163- Theodosius's Walls

For the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world?

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We've spent the last two weeks focused primarily on the Western Empire during the first decade of the 400s AD.

So before we just keep barreling along into the sack of Rome and the fall of Constantine III, I want to double back and bring the Eastern Empire up to speed.

But just so you know, as soon as we're caught up, we're going to head right back to the West because basically, that's where all the action is right now.

The thing to understand about the Eastern half of the Empire in the years after Theodosius' death is that though the Eastern Court was far less stable politically than the Stilico-led Western Court, the Eastern provinces as a whole were far more stable than the western provinces as a whole.

The population migrations brought on by the Hunnic advance onto the Hungarian plain tended to drive displaced local barbarian tribes west rather than south, which meant, as we saw last week, that the western provinces wound up dealing with the consequences of those disruptive migrations.

On top of that, Sassanid Persia had been peaceful since signing a treaty with Theodosius back in the 380s, a treaty that Stilico helped broker, so the Eastern legions could afford to focus on deflecting those barbarian migrations west instead of allowing them to come south.

Indeed, in just a minute, Constantinople and the Sassanids will renew their peaceful terms, and that renewal will further stabilize the eastern provinces, both because it meant the Romans didn't have to pour resources into fighting the Persians, but also because it meant the lucrative trade routes to and from Asia remained open for business.

As we've seen, in the late 390s and early 400s, the Emperor Arcadius was dominated by a shifting caste of ministers and generals who focused on winning and holding power at least as much as they focused on actually governing the Eastern Empire.

The only permanent political presence during these years was the Empress Eudoxia, whose influence over her husband never wavered while all these ministers rose and fell around her.

In fact, the only real challenge to her authority came not from some ambitious prefect or powerful general, but from an incorruptible clergyman who had risen to become bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostum, also known as John the Golden Mouth.

Though he would never achieve the same sort of political success that Ambrose of Milan had achieved, there were two critical similarities between the two men.

First, both were fearless when it came to challenging imperial authority, and second, both were wildly popular with the masses.

John tended towards a vow of poverty form of Christianity, and early in his life he had gone so far as to spend a few years living as an ascetic hermit.

After nearly dying from his self-imposed deprivations, John returned to civilization and began preaching.

He liked to use simple language to teach practical interpretations of scripture rather than using high falutin rhetoric to teach snooze-inducing abstract philosophy, and he quickly became a favorite of the common people.

Because of this popularity, John was tapped to become Bishop of Constantinople in 398, but at first he refused.

He genuinely did not want to get caught up in the trappings of power that came along with such an important office.

But when pressed, he relented, though he refused to temper his beliefs in any way.

He was unapologetic about denouncing the extravagant lifestyles enjoyed by the ruling elite, and one of his favorite targets became Eudoxia, who was similarly unapologetic about said extravagant lifestyle.

Pretty soon, the bishop's constant hammering began to have an effect, and the popularity of the Empress fell precipitously.

So in 403, Eudoxia finally decided she had had enough of this gadfly bishop, and so she organized a church council whose sole purpose was to oust John and replace him with someone more agreeable.

But the Empress underestimated John's popularity, and when the council completed its task and John was dumped from the bishopric, unrest, bordering on riots, broke out across Constantinople.

Plus, on the very night that John was taken into imperial custody in advance of his expected banishment, an earthquake struck, which almost everyone, including the Empress herself, took to be a sign of God's displeasure with how they had treated the bishop.

He was released from custody and reinstated to his position at once.

This brush with exile dampened John's spirit not at all.

The very next year, a silver statue of Eudoxia was erected near the bishop's church, which sent him straight to the pulpit to denounce both the empress and her shiny new statue.

This would prove to be the last straw, and when Eudoxia and her allies moved against John this time, there was no earthquake to make them think twice.

The bishop was exiled from Constantinople, and despite a concerted campaign to recall him, he never would return.

Unfortunately for the Empress, though, she would not have long to enjoy an uncritiqued life of luxury, because in mid-404 she died suddenly of a pregnancy-related infection.

Though it's really not polite to dance on anyone's grave, objectively speaking, it's hard not to see Eudoxia's death as a net positive for the Empire, because it cleared room for the new Praetorian prefect, Flavius Anthemius, to rise up and seize hold of power.

Without a jealous empress around to potentially stab him in the back, Anthemius was able to dominate the Eastern Emperors for the next decade, first Arcadius and then Theodosius II, and see to it that the Empire was run with a consistent competence it had not enjoyed in years.

Not only that, but Anthemius is more or less personally responsible for the Byzantine Empire holding out as long as it did, because as soon as he came to power, the prefect initiated one of the most important construction projects in world history, the building of the Theodosian Walls.

Now I have had the good fortune to stand atop the Theodosian Walls on three separate occasions, and I can tell you straight up that there is a reason Constantinople was simply invulnerable to overland assaults.

When you approach the fortification line, there is a short initial wall to trip up you and your siege engines.

That short wall stands in front of the much larger outer wall, which stands about eight meters tall.

Behind that much larger wall are huge towers about 20 meters tall that would be able to rain hell and damn nation down on your head while you struggled valiantly to get over the top of the eight meter wall.

But once you're over the top of the eight meter wall, the reality of your situation would have hit you full in the face.

Because about 20 meters beyond the 8 meter wall was an even larger wall, about 12 meters tall.

All you've managed to do is plop yourself down in a no man's land trench filled with mud and debris that would stick you in place while the soldiers on top of the even bigger inner wall and the guard towers rained further hell and damnation down on your head.

No one got out of that pit of despair alive.

The Theodosian walls would be completed around four hundred fourteen, during the reign of young Theodosius II, hence the name, and for the next thousand years they would repel every attempt to take Constantinople by land.

It took the invention of of the cannon, and then the construction of literally the biggest cannon ever built by humans to finally break through.

I've posted some pictures that we took of the walls during the first set of History of Rome tours up at thehistoryofro.typad.com.

Honestly, my heart goes out to every foot soldier ever ordered by some megalomaniacal general to attack the Theodosian walls.

With the physical defense of the capital city taken care of, Anthemius then turned his attention to broader security concerns.

As I just mentioned, historically speaking, the biggest threats to the Eastern Empire always came from the direction of Persia, first from the Parthians and then from the Sassanids.

With the Huns now moving decisively onto the Hungarian plain, where they would pose a permanent threat to the northern border, Anthemius knew that any kind of conflict with the Sassanids would be disastrous.

The Huns already posed enough of a threat that Anthemius had ordered a humongous wall built to guard Constantinople.

If troops ever had to be peeled off to fight in Syria, I mean, that could have been the ball game right there.

So Anthemius sent envoys to the Sassanid court and very respectfully renewed the terms that had kept the two empires at peace for the last generation.

In other words, at just the right moment, Constantinople fell under the sway of an eminently practical man who did not suffer any trumped up delusions of grandeur.

He was not petty, he did not make politics personal, and he didn't appear to have much of an agenda beyond protecting and serving the Empire.

What made Anthemius' arrival so perfectly timed was the fact that Arcadius wound up dying on his watch in 408.

As we've seen ad nauseum, transitions of imperial power can be times fraught with danger, and even though an heir was in place, that heir was just seven years old.

So opportunists of every shape and size were sharpening their long knives and getting ready to make their move.

But with Anthemius firmly entrenched in power, the transition from Arcadius to the seven-year-old Theodosius II was, well, kind of anticlimactic.

The prefect was able to provide a continuity of leadership and a continuity of policy that allowed the empire to move seamlessly into being ruled by a boy emperor without missing a beat.

Child emperors are only as good as their regents, and not unlike Stilico and Honorius, in Anthemius, Theodosius II had a rock-solid regent.

Speaking of Stilico, the only thing that really could have screwed up the transition of power in 408 would have been Stilico showing up and making all kinds of noise about his own claim to power.

Though I think it's a good thing that the trip never happened, it would have been kind of cool to see Stilico and Anthemius square off in a fight for control of Constantinople.

I don't particularly like Stilico's chances given the enormous home field advantage Anthemius would have enjoyed, but still, it would have made for some good theater.

Sadly though, Stilico was betrayed and then he calmly allowed himself to be beheaded in order to nobly avert a civil war, which I suppose was pretty good theater, too.

Okay,

so that brings us back up to where we left off last week.

The East is now in the capable hands of Anthemius, while the West is presently falling into the bungling hands of Stilicoe's successors.

The bungling got started right away, when Olympius, the minister who had undermined Stilico to death, decided to give in to the absolute worst impulses of his age.

You'll recall that both the Italian nobility and the rank-and-file foot soldiers of the regular Roman army had been none too pleased about Stilico's pro-barbarian policies, which were really just an extension of Theodosius' pro-barbarian policies, by the way.

They didn't like taking orders from barbarian officers, they didn't like using gold to buy the support of barbarian kings, and they really, really didn't like Alaric and his Goths.

With Stilico out of the way, Olympius just went ahead and let all this irrational hatred off its leash.

When Radagysus was defeated in 406, those 12,000 Gothic warriors who were incorporated into Stilico's army brought their families along with them.

Essentially, their wives and children were exempted from being sold into slavery.

These Gothic families were then split up and settled across dozens of Italian municipalities, partly to give them a place to live, but partly to act as hostages to keep the men in line.

In the late summer 408, Olympius announced that the presence of Gothic families in Italian cities would no longer be tolerated.

So, did he ask them nicely to leave?

Did he send soldiers to forcibly eject them?

No, he put out an order that they were all to be slaughtered.

Literally, I want you to murder every Gothic woman and every Gothic child you can find.

Whatever good Olympius thought this insanely cruel order would accomplish, and he must have thought it would accomplish something good,

the only lasting impact it had was to drive those twelve thousand warriors right out of the Roman camp.

With Italy momentarily consumed by genocidal chaos, the Goth warriors abandoned their posts and marched straight for the one man who could offer them asylum.

Alaric.

In a flash, the Gothic king went from potentially marginalized figure in a post stilico-geopolitical world back to major player.

Also in a flash, the Roman army lost 12,000 soldiers.

Genocide is as morally reprehensible a thing as exists in the world, but rarely does it so immediately blow up in the face of the perpetrators.

Really, the massacre of the Goth families was just so unbelievably stupid, I'm kind of at a loss for words.

Alaric wasted no time seizing the day, and with the enthusiastic backing of his new revenge-minded recruits, he immediately marched them and the rest of his army over the Alps into Italy.

With the regular Roman forces mostly prepared for the coming offensive against Constantine in Gaul, Alaric was able to pass into Italy without so much as an arrow being shot in his direction.

Plus, with the addition of Radagisus's Goths, Alaric now led an army comparable numerically to the Roman forces stationed at Pavia.

Beating the Goths in battle now was by no means a sure thing, so the Roman high command couldn't take the risk of a direct confrontation.

I mean, what if they lost?

During Alaric's first invasion of Italy, he had kept mostly to the northern edges of the home province, since that's where the military and political centers of the Western Empire now were.

But this time he decided to play a more psychologically terrifying card.

Bypassing Aquilea and Ravenna and Milan, Alaric led his Goths due south on a B line directly for Rome.

Now at this point, Alaric had absolutely no intention of sacking the eternal city.

His plan was to simply set up a blockade, make demands, and wait for the Senate to cave, which he did, and which they then did.

Alaric surrounded the city, preventing all food and supplies from entering Rome, and then demanded 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, and all manner of silks and linens and furs to clothe his people.

He also demanded the release of the forty thousand odd Goths who had been sold into slavery following Radagisus' defeat.

Not that he really needed to stand firm on that last point.

As soon as Alaric entered Italy, most of the recently enslaved Goths just walked away from their new masters and joined his army.

The Senate deemed the blockade obviously unbreakable and agreed to meet all of Alaric's demands.

The slaves freed, the Senate humiliated, and the Goths now struggling under the weight of 35,000 pounds of precious metal, Alaric called off the blockade and returned north to negotiate further concessions from Honorius.

Now, the thing we must keep in mind about Alaric is that despite any preconceptions we might have about him being some rampaging barbarians because of the fact that, yes, he is about to sack Rome, this whole adventure, the invasion, the blockade, and eventually the sack itself, were all just part of his larger struggle with the Western court for political recognition.

At no point was Alaric engaged in some attempt to destroy the Roman Empire.

Just the opposite.

What he wanted more than anything else was a legitimate place for himself and his people within the Roman Empire.

In initiating the blockade he was demonstrating how powerful he now was, and in breaking off the blockade he was demonstrating that he was fully capable of bargaining in good faith.

So when he met with Honorius's agents in late four hundred eight and early four hundred nine, he had every reasonable hope that an agreement could be reached that the Romans would grant some sort of territorial independence to the Goths in Illyria, where they would be safe from future genocidal massacres, and that Alaric would once again be made a high ranking general in the Roman army.

But But Honorius was still under the sway of the suicidally anti-barbarian Olympius, and so the negotiations went nowhere.

Frustrated that the emperor did not seem to have gotten the message, in early 409 Alaric marched back to Rome and blockaded the city a second time.

The people of Rome offered no resistance, and the cowed senate seemed positively eager to help Alaric get what he wanted out of Honorius, because otherwise he was just going to keep showing up on their doorstep.

While Alaric was once again encamped outside Rome, Honorius and his ministers took steps to ensure that they would be able to focus exclusively on the Gothic question, at least for the next little while.

Headquartered up in Arles in Gaul, the usurper Constantine III was delighted when he opened up a package from Honorius one day in the spring of 409 and found that it contained a purple cloak, a clear signal that Ravenna now recognized Constantine's claim to imperium over Gaul and Britain.

In the great back and forth of imperial politics, Constantine had just been surpassed by Alaric as the greater threat, and so he suddenly got what he had been asking for for the last two years.

With the northern frontier temporarily free from the threat of invasion, Ravenna then turned its attention back to the question of Alaric and received an embassy of senators from Rome to help them talk through the issue.

The senators, obviously, recommended that Honorius grant Alaric's demands.

We don't like it any more than you do, but the Goths are just too strong at the moment.

This is no time to get pig headed.

So when Alaric came back north to resume negotiations, things went a bit smoother.

This time the two sides agreed in principle to political independence for the Goths in Illyria, as well as an annual stipend of gold and grain to keep them happy and fed.

But Honorius refused to yield on the point of giving Alaric an official position in the Roman military.

Talks looked like they were about to break down again when Alaric shocked everyone by suddenly abandoning almost everything he had been asking for.

Gone was the request for an independent Gothic state in Illyria.

Gone were the payments of gold, and gone was the military commission.

Instead, Alaric came back with a simple proposal.

Let us go live along the Danube border in Noricum.

Send us enough grain to help keep us fed, and we'll live in peace and defend the frontiers for you.

In his excellent book, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Peter Heather speculates that this sudden about-face was driven by Alaric's long-range censors, which picked up on on the fact that though the Romans were weak now, they would not be weak forever.

Take them to the cleaners today, and they may come back tomorrow when they're strong again and take it all back with interest.

But ask them for only a few supplies and the right to live in peace, and the Romans might consider us friends forever.

Everyone expected the deal to go through.

I mean, why wouldn't it?

But at the eleventh hour, Ravenna rejected all terms and broke off negotiations.

There is probably something that explains this otherwise inexplicable rejection of what appears to be a criminally good deal for Rome, but we don't seem to have it.

Alaric promised to go away for a song, and Honorius refused to sing.

So Alaric packed his bags and headed back to Rome for the third time.

When he got there, he decided to up the ante.

He picked an amenable and influential senator of Greek origin named Priscus Attaulus, and had the Senate proclaim their colleague Augustus of the Western Empire.

If Honorius wasn't even going to pretend to play ball, then it was time to ditch him and recognize a whole new emperor, one who would actually listen to reason.

So now there were three rival imperial courts in the West.

Constantine III, up in Arles, who was backed by a mix of regular troops and barbarian allies, Honorius in Ravenna, who was backed by some palace guards and the swamps of Ravenna, and Priscus down in Rome backed by Alaric and his Goths.

Next time we will throw them all into the octagon to see who winds up being the last man standing.

I say next time because the holidays are upon us once again, and as usual, I'm going to take the next two weeks off for Christmas and New Year's and all the jam-packed family fun contained therein.

But we'll be back on January the 8th for the sack of Rome, the rise of Attila, and the rest of the rocket sled ride into the abyss.

Before we go, though, I should also mention that a few spots have opened up on the history of Rome's next tour in March.

So, if someone's been asking you what you want for Saturnalia, I'm just saying that would be a pretty awesome present.

Okay, happy Saturnalia to you all, and I'll see you next year.

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