Summary
As the Vandals descended upon north Africa, the Huns reappeared as Eastern and
Western Rome's primary nemesis. Geographic stasis in the Balkans just beyond
the Danube from the 380s and subjugation of resident Gothic and Suevi remnants
had caused a political change in Hunnic society. Though previously the Hunnic
hordes recognized no unitary political leadership, by the 420s Rouia
(Rugilla) emerged as their overlord. He began to steeply increase the tribute
Constantinople had to pay as ransom for those lands precious to the
Eastern
Emperor. In 433 this tribute was doubled again to 700 yearly pounds of gold,
and the Hun leader, Attila, additionally demanded that Emperor Theodosius II
return all Germans who had fled Attila's wrath. Extortion continued to 441,
when Attila took a mixed Hun-German army over the Danube. Ravaging valuable
agricultural lands, he withdrew only after increasing tribute to 21,000 pounds
of gold. Six years later, he returned, pillaging Balkan and Thracian cities,
and demanding imperial evacuation from land south of the Danube equal to five
days' march. In 450, the new Eastern Emperor Marcian (450-457) refused a
further tribute increase.
Marcian was saved from destruction by the Western Emperor Valentinian III's
daughter, Honoria. Rejecting her father's command to marry an aged senator,
she requested Attila's protection. Reading this as a marriage proposal, in 451
he came West for his bride, demanding a dowry of the western half of the Empire.
Aetius, who had heretofore relied on Huns to rein in Germans, was forced to
change course and turn to Germanic tribes for soldiers. Equally terrified of
the Huns as were the Romans, the Franks, Burgundians, Alans, and
Visigoths supplied him with troops. In 451, at the Battle of Catalaunian
Plains, Aetius and Theodoric (who died during the battle) defeated Attila.
Visigoths played the main part, while Roman regulars were nearly absent. Attila
returned the next year, crossing totally undefended eastern Alpine passes into
the Po Valley and Northern Italy. Aetius was unable to recruit Germans, as the
region was of no concern to them. Plundering a prosperous region, Attila
withdrew without proceeding to Rome. It may be, as some versions hold, that a
party of Senators and Pope Leo I convinced him to relent. Alternatively, a
plague among his troops, or recognition that the terrain was inappropriate to
his horse-borne forces, could have convinced him to leave. In 453, he took a
new barbarian bride, dying the night of his wedding. In this political vacuum,
subject Germans revolted against the Huns under Gepid leadership. The
Germans won, and the Huns scattered, no longer impinging on European history.
Feeling he no longer needed Aetius and resenting his closeness to the Huns,
Valentinian III had his Master of Soldiers killed. Valentinian himself was
murdered in 455 by Barbarians of Aetius' retinue. That same year, the North
African Vandal leader Gaiseric sent a pirate fleet up the Tiber River,
sacking Rome and plundering it heavily for fourteen days. The next twenty-one
years were the practical end of the Roman state, and saw a series Germanic
generals who controlled puppet Western Emperors, and through those Emperors
cared only for Italy and, at times, North Africa. One Ricimer, of
Visigothic and Suevian origin, defeated the Vandals at sea in 456. In 460 he
and his emperor Marjorian set out to regain Africa, but the imperial fleet
was decimated. In 461, another puppet Emperor of Ricimer's (he had discarded
Marjorian) was not recognized by Gaulic Roman forces, so areas north of the
Loire slipped from Italian control. Ricimer began to favor rapprochement with
the Vandals rather than war, and succeeded in this endeavour by installing as
Emperor an unimportant senator with a slight familial relation to Gaiseric by
marriage. Ricimer and the Emperor had died by 472, at which time areas under
imperial control had further contracted to include only Italy and Southeastern
France. South of the Loire in central and Western France was Visigothic, while
South-Central France was Burgundian. Ricimer's successor as Master of Soldiers,
Orestes made his own son Emperor Romulus Augustulus in 475. The two
were both overthrown in 476 by the Barbarian-Roman general Odovacar. Not
setting up a puppet emperor as had become fashion, Odovacar, supported by
senators, notified the Eastern Emperor Zeno that there was no need to
appoint a Western colleague: Odovacar would rule the West as Zeno's agent, and
thus was sealed the official end of the Western Roman state. Zeno seemed to
acquiesce, then sent Theodoric the Ostrogoth to unseat Odovacar in 488-93 as
a way to prevent the Ostrogoths from causing more damage in the Balkans and
Thrace. Theodoric succeeded, and became 'king of Italy'. As had countless
Barbarians before him, Theodoric presented himself as a Roman official.
Along with the Burgundian and Visigothic kingdoms, his realms gave form
to the first post-Roman, Medieval order, soon to be joined by the Franks
from the 520s.
Commentary
We are left asking how such an ignoble end could encompass the once glorious
Western Empire. Countless reasons have been offered. In terms of immediate
causality, it appears that policy incoherence and a lack of resolve by
emperors and other elites combined to sap all resilience out of the Roman
government. What was missing was the will-power to break the cycle of
Germanic military strongmen in Roman ranks, the senseless intriguing of Roman
politics, and the general relinquishment of government responsibilities.
Indeed, for its last eighty years Rome appears to have been bereft of the spirit
of past rulers, such as Augustus, Vespasian, Diocletian, or Constantine.
Was it simply the magnitude of military and fiscal challenges that overwhelmed
uninspired leaders? This is possible, though it should be recalled that the
sedentary population of the Empire, while decreasing in the fourth and fifth
centuries, was still much larger than the population of invading Germanic
tribes. Reviewing the sequences of Germanic infiltration into Roman military,
administration, and society, it seems that rather than falling, the Roman state
in the West willingly gave up, letting day to day control of its holdings slip
from its fingers without so much as a spasm, delegating itself out of existence.
It is not even clear that those responsible for this irreversible delegation
were even aware they were presiding over the destruction of a state. Did they
see their world as a continuation of Roman policies and methods dating back
centuries, with potential for preserving the state?
Moving to theories of the long-term causes, some are quite far-fetched.
Debilitating malaria epidemics among the ranks have been posited, just as
some have suggested that the use of lead piping in aqueducts, sewerage, etc.
in Roman cities caused a gradual lead poisoning and inability to
conceptualize complex solutions. Such ideas are unquantifiable. More
serious is the notion that the city-state was the basis of civilization in
Antiquity. With its economic and then demographic decline from the mid-
second century, the intellectual and pragmatic problem-solving vitality of
the Empire diminished. This is not unrelated to the theory that from the
ascendance Severi, as more of the empire's rulers were raised in Balkan
areas or regions far from long-time Roman cultural centers, they were unable to
conceptualize 'Rome' as a civilization, and unable to distinguish it from
lesser cultural forms. As Rome began to fail, then, few noticed, as they could
no longer recognize what Rome actually was. This thesis also applies to those
proleterians or former slaves that were able to rise through the ranks of army
and bureaucracy based on Diocletian and Constantine's reforms. These
men, the power in Rome, were protecting a world and ideal they did not fully
understand, and their protection was therefore haphazard and incomplete.
On a much more abstract level are two suggested reasons for the fall.
According to one, after 200 CE, the Empire became 'Orientalized' in the ethnic
complexion of its rulers and administrators. This does not seem to count for
much in real policy; indeed, the Eastern Empire was much more 'Oriental', and it
outlasted the West by half a century. Still, some see Christianity and other
mystery religions as a philosophy and world view imported from the East, and
perceive of these religions as both sapping Roman rational thinking and removing
from Roman imperial service talented people who chose church service. Only the
latter aspect appears to have merit, and that only in the most guarded sense.
