The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (21 page)

Such spirit as was shown was directed less against the invaders than against Petronius Maximus himself. He too had resolved upon flight; but his subjects, who held him responsible for all their woes, were determined that he should not escape. On
31
May, with the Vandal fleet already approaching the Italian coast, the palace guard mutinied, fell upon their hopeless master, killed him, dismembered the body and flung the pieces into the Tiber. He had reigned for just seventy days; and three days after his death King Gaiseric stepped ashore at Ostia. For the fourth time in less than half a century, a barbarian army stood at the gates of Rome.

Had it not been for Pope Leo, who had turned back Attila on the banks of the Mincio three years before, it would have been the fifth; and now once again the Pope set out for the barbarian camp to plead on behalf of his city. This time he was on far weaker ground: Gaiseric was already on the threshold of his objective, his men were healthy and well-fed, and he had no advancing army in his rear. On the other hand, though an Arian, he was at least a Christian - and as such might be expected to show some respect for the papal dignity. Leo's mission was not entirely successful - that would have been too much to hope - but neither was it a total failure. The Vandal refused to be thwarted of his plunder; he promised, however, that there would be no killing, no torturing to discover the location of hidden treasure and no destruction of buildings, public or private. It may, perhaps, have been cold comfort; but it was better than nothing.

And so the gates were opened, and the barbarian horde passed into an unresisting city. For fourteen relentless days they quietly and systematically stripped it of its wealth: the gold and silver ornaments from the churches, the statues from the palaces, the sacred vessels from the Jewish synagogue, even the gilded copper roof - or half of it - from the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Everything was carted to Ostia, loaded into the waiting ships and taken off for the enrichment of Carthage. Their work done, Gaiseric and his men departed in good order, forcing Eudoxia and her two daughters to accompany them
1
and leaving a desecrated and humiliated city behind. True to their word, however, they had left the people and the buildings unharmed. They had behaved like brigands, certainly; but not, on this occasion, like Vandals.

Less than two years after the death of Valentinian, in late January or early February
457,
the Eastern Emperor Marcian followed him to the grave; and with Marcian the male Theodosian line - of which, through his marriage to Pulcheria, he must be counted an honorary member -came to an end. Such moments of dynastic exhaustion were always dangerous for the Roman Empire. Theoretically, the Augustus was still chosen by the army; if the diadem had long appeared to be almost hereditary, this was only because so many Emperors had followed the practice of nominating their sons and having them formally recognized during their own lifetimes. Marcian, without male issue, had nominated no one. Pulcheria would doubtless have saved the situation as before had she been alive; but she had died - a few months after Attila - in
453
.
2
Her two younger sisters (who had in any case never involved themselves in affairs of state) had both predeceased her. The throne, in short, seemed emptier than it had since the death of Julian; and the people of Constantinople looked to the army to fill it - or, more precisely, to its chief: the
magister militum per
orientem,
Aspar.

Aspar had first distinguished himself as long ago as
424,
when he had been a member of the expedition to Ravenna which had deposed Johannes and placed young Valentinian on the throne. Eight years later, in
432,
he had commanded the army sent out by Theodosius to North Africa to

reinforce the local legions and, it was hoped, turn the tide against the Vandal invasion; despite his failure, his reputation for leadership and personal courage had remained undiminished. Since then he had served as Consul, and his sons had been Consuls in their turn; he now bore the title 'First of the Patricians', and would in fact almost certainly have succeeded Theodosius instead of Marcian - who, when he had first arrived in Constantinople, penniless, from Thrace, had joined Aspar's domestic staff and remained a member of it for nearly twenty years - but for two things: he was an Alan - a member of that formerly nomadic, pastoral Germanic clan that in
370
had been driven by the Huns from its homeland beyond the Black Sea - and, like nearly all the Christian barbarians, an Arian.

There could, in consequence, be no question of Aspar's own succession. Like the Frankish general Arbogast, however - whose position in the West had been strikingly similar sixty-four years before - he was quite content to be a kingmaker. Significantly, his choice fell on another of his underlings -the steward of his own household, an orthodox Christian from the province of Dacia named Leo. The legions obediently acclaimed their new Emperor and raised him on their shields according to tradition; but now, for the first time, a second ceremony was instituted. On
7
February
45 7,
in the course of a solemn mass in the Church of the Holy Wisdom, Leo was formally crowned by Patriarch Anatolius - a clear reflection of the increased importance of the Patriarchate since the Council of Chalcedon and at the same time a sign that the old order was beginning to change: away from the venerable military traditions on which the Empire had been founded and towards that religious, mystical concept of sovereignty which was to grow ever more insistent as the centuries went by.

Leo had little formal education; he possessed, on the other hand, a full measure of good sound common sense and - equally important -a mind of his own; if Aspar had thought that he was placing a puppet on the throne of Byzantium, he soon found himself mistaken. A furious dispute between the two broke out within weeks of Leo's accession - probably over his refusal to appoint one of Aspar's sons to a position of high emolument - and was further exacerbated by the Emperor's determination to clip the wings of the dangerously powerful Germanic element in the State, of which Aspar was the outstanding representative. In pursuance of this policy, he resolved to purge the army of Germans and to reconstruct it around a nucleus of Isaurians, a tough mountain folk hailing from a wild region of the Taurus south of Iconium and Lystra, around the basin of the Calycadnus river. Aspar, equally determined to preserve the status quo, fought back; and
the rivalry between Emperor and general soon became the principal leitmotiv of Leo's reign.

It was perhaps inevitable that this rivalry should produce two distinct factions within the government. On the Emperor's side the leading influence was that of an Isaurian chief
tain whose original name, Taras
icodissa Rousoumbladeotes, he very sensibly changed, before marrying Leo's daughter Ariadne, to Zeno. But Aspar too had adherents within the Palace, the chief among whom was
Basileus
, the brother of the Emperor's wife Verina. The two could scarcely have been more different. Aspar was a barbarian of little or no culture, who spent his leisure hours, wrote Priscus, 'with actors and jugglers and all stage amusements'; as a convinced Arian, he came near to denying the godhead of Christ; as a leader of men, he was the finest general of hi
s time. Basilise
us, by contrast, was a Hellenized, well-educated Roman; a fanatical monophysite, for whom Christ was divine rather than human; something of a joke in Constantinople by reason of his consuming desire for the imperial diadem, which he made no attempt to conceal; and, as would soon be proved, a man totally unfitted for any sort of command. Despite their differences, however, they were flung together by their common hatred for the Isaurians; and when the Emperor decided in
468
to launch a massive naval expedition against King Gaiseric and his Vandals, he was persuaded by hi
s wife and Aspar to put Basilise
us at its head.

To many a Roman, this expedition seemed long overdue. Thirteen years had passed since Gaiseric's sack of Rome, during which time the Empire had not stirred against him. The West, to be sure, was so near the point of collapse as to be no longer capable of avenging the insult; but the apathy of the East was harder to defend. Certain apologists for Marcian had attempted to excuse his inertia by claiming that in his youth, while a member of Aspar's ill-fated campaign of
432
against the Vandals, he had been captured, taken with a group of fellow-prisoners to the palace at Carthage, and there forced to wait for several hours in the courtyard with no protection from the broiling sun. Soon he had laid down to sleep; and Gaiseric, looking down from a window, had been astonished to see a huge eagle hovering above him, shading him with its wings. It was, he immediately understood, a sign from heaven; the young man clearly had a great future in store. Summoning him to his presence, he offered to release him on the spot in return for a promise that, whatever his destiny, he would never again take up arms against the Vandal Kingdom. Marcian had agreed, and had kept his word for the rest of his life.

It was a good story; but it is unlikely to have been widely believed.

Marcian had been a straightforward, down-to-earth character, not at all the sort to whom miracles occur. He had, on the other hand, inaugurated a blessed period - which Leo was to continue after his death - of peace, prosperity and good government, after eighteen years of which there could be no justification for leaving the Vandals still unpunished. Besides, he had another, even better reason for intervention: Gaiseric, a fanatical Arian, had initiated a savage persecution of the orthodox Christians. A number of churches and monasteries had been burnt to ashes, and many venerable ecclesiastics, if not actually put to death, had been dispossessed, driven from their homes, and even occasionally tortured. Leo's long-awaited announcement of his proposed expedition was therefore greeted with relief and satisfaction, and preparations began. They were conceived on a colossal scale: over a thousand ships, we are told, were collected from all over the eastern Mediterranean, and a hundred thousand men. If these figures are correct, the combined naval and military force should have been more than enough to wipe the Vandals off the face of Africa, and under virtually any other commander would certainly have done so.

Not, however, under
Basileus
. According to Procopius - our only source for the campaign
1
- it began promisingly enough, with two highly successful subsidiary expeditions in which Marcellinus, Lord of Dalmatia, drove the Vandals from Sardinia while a Byzantine general named Heraclius landed in Tripolitania with a small force and advanced on Carthage from the south-east.
Basileus
had meanwhile landed at a place called Mercurion near Cape Bon; but instead of marching directly on the Vandal capital and taking the enemy by surprise, he settled down there and showed no inclination to go further. This gave Gaiseric precisely the opportunity he needed. He sent envoys to Mercurion to say that he would do all that the Emperor required of him, and asking only for five days' grace, during which he would make the necessary arrangements.
Basileus
, already congratulating himself on a bloodless victory, was only too ready to agree.

It was the greatest mistake of his life. Gaiseric spent the five days preparing his war fleet, together with a number of empty hulks to be used as fire-boats. The wind then turned, exactly as he had foreseen; and on the fifth day his ships sailed before a fresh following breeze into

i
History
of
the
Wars,
111,
vi. Despite Gibbon's strictures (p.
16m.),
Procopius is probably quite reliable here. The true facts would have been well known in his day; and he had, moreover, been a member of the expedition against Carthage of
553
, in which Bclisarius succeeded where
Basileus
had failed.

Mercurion, towing the hulks behind them. Just as they entered the harbour, the sailors lit the fuses, releasing the blazing hulks to bear down into the centre of the densely packed Byzantine fleet.
Basileus
and his men were powerless to stop them or to quench the flames, which spread almost instantaneously from one vessel to the next. 'And,' writes Procopius,

as the fire advanced, the Roman fleet was naturally thrown into confusion, and the noise of the wind and the crackling flames was mingled with the cries of the soldiers and sailors as they shouted commands to one another, using long poles to push off the fire-boats and each others' ships . .. And now the Vandals too were among them, ramming and sinking their vessels, taking prisoner such of the soldiers as attempted to escape and seizing their arms for plunder.

Within a few hours it was all over. The wretched
Basileus
, who had taken flight at an early stage of the battle, returned to Constantinople, where the mood of anger, disappointment and humiliation was such that he was obliged to seek refuge in St Sophia. Only after impassioned entreaties by his sister the Empress did Leo agree to spare his life.

It was fortunate for Leo that the blame for the North African
debacle
fell so squarely on the head of its leader. If anyone else was held responsible it was Aspar, who was suspected in some quarters of having secretly sided with his fellow-Arian Gaiseric and bribed
Basileus
to betray his trust. This rumour was almost certainly baseless; it was, however, a reflection of Aspar's extreme unpopularity, which was in no way diminished two years later when he persuaded - or, more likely, intimidated - the Emperor into agreeing to the betrothal of his younger daughter, the Princess Leontia, to his own second son Patricius, and proclaiming the latter Caesar. Just what pressure he was able to bring to bear on Leo to do this we can only guess; but given the Emperor's strict orthodoxy and his repugnance to the prospect of an Arian successor it must have been considerable.

In other fields as well, the activities of Aspar and his sons were causing concern. Already in
469
they had tried to assassinate Zeno and very nearly succeeded; and towards the end of
471
the elder son, Ardabur, was found to be involved in dark intrigues with the Isaurian faction in an attempt to win it over to his father's side. For Leo, this was the last straw. One morning in the imperial palace his guards suddenly drew their swords and cut down both Aspar and Ardabur; Patricius was badly wounded, but is thought eventually to have recovered.

It was presumably these murders which led the contemporary historian Malchus to give Leo the nickname
Makelles,
the Butcher; he also shows his dislike by describing him as 'a repository of every vice' and castigating him for his rapaciousness and avarice. Yet even Malchus has to admit that Leo was generally accounted the most fortunate, or most successful -
eutuch
esteros
-
of all the Emperors that had preceded him, and there can be little doubt that he was, though perhaps not loved, at least respected by the vast majority of his subjects. If he hardly deserved his title of 'the Great' - bestowed on him, apparently, for his religious orthodoxy rather than for any outstanding strength of character or brilliance of statesmanship - he was on the whole a just and merciful ruler; and when he died on
3
February
474
he had, by the standards of the time, remarkably little blood on his hands.

Five months previously, Leo had nominated his successor: not, as everyone had expected, his son-in-law Zeno but the latter's seven-year-old son, called Leo like his grandfather. Whether the Emperor's decision was taken out of personal animosity towards Zeno, whether he felt that the Isaurians were not of imperial calibre or whether he simply wished the diadem to pass to his own flesh and blood we cannot tell; in the event, however, the question proved academic - Ariadne having instructed her son, when his father came to him to make his formal obeisance in the Hippodrome, to crown him co-Emperor on the spot. It was as well that she did. Nine months later young Leo was dead.

One of Zeno's first acts on his succession was to put an end to the Vandal War. As his peace-maker he appointed a distinguished senator, Severus, raising him to the rank of Patrician as a sign of the importance that he attached to the mission; and he could not have made a better choice. Severus impressed Gaiseric by refusing to accept any presents for himself; far better than any gift, he said, would be the release of the Roman captives. The Vandal King immediately freed all those who were in bondage to himself and his family and gave Severus permission to redeem as many more as he could.
1
Peace was signed before the end of the year; never again were the Vandals to cause the Empire concern.

It was an auspicious start; but already the storm-clouds were gathering. By now the Isaurians had made themselves thoroughly unpopular. Unlike the Germanic tribesmen they were subjects of the Empire, and could not therefore technically be called barbarians; in their behaviour, however,

1
Much of the necessary ransom money was personally raised by Severus on his return, from the sale of the magnificent robes and gold and silver vessels by which he had impressed the Vandal court with the majesty of Byzantium.