Defeat the Emperor Decius, A.D. 257.
Such were the people who, more than any others, caused the disruption of the Roman empire. Devastating the country on all sides, as they advanced through the Ukraine into Thrace, and having captured the city of Philippopolis, and defeated and slain the Emperor Decius, they were for a while checked by an ignominious peace, and by the payment of a considerable sum in money by his successor, Gallus, which only showed the weakness of the empire, and stimulated them to fresh attacks. The province of Dacia, ceded to them by Aurelian, was one of the first steps in advance they secured; for, though often repulsed with great loss, their perseverance was indomitable, while they showed an aptitude for war remarkable among men in other respects so ignorant; their recovery from crushing defeats being often scarcely less glorious than their victories. Thus, when joined with the Vandals in the expedition that ended in the possession of Dacia, they soon made themselves masters of the Black Sea. An enormous army needs an ample fleet; but it would seem that the fearless courage of the Goths made up for want of skill in the construction of their transport vessels. The natives of the coasts of that sea had for centuries made use of very frail boats for its navigation;[327] and there is no reason for supposing that the Goths had better ships than Tacitus describes as on the Euxine in his day. Speaking of a sudden invasion of Pontus, A.D. 69, that historian says: “The barbarians even insolently scoured the sea, in hastily constructed vessels of their own, called ‘cameræ,’ built with narrow sides and broad bottoms, and joined together without fastenings of brass and iron. Whenever the water is rough, they raise the bulwarks with additional planks, according to the increasing height of the waves, till the vessel is covered in like a house. Thus they roll about amid the billows, and as they have a prow at both extremities alike, and a convertible arrangement of oars, they may be paddled in one direction or another, indifferently and without risk.”[328]
It was in such frail craft as these that the Goths committed themselves to a sea with which they were wholly unacquainted, yet, under the guidance of local and impressed mariners, they succeeded in surprising the city of Trebizond, wherein immense treasures had been collected for safety, its capture, with many of its merchants, being the reward of their daring.
Seven years after obtaining possession of Dacia they were, however, again driven from it by Probus; but the skill and courage of these barbarous tribes were always conspicuous at sea; and in no instance more so than in the case of a party of Franks, who had been settled near the sea coast, and who, being suddenly seized with the desire of returning to their homes, surprised a small fleet then on the Euxine, and were thus enabled to carry out their plan. Unskilled in the art of navigation, and unacquainted with any other except the Baltic and the Black Seas, these adventurers made their way through the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean, and, after sacking Syracuse and other towns, boldly steered through the Straits of Gibraltar, entered the Atlantic with a degree of hardihood almost unparalleled, and made a triumphant passage to the Batavian or Frisian coasts.[329]
Rebellion of Egypt, A.D. 273.
Though repeatedly defeated, their successes, together with the steady advance of other barbarian hordes from the north, were sufficient to destroy the prestige which had for centuries made Rome invincible. A general spirit of revolt was now awakened in all the provinces. Even Egypt, so long the most docile of the slaves of Rome, was aroused into active rebellion by Firmus, a wealthy merchant of Alexandria, who, after plundering that city at the head of a furious mob, maintained, though for only sixty days, the imperial purple, published edicts, and raised an army, supported, as he boasted vaingloriously, from the profits of his paper trade.[330]
Franks and Allemanni.
The dangerous secret of the wealth and weakness of the empire once clearly discerned, new swarms of barbarians, encouraged by the successes of those who had gone before them, sprang into existence, overran the northern districts, flooded Gaul and Spain, and carried desolation and terror almost to the very walls of Rome. Of these the most formidable were the Franks, or Freemen, who now occupied the Rhenish frontier, and the Allemanni, a name now generally held to imply a confederacy of many tribes of German origin. As in the case of the Goths, their first successes were of short duration, and, after three bloody battles, Aurelian was able to drive them out of Italy, securing, at the same time, by the overthrow of Zenobia and the destruction of Firmus, a short breathing time for the distracted empire. But the policy now, though not for the first time, adopted by the Roman generals, was not one likely to succeed against the hosts now arrayed against the empire. The principle of building walls of great size and length, which had failed in England and in Scotland, failed even more conspicuously when adopted by Probus,[331] who, at the head of his legions, still maintained vigorously the prowess and the name of ancient Rome. His wall, two hundred miles in length, from the Danube to the Rhine, could be of little real value against an active and experienced enemy; indeed, Gibbon stated the truth when he said, “The experience of the world has exposed the vain attempt of fortifying an extensive tract of country.” Nor did Probus’s second scheme of enlisting in the Roman armies large levies taken from tribes but partially conquered, prove, as might have been anticipated, a more effective source of security and strength. It must, indeed, have been clear to any persons of observation, that no permanent stability could be secured for a government which wasted its means by acts of wanton and revolting extravagance, such as those which Gibbon has so eloquently described in his “Decline and Fall” of the great empire.
The barbarians, ever on the alert, now discovered that there were traitors within the Roman camps who gave fresh assistance to their inroads. Such a traitor was Carausius, not, as Stukeley imagined, a descendant of the blood royal of Britain, but a Dutch soldier of fortune, of the tribe of the Menapii. Tampering with the fleet he commanded in the name of Maximian, he crossed with it from Gessoriacum (Boulogne), and, seizing on Britain, proclaimed himself Augustus and struck money with his effigy. For seven years he maintained his ill-gotten power, but, though at length murdered by his lieutenant, Allectus, Carausius deserves some historical remembrance as the first creator of a British-manned navy.
A.D. 287.