Agricola

by William Emerton Heitland

A flagrant instance[1678] is seen in the efforts made to thwart his reforming energy during the winter of 357-8. After defeating and humbling aggressive German tribes, he set himself to relieve the distress of the landowners, who had suffered great losses. There was at the time a great need of money. The praetorian prefect of the Gauls, Florentius, proposed to raise the sums required[1679] by an additional levy, and procured from Constantius an order to that effect. Julian would rather die than allow this. He knew what would happen in carrying it out, and that such ‘precautions’ (provisiones)[1680] or rather destructions (eversiones) had often brought provinces into the extremities of want. The Prefect, to whose department the matter in strictness belonged, protested loudly, relying on the powers given him by Constantius. But Julian stood firm, and tried to soothe him by calmly proving that there was no necessity for the proposed measure. Careful calculations shewed that the normal impost (capitatio) would produce enough to furnish the needful supplies, and something to spare. He would have nothing to do with the order[1681] for an extra levy. The Prefect duly reported this to Constantius, who reprimanded the Caesar for his obstinacy. Julian replied that the provincials had been exposed to ravages from various quarters, and that if they were still able to render the usual dues[1682] the government had reason to be thankful. To wring more out of men in distress by punishments was impossible. And he did manage to prevent extraordinary exactions in Gaul. In the winter of 358-9 he continued the same policy. He saw to the equitable assessment[1683] of the tribute, and kept at bay the horde of rascally officials who made fortunes[1684] out of injuring the people. The corruption of the law-courts he checked by hearing the important cases himself. No wonder that in an age of Christian emperors the virtuous pagan earned a reputation as a restorer of Roman greatness far beyond the boundaries of Gaul. Whether the fact that adherents of polytheism were now chiefly to be found among rustics (pagani) had anything to do with Julian’s clear appreciation of the sufferings of countryfolk, is a question on which I cannot venture to offer an opinion.

That all or most of the corn levied by imperial taxation was in the frontier Provinces required for the military commissariat is well known, and the granaries for storing it were a leading feature of permanent camps and garrison towns. The feeding of armies in the field, always wasteful, no doubt consumed a great deal. In the case of Gaul (for to live on the country was starvation to a force invading wild Germany) the quantity to be brought up to the front seems to have been normally more than Gaul could spare. It was usual to rely on the harvests[1685] of Britain. Transport was the main difficulty. Saxon pirates infested the narrow seas, and the navigation of the Rhine was blocked by Franks. Julian’s energy cleared away these obstacles, and saw to the erection or repair of granaries in the Rhineland towns to receive the British corn. These measures enabled him to do without making extra demands on the farmers of Gaul, a step sometimes unavoidable when there was war on the frontiers. Of course such commandeering was very unpopular, and wise generals avoided it whenever possible. Ammianus draws particular attention[1686] to this matter when narrating the campaign of Theodosius in Mauretania (373). He forbade the levy of supplies from the provincials, announcing that he would make the stores of the enemy[1687] provide the commissariat, and the landowners were delighted.

Among the interesting references that occur in the course of the work are some that throw further light on the conditions of life in the parts of the empire subject to invasion. It is not necessary to cite the frequent mention of various kinds of fortified posts from great strongholds to mere blockhouses. These remind us that the strength of the imperial armies could never be so maintained as to guard the frontier at all times on all points. Barbarian raiders slipped through[1688] the inevitable gaps, and wide stretches of country were laid waste long before sufficient forces could be gathered to expel them. We do not need the descriptions of their cruel ravages to convince us that agriculture near the Danube or Rhine borders was a perilous calling. If the farmer were not carried away into bondage or slain, he was left robbed of his all, and in imminent danger of starving: for the barbarians ate up everything, and hunger was a principal motive in leading them to come and warning them to return home. Naturally it was the custom in these border-lands to provide fortified refuges here and there in which local farmers could find temporary shelter with their belongings, and homesteads of any importance were more or less equipped for defence. This was the state of things even in Mauretania. We read of a farm[1689] (fundus) which the brother of Firmus the rebel leader (373) ‘built up after the fashion of a city’; also of one girt with a strong[1690] wall, a very secure refuge for the Moors, to destroy which Theodosius had to employ battering-rams. These are not the only instances. And forts (castella) and walled towns are often referred to. Along the northern borders the necessity for such precautions was much greater. Still it seems that few if any in the latter part of the fourth century foresaw that frontier defences would at no distant date give way before the barbarian flood. A high imperial official, with whose corrupt connivance[1691] gross wrongs had been perpetrated (370) in Africa, on being superseded in office withdrew to his native Rhineland, and ‘devoted himself[1692] to rural affairs.’ The retired ease for which he apparently hoped was soon ended, though not by barbarian raiders. The malignity of a praetorian prefect tracked him to his retreat and by persecution drove him to suicide.

This last episode may remind us that the weakening of the empire was not wholly due to failure of an economic kind or to decay of military skill. The farmers might raise crops enough, the armies might prove their superiority in the field, but nevertheless the great organism was in decline. A general mistrust, fatal to loyal cooperation for the common good, was the moral canker by which the exertions of farmer and soldier were hampered and rendered vain. Officials seeking to ruin each other, emperors turning to murders and confiscations as a source of revenue, all classes bound fast in rigid corporations or gilds under laws which it was their study to evade; the failure of individual enterprise, lacking the joy of individual freedom, and the stimulus of expected reward; in short, everyone ready to sacrifice his neighbour to save his own skin: how was a society characterized by such phenomena to maintain a moral advantage over the rude barbarians? That it was now protected by alien swords, that aliens were even commanding[1693] the Roman armies, was not the main cause of its overthrow. As a rule these barbarians kept their bargain, and shed their blood freely for the empire that enlisted them in masses. But we must distinguish between two or three different classes of these alien defenders. The mere mercenaries need not detain us. More significant were the contingents taken over in large bodies by agreement with the tribes. A good instance[1694] is that of the year 376, when a vast host of Goths sought leave to pass the Danube with the hope of settling on vacant lands south of the river. We are told that the Roman commanders on that front got over their first alarm and took the line that really the emperor was in luck. Here was a huge supply of recruits[1695] brought to him from the ends of the earth, an unlooked-for reinforcement ready to be blended with his own troops, and to make up an unconquerable army. Instead of spending the yearly payments of the provinces[1696] on filling up the ranks, the treasury would gain a great sum of gold. It would seem that they reported to the emperor in favour of the request, for Valens granted the petition of a Gothic embassy. Arrangements were made for transporting them over the river, and it was understood that they had leave to settle in the parts of Thrace. But now troubles began. Greedy Roman officials fleeced and maltreated the hungry horde, who were at length driven into rebellion. With the sequel, the great battle (378) near Adrianople, and the death of Valens, we are not here concerned. But the account[1697] of their ravages in Thrace gives us a picture of the countryside in a harassed province and of the slave labour employed. The rebels, unable to take fortified places by regular siege, overran the country in raiding bands. Captives guided them to places stocked with food. But they were especially encouraged and strengthened by the great number of people of their own race who came pouring in to join them. Ammianus describes[1698] these deserters as men who had long before been sold (into slavery of course) by traders, and with them very many whom at the time of their passing the river, when they were perishing of hunger, they had bartered for thin wine or worthless scraps of bread.

This scene may serve to remind us that slavery and the sale of slaves to Roman dealers were recognized features of German tribal life as described by Tacitus. It also gives us a glimpse of the way in which opportunities of imperial advantage could be wasted or turned into calamities by the unpatriotic and selfish greed of Roman officials. In this case potential recruits were turned into actual enemies; and the barbarian slaves, who should have been tilling Thracian fields in the interest of Rome, were left to guide and recruit the hostile army of their kinsmen. It must not be supposed that all schemes for raising barbarian troops in large bodies were thus by gross mismanagement brought to a disastrous end. The value of sound flesh and blood in the ranks was well understood, and a successful campaign against German tribes could be made profitable from this point of view. Thus in 377, when Gratian had a whole tribe at his mercy, he required of them a contingent[1699] of sturdy recruits to be incorporated in Roman army-units, on delivery of whom he set free the rest to return to their native homes. That such recruits became under Roman discipline so far Romanized as to provide efficient armies is clear from the victories that still delayed the fall of the empire. But ‘Roman’ was becoming more than ever a mere name-label: there had never been a Roman nation. Of the third class of alien soldiery little need be said. Military colonists of barbarian origin had for a long time past been brought into the empire, some as frontier guards holding land on condition of army service, others more in the interior, even[1700] in Italy; and these latter undoubtedly furnished many recruits, on whatever terms. The general result may be summed up in saying that, when the barbarian invaders at last came to stay, they found their kindred already there at home.

LV. CLAUDIAN.

In Claudian, who wrote about 400, we have another oriental Greek, who wrote chiefly in Latin with far more mastery of that language than Ammianus. Stilicho his patron, the great barbarian head of the Roman army, was at the height of his power, and Claudian’s most congenial occupation was to sing his praises and denounce his opponents. He was also poet laureate of the feeble emperor Honorius. Writing mainly on contemporary themes, he is, if allowance be made for his bias, a witness worth citing; but the passages relevant to the present subject are naturally few. In common with other writers of the later ages of Rome he is constantly looking back to a great and glorious past, contrasting painfully with that present which he nevertheless is striving to glorify. Thus he not only refers with enthusiasm[1701] to the old heroes of Roman history and legend, the common material of Roman literature, but even dreams[1702] of a golden age to be, when the earth of her own accord shall render all good things in abundance to a people living happily in communistic brotherhood. This fancy however is no more than a piece of unreal rhetoric, an echo of Vergil. It is inspired by the victories of Stilicho, and the world-dominion under which this beatific vision is to be realized is—the rule of Honorius.

In January 395 the great Theodosius died, and the empire was divided between his two sons. In November, Rufinus, who dominated Arcadius at Constantinople, was murdered. His place was soon taken by the eunuch Eutropius. On these two personages Claudian poured out a flood of invective, speaking for Stilicho and the West. The greed of Rufinus is depicted[1703] as ruinous to the landed interests. ‘The fertility of his land was the ruin of the landlord: a good crop[1704] made the farmers tremble. He drives men from their homes, and thrusts them out of their ancestral borders, either robbing the living or seizing the estates of the dead.’ The jealousy of the West expresses itself in a passage[1705] referring to the famine created in Rome by the rebellion of Gildo in Africa. Honorius (that is Stilicho) is effusively praised for its relief by importations from other Provinces, chiefly from Gaul. That, owing to the claim of the New Rome to the corn of Egypt, the Old Rome should be so dependent on Africa, is a situation indignantly resented[1706] in eloquent lines. A symptom ominous of imperial failure was the attempt to wrest eastern Illyricum from the rule of Arcadius (407-8) an enterprise[1707] secretly concerted between Stilicho and Alaric. Fugitives from Epirus sought refuge in Italy. Stilicho treated them as prisoners of war from an enemy’s country, and handed them over to Italian landlords as slaves or coloni. When Alaric and his Goths moved towards Italy, some of these refugees, aided by a law issued for their protection, found their way home again. Claudian unblushingly declares[1708] that none but Stilicho will be able to heal the empire’s wound: ‘at length the colonus will return to his own borders and the court will once more be enriched by the tributes of Illyricum.’

A Roman view of the intruding barbarians and their capacity of peaceful settlement is in one place[1709] put into the mouth of Bellona the war-goddess. She addresses a Gothic chief in bitter sarcasm. ‘Go and be a thorough ploughman, cleaving the soil: teach your comrades to lay aside the sword and toil at the hoe. Your Gruthungians[1710] will make fine cultivators, and tend vineyards in accordance with the seasons.’ She taunts him with degenerating from the good old habits of his race, war and plunder, and scornfully describes him as one captured[1711] by the glamour of fair dealing, who had rather live as a serf on what is granted him than as a lord on what he takes by force. In short, he is a coward. Now no doubt there were Goths and others, Huns in particular, of this war-loving work-hating type approved by the war-goddess. But abundant evidence shews that many, perhaps most, of the barbarians were quite ready to settle down in peace and produce their own food. When Claudian himself speaks[1712] of the ‘Teuton’s ploughshare’ as one of the agencies producing corn that relieved famine in Rome, he is most likely referring to the many Germans already settled in Gaul as well as to inhabitants of the ‘Germanies,’ the two provinces along the Rhine.