Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (6 page)

I once aspired [he said]… to obliterate the name of Rome; to erect on its ruins the dominion of the Goths; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal fame of the founder of a new empire. By repeated experiments [however,] I was gradually convinced that laws are essentially necessary… and that the fierce untractable humour of the Goths was incapable of bearing the salutary yoke of… civil government… it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger, who employed the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore and maintain, the prosperity of the Roman empire.
⁸

The decade following Alaric’s death was filled with violent conflict not only between the Visigoths and their rivals but also among the leading Visigothic families. Ataulf marched his people from Italy to southern Gaul and Spain, where they attacked the Vandals, Suevi and Alans. At the same time, a simmering feud between Alaric’s own dynasty and the rival Amalfings was reignited. Ataulf, who had married the captive Galla Placidia, was murdered in his palace at Barcelona in 415, together with their children. So, too, was his immediate successor, Sidericus, ‘the king of five days’. The man who then emerged as leader, a brave warrior and an astute diplomat called Vallia, is sometimes identified as Alaric’s bastard son. It was Vallia who negotiated the key treaty whereby the Visigoths reconfirmed their status as imperial allies and received a permanent home in Roman Aquitania.

The ‘Kingdom of Tolosa’, therefore, started its life as a dependent but autonomous imperial sub-state. It occupied one of the three parts into which Gaul had traditionally been divided, and it was ruled by its tribal chiefs operating under the standard rules of imperial
hospitalitas
. By decree of the Emperor Honorius, the Visigoths took possession of their new capital of Palladia Tolosa (the modern Toulouse) in 418. After Vallia, they were to be ruled for the rest of the century by five kings: Theodoric I, Thorismund, Theodoric II, Euric and Alaric II. Theodoric I and Alaric II would both be killed in battle. Thorismund and Theodoric II were both murdered. Euric, the younger brother of both Thorismund and of the second Theodoric, brought the kingdom to the peak of its wealth and power.
⁹

The Visigoths took over Aquitania after a long period of disquiet, apparently without provoking serious opposition. The Gallo-Roman nobility, which had once joined a rebel Gallic Empire, were not noted for their docility. Yet the new overlords were zealous imitators of Roman ideals, and the smack of strong government went unopposed. The Visigothic kings were given to taking hostages and to punishing disloyal subjects, but they did not indulge in gratuitous violence. Numerous Romans entered their service, notably the military general Nepotanius, the admiral Namatius of Saintes, and Victorius, the
dux super septem civitates
, or ‘commander of Septimania’.
¹⁰
The Visigoths did not legislate separately for the Gallo-Romans, suggesting a willingness to assimilate; a new system of land tenure did not involve significant confiscations; and in religious matters, the Arian practices of the Visigothic clergy proceeded in parallel to the well-established network of Roman bishoprics and rural churches. The fact that the General Church Council of Agde could take place in Visigothic territory in 506 suggests that the non-Arians had no special fear for their safety.
¹¹

The Roman city of Tolosa, built on the plain beneath an ancient Celtic hill fort, had been given the epithet Palladia by the Emperor Domitian in honour of the goddess Pallas Athena, patroness of the arts. Surrounded by walls of Augustan vintage, it was fully furnished with aqueducts, theatres, baths and an elaborate sewage system, and it served the strategic Via Aquitania, which ran across southern Gaul from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. From the fourth century onwards, it was an active centre of imperial Christianity and the seat of a bishop. St Saturnin, one of the first apostles of Gaul, had been martyred in Tolosa in
c.
257, dragged through the streets by a wild bull. The basilica where his relics were guarded was the main focus of Nicene worship. The chief church of the Arians was at Nostra Domina Daurata, founded in the mid-fifth century on the site of a former temple to Apollo.

Aquitania, in fact, had a long tradition of energetic theological debate. St Hilarius of Poitiers (
c
. 300–368) was renowned as the
Malleus Arianorum
, an early ‘Hammer of the Arians’. St Experius (d. 410), bishop of Tolosa, is remembered as the recipient of a letter from Pope Innocent I that fixed the canon of Holy Scripture. The priest Vigilantius (
fl
.
c
. 400), in contrast, was regarded as a bold dissident who condemned the superstitious cult of saints and relics. St Prosper of Aquitania (
c
. 390–455) was a historian, a disciple of St Augustine and the first continuator of Jerome’s Universal Chronicle;
¹²
and St Rusticus of Narbonne (d. 461), a champion of what would later emerge as ‘Catholicism’, battled against both the new Nestorian heresy
*
and the older Arianism of his Visigoth masters.

Once Visigothic rule was established, the kingdom expanded dramati-cally. Acquisitions were made in almost every decade of the fifth century. The conquest of Narbo Martius (Narbonne) in 436 provided direct access to the Mediterranean. The whole of Septimania followed later by gift of the imperial authorities. In the aftermath of the mid-century irruption of the Huns, the Visigoths roamed far to the north, well beyond the Loire, and in 470 they surged into central Gaul, incorporating both Civitas Turonum (Tours) and Arvernis (Clermont). After that, they took possession of Arelate (Arles) and Massilia (Marseille), and, during a systematic campaign of conquest in Iberia, reached the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). From 474, a Roman in the Visigothic service, Vincentius, ruled as the king’s deputy in Iberia with the title of
dux hispaniarum
. By the turn of the century, they controlled the largest of all the states in the post-Roman West, and looked set to become the principal winner among the Empire’s barbarian predators.

Theodoric I, or Theodorid (r. 419–51), was blessed with numerous sons and daughters, and used them to found an elaborate network of dynastic
alliances. But he is best remembered both by contemporary chroniclers and by later historians for his valiant part in the repulse of Attila’s Huns. He perished as a faithful ally of the imperial general, Flavius Aetius, leading his warriors in June 451 into the bloody fray of the Catalaunian Fields
*
which preserved Gaul from the most terrible horsemen of the steppes.
¹³
He was succeeded in turn by three of his sons.

According to Gibbon, Thorismund (r. 451–3) had played the key role in the victory where his father perished, holding his forces in reserve on the nearby heights until he swept down and drove the Huns from the field. The victory brought him little reward. He was murdered by his brother Theodoric before his power could be consolidated, reputedly for threatening to break with the Roman alliance.

Theodoric II (r. 453–66), has enlivened the historical record partly through the colourful name of his wife, Queen Pedauco – meaning ‘Goose Foot’ – and partly through a rare eyewitness description of him by the Latin writer Sidonius Apollinaris. Sidonius (432–88) was bishop of Arvernis, and hence a subject of the Visigoths. One of his surviving letters answered a request from a friend to describe the king in detail:

Well, he is a man worth knowing… He is well set up, in height above the average man, but below the giant. His head is round, with curled hair retreating… His nervous neck is free from disfiguring knots. The eyebrows are bushy and arched; when the lids droop, the lashes reach almost half-way down the cheeks. The upper ears are buried under overlying locks, after the fashion of his race. The nose is finely aquiline; the lips are thin and not [unduly] enlarged… Every day the hair springing from his nostrils is cut back;… and his barber is assiduous in eradicating the rich growth on the lower part of the face. Chin, throat, and neck are full, but not fat, and all of fair complexion… they often flush, but from modesty, and not from anger. His shoulders are smooth, the upper- and forearms strong and hard; hands broad, breast prominent; waist receding. The spine dividing the broad expanse of back does not project, and you can see the spring of the ribs; the sides swell with salient muscle, the well-girt flanks are full of vigour. His thighs are like hard horn; the knee-joints firm and masculine; the knees themselves the comeliest and least wrinkled in the world. A full ankle supports the leg, and the foot is small to bear such mighty limbs.

… Before daybreak he goes with a very small suite to attend the service of his priests. He prays with assiduity, but… one may suspect more of habit than conviction in his piety. Administrative duties… take up the rest of the morning. Armed nobles stand about the royal seat; the mass of guards in their garb of skins are… kept at the threshold… [F]oreign envoys are introduced. The king hears them out, and says little;… but accelerates matters ripe for dispatch. The second hour arrives; he rises from the throne to inspect his treasure-chamber or stable.

The bishop, clearly an admirer, warms to the task:

If the chase is the order of the day, he joins it, but never carries his bow at his side, considering this derogatory to royal state. When a bird or beast is marked for him… he puts his hand behind his back and takes the bow from a page with the string all hanging loose… He will ask you beforehand what you would like him to transfix; you choose, and he hits. If there is a miss… your vision will mostly be at fault, and not the archer’s skill.

On ordinary days, his table resembles that of a private person. The board does not groan beneath a mass of dull and unpolished silver set on by panting servitors; the weight lies rather in the conversation than in the plate; there is either sensible talk or none. The hangings and draperies… are sometimes of purple silk, sometimes only of linen; art, not costliness, commends the fare… Toasts are few… In short, you will find the elegance of Greece, the good cheer of Gaul, Italian nimbleness… and everywhere the discipline of a king’s house… The siesta after dinner is… sometimes intermitted. When inclined for the board-game, he is quick to gather up the dice, examines them with care, shakes the box with expert hand, throws rapidly, humorously apostrophizes them, and patiently waits the issue. Silent at a good throw, he makes merry over a bad [one]… always the philosopher… Sometimes, though this is rare, supper is enlivened by sallies of mimes, but no guest is ever exposed to the wound of a biting tongue. Withal there is no noise of hydraulic organ, or choir with its conductor intoning a set piece; you will hear no players of lyre or flute, no master of the music, no girls with cithara or tabor; the king cares for no strains but those which no less charm the mind with virtue than the ear with melody. When he rises to withdraw, the treasury watch begins its vigil; armed sentries stand on guard during the first hours of slumber… I must stay my pen; you asked for nothing more than one or two facts… and my own aim was to write a letter, not a history. Farewell.
¹⁴

Theodoric II’s reign came to grief through the vagaries of imperial politics. In 455, the newly appointed Roman commander in Gaul, Eparchius Avitus, visited Tolosa. News arrived during his visit that Rome had been sacked for a second time, by the Vandals; and Theodoric
seized the opportunity to proclaim Avitus emperor. He then conducted the first of the Visigoths’ incursions into Iberia, justifying his conquests as the recovery of imperial land. His claims did not convince the next emperor, Majorian, described by Gibbon as ‘a great and heroic character’, who briefly reasserted imperial authority in Gaul with energy.

Theodoric’s younger brother, Euric (or Evaric or Erwig, r. 466–84), seized power in the midst of military conflicts involving not only Visigoths and imperial forces but also a number of Visigothic factions. He killed his brother, defeated a rampaging Celtic warlord, Riothamus, recrossed the Pyrenees and settled a body of Ostrogothic mercenaries from Roman service in his lands. Lawgiver as well as warrior chief, he turned out to be the most rounded personality of his House. Though familiar with Latin, he usually spoke to foreign envoys in Gothic through an interpreter. The Arian services of his royal chapel were also conducted in Gothic. He extended his realms right across Iberia. The
Codex Euricianus
of 471 was the first attempt in the post-Roman world to commit a summary of customary Germanic laws to writing.
¹⁵
It was a sign of political maturity. In 476, Euric persuaded the penultimate emperor of the West, Julius Nepos, to relinquish even nominal Roman suzerainty over the Visigoths’ lands. Before he died, the Roman Empire in the West had collapsed completely. The Kingdom of Tolosa was left orphaned and sovereign.