Italian Yesterdays, vol. 1

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

That was indeed a hard-fought fight; Arbogast knew every inch of the country, his troops outnumbered those of Theodosius, and the cunning old soldier had so disposed them that, unknown to the Emperor, they cut off every line of march save the narrow one by which he had come. The first day’s fighting resulted in a practical defeat for the loyalists, and as the night came down and hostilities were necessarily suspended, Theodosius realised with anguish that the next day’s sun would probably see paganism triumphant and the Cross of his standards trampled underfoot. He had lost great numbers of men; those who remained were deeply discouraged, and he doubted whether they could be persuaded to meet the enemy again. From the adversary’s camp came shouts of triumph and sounds of feasting; he was passing the night in celebrating what he reckoned as a conclusive victory. Theodosius wandered away alone into the hills and remained all night in fervent prayer that God would help the right and vindicate His own cause. As the dawn came up behind the eastern hills the Emperor fell asleep and had a wonderful dream. In his dream he saw two radiant knights, clothed in white and mounted on white horses, come towards him. They told him that they were John and Philip, the Apostles of the Lord, and that he should be of good courage, for God had heard his prayers. Theodosius awoke, but only to begin praying again; nor did he cease until, just as the sun leapt up behind the Nanosberg, an officer came running to tell him of a wonderful dream that one of his soldiers had had—and described the same vision that had visited and comforted the Emperor.

Then indeed Theodosius knew that he should prevail, but he neglected no smallest point that could aid him to victory. When all was ready he made the sign of the Cross, the preconcerted signal of attack, and hurled his men on the foe, who was somewhat dazed and disorganised after the night’s excesses. Still Arbogast’s men fought so fiercely that the issue seemed once more wavering in the balance, and then the great Emperor, like another David, rising in his saddle, shouted, “Where is the Lord God of Theodosius?” and dashed into the thickest of the fray. Like those other valiant ones, who carried no weapons, his soldiers said, “Let us perish with him!” and flew to follow; and then the Lord God of Theodosius let loose His servant, the terrible “Bora,” the wind that science cannot account for, that blows once in a century or once in a decade, as the case may be, and always carries death on its wings. From behind the spurs of the Alps it roared down that day, as if placed under the Emperor’s orders, and in its fury the very darts of Arbogast’s men were turned back and buried in the bowmen’s flesh.

It was a great victory, one of the decisive battles of the world, and Alaric had helped to win it, but from that day his enthusiasm for the Emperor waned. Theodosius had given him to understand that, if Eugenius and Arbogast were subdued, he should be promoted to high military office and, in time, be entrusted with the command of Roman troops in the very centre of any future line of battle; but Theodosius forgot, or trusted that Alaric had forgotten the hopes thus held out, and the proud young chief found himself still in the second rank, a leader of auxiliaries, while the foremost honours of conflict remained with men whom his soul disdained and his intelligence discredited. There was no open rupture till after the death of Theodosius on the 17th of January, 395, little over four months after the battle of the Frigidus. The Goths had long been murmuring that they were weary of fighting the Romans’ battles for them and would prefer to fight for themselves; Alaric’s allegiance to the Emperor had been in great part a personal matter; the feeble boys, Arcadius and Honorius, who were now hailed as the Emperors of the East and West, had inherited none of the great attributes which the young Goth had admired and respected in their father, and were mere tools in the hands of their ministers, whose policy did not lead them to encourage or highly recompense their Barbarian allies; and so it came about that soon after St. Ambrose had pronounced his immortal funeral oration over the body of Theodosius, the Goths, camped on the fair Illyrian plain, took Alaric, placed him on a shield, and, raising it high on their shoulders, broke forth into a mighty shout echoed by all their comrades: “Theodosius! Theodosius!” “A King, a King!”

And he was a born king who stood there, smiling down on them as his graceful young figure balanced itself so lightly and easily on the upraised shield—and not only a king, but a king-maker and the first of a long line of Kings, ruling over that which was destined to be for ages the richest and most Catholic realm in Europe, the Kingdom of Spain—the true Fatherland of dead Theodosius. But Alaric’s thoughts travelled not thither; when his spirit freed itself at a leap from all the practical surroundings of his life, when the veil of the present was drawn aside in dreams, and the future, vague yet glorious, revealed itself for a fleeting moment to his eyes, it was Rome that they saw, insolent and mighty even in her decay, pagan at heart still, and it was he, Alaric, who was to chastise her for her sins and cleanse her from her corruption. His Arian impiety, shared with almost all his countrymen, in no way diminished his zeal for Christianity as he apprehended it, though it is hard for us to reckon as Christians the Arian detractors from the divinity of Christ. Even in our own day the Unitarians are indignant when we refuse the appellation to them—so coveted are the virtues of Christianity by those who make of Christ, the Son of God, a liar and a fraud!

So the spring of 395 saw Alaric start on a conquering career for himself, an enterprise great enough to suit his soaring ambition, and aided, all unconsciously, by the Huns, who chose the same moment for their first descent on Europe. The enfeebled empires of the East and West were appalled at the flood of devastation thus let loose and scarcely knew which foe to meet first—Alaric in Greece (whither he first turned his steps) or the Huns, who were pouring over the Caucasus and terrifying Central Europe with their hideous faces and savage war-cries. It seemed as if the last days of the world had come, and black despair breathes out of every page of the chronicles of the time. But Alaric at least had no idea of continuous fighting for mere fighting’s sake; and although he did, when it suited him, permit orgies of plunder to his followers, he showed again and again the most unexpected and, as we should call it, capricious moderation, renouncing suddenly, and without apparent motive, the entire fruits of a hard-won victory. Thus, when Athens with all its riches lay, a tamed captive, to his hand, one of those strange revulsions of feeling came over him and he made peace with its rulers, entered the city as their guest, and left it without having touched any of its treasures. Twice he stood before the Gates of Rome and twice, in obedience to the Inner Voice that had sent him there, halted at the sacred threshold and withdrew, exacting, however, a heavy indemnity to pacify his troops.

But when, in just rage at the folly of Honorius, he stood for the third time before Rome’s gates, neither the promptings of the “Voice” nor the entreaties of the holy monk who had attempted to stay him and had prophesied his doom should he persist, could turn him from his resolve to take the city. And it is for the sake of my city that I have told these few scanty details of the story of Alaric. His invasion was to be the prototype of many another, but this is the first picture thrown out by the magic lantern of history showing a self-styled Christian and his horde robbing, destroying, dishonouring in the very streets of the Capital of Christianity. The Goths were given but six days (some writers say only three) in which to sate the thirst for riches and treasures which the intercourse with Rome and Constantinople had long ago aroused in their hearts. On Alaric’s former visit a great part of the tribute exacted had been stipulated for in costly garments, and—of all things!—pepper, a luxury already highly prized by the Barbarians, perhaps as stimulating to their naturally noble thirst for strong drinks; this time every man helped himself, the only prohibitions proclaimed extending to holy vessels pertaining to the great sanctuaries. It is claimed for Alaric that he forbade bloodshed, but, if he did, the command was disregarded, as the contemporary lamentations of St. Jerome and St. Augustine show us there was terrible slaughter, the citizens probably attempting, at all risks, to defend their goods and their women. St. Jerome’s quiet retreat at Bethlehem was crowded with refugees, the cream of Roman aristocracy, who gave him such terrible descriptions of the downfall of the city that he was, as he tells us himself, utterly overcome with sorrow and despair. It was on learning of the ruin of the Mistress of the World that St. Augustine, once more convinced of the passing nature of earthly things, conceived the idea of writing his great work, “De Civitate Dei,” showing the indestructibility of God’s City of the Soul, the marvellous spiritual edifice not made with hands, of which every true Christian is co-builder and co-heir.

Alaric prided himself on his Christianity, but the sectarian hatred of many things that Catholicism reveres was so irrepressible that, as I have already related, the tombs of the martyrs were sacked whenever they were discovered, and the traces of their blessed footsteps all but obliterated in many of the Catacombs. There were, too, some of the fairest virtues of Christianity in which the Arian conquerors simply refused to believe; charity, self-denial, voluntary poverty for Christ’s sake—these were such unbelievable folly in the eyes of those baptised Barbarians that they laughed at and punished them as various forms of fraud. One pitiful picture stands out from the red reek of those awful six days—that of the saintly Lady Marcella, living in her old age in her palace on the Aventine, whence every object of value had long vanished—to feed the orphan and the widow. Her only earthly treasure is one sweet girl, her adopted daughter, Principia, who repays her love with all the devotion of a young heart, and follows her example, asking nothing from life but the honour of serving Christ in His suffering poor. No slaves surround the two noble women; their garments are mean and threadbare in the eyes of men, though they look marvellously rich to their Guardian Angels. Alone in their empty palace they two pray and weep while the roar of the sack and the shrieks of the dying sound up from the streets below. Then the invaders have sighted the fair palace on the hill; there is a rush for the entrance—every man would be the first to pick his loot from the treasures it must contain. Marcella drags Principia to a remote hiding-place—those fierce eyes only rest on youth and beauty to destroy—and returns to face the robbers, alone. The great fair-haired fellows, drunk with license, crowd round her, shouting in their uncouth tongue that she must bring forth her treasures. In vain the delicate old lady assures them that she has none, that the threadbare garments she points to are the only ones she possesses, and that the only vessels she uses are those common earthenware cups and jars in the corner, that all the rest has gone to the poor.

“It is a lie!” they cry. “A lie! You have buried your gold and silver—show us where it is!”

She calls on Heaven to witness that she has nothing, nothing but what they see, but the lust of gold has driven them mad. They seize her, throw her to the ground, and beat her with their heavy clubs till she is all but dead. Yet her heart lives. She has been praying for one thing in her torture and now she asks it of them as, weary of her obstinacy, they turn to search the dwelling for themselves:

“One thing I ask of you, and I freely forgive you all your cruelty. Leave me my daughter Principia—let me live for her sake. She is young—timid—if we are separated—if she is left desolate of my protection—she will die of despair!”