(F. G. M. B.)
From about 370 the history of the East and West Goths parts asunder, to be joined together again only incidentally and for a season. The great mass of the East Goths stayed north of the Danube, and passed under the Later history. overlordship of the Hun. They do not for the present play any important part in the affairs of the Empire. The great mass of the West Goths crossed the Danube into the Roman provinces, and there played a most important part in various characters of alliance and enmity. The great migration was in 376, when they were allowed to pass as peaceful settlers under their chief Frithigern. His rival Athanaric seems to have tried to maintain his party for a while north of the Danube in defiance of the Huns; but he had presently to follow the example of the great mass of the nation. The peaceful designs of Frithigern were meanwhile thwarted by the ill-treatment which the Goths suffered from the Roman officials, which led first to disputes and then to open war. In 378 the Goths won the great battle of Adrianople, and after this Theodosius the Great, the successor of Valens, made terms with them in 381, and the mass of the Gothic warriors entered the Roman service as foederati. Many of their chiefs were in high favour; but it seems that the orthodox Theodosius showed more favour to the still remaining heathen party among the Goths than to the larger part of them who had embraced Arian Christianity. Athanaric himself came to Constantinople in 381; he was received with high honours, and had a solemn funeral when he died. His saying is worth recording, as an example of the effect which Roman civilization had on the Teutonic mind. “The emperor,” he said, “was a god upon earth, and he who resisted him would have his blood on his own head.”
The death of Theodosius in 395 broke up the union between the West Goths and the Empire. Dissensions arose between them and the ministers of Arcadius; the Goths threw off their allegiance, and chose Alaric as their king. This was a restoration alike of national unity and of national independence. The royal title had not been borne by their leaders in the Roman service. Alaric’s position is quite different from that of several Goths in the Roman service, who appear as simple rebels. He was of the great West Gothic house of the Balthi, or Bold-men, a house second in nobility only to that of the Amali. His whole career was taken up with marchings to and fro within the lands, first of the Eastern, then of the Western empire. The Goths are under him an independent people under a national king; their independence is in no way interfered with if the Gothic king, in a moment of peace, accepts the office and titles of a Roman general. But under Alaric the Goths make no lasting settlement. In the long tale of intrigue and warfare between the Goths and the two imperial courts which fills up this whole time, cessions of territory are offered to the Goths, provinces are occupied by them, but as yet they do not take root anywhere; no Western land as yet becomes Gothia. Alaric’s designs of settlement seem in his first stage to have still kept east of the Adriatic, in Illyricum, possibly in Greece. Towards the end of his career his eyes seem fixed on Africa.
Greece was the scene of his great campaign in 395-96, the second Gothic invasion of that country. In this campaign the religious position of the Goths is strongly marked. The Arian appeared as an enemy alike to the pagan majority and the Catholic minority; but he came surrounded by monks, and his chief wrath was directed against the heathen temples (vide G. F. Hertzberg, Geschichte Griechenlands, iii. 391). His Italian campaigns fall into two great divisions, that of 402-3, when he was driven back by Stilicho, and that of 408-10, after Stilicho’s death. In this second war he thrice besieged Rome (408, 409, 410). The second time it suited a momentary policy to set up a puppet emperor of his own, and even to accept a military commission from him. The third time he sacked the city, the first time since Brennus that Rome had been taken by an army of utter foreigners. The intricate political and military details of these campaigns are of less importance in the history of the Gothic nation than the stage which Alaric’s reign marks in the history of that nation. It stands between two periods of settlement within the Empire and of service under the Empire. Under Alaric there is no settlement, and service is quite secondary and precarious; after his death in 410 the two begin again in new shapes.
Contemporary with the campaigns of Alaric was a barbarian invasion of Italy, which, according to one view, again brings the East and West Goths together. The great mass of the East Goths, as has been already said, became one of the many nations which were under vassalage to the Huns; but their relation was one merely of vassalage. They remained a distinct people under kings of their own, kings of the house of the Amali and of the kindred of Ermanaric (Jordanes, 48). They had to follow the lead of the Huns in war, but they were also able to carry on wars of their own; and it has been held that among these separate East Gothic enterprises we are to place the invasion of Italy in 405 by Radagaisus (whom R. Pallmann[1] writes Ratiger, and takes him for the chief of the heathen part of the East Goths). One chronicler, Prosper, makes this invasion preceded by another in 400, in which Alaric and Radagaisus appear as partners. The paganism of Radagaisus is certain. The presence of Goths in his army is certain, but it seems dangerous to infer that his invasion was a national Gothic enterprise.
Under Ataulphus, the brother-in-law and successor of Alaric, another era opens, the beginning of enterprises which did in the end lead to the establishment of a settled Gothic monarchy in the West. The position of Ataulphus is well marked by the speech put into his mouth by Orosius. He had at one time dreamed of destroying the Roman power, of turning Romania into Gothia, and putting Ataulphus in the stead of Augustus; but he had learned that the world could be governed only by the laws of Rome and he had determined to use the Gothic arms for the support of the Roman power. And in the confused and contradictory accounts of his actions (for the story in Jordanes cannot be reconciled with the accounts in Olympiodorus and the chroniclers), we can see something of this principle at work throughout. Gaul and Spain were overrun both by barbarian invaders and by rival emperors. The sword of the Goth was to win back the last lands for Rome. And, amid many shiftings of allegiance, Ataulphus seems never to have wholly given up the position of an ally of the Empire. His marriage with Placidia, the daughter of the great Theodosius, was taken as the seal of the union between Goth and Roman, and, had their son Theodosius lived, a dynasty might have arisen uniting both claims. But the career of Ataulphus was cut short at Barcelona in 415, by his murder at the hands of another faction of the Goths. The reign of Sigeric was momentary. Under Wallia in 418 a more settled state of things was established. The Empire received again, as the prize of Gothic victories, the Tarraconensis in Spain, and Novempopulana and the Narbonensis in Gaul. The “second Aquitaine,” with the sea-coast from the mouth of the Garonne to the mouth of the Loire, became the West Gothic kingdom of Toulouse. The dominion of the Goths was now strictly Gaulish; their lasting Spanish dominion does not yet begin.
The reign of the first West Gothic Theodoric (419-451) shows a shifting state of relations between the Roman and Gothic powers; but, after defeats and successes both ways, the older relation of alliance against common enemies was again established. At last Goth and Roman had to join together against the common enemy of Europe and Christendom, Attila the Hun. But they met Gothic warriors in his army. By the terms of their subjection to the Huns, the East Goths came to fight for Attila against Christendom at Châlons, just as the Servians came to fight for Bajazet against Christendom at Nicopolis. Theodoric fell in the battle (451). After this momentary meeting, the history of the East and West Goths again separates for a while. The kingdom of Toulouse grew within Gaul at the expense of the Empire, and in Spain at the expense of the Suevi. Under Euric (466-485) the West Gothic power again became largely a Spanish power. The kingdom of Toulouse took in nearly all Gaul south of the Loire and west of the Rhône, with all Spain, except the north-west corner, which was still held by the Suevi. Provence alone remained to the Empire. The West Gothic kings largely adopted Roman manners and culture; but, as they still kept to their original Arian creed, their rule never became thoroughly acceptable to their Catholic subjects. They stood, therefore, at a great disadvantage when a new and aggressive Catholic power appeared in Gaul through the conversion of the Frank Clovis or Chlodwig. Toulouse was, as in days long after, the seat of an heretical power, against which the forces of northern Gaul marched as on a crusade. In 507 the West Gothic king Alaric II. fell before the Frankish arms at Campus Vogladensis, near Poitiers, and his kingdom, as a great power north of the Alps, fell with him. That Spain and a fragment of Gaul still remained to form a West Gothic kingdom was owing to the intervention of the East Goths under the rule of the greatest man in Gothic history.
When the Hunnish power broke in pieces on the death of Attila, the East Goths recovered their full independence. They now entered into relations with the Empire, and were settled on lands in Pannonia. During the greater part of the latter half of the 5th century, the East Goths play in south-eastern Europe nearly the same part which the West Goths played in the century before. They are seen going to and fro, in every conceivable relation of friendship and enmity with the Eastern Roman power, till, just as the West Goths had done before them, they pass from the East to the West. They are still ruled by kings of the house of the Amali, and from that house there now steps forward a great figure, famous alike in history and in romance, in the person of Theodoric, son of Theodemir. Born about 454, his childhood was spent at Constantinople as a hostage, where he was carefully educated. The early part of his life is taken up with various disputes, intrigues and wars within the Eastern empire, in which he has as his rival another Theodoric, son of Triarius, and surnamed Strabo. This older but lesser Theodoric seems to have been the chief, not the king, of that branch of the East Goths which had settled within the Empire at an earlier time. Theodoric the Great, as he is sometimes distinguished, is sometimes the friend, sometimes the enemy, of the Empire. In the former case he is clothed with various Roman titles and offices, as patrician and consul; but in all cases alike he remains the national East Gothic king. It was in both characters together that he set out in 488, by commission from the emperor Zeno, to recover Italy from Odoacer. By 493 Ravenna was taken; Odoacer was killed by Theodoric’s own hand; and the East Gothic power was fully established over Italy, Sicily, Dalmatia and the lands to the north of Italy. In this war the history of the East and West Goths begins again to unite, if we may accept the witness of one writer that Theodoric was helped by West Gothic auxiliaries. The two branches of the nation were soon brought much more closely together, when, through the overthrow of the West Gothic kingdom of Toulouse, the power of Theodoric was practically extended over a large part of Gaul and over nearly the whole of Spain. A time of confusion followed the fall of Alaric II., and, as that prince was the son-in-law of Theodoric, the East Gothic king stepped in as the guardian of his grandson Amalaric, and preserved for him all his Spanish and a fragment of his Gaulish dominion. Toulouse passed away to the Frank; but the Goth kept Narbonne and its district, the land of Septimania—the land which, as the last part of Gaul held by the Goths, kept the name of Gothia for many ages. While Theodoric lived, the West Gothic kingdom was practically united to his own dominion. He seems also to have claimed a kind of protectorate over the Teutonic powers generally, and indeed to have practically exercised it, except in the case of the Franks.
The East Gothic dominion was now again as great in extent and far more splendid than it could have been in the time of Ermanaric. But it was now of a wholly different character. The dominion of Theodoric was not a barbarian but a civilized power. His twofold position ran through everything. He was at once national king of the Goths, and successor, though without any imperial titles, of the Roman emperors of the West. The two nations, differing in manners, language and religion, lived side by side on the soil of Italy; each was ruled according to its own law, by the prince who was, in his two separate characters, the common sovereign of both. The picture of Theodoric’s rule is drawn for us in the state papers drawn up in his name and in the names of his successors by his Roman minister Cassiodorus. The Goths seem to have been thick on the ground in northern Italy; in the south they formed little more than garrisons. In Theodoric’s theory the Goth was the armed protector of the peaceful Roman; the Gothic king had the toil of government, while the Roman consul had the honour. All the forms of the Roman administration went on, and the Roman polity and Roman culture had great influence on the Goths themselves. The rule of the prince over two distinct nations in the same land was necessarily despotic; the old Teutonic freedom was necessarily lost. Such a system as that which Theodoric established needed a Theodoric to carry it on. It broke in pieces after his death.
On the death of Theodoric (526) the East and West Goths were again separated. The few instances in which they are found acting together after this time are as scattered and incidental as they were before. Amalaric succeeded to the West Gothic kingdom in Spain and Septimania. Provence was added to the dominion of the new East Gothic king Athalaric, the grandson of Theodoric through his daughter Amalasuntha. The weakness of the East Gothic position in Italy now showed itself. The long wars of Justinian’s reign (535-555) recovered Italy for the Empire, and the Gothic name died out on Italian soil. The chance of forming a national state in Italy by the union of Roman and Teutonic elements, such as those which arose in Gaul, in Spain, and in parts of Italy under Lombard rule, was thus lost. The East Gothic kingdom was destroyed before Goths and Italians had at all mingled together. The war of course made the distinction stronger; under the kings who were chosen for the purposes of the war national Gothic feeling had revived. The Goths were now again, if not a wandering people, yet an armed host, no longer the protectors but the enemies of the Roman people of Italy. The East Gothic dominion and the East Gothic name wholly passed away. The nation had followed Theodoric. It is only once or twice after his expedition that we hear of Goths, or even of Gothic leaders, m the eastern provinces. From the soil of Italy the nation passed away almost without a trace, while the next Teutonic conquerors stamped their name on the two ends of the land, one of which keeps it to this day.