159- The Divine Winds

Candice Rivera has it all.

In just three years, she went from stay-at-home mum to traveling the world, saving lives and making millions.

Anyone would think Candice's charm life is about as real as Unicorn's.

But sometimes the truth is even harder to believe than the lies.

It's not true.

There's so many things not true.

You gotta believe me.

I'm Charlie Webster, and this is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by Seven Hills.

Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

If you thought goldenly breaded McDonald's chicken couldn't get more golden, think golder because new sweet and smoky special edition gold sauce is here.

Made for your chicken favorites.

At Participating McDonald's for a limited time.

Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome,

episode 159: The Divine Winds.

Last time we left off on the eve of a great battle.

In the late summer 394, the army of Theodosius entered the Alpine passes, and the army of Arbogast and Eugenius sat a few miles east of Aquileia waiting for them to emerge from the mountains.

Today, we'll get into the guts of the battle that is about to ensue, and then get into the guts of what happened next.

Since he was just 47 years old, you would think that what happened next was another fifteen odd years of solid rule from Theodosius before he handed the reins of power off to his two now grown and groomed sons.

But instead, less than six months after his great victory at the Frigidus River, Theodosius was dead, and the Empire was forced to hand the reins of power to the dead emperors still underage and not at all properly groomed sons.

With no shortage of powerful and ambitious men more than willing to exploit the deficiencies of the inadequate brother emperors, Theodosius' early demise turned out to be one of the more destabilizing events in an era absolutely rife with destabilizing events.

But before we get into that, we must turn our attention to Theodosius' last great triumph, a triumph that will eventually be painted as nothing less than proof that the Christian God was more powerful than all the pagan gods put together.

Adding to the notion that the coming coming battle was some kind of religious showdown, when Arbagost and Eugenius arrived at the spot they had chosen to meet Theodosius, they planted a statue of Jupiter on the field and then affixed images of Hercules to the banners of their troops.

With the old gods of Rome watching over them, the Army of the West awaited the Army of the East.

Now, whether these details are a later embellishment or not is unknown, but it certainly seems plausible given the vaguely pro-pagan stance Eugenius had adopted for his regime.

But, as I said last week, the war between East and West was not about paganism and Christianity, it was about power, pure and simple.

I don't think any neutral observer could be blamed for believing that Theodosius was doomed the minute he emerged on the west side of the Alps in early September 394.

He popped out into the Frigidus River Valley in modern Slovenia and was immediately greeted by the troubling specter of Arbagos' army.

Not only was it troubling that they were there at all, but the highly capable Frankish general had seized every piece of high ground in the valley.

Wherever Theodosius looked, he was looking up at Arbagos' soldiers.

That alone would have been enough to give any commander a moment's pause.

I mean, do I really want to attack an enemy who so completely controls the terrain?

We don't know if Theodosius paused, but if he did, it wasn't for very long.

The Emperor decided that crappy position or no crappy position, he was going to attack.

As soon as his men were lined up for battle, the Eastern Legions launched themselves forward in a full frontal assault.

Well, I suppose saying the Eastern Legions is a bit misleading.

Out in front of this initial charge was Alaric and his Goths.

Through an ultra intense day of fighting, the Gothic auxiliaries wound up bearing the brunt of Arbagos' counterattacks, while Theodosius kept the legions proper pulled back in reserve.

The casualty rate of the Goths was so high that when the battle was all over, it was said that Theodosius had actually beaten two enemies that day, with Alaric joining Arbagost in defeat.

When the dust settled, the Gothic chief and what remained of his men certainly came away thinking that Theodosius was up to slightly more than just trying to defeat Arbagost, and that he had purposefully spilled the blood of the Goths to weaken them politically and militarily.

The hard feelings generated by the way they had been used in the battle would last for a generation, winding their way through a brief revolt that we'll get to in a second, and ultimately leading to the stunning, if not exactly strategically important, sack of Rome fifteen years later.

The first day of the battle ended without a decisive victory for either side, but it was obvious to everyone on both sides that Arbogast was getting the better of Theodosius.

In the camp of the Western Army spirits were high, and everyone was under the impression that victory was just a good night's sleep away.

On the other side, in the camp of the Eastern Army, morale was non-existent.

They were just a bunch of men sitting around waiting to die.

Even Theodosius despaired at his chances, and he spent the evening in prayer, attempting to gin up some sort of miracle that would salvage his chances.

And given everything that's about to happen, it's fairly easy to see why later chronicles might play this up, and report that God decided to answer Theodosius' prayers.

The first little turn of fortune came during the night.

Arbagos still commanded the high ground of the battlefield, but the passes that the eastern legions had emerged from were still wide open, and the Frankish general was concerned that Theodosius would get it into his head to retreat rather than stay and fight.

So he ordered a strong detachment of soldiers to march around Theodosius' camp and occupy the entrances.

Bottled up and broken, Theodosius would most likely offer his surrender by lunchtime the following day.

But the commander of this detachment knew an opportunity when he saw it, and when he got into position, he sent word down to Theodosius saying that he'd be happy to defect if the price was right.

Since the Eastern Augustus was basically facing his own imminent death, the commander could pretty much name what that right price was, which he did, which Theodosius immediately agreed to pay.

The detachment defected, the passes remained open, and Theodosius' army gained some much needed reinforcements.

The second and more famous turn of fortune came the next day after the two sides had resumed their fighting.

The only problem is that there are no guarantees that it actually happened the way that later historians claim that it happened.

It's eminently plausible, but since the specific details that have been passed down to us didn't start cropping up until years later, it is entirely possible that the whole incident is just a figment of some overzealous church historian's imagination, as a way to graphically depict how God had stepped into the fighting on Theodosius' side.

See, there is this weather phenomenon that lurks around the eastern Alps called the Bora, hugely intense windstorms that have been known to gust with the strength of a low-grade hurricane.

On the second day of battle, one of these windstorms kicked up, and wouldn't you know it, it blew directly into the face of Arbagos' army.

As the two sides approached each other, the western army was rendered practically blind by the dusky winds blowing directly in their face.

The eastern army, on the other hand, had the wind at their back, and so advanced completely unaffected.

It is written that the winds eventually became so strong that the spears lobbed at Theodosius' army were blown back at the very men who had thrown them, and that the arrows fired were shot back at the very men who had fired them.

Arbagos' army, so close to victory the night before, quickly fell apart in the face of the torrential wind.

By the end of the second day, the army of the West was broken, and those who could not flee were captured.

Theodosius had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Could it be anything less than divine intervention?

Among those captured was Eugenius.

The would-be be emperor was brought before Theodosius, whereupon he nobly dropped to his knees and began begging for his life.

Though Theodosius was typically magnanimous in victory, this magnanimity had its limits, and self proclaimed emperors received no quarter.

Eugenius was executed, and his head was put on display for all to see.

Arbagos, meanwhile, managed to escape from the battle unharmed, but after spending a few days in the hills dodging patrols like some common criminal, he concluded that it was high time that he took the honorable path out of his predicament, and he committed suicide before he could be captured.

The deaths of Eugenius and Arbagost meant that for the moment at least, across the whole expanse of the Roman Empire, from Spain to Syria and from Africa to Britain, no one opposed Theodosius' sole rule.

For a few months in late 394 AD, Theodosius stood as the only emperor in the Roman Empire.

He would be the last man to hold that distinction.

Just as he had done following the victory over Maximus, Theodosius completed his march by entering Milan and setting up court in the Italian capital.

There was much to be done and much to grapple with, and Theodosius knew he was going to have his work cut out for him.

The war with Eugenius and Arbogast had been even bloodier than the war with Maximus, which hurt doubly since the legions had not really gotten back to full strength since that last civil war.

Both the Rhine and Danube frontiers were now dangerously undergarrisoned.

On top of his military woes, the Theodosius also knew he was going to have to deal with the headache of rolling back the pagan tide that had risen in his absence.

Committed more than ever to his Nicene Catholicism following the miracle victory at the Frigatus, the Theodosius began to undo the religious damage done by the pagan aristocracy of Rome.

It was at this point that the altar of victory disappears from the historical record, never to be heard from again.

So, quit asking me to put it back in the Senate House, it's gone, so get over it.

Since Theodosius' historic place, as the last sole ruler of the Roman Empire, is often listed near the very top of his imperial resume, you might be inclined to think that he held this distinction for a few years, I mean, at least a year,

but not so.

The correct answer is four months.

All that stuff that Theodosius knew he was going to have to deal with wound up getting dealt with by someone else, because in mid-January the emperor came down with what historians label as a nasty bout of edema.

Doctors were called and everyone prayed, but it all did no good.

On the 17th of January 395 AD, Theodosius died.

He was 48 years old and had been an Augustus for 16 years.

Did I mention that he was the last sole ruler of the Roman Empire?

Theodosius was an enormously influential ruler, and though I don't think he cracks into that upper tier of truly great emperors, there is no getting around the fact that the history of the world runs right through his reign.

Obviously, his staunch Catholicism and eventual staunch anti-paganism spelled the end of the old religions of antiquity.

Monotheism was here to stay.

Christianity was now the religion of the Empire.

But beyond the official public policies, Theodosius' own personal piety allowed the Western Church, in the form of Bishop Ambrose, to establish once and for all a degree of autonomy from the secular ruling class, and even a degree of power over it.

As I mentioned previously, the next thousand years of political philosophy will revolve around the relationship between church and state, and I'm not sure that debate even gets started if Theodosius refuses to yield to Ambrose in the months after the massacre at Thessalonica.

But the emperor's religion was not a PR stunt.

His Christian beliefs were heartfelt, and he took Ambrose's threats to his soul seriously.

So, Theodosius did what the bishop demanded he do, and in the process set a precedent that later kings and popes would follow.

Finally, given that he did play such a major role in the final entrenchment of Christianity, which I think we can all agree is a pretty big deal, the major role Theodosius played in ensuring the Empire did not collapse following Adrianople is sometimes lost in the shuffle.

But that too was a pretty big deal.

His ability to recognize the stark reality of the Empire's situation, that they could not risk another battle, that they must deal with the Goths diplomatically, is perhaps even more important to the history of the world than his religious policies, because had he blown it in the dark days after Adrianople, there might not have been an empire left to Christianize.

That said, allowing the undefeated Goths to settle in Roman territory and essentially live under their own laws would have profound negative consequences down the road.

It is, after all, another one of the 257 different reasons why the Western Empire fell apart.

But we'll get into all that a bit down the road.

For now, though, we must turn to Theodosius' more immediate legacy, namely, that his untimely death meant that control of the empire fell into the hands of a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old, neither of whom were well trained in the military arts, had any real experience with statecraft, or, if you believe the pronouncements of most modern scholars, were particularly bright individuals.

Sadly, Sadly, for the good people of the Roman Empire, their emperors Arcadius and Honorius turned out to be a couple of underage dim bulbs, who were so easily manipulated and pushed around that their reigns were defined most especially by the revolving door of ambitious advisers who were constantly cutting each other's throats in order to take their turn being the real power behind the throne.

Without anything resembling a firm hand on the tiller, power-hungry ministers and generals began to run amok, fatally undermining the political solidarity that the empire so desperately needed at the dawn of the fifth century.

The first two of those power-hungry ministers stepped to the plate upon the death of Theodosius in January 395, and of course, since political solidarity was so vitally important at the dawn of the fifth century, it was perfect that they were personal enemies, who were more than willing to extend their rivalries into official state policy.

Awesome.

The first of these ministers was Stilico, the Vandal general who had risen to become Theodosius' son-in-law and the leader of the Eastern Army.

The other was the Praetorian Prefect Rufinus, who had been left in charge of Constantinople when that Eastern army had marched west.

Arcadius and Honorius had both been left in Rufinus' care when their father had marched off to face down Eugenius and Arbogast, but when Theodosius became deathly ill, Honorius was called to Milan in case he needed to assume the mantle of Western Augustus.

Aware that his time was drawing near, Theodosius began scrambling to get some sort of succession plan in place, and he naturally turned to Stilico to ensure that things wouldn't go to hell the minute he died.

Pretty soon, everyone got word that when the emperor did die, that Stilico would act as a de facto regent for the underage Honorius.

Given the general's familial connection to Theodosius, this came as a surprise to no one.

But then came the curveball.

Just before he died, Theodosius dismissed all his other ministers so he could have a private chat with Stilico.

During this chat, Theodosius told his son in law that he wanted Stilico to act as a guardian not just of Honorius, but of Arcadius as well.

This deathbed request effectively became the emperor's last words, as he died almost immediately after this secret conversation.

But you can probably see the problem here.

Stilicoe was the only one present for this momentous pronouncement.

Everyone assumed the Vandal General was going to rule the West, and everyone was fine with that.

But now, suddenly, he was wandering around telling people that Theodosius secretly told him at the last minute that he was supposed to rule the East too.

To which I would have reacted, you don't actually expect me to believe that obvious load of complete BS, do you?

But Stilico apparently did expect everyone to believe it, and for almost the entire time he was in power, he maintained his rather bizarre claim to regency over the whole empire.

To top it all off, modern historians are not even convinced that there ever was a secret conversation, that the whole thing had been made up out of whole cloth after the fact to explain Stilicoe's attempt to seize control of the Eastern Empire.

Probably the person laughing hardest at Stilico's obvious load of complete BS was back in Constantinople, the Praetorian Prefect Rufinus.

As I mentioned, he and Stilico were bitter enemies, so you can probably imagine his reaction when a messenger arrived one day bearing the news that Stilico was claiming Theodosius secretly wanted him to control the Eastern Empire.

I picture Rufinus falling out of his chair laughing, picking himself up off the floor, and then immediately making plans to kill Stilico at the earliest opportunity.

But Stilico would prove himself to be an extremely savvy operator, far savvier than Rufinus, anyway, who will, incidentally, wind up dead in a ditch in less than a year.

Eager to solidify his position as the new de facto regent, and I say de facto because there was no official regent position in Roman law, he turned to the most powerful man in the Western Empire, Ambrose of Milan for support.

The Vandal general and the Roman bishop forged an alliance that was sealed when Ambrose publicly endorsed the claim that Stilico had been ordered to preside over both imperial brothers rather than just Honorius.

But Rufinus was undeterred.

Stilico could make all the laughable claims he wanted.

There was no way the Praetorian Prefect was giving an inch of political space.

This test of wills came to a head in 395 in an incident that put on full display the consequences of personal rivalry spilling over into official policy.

As I've mentioned, the Goths were not at all happy about the way they had been used at the Battle of the Frigidus, and it was an article of faith among them that they had been intentionally led to the slaughter to weaken their power.

Initially, Alaric, the leading chief of the Gothic army, neither stoked these fires nor did anything really to dampen them out.

He was more reserved than his countrymen because, with all the reshuffling that was underway following the death of Theodosius, he thought he saw an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Rycomir and Arbogast and Stilico and become a barbarian general in the Roman army.

But Stilico in particular was hugely opposed to the idea of Alaric serving Rome in an official capacity, mostly because combining the role of Gothic king with Roman general was a frightening prospect.

Alaric led his troops back to Thrace in the spring of 395, but when he got there, he received word that he was not, in fact, going to be offered a command, and so, feeling betrayed, he started actively encouraging the Goths' hostility.

In just a few weeks, their rage boiled over, and the central empire was once again dealing with a marauding Gothic army.

Since the Romans had just fought a big old civil war in northern Italy, that's where most of the troops of the Empire were at the moment, and so it fell to Stilicoe to deal with Alaric's rampaging Goths.

But the army Stilico led through the Alps was not really in tip-top shape, nor a particularly cohesive unit.

The damage done at the frigidus was still being felt, not just in terms of physical fighting ability, but also in terms of the troops actually trusting each other.

After all, the men who made up Stilico's army had just been hacking each other to pieces the previous autumn.

It was a little difficult for them to grasp that they were all now on the same side.

But there was no getting around the fact that the Goths needed to be settled, so off Stilicoe went to try to settle them.

The Vandal was a deft general, and, knowing the weakness of his own army, decided to engage in a positional campaign designed to hem Alaric in, rather than trying to break him in a set-piece battle.

Eventually, Astilico's strategy proved so successful that the Goths became trapped in a terrible position.

If Stilico was ever going to take a shot at battle, now would be the time to do it.

But then a surprise order came in from Arcadius, originating, of course, with Rufinus, demanding that Stilico return the Eastern troops to Constantinople and withdraw from Greece at once.

That Stilico decided to comply with this order hints that he maybe had no intention of actually attacking the Goths.

But he sure told everyone who would listen that he had been fatally undercut by that sneaky snake Rufinus, who had robbed the Romans of a certain victory simply to deny me, noble Stilico, a personal victory.

Whoever's idea it was to let Alaric go, and there is good evidence that it was indeed Stilico's idea.

The fact that the Gothic chief lived to fight another day wound up having some pretty serious consequences down the road.

Next week, we will begin to feel some of those consequences, as the Empire will break down into three political centers of gravity: Stilico in the west, Alaric in the center, and whoever happened to be controlling Arcadius at the moment in the east.

Over the next few years, they will all play everyone off everyone else in a tricky and often bloody game of political chess that will wind up leaving the Empire with very few pieces left on the board.

Hoyer married

this one, video yamo la

Here,

but

23 ago.

Check out the internet.

Video as

well, obtain Wi-Fi and Mazarin with the local con ATNT Fiber with Al-Fi.

ATT connectar locambia todo.

ATNT Fiber teneris convivial limitadancertas.

Requires the visit of covert Wi-Fi extended TNT concerns.

Start your journey toward the perfect engagement ring with Yadev, family-owned and operated since 1983.

We'll pair you with a dedicated expert for a personalized one-on-one experience.

You'll explore our curated selection of diamonds and gemstones while learning key characteristics to help you make a confident, informed decision.

Choose from our signature styles or opt for a fully custom design crafted around you.

Visit yadavjewelry.com and book your appointment today at our new Union Square showroom and mention podcast for an exclusive discount.