Authors: Stephen Dando-Collins
The Roman defeat at Adrianople was a staggering blow to Roman prestige. “The annals record no such massacre of a battle except the one at Cannae,” said Ammianus, referring to the defeat of the Romans in Italy by Hannibal many centuries before. [Ibid., 13, 19] But worse than the stink of defeat, these were “ever irreparable losses,” Ammianus lamented, “so costly to the Roman state.” [Ibid., 13, 11] Poor generalship had been to blame. The barbarian nations in both the West and the East took heart from this telling defeat and renewed their savage inroads into the Roman provinces. The conquest of Italy now seemed achievable. Rome itself now beckoned.
Who would or could save the Roman Empire from collapse now?
AD
401–403
LXXIV. STILICHO SAVES ITALY
Rome’s last hope
“You and you alone, Stilicho, have dispersed the darkness that enshrouded our empire and have restored its glory.”
C
LAUDIAN
,
The Gothic War
,
AD
36–39
It was the middle of the winter of
AD
401–402, and a Roman cavalry column was warily picking its way across the snowbound Swiss Alps, urged on by their impatient young commander; Rome’s most senior general was attempting to come to the rescue of his emperor after Italy had been invaded by the Visigoths.
Flavius Stilicho was just 36 years of age. Yet, according to the poet Claudian, who knew him, Stilicho had “shining gray hair.” [Claud.,
TGW
, 458] The weight of command had apparently sent him prematurely gray, for on his young shoulders Stilicho carried the command of all of Rome’s military in the west of the Roman Empire as Master of Both Military Services, a post previously occupied by two men that combined the roles of Master of Foot and Master of Cavalry. Stilicho’s mother was a Roman, his father a Vandal from Scandinavia who had been a tribune of Roman cavalry.
As a teenager Stilicho had embarked on a career within the Roman military, swiftly becoming an outstanding soldier and an extremely confident and inspiring leader. Both qualities meant that he was swiftly propelled to the rank of tribune of cavalry. In
AD
385, at the age of just 20, Stilicho had been appointed by the emperor Theodosius to the post of
Comes Domesticorum
—Count of the Household troops, the imperial bodyguard that succeeded the Praetorian Guard abolished by Constantine the Great. Theodosius had also given Stilicho the hand in marriage of his favorite niece, Serena. Two years before Theodosius died in
AD
395, he had made Stilicho Master of all his forces in the west, and guardian of his 10-year-old son and successor Honorius. This, in effect, made Stilicho regent of the Western Empire. Young Honorius had subsequently married Stilicho’s daughter Maria.
Now, Stilicho faced his greatest test—saving Italy from the invading hordes. The Visigoths, originally from the Ukraine, had crossed the Danube thirty years before. After the massive Gothic defeat of the army of the emperor Valens at Adrianople in
AD
378, the Visigoths had occupied Moesia, making their capital Novae, previously the base of the 1st Italica Legion. Two years after the death of Theodosius, in
AD
395, the Visigoths had elected a new king and war leader, 25-year-old Alaric, who had previously served as commander of Goth auxiliary troops in the Roman army. Since then, the Visigoths had invaded Thrace, occupied all of Greece, and seized Pannonia and Illyricum from Rome, forcing Roman settlers to flee. Alaric had been placated by the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Arcadius, Theodosius’ eldest son, apparently with a bribe, and for six years the Visigoths had controlled their Balkan empire on Italy’s eastern flank while maintaining an uneasy peace with the Romans.
As the autumn of
AD
401 was coming to an end, Alaric led his people—men, women and children—along a recently built path that traversed the Julian Alps, and entered northeastern Italy unheralded. As Alaric had hoped, the Romans were caught completely off guard. The Visigoths supposedly had a treaty of peace with them, while the looming winter gave the residents in Italy a false sense of security—no one, they thought, would launch an invasion at this time of year. In late October, once the invaders’ presence in northeastern Italy became known, a hastily assembled Roman army met the Visigoths at the Timavus, the Timavo river, northwest of Trieste. In the battle that followed, the Roman army was destroyed, after which Alaric’s forces flooded unimpeded across northern Italy as far as Liguria to the west, overwhelming farms and villages, and laying siege to cities and towns.
Community after Roman community fell to the invaders. Walls reinforced with steel, mighty defensive towers and iron gates, none of these could keep the invaders out. No rampart or palisade could withstand the onrush of the Visigoth cavalry,
said Claudian; it was almost as if the city gates opened of their own accord. [Claud.,
TGW
, 213–16] The people of northern Italy resorted to praying for foul weather which would bring rain that flooded the rivers and kept the invaders from reaching their towns and villages. But through the winter and into the spring the rain stayed away, and the people complained that even the sunshine seemed to conspire against them. [Ibid., 48] Nothing stopped the invaders; they glutted themselves with booty, and took tens of thousands of Roman civilian captives—some to ransom, others to retain as slaves.
Rome was no longer the seat of emperors. In northwestern Italy, the young emperor Honorius had made his capital at Mediolanum, today’s city of Milan, just as his father and several previous emperors had done since early in the fourth century. And now the invaders surrounded the imperial city, cutting off Honorius and his court from the outside world. In southern Italy, as news arrived that the north was being overrun, Rome and every other city and town closed their gates and levied every able-bodied man to their defense. A massive earthen wall was thrown up around Rome’s outer suburbs and equipped with numerous wooden watchtowers—Claudian, who was in Rome to see it being built, said that the wall’s architect was fear. [Claud.,
SCH
., 533] Yet, while many were industrious in their preparations to defend Rome, the wealthy prepared to evacuate their families and their valuables to the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. [Claud.,
TGW
, 218]
At Honorius’ court in Milan there was talk of giving up Rome to the invaders and transferring the city’s population to southern Gaul at the junction of the Saône and Rhine rivers, making Lugdunum the new capital, the new Rome. [Ibid., 296–300] In Gaul itself, and in Spain and Britain, the news of the Visigoth invasion generated a rumor, which quickly spread, that Rome had fallen. [Ibid., 201–204] Meanwhile, messengers from the emperor had been sent on a desperate mission to find Stilicho and beg him to return to Italy at once to direct the defense.
When tidings of the invasion reached Stilicho, he had been in Vindelicia, a region taking in parts of modern-day Switzerland, Germany and Austria. He had been busy putting down an uprising by Ostrogoth tribesmen who had settled in Vindelicia and Noricum under a peace settlement with Rome. [Warry,
WCW
] Apparently encouraged by Alaric, the barbarian settlers had broken their treaties. [Claud.,
TGW
, 364–6] Once Stilicho arrived in Vindelicia, despite being accompanied by only a small number of Roman troops, he had soon quelled the rebellion. His soldiers from Raetia had then sacked the Ostrogoth farms across Vindelicia and generated a “mass of spoil.” [Ibid., 415]
Another barbarian tribe which had also settled in Roman territory in Switzerland under an agreement with a previous administration. They were Alans, and were reported to have been ready to participate in the uprising, or at the very least had supported it. The (unnamed) king of the Alans had protested his innocence, and volunteered to lead his mounted fighting men in Stilicho’s service. So Stilicho enrolled the Alans, “setting such number to their forces as should best suit” to ensure that he did not take over many of them to Italy with him, where, if there were too large a number, they might have been a burden to the country or a threat to him. [Ibid., 400–403] Stilicho would soon have plenty of bloody work for the Alani cavalry.
To speed his journey south, Stilicho had used a small boat to cross “the lake”—Lake Como, according to Gibbon. He then joined a waiting mounted column quite probably made up of the Alani volunteers, for the passage of the Alps, which were considered “inaccessible in winter.” [Ibid., 320–23] As Stilicho hurried toward Italy, messengers were carrying the youthful Master of the Armies’ orders to legion commanders throughout western Europe, telling them to march their units to join him with all speed in northern Italy.
From their station at Castra Regina (Regensburg) in Raetia, the 3rd Italica Legion set off to join their general. From faraway Britain, the only legion that remained intact in the British Isles, the 6th Victrix, hastened from Eburacum to the Kent coast, from where it was ferried to Gaul for the march to Italy. This was the legion, said Claudian, “that had kept the fierce Scots in check, [and] whose men had scanned the strange devices tattooed on the faces of the dying Picts.” [Ibid., 416–18]
From the Rhineland came the last two legions left guarding the Rhine frontier. The 1st Minervia left its base at Bonna, where it had “held the Chatti and wild Cherusci in subjection” since the reign of Trajan. The 22nd Primigeneia marched from Mogontiacum, where it had been based without interruption from the days of Claudius, and where it had lately “faced the flaxen-haired Sugumbri.” With these legions’ departures, said Claudian, the Rhine was defended by just one thing—the fear of Rome. [Ibid., 421–4] While Stilicho lived, his reputation alone guarded the west bank of the Rhine from German attack, despite the removal of Rome’s best frontier troops.
The path that Stilicho took across the Alps to reach Italy was deep with snow, and men commonly froze to death trying to use this route in winter, or were carried away by avalanches of ice and snow, while ox-carts plunged from icy paths into crevasses. There was no wine and little food for Stilicho’s mountain crossing, and what food they had Stilicho and each man ate with sword in hand, “burdened with rain-soaked cloak,” before urging on “his half-frozen steed.” At night, Stilicho slept in caves or shared the huts of alpine shepherds, using his shield for a pillow. [Ibid., 348–56]
Despite the bitter conditions, Stilicho and his escort pressed on and succeeded in crossing the Alps. As soon as they reached the foothills of northern Italy, Stilicho sent riders galloping south with a message for the people of Rome, urging them not to abandon hope, but patiently to await the defeat of the foe. [Ibid., 268–9] He himself set his course for Milan, which was crowded with Roman refugees. At Milan, refugees and residents, “herded together like sheep,” had to watch glumly from the city
walls as Alaric’s Visigoths put farmland to the torch, and flames swept through the fields around the city. [Ibid., 45–7]
Twilight was descending as, from one of the city’s Palatine towers, the 17-year-old emperor Honorius surveyed the depressing scene around Milan. The city had been surrounded by the Visigoths since February, but they were not making any effort to storm it; Alaric was convinced that, without any hope of relief from outside, the boy emperor would soon be forced to come to terms with him “on any conditions he chose.” [Claud.,
SCH
., 448–9] Claudian was to quote Honorius directly about this night. A leading poet in Rome at the time, he was close to Serena, Stilicho’s wife, so it is likely that the emperor spoke to him about these events. “Wherever I looked I saw the watch fires of the enemy shining like stars,” the young emperor recalled. [Ibid., 453–4]
Somewhere out there, Honorius hoped, his wife’s father was trying to reach him, for he was counting on Stilicho getting through to lift the siege of the city. [Claud.,
SCH
, 450–51] “But the enemy held the road between my father-in-law and myself,” Honorius said. “What was Stilicho to do? Halt? My danger forbade the slightest delay. Break through the enemy’s line? His force was too small—in hurrying to my aid he had left behind him many troops, both of our country and foreign.” [Ibid., 462–3]
Stilicho was in fact very close by. After coming down out of the mountains east of the River Adda, his mounted column had followed the Adda south toward Milan without encountering Visigoth patrols. Opposite Milan, where a bridge crossed the churning river’s icy mountain waters, Stilicho had come on a Visigoth encampment barring the way over the bridge. From Milan, just across the river, Roman trumpets could be heard summoning the men of the first watch to their guard posts. [Ibid., 444–5] Stilicho decided not to wait for his other forces to join him. Time was of the essence. In the fading light, Stilicho and his cavalry escort charged into the Visigoth camp at the Adda bridge. Surprising the sentries, he rode right through the camp, “sword in hand, cutting down all who stood in his path.” [Ibid., 488–9]
The sentries in the tower at Milan’s main gate recognized their general at once as he and his small force of heavy cavalry galloped up from the bridge with their dragon pennants flying. Tall and slim, with large eyes, small mouth, a neat beard and his gray hair shorn in the page-boy style that had become the fashion, Stilicho wore a richly embroidered cavalry cloak that reached all the way to his knees, while his
helmet gleamed. As the gate rose up and Stilicho was admitted to the embattled city, the troops in Milan came running to him. “The cohorts, such love they bore their commander, hurriedly assembled from everywhere, and at the sight of Stilicho their courage revived and they burst into tears of joy.” [Claud.,
TGW
, 404–407]
Alaric would have been furious that Stilicho had managed to push through to link up with his emperor. But that was only the beginning of Alaric’s problems. The news that Roman reinforcements were crossing the Cottinian Alps from Gaul now reached both Alaric and Stilicho, probably at much the same time. Using the main military highways of Gaul, the legions had marched from Britain and the Rhine. The 6th Victrix, 1st Minervia and 22nd Primigeneia legions would have linked up in Gaul and marched south in one large column, passing through Lugdunum and Vienna on their way to the Cottinian Alps. Then, in March, as the spring thaw made the Alps passable to legions with their heavy baggage, the units crossed the mountains to Turin in northeastern Italy. From there it was only several days’ march to Milan to join Stilicho and lift the siege.