The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (16 page)

According to Claudian one of the assassins shouted, as he struck, that he was acting on behalf of Stilicho; but there is no other evidence to suggest that the murder had been instigated by the
magister militum
of the West. It may equally well have originated with Eutropius, or with Gainas and his soldiers on their way to the capital, or with any combination of the three. In fact, whoever was responsible, the death of Rufinus had little effect on the conduct of affairs. Now that Eutropius alone had the Emperor's ear, corruption, peculation and the open buying and selling of offices became more widespread than ever. 'One man,' laments Claudian,
gives his country seat for the government of Asia; another uses his wife's jewels for the purchase of Syria; yet a third buys Bithynia, and buys it too dear, by the sacrifice of the home of his fathers. In the public antechamber of Eutropius there hangs a tariff, showing the prices of the various provinces . .. The eunuch seeks to wipe out his personal ignominy in the general disgrace and, as he has sold himself, now desires to sell everything else.
2

In
399
Eutropius managed to get himself nominated Consul - a step which almost certainly hastened his downfall. Although the title had long been purely honorary, it remained the highest distinction that the

Empire could bestow, one which the Emperors themselves were proud to bear - usually more than once - during their reigns; when it was given outside the imperial family it had been invariably reserved for Romans of high birth and with long records of distinguished service behind them. To see it now assumed by an erstwhile slave and emasculated male prostitute was more than the free-born Roman population of Constantinople could stand. Ironically, matters were brought to a head not by the Senate or the Roman aristocracy but by a Goth - that same Gainas whom Stilicho had entrusted with the army of the East and whose soldiers had cut down Rufinus four years before. On his arrival in the capital his appointment as
magister militum per orient
em
had been confirmed; thus, when in the spring of
399
a new revolt broke out among the Gothic settlers in Phrygia, Gainas was - despite his own Gothic origins - one of the two generals sent out to crush it. On his arrival, however, he secretly changed sides; and in the ensuing battle he and the rebels swiftly destroyed the Roman elements in the army and were left masters of the field. Still posing as a loyal servant of the Emperor, he then sent a message to Arcadius informing him that the insurgents were too numerous to be put down by force and that it would be necessary to come to terms with them; fortunately they were making only a few most reasonable demands which, he recommended, should be accepted without further ado. The first of these proved to be the surrender of Eutropius. Arcadius hesitated; he needed his old chamberlain and relied on him. But now another powerful voice was heard - that of the Empress Eudoxia herself.

Eudoxia is the first of that long line of Byzantine Empresses, beautiful, worldly and ambitious, whose names were to become bywords for luxury and sensuality. Widely rumoured to entertain whole strings of lovers -one of whom, a nobleman whom we know only as John, was probably to be the father of her son Theodosius - she was said to flaunt her depravity, together with her court ladies, by wearing a fringe combed down low over the forehead, the recognized trademark of a courtesan. She owed her position entirely to Eutropius; foolishly, however, he had reminded her of the fact once too often, and she was furthermore deeply jealous of his influence over her husband. In the four years since their marriage, relations between herself and Arcadius had deteriorated to the point where they no longer made any secret of their mutual loathing.

And so, reluctantly, the Emperor gave the order; and Eutropius fled in terror to seek asylum in the Church of St Sophia, flinging himself at the feet of the bishop, St John Chrysostom - who, he whimperingly pointed out, also owed his elevation to him alone. This lugubrious cleric, who had been lured by a trick to the capital in the previous year and had never wanted the see in the first place, had no more affection for his self-styled benefactor than did Eudoxia; but he could not deny the right of sanctuary. When the soldiers arrived soon afterwards to demand the surrender of the fugitive, he stood implacably before them and turned them away, while the trembling eunuch cowered beneath the high altar.

Eutropius was safe in St Sophia; unfortunately, as he well knew, he was also trapped there. On the following day - a Sunday - after a cold and uncomfortable night, he had to suffer the additional humiliation of listening to a blistering sermon of the kind that had earned the preacher his name,1 pronounced in the presence of a vast congregation but addressed to him alone, on the text: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity'.
2
It was probably this homily - which must have shrivelled him up more than ever - that persuaded Eutropius to surrender himself at last, on condition that his life should be spared. He was exiled to Cyprus, but at the insistence of Gainas was shortly afterwards brought back and - on the transparently specious grounds that his physical immunity was assured only in Constantinople -
tried at Chalcedon, where he was condemned and executed.

Gainas had won; but he was not long to enjoy his victory. Early in the year
400
he returned to the capital, where he tried to set up a power base as Rufinus and Eutropius had done before him; but hostile groups within the city prevented his ever acquiring a similar degree of authority, and a secret attempt to capture the imperial palace - presumably with the object of murdering its occupants and seizing the throne for himself - was foiled almost before it started. In the absence of adequate contemporary information it is impossible to establish the full story; some time towards the end of the summer, however, after six months of increasing unrest, Gainas suddenly ordered his army of Goths to prepare for departure. Suspecting that some fresh coup was being planned, the anxious populace gathered in the streets; and so highly charged was the atmosphere that fighting broke out between them and the departing barbarians. Most of the latter had already left the city; but the remainder, heavily outnumbered, fell easy victims to the anti-Gothic feeling that had been building up for years. The gates were shut to prevent their escape, and
7,000
were dead by morning - many having been burnt alive in their church near the imperial palace, in which they had taken sanctuary.

1
Chrysostom,
literally 'the golden-mouthed'.

2 St John Chrysostom,
Homily to Eutropius, Oeuvre
s,
Vol. I, p.
3
j.

Gainas himself, with what was left of his army, wandered rather hopelessly through Thrace before attempting to cross the Hellespont into Asia, where he sustained still heavier losses at the hands of a loyalist army that awaited him on the other side. He then struggled northward again towards the Danube, eventually falling captive to the Hunnish King Uldin, who cut off his head and sent it as a present to Arcadius. Yet another adventurer, seeking to turn the growing confusion in the Empire to his own advantage, had paid the price of his temerity.

The fourth century had been a fateful one indeed for the Roman Empire. It had seen the birth of a new capital on the Bosphorus - a capital which, although not yet the sole focus of a united political state, was steadily growing in size and importance while the world of the Western Mediterranean subsided into increasing anarchy; and it had seen the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Emperor and his subjects. It ended, however, on a note of bathos: in the West with silence and inertia in the face of the barbarian menace, in the East with a whimper - the only possible description for the reactions of the most feckless Emperor yet to occupy the throne of Constantinople as he watched successive strong men meet their variously violent deaths, while his own vicious and domineering wife insulted and humiliated him in public, holding him up to ridicule as a fool, an incompetent and a cuckold. The new century, on the other hand, began with a bang. In the early summer of
401,
Alaric the Goth invaded Italy.

The greatest of all the Gothic leaders - and the only one whose name was to reverberate down the halls of history - Alaric effortlessly dominates the early years of the fifth century. When it opened, he was still only some thirty years old, having been chief of the Visigoths since the age of twenty-five. In this capacity he had left friends and enemies alike in no doubt of his mettle, speading terror from the walls of Constantinople to the southern Peloponnese; but, by the obvious readiness with which he had accepted the title of
magister militum
when it had been offered him, he had also shown something else: that he was not fundamentally hostile to the Roman Empire. The truth, indeed, was quite the contrary: Alaric fought not to overthrow the Empire, but to establish a permanent home for his people within it, in such a way that they might enjoy their own local autonomy while he, as their chieftain, would be granted high imperial rank. If only the Western Emperor and the Roman Senate could have understood this simple fact, they might still have averted the final catastrophe. By their lack of comprehension they made it inevitable.

To any intelligent observer, the only surprising thing about Alaric's invasion was that he had delayed it so long. It was, after all, four years since he had withdrawn with his army into Illyricum, and he was obviously not going to remain there for ever. In those four years the Empire might have been expected to take some measures to avert the coming onslaught; it was typical of Honorius - whose only interest at this time seems to have been the raising of poultry - that nothing of any kind had been done. Thus, as news of the invasion spread, blind panic spread with it. Claudian lists a whole succession of portents and prophecies, prodigious hailstorms, an eclipse of the moon and even a comet, ending with the appearance of two wolves which suddenly started up under the Emperor's horse while he was reviewing his cavalry and whose stomachs were subsequently found to contain human hands. Slowly and, it seemed, irresistibly, the huge Gothic host lumbered down the valley of the Isonzo, their wives and families trailing behind: as so often with the barbarian invaders, this was not just an army but an entire nation on the march. Not pausing to besiege either Aquileia or Ravenna, the two greatest cities of north-east Italy (Venice was still only a cluster of desolate sandbanks in the lagoon) they headed west towards Milan, the young Emperor fleeing before them to Asti in Piedmont; and it was just a few miles from that city that they found the Roman army awaiting them, the familiar figure of Stilicho at its head.

The battle was fought just outside Pollentia - now the little village of Pollenzo, but in imperial days an important manufacturing city - on Easter Sunday, 402. Of its outcome the chroniclers of the time give widely differing reports. It seems to have been the worst kind of battle: protracted, bloody and ultimately indecisive. At any rate the Goths advanced no further but retired once more to the East. On their way, Alaric made a surprise attack on Verona where, if Claudian is to be believed, he sustained an indisputable defeat at the hands of Stilicho. Once again, however, the Vandal captain allowed him to withdraw beyond the frontiers of Illyricum, his army still basically intact.

Stilicho had now had Alaric twice at his mercy - possibly three times, if we include that curious moment in Thessaly in 395 - only to let him go again; and the moment has now come to examine his motives rather more closely. From the start, his attitude towards the Gothic leader seems to have been strangely ambiguous. Professor Bury, in his
History
of
the Later Roman Empire,
first voices his suspicions when Stilicho tarries in Milan with the army of the East after the battle of the Frigidus; perhaps, he suggests, he had advance warning of Alaric's revolt and
deliberately held back so that his own intervention might be even more essential at a later stage. Next comes the incident of the Thessalian stockade: does that, one wonders, ring altogether true? Was Alaric really so reluctant to fight? Or was Stilicho reluctant to weaken him? Oddest of all is the Goths' escape at Pholoe: Should we perhaps link this with Stilicho's known ambition to seize Illyricum and the Balkan peninsula from the Eastern and to attach it to the Western Empire - possibly under the dominion of his son Eucherius as co-Emperor - and deduce that Alaric may have agreed, in return for his freedom, to become his accomplice in the scheme? The hypothesis certainly seems plausible enough in view of subsequent events. We know too that Stilicho had growing dynastic ambitions; indeed, he was already the Emperor's father-in-law, having married his daughter Maria to Honorius in
398.
1
Whatever the truth may be, it seems clear that he saw the Goths as being potentially useful allies in any future action against the Eastern Empire, and he had no desire either to break their strength completely or to sacrifice all of their goodwill.

At this time, however, Stilicho was still concealing his long-term plans; it was another five years before he came out into the open. Meanwhile relations between East and West had steadily deteriorated, largely owing to the character and the tribulations of the Bishop of Constantinople, St John Chrysostom. This saintly but insufferable prelate, by his scorching castigations of the Empress and her way of life, had made himself dangerously unpopular at court; and in
403
his long and impassioned dispute with Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, gave Eudoxia the excuse for which she had been waiting: Chrysostom was deposed and exiled to Bithynia. But however many enemies he may have had in high places, he enjoyed considerable support among the people: riots broke out, followed by furious fighting in the streets between the local citizenry and the people of Alexandria who had come to Constantinople to support their bishop. That night, moreover, there was an earthquake - which so frightened the superstitious Empress (it was rumoured that she had a miscarriage on the spot) that the exiled prelate was recalled and reinstated.

John had won the first round; and if only he had agreed to moderate his tone a little all might have been well. Alas, he did nothing of the kind. Only a few weeks later he made a vigorous protest when a silver statue of Eudoxia - who had had herself proclaimed Augusta three

1
The marriage evoked
100
lines of peculiarly flatulent verse from Claudian, the lipithalamium ending with an affecting picture of an infant son sitting on his parents' knees. Maria is said, however, to have lived and died a virgin.

years before - was erected in the Augusteum, just outside St Sophia: the noise of the inauguration ceremony, he claimed, interrupted his services. Thereafter the breach between bishop and imperial family was complete, Eudoxia refusing to allow her husband any communication at all with the leading ecclesiastic of the Empire. Early the following spring, in the course of another synod summoned to decide upon the dispute with Alexandria, Chrysostom was again condemned; a recent sermon of his, containing the passage, 'Again Herodias rages . . . again she demands the head of John on a platter,' may not have helped his case. On this occasion, doubtless remembering the events of the previous year, Arcadius contented himself with debarring the bishop from his church; but matters came to a head at Easter when two thousand catechumens awaiting baptism gathered in the Baths of Constantine instead. What began as a service rapidly degenerated into a demonstration; the soldiers were called in to restore order; and the baptismal water, we are told, ran red with blood. On
24
June the recalcitrant bishop was exiled for the second time; once again, disaster overtook Constantinople. That same evening St Sophia was destroyed by fire - arson was suspected but never proved - the flames being blown by a strong north wind on to the Senate House nearby. By next morning the two buildings were charred and blackened shells, and the city's most important collection of antique statuary was lost. Less than four months later, on
6
October, there came the final, unmistakable sign of divine displeasure: the Empress had another miscarriage, which on this occasion proved fatal.