THE EASTERN EMPERORS, 457-518.
The Ostrogoths had never gone westward, like their kinsmen the Visigoths. They had lingered on the Danube, first as members of the vast empire of Attila the Hun, then as occupying Pannonia in their own right. But, in the reign of Leo I., they had moved across the Save into the territory of the Eastern Emperors, and had permanently established themselves in Moesia. There they had settled down and made terms with the Constantinopolitan Government. But they were most unruly vassals, and, even in full time of peace, could never be trusted to refrain from raids into Thrace and Macedonia. |Early life of Theodoric.| The main body of their tribe now acknowledged as its chief Theodoric the son of Theodemir, the representative of the heaven-born race of the Amals, the kings of the Goths from time immemorial. Theodoric was now a young man of twenty-three, stirring and ambitious, who had already won a great military reputation by victories over the Bulgarians, the Sarmatians, and other tribes who dwelt across the Danube. He had spent ten years of his boyhood as a hostage at Constantinople, where he had learnt only too well the weak as well as the strong points of the East-Roman Empire. His after-life showed that he had there imbibed a deep respect for Roman law, order, and administrative unity; but he had also come to entertain a contempt for the timid Zeno, and a conviction that his bold tribesmen were more than a match for the motley mercenary army of the emperor, of which so large a proportion was still composed of Goths and other Teutons, who could not be trusted to fight with a good heart against their Ostrogothic kinsmen.
But Theodoric the Amal was not the only chief of his race in the Balkan peninsula. He had a namesake, Theodoric the son of Triarius, better known as Theodoric the One-eyed, who had long served as a mercenary captain in the imperial army, and had headed the Teutonic auxiliaries in the camp of the usurper Basiliscus. When Basiliscus fell, Theodoric the One-eyed collected the wrecks of the rebel forces, strengthened them with broken bands of various races, many of whom were Ostrogoths, and kept the field against Zeno. He retired into the Balkans, and occasionally descended to ravage the Thracian plains; but meanwhile he sent an embassy to Zeno, offering to submit if he were given the title of magister militum, which he had held under Basiliscus, and taken with all his army into the imperial pay.
Zeno indignantly refused to entertain such terms, and resolved to take in hand the destruction of the rebel. |The two Theodorics.| He sent an Asiatic army into Thrace to beset the son of Triarius from the south, and bade his warlike vassal the son of Theodemir to attack his namesake from the north, on the Moesian side. The younger Theodoric eagerly consented, for he grudged to see any other Gothic chief than himself powerful in the peninsula, and looked down on the son of Triarius as a low-born upstart, because he did not come like himself from the royal blood of the Amals.[[4]]
[4]. By his name (Triarius) the father of Theodoric the One-eyed must have been a Roman or a Romanised Goth, but the One-eyed had himself married a wife who was close akin to Theodoric the Amal, for his son Recitach is called the Amal’s cousin.
The campaign against Theodoric the One-eyed turned out disastrously for the imperial forces. The Roman army in the south missed the track of the rebel, whether by accident or design, while Theodoric the Amal with his forces got entangled in the defiles of the Balkans, and surrounded by the army of his rival. He had been promised the co-operation of the army of Thrace, but no Romans appeared, and his projects began to look dark. His one-eyed rival, riding to within earshot of his camp, taunted him with his folly in listening to the orders and promises of the emperor. ‘Madman,’ he cried, ‘betrayer of your own race, do you not see that the Roman plan is always to destroy Goths by Goths? Whichever of us falls, they, not we, will be the stronger. They never will give you real help, but send you out against me to perish here in the desert.’ Then all the warriors of the Amal shouted that the One-eyed was right, and that they would not fight against their brethren in the other camp. The son of Theodemir bowed to their will and joined himself to the son of Triarius. Uniting their armies, they moved down into the valley of the Hebrus, and advanced toward Constantinople. They sent Zeno an ultimatum, in which the Amal demanded more territory for his tribe, and a supply of corn and money, while the One-eyed stipulated for the post of magister militum, and an annual payment of 2000 pounds of gold. Zeno, who was very anxious to keep the younger Theodoric on his side, proffered him a great sum of money, and the hand of the daughter of the patrician Olybrius, if he would abandon his namesake the rebel. But the Amal refused to break the oath that he had sworn to his ally, and marched westward to ravage Macedonia up to the very gates of Thessalonica. Zeno sent his troops into winter-quarters, as the season was late, and made one final attempt to stave off the impending danger by offering terms to Theodoric the One-eyed. Less true to his word than the Amal, the elder Theodoric listened to the emperor’s offer, and, on being promised the title of magister militum and all the revenues that he had enjoyed under Basiliscus, led his troops over into the imperial camp (479).
For the next two years the son of Theodemir ranged over the whole Balkan peninsula from Dyrrhachium to the gates of Constantinople, plundering and burning those parts of Macedonia and Thrace which had hitherto escaped the ravages of the Huns of Attila and the Ostrogoths of the previous generation. |Wars of Zeno and Theodoric the Amal.| The generals of Zeno met with little good fortune in their attempts to check him, the only success they obtained being a victory won by a certain Sabinianus in 480, who cut off the rear-guard of Theodoric as it was crossing the Albanian mountains, and captured 2000 waggons and 5000 Gothic warriors. But Sabinianus made himself too much feared by Zeno, who, on a suspicion of treachery, had him executed in the following year. It was not till 483 that the Amal, having wasted Thrace and Macedon so fiercely that even his own army could no longer find food, at last came to terms with Zeno, on being made magister militum, and granted additional lands in Moesia and Dacia for his tribesmen. The son of Triarius had died a year earlier: he had again burst out into insurrection against the emperor, and was mustering an army on the Thracian coast when he was slain in a strange manner. A restive horse threw him against a spear which was standing by the door of his tent, and he was pierced to the heart. His son Recitach continued his rebellion, but Theodoric the Amal, who wished to see no other Gothic chief but himself in the Balkan peninsula, slew the young man, and incorporated his warriors with the main body of the Ostrogoths.
The utter helplessness which Zeno showed in dealing with the two Theodorics may be attributed in a large measure to his troubles at home. In 479, the year when he had failed to support Theodoric the Amal in the Balkans, his throne had nearly been overturned by a rising in Constantinople. Marcianus and Procopius, the two sons of Anthemius, the late emperor of the West, who were popular with the citizens of the capital, formed a plot for overthrowing the emperor, in which they enlisted many men of importance. They surprised the palace and massacred the body-guard, but Zeno escaped, brought over his faithful Isaurians from Asia, and crushed the rebellion after a vigorous street fight. In 482-3 he had a prolonged misunderstanding with his commander-in-chief Illus, the Isaurian general who had put down the rebellion of Basiliscus five years before. Zeno neither banished nor fully trusted him. He left him in office, but was nervously on his guard, and always thwarting his Minister. It is said that, with or without his consent, the Empress Ariadne endeavoured to procure the assassination of Illus.
In 483, the year in which Theodoric the Amal made his peace with Zeno, a certain Leontius raised a rebellion in Syria. Illus, who was sent to put him down, had grown tired of serving his suspicious and ungrateful master, and joined in the revolt. |Revolt of Leontius, 483.| He and Leontius seized Antioch, where the latter was proclaimed emperor, and got possession of Cappadocia, Cilicia, and north Syria. It is said that they designed to re-establish paganism, a project which seems absolutely incredible in the very end of the fifth century, when the heathen were no more than a forlorn remnant scattered among a zealous Christian population. The empress-dowager Verina, who was living in exile in Cappadocia, joined herself to them, and adopted Leontius as her son. But the rebels took more practical measures to support their cause when they applied for aid to Odoacer the king in Italy, and to the Persian monarch Balas. Both promised aid, but, before they could send it, Zeno had put the rebellion down. He induced his late enemy Theodoric to join his army, and the Goths and Isaurians combined easily got the better of Leontius. Syria submitted, and the rebel emperor and Illus, after a long and desperate defence in a castle in Cappadocia, were taken and slain.[[5]]
[5]. This fort—it was called Castellum Papirii—is said to have held out for the incredibly long period of four years after all the rest of the rebellious districts had been subdued, and only to have fallen by treachery.