The inhabitants, as a proof of their repentance and loyalty, seized and confined the person of Gildo in a dungeon; and his own despair saved him from the intolerable torture of supporting the presence of an injured and victorious brother.54 The captives and the spoils of Africa were laid at the feet of the emperor; but Stilicho, whose moderation appeared more conspicuous and more sincere in the midst of prosperity, still affected to consult the laws of the republic, and referred to the senate and people of Rome the judgment of the most illustrious criminals.55 Their trial was public and solemn; but the judges, in the exercise of this obsolete and precarious jurisdiction, were impatient to punish the African magistrates, who had intercepted the subsistence of the Roman people. The rich and guilty province was oppressed by the Imperial ministers, who had a visible interest to multiply the number of the accomplices of Gildo; and, if an edict of Honorius seems to check the malicious industry of informers, a subsequent edict, at the distance of ten years, continues and renews the prosecution of the offences which had been committed in the time of the general rebellion.56 The adherents of the tyrant who escaped the first fury of the soldiers and the judges might derive some consolation from the tragic fate of his brother, who could never obtain his pardon for the extraordinary services which he had performed. After he had finished an important war in the space of a single winter, Mascezel was received at the court of Milan with loud applause, affected gratitude, and secret jealousy; 57 and his death, which, perhaps, was the effect of accident, has been considered as the crime of Stilicho. In the passage of a bridge, the Moorish prince, who accompanied the master-general of the West, was suddenly thrown from his horse into the river; the officious haste of the attendants was restrained by a cruel and 54 The death of Gildo is expressed by Claudian (i. Cons. Stil. 1. 357) and his best interpreters, Zosimus and Orosius. 55 Claudian (ii. Cons. Stilich. 99-119) describes their trial (tremuit quos Africa nuper, cernunt rostra reos) and applauds the restoration of the ancient constitution. It is here that he introduces the famous sentence, so familiar to the friends of despotism: Nunquam libertas gratior exstat But the freedom which depends on royal piety scarcely deserves that appellation. 56 See the Theodosian Code, 1. ix. tit. xxxix. leg. 3, tit. xl. leg. 19. 57 Stilicho, who claimed an equal share in all the victories of Theodosius and his son, particularly asserts that Africa was recovered by the wisdom of his counsels (see an inscription produced by Baronius). [Gruter, p. 412. See Appendix 11.] perfidious smile which they observed on the countenance of Stilicho; and, while they delayed the necessary assistance, the unfortunate Mascezel was irrecoverably drowned.58 and char Honorius. The joy of the African triumph was happily connected with Marriage the nuptials of the emperor Honorius and of his cousin Maria, acter of the daughter of Stilicho; and this equal and honourable alliance A.D. 398 seemed to invest the powerful minister with the authority of a parent over his submissive pupil. The muse of Claudian was not silent on this propitious day: 59 he sung, in various and lively strains, the happiness of the royal pair, and the glory of the hero, who confirmed their union and supported their throne. The ancient fables of Greece, which had almost ceased to be the object of religious faith, were saved from oblivion by the genius of poetry. The picture of the Cyprian grove, the seat of harmony and love; the triumphant progress of Venus over her native seas, and the mild influence which her presence diffused in the palace of Milan; express to every age the natural sentiments of the heart, in the just and pleasing language of allegorical fiction. But the amorous impatience which Claudian attributes to the young prince 60 must excite the smiles of the court; and his beauteous spouse (if she deserved the praise of beauty) had not much to fear or to hope from the passions of her lover. Honorius was only in the fourteenth year of his age; Serena, the mother of his bride, deferred, by art or persuasion, the consummation of the royal nuptials; Maria died a virgin, after she had been ten years a wife; and the chastity of the emperor was secured by the coldness, or perhaps the debility, of his constitution.61 His subjects, who attentively studied the I have softened the narrative of Zosimus, which, in its crude simplicity, is almost incredible (1. v. p. 303 [c. 11]). Orosius damns the victorious general (p. 538 [7, 33]) for violating the right of sanctuary. Claudian, as the poet laureate, composed a serious and elaborate epithalamium of 840 lines: besides some gay Fescennines, which were sung in a more licentious tone on the wedding-night. (de Nuptiis Honor. et Mariæ, 587) and more freely in the Fescennines (112-126 [iv. 14-29, ed. Koch]). Dices "O" quotiens, "hoc mihi dulcius Tum victor madido prosilias toro See Zosimus, 1. v. p. 333 [c. 28]. 62 character of their young sovereign, discovered that Honorius was without passions, and consequently without talents; and that his feeble and languid disposition was alike incapable of discharging the duties of his rank or of enjoying the pleasures of his age. In his early youth he made some progress in the exercises of riding and drawing the bow: but he soon relinquished these fatiguing occupations, and the amusement of feeding poultry became the serious and daily care of the monarch of the West, who resigned the reins of empire to the firm and skilful hand of his guardian Stilicho. The experience of history will countenance the suspicion that a prince who was born in the purple received a worse education than the meanest peasant of his dominions; and that the ambitious minister suffered him to attain the age of manhood without attempting to excite his courage or to enlighten his understanding. The predecessors of Honorius were accustomed to animate by their example, or at least by their presence, the valour of the legions; and the dates of their laws attest the perpetual activity of their motions through the provinces of the Roman world. But the son of Theodosius passed the slumber of his life, a captive in his palace, a stranger in his country, and the patient, almost the indifferent, spectator of the ruin of the Western empire, which was repeatedly attacked, and finally subverted, by the arms of the Barbarians. In the eventful history of a reign of twenty-eight years, it will seldom be necessary to mention the name of the emperor Honorius. 63 62 Procopius de Bell. Gothico, 1. i. c. 2. I have borrowed the general practice of Honorius, without adopting the singular and, indeed, improbable tale which is related by the Greek historian. 63 The lessons of Theodosius, or rather Claudian (iv. Cons. Honor. 214-418), might compose a fine institution for the future prince of a great and free nation. It was far above Honorius and his degenerate subjects. CHAPTER XXX Revolt of the Goths-They plunder Greece-Two great Invasions of Italy by Alaric and Radagaisus-They are repulsed by Stilicho-The Germans overrun Gaul-Usurpation of Constantine in the West-Disgrace and Death of Stilicho I' the Goths. F the subjects of Rome could be ignorant of their obligations Revolt of to the great Theodosius, they were too soon convinced A.D. 395 how painfully the spirit and abilities of their deceased emperor had supported the frail and mouldering edifice of the republic. He died in the month of January; and before the end of the winter of the same year the Gothic nation was in arms.1 The Barbarian auxiliaries erected their independent standard; and boldly avowed the hostile designs which they had long cherished in their ferocious minds. Their countrymen, who had been condemned by the conditions of the last treaty to a life of tranquillity and labour, deserted their farms at the first sound of the trumpet, and eagerly resumed the weapons which they had reluctantly laid down. The barriers of the Danube were thrown open; the savage warriors of Scythia issued from their forests; and the uncommon severity of the winter allowed the poet to remark that they rolled their ponderous waggons over the broad and icy back of the indignant river". The unhappy natives of the provinces to the south of the Danube submitted to the calamities which, in the course of 1 The revolt of the Goths and the blockade of Constantinople are distinctly mentioned by Claudian (in Rufin. 1. ii. 7-100), Zosimus (1. v. p. 292 [c. 5]), and Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 29). [Alaric approached Constantinople, but did not blockade it. Cp. Keller, Stilicho, p. 31.] Claudian and Ovid 2 -Alii per terga ferocis Danubii solidata ruunt expertaque remis often amuse their fancy by interchanging the metaphors and properties of liquid water and solid ice. Much false wit has been expended in this easy exercise. twenty years, were almost grown familiar to their imagination; and the various troops of Barbarians who gloried in the Gothic name were irregularly spread from the woody shores of Dalmatia to the walls of Constantinople. The interruption, or at least the diminution, of the subsidy which the Goths had received from the prudent liberality of Theodosius was the specious pretence of their revolt; the affront was embittered by their contempt for the unwarlike sons of Theodosius; and their resentment was inflamed by the weakness or treachery of the minister of Arcadius. The frequent visits of Rufinus to the camp of the Barbarians, whose arms and apparel he affected to imitate, were considered as a sufficient evidence of his guilty correspondence; and the public enemy, from a motive either of gratitude or of policy, was attentive, amidst the general devastation, to spare the private estates of the unpopular præfect. The Goths, instead of being impelled by the blind and headstrong passions of their chiefs, were now directed by the bold and artful genius [Born be- of Alaric. That renowned leader was descended from the 360 and 370) noble race of the Balti; which yielded only to the royal dignity of the Amali: he had solicited the command of the Roman [Probably armies; and the Imperial court provoked him to demonstrate the folly of their refusal and the importance of their loss. Whatever hopes might be entertained of the conquest of Constantinople, the judicious general soon abandoned an impracticable enterprise. In the midst of a divided court and a discontented people, the Emperor Arcadius was terrified by the aspect of the Gothic arms; but the want of wisdom and valour was supplied by the strength of the city; and the fortifications, both of the sea and land, might securely brave the impotent and random darts of the Barbarians. Alaric disdained to tween A.D. made King A.D. 395] 4 3 Jerom, tom. i. p. 26 [ep. 60]. He endeavours to comfort his friend Heliodorus, bishop of Altinum, for the loss of his nephew Nepotian, by a curious recapitu. lation of all the public and private misfortunes of the times. See Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tom. xii. p. 200, &c. * Baltha or bold: origo mirifica, says Jornandes (c. 29). [The meaning of the passage of Jordanes may be, as Köpke thinks, that owing to his bravery Alaric was described inter suos as a true Baltha (opeúvuμos).] This illustrious race long continued to flourish in France, in the Gothic province of Septimania or Languedoc, under the corrupted appellation of Baux; and a branch of that family afterwards settled in the kingdom of Naples (Grotius in Prolegom. ad Hist. Gothic. p. 53). The lords of Baux, near Arles, and of seventy-nine subordinate places, were independent of the counts of Provence (Longuerue, Description de la France, tom. i. p. 357). |