David Hume - The Dark Ages

It was the cherished project of Rufinus to unite Arcadius with his only daughter; once the Emperor’s father-in-law he might hope to become an Emperor himself. But he was thwarted by a subtle adversary, Eutropius, the lord chamberlain ( praepositus sacri cubiculi ), a bald old eunuch, who with oriental craftiness had won his way up from the meanest services and employments. Determining that the future Empress should be bound to himself and not to Rufinus, he chose Eudoxia, a girl of singular beauty, who had been brought up in the house of the widow and sons of one of the victims of Rufinus. 8Her father was Bauto, a Frank soldier who had risen to be Master of Soldiers, and for a year or two the most powerful man in Italy, in the early years of Valentinian II. 9Her mother had doubtless been a Roman, and she received a Roman education, but she inherited, as a contemporary writer observes, barbaric traits from her German father. 10Eutropius showed a picture of the maiden to the Emperor, and so successfully enlarged upon her merits and her charms that Arcadius determined to marry her; the intrigue was carefully concealed from the Praetorian Prefect; 11and till the last moment the public supposed that the bride for whose Imperial wedding preparations were being made was the daughter of Rufinus. The nuptials were celebrated on April 27, A.D. 395. It was a blow to Rufinus, but he was still the most powerful man in the east.

The event which at length brought Rufinus into collision with Stilicho was the rising of the Visigoths. They had been settled by Theodosius in the province of Lower Moesia, between the Danube and the Balkan mountains, and were bound in return for their lands to do battle for the Empire when their services were needed. They had accompanied the Emperor in his campaign against Eugenius, and had returned to their homes earlier than the rest of the army. In that campaign they had suffered severe losses, and it was thought that Theodosius deliberately placed them in the most dangerous post for the purpose of reducing their strength. 12This was perhaps the principal cause of the discontent which led to their revolt, but there can be no doubt that their ill humour was stimulated by one of their leaders, Alaric (of the family of the Balthas or Bolds), who aspired to a high post of command in the Roman army and had been passed over. The Visigoths had hitherto had no king. It is uncertain whether it was at this crisis 13or at a later stage in Alaric’s career that he was elected king by the assembly of his people. In any case he was chosen leader of the whole host of the Visigoths, and the movements which he led were in the fullest sense national.

Under the leadership of Alaric, the Goths revolted and spread desolation in the fields and homesteads of Thrace and Macedonia. They advanced close to the walls of Constantinople. They carefully spared certain estates outside the city belonging to Rufinus, but their motive was probably different from that which caused the Spartan king Archidamus to spare the lands of Pericles in the Peloponnesian war. Alaric may have wished, not to draw suspicions on the Prefect, but to conciliate his friendship and obtain more favourable terms. Rufinus went to the Gothic camp, dressed as a Goth. 14The result of the negotiations seems to have been that Alaric left the neighbourhood of the capital and marched westward.

At the same time the Asiatic provinces were suffering, as we shall see, from the invasions of other barbarians, and there were no troops to take the field against them, as the eastern regiments which had taken part in the war against Eugenius were still in the west. Stilicho, however, was already preparing to lead them back in person. 15He deemed his own presence in the east necessary, for, besides the urgent need of dealing with the barbarians, there was a political question which deeply concerned him, touching the territorial division of the Empire between the two sovrans.

Before A.D. 379 the Prefecture of Illyricum, which included Greece and the central Balkan lands, had been subject to the ruler of the west. In that year Gratian resigned it to his new colleague Theodosius, so that the division between east and west was a line running from Singidunum (Belgrade) westward along the river Save and then turning southward along the course of the Drina and reaching the Hadriatic coast at a point near the lake of Scutari. It was assumed at Constantinople that this arrangement would remain in force and that the Prefecture would continue to be controlled by the eastern government. But Stilicho declared that it was the will of Theodosius that his sons should revert to the older arrangement, and that the authority of Honorius should extend to the confines of Thrace, leaving to Arcadius only the Prefecture of the East. 16Whether this assertion was true or not, his policy meant that the realm in which he himself wielded the power would have a marked predominance, both in political importance and in military strength, over the other section of the Empire.

It would perhaps be a mistake to suppose that this political aim of Stilicho, of which he never lost sight, was dictated by mere territorial greed, or that his main object was to increase the revenues. The chief reason for the strife between the two Imperial governments may have lain rather in the fact that the Balkan peninsula was the best nursery in Empire for good fighting men. 17The stoutest and most useful native troops in the Roman army were, from the fourth to the sixth century, recruited from the highlands of Illyricum and Thrace. It might well seem, therefore, to those who were responsible for the defence of the western provinces that a partition which assigned almost the whole of this great recruiting ground to the east was unfair to the west; and as the legions which were at Stilicho’s disposal were entirely inadequate, as the event proved, to the task of protecting the frontiers against the Germans, it was not unnatural that he should have aimed at acquiring control over Illyricum.

It was a question on which the government of New Rome, under the guidance of Rufinus, was not likely to yield without a struggle, and Stilicho took with him western legions belonging to his own command as well as the eastern troops whom he was to restore to Arcadius. He marched overland, doubtless by the Dalmatian coast road to Epirus, and confronted the Visigoths in Thessaly, whither they had traced a devastating path from the Propontis. 18

Rufinus was alarmed lest his rival should win the glory of crushing the enemy, and he induced Arcadius to send to Stilicho a peremptory order to dispatch the troops to Constantinople and depart himself whence he had come. The Emperor was led, legitimately enough, to resent the presence of his relative, accompanied by western legions, as an officious and hostile interference. The order arrived just as Stilicho was making preparations to attack the Gothic host in the valley of the Peneius. His forces were so superior to those of Alaric that victory was assured; but he obeyed the Imperial command, though his obedience meant the delivery of Greece to the sword of the barbarians. We shall never know his motives, and we are so ill-informed of the circumstances that it is difficult to divine them. A stronger man would have smitten the Goths, and then, having the eastern government at his mercy, would have insisted on the rectification of the Illyrian frontier which it was his cherished object to effect. Never again would he have such a favourable opportunity to realise it. Perhaps he did not yet feel quite confident in his own position; perhaps he did not feel sure of his army. But his hesitation may have been due to the fact that his wife Serena and his children were at Constantinople and could be held as hostages for his good behaviour. 19In any case he consigned the eastern troops to the command of a Gothic captain, Gaïnas, and departed with his own legions to Salona, allowing Alaric to proceed on his wasting way into the lands of Hellas. But he did not break up his camp in Thessaly without coming to an understanding with Gaïnas which was to prove fatal to Rufinus.