Constantinople. In all
this wearisome period of Theodoric’s life his
action seems to be merely destructive; there is nothing
constructive, no fruitful or fertilising thought to
be found in it. Had this been a fair sample of
his life, there could be no reason why he should not
sink into the oblivion which covers so many forgotten
freebooters. But in 488 a change came over the
spirit of his dream. A plan was agreed upon between
him and the Emperor (by which of them it was first
suggested we cannot now say) for the employment of
all this wasted and destructive force in another field,
where its energies might accomplish some result beneficent
and enduring.
That new field was Italy, and in order
to understand the conditions of the problem which
there awaited Theodoric, we must briefly recount the
chief events which had happened in that peninsula since
Attila departed from untaken Rome in compliance with
the petition of Pope Leo.