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- [00:00]
Tristan Hughes
Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes and if you would like the Ancients ad free, get early access and bonus episodes.
- [00:06]
Professor Peter Heather
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- [00:09]
Tristan Hughes
History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary All About Petra and the Nabateans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:25]
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- [01:23]
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- [02:06]
Tristan Hughes
The year is 370 AD. A cloud of dust appears on the horizon. Dark against the noonday sun, the thunder of hooves reverberates across the vast carpet of the great Steppe, a boundless expanse of scrub and grassland spanning from the plains of Hungary to the deserts of Mongolia. The primal screams of war horses, bred for their agility in battle, merge with the guttural cries of their riders, creating an unrelenting cacophony. These riders are the Huns, a fugitive nomadic people driven from their homeland by the capricious whims of Mother Nature. Bent on pillage and bloodshed, they descend westward into the Gothic lands of Eastern Europe. They are the oncoming storm, a barbarian storm, and Rome is not ready for the havoc they will unleash. This is the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host and welcome to the Second instalment in our mini series on the fall of Rome. In our last episode, we traced the underlying origins of Rome's decline and examined whether the empire was the victim of slow decay in the third and fourth centuries. If you haven't listened, do go back and type. In next week, we'll be exploring the impact of plagues on Rome's collapse and the fate of Rome's last emperors. Today, though, we're moving forward into the late 4th and early 5th centuries to a time of great instability and upheaval, when Germanic tribes who inhabited the unconquered lands of northern and eastern Europe, Goths, Alans, Franks, Saxons, flooded into the empire. Coming initially as refugees and then as invaders, these so called barbarians would ultimately surround and lay siege to the walls of Rome. With the Eternal City sacked by the Goths in 410 and then the Vandals in 455, the empire's heart was ripped out twice in a generation. Rome did not fall in a day, but these sackings and the barbarian invasions which preceded them, still standing as pivotal moments in that process. To understand how the city of Rome found itself torn to shreds by hordes of ravaging barbarians, we must begin our story with the Huns, those fearsome steppe riders we met at the start. They were described by Roman soldier and historian Ammianus Marcellinus as glued to their horses, little known from ancient records and exceeding in every degree of savagery. Beginning in the 370s AD, the Huns poured out of the east and stormed into the lands of the Goths, casting a long and dark shadow over the shores of the Black Sea. It is still unclear what drove them westwards, but what is certain is that it came as a devastating surprise to the Germanic peoples. They overran and set off a domino effect of cataclysmic proportions. The Goths, pushed out of their ancestral heartlands by these Hunnic marauders, had no option but to flee. Wrapped in sheepskin cloaks and carting wagons loaded with terrified women and children, the Gothic chieftains resolved to seek refuge within the bounds of the Roman Empire. And so, in the year 376, they amassed in their thousands on the banks of the River Danube, its raging waters unnatural frontier between the Roman Empire and the turbulent territories that lay beyond it. They sought permission from the Emperor Valens to cross into his lands. They could offer little to the Romans in way of payment, being the refugees that they were, other than their own manpower to bolster the faltering ranks of the Empire's army. And yet this was an offer the Emperor simply could not refuse. His army was incessantly engaged in the distant lands of Persia and was in dire need of a steady supply of recruits. Seeing the merits of settling the Goths inside the Empire, Valens granted their request and sent forth several Roman officers to help ferry these displaced peoples across the river. As soon as news of the Emperor's ascent reached those occupying the Danube, they streamed across its waters onboard Roman naval ships, purpose built wagon rafts and canoes carved out of the hollow trunks of Balkan oak trees. Day and night they crossed with some so desperate to escape the impending Hun raiders that they attempted to swim the rapids and drowned in the process. The seeming resolution of this refugee crisis was said to have initially sparked great joy among the Romans. Whilst we can imagine that for the Goths, the overriding feeling was relief, they had escaped their barbarian tormentors and were now seemingly protected by both the natural frontiers and military might of the Roman Empire. Yet very quickly, things turned sour. Over the next 35 years, these alleged refugees ran rampant throughout the imperial provinces, incensed by the reluctance of the Romans to grant them adequate lands. In 406 AD, St. Jerome, a churchman stationed in the Levantine town of Bethlehem.
- [07:40]
St. Jerome
Lamented, since the Danube boundary was broken, war has been waged in the very midst of the Roman Empire.
- [07:49]
Tristan Hughes
By 408, the Gothic king Alaric had become so enraged by Roman indifference that he undertook to hold the city of Rome itself hostage. The apparatus of imperial power had long since deserted the Empire's once mighty capital in favour of other cities such as Constantinople, Antioch, Trier and Ravenna. Yet Rome remained a potent symbol, and Alaric believed the threat of its capture would extract the concessions he desired from Rome's haughty elite. Over the course of two years and three gruelling sieges, the fearsome Gothic warlord engaged in a tense back and forth with the Emperor. But by late summer of 410, Alaric's patience had worn thin. Infuriated by what he perceived to be Roman duplicity and unwillingness to commit to Alaric's demands, he ordered his warbands to sack the city. Rome's great public buildings were ransacked and burned, including the mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian. Resting places of emperors passed. Even the tarnished bronze statues in the Roman forum were not spared. Hundreds of Roman citizens were captured and enslaved, including the Emperor's sister, Galla Placidia, while thousands more fled as refugees across the Mediterranean Sea to Africa, Egypt and Syria. News of the city's ruin rippled along the Empire's trade routes and communication lines, leaving the Roman world reeling in shock and disbelief. St. Jerome, the churchman who in 406 rued the crisis the Goths had wrought, could hardly believe the number of refugees.
- [09:34]
Professor Peter Heather
Who arrived in Bethlehem by boat to.
- [09:36]
Tristan Hughes
Take shelter from the barbarian storm.
- [09:39]
St. Jerome
Who could believe this? Who could believe that Rome, built up by the conquest of the whole world, would collapse? That the city which had taken the whole world was itself taken? That the mother herself would become the tomb of her people? That today holy Bethlehem should shelter men and women of noble birth who once abounded in wealth and are now beggars?
- [10:04]
Tristan Hughes
And it is hard to believe, it seems astonishing that a refugee crisis that began on the edge of Empire precipitated the collapse and sa of a city which had once ruled the known world. So to help us make sense of it and guide us through the invasions of the Goths, Vandals and Huns, I'm joined by Professor Peter Heather from King's College London, author of the Fall of the Roman A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. He's spoken with me on the podcast before, one of our first ever episodes about this very topic, the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and he's an esteemed expert on all things barbarians.
- [10:45]
Professor Peter Heather
Peter, it is wonderful to have you back on the show.
- [10:47]
Thank you, Tristan. It's great to be back again. Yeah.
- [10:50]
You were one of the first people I ever interviewed on the Ancients podcast. Back in lockdown, I think it was, in 2020, where we did cover a similar topic. So we've gone full circle here. It's wonderful.
- [10:58]
Yeah, that's right. We both shut down at home doing.
- [11:02]
This and look how far we are now. We're doing this in person together. Let's delve straight into it. So the Roman empire in the mid 4th century, if we start at that point, first of all, what sort of Roman Empire should we be imagining?
- [11:16]
You've got to imagine an extremely prosperous Roman Empire. That's, I think, the single most important point that people need to understand, because it's the revolution in our understanding of the empire that has emerged over the last sort of 40 years. You talk to any of my older colleagues now happily in their graves, but this would be the single most extraordinary thing that they wouldn't expect. Because of the archaeological evidence, we now know that the rural economy of the Roman Empire and its general population levels are at a maximum in the 4th century compared to any other point in the Empire. So that's. I think it's not teetering on the point of collapse, in other words, because.
- [12:00]
It survived the turbulence of the third century crisis and then is in this period where you have a rich archaeological record and also a rich literary record too. So, as you say, it's not on collapse, it is thriving.
- [12:11]
Yes. I mean, it's a human society. It's not perfect. Historians are sometimes very weird. They think that if you detect any problem in any society, it's about to collapse. Well, look around you. Human life is not perfect. There are some serious issues. For various reasons, they've had to divide political authority between two centers, one in the west and one in the east. And there is fairly constant tension and occasional conflict between those two centers. Occasional civil war is part of the deal by the late imperial period. But that looks systemic and sustainable, as it were. There's nothing in that narrative which suggests that the thing is about to collapse.
- [12:54]
And simply put, as it splits between east and west at that point, is it clear that one of those powers is more powerful than the other, or is it quite balanced in the mid 4th century?
- [13:03]
In the mid 4th century, it looks pretty balanced to me. Obviously, as the west starts to lose control of its territories, the east emerges very quickly as more powerful. But actually, if you look at the archaeological evidence from, well, even southern Britain, but also definitely central and southern what's now France, Gaul, then Spain, North Africa, which are all western imperial territories, they're all flourishing. So it's not clear to me that there is an obvious imbalance between the.
- [13:31]
Two, because where's the line split? Is it almost Greece or the Balkans? Is it almost like a line in the sand kind of thing?
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The line runs through the Balkans and there's a bit of bickering between. Yeah, that's exactly where in the Balkans we should put it. But basically, the very nice bits of the Balkans, like, you know, what's now Croatia, the Dalmatian coastline and Greece are usually part of the Western Empire. Bizarrely, you would think Greece would be in the Eastern Empire, but it's not in the 4th century.
- [13:58]
And if we explore their relationship with the people outside of the empire, should we tackle this term of barbarians? First of all, why do the Romans label everyone outside of the empire as barbarians?
- [14:09]
Well, it's an old Greek habit. They picked the term up from the Greeks. I mean, it's a term of abuse. We're used to it and we throw it around a lot. But to call someone a barbarian is to say that they are an inferior, indeed imperfect human being. The Romans inherit the sort of classical Greek view of what civilization is. And it's quite specific, actually. It comes down to a vision of how human beings are constructed, that we have a rational soul or mind in a very physical, irrational body. And barbarians are people in whom the rational faculties of the mind or soul have not been developed sufficiently to control the irrational faculties of the body. Civilized people. The rational faculties have been developed sufficiently to control all those impulses that come from our physicality.
- [15:04]
So the Romans had this kind of superiority complex, do they? Oh yes, very much, yes.
- [15:11]
You couldn't accuse them being modest.
- [15:13]
But is this reflected in how are they treated with these peoples outside the empire, with the so called barbarians at that time in the 4th century, where no matter where they are in the empire, do they treat them very much as inferiors? Or is there more, actually more of a rational dealing with them as trade partners and so on? Or, I mean, how do they treat with these different groups?
- [15:33]
Well, both things are true, of course. You know, there is the ideology and then there's the practicality. And the ideology is not an insignificant element in the way that relationships are constructed. So if you're a smart prince on the frontier, you know damn well how you're expected to behave when you're confronted with an emperor parading his standards through your territory. Grovelling is good. GENTLE SOBBING Excellent maneuver. GENTLE SOBBING GENTLE SOBBING There's a Sarmatian prince called Zizase in358 who knows the script perfectly. So he lies down on the ground, he can't move, he's so full of awe in the face of the emperor, HE SOBS GENTLY and then he gets the deal he wants. I could make some modern parallels.
- [16:22]
I was going to say, things go in circles, don't they?
- [16:26]
But, you know, you play the script, you get the deal you want, but the script is real. Every portrayal of an emperor in resplendent glory, well, it will usually have two things. It'll have a victory in the top corner, an image of victory, and it will have a barbarian lying supine at the bottom. Because the other element to this Roman image of superiority is that this is divinely ordained. So you have divine support for the Empire because it is the one place that generates these properly civilized human beings, which is what we're all meant to be. And how does divine support manifest itself? Well, most obviously in victory. You know, if you have the supreme omnipotent creator of the cosmos on your side, you ought to win.
- [17:09]
What are the main barbarian groups that the Romans have to deal with in this time period?
- [17:15]
We're seeing by the 4th century a shift really, in the sense that if you look at the time of Castus in the first century, you've got lots of small named groups on the Rhine and Danube in Europe. If we talk about the European frontiers, for my sins, I added them up once and it's something like it's over 60 named groups in Tacitus Germania.
- [17:40]
This is like Arminius, isn't it, in the Teutoburg Forest, how he has to unite all these different small.
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They're tiny. You've got 60 odd groups in between what's now the Rhine and the Vistula in Poland. So each territory is small and actually there's a strong. They don't like each other very much. And there's a strong implication that there's empty territory between the main concentrations of each of them. So, you know.
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Well, same with Boudicca as well, you know, how much she united the tribes was unprecedented for the time because they were usually at each other's throats.
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Absolutely. You get very temporary alliances, they don't last long even in victory, like Arminius doesn't, for instance. But by the late empire, we get in the Roman sources, a smaller number of names appearing. So Franks and Alemanni on the Rhine, Saxons behind them, fairly small groups actually, opposite what's now the Danube bend in Hungary. So Sarmatians and Quadi, but then another large confederative group, Goths of different kinds on the lower Danube. So the political world, viewed through a Roman lens at least, has changed a lot.
- [18:46]
And is it that as we approach the big date of 376, is there another force that is forcing these groups to move towards the Roman Empire's borders, like the Goths, when you get to.
- [18:59]
The late 4th century? I think there is. Well, the sources, the contemporary sources, are absolutely unanimous that the arrival of the Huns across the western steppe, from the Volga to the Ukrainian steppe, is what pushes the Goths to the danube frontier in 376. So certainly that becomes a major factor in the late 4th and 5th centuries. But we'd seen, or we've already seen the evidence quite strongly suggest that there is a movement from, you might say, outer periphery of Germanic groups towards the Roman frontier in the second and third centuries, which has got nothing to do with the hunt.
- [19:40]
So there's already been movement.
- [19:41]
There has, yes, there has. And I think that makes quite a lot of sense if you think about the type of relations that Rome establishes with these frontier groups, which often involves favorable trading relations Diplomatic presence, all kinds of things for the groups around the frontier. Because the practical deal, beyond the ideological point of showing that you're superior, which is not unimportant, the practical deals are about maintaining frontier security in the most efficient way for the empire. So in other words, you want to establish relations with a fairly stable group and you work actually to stabilize it. You don't expect these things to last forever, but you're looking for a kind of 10, 20 year settlement so that you don't have to intervene militarily. So actually a lot of wealth collects amongst the groups immediately adjacent to the frontier. They also play a large role in supplying the foodstuffs and raw materials needs of Roman legions on the rim frontier. So again, transfer of wealth from empire to the groups immediately adjacent to the frontier. So wealth, there is a kind of overall revolution, economic revolution unfolding in the Germanic world between the first and the fourth centuries, but it's not evenly spread. Wealth concentrates near the frontier and ambitious groups further away want to be part of that action.
- [21:04]
So they all start moving. And is it almost a bit like a domino effect? Is it competing for land or do you sometimes get those groups that are near the borders of the Roman Empire over those centuries, even before we get to the late 4th century of actually taking that next step of asking to be let in to the Roman Empire and settling within?
- [21:22]
Yeah, there are some specific examples where groups want to get out of the action that it's too competitive and too difficult. They do ask Latin term is receptio being received onto Roman territory. There's one small group that do this in the second century as part of the so called Marcomannic war. But Rome also often transfers populations away from the immediate frontier region because it's aware that competition taking place there, which is always military, might spill over onto Roman territory. So they don't want the immediate frontier zone to be too crowded because that will lead to conflict and it will spill over.
- [22:04]
So if there is already a precedent of these people outside the Roman Empire, but moving towards the empire and in some cases being settled within it, why is it almost the next level when we get to 376ad? And why is this such an important state to explore?
- [22:21]
It's different in a couple of ways in the second and third century. Well, actually in the first century too, there are resettlements. Rome is always militarily in control of the situation, so really quite large numbers of people are moved around sometimes. There's an inscription from the Balkans which claims that in the first century over 100,000 people are being moved. Did they count them? Is that real? I don't know. It clearly means a lot of people. More than that, you would hesitate, but it's a lot of people and there's no reason to think it wasn't a lot of people. And similarly, on Rhine frontiers too, we do see some major transfers of population, but the Empire's controlling it. It doesn't mean that everyone who's moved in is necessarily unarmed. Some of these people you want to use as sources of auxiliary troops, new.
- [23:10]
Recruits coming for the Empire.
- [23:11]
Absolutely. And they might have particular skills. So the Batavi from Batavia are very good light cavalry. You don't want to change them. They're like the Gurkhas or the Scottish Highland regiments in the 18th, 19th century British Army. They have specific characteristics. They're very good soldiers. You want them to be what they are. But what's different about 376onwards is the lack of Roman control on the one hand, and that partly reflects the other big difference, which is the size and degree of autonomy that the intrusive groups retain.
- [23:46]
Because what is this group of people that is knocking on the Roman Empire's door on the River Danube? Isn't it in 376? So this is the Goths, if I'm not mistaken.
- [23:55]
It is. And it's not just one Gothic group, it's two large Gothic groups. This is the key bit of information. Our best source tells us the Huns have undermined the security of tenure that the Goths have had north of the Black Sea. I mean, currently, it's exactly the area where the current Ukraine war is being fought. But they'd been there for over a century. So, you know, it's not like they moved in one day, moved out the next. They'd established a reasonably stable hegemony in that region. But the arrival of the Huns undermines that. And we end up with two separate large Gothic groups, both wanting admission to the Empire. Scale of it. Well, one source says over 100,000 people.
- [24:38]
Well, that's a lot in one place.
- [24:40]
It is a lot of people in one place. And it's not surprising that food supplies become a problem. The clearer piece of evidence that it's a lot of people is the fact that they can destroy Valens Eastern Field army on one day at Hadrianople in 378. How many you think there were certainly depends on how many troops you think Valens brought with him. But our best source tells us that two thirds of Valens army dies.
- [25:13]
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- [25:43]
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- [26:12]
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- [26:40]
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- [27:13]
Professor Peter Heather
So let's kind of get to that point of Adrianople because it feels an important point, isn't it? But that's two years after when they are at the Danube.
- [27:20]
Yes.
- [27:20]
And Emperor Valens, he's the Emperor in the east at that time. He doesn't control the whole Roman Empire.
- [27:25]
He doesn't.
- [27:25]
So he's in Constantinople. But how does it go from the Romans having to make a decision on the river Danube whether to let more than 100,000 of these people in to them being welcomed in, but ultimately then having resentments with the Romans?
- [27:42]
Yes. The key point is that Valens is not in Constantinople, he's in Antioch because he's fighting Persia. So he and his army are fully engaged against Persia when the security of the Danube frontier collapses. So foreign policy headaches number one. And he doesn't let them all in. What he does is let one group in and Try and exclude the other. I'm absolutely certain left to his own devices he'd have let none of them in.
- [28:08]
He's almost kind of trying to play them off each other at the same time.
- [28:11]
It's divide and rule. It's the least worst scenario. He knows he doesn't have enough troops in the Balkans to keep both out, so he's letting one in, fingers crossed behind his back, keep the other one out, make a deal with Persia, which is what he does as soon as possible to free up his army and then we'll restore normal order even against the group we've let in.
- [28:29]
So did you think, was there ever a chance that he was thinking actually these Goths, they're good soldiers. If I let one of the groups in they could actually be auxiliaries for my army against Persia. It doesn't sound like he's thinking that way.
- [28:40]
I don't think he's thinking that way. That's what the sources tell us he's thinking. But you know, no emperor can ever say well sorry, we're stuffed, I have to let some of them in because I don't have enough troops in the Balkans. That is a not possible admission for a Roman emperor to make. You have always to be in control of the situation against barbarians because otherwise God is not with you and therefore you're not a legitimate emperor. What should have happened would be that you'd let half them in, break them up into small groups, settle them in separate parts of the Balkans, then draw on them for a smallish, reasonably sized number of recruits in dribs and drabs subsequently. That's I think what he would like to do.
- [29:20]
Does it feel then, do the Goths feel from the attitudes of the local Roman officials overseeing Valens orders that there is this mistrust there? There's a feeling that there's something not quite right, that maybe Valens is preparing to double cross them. Do they get that feeling very early on which is why tensions really do rise quickly?
- [29:39]
I think they do, yes. One thing that occurs is that there are supply problems. Now you could say trying to feed 100,000 people is very difficult anyway. But the Roman sources let it slip that Valens officials had been busy moving all the food into defended cities where the Goths can't get at it on their own account. The Goths also know enough about Roman policy to know that letting them in in one group is a real break with the past. And this may not be forever. So actually the group that is admitted stays in contact with the group that's not admitted. And it's pretty clear that Valens had also given contingent orders to his local commanders what to do if things start to look like they're getting a bit dodgy and that the Goths, the group that have been admitted, are going to go into revolt. Because one standard trope you see in Roman frontier management in the 4th century is invite a slightly dangerous looking king to dinner and then eliminate them. And as tensions start to build up, the local Roman commander invites all the leaders of the admitted Goths to dinner and eliminates most of them. Fritigern comes out of this dinner party and this fascinates me.
- [30:59]
Scarred, must be completely.
- [31:01]
Yes, well, except that the dinner party got rid of all his rivals because Fritigern is not an old established leader. When that group negotiates to come in, two people are named Fritigern, but also Alavivus. Alavivus disappears, I imagine at the dinner party. I've got a feeling Fritigern said to the local Roman commander, okay, look, you take him out the way and I'll give you a deal. I'll keep the Goths quiet. It's my steep, dark suspicion. I cannot prove it. I cannot prove it.
- [31:32]
But obviously it doesn't work because soon enough they're at each other's throats again. It almost feels like a red wedding.
- [31:37]
And what happens is the troops that have been posted to keep the second group on the other side of the river have to come in to deal with the rebellion and the other group immediately crosses.
- [31:46]
But when we get to the battle itself, is it a case of Valens is leading his troops himself as the Roman Emperor? Is he overconfident? He expects the victory to be easy. He underestimates the Goths.
- [31:58]
I mean he knows that the problem is a very serious one. And actually it takes him two years between 376 and 378 to extract his army from Persia. But he also has been negotiating help from the Western emperor who is his nephew, Gratian. So Gratian is on his way with an army, but Gratian is slow. He's only on the fringes of the Balkans. As soon as he started to move his troops, there was some trouble on the Rhine because the people on the other side of the frontier watch the frontier like a hawk. So they looking at Roman army movements for any opportunities that might arise. So Gratian is slow and then Valens is sitting not far from Constantinople with his army waiting for Gratian. The idea is clearly that you're going to catch the Goths between these two field armies, the eastern and western one, and restore order as it were. Normal patterns of events. But he gets some intelligence that I think what it told him is that only one of the two Gothic groups was by itself near Hadrianople. So he rushes forward thinking that he's got a chance with his army just to take out one of the Gothic groups, which he should be able to do, but actually they're both there and we're told his army is not fully deployed and the other Gothic group hits them from the side. The result is the deaths of two thirds of his army.
- [33:25]
One of the worst defeats in Roman history, isn't it? Adrianople is one of the most. It is famous dates of late antiquity, I guess.
- [33:31]
Yeah, I mean higher estimates think that valens came with 30,000 men, so 20,000 die. I think he probably came with 15. More like 15 and so 10,000 die. But either way, and it is the cream, I mean this is the thing, the way that late Roman army is set up, the regiments that go with the Emperor, the so called prisonal forces, they are the cream. They are better paid, better equipped, better trained. So it is the creme de la creme of the East Roman army is lost on that afternoon.
- [34:03]
It's a big event to cover, especially following 376, you know, only a couple of years later. But if we now can cover the next couple of decades with the Goths, they've gained that great victory. I mean what do they do next? Do they start rampaging across the empire, being a bit more like invaders rather than refugees?
- [34:20]
They never get out of the Balkans. You can't get out of the Balkans eastwards because the Romans control the sea crossings into Turkey and you can't get out westwards because Gratian is still there with his forces. But the Romans decide that they cannot in the end get together enough forces properly to subdue the Goths. They try. So Gratian appoints a colleague, the emperor Theodosius I, who puts together, improvises, another eastern army. He's appointed, clearly from his own propaganda, as the man who's going to win the Gothic war. But his army falls apart. We don't quite know what happens. The sources are evasive, don't know if it's they said we're not going to do that, thanks very much or treachery or Theodosius took one look at the balance of forces and realized he couldn't win. We don't know. But anyway, whereas when he first Appears Theodosius is the man to win the war. He then hands control of the war back to Gratian and his forces after the summer of 380. The summer of 380 is something happens to Theodosius army and Gratian decides that he can't win an outright victory. So we end up with a deal done with the Goths that the leaders of Hadrianople among the Goths, they don't appear. So my strong suspicion is that part of the deal is that they'd be.
- [35:50]
Eliminated, they have to be given up.
- [35:52]
But Fritigern is not mentioned again. But we do a peace deal. And that peace deal doesn't recognize a single Gothic leader as king, but it does allow Goths continued autonomy in large masses, maybe several rather than one composite mass in the Balkans on Roman territory. This has been contested, but actually sources that are contemporary, that are in favor of the deal and are hostile to it say the same thing about it. So to my mind, that's game, set and match when both sides to the story are telling you the same thing. Essentially, that's the nature of the deal.
- [36:33]
Does it also feel that that deal probably is going to be quite temporary, if that ill feeling is still there? I mean, I've got in my notes now almost kind of two titanic figures before we get to the sack of Rome in the early 5th century, which is Stilicho versus Alaric. Does this dominate this next period?
- [36:49]
There is a kind of intervening period before we get to them, and that is that Theodosius fights to Western usurpers and uses the Goths on both campaigns. But the Goths don't like being used. There are mutinies on the first campaign and in the second campaign. Well, how did that happen? The Goths end up in the front line of the battle and the frigates suffer very large casualties. Accident, design.
- [37:14]
They're kind of used as the expendable troops. Right.
- [37:17]
And that is the backdrop to Alaric's revolt. When Theodosius suddenly dies unexpectedly in January 395, Alaric is able to mobilize the ill feeling amongst the Goths, who are well aware that the Roman state might want to revisit the deal. Very exceptional, totally unique deal that it's offered them and he can get enough of them onside to make a major revolt.
- [37:45]
And does he still stay in the Balkans or does he now start heading westwards towards Rome? And this figure of Stilicho, I mean, how does Alaric fare over that next decade or so as he's trying to recover and inspire the Goths in their revolt.
- [37:58]
To my mind, the sources are pretty clear that he knows that what he needs is a more secure deal from the Roman state. And he uses ravaging and conflict as the mechanism to extract that deal. So his first move is on Greece. They march south. And that does get him a temporary deal with the Eastern Empire. But that deal is very unpopular in Eastern imperial circles. Giving in to barbarians and letting them do what they want is not on the script for the divinely supported empire and it gets overturned at that point. No one is threatening Alaric with extinction or anything like that, but he's completely in political limbo and he tries his luck with the Western Empire. So this is the first invasion of Italy in 4001. Again in search of a deal, I think. But Stilicho is able to fend him off.
- [38:54]
I'm guessing he comes back. And when he comes back to Italy, has the Roman Empire in the west, is it struggling more at that time? Is there no longer a Stilicho like figure who can lead the resistance?
- [39:05]
Well, by the time Alaric comes back in 408, 9, Stilicho has been eliminated, but only just. And the reason he's been eliminated is the real problem, namely that we've had two further mass incursions across the frontier. And unlike the first one in 376 which went into Eastern Imperial territory, the two new ones have gone into Western imperial territory. So in 4005, 6, a king called Radagisius led a very large force into Italy. Stilicho does manage to control and dismember that force. Pulls it apart diplomatically. We're told that he transferred a lot of its high status members into the Roman army. But the king who leads it ends up being executed. But then at the end of 406, we get a second major incursion across the Rhine, the famous Vandals, Alans and Suevs, who then start rampaging through Gaul and Spain. And Stilicho doesn't really have an answer to that. I think that he starts to make overtures to Alaric as part of a potential answer, as a way of then pulling some of Alaric's military clout into the Western Roman army with a view, possibly at that point then, of restoring order against the Vandals, Alans and Sweves. But Stilicho's incapacity to defend southern Gaul and Spain immediately from the Rhine invaders has prompted usurpations in Britain.
- [40:27]
So this is the rebellion of Constantine iii, another Constantine.
- [40:30]
Tristan Hughes
Right.
- [40:31]
Professor Peter Heather
He's the third of three quarrelsome lot, the British, he's the one who's successful. He's got some field army units in southern Britain and he also then is able to pull in quite a lot of the Roman army of the Rhine. So he puts together quite a major force. So at this point the Emperor Honorius starts to lose confidence in Stilicha because you've got Constantine III hammering away north of the Alps. You've got Vandals, Alans and Swerves in southern Gaunt, Spain, and you've got Silico making eyes at Alaric. That doesn't seem to make sense. In fact, I think it's perfectly reasonable maneuver on Stilicho's part. But it's quite easy for other people to get in the imperial ear. And once Stilicho has lost the Emperor's confidence, he is undermined.
- [41:21]
He has quite a good legacy, if I'm correct, in that people, there seems to be quite a bit of sympathy for Stilicho, isn't there, with all the problems that he faces, as you say, all of these threats coming very quickly one after another, where it's incursions across the Rhine or into Italy. You've got Alaric there, you've got this usurpation in Britain as well, and they're just too many problems to deal with. And yet he almost feels like the force. He goes from hero to zero because there are rivals to him in the imperial court.
- [41:47]
Absolutely. You know, you have that in your inbox and see how you feel, frankly. And what I think is fantastic about Stiliger was a bit like the Thane of Cawdor. Nothing becomes him like the leaving in this life, like the leaving of it. He's been undermined. He knows that there's a warrant out for his arrest and that he will be executed. And I think it is the groups from that invasion of Italy in 4056, the Barbarian groups he's transferred into the Roman army. They say, come on, lead us in revolt, we'll put you back in control. But he refuses. He allows himself to be arrested and executed rather than lead them in a desperate bid to save his career. And I think that's a pretty extraordinary moment, actually. And he knows his son is going to be killed as well, but it's never just you. But he accepts that rather than pressing the nuclear button.
- [42:44]
Well, Stilicho meets a sticky end. And you've already mentioned how also at this time, after 408, you have the Vandals, the Alans and the Suevs. They're making their way through Roman Gaul and into Spain. So France and Spain today. So there's a problem there. Silico's out the way. Alaric is seeing all of this in the Balkans area or on the approach to Italy. How does this all ultimately lead to him besieging and then sacking Rome?
- [43:10]
Well, Alaric's constant need remained a deal which recognizes the Goths as part of the Roman Empire, part of the Roman political military world. And he sense now that the west is going to be the place for him to get that deal. Constantinople. The walls are constructed, the army's in one piece. They put it back together after Hadrianople. He's never going to be allowed back into the political structures of Constantinople.
- [43:40]
The east is strong.
- [43:41]
Yeah, absolutely. So this divided, brutalized west is the place where he can negotiate the best deal. And that's what brings him to Rome. He doesn't want to sack Rome. He sits outside it for 18 months before he finally sacks it. What he's doing there is using it as a bargaining chip in the desire to get a deal from the western Roman state.
- [44:03]
If he's waiting outside Rome for that long, I mean, does the Emperor Honorius or is he influenced by those around him? Does he prove too stubborn? Does he push Alaric too far?
- [44:11]
In the end he does, yes. There's a sequence of regimes, if you like, around Honorius. So advisors come and go with different policies. The first guy who replaces Stilicho has, well, you should fight them on the beaches down the line. But that proves a total disaster. So he's quickly ousted and the next guy comes along and says we should do a deal. So they concoct a deal. But actually, actually that deal, from Honoris's point of view looks way too favorable to Alaric. And it was an extraordinary deal under those terms. Alaric was going to be given an imperial generalship. His troops are going to be stationed either side of the Alps, Northern Italy and then the other side. So it'd be very close to Ravenna and Milan, political centers of Northern Italy. And the Goths were going to receive not only rations but also payments in gold. So like full on Roman soldiers, that's close to establishing a semi Gothic protectorate over the Western Empire. Honorius won't have that. So that deal is rejected. Then as our best source tells us, everyone's astounded because Alaric comes back with another offer. And that offer I think is very revealing. He says, look, okay, no generalship, no gold, bit of land on the frontier that is not close to the political heartland and just some rations.
- [45:37]
So he's relented, he's given quite a lot of concessions there.
- [45:40]
Yes, I think it tells you that Alaric's perception is that the current malaise in the Western Empire is only going to be temporary. He could get far more than that in the short term. But that's not what he wants. He wants a long term deal and he thinks that that is the shape that a long term deal might take. And actually he's not wrong because when his group is eventually settled in 4:16,418, when it finally does a deal, it's not Alaric anymore. He's dead by now. But the deal that's done is very similar to Alaric's minimum offer, not his maximum warfare. So no generalship, no payments in gold that we know about. Land well away from the Italian political heartland, that is southwestern Gaul and occasional military service.
- [46:28]
It's an interesting point that you raise how we of course are doing this. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that 70 years after this, roughly 70 years, the Roman Empire in the west will fall. Oh, it will completely transform. But they don't think that, they think the Roman Empire will continue. So it's interesting to learn.
- [46:45]
Well, it'd been there for 500 years.
- [46:47]
Well, exactly. That's the thing. Like you wouldn't expect it to change.
- [46:49]
No, you really wouldn't.
- [46:51]
Between now and Stuart England or Tudor England. But it does also beg the question, doesn't it? You highlighted how the political centres at that time in Italy, not Rome, it's Milan and Ravenna. So when Alaric does decide to sack Rome, I mean, how important an event is it? Symbolically, is it devastating, but actually politically, not that big a deal.
- [47:12]
I think that's exactly what it, it is actually. It's a huge symbolic moment. Rome is a cultural capital. There's a huge scholarly argument about whether emperors visited Rome on three or four occasions for a month in the first century, that is, they never went there.
- [47:27]
Yeah, a holiday place kind of thing.
- [47:29]
Yeah, that's right. It's important for its universities, it's important for its cult sites, for its history, but it's not where the empire is run from. My favorite put down is from a, an Eastern orator who refers to it as a sacred precinct far from the highway. He talks about it in the 350s. So politically it's not that big a deal. But culturally it is. Psychologically too. People fight about it, but it's certainly one of the major stimuli which will set Augustine of Hippo in the city of God, putting forward the argument that actually there isn't a special relationship between the Divinity and the Roman state. There's a temporary one and that's only contingent, and the Divinity might withdraw his support from that state at any point.
- [48:21]
Is it devastating the sack of Rome? I mean, physically, what Alaric does? I know that he captures Honorius, sister Gallopesidia, but is it like the common image you have, like fires in the streets, killing here, there and everywhere? I mean, do we know how devastating the actual sack of Rome was?
- [48:39]
We really don't know quite how devastating it was. The Goths are Christian and all our commentators are Christian and they all share the view that it has to be God's will. So according to Augustine and friends, it's the most civilized sack there's ever been. Virgins are led off to the churches and are safe and got. Who knows? It doesn't look like it is the wreck of some of those early modern sacks or indeed the vandal sack in 457. But there are treasures and there are burn layers that you find occasionally. So I don't think it was a piece of cake either. Alaric is forced into sacking. He doesn't want to, but he's kept his forces outside the city. They expect to return. They want all this stuff. So I think it's a slightly controlled process and not a total devastation of the city. We have plenty of archaeological and literary sources which suggest that the city is not a burnt and devastated landscape.
- [49:49]
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- [50:59]
Professor Peter Heather
Peter, let's move on to the next big barbarians in the story today. The vandals. You mentioned them in passing right there. And we will get to the Vandal sack of Rome that follows. First off, who are the Vandals and how do they come into the story of the fall of the Western Roman Empire?
- [51:14]
The Vandals? Well, there are two separate groups of Vandals that we know about, Housding Vandals and Siling Vandals. And when they cross the Rhine at the end of 406 they are separate units with their own kings. Our best suggestion is that they are from Central Europe, close to what's now Hungary, Slovakia, and they'd been there or thereabouts from the third century onwards. They are agricultural farmers and they are not immediately close to the frontier in the 4th century. So we don't have direct Roman relations between Vandal kings and Roman emperors recorded in our 4th century sources.
- [52:00]
And so how do they go from feels such a journey that they go from Hungary, Slovakia, Central Europe, not near the borders of the Roman Empire, so no direct contact. Two, by the time that Alaric sacked Roman, just after that they have established themselves in North Africa. How do they get there?
- [52:22]
Well, their journey is only part of it actually. There's a bigger journey that's involved and that is when they cross The Rhine in 406, they are in alliance with loads of others, some small groups, but the biggest partners with these two separate Vandal groups are Alans. And the sources are quite unanimous that the Alans are in the majority at that point. And in fact when they share out Spain in 4, 11, 12, the Alans get more of Spain than the two vandal groups. So the Alans are definitely the bigger party to this alliance and they've come even further. Are they Iranian or the north of the Black Sea? So we've got to get the Alans over the Carpathians or round the Carpathians into Central Europe to make the alliance with the Vandals and then shunt everybody further west. So the Alans I think are collateral damage from the arrival of the Huns. So this is the great domino effect. There are lots of my colleagues who don't like domino effects. But how the hell you get tens of thousands of Alans in Hungary when they used to be in Ukraine without a domino effect? I do not know. I think essentially what happens is that the Huns destabilize things north of the Black Sea, but that destabilization then destabilizes things in Central Europe, which is why we have loads of Alans there to make this alliance. And they all cross into Southern Gaul in 406 they cross into Spain. It looks in 409.
- [53:46]
And in that's a really rich part of the empire, isn't it? Spain and then North Africa.
- [53:50]
Really rich, yeah. And they divide up Spain between them. We're told the allocation in one of our sources. The Alans get the best bits. They move on to North Africa because the Goths of Alaric, not led by Alaric anymore, are settled in southwestern Gaul by the one smart, or the first really smart ruler of the west. Who gets control of Honorius after Stilicho's death. A man called Flavius Constantius, who will later marry Honorius sister, the one dragged off by the Goths and become emperor in turn. Co emperor. They don't get rid of Honorius, they rule with him. And he settles the Goths in southwestern Gaul, does a deal with them for joint military action. And between 416 and 418, that joint Roman Gothic force destroys the Alans as an independent force kills their kings, destroys the Siling Vandals, and we're left only with the Hasding Vandals in Spain. But the refugees from certainly the Alans and I suspect also the Siling Vandals as well, join the Hasdin Vandals and the Hasdin kings who invade North Africa. Their official titulature is kings of the Vandals and Alans. So it is an alliance.
- [55:09]
Vandals have become the dominant part. And I guess that's why when thinking about those great kingdoms that follow the fall of the Western Roman Empire, you don't have the Alans as big in our memory as the Goths and the Vandals today.
- [55:21]
Absolutely not. That Roman Gothic counteraction in Spain was clearly pretty nasty or effective, depending on your point of view, and destroys the hegemony that the Alans had had within that grouping.
- [55:35]
One thing I remember from our first ever chat together on a similar topic, but I remember when we covered this part was almost when the Vandals go off from Central Europe to think whether they actually knew where North Africa was. And then ultimately they have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into Roman North Africa at this time by the 420s. And is it quite a brutal process of taking over North Africa? Is it pretty swift? I mean, do we know how quickly the Vandals are able to take over one of the most rich and lucrative parts of the Western Roman Empire?
- [56:06]
There's an outline chronology. So they transfer themselves over the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco in 429. There is then a slow march westwards. They are given an intermediate deal in 435, which sees them in control of Algeria or sort of central and western Algeria. The really rich bits of North Africa are what are now Tunisia and Eastern Algier. This is where all the kind of millionaires had their holiday homes between the wars.
- [56:39]
Is it Hippo, Regius and Carthage and places like that that are very important?
- [56:43]
Well, that's where Yves St. Laurent has a famous house there. Fabulous gardens. He can go visit, et cetera, et cetera. This isn't Beau Geste in the desert. This is really rich Mediterranean landscapes. Then in 439, the vandals break out of that deal and out of the reservation that they've been put in, and they take over the richest bits of North Africa with some fighting, we're told. They fight their way into Carthage, but how much is not clear.
- [57:10]
So they've then taken over North Africa. How do we then get to the point where they've now settled in one of the richest parts of the Roman Empire to them deciding, actually, let's go to Rome, let's do what the Goths did, but then let's take it to the next level? Why do they then decide, let's go and sack Rome?
- [57:27]
Partly, of course, for treasure. One should never discount. None of these kings are so securely in power that they can afford not to reward their followers. So there is always a need for kings to make raiding opportunities available, otherwise satisfy the unruly political aspirations that might be bubbling up within their own followings. But also about getting again, a secure deal that recognizes their control of North Africa. You can imagine that the first response to the Vandal seizure of the best bits of North Africa is not one of, oh, thanks for doing that. From the Roman point of view, a huge Roman counterattack involving both east and west is prepared in 441, 442.
- [58:14]
So the Eastern Roman empires finally decided, okay, we need to act and help.
- [58:17]
Our allies in west the forces gathered in Sicily. But then, oh, Attila invades across the Danube and the eastern forces are withdrawn. What prompts the sack of Rome by The Vandals in 457 is a chain event that follows on from Attila's death. Which means that the reigning Western emperor, Valentinian iii, doesn't think he needs his chief advisor anymore, a man called Aetius, who's another very competent generalissimo like Stilicho and Flavius Constantius. So he kills him. Supporters of Aetius kill Valentinian in turn. We've got political chaos. Geisrich sense opportunity, but also the need to establish that his Vandal kingdom will Be safe.
- [59:06]
He's the Vandal king, Geiseric, at that time.
- [59:07]
Yeah, yeah. He's the son of the first hasting Vandal king who created the alliance. Yeah.
- [59:14]
And is this sack of Rome, I mean, they've already taken over North Africa, which must have been absolutely devastating economically. But is the Vandal sack of Rome compared to the Gothic one? Do we think it's even more devastating. And then could you draw the conclusion that the Vandals actually have a bigger impact on the fall of the Roman Empire in the west than the Goths did?
- [59:32]
The Vandal sack of Rome is certainly more brutal. They're there a week and the current Western emperor, he's really still only at the kind of pretender stage. He is the emperor in name. Petronius Maximus is killed fleeing the city as the Vandals arrive. Yeah. Supposedly they strip out much more of the city. Again, it's not left burnt and in ruins, but it's a very substantial sack. And I think you can say that the Vandals are playing a more substantial role in fall of the empire for this reason. The empire is actually a very simple structure. You tax the agricultural production of provincial holdings to maintain the central army, and every time you lose control of provincial territories, you SAP that flow of revenues and make it impossible for the empire to maintain armies of the same scale. And what we see happening between 440, actually you can see it happening from 420 onwards is the slow draining away of this tax revenue lifeblood of the Western Empire to the extent that it can no longer maintain sufficient forces to be the preponderant military force within Western imperial territory. That's the process. And North Africa was the kind of jewel in the crown of the Western Empire. Didn't take much defending before the Vandals arrived there, produced great agricultural surplus. Perfect characteristics for your province. If you wanted to design the ideal province, that's. It doesn't need much defending, produces lots of wealth, thank you very much. But taking the richest part of North Africa out of the tax base of the Western Empire, that is a very disastrous moment for the crucial fiscal military axis, which is what keeps the empire in being.
- [61:35]
It's always important to highlight the Vandals because I always think that they are overlooked compared to the Goths, So highlighting their significance in the fall of Rome in the West.
- [61:44]
Yeah. And it's important to see that what kills the empire is not these occasional military defeats, it is the sapping away of the revenue flow. So we look at the sacks of Rome, we look at the Battle of Hadrianople, they have short term significances, but the long term process is the disappearance of the flow of tax revenues which keeps that army in being.
- [62:09]
But is the loss of places like Roman Britain in the early 5th century. It's not almost the usurpation that you were talking about which might be dealt with. It's the fact that the Romans permanently lose Britain's tax, loses the money from Britain. It's not almost the Saxon threat, it's actually that tax reason.
- [62:28]
Yeah, exactly. And that is the right way to think about it. Every loss of a province is a loss of tax flow and it already shows up. We have this document called Nunitia Dignitatum which lists the Roman army very usefully from our perspective. We have two lists for the Western army, one from 395 and a later updated version from the early 420s, probably just after the fighting in Spain. And you can compare and contrast the two and very interesting things show up. First of all, the Roman field army has suffered very heavy casualties in the intervening period. Like 40% of the regiments that existed in 395 don't exist in 420. But then the numbers have been made up, but they've been made up for the most part, not by recruiting new units, but by shifting what used to be frontier defense forces into the field army. So a lot of former garrison troops have now been regraded, whatever that means, as field army troops. So the total number of field army troops is the same. But as it were, we've done it on the cheap. We haven't filled in the gaps by proper new recruiting. And goodness knows what holes have been left on the frontier where those troops have been transferred. That I think is absolutely showing you the effects of the loss of revenue flow already by the 420s and that's before the loss of North Africa.
- [64:00]
So we've covered in detail the Goths and we've looked at the Vandals. You mentioned how a key reason as to why the Vandals sack Rome is the aftermath of Attila and the Huns. So it feels integral to this chat that we also talk about the Huns. Well, exactly. I mean, what does Attila, the famous leader of the hunter, infamous leader of the Huns, what does he do in the Western Roman Empire during his campaigns there? And how significant are the Hunnic invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the ultimate fall of it?
- [64:33]
I think the Hunnic invasions of the west are not directly causative of the fall of the Western Empire. But they are indicative of what's going on in the sense that the very effective West Roman leader at the time, Aetius, who is the right hand man of the Emperor Valentinian III and the effective ruler of the empire, Atius, had been using the Huns to keep people like the Goths under control. So Atius has had to live with Goths in southwestern Gaul. He's had to settle Burgundians in the Rhone Valley, but all the time he's been drawing on Hunnic military support. So there's a big Gothic revolt in the mid-430s.
- [65:21]
Burgundians are just another group that are problematic.
- [65:24]
Exactly. And the Burgundians were heavily attacked by Huns before the remnants are settled on Roman soil. Whether that's a Roman policy to do that, or whether it's accident that the Hunnic action against the Burgundians was autonomous, we don't know. But anyway, basically, Atius been drawing on Hunnic's world to put himself in power to start with, but then also to keep control of the sort of geostrategic situation in the Western empire in the 430s. Attila comes to power I think in 440 with his brother, and immediately changes, and we start to see a Hunnic empire which is no longer willing to be paid for mercenary service by the Western or Eastern empires, but is taking direct military action to access wealth and subsidies from it. And this of course, changes the balance of power. You can't use the Huns anymore to keep the Goths in control. So when the Huns eventually turned from having ransacked the Balkans and the Eastern Empire for everything they could get to Western campaigns in 450 and 451, then Atius has to put together a new military alliance to face down the Huns. The Roman army by itself is not strong enough. He calls in Goths.
- [66:39]
Goths are back on side.
- [66:40]
They're back on side. And this actually points to the future. Attila's empire has this brief flowering. It falls apart when he dies. There's then a huge fight for succession amongst the Huns, and there's a lot of fallout from that, which leads to yet more groups ending up on both eastern and west Roman soil, more groups of barbarians. But fundamentally, we're left with a new political context in the Western Empire, where the Goths are too powerful to be excluded from deal making. So to construct a regime that's got any kind of chance of working, you have to get the Goths on side because you can no longer use Hunnic outside threat to keep them on the reservation, as it were. And the moment that the Vandals are sacking Rome, the then Western emperors representative Avitus has gone to the Goths to concoct a deal with them. When Petronius Maximus is killed and lo and behold the Goths or Avitus has himself declared emperor at the Gothic court, the Goths have become kingmakers.
- [67:50]
I was going to say emperor makers.
- [67:51]
Or kingmakers, isn't it? Absolutely. And that is really pointing to the strategic shift which is with the decline in tax revenues, the Western army is no longer strong enough to operate completely independently of Gothic military support as well. You have to include the Goths in.
- [68:10]
This because of course with Aetius he almost feels like another Stilicho, doesn't he? Stilicho with Honorius, Aetius with Valentinian iii. But as you say, that flowering of the Hunnic empire in the west, it's very brief. And then Attila dies, so that threat goes away. But Aetius, he doesn't last long before the Vandal sacrome. Has he fallen from grace too? Like Stilicho had before?
- [68:35]
Exactly like Stilicho. Again, you've got a dominant figure with what was originally a child emperor. This type of relationship is never pretty and it's never easy to resolve. The only way for someone who comes to power as a ruler to assert their independent control is by violence. You've got to eliminate the person who's been dominating you. Edward III does it successfully in England, gets rid of his mother and her lover. What a kind of extraordinary coup d' etat to take power. It has to be something like that. And Valentinian iii, with the threat of the Huns now removed, thinks that he can be his own man. And the scene is actually very indicative. Aetius is listing out all the remaining tax revenues that there are.
- [69:24]
We've got this left, this left and this left.
- [69:26]
The rest is Valentin's had enough of that and knife in the middle of this.
- [69:33]
They don't help themselves, the last emperors.
- [69:35]
No, they don't. I don't think he was willing to be told as again, modern parallels might suggest those with God complexes don't like to be told hard truths.
- [69:47]
So by the time we get to post Valentinian iii, because he doesn't last long himself, does he? At the end of the day, when we get to that time, the last emperors following the Vandals have sacked Rome, by this time has Roman control over Gould, modern day France is that that Fragmented, Spain is fragmented. So Roman power is only kind of Italy and maybe the southern reaches of France and the Balkans, Dalmatia region, maybe Sicily as well. There's not much left at that period.
- [70:14]
The core areas left and there are two functioning regimes, one by Majorian 4, 5, 9 to 4, 61 and then Anthemius in the later 460s. They have control of Italy, obviously, the Nice Dalmatian coast, Sicily, they can still exert power north of the Alps. The landowning opinion in central and southern Gaul is still within their political compass. And north eastern Spain, Tarraconensis, it's the Roman province around Barcelona. That much is reasonably under control. That's their core territory.
- [70:59]
It's so interesting, Peter, because in this chat we have covered, I think it's fair to say, the major barbarian invasions of that time period with the Goths, the Alans, the Vandals and the Huns. From all of your work on this topic, how significant do you think these barbarian invasions are in the ultimate fall of Rome? Are they a key contributed to it? Or was the Roman Empire already on its decline before it happens that they're almost a catalyst to it?
- [71:27]
You'd get different answers to that from people. My own answer is categorically that they are central to this. And I think for two reasons. First of all, the old model of social and economic dislocation in the third and fourth centuries, followed by political collapse in the fifth, which is intuitively convincing, the archaeological evidence makes it clear that that's no longer supportable. Economy and society are flourishing. And indeed actually the cultural evidence, if you look at writings from the late 3rd and 4th century, there's a ton of it, you know, very sophisticated. This doesn't look like a world in crisis at all. So we've got that. And the second part is, while certainly civil war and tension is now systemically hardwired into the operations of the Roman imperial system because of the division between east and West. I don't see any narrative pathway that gets you from the kind of civil wars that we see in the fourth century to imperial collapse and for this reason. So we see two kinds. We either see conflict between Eastern and Western Roman emperors, usually for preeminence over the whole Kitna caboodle. In other words, we're looking to pull the thing together, not to break it apart. The other type we see is that there's a kind of fault line in the Western Empire around the Alps, because we've got one army group in Gaul and we've got another army group in northern Italy or the western Balkans, protecting the sort of middle Danube frontier. And you get rival leaders. I mean, emperors are always generals, as it were. So these two army groups can put forward rival pretenders for control of the Western empire. And we see conflict of that kind. But again, as the sort of fancy sociologists would call it, these are centripetal, not centrifugal conflicts. We're not looking to break off a bit of the empire and run it separately. We've seen rival leaders for control of the whole thing. And there is not any sign in the 4th century of the kind of thing that we saw in the third century, which is bits of the empire operating and setting up as autonomous units. So we had the Gallic Empire, we had Palmyra in the east in the third century, no repeat of that at all. And the reason we don't have is that we've reorganized the military so that the most powerful militia formations are around the imperial person. It isn't possible anymore for a regional general to set up an independent part of the empire. They can't do it. British usurpers try it, they get crushed in the late third, very early fourth century, and there is no repetition. So if you think, what does the fall of the Empire in the west mean? It means the disappearance of a unitary state that runs from Hadrian's Wall to the Atlas Mountains of North Africa into a series of successor states. Can we get to that situation just with the pattern of Roman politics and Roman military organization in the 4th century? I see no remote possibility, especially as.
- [74:58]
Those successor states are named after those barbarian groups, the Frankish kingdom, Ostrogothic, Visigothic.
- [75:04]
And this is where the barbarians are crucial. They undermine that flow of revenues, which makes for that preponderance of the prizental forces around the emperor.
- [75:12]
So they take the revenue almost for themselves in the forming of their own kings.
- [75:17]
So therefore the preponderance of military power disappears from the Roman center. It can't keep everyone straight. We get regional fragmentation, but around the barbarian dynasts, not around Roman military commanders, because it couldn't happen around Roman military commanders. There isn't a regional Roman commander who has a powerful enough military formation to stand up to the central forces.
- [75:39]
Well, Peter, this has been brilliant. And it also undermines, isn't it, how these barbarian movements, these movements of people at that time, they are central to the creation of that early medieval world and those kingdoms that become very well known in the Middle Ages. It just goes to me to say this has been a fantastic chat and thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast.
- [76:00]
It's my absolute pleasure. I've been rabbiting on about these things now for about 40 years, but it doesn't lose my interest. Give you a reflection on me.
- [76:10]
Absolute pleasure.
- [76:11]
Thank you.
- [76:15]
Tristan Hughes
Well, there you go. That was Professor Peter Heather joining us for the second episode in our Fall of the Roman Empire series exploring the so called barbarian invasions, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals and how far these supposed outsiders really shaped the collapse of Rome. I hope you enjoyed it.
- [76:33]
Professor Peter Heather
If you'd like to hear more from.
- [76:34]
Tristan Hughes
Peter, be sure to check out his earlier appearance on the Ancients about the.
- [76:38]
Professor Peter Heather
Fall of the Western Empire. It'll be linked to in the description below.
- [76:42]
Tristan Hughes
Peter was also one of our star interviewees for a special two parter episode.
- [76:46]
Professor Peter Heather
That we released last year on the.
- [76:48]
Tristan Hughes
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, so also check that one out too. Now if you're ready for the next chapter in this story, don't miss the.
- [76:55]
Professor Peter Heather
Next episode in the series where we'll.
- [76:57]
Tristan Hughes
Be turning to the plagues, pandemics and environmental factors that added further pressure on an already fragile empire. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or.
- [77:09]
Professor Peter Heather
Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [77:11]
Tristan Hughes
It really helps us and you'll be.
- [77:12]
Professor Peter Heather
Doing us a big favor if you.
- [77:14]
Tristan Hughes
Leave us a rating as well. We'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com subscribe.
- [77:45]
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- [78:15]
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