Theodoric the Goth Part 6

II. In the year 490 Gundobad, king of the Burgundians, crossed the Alps and descended into Italy to mingle in the fray as an antagonist of Theodoric. In the same year, probably at the same time, Alaric II., king of the Visigoths, entered Italy as his ally. A great battle was fought on the river Adda, ten miles east of Milan, in which Odovacar, who had emerged from the shelter of Ravenna, was again completely defeated. He fled once more to Ravenna, which he never again quitted.

[Footnote 55: Ennodius (writing the life of Bishop Epiphanius).]

While these operations were proceeding, Theodoric's own family and the non-combatants of the Ostrogothic nation were in safe shelter, though in somewhat narrow quarters, in the strong city of Pavia, whose Bishop, Epiphanius, was the greatest saint of his age, and one for whom Theodoric felt an especial veneration. No doubt they must have left that city before the evil-minded Rugians entered it (492), but we hear nothing of the circ.u.mstances of their flight or removal.

As for the Burgundian king, he does not seem to have been guided by any high considerations of policy in his invasion of Italy, and having been induced to conclude a treaty with Theodoric, he returned to his own royal city of Lyons with goodly spoil and a long train of hapless captives torn from the fields of Liguria.

III. These disturbing elements being cleared away, we may now turn our attention to the true key of the position and the central event of the war, the siege of Odovacar in Ravenna. After Tufa's second change of sides, and during the Burgundian invasion of Italy, there was no possibility of keeping up an Ostrogothic blockade of the city of the marshes. Odovacar emerged thence, won back the lower valley of the Po, and marching on Milan, inflicted heavy punishment on the city, for the welcome given to Theodoric. In the battle of the Adda, 11 August, 490, however, as has been already mentioned, he sustained a severe defeat, in which he lost one of his most faithful friends and ablest counsellors, a Roman n.o.ble named Pierius. After his flight to Ravenna, which immediately followed the battle of the Adda, there seems to have been a general movement throughout Italy, headed by the Catholic clergy, for the purpose of throwing off his yoke, and if we do not misread the obscure language of the Panegyrist, this movement was accompanied by a wide-spread popular conspiracy, somewhat like the Sicilian Vespers of a later day, to which the _fderati_, the still surviving adherents of Odovacar, scattered over their various domains in Italy, appear to have fallen victims.

Only two cities, Csena and Rimini, beside Ravenna, now remained to Odovacar, and for the next two years and a half (from the autumn of 490 to the spring of 493) Ravenna was straitly besieged. Corn rose to a terrible famine price (seventy-two s.h.i.+llings a peck), and before the end of the siege the inhabitants had to feed on the hides of animals, and all sorts of foul and fearful aliments, and many of them perished of hunger. A sortie made in 491 by a number of barbarian recruits whom Odovacar had by some means attracted to his standard, was repelled after a desperate encounter. During all this time Theodoric, from his entrenched camp in the great pine-wood of Ravenna, was watching jealously to see that no provisions entered the city by land, and in 492, after taking Rimini, he brought a fleet of swift vessels thence to a harbour about six miles from Ravenna, and thus completed its investment by sea.

In the beginning of 493 the misery of the besieged city became unendurable, and Odovacar, with infinite reluctance, began to negotiate for its surrender. His son Thelane was handed over as a hostage for his fidelity, and the parleying between the two rival chiefs began on the 25th of February. On the following day Theodoric and his Ostrogoths entered Cla.s.sis, the great naval emporium, about three miles from the city; and on the 27th, by the mediation of the Bishop, peace was formally concluded between the warring kings.

The peace, the surrender of the city, the acceptance of the rule of "the new King from the East", were apparently placed under the especial guardians.h.i.+p of the Church. "The most blessed man, the Archbishop John", says a later ecclesiastical historian,[56] "opened the gates of the city, 5 March, 493, which Odovacar had closed, and went forth with crosses and thuribles and the Holy Gospels, seeking peace. While the priests and the rest of the clergy round him intoned the psalms, he, falling prostrate on the ground, obtained that which he desired. He welcomed the new King coming from the East, and peace was granted unto him, including not only the citizens of Ravenna, but all the other Romans[57], for whom the blessed John made entreaty".

[Footnote 56: Agnellus (writing in the ninth century). His use of the term Archbishop is itself a sign of a later age.]

[Footnote 57: The non-barbarian population of Italy]

The chief clause of the treaty was that which a.s.sured Odovacar not only life but absolute equality of power with his conqueror. The fact that Theodoric should have, even in appearance, consented to an arrangement so precarious and unstable, is the strongest testimony to the impregnability of Ravenna, which after three years' strict blockade, could still be won only by so mighty a concession. But of course there was not, there could not be, any real peace on such terms between the two queen-bees in that swarming hive of barbarians. Theodoric received information--so we are told--that his rival was laying snares for his life, and being determined to antic.i.p.ate the blow, invited Odovacar to a banquet at "the Palace of the Laurel-grove", on the south-east of the city (15th March, 493). When Odovacar arrived, two suppliants knelt before him and clasped his hands while offering a feigned pet.i.tion. Some soldiers who had been stationed in two side alcoves stepped forth from the ambush to slay him, but at the last moment their hearts failed them, and they could not strike. If the deed was to be done, Theodoric must himself be the executioner or the a.s.sa.s.sin. He raised his sword to strike. "Where is G.o.d?" cried the defenceless but unterrified victim.

"Thus didst thou to my friends", answered Theodoric, reminding him of the treacherous murder of the "henchmen". Then with a tremendous stroke of his broadsword he clove his rival from the shoulder to the loin. The barbarian frenzy, which the Scandinavian minstrels call the "fury of the Berserk", was in his heart, and with a savage laugh at his own too impetuous blow, he shouted as the corpse fell to the ground: "I think the weakling had never a bone in his body".

The body of Odovacar was laid in a stone coffin, and buried near the synagogue of the Jews. His brother was mortally wounded while attempting to escape through the palace-garden. His wife died of hunger in her prison. His son, sent for safe-keeping to the king of the Visigoths in Gaul, afterwards escaped to Italy and was put to death by the orders of Theodoric. Thus perished the whole short-lived dynasty of the captain of the _fderati_.

In his long struggle for the possession of Italy, Theodoric had shown himself patient in adversity, moderate in prosperity, brave, resourceful, and enduring. But the memory of all these n.o.ble deeds is dimmed by the crime which ended the tragedy, a crime by the commission of which Theodoric sank below the level of the ordinary morality of the barbarian, breaking his plighted word, and sinning against the faith of hospitality.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER VIII.

CIVILITAS.

Transformation in the character of Theodoric--His t.i.tle--Emba.s.sies to Zeno and Anastasius--Theodoric's care for the rebuilding of cities and repair of aqueducts--Encouragement of commerce and manufactures--Revival of agriculture--Anecdotes of Theodoric.

Thus far we have followed the fortunes of a Teutonic warrior of the fifth century of our era, marking his strange vacillations between friends.h.i.+p and enmity to the great civilised Empire under the shattered fabric whereof he and his people were dwelling, and neither concealing nor extenuating any of his lawless deeds, least of all that deed of treachery and violence by which he finally climbed to the pinnacle of supreme power in Italy. Now, for the next thirty years, we shall have to watch the career of this same man, ruling Italy with unquestioned justice and wise forethought, making the welfare of every cla.s.s of his subjects the end of all his endeavours, and cheris.h.i.+ng civilisation (or, as it was called in the language of his chosen counsellors, _civilitas_) with a love and devotion almost equal to that which religious zeal kindles in the hearts of its surrendered votaries.

The transformation is a marvellous one. Success and unquestioned dominion far more often deprave and distort than enn.o.ble and purify the moral nature of man. But something like this transformation was seen when Octavian, the crafty and selfish intriguer, ripened into the wise and statesmanlike Augustus. Nor have our own days been quite ignorant of a similar phenomenon, when the stern soldier-politician of Germany, the man who once seemed to delight in war and whose favourite motto had till then been "blood and iron" having secured for his master the hegemony of Europe, strove (or seems to have striven), during twenty difficult years, to maintain peace among European nations, like one convinced in his heart that War is the supreme calamity for mankind.

It is a threadbare saying, "Happy is the nation that has no annals", and the miserable historians of the time tell us far too little about the thirty years of peace which Italy enjoyed under the wise rule of Theodoric; still we are told enough to enable us in some degree to understand both what he accomplished and how he accomplished it. And one thing which makes us accept the statements of these historians with unquestioning belief is that they have no motive for the praises which they so freely bestow on the great Ostrogoth. They are not his countrymen, nor his fellow-religionists. Our chief authorities are Roman and Orthodox, and bitterly condemn Theodoric for the persecution of the Catholics, into which, as we shall see, he was provoked in the last two years of his reign. Still, over the grave of this dead barbarian and heretic, when they have nothing to gain by speaking well of him, they cannot forbear to praise the n.o.ble impartiality and anxious care for the welfare of his people, which, for the s.p.a.ce of one whole generation, gave happiness to Italy. It will be well to quote here one or two of these testimonies, borne by impartial witnesses.

Our chief authority,[58] who is believed to have been a Catholic Bishop of Ravenna, says:

"He was an ill.u.s.trious man, and full of good-will towards all. He reigned thirty-three (really thirty-two) years, and during thirty of these years so great was the happiness of Italy that even the wayfarers were at peace. For he did nothing wrong. So did he govern the two nations, the Goths and Romans, as if they were one people, belonging himself to the Arian sect, yet he ordained that the civil administration should remain for the Romans as it had been under their Emperors. He gave presents and rations to the people, yet, though he found the Treasury ruined, he brought it round, by his own hard work, into a flouris.h.i.+ng state. He attempted nothing (during these first thirty years) against the Catholic faith. Exhibiting games in the circus and amphitheatre, he received from the Romans the names of Trajan and Valentinian (the happy days of which most prosperous Emperors he did in truth seek to restore), and, at the same time, the Goths rendered true obedience to their valiant King, according to the Edict which he had promulgated for them".

[Footnote 58: "Anonymus Valesii" (probably Bishop Maximian).]

"He gave one of his daughters in marriage to the King of the Visigoths in Gaul, another to the son of the Burgundian King; his sister to the King of the Vandals, and his niece to the King of the Thuringians. Thus he pleased all the nations round him, for he was a lover of manufactures and a great restorer of cities. He restored the aqueduct of Ravenna, which Trajan had built; and again, after a long interval, brought water into the city. He completed, but did not dedicate, the palace, and finished the porticoes round it. At Verona he erected baths and a palace, and constructed a portico from the gate to the palace. The aqueduct, which had been long destroyed, he renewed, and brought in water through it. He also surrounded the city with new walls. At Ticinum (_Pavia_) too he built a palace, baths, and an amphitheatre, and erected walls round the city. On many other cities also he bestowed similar benefits.

"Thus he so charmed the nations near him that they entered into a league with him, hoping that he would be their King. The merchants, too, from divers provinces, flocked to his dominions, for so great was the order which he maintained, that if any one wished to leave gold or silver on his land (in his country house) it was as safe as in a walled city. A proof of this was the fact that he never made gates for any-city of Italy, and the gates already existing were not closed. Any one who had business to transact could do it as safely by night as by day.

"In his time men bought wheat at 60 pecks for a _solidus_ (12 s.h.i.+llings a quarter), and 30 amphor of wine for the same price (2_s_. 4_d_. a gallon)".

So far the supposed Bishop of Ravenna. Now let us hear Procopius, an official in the Imperial army which brought the Ostrogothic kingdom to ruin:

"Theodoric was an extraordinary lover of justice, and adhered rigorously to the laws. He guarded the country from barbarian invasions, and displayed the greatest intelligence and prudence. There was in his government scarcely a trace of injustice towards his subjects, nor would he permit any of those under him to attempt anything of the kind, except that the Goths divided among themselves the same proportion of the land of Italy which Odovacar had allotted to his partisans. Thus then Theodoric was in name a tyrant (that is, an irregular, because barbarian, ruler), but in deed a true King (or Emperor), not inferior to the best of his predecessors, and his popularity grew greatly, both among Goths and Italians, and this fact (that he was popular with both nations) was contrary to the ordinary fas.h.i.+on of human affairs. For generally, as different cla.s.ses in the State want different things, the government which pleases one party has to incur the odium of those who do not belong to it.

"After a reign of thirty-seven years[59] he died, having been a terror to all his enemies, but leaving a deep regret for his loss in the hearts of his subjects".

[Footnote 59: Really thirty-two years and a half from the death of Odovacar, thirty-seven from the descent into Italy, thirty-eight from Theodoric's departure from Nov.]

So much for the general aspect of Theodoric's rule in Italy. Now let us consider rather more in detail what was his precise position in that country. And first as to the t.i.tle by which he was known. It is singularly difficult to say what this t.i.tle was. It is quite clear that Theodoric never claimed to be Emperor of the West, the successor of Honorius and Augustulus. But there are grave reasons for doubting whether he called himself, as has been often stated, "King of Italy". In the fifth century territorial t.i.tles of this kind were, if not absolutely unknown, at least very uncommon. The various Teutonic rulers generally took their t.i.tles from the nations whom they led to battle, Gaiseric being "King of the Vandals and Alans", Gundobad, "King of the Burgundians", Clovis, "King of the Franks", and so forth. Upon the whole, it seems most probable that Theodoric's full t.i.tle was "_King of the Goths and Romans in Italy_" [60] and that the allusion to "Romans" in his t.i.tle explains some of the conflict of testimony as to the source from whence he derived his t.i.tle of King. It is quite true that a Teutonic sovereign like Theodoric, sprung from a long line of royal ancestors, and chosen by the voice of his people to succeed their king, his father, would not need, and except under circ.u.mstances of great national humiliation would not accept, any grant of the kingly t.i.tle, as ruler over his own nation, from the Augustus at New Rome. But when it came to claiming by the same t.i.tle the obedience of Romans as well as Goths, especially in that country which had once been the heart of the Empire,--Theodoric, King of the Goths, might well be anxious to strain all the resources of diplomacy in order to obtain from the legitimate head of the Roman world the confirmation of those important words "and Romans", which appeared in his regal t.i.tle.[61]

[Footnote 60: Per Italiam.]

[Footnote 61: The chief advocates of the two opposite views here indicated are Prof. Dahn (in his "Konige der Germanen; Abtheilung iv".) and Prof. Gaudenzi ("Sui rapporti tra e l'Italia l'Impero d'Oriente"). I believe that the view which is suggested above is the true reconciliation of both theories.]

In the year 490, probably soon after the battle of the Adda, Theodoric sent Faustus, an eminent Roman n.o.ble and "Chief of the Senate", on an emba.s.sy to Zeno, "hoping that he might receive from that Emperor permission to clothe himself with the royal mantle". It will be remembered that in the compact between Roman and Teuton, which preceded Theodoric's invasion of Italy, words had been used which implied that he was only to rule as "loc.u.m tenens" of the Emperor till he himself should arrive to claim the supremacy. Now, with that conquest apparently almost completed, and with his rival fast sealed up in Ravenna, Theodoric sends a report of his success of the enterprise undertaken "on joint account", and desires to legalise his position by a formal grant of the mantle of royalty from the Autocrat of the World.

The time of the arrival of Theodoric's emba.s.sy at Constantinople was unpropitious, as the Emperor Zeno was already stricken by mortal illness. On the 9th of April, 491, he died, and was succeeded by the handsome but elderly life-guardsman, Anastasius, to whom Ariadne, widow of Zeno, gave her hand in marriage. The rights and duties which pertained to the compact between Theodoric and Zeno were perhaps considered as of only personal obligation. It might plausibly be contended by the Emperor's successor that he was not bound to recognise the new royalty of his predecessor's, "filius in arma", and by Theodoric that the conditional estate in Italy granted to him to hold "till Zeno should himself arrive" became absolute, now that by the death of Zeno that event was rendered impossible. However this may be, we hear no more of negotiations between the Gothic camp and the Court of Constantinople till the death of Odovacar(493). Then the Goths, apparently in some great a.s.sembly of the nation, "confirmed Theodoric to themselves as King", without waiting for the orders of the new Emperor.[62] Whatever this ceremony may have imported, it must have in some way conferred on Theodoric a fuller kings.h.i.+p, perhaps more of a territorial and less of a tribal sovereignty than he had possessed when he was wandering with his followers over the pa.s.ses of the Balkans.

[Footnote 62: Gothi sibi confirmaverunt regem Theoderic.u.m, non expectata jussione novi principis (Anastasii).--Anon. Vales., 57.]

Though Theodoric had not consulted the Emperor before taking this step, he sent an amba.s.sador, again Faustus, who now held the important post of "Master of the Offices",[63] to Constantinople, probably in order to give a formal notification of his self-a.s.sumed accession of dignity.[64]

[Footnote 63: The _Magister Officiorum_, who was at the head of the civil service of the Empire (or Kingdom), combined some of the duties of our Home Secretary with some of those of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs.]

[Footnote 64: Faustus was accompanied by another n.o.bleman--Irenus. We are not definitely informed of the object of their mission, but may fairly infer it from the date of their departure.]

No messages or emba.s.sies, however, could yet soothe the wounded pride of Anastasius. There was deep resentment at the Eastern Court, and for three or four years there seems to have been a rupture of diplomatic relations between Constantinople and Ravenna. At length, in the year 497, Theodoric sent another amba.s.sador, Festus, (also an eminent Roman n.o.ble and Chief of the Senate,) to Anastasius. This messenger, more successful than his predecessor, "made peace with Anastasius concerning Theodoric's premature a.s.sumption of royalty, and brought back all the ornaments of the palace which Odovacar had transmitted to Constantinople".[65]

[Footnote 65: Anon. Valesii.]

(497) This final ratification of the Ostrogoth's sovereignty in Italy is so vaguely described to us that it is difficult to see how much it may have implied. Probably it was to a certain extent convenient to both parties that it should be left vague. The Emperor would not abandon any hope, however shadowy, of one day winning back full possession of "the Hesperian kingdom". The King might hope that, in the course of years or generations, he himself, or his descendants, might sever the last link of dependence on Constantinople, perhaps might one day establish themselves as full-blown Emperors of Rome. The claims thus left in vagueness were the seeds of future difficulties, and bore fruit forty years later in a b.l.o.o.d.y and desolating war, but meanwhile the position, as far as we can ascertain it, seems to have been something like this.

Theodoric, "King of the Goths and Romans in Italy", was absolute ruler of the country _de facto_, except in so far as the Gothic nation, a.s.sembled under arms at its periodical parades, may have exercised some check on his full autocracy. He made peace and war, he nominated the high officers of state, even one of the two Consuls, who still kept alive the fiction of the Roman Republic; he probably regulated the admissions to the Senate; he was even in the last resort arbiter of the fortunes of the Roman Church.

On the other hand, he did not himself coin gold or silver money with his effigy; but in this he was not singular, for it was not till a generation or two had elapsed that any of the new barbarian royalties thought it worth while to claim this attribute of sovereignty. Though dressed in the purple of royalty, by a.s.suming the t.i.tle of King only, he accepted a position somewhat lower than that of the Emperor of the New Rome. He sent the names of the Consuls whom he had appointed to Constantinople, an act which might be represented as a mere piece of formal courtesy, or as a request for their ratification, according to the point of view of the narrator. With a similar show of courtesy, or submission, the accession of Theodoric's descendants to the throne was, when the occasion arose, notified to the then reigning Emperor. And there were many limitations which the good sense and statesmanlike feeling of the Ostrogothic king imposed on his exercise of the royal power, but which might be, perhaps were, represented as part of the fundamental compact between him and the Emperor of Rome. Such were the employment of men of Roman birth by preference, in all the great offices of the state; absolute impartiality between the rival creeds, Catholic and Arian (to the latter of which Theodoric himself was an adherent); and a determination to abstain as much as possible from all fresh legislation which might modify the rights and duties of the Roman inhabitants of Italy, the legislative power being chiefly exercised in order to provide for those new cases which arose out of the settlement of so large a number of new-comers of alien blood within the borders of the land.

After all the attempts which have been made to explain and to systematise the relation between the new barbarian royalties and the old and tottering Empire, much remains which is absolutely incapable of definition, but perhaps an historical parallel, though not strictly accurate, may somewhat aid our comprehension of the subject. It is well-known how for the first hundred years of the English _Raj_ in India the power which actually resided in an a.s.sociation of traders, the old East India Company, and which was wielded under their orders by a Clive, a Hastings, or a Wellesley, was theoretically vested in an Emperor, the descendant of "the Great Mogul", who lived in seclusion in his palace at Delhi, and who, though nominally all-powerful, had really, as Macaulay has said, "less power to help or to hurt than the youngest civil servant of the Company". Now a.s.suredly Anastasius and Justin, the Imperial contemporaries of Theodoric, were no mere phantoms of royalty, like the last Mogul Emperors of Delhi, but as far as actual efficacious share in the government of Italy went, the parallel holds good. Such deference as was paid to their name and authority was a mere courteous form; the whole power of the State--subject, as has been said, to the limitations still imposed by the popular inst.i.tutions of the Goths--was gathered up in the hands of Theodoric.

What then, it may be said, was gained by keeping up the fiction that Italy still formed part of the Roman Empire, and that Theodoric ruled in any sense as the delegate of the Emperor? For the present, much (though at the cost of future entanglements and complications), since it facilitated that union of "Romania" and "Barbaric.u.m", which was the next piece of work obviously necessary for Europe. If the reader will recur to that n.o.ble sentence of Ataulfus, which was quoted in the introduction to this book,[66] he will see that the reasoning of that great chieftain took this shape: "A Commonwealth must have laws. The Goths, accustomed for generations to their tameless freedom, have not acquired the habit of obedience to the laws. Till they acquire that habit, the administration of the State must be left in Roman hands, and all the authority of the King must be used in defence of Roman organisation".

[Footnote 66: See p. 4.]