Part 5 (1/2)
One of these recruits, on his southward journey, stepped into the cave of a holy hermit named Severinus, and stooping his lofty stature in the lowly cell, asked the saint's blessing. When the blessing was given, the youth said: ”Farewell”. ”Not farewell, but fare forward”,[46] answered Severinus. ”Onward into Italy: skin-clothed now, but destined before long to enrich many men with costly gifts”. The name of this young recruit was Odovacar.[47]
[Footnote 46: ”Vale”. ”Vade”.]
[Footnote 47: This is the form of the name used by contemporary historians; Odoacer is a later and less authentic form.]
Odovacar probably entered Italy about 465. He attached himself to the party of Ricimer, and before long became a conspicuous captain of _fderati_ After the death of Ricimer (18th August, 472), there was a series of rapid revolutions in the Roman State. Olybrius, the then reigning nonent.i.ty, died in October of the same year.
(June, 474) After five months' interregnum, a yet more shadowy shadow, Glycerius, succeeded him, and after fifteen months of rule was thrust from the throne by Julius Nepos, who had married the niece of Verina, the mischief-making Augusta of the East, and who was, therefore, supported by all the moral influence of Constantinople.
Nepos, after fourteen months of Empire, in which he distinguished himself only by the loss of some (Oct.,475) Gaulish provinces to the Visigoths, was in his turn dethroned by the Master of the Soldiery, Orestes, who had once held a subordinate situation in the court of Attila. Nepos fled to Dalmatia, which was probably his native land, and lived there for four years after his dethronement, still keeping up some at least of the state which belonged to a Roman Emperor.
We know very little of the pretexts for these rapid revolutions, or the circ.u.mstances attending them, but there cannot be much doubt that the army was the chief agent in what, to borrow a phrase from modern Spanish politics, were a series of _p.r.o.nunciamentos_. For some reason which is dim to us, Orestes, though a full-blooded Roman citizen, did not set the diadem on his own head, but placed it on that of his son, a handsome boy of some fourteen or fifteen years, named Romulus, and nicknamed ”the little Augustus”. For himself, he took the dignity of ”Patrician”, which had been so long worn by Ricimer, and was a.s.sociated in men's minds with the practical mastery of the Empire. But a ruler who has been raised to the throne by military sedition soon finds that the authors of his elevation are the most exacting of masters. The _fderati,_ who knew themselves now absolute arbiters of the destiny of the Empire, and who had the same craving for a settlement within its borders which we have met with more than once among the followers of Theodoric, presented themselves before the Patrician Orestes, and demanded that one-third of the lands of Italy should be a.s.signed to them as a perpetual inheritance. This was more than Orestes dared to grant, and, on his refusal, Odovacar said to the mercenaries: ”Make me king and I will obtain for you your desire”.
(23d Aug., 476) The offer was accepted; Odovacar was lifted high on a s.h.i.+eld by the arms of stalwart barbarians, and saluted as king by their unanimous acclamations.
When the _fderati_ were gathered out of the ”Roman” army, there seems to have been nothing left that was capable of making any real defence of the Empire. The campaign, if such it may be called, between Odovacar and Orestes was of the shortest and most perfunctory kind. Ticinum (_Pavia_), in which Orestes had taken refuge, was taken, sacked, and partly burnt by the barbarians. The Master of the Soldiery himself fled to Placentia, but was there taken prisoner and beheaded, only five days after the elevation of Odovacar. A week later his brother Paulus, who had not men enough to hold even the strong city of Ravenna, was taken prisoner, and slain in the great pine-forest outside that city. At Ravenna the young puppet-Emperor, Romulus, was also taken prisoner. The barbarian showed himself more merciful, perhaps also more contemptuous, towards his boy-rival than was the custom of the Emperors of Rome and Constantinople towards the sons of their compet.i.tors. Odovacar, who pitied the tender years of Augustulus, and looked with admiration on his beautiful countenance, spared his life and a.s.signed to him for a residence the palace and gardens of Lucullus, the conqueror of Mithridates, who five and a half centuries before had prepared for himself this beautiful home (the Lucullanum) in the very heart of the lovely Bay of Naples. The building and the fortifying of a great commercial city have utterly altered the whole aspect of the bay, but in the long egg-shaped peninsula, on which stands to-day the Castel dell'
Ovo, we can still see the outlines of the famous Lucullanum, in which the last Roman Emperor of Rome ended his inglorious days. His conqueror generously allowed him a pension of 3,600 per annum, but for how long this pension continued to be a charge on the revenues of the new kingdom we are unable to say. There is one doubtful indication of his having survived his abdication by about thirty years,[48] but clear historical notices of his subsequent life and of the date of his death are denied us; a striking proof of the absolute nullity of his character.
[Footnote 48: I allude here to a letter in the Vanarum of Ca.s.siodorus (iii., 35), written between 504 and 525, and addressed to Romulus and his mother. But we can by no means prove that this is Romulus Augustulus.]
This then was the event which stands out in the history of Europe as the ”Fall of the Western Empire” The reader will perceive that it was no great and terrible invasion of a conquering host like the Fall of the Eastern Empire in 1453; no sudden overthrow of a national polity like the Norman Conquest of 1066; not even a b.l.o.o.d.y overturning of the existing order by demagogic force like the French Revolution of 1792. It was but the continuance of a process which had been going forward more or less manifestly for nearly a century,--the recognition of the fact that the _fderati,_ the so-called barbarian mercenaries of Rome, were really her masters. If we had to seek a parallel for the event of 476, we should find it rather in the deposition of the last Mogul Emperor at Delhi, and the public a.s.sumption by the British Queen of the ”Raj” over the greater part of India, than in any of the other events to which we have alluded.
Reflecting on this fact, and seeing that the Roman Empire still lived on in the East for nearly a thousand years, that the Eastern Csar never for many generations reliquished his claim to be considered the legitimate ruler of the Old Rome, as well as of the New, and sometimes a.s.serted that claim in a very real and effective manner, and considering too that Charles the Great, when he (in modern phrase) ”restored the Western Empire” in 800, never professed to be the successor of Romulus Augustulus, but of Constantine VI., the then recently deposed Emperor of the East; the latest school of historical investigators, with scarcely an exception, minimise the importance of the event of 476, and some even object to the expression ”Fall of the Western Empire” as fitly describing it. The protest is a sound one and was greatly needed.
Perhaps now the danger is in the other direction, and there is a risk of our making too little of an event in which after all the sceptre did manifestly depart from Rome. During the whole interval between Odovacar's accession and Belisarius' occupation of Rome (476-536), no Roman, however proud or patriotic, could blind himself to the fact that a man of barbarian blood was the real, and in a certain sense the supreme, ruler of his country. Ricimer might be looked upon as an eminent servant of the Emperor who had the misfortune to be of barbarian birth. Odovacar and Theodoric were, without all contradiction, kings; if not ”kings of Italy”, at any rate ”kings in Italy”, sometimes actually making war on the Csar of Byzantium, and not caring, when they did so, to set up the phantom of a rival Emperor in order to legitimise their opposition. But in a matter so greatly debated as this it will be safer not to use our own or any modern words, This is how Count Marcellinus, an official of the Eastern Empire, writing his annals about fifty-eight years after the deposition of Romulus, describes the event: ”Odovacar killed Orestes and condemned his son Augustulus to the punishment of exile in the Lucullanum, a castle of Campania. The Hesperian (Western) Empire of the Roman people, which Octavia.n.u.s Augustus first of the Augusti began to hold in the 709th year of the building of the city (B.C. 44), perished with this Augustulus in the 522d year of his predecessors (A.D. 476), the kings of the Goths thenceforward holding both Rome and Italy”.[49]
[Footnote 49: ”Orestem Odoacer llico trucidavit, Augustulum filium Orestis Odoacer in Lucullano Campania castello exilii poena d.a.m.navit.
Hesperium Romana gentis imperium, quod septingentesimo nono urbis condita anno primus Augustorum Octavia.n.u.s Augustus tenere cpit, c.u.m hoc Augustulo periit, anno decessorum regni Imperatorum DXXII. Gothorum dehinc regibus Romam tenentibus”. It will be seen that there is an error of two years in the calculation.]
Of the details of Odovacar's rule in Italy we know very little. Of course the _fderati_ had their will, at any rate in some measure, with reference to the a.s.signment of land in Italy, but no historian has told us anything as to the social disorganisation which such a redistribution of property must have produced. There are some indications that it was not thoroughly carried into effect, at any rate in the South of Italy, and that the settlements of the _fderati_ were chiefly in the valley of the Po, and in the districts since known as the Romagna.
The old Imperial machinery of government was taken over by the new ruler, and in all outward appearance things probably went on under King Odovacar much as they had done under Count Ricimer. No great act of cruelty or oppression stains the memory of Odovacar. He lost Provence to the Visigoths, but, on the other hand, he by judicious diplomacy recovered Sicily from the Vandals. Altogether it is probable that Italy was, at any rate, not more miserable under the sway of this barbarian king than she had been at any time since Alaric's invasion, in 408, proclaimed her helplessness to the world.
One piece of solemn comedy is worth relating, namely, the emba.s.sies despatched to Constantinople by the rival claimants to the dominion of Italy. It was probably towards the end of 477, or early in 478, that Zeno, then recently returned from exile after the usurpation of Basiliscus, received two emba.s.sies from two deposed Emperors of the West. First of all came the amba.s.sadors of Augustulus, or rather of the Roman Senate, sent nominally by the orders of Augustulus, really by those of Odovacar. These men, great Roman n.o.bles, represented ”that they did not need an Emperor of their own. One absolute ruler was sufficient to guard both East and West; but they had, moreover, chosen Odovacar, who was well able to protect their interests, being a man wise in counsel and brave in war. They therefore prayed the Emperor to bestow on him the dignity of Patrician, and to entrust to him the administration of the affairs of Italy”. At the same time (apparently) they brought the ornaments of the Imperial dignity, the diadem, the purple robe, the jewelled buskins, which had been worn by all the ”Shadow Emperors” who flitted across the stage, and requested that they might be laid up in the Imperial palace at Constantinople.
Simultaneously there came amba.s.sadors from Nepos, the Imperial refugee, the nephew by marriage of Verina. From his Dalmatian exile he congratulated his kinsman Zeno on his recent restoration to the throne, and begged him to lend men and money to bring about the like happy result for him by replacing him on the Western throne.
To these emba.s.sies Zeno returned ambiguous answers, which seemed to leave the question as to the legitimacy of Odovacar's rule an open one.
The Senate were sharply rebuked for having acquiesced in the dethronement of Nepos, and a previous Emperor who had been sent to them from the East.[50] Odovacar was recommended to seek the coveted dignity from Nepos, and to co-operate for his return. At the same time, the moderation of Odovacar's rule, and his desire to conform himself to the maxims of Roman civilisation, received the Emperor's praise. The nature of the reply to Nepos is not recorded, but it was no doubt made plain to him that sympathy and good wishes were all that he would receive from his Eastern colleague. The letters addressed to Odovacar bore the superscription ”To the _Patrician_ Odovacar”, and that was all that the barbarian really cared for. With such a t.i.tle as this, every act, even the most high-handed, on the part of the barbarian king was rendered legitimate. Nepos and Augustulus were equally excluded as useless enc.u.mbrances to the state, and the kings _de jure_ and _de facto_ became practically one man, and that man Odovacar.
[Footnote 50: Anthemius.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: HALF-SILIQUA OF SILVER. (ODOVACAR.)]
[Ill.u.s.tration:]
CHAPTER VII.
THE CONQUEST OF ITALY.
Odovacar invades Dalmatia--Conducts a successful campaign against the Rugians--Theodoric accepts from Zeno the commission to overthrow Odovacar--He invades Italy, overthrowing the Gepidse, who attempt to bar his pa.s.sage--Battles of the Isonzo and Verona--Odovacar takes refuge in Ravenna--The treachery of Tufa--Gundobad, king of the Burgundians, comes to Italy to oppose Theodoric, while Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, comes as his ally--The battle of the Adda, and further defeat of Odovacar--Surrender of Ravenna--a.s.sa.s.sination of Odovacar.