Theodoric the Goth Part 2

The next event of which we are informed in the history of the Ostrogothic nation, a war with the Eastern Empire, was one destined to exert a most important influence on the life of the kingly child, The Ostrogoths settling in Pannonia, one of the provinces of the Roman Empire, were in theory allies and auxiliary soldiers[18] of the Emperor.

Similar arrangements had been made with the Visigoths in Spain, with the Vandals in that very province of Pannonia, probably with many other barbarian tribes in many other provinces. There was sometimes more, sometimes less, actual truth in the theoretical relations thus established, and it was one which in the nature of things was not likely long to endure: but for the time, so long as the Imperial treasury was tolerably full and the barbarian allies tolerably amenable to control, the arrangement suited both parties. In the case before us the position of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia was legalised by the alliance, and such portions of the political machinery of the Empire as might still remain were thereby placed at their disposal. The Emperor, on the other hand, was able to boast of a province recovered for the Empire, which was now guarded by the broadswords of his loyal Ostrogoths against the more savage nations outside, who were ever trying to enter the charmed circle of the Roman State. But as the Ostrogothic _fderati_ were his soldiers, there was evidently a necessity that he must send them pay, and this pay, which was called wages when the Empire was strong, and tribute when it was weak, consisted, partly at any rate, of heavy chests of Imperial _aurei_,[19] sent as _strenae_[20] or New Year's presents, to the barbarian king and his chief n.o.bles.

[Footnote 18: _Fderati_.]

[Footnote 19: The _solidus aureus_, the chief Imperial coin of this time, was worth about twelve s.h.i.+llings of our money.]

[Footnote 20: The same word as the French _trennes_.]

Now, about the year 461, the Emperor Leo (successor of the brave soldier Marcian), whether from a special emptiness in the Imperial treasury or from some other cause, omitted to send the accustomed _strenae_ to the Ostrogothic brother-kings. Much disturbed at the failure of the _aurei_ to appear, they sent envoys to Constantinople, who returned with tidings which filled the three palaces of Pannonia with the clamour of angry men. Not only were the _strenae_ withheld, and likely to be still withheld, but there was another Goth, a low-born pretender, not of Amal blood, who was boasting of the t.i.tle of _fderatus_ of the Empire, and enjoying the _strenae_ which ought to come only to Amal kings and their n.o.bles. This man, who was destined to cross the path of our Theodoric through many weary years, was named like him Theodoric, and was surnamed Strabo (the squinter) from his devious vision, and son of Triarius, from his parentage. He was brother-in-law, or nephew, of a certain Aspar, a successful barbarian, who had mounted high in the Imperial service and had placed two Emperors on the throne. It was doubtless through his kinsman's influence that the squinting adventurer had obtained a position in the court of the Roman Augustus so disproportioned to his birth, and so outrageous to every loyal Ostrogoth.

When the news of these insults to the lineage of the Amals reached Pannonia, the three brothers in fury s.n.a.t.c.hed up their arms and laid waste almost the whole province of Illyric.u.m. Then the Emperor changed his mind, and desired to renew the old friends.h.i.+p. He sent an emba.s.sy bearing the arrears of the past-due _strenae_, those which were then again falling due, and a promise that all future _strenae_ should be punctually paid. Only, as a hostage for the observance of peace he desired that Theudemir's little son, Theodoric, then just entering his eighth year, should be sent to Constantinople. The fact that this request or demand was made by the ostensibly beaten side, may make us doubt whether the humiliation of the Empire was so complete as the preceding sentences (translated from the words of the Gothic historian) would lead us to suppose.

Theudemir was reluctant to part with his first-born son, even to the great Roman Emperor. But his brother Walamir earnestly besought him not to interpose any hindrance to the establishment of a firm peace between the Romans and Goths. He yielded therefore, and the little lad, carried by the returning amba.s.sadors to Constantinople, soon earned the favour of the Emperor by his handsome face and his winning ways.[21]

[Footnote 21: An expansion of the words of Jordanes, "et quia puerulus elegans erat meruit gratiam imperialem habere".]

Thus was the young Ostrogoth brought from his home in Pannonia, by the banks of lonely Lake Balaton, to the New Rome, the busy and stately city by the Bosphorus, the city which was now, more truly than her worn and faded mother by the Tiber, the "Lady of Kingdoms" the "Mistress of the World". Of the Constantinople which the boyish eyes of Theodoric beheld, scarcely a vestige now remains for the traveller to gaze upon. Let us try, therefore, to find a contemporary description. These are the words in which the visit of the Gothic chief Athanaric to that city about eighty years previously is described by Jordanes:

"Entering the royal city, and marvelling thereat, 'Lo! now I behold,'

said he, 'what I often heard of without believing, the glory of so great a city.' Then turning his eyes this way and that, beholding the situation of the city and the concourse of s.h.i.+ps, now he marvels at the long perspective of lofty walls, then he sees the mult.i.tudes of various nations like the wave gus.h.i.+ng forth from one fountain which has been fed by divers springs, then he beholds the marshalled ranks of the soldiery.

'A G.o.d,' said he, 'without doubt a G.o.d upon Earth is the Emperor of this realm, and whoso lifts his hand against him, that man's blood be on his own head."

Still can we behold "the situation of the city", that unrivalled situation which no map can adequately explain, but which the traveller gazes upon from the deck of his vessel as he rounds Seraglio Point, and the sight of which seems to bind together in one, two continents of s.p.a.ce and twenty-five centuries of time. On his right hand Asia with her camels, on his left Europe with her railroads. Behind him are the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, with their memories of Lysander and gospotami, of Hero, Leander, and Byron, with the throne of Xerxes and the tomb of Achilles, and farther back still the island-studded Archipelago, the true cradle of the Greek nation. Immediately in front of him is the Golden Horn, now bridged and with populous cities on both its banks, but the farther sh.o.r.e of which, where Pera and Galata now stand, was probably covered with fields and gardens when Theodoric beheld it. There also in front of him, but a little to the right, comes rus.h.i.+ng down the impetuous Bosphorus, that river which is also an arm of the sea. Lined now with the marble palaces of bankrupt Sultans, it was once a lonely and desolate strait, on whose farther sh.o.r.e the hapless Io, transformed into a heifer, sought a refuge from her heaven-sent tormentor. Up through its difficult windings pressed the adventurous mariners of Miletus in those early voyages which opened up the Euxine to the Greeks, as the voyage of Columbus opened up the Atlantic to the Spaniards. It is impossible now to survey the beautiful panorama without thinking of that great inland sea which, as we all know, begins but a few miles to the north of the place where we are standing, and whose cloudy sh.o.r.es are perhaps concealing in their recesses the future lords of Constantinople. We look towards that point of the compa.s.s, and think of Sebastopol. The great lords of Theudemir's court, who brought the young Theodoric to his new patron, may have looked northwards too, remembering the sagas about the mighty Hermanric, who dwelt where now the Russians dwell, and the fateful march of the terrible Huns across the shallows of the Sea of Azof.

The great physical features of the scene are of course unchanged, but almost everything else, how changed by four centuries and a half of Ottoman domination! The first view of Stamboul, with its mosques, its minarets, its latticed houses, its stream of manifold life both civilised and barbarous, flowing through the streets, is delightful to the traveller; but if he be more of an archaeologist than an artist, and seeks to reproduce before his mind's eye something of the Constantinople of the Csars rather than the Stamboul of the Sultans, he will experience a bitter disappointment in finding how little of the former is left.

He may still see indeed the land-ward walls of the city, and a most interesting historical relic they are.[22] They stretch for about four miles, from the Sea of Marmora to the Golden Horn. It is still, comparatively speaking, all city inside of them, all country on the outside. There is a double line of walls with towers at frequent intervals, some square, some octagonal, and deep fosses running along beside the walls, now in spring often bright green with growing corn.

These walls and towers, seen stretching up hill and down dale, are a very notable feature in the landscape, and ruinous and dismantled as they are after fourteen centuries of siege, of earthquake, and of neglect, they still help us vividly to imagine what they must have looked like when the young Theodoric beheld them little more than ten years after their erection.[23]

[Footnote 22: For the fact that these walls are still visible we have to thank the good offices of a recent British amba.s.sador, I believe Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. The Sultana Valid (Sultan's mother) had obtained from her son an order to pull down the walls, and sell the materials for the benefit of her privy purse. The amba.s.sador, however, protested against this act of Ottomanism (rather than Vandalism), and the walls were saved.]

[Footnote 23: The walls of Constantinople were first built in 412, but having been much injured by an earthquake were rebuilt (we are told in the short s.p.a.ce of sixty days) by the Prefect of the City, Constantine, at the command of Theodosius II. This rebuilding, which was partly due to the terror caused by Attila, took place in the year 447.]

Of the gates, some six or seven in number, two are especially interesting to us. The first is the Tep-Kapou (Cannon Gate), or Porta Sancti Romani. This was the weakest part of the fortifications of Constantinople, the "heel of Achilles", as it has been well called,[24]

and here the last Roman Emperor of the East, Constantine Palaeologus, died bravely in the breach for the cause of Christianity and civilisation, The other gate is the Porta Aurea, a fine triple gateway, the centre arch of which rests on two Corinthian pilasters. Through this gateway--the nearest representative of the Capitoline Hill at Rome--the Eastern Emperors rode in triumphant procession when a new Augustus had to be proclaimed, or when an enemy of the Republic had been defeated. It is possible that Theodoric may have seen Anthemius, the Emperor whom Constantinople gave to Rome, ride forth through this gate (467) to take possession of the Western throne: possible too that the great but unsuccessful expedition planned by the joint forces of the East and West against the Vandals of Africa may have had its ignominious failure hidden from the people for a time by a triumphal procession through the Golden Gate in the following year (468). This gate is now walled up, and tradition says that the order for its closure was given by Mohammed, the Conqueror, immediately after his entry into the city, through fear of an old Turkish prophecy, which declared that through this gate the next conquerors should enter Constantinople.

[Footnote 24: By Dr. Dethier. "Bosph.o.r.e et Constantinople", p. 51.]

Of the palace of the Emperor, into which the young Goth was ushered by the eunuch-chamberlain, no vestige probably now remains. The Seraglio has replaced the Palation, and is itself now abandoned to loneliness and decay, being only the recipient of one annual visit from the Sultan, when he goes in state to kiss the cloak of Mohammed. The great mosque of St. Sophia on the right is a genuine and a glorious monument of Imperial Constantinople, but not of Constantinople as Theodoric saw it. The basilica, in which he probably listened with childish bewilderment to many a sermon for or against the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, was burnt down sixty years after his visit in the great Insurrection of the "Nika", and the n.o.ble edifice in which ten thousand Mussulmans now a.s.semble to listen to the reading of the Koran, while above them the Arabic names of the companions of the Prophet replace the mosaics of the Evangelists, is itself the work of the great Emperor Justinian, the destroyer of the State which Theodoric founded.

But almost between the Church of St. Sophia and the Imperial Palace lay in old times the Great Hippodrome, centre of the popular life of the capital, where the excited mult.i.tudes cheered with rapture, or howled in execration, at the victory of the Blue or the Green charioteer; where many a time the elevation or the deposition of an Emperor was accomplished by the acclamations of the same roaring throng. Of this Hippodrome we have still a most interesting memorial in the Atmeidan (the Place of Horses), which, though with diminished area, still preserves something of the form of the old racecourse. And here to this day are two monuments on which the young hostage may have often gazed, wondering at their form and meaning. The obelisk of Thothmes I., already two thousand years old when Constantinople was founded, was reared in the Hippodrome, by order of the great Emperor Theodosius, and some of the bas-reliefs on its pedestal still explain to us the mechanical devices by which it was lifted into position, while in others Theodosius, his wife, his sons, and his colleague sit in solemn state, but, alas! with grievously mutilated countenances. Near it is a spiral column of bronze which, almost till our own day, bore three serpents twined together, whose heads long ago supported a golden tripod. This bronze monument is none other than the votive offering to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, presented by the confederated states of Greece, to celebrate the victory of Plata. The golden tripod was melted down at the time of Philip of Macedon, but the twisted serpents, brought by Constantine to adorn and hallow his new capital by the Bosphorus, bore and still bear the names, written in archaic characters, of all the h.e.l.lenic states which took part in that great deliverance.

All these monuments are on the first of the seven hills on which Constantinople is built. On the second hill stands a strange and blackened pillar, which once stood in the middle of the Forum of Constantine; and this too was there in the days of Theodoric. It is called the Burnt Column, because it has been more than once struck by lightning, and is blackened with the smoke of the frequent fires which have consumed the wooden shanties at its base. But

"there it stands, as stands a lofty mind, Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd".

It was once 150 feet high, but is now 115, and it consists of six huge cylinders of porphyry, one above another, whose junction is veiled by sculptured laurel wreaths. On its summit stood the statue of Constantine with the garb and attributes of the Grecian Sun-G.o.d, but having his head surrounded with the nails of the True Cross, brought from Jerusalem to serve instead of the golden rays of far-darting Apollo. Underneath the column was placed (and remains probably to this day) the Palladium, that mysterious image of Minerva, which neas carried from Troy to Alba Longa, which his descendants removed to Rome, and which was now brought by Constantine to his new capital, so near to its first legendary home, to be the pledge of abiding security to the city by the Bosphorus.

These are the chief relics of Constantinople in the fifth century which are still visible to the traveller. I have described with some little detail the outward appearance of the city and its monuments, because these would naturally be the objects which would most attract the attention of a child brought from such far different scenes into the midst of so stately a city. But during the ten or eleven years that Theodoric remained in honourable captivity at the court of Leo, while he was growing up from childhood to manhood, it cannot be doubted that he gradually learned the deeper lessons which lay below the glory and the glitter of the great city's life, and that the knowledge thus acquired in those years which are so powerful in moulding character, had a mighty influence on all his subsequent career.

He saw here for the first time, and by degrees he apprehended, the results of that state of _civilitas_ which in after years he was to be constantly recommending to his people. Sprung from a race of hunters and shepherds, having slowly learned the arts of agriculture, and then perhaps partly unlearned them under the over-lords.h.i.+p of the nomad Huns, the Ostrogoths at this time knew nothing of a city life. A city was probably in their eyes little else than a hindrance to their freebooting raids, a lair of enemies, a place behind whose sheltering walls, so hard to batter down, cowards lurked in order to sally forth at a favourable moment and attack brave men in their rear. At best it was a treasure-house, which valiant Goths, if Fortune favoured them, might sack and plunder: but Fortune seldom did favour the children of Gaut in their a.s.saults upon the fenced cities of the Empire.

Now, however, the lad Theodoric began to perceive, as the man Ataulfus had perceived before him, that the city life upon which all the proverbs and the songs of his countrymen poured contempt, had its advantages. To the New Rome came the incessant s.h.i.+ps of Alexandria, bringing corn for the sustenance of her citizens. Long caravans journeyed over the highlands of Asia Minor loaded with the spices and jewels of India and the silks of China. Men of every conceivable Asiatic country were drawn by the irresistible attraction of hoped-for profit to the quays and the Fora of Byzantium. The scattered homesteads of the Ostrogothic farmers had no such wonderful power of drawing men over thousands of miles of land and sea to visit them. Then the bright and varied life of the Imperial City could not fail to fill the boy's soul with pleasure and admiration. The thrill of excitement in the Hippodrome as the two charioteers, Green and Blue, rounded the _spina_, neck and neck, the tragedies acted in the theatre amid rapturous applause, the strange beasts from every part of the Roman world that roared and fought in the Amphitheatre, the delicious idleness of the Baths, the chatter and bargaining and banter of the Forum,--all this made a day in beautiful Constantinople very unlike a day in the solemn and somewhat rude palace by Lake Balaton.

As the boy grew to manhood, the deep underlying cause of this difference perhaps became clearer to his mind. He could see more or less plainly that the soul which held all this marvellous body of civilisation together was reverence for Law. He visited perhaps some of the courts of law; he may have seen the Ill.u.s.trious Prtorian Prefect, clothed in Imperial purple, move majestically to the judgment-seat, amid the obsequious salutations of the dignified officials,[25] who in their various ranks and orders surrounded the hall. The costly golden reed-case, the ma.s.sive silver inkstand, the silver bowl for the pet.i.tions of suitors, all emblems of his office, were placed solemnly before him, and the pleadings began. Practised advocates arose to plead the cause of plaintiff or defendant; busy short-hand writers took notes of the proceedings; at length in calm and measured words the Prefect gave his judgment; a judgment which was necessarily based on law, which had to take account of the sayings of jurisconsults, of the stored-up wisdom of twenty generations of men; a judgment which, notwithstanding the venality which was the curse of the Empire, was in most instances in accordance with truth and justice. How different, must Theodoric often have thought, in after years, when he had returned to Gothland,--how different was this settled and orderly procedure from the usage of the barbarians. With them the "blood-feud", the "wild justice of revenge", often prolonged from generation to generation, had been long the chief righter of wrongs done; and if this was now slowly giving place to judicial trial, that trial was probably a coa.r.s.e and almost lawless proceeding, in which the head man of the district, with a hundred a.s.sessors, as ignorant as himself, amid the wild cries of the opposed parties, roughly fixed the amount of blood-money to be paid by a murderer, or decided at hap-hazard, often with an obvious reference to the superior force at the command of one or other of the litigants, some obscure dispute as to the owners.h.i.+p of a slave or the right to succeed to a dead man's inheritance.

[Footnote 25: Officium, or Militia Literata.]

Law carefully thought out, systematised, and in the main softened and liberalised, from generation to generation, was the great gift of the Roman Empire to the world, and by her strong, and uniform, and, in the main, just administration of this law, that Empire had kept, and in the days of Theodoric was still keeping, her hold upon a hundred jarring nationalities. What hope was there that the German intruders into the lands of the Mediterranean could ever vie with this great achievement?

Yet if they could not, if it was out of their power to reform and reinvigorate the shattered state, if they could only destroy and not rebuild, they would exert no abiding influence on the destinies of Europe.

I do not say that all these thoughts pa.s.sed at this time through the mind of Theodoric, but I have no doubt that the germs of them were sown by his residence in Constantinople. When he returned, a young man of eighteen years and of n.o.ble presence to the palace of his father, he had certainly some conception of what the Greeks meant when he heard them talking about _politeia_, some foreshadowing of what he himself would mean when in after days he should speak alike to his Goth and Roman subjects of the blessings of _civilitas_.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV.

THE SOUTHWARD MIGRATION.

Struggles with the Swabians, Sarmatians, Scyri, and Huns--Death of Walamir--Theudemir becomes king--Theodoric defeats Babai--The Teutonic custom of the comitatus--An Ostrogothic Folc-mote--Theudemir invades the Eastern Empire--Macedonian settlement of the Ostrogoths.

The young Theodoric, who was now in his nineteenth year, was sent back by Leo to his father with large presents, and both the recovered son and the tokens of Imperial favour brought joy to the heart of the father.

There had been some changes in the Ostrogothic kingdom during the boy's absence. There had been vague and purposeless wars with the savage nations around them,--Swabians, Sarmatians, Scyri--besides one final encounter with their old lords, the Huns. These last, we are told, they had driven forth so hopelessly beaten from their territory, that for a century from that time all that was left of the Hunnish nation trembled at the very name of the Goths. But in a battle with another people of far less renown, the barbarous Scyri beyond the Danube, Walamir, while cheering on his men to the combat, was thrown from his horse and being pierced by the lances of the enemy was left dead on the field. His death, it is said, was avenged most ruthlessly on the Scyri, and Theudemir, the brother who was next him in age, became chief king of the Ostrogoths.

Scarcely had Theodoric returned to his home when, without communicating his purpose to his father, he distinguished himself by a gallant deed of arms. On the south-east of the Ostrogothic kingdom, in the country which we now call Servia, there reigned at this time a Sclavonic chief called Babai, who was full of pride and self-importance because of a victory which he had lately gained over the forces of the Empire. Theodoric had probably heard at Constantinople the other side of this story: on his journey to the north-west he had pa.s.sed through those regions, and marked the pride of the insolent barbarian. Sympathy with the humiliated Empire, but, far more, the young warrior's desire at once to find "a foeman worthy of his steel", and to win laurels for himself wherewith he might surprise his father, drove him into his new enterprise. Having collected some of his father's guardsmen, and those of his people with whom he was personally popular, or who were dependent upon him, he thus mustered a little army of six thousand men, with whom he crossed the Danube.[26] Falling suddenly upon King Babai, he defeated and slew him, took his family prisoners, and returned with large booty in slaves and the rude wealth of the barbarian to his surprised but joyful father. The result of this expedition was the capture of the important frontier city of Singidunum (whose site is now occupied by Belgrade), a city which Babai had wrested from the Empire, but which Theodoric, whatever may have been his inclination to favour Constantinople, did not deem it necessary to restore to his late host.

[Footnote 26: The words of Jordanes (which are important on account of their bearing on the pa.s.sage of Tacitus quoted below) are: "Ascitis certis ex satellitibus patris et ex populo amatores sibi clientesque consocians pne s.e.x mille viros c.u.m quibus inscio patre emenso Danubio super Babai Sarmatarum regem discurrit" (Getica, lv.).]

This incident of the early manhood of Theodoric is a good ill.u.s.tration of the Teutonic custom which Tacitus describes to us under the name of the _comitatus_, a custom which was therefore at least four centuries old (probably far older) in the days of Theodoric, and which, lasting on for several centuries longer, undoubtedly influenced if it did not actually create the chivalry of the Middle Ages. The custom was so important that it will be better to translate the very words of Tacitus concerning it, though they occur in one of the best-known pa.s.sages of the "Germania".

"The Germans transact no business either of a public or private nature except with arms in their hands. But it is not the practice for any one to begin the wearing of arms until the State has approved his ability to wield them. When that is done, in the great Council of the nation one of the chiefs, perhaps the father or some near relation of the candidate, equips the youth with s.h.i.+eld and spear. This is with them like the _toga virilis_ with us, the first dignity bestowed on the young man. Before this he was looked upon as part of his father's household--now he is a member of the State. Eminently n.o.ble birth, or great merit on the part of their fathers, a.s.signs the dignity of a chief[27] even to very young men. They are admitted to the fellows.h.i.+p of other youths stronger than themselves, and already tried in war, nor do they blush to be seen among the henchmen.[28] There is a gradation in rank among the henchmen, determined by the judgment of him whom they follow, and there is a great emulation among the henchmen, who shall have the highest place under the chief, and among the chiefs who shall have the most numerous and the bravest henchmen. This is their dignity, this their strength, to be ever surrounded by a band of chosen youths, an honour in peace, a defence in battle. And not only in his own nation, but among the surrounding states also, each chief's name and glory are spread abroad according to the eminence of his 'train of henchmen'[29]

in number and valour. Chiefs thus distinguished are in request for emba.s.sies, are enriched with costly presents, and often they decide a war by the mere terror of their name".

[Footnote 27: Dignationem principis; the true rendering of this sentence is very doubtful.]

[Footnote 28: I think upon the whole "henchmen" is the best translation of this difficult word "comites", "Companions" is too indefinite; "comrades" implies too much equality with the chief.]

[Footnote 29: Comitatus.]

"When they stand on the battle-field, it is held a disgraceful thing for the chief to be surpa.s.sed in bravery by his henchmen, for the henchmen not to equal the valour of their chief. Now too it will mark a man as infamous, and a target for the scorn of men for all the rest of his life, if he escapes alive from the battle-field where his chief needed his help. To defend _him_, the chief; to guard _his_ person; to reckon up one's own brave deeds as enhancing _his_ glory: this is the henchman's one great oath of fealty.[30] The chiefs fight for victory, the henchmen for their chief. If the state in which they are born should be growing sluggish through ease and a long peace, most of the n.o.ble young men seek of their own accord those nations which are then waging war, both because a quiet life is hateful to this people, and because they can more easily distinguish themselves in perilous times, nor can they keep together a great train of henchmen, except by war and the strong hand. For it is from the generosity of their chief that each henchman expects that mighty war-horse which he would bestride, that gory and victorious spear, which he would brandish. Banquets, too, and all the rough but plentiful appliances of the feast are taken as part of the henchman's pay; and the means of supplying all this prodigality must be sought by war and rapine. You would not so easily persuade them to plough the fields and wait in patience for a year's harvest, as to challenge an enemy and earn honourable wounds; since to them it seems always a slow and lazy process to acc.u.mulate by the sweat of your brow what you might win at once by the shedding of blood".

[Footnote 30: Prcipuum sacramentum.]