Six—
De Providentia and the Barbarians
I—
The Massacre
We possess numerous accounts of the massacre of the Goths in Constantinople: Synesius, Socrates, Sozomen, and Zosimus; and less full but still important notices in Philostorgius and Marcellinus.[1] But only one is ever taken seriously.
Generations of scholars have congratulated themselves on possessing in Synesius a well-informed eyewitness, whom they follow unreservedly as their prime source for the events of 400. So, for example, Demougeot, who explained in revealing detail why Synesius's account is always to be preferred:[2] Zosimus is suspect because he drew on Eunapius, who was born in Sardis, one of the cities menaced by Tribigild and Gaïnas. Yet it is easy enough to discount this rather minor bias, and Sardian chauvinism can hardly explain (to give an example discussed in detail below) the conflict between Synesius and Zosimus about the presence of palace guards in Constantinople.
Socrates and Sozomen Demougeot considered inferior to Synesius
[1] Syn. De providentia 2.1–3; Socr. HE 6.6; Soz. HE 8.4 (clearly based on Socrates, but with a number of independent details); Zos. 5.18. 10–19.1–5; Philostorg. HE 11.8, p. 139 Bidez-Winkelmann; Marcellin. s.a. 399 = Chron.Min. II.66.
[2] Demougeot 1951, 248 n. 74.
because they drew on Eusebius Scholasticus's lost epic poem Gaïnias ,[3] which she characterizes as an "oeuvre de circonstance" written after the event, flawed by its weakness for the miraculous.[4] But De providentia was no less an "oeuvre de circonstance," and while the laws of nature are never suspended in its narrative portions, nonetheless gods and demons frequently join in the action. Eusebius's alleged weakness for the miraculous rests on the assumption that it was from him that Socrates got his story of angels in the form of gigantic soldiers foiling repeated attempts by Gaïnas's men to burn down the imperial palace. But it is for what he twice calls "the war" that Socrates cites Eusebius, and it may be that the poem, as we might expect of an epic, was largely concerned with Fravitta's campaign and the sea battle off the Chersonnese.[5] If so, it should be noted that this is the most straightforward and factual part of Socrates' account. At the very least, Eusebius's poem would have made a fascinating comparison with the contemporary epics Claudian was composing for Western audiences during this period. And inevitably it would have reflected a different point of view from De providentia . A poem on Gaïnas's defeat could not have had Aurelian as its hero.
It is worth observing before we proceed how tendentiously the word "eyewitness" is applied to De providentia .[6] An eyewitness is someone who "has seen an occurrence or an object with his own eyes and so is able to give a firsthand report on it."[7] Synesius did indeed live in Constantinople during Gaïnas's coup, but he was not alone among our sources in doing so. Socrates was a native,[8] and Eusebius at least resided
[3] It is only Socrates who cites Eusebius, and the similarities between them are best explained by the assumption that Sozomen copied Socrates rather than a source common to both. Sozomen did not share Socrates' enthusiasm for classicizing literature: Cameron 1982, 282.
[4] Garzya too praises Synesius as "un testimone oculare dei fatti, più fededegno sia di un Eunapio . . . dislocato nella lontana Sardi, sia di un Socrate, influenzato dalla Gainiade di Eusebio Scolastico" (Hommage à André N. Stratos 2 [Athens 1986]: 440), and Becatti (1959, 167) underlines the difference between all other sources and "un testimone oculare sensibile e appasionato come Sinesio."
[6] It appears in every modern account, from Seeck ("so frisch und anschaulich dargestellt, wie nur ein Augenzeuge es vermag," 1894, 442) to Barnes ("a patent eyewitness account," 1986a, 96).
[7] Webster's Third New International Dictionary , ed., s.v. "eyewitness."
[8] Born (ca. 380) and educated in Constantinople, where he seems to have spent most of his life: Chestnut 1977, 168f. It has often been alleged on the basis of an "as they say" when discussing Chrysostom (HE 6.3) that Socrates was absent during the period398–404, but the reference is to Chrysostom's temperament , and we need only conclude that the young layman never met the patriarch. Nor need the reference to Eusebius as an eyewitness imply that Socrates was absent himself, since it is to Eusebius's qualifications to write on the war as an eyewitness that he is alluding.
there at this period. Possibly Philostorgius did too;[9] he gives what is undoubtedly an eyewitness description of the short, swarthy, lethargic Arcadius standing by the side of the tall, handsome, alert Rufinus.[10] When Socrates calls Eusebius an "eyewitness (
Unfortunately, the only detail on which all sources agree is that Gaïnas was planning to burn and loot the city—where his own house stood. A drastic plan, but most modern accounts treat it as both true and uncontroversial. For example, F. M. Clover explains it as follows:
He had then crossed the straits and entered. Constantinople. Immediately[14] he tried to occupy the capital with barbarian forces under his command. After the attempt failed, he withdrew from the city, intending to have his troops seize it on a signal. The plan miscarried. The angry inhabitants massacred those of his men who were in the capital.[15]
[9] See the evidence assembled in Bidez's edition, pp. cvii-ix.
[10] HE 11.3, p. 134.24f. Bidez-Winkelmann.
[11] It was Lampsacus that Gaïnas was aiming for, according to Socrates.
[12] De insomniis 148C–D, also in supernatural terms, at least confirms the sense of danger and unpleasantness Synesius carried away from this period.
[13] 124A; cf. 88B.
[14] In fact after nearly three months' delay, from April to 12 July.
[15] Clover 1979, 65.
That is to say, the failure of the plan to seize Constantinople is held to explain the massacre. But if Gaïnas's aims had been so straightforward, he had no need to negotiate at length with Tribigild and Arcadius. He had for a long time given every indication that all he wanted was a government at Constantinople willing to bestow on him the command and honors to which he felt entitled.[16] There can be no question that he exploited Tribigild's revolt to his own advantage, but Zosimus concedes that at a stage when "everyone" understood his true goals Gaïnas himself continued to play the loyal Roman officer.
Why revert to barbarism when he had finally come so far within the Roman system? He had been appointed magister militum praesentalis . He had successfully demanded the exile of the PPO. Politically he was already master of Constantinople. As praesentalis , stationed at the capital, he had free access to the city. Indeed, he and his family had lived there for many years, in a grand mansion still known as the House of Gaïnas half a millenium later.[17] Even Synesius states matter of factly that "the general of the foreign troops had his home in the royal city" (108B).
If it was cash he needed to pay his men, extortion would have been simpler and more satisfactory than violence. As Socrates put it, the malleable Arcadius "was ready to conciliate Gaïnas in every way, in both word and deed." It is significant that the only specific instance of looting mentioned is Socrates' claim that Gaïnas had been intending to rob the banks, but the bankers, "forewarned of his intention," hid their cash. A truly ruthless pillager would hardly have been deterred by so simple a stratagem. The only specific allegation of burning is another and even less plausible unfulfilled intention:[18] a plan to burn the imperial palace, foiled by angels. What could the Goths possibly have achieved that was worth the opprobrium of burning the palace?[19]
With the sole exception of Synesius, all surviving accounts of Gaïnas's coup were written after Alaric's sack of Rome in 410. They all make the implicit assumption that as a Goth Gaïnas intended to sack New Rome in the same way. In fact the comparison suggests precisely the opposite conclusion. It was not, as Romans flattered themselves, because
[16] For full discussion of Gaïnas's successive demands and bargains, see below, pp. 324–28.
[17] Preger, Script. orig. Cpol ., 2:252.5–7.
[18] "All of a sudden the imperial palace went up in flames": so H. Wolfram, Die Geburt Mitteleuropas (Vienna and Berlin 1987), 149, not noticing that, like the planned bank robberies, this too was an unfulfilled intention.
[19] Demougeot (1951, 255), anxious at all costs to salvage an ancient source, suggests: "Peut-être eut-il lintention[*] de semparer[*] du palais, non pour le détruire, mais pour sassurer[*] de la personne de lempereur[*] et se débarrasser de la cour restée nationaliste."
Alaric was obsessed with Rome that he laid siege to the city three times. He was trying to extort from the Western government a position for himself and his people within the empire. It was only because all his attempts failed that, in frustration, he finally sacked the city for its gold and valuables:
For Alaric, the sack of Rome was an irrelevance, forced upon him by the failure of his other policies; and his aim now, as he marched south to attempt a crossing to Africa, was the same as it had always been—to win security for his people, and a place for them to settle in peace. This, it is clear, had been his objective throughout his negotiations with the court of Ravenna during the two years of his occupation of Italy. During this time, he had used the threat to march on Rome as merely the most valuable diplomatic counter which he possessed in his attempts to achieve a negotiated settlement with Honorius.[20]
There is an obvious parallel in tactics. Both Gaïnas and Alaric used extortion as a means to an end. But their aims were different and Gaïnas (briefly) succeeded where Alaric was to fail. Far from being a frustrated barbarian chieftain, unable to satisfy the following on which his power depended except by plunder, in April 400 Gaïnas had reached the summit of his ambitions. Arcadius had granted his every demand.[21] He was supreme commander of the Eastern army and consul designate for 401.[22]
His aims were simpler, of course; unlike Alaric, he had no people to provide for. This point has been obscured by the tendency of our sources to depict him as the leader of a barbarian horde. A modern version of this position has recently been embraced by Liebeschuetz, for whom Gaïnas commanded only barbarian federates, unlike his colleague Leo, who is held to have led Roman troops.[23] This is paradoxical to start with, since Liebeschuetz does not dispute that Leo was Gaïnas's second in command (
[20] Matthews 1975, 301.
[21] Demougeot 1951, 251: "Arcadius consentit à tout."
[22] See p. 327.
[23] Liebeschuetz 1990, 101–2.
[24] Albert 1984, 112f. ("Gefolgschaft"); Liebeschuetz 1986c. Against this suggestion Gluschanin (1989, 246–47) makes the excellent objection that Gaïnas had been unemployed since 395 and was hardly in a position to pay for a private army.
In order to maintain that Gaïnas was appointed to a federate command in 399, Liebeschuetz was obliged to maintain that he was still a count (comes foederatorum ) at the time,[25] as he had been on the Frigidus campaign in 394. On that occasion Zosimus lists Timasius and Stilicho as magistri militum in command "of the Roman troops," and Gaïnas (with Saul and Bacurius) as comites in charge of barbarian federates.[26] By 400 Gaïnas was certainly praesentalis . But when was he promoted? Liebeschuetz disposes of this vital point in a footnote, with no systematic discussion of the relatively abundant sources, remarking that only Socrates "implies" that Gaïnas held a lesser rank, but is "probably careless and wrong."[27]
The facts are as follows. Socrates states explicitly at the beginning of his account of the rebellion that Gaïnas "was appointed general (
[25] Following PLRE 1.379–80.
[26] Zos. 4.57.2–3, with Paschoud's comm. pp. 463–65.
[27] Liebeschuetz 1990, 101 n. 62.
[28] HE 6.6.
[30] HE 11.8, p. 138 Bidez-Winkelmann.
[31] HE 5.32.1.
comes is often found in combination with higher ranks,[33] and (b) Marcellinus merely repeats under 399 and 400 the style he had first used under 395 (Gaina comes )—just as he continues to use the formula Stilicho comes as late as 408. As for Jordanes, anyone who looks up the relevant passages will see at once that his source was Marcellinus.[34]
Since all Greek sources are united in styling Gaïnas
According to Liebeschuetz, "Gaïnas's forces are consistently described as barbarians and contrasted with the Roman forces of Leo," citing half a dozen passages of Zosimus.[37] This is certainly what Zosimus says, but can we really have any confidence that this notoriously careless and imprecise historian began (and ended) with Gaïnas so precise and systematic a distinction between the different elements in a late Roman army? Liebeschuetz is no doubt correct to claim that Roman armies at this period consisted not only of regular units, which might themselves be largely barbarian in composition (though trained and commanded by Roman officers), but also of barbarian irregulars not represented in the Notitia —not to mention the possibility of bucellarii . But these references in Zosimus imply something quite different and much simpler: that Gainas's entire army consisted of nothing but barbarians.
The explanation is surely that, writing as he was long after 410, Zosimus had Alaric in mind and simply assumed that Gaïnas was the leader of a barbarian horde.[38] Hence his frequent references to Gaïnas
[34] Romana 319, Getica 176 (Mommsen, ed., MGH : AA 5 [1882]).
[35] W. Enb ilin, Klio 23 (1930): 323–24; examples are cited on p. 225 n. 127 below.
[36] So Demandt 1970, 733–34; and Paschoud 1986, 122–23.
[37] Liebeschuetz 1986c, 466: Zos. 5.14.3, 17.1, 18.6, 18.10, 19.2, 21.9.
[38] Zakrzewski argues that Gaïnas had long been preparing the army for revolt "en la pénétrant delements[*] germaniques" (1931, 47), but does not explain how he could have done this while apparently out of office between 395 and 399.
and "his barbarians." Socrates too implies that Gaïnas's forces were all barbarians,[39] and a late source like Jordanes writes straightforwardly of Gothorum foederatorum manus . But Zosimus contradicts himself in his own last reference to Gaïnas's forces. After the final defeat by Fravitta, Gaïnas
was afraid that another Roman army might follow and attack the few barbarians that remained with him; he was also suspicious of the Romans who still followed him. So he killed them all before they suspected his intentions and crossed the Danube with his barbarians, planning to return to his native land and spend the rest of his days there.[40]
Zosimus can hardly have invented a detail in such sharp conflict with his own picture of a barbarian horde. Even at the lowest point in his fortunes, there were still some nonbarbarians in Gaïnas's army.[41]
That more is involved here than the simplification or ignorance of later writers is shown by a whole series of references in Synesius. For example, that the barbarians "were conducting a campaign against a contingent of their own[42] people who had rebelled" (De providentia 108B), unmistakably and falsely implies that the forces of both Gaïnas and Tribigild were wholly barbarian. Osiris's plan to reduce the barbarian element in the army is amusingly described as "infiltrating the military rolls" (108D), that is to say, surreptitiously adding nonbarbarians. Nevertheless, though Synesius had introduced a native soldiery participating in the royal election (94C-D), throughout the rest of the allegory soldiers are simply equated with barbarians. References are particularly frequent in the first half of book 2.
Such simplifications on Synesius's part are not to be accorded the authority of a "well informed eyewitness."[43] His aim was not to describe
[39] Liebeschuetz (1986c) seems to take seriously Socrates' claim (HE 6.6) that Gaïnas "sent for the entire Gothic race from his own land and gave his kinsmen commands in the army" (cf. Soz. HE 8.4.1: "He summoned his Gothic fellow tribesmen from their own ways"). See Liebeschuetz's own claim that "Gaïnas's Goths appear to have been recruited from the East of the Danube outside the Empire" (466). But Socrates' only illustration of kinsmen given commands is Tribigild, who of course was not appointed by Gaïnas; and surely there were no Tervingians (Gaïnas's "fellow tribesmen") left in their homelands. Socrates' claim may be no more than a way of emphasizing the barbarian danger by presenting Gaïnas as a proto-Alaric. Note too his exaggerated remark that Gaïnas's arrival in Constantinople meant that the city was "inundated with barbarians."
[40] Zos. 5.21.9.
[41] Gainas did not in fact "return to his native land" beyond the Danube: see below, p. 331.
[42] For the text "of their own" see notes ad loc., p. 367.
[43] Demougeot 1951, 249 n. 74.
the composition of Gaïnas's army, but to provide a pseudomythical paradigm of what happens when a mighty kingdom entrusts its defense to foreigners. He thought of himself as a philosopher, not a historian; not the particular, but the general was his prime concern.[44]
In Synesius's judgment the Eastern empire had surrendered its defense to barbarians. The modern historian rightly draws a sharp distinction between regular units trained and commanded by regular officers, even when recruited from barbarians, and bands of federates led by hereditary chieftains. But not Synesius. Two years earlier in De regno he wrote as though the Romans relied exclusively on barbarians, lamenting the fact that they had no force to "counterbalance" the Goths,[45] protesting that there was no reason why the Romans should not have an army of their own (21D). At 18A he had referred disapprovingly to the tall, blond, long-haired guards who accompanied the emperor wherever he went.[46] The imperial guards, the scholae palatinae , were indeed, as Synesius's description implies, recruited almost entirely from barbarians.[47] There is no evidence that they were ever disloyal, but Synesius feared all wolves the unwise shepherd might mix with his dogs (22A). That is why he goes on to warn that it makes no difference whether they are caught as cubs and appear to have been tamed, since "the moment they notice any weakness in the dogs they will pounce on them, flock, shepherds, and all." These "wolf cubs" must be barbarian recruits in regular units, naturally including the scholae.[48] It follows that we cannot make any precise inferences from Synesius's use of the term "barbarian."
It seems to be generally accepted that Gaïnas's army occupied Constantinople. According to Demougeot, for example, Gaïnas "couronna cette revanche spectaculaire par une entrée solennelle dans la capitale qui ne setait[*] jamais vue occupée par des barbares. Ses troupes nombreuses, 35,000 hommes sans doute, eurent quelque mal à se loger, terrorisèrent les habitants et les exaspérèrent."[49] Albert makes much of
[44] See above, p. 145 for a fuller statement of this point, and chapter 7 on literary aspects of De providentia .
[46] On this passage see Frank 1969, 133, 149; Hoffmann 1969, 300.
[47] Frank 1969, 59f.; Hoffmann 1969, 299f. Frank (59) refers to palace guards in the passage on the danger of having Gothic "guards" at 21D, but in the context the reference is clearly to the guard dogs of Pl. Rep . 375E; cf. Syn. Ep . 131, p. 225.15f. G.
[48] Perhaps laeti , barbarians settled by the government on Roman soil with a view specifically to their breeding recruits for the army: Jones 1964a, 620.
[49] Demougeot 1951, 252. She assumes that Gaïnas's troops were all barbarians. Cf. Dagron 1974, 111 ("[Gaïnas] . . . pénètre dans la ville, par un véritable coup detat[*] , avec ses 35 000 Goths"): Wolfram 1988, 149 ("Gainas marched to Constantinople and occupied the city"); Albert 1984, 130f. On the size of Gaïnas's army, see p. 383 n. 247.
the problem of provisioning and disciplining this horde inside the city.[50] If Gaïnas really did quarter 35,000 Gothic soldiers in Constantinople, it is easy to see why the situation got out of control. But did he?
According to the transmitted text of Zosimus 5.18.10,
once established in Constantinople, [Gaïnas] dispersed the soldiers under his command in all directions, so that the city was deprived of even the palace guards , and he secretly ordered his barbarians that when they saw him[51] secretly leaving the city, they should immediately attack it, bereft as it was of military protection, and hand the supreme power over to him.
There are various problems with this passage. First, Gaïnas is said to have replaced palace guards (the scholae ) with barbarians,[52] so that he could seize the city when it was left defenseless. But a few lines later the same Zosimus tells us that Gaïnas "left enough barbarians in the city greatly to outnumber the palace guards" (5.19.2), and a few lines later again (5.19.3) he mentions the palace guards twice in his account of the actual massacre. They are also mentioned by Philostorgius, and twice each in the accounts of both Socrates and Sozomen.
Clearly Gaïnas did not replace the scholae with his own men. He would have been going far beyond his authority if he had. The scholae were commanded by tribunes answerable only to the emperor, and it is hard to believe that Arcadius would have consented to be deprived of his own bodyguards. There were seven regiments of the scholae , elite units consisting of 500 men each.[53] Gaïnas can hardly have contemplated a pitched battle with the emperor's guards in the streets of Constantinople. Moreover, his own men, regular units rather than a personal following, were not likely to attack the emperor's guards even if he had given the order. Nor could such a show of force have brought him any advantage.
[50] Albert 1984, 131; cf. Demougeot 1951, 252.
[52] Paschoud implausibly argues that the "soldiers under his command" are not the army Gaïnas arrived with, but Roman soldiers stationed in the capital who now fell under his command as magister militum praesentalis (comm. p. 152). But these could only have been the scholae , who were commanded directly by the emperor (and administratively by the magister officiorum : Jones 1964a, 613), never by the praesentalis .
[53] Frank 1969, 52 n. 20; Hoffmann 1969, 280. That this was more than a paper figure is proved by a passage of Palladius indicating one regiment with an active strength of 400 in 404 (Dialogus de vita S. Iohannis Chrysostomi , p. 57.18 Coleman-Norton).
Zosimus 5.18.10 does not prove that Gaïnas formally stationed troops inside the city. The army of the praesentalis was normally dispersed in a variety of camps or barracks in the neighborhood of Constantinople.[54] Zosimus need not imply any more than that Gaïnas quite properly dispatched his army to these various legitimate destinations. Albert confesses that he cannot find any satisfactory motive for the occupation of the city but concludes that Gaïnas acted to strengthen his position in Constantinople, where, though commander in chief, he was "powerless" because he could not bring his troops inside the city.[55] But this is to confuse power with military strength. In the ordinary way no imperial commander in chief had anything to fear inside a city, nor did his political authority rest on the exercise of military power. And even if he felt that it did, even 5,000, let alone 35,000, troops would be more hindrance than help in such a confined space.[56] They would be more useful if stationed in the usual barracks a mile or two outside the city.
Book 2 of De providentia admittedly implies a substantial Gothic presence inside the city. For example, according to 116B, "the barbarians were using the city like a camp." According to 117A, "cavalrymen rode about the marketplace in file, moving in squadrons to the sound of the trumpet. If any of them needed a shopkeeper or shoemaker or someone to polish his sword, all the rest stood guard over his need, so that the phalanx would not be broken even in the streets." Even within the obvious hyperbole, Synesius does not describe soldiers carrying out a for-
[54] Dagron 1974, 108 ("sur les deux rives du Bosphore, et sans doute aussi à lHebdomon[*] ").
[55] Albert 1984, 130 ("da . . . innerhalb der Stadt keine Truppen lagen"). The argument is confused and incorrect as stated. The evidence to which he refers (cited below, p. 211 and notes) forbids civilians to bear arms anywhere , not soldiers to bear arms inside cities. The purpose of this constantly reiterated ban was to prevent civilian, not military, disorder and ambition: "those who have entered into a conspiracy to raise a mob or a sedition or who keep either slaves or free men under arms" (Digest 48.6.3). In the city the emperor was attended everywhere by the scholae , like earlier emperors by their praetorians in Rome (J. B. Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army, 31B.C. –A.D. 235 [Oxford 1984], 113f.). No further troops were required. It is often claimed (e.g., by Dagron 1974, 110) that when the emperor was absent, troops were not allowed in the city even to defend it against invasion. But the only evidence cited is Socrates HE 4.38, where the people of Constantinople are alleged to have clamored in the hippodrome: "Give us arms and we ourselves will fight." But this is an ironic protest addressed to Valens when present and (they claimed) himself too scared to face the Goths. There is no question here of a garrison to defend the city in the emperor's absence. On the other hand, when the Goths actually attacked Constantinople after defeating Valens at Adrianople shortly afterwards, there was in fact a garrison in the city, a contingent of Saracens "recently summoned thither . . . who rushed forth boldly from the city" (Amm. Marc. 31.16.5).
[56] While conceding this point, Albert implausibly supposes that Gaïnas himself did not discover it till too late: "Vor allem aber blieb ihm jetzt weiterhin die effektive Kontrolle seiner Leute durch die räumlichen Verhältnisse der Großstadt erschwert" (1984, 133).
mal occupation, but off-duty soldiers throwing their weight about the marketplace intimidating civilians. No doubt many of Gaïnas's officers, like himself, were now living in Constantinople. Even without a formal occupation, the city must have been full of swaggering soldiers, creating noise and nuisance at all hours. And Synesius's jaundiced eye exaggerated the Gothic presence in every quarter. In De regno he had complained that the city was full of Scythians—for even the humblest houses had Scythian slaves (23D).[57] He warned that when the next Gothic attack came, the Gothic slaves of Constantinople would rise up and join them, "reckless and valiant soldiers who will perform the unholiest deeds to win their liberty" (24C). De providentia shows nothing that bore out these fears.
More tellingly, if Gaïnas had held Constantinople by force, we should expect the myth to describe a corresponding enslavement of Egyptian Thebes. Yet at the end of book 1 the Scythian general emphatically refuses Typhos's invitation to enslave Thebes:
"Your soldiers can make themselves rich by enslaving a prosperous city," [said Typhos] . . . . But the Scythian refused. For he held in high esteem the sacred senate and the decent citizens and the prerogatives of the city. He said that he marched against Osiris not as a volunteer but under a compulsion that Osiris himself had created. And if he succeeded in overcoming him, with the city safe and the countryside unravaged, he said, he would reckon it a gain that no greater evil proved necessary.[58]
Of course this tendentious exchange does not reflect the realities of A.D. 400.[59] It is one of a series of attempts in book 1 to shift responsibility from Gaïnas to Caesarius. Synesius was evidently reluctant to antagonize Gaïnas, still a threat to Constantinople at the time of writing. As in the case of his similar displacement of the responsibility for Osiris's deposition and exile in 111A–B,[60] Synesius reversed their true roles. But the crucial fact behind this transparent artifice is that Thebes was not enslaved. Whether the initiative comes from Typhos or the Scythian, enslavement is represented as an unfulfilled intention. Like everyone else, Synesius expected Gaïnas to enslave and plunder Constantinople. But at the time of writing the disaster had not yet happened.
Compare too a neglected passage at the end of book 1, the rustic
[57] The passage is quoted in full above, p. 111.
[58] 110C–D.
[59] Contra Paschoud (comm. p. 152) on the usual grounds that Synesius was a "témoin oculaire."
[60] See chapter 8, section III, for a fuller discussion of this point.
philosopher's reflection on the god's prediction that the Goths would soon be driven out: "For it was beyond human prediction to guess that a vast armed force—the barbarians had the legal right to carry arms even in peacetime—would be defeated with no force to resist them" (115A).[61] If Gaïnas had occupied the city by force, it would have been an act of war; and if the barbarians mentioned here had been soldiers on active duty, they would not have needed any special dispensation to carry arms. It was civilians who were strictly forbidden to bear or manufacture arms, partly in the interests of public order but more importantly to prevent private citizens usurping power with the aid of personal militias.[62] Half a century later the historian Priscus makes a Roman deserter living among the Huns complain that Romans cannot protect themselves against barbarians because they are not allowed to bear arms "through <fear of> usurpers."[63] Synesius himself was well aware of the ban and its rationale when he himself later had arms manufactured to defend Cyrene: "Are you going to tell me," he writes to his brother, who had evidently reminded him of the ban, "that private individuals are not allowed to bear arms but are allowed to die? Apparently the government doesn't like people trying to save their own lives!"[64] It is clearly this well-known ban from which the barbarians of Synesius's myth are being exempted. It would have been absurd to suggest that soldiers on active duty needed such an exemption. It follows that the barbarians he has in mind here are civilians or off-duty soldiers and that the massacre took place in peacetime.
The massacre is beginning to take on an entirely different complexion. There were no doubt a certain number of Gaïnas's soldiers in the city at the time on one errand or another. But we no longer need to believe that unarmed civilians spontaneously rose up against and defeated an army of several thousand Gothic warriors.[65]
[62] Under the provisions of the Lex Julia de vi publica , constantly reiterated: see the extracts in Digest 48.6.1 and the detailed restatement in Just. Nov. 85 of 539. See too Jones 1964a, 671, and chap. 25, n. 54; Dagron 1974, 108–15; Cameron 1976a, 123–24; the same ban applied already for the republican period, when it was a capital offense for a civilian to bear arms: see P. A. Brunt, Past and Present 35 (1966): 10–11; and see especially Brunt's Roman Imperial Themes (Oxford 1990), 255–66.
[63] Frag. 8 Müller = 11.2 Blockley (p. 268, line 440).
[64] Ep. 107; cf. 108.
[65] Not that such a feat would be incredible in itself; Dio (80.2.3) and Herodian (7.11) record two spectacular battles between the people of Rome and the praetorian guard in 222/23 and 238. The so-called moneyers' revolt under Aurelian, in which 7,000 are allegedto have perished, is a much more dubious proposition: cf. M. Peachin, Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History , vol. 3, ed. C. Deroux (Brussels 1983), 325–35.
To be sure Synesius tries to suggest that this is precisely what happened. He follows his vignette of Gothic cavalrymen quoted above with the claim that it was these same warriors who "fled in rout from naked, unarmed, disheartened men who had not even a prayer of victory." He insists that there was "not a weapon in the city nor anyone to use it" (116C); that "the Egyptians had no spearman, no spear; no javelin-thrower, no javelin" (120A); that "anything that came to hand was a weapon in time of need" (119A). In short, our eyewitness assures us that superbly trained and equipped cavalry were routed by completely unarmed civilians.[66]
Once more, we simply cannot believe him. No fewer than four other sources—Philostorgius, Socrates, Sozomen, and Zosimus—expressly state that the palace guards played a part. According to Zosimus, for example, it was the guards who raised the alarm and "everyone . . . together with the guards" who drove Gaïnas's men from the walls (5.19.3). Some of these guardsmen may have cut a better figure on the parade ground than on the battlefield, and Palladius claims that the 400 scholae who killed a number of catechumens in 404 were hotheaded recruits.[67] Nonetheless, they made up a force of some 3,500 well-armed elite troops accustomed to operating (as in 404) on the streets of Constantinople.
One significant but overlooked detail in the accounts of Socrates and Sozomen strongly supports their versions against Synesius's on this point. According to Socrates, when Gaïnas left the city on the fateful day, "together with him went barbarians secretly carrying out arms, some concealing them in earthenware pots, some in other ways. And when the soldiers who guarded the city gates detected the stratagem, they would not allow them to take out the arms, whereupon the barbarians drew their swords and killed the guards." Sozomen adds a few details: "Some of the barbarians remained in Constantinople, and others accompanied Gaïnas, secretly carrying arms in ladies' carriages and pots containing daggers. When they were discovered, they killed the guards at the gates when they tried to stop them taking out the weapons."[68] Philostorgius's briefer narrative says nothing about concealed weapons but confirms that Gaïnas's party broke through guards posted at the gates. These concealed weapons are too circumstantial to reject. Why should anyone have invented such a curious detail? The barbarians who
[66] Not to mention earlier believers, note Dagron 1974, 111: "Ce dénouement ne fait intervenir aucune force armée, aucune milice, seulement une population insurgé."
[67] Demougeot 1951, 329.
[68] Socr. HE 6.6, Soz. HE 8.4.15.
accompanied Gaïnas on this occasion cannot, as usually supposed,[69] have been his bodyguard alone, for naturally they would have carried weapons openly. They must have been mainly civilians, as the reference to ladies' carriages confirms. Gaïnas's party was obliged to submit to inspection by guards manifestly not answerable to Gaiïas himself. On discovering the forbidden weapons, the guards correctly tried to confiscate them.[70] It follows that Gaïnas's army cannot possibly have been in military occupation of Constantinople at the time.
We have already seen that Synesius himself explicitly alludes to barbarians receiving a special dispensation to carry arms (115A). Why did he go out of his way to import this puzzling anachronism into his Egyptian myth? He cannot have had Gaïnas's army in mind, since it would go without saying that soldiers carried arms. It was civilians who were forbidden to bear arms, and yet it is hardly credible that Gothic civilians resident in Constantinople really were given special permission. What would have been the point? On Synesius's own earlier testimony, many of them were slaves, and many more women and children. How would it benefit even Gaïnas to arm untrained civilians when he already had a trained army?
Synesius's reference to this special dispensation comes at the end of book 1 among the obviously post eventum prophecies of the coming massacre, immediately following the veiled allusions to the request for an Arian church inside Constantinople and the comet of the spring of 400 (114D–115B). Contemporary readers would therefore have been prompted to interpret the allusion to Goths bearing arms in terms of the antecedents of the massacre. They would have been reminded of the incident Socrates and Sozomen describe. It was after all the discovery that Gothic civilians were carrying weapons that led to the first bloodshed. Synesius makes the wicked Typhos allow the barbarians to carry, openly, the arms that had to be concealed in A.D. 400, to transfer the initiative to Typhos and exaggerate his tyranny. His illegitimate power rested on "his darling barbarians" (122B); he armed his supporters by an illegitimate concession, exempting them from the general ban. Common to both myth and reality are the barbarians' weapons; the difference is simply a question of responsibility. Clearly Synesius meant to suggest that in real life Caesarius had connived at the hidden weapons, as part of the modern Typhos's plot to hand Constantinople over to the barbarians. This is characteristic of the way Synesius adapts and improves on contemporary events in his myth.
[69] E.g., Albert 1984, 135.
[70] See the provisions of Just. Nov. 85, De armis .
Despite the rumors they themselves preserve that the Goths were planning to sack the city, both Socrates and Sozomen make it clear that it was only when the Goths started to leave the city, and to leave secretly , that violence erupted. Here Synesius is in complete agreement with them: "[The barbarians] withdrew from the city at a signal, stealing away with their children, their wives, and their most valued possessions" (117A–B). For Synesius too the killing began at the city gates, though he says nothing of guards and concealed weapons. Imperial guards could not be admitted to a myth where there was no emperor and the only soldiers were disloyal barbarians. For Synesius, it was an old beggarwoman who "saw in the distance what the Scythians were doing, since it was fully daylight and they kept running in and out like burglars, all packing their goods and carrying them away" (117D). The beggarwoman denounces the Scythians, and one of them "sprang upon her, cutlass drawn to chop the head off the wretched creature who, he surmised, was reviling them and had made their night's work public" (118B). The blow is warded off by "either a god or someone like a god," and the fighting begins. Firmly in the grip of the "eyewitness" fallacy and undeterred by the fact that the old woman's speech is a reprise of the antibarbarian tirade from Synesius's own De regno , Bury incautiously assumed that Synesius was, as usual, simply reporting the facts: "It happened that a beggar-woman was standing at one of the western gates."[71]
Synesius places the incident of the beggarwoman first thing in the morning (117D). Philostorgius placed Gaïnas's departure just before nightfall; and according to Socrates the massacre did not begin till one day after the incident of the concealed weapons. All Synesius did was to omit the earlier incident and concentrate on the outbreak of the actual massacre the following morning. It is likely enough that Goths were still trying to get out of the city on the next day. Mutual fear would have been at its height, Romans seeing the concealed weapons as part of some such Gothic plot to sack the city, as all our sources report in one form or another, and Goths fearing reprisals from the Romans. It only needed a spark to set off the conflagration. The spark might even have been some old beggarwoman, though doubtless without Synesius's color and drama, let alone the deus ex machina who saves her.
In its essentials Synesius's version agrees well enough with Socrates and Sozomen here: the barbarians were trying to leave the city in secret when they were found out. At the very beginning of his account Synesius adds a detail that helps to explain this furtive departure: "The gen-
[71] Bury (1923) 1958, 133; as portrayed, she is a literary creature, owing much to the prophetess in Dio Chrys. Or. 1.53f.: see the notes to the translation, pp. 381–82, and p. 271.
eral suffered from terrors in the night—Corybantes, I think, assaulted him—and outbreaks of panic seized the army by day. The recurrent alarm rendered them witless and unable to control their thoughts. They wandered around alone or together, all of them like men possessed" (116B–C). What were the barbarians afraid of? Central though this fear is to his account of the evacuation, Synesius offers no reasonable explanation. He insists that it was sent by God, completely at odds with the apparent probabilities of the situation, in vindication of divine Providence. Synesius's verbiage in the passage just quoted is emphatic: the barbarians' distress is ascribed to Corybantes and Pans,[72] and their final state is, literally, "like men stolen by nymphs" (
Synesius makes no concessions to the historian who wants to understand events in terms of human motivations. Though unexplained, the portrait of mutual paranoia he offers is itself reasonably plausible. Before positive divine inspiration, "when the populace saw them packing up, they did not yet understand what was happening, but despaired for themselves all the more." Some flee and some prepare for death (117B). Synesius explicitly declares their attitude to be mistaken, but its correction waits on the gods (117C). The old beggarwoman shows more spirit, but she too interprets all Scythian action exclusively in terms of threat: they were moving out all their families and valuables "so that the city would no longer contain anything of theirs as security. As soon as they had moved camp, they would strike the first blow without fear that they might share in the consequences, as would have happened if criminals and victims had been living together" (118A). Her judgment is meant to be plausible, from the citizens' limited perspective, but that perspective is expressly vitiated in favor of the gods' intervention.
Zosimus offers an opposite unfulfilled intention: "Leaving enough barbarians in the city greatly to outnumber the palace guards, [Gaïnas] retired to a suburb forty stades away, whence he intended to make his
own attack after the barbarians in the city had begun the attack in accordance with their orders " (5.19.2). This plan, Zosimus continues, was spoiled by Gaïnas's barbarian rashness: "Instead of waiting for the signal, he approached the wall and the guards were startled and raised the alarm." Marcellinus more simply claims that Gaïnas "secretly ordered his barbarians to prepare civil war," without details.[73] Synesius did not require his explanation to bear much weight, and the other does no better.
The detail that rings truest in Synesius's account is the fear that drives the barbarians to leave the city. It operates as divine machinery to help unman the ferocious, well-trained soldiers to a point where they can be routed by unarmed civilians. But for the gods this mechanism would not have been necessary; that is to say, Synesius had no motive to invent Gothic fear for the sake of his version. If anything, it detracts from the glory of the Constantinopolitans. For Synesius's purposes they could as well have fallen on the Goths in the marketplace. Since, moreover, the furtive flight of the Goths from the city is corroborated with such circumstantial detail by Socrates and Sozomen, we must accept it as fact and dispense with intrinsically improbable unfulfilled intentions.
It is also relevant to compare the various accounts of Gaïnas's own departure from the city, evidently a key event in the sequence that led up to the massacre. According to Socrates and Sozomen, he left for the church of St. John the Evangelist seven miles distant, feigning demonic possession. According to Zosimus, he claimed that he was weary and needed to free his mind from cares. According to Marcellinus he feigned illness.[74] The differences are perhaps less striking than the general agreement that he made some pretext or other. For in the ordinary way a Roman commander in chief did not need to make excuses to leave Constantinople. The implication is that Gaïnas left at a time and in a manner that was thought to require some justification. Philostorgius gives no pretext but connects his fear with the decision to leave the city "immediately, although night was falling."[75] A hasty nighttime departure by the commander in chief and his entourage was liable to inspire alarm among both Romans and barbarians.
Whatever it was that so terrified the civilian Gothic population of Constantinople, it is difficult to believe that they would have fled the city in such panic if it had been occupied by 35,000 Gothic soldiers. It was the
[73] Chron. Min. II.66: "ad praeparandum civile bellum barbaros suos occulte ammonet."
[74] Blockley (1983, 147 n. 150) rightly dissociates Eunap. frag. 75.2 (= 67.1 Blockley), which refers to illness, from Zos. 5.19.1.
non-Gothic population of Constantinople they were afraid of—a fear that was to prove only too justified. Both Synesius (121A) and Zosimus (5.19.3) place before the massacre a rather confused account of Romans locking the city gates against barbarians attacking from outside. For Zosimus, this was part of Gaïnas's botched plan to seize the city, but more probably it was a desperate attempt by such of Gaïnas's men as were near enough to prevent the massacre.
It has hitherto been assumed that it was Gaïnas's military occupation of Constantinople that drove its people to massacre their oppressors. But we do not need to postulate anything so drastic as full-scale military occupation. Gaïnas's blatant blackmail of the emperor, the execution of Eutropius, the exile of Aurelian and his associates, against the background of the large number of Gothic civilians and off-duty soldiers in the city can only have created an atmosphere of extreme mutual fear and hostility toward Goths. Leaving aside divine participation, this is exactly the picture Synesius draws. The hyperbole of panic-mongers like him raised tensions still higher. Gothic residents fearing for their safety inside the city started to leave, secretly, so as not to provoke attack while they were encumbered and least able to fight back. Gaïnas himself, observing the rapid deterioration of the situation inside Constantinople, escorted one such group; the "ladies' carriages" presumably carried the families of some Gothic notables. His actions were felt to be suspicious, whence the excuses, which were perceived as such. The discovery of concealed weapons only made matters worse. The apprehensions of both Gothic and Roman residents were sharpened even further. Synesius states that "each side had long feared attack from the other" (119B). The Romans may genuinely have feared that the Goths were removing their women and children so that they could set fire to the city, and accordingly refused to allow them to leave. The Goths did their best to defend themselves but with few Gothic soldiers inside the city to protect them were no match for the enraged populace, especially once the several thousand troops of the scholae joined the fray. Synesius admits that some of the Goths left behind in the city "were still in their houses" (119D). Many, if not most, of the Goths killed were burned alive in what Socrates describes as the "church of the Goths." Since there were no Arian churches in the city, this was presumably the one Gothic church within the city walls, the Catholic church "beside the church of Paul."[76] Many of these must have been the resident Catholic Goths to whom we know John Chrysostom preached.
[76] That the church was Catholic: Marcellinus, s.a. 399, "fugientes ecclesiae nostrae succedunt." That it was located "beside the church of Paul": Chrysostom, PG 53.499; for detailed discussion, see the commentary to the translation of 121A.
One other text, a fragment of Eunapius, may allude to the massacre; it has been much discussed in recent years but still not satisfactorily explained:
Perses [a Persian?], prefect in [New?] Rome, reduced the success of the Romans to mockery and laughter. Wishing to offer a representation of what had happened, he put together many small panels in the middle of the hippodrome. But the subject matter of these paintings was laughable, and he unwittingly mocked his subject by the representation. For nowhere did the paintings show or even hint at the bravery of the emperor or the strength of the soldiers or any obvious, regular war. But there was a hand extending as if from the clouds, and this inscription by the hand: "the hand of God driving off the barbarians." (It is shameful but necessary to record this.) And in another place: "the barbarians fleeing God," and other things more fatuous and distasteful still, the ravings of drunken painters.[77]
The paintings here described evidently embodied a Christian interpretation of a recent imperial victory over barbarians. But there are problems.
First, was Perses prefect of Rome or Constantinople? Rome, according to most recent discussions.[78] Reasonable though this might seem at first glance, there is in fact a series of objections.
In the first place, there is no room for another prefect of Rome in the already full fasti of the relevant period, 399–402:[79] Nicomachus Flavianus (6 June 399–8 November 400), Protadius (400–401), Longinianus (401–2), and Albinus (6 December 402). None of them could by any stretch of the imagination be described as Persians, nor, pace Baldwin, is it easy to see how any of them could have come by the nickname Perses. Second, this part of Eunapius's narrative betrays so little interest in or knowledge of the West that it would be surprising to find such a Western reference. Third, the Western court normally celebrated Eastern victories at the Western capital, Milan, not in Rome.[80]
According to R. C. Blockley, this fragment is a digression that refers "to an event in the West, perhaps the defeat of Gildo [July 398], in which
[77] Eunap. frag. 78 = 68 Blockley.
[78] Cracco Ruggini 1972, 101–2; Baldwin 1976, 7–8; PLRE II.1222; Blockley 1981, 161 n. 64; Paschoud 1986, 156; McCormick 1986, 118.
[79] Chastagnol 1962, 251–60; PLRE II.1252. PLRE does in fact try to squeeze Perses in between Protadius and Longinianus.
[80] As, for example, in 421 at Ravenna, discussed by McCormick 1986, 119. On the preceding page McCormick makes much of the statues dedicated by the city prefect Albinus in 389 to commemorate Theodosius's victory over Maximus the preceding year, but it makes all the difference here that Theodosius was himself present in Rome at the time. Nor are statues erected by Roman officials quite the same as victory games given by the emperor.
the power of God was stressed in the official version."[81] But Gildo was a rebellious Roman official, not a barbarian enemy, nor was there any such official version.[82] Leilia Cracco Ruggini sees a reference to expeditions of Stilicho. But it is not likely that Stilicho would have allowed himself to be robbed of his credit by God in this way. The evidence of both Claudian and contemporary monuments suggests on the contrary that he was anxious to make the most of all his successes during these years.[83] According to Michael McCormick, Eunapius was describing a celebration held at Rome to commemorate Fravitta's victory over Gaïnas in 401. But the sequence of the fragments points to a slightly earlier context. Frag. 68 is no. 72 in the Excerpta de sententiis . No. 70 (frag. 67.10Blockley [hereafter B]) describes Gaïnas's destruction of Eutropius and dealings with Tribigild; no. 71 (frag. 67.11B) Gaïnas in league with Tribigild; no. 72 (frag. 69.1B) Fravitta's appointment to a command despite poor health, evidently the command against Gaïnas; no. 74 (frag. 69.4B) Fravitta's defeat of Gaïnas and designation to the consulship for 401.
Wherever the sequence of the Excerpta can be checked, they are in chronological order, and there seems no reason to doubt that the present sequence is too. So Perses' pictures in the circus were mentioned between the account of Gaïnas's collusion with Tribigild and Fravitta's appointment to the command against Gaïnas. If the passage came in Eunapius's main narrative, the "barbarians fleeing God" should be the barbarians killed in the massacre. If in a digression, the digression must at any rate have been hung on the account of the massacre; it is therefore unlikely to be a reference forward to Fravitta's victory.[84] If the reference is to the massacre rather than to Fravitta's victory, the circus games can hardly have been Western. Such victory celebrations were held only on receipt of official victory bulletins circulated around all the principal cities of the empire.[85] No such bulletin would have been issued to commemorate the burning alive of civilians in a Catholic church in Constantinople, especially since it caused, rather than terminated, a civil war.
But in Constantinople itself there was doubtless a good deal of unofficial celebrating, and it is entirely possible that the city prefect had
[81] Blockley 1981, 161.
[82] Orosius 7.36.5f., to which Blockley refers (1981, 161 n. 64 fin. ), can hardly be so described when the poems of Claudian tell such a different story.
[83] Cameron 1970a, passim.
[84] The possibility cannot be excluded, of course; but if Eunapius had wanted to refer to pictures celebrating the victory of his hero Fravitta, why not discuss them when referring to that victory rather than another, less glorious and less honorable?
[85] McCormick 1986, 192–95 (and index, p. 425) gives a full account of these victory bulletins.
some such pictures made to decorate the hippodrome. Rome here could well be New Rome. Already in the lifetime of Constantine, Constantinople is styled New or Second Rome,[86] and where there was no likelihood of confusion, it eventually became normal to write Rome alone. Most of the datable examples are of the sixth century,[87] the earliest securely dated being an inscription from the base of a statue to the great Constantinopolitan charioteer Porphyrius of ca. 500.[88]AP 9.799 on a certain Muselius who had a building called the Museion repaired and extended may be nearly a century earlier if it refers to the Musellius who was praepositus sacri cubiculi in 414.[89]
More specifically, "Rome" alone was undoubtedly a feature of the titulature of the prefect of Constantinople. There are a number of weights, in glass, lead, and bronze, that bear the names of prefects of Constantinople, evidently the authority who issued or guaranteed the correctness of the weights. The word "Constantinople" itself never appears, just "eparch,"[90] sometimes with the word RWMHIS in the central field.[91] Since the provenance of these weights is Asiatic or Egyptian where known, several of them found at Istanbul itself, and since the legends are invariably in Greek, there can be no doubt that here at least Rome does mean New Rome. Some of them, moreover, bear relatively uncommon names borne by known prefects of Constantinople. For example, Zemarchus, in office in 565,[92] documented by one glass,[93] and three bronze,[94] weights; and Gerontius, prefect in 560. There is also an inscription from Constantinople supplemented (in the only available edition):
[86] For a fairly comprehensive list of texts, see Dölger 1964, 70–115; and Cameron, Constantinople: Birth of A New Rome (forthcoming).
[87] APl 62.2 of 531 (cf. Cameron 1977, 42f.); AP 1.10.43 of 524–27 (Mango and Sevcenko 1961, 243–47); AP 9.697.3 of 524–26 (Cameron 1976c, 269f.); APl 32b.1.
[90] In the form EPI IWANNO¡EPARCO¡ , for example.
[91] G. Schlumberger, REG 8 (1895): 59f., nos. 5, 8, 12, 13; more were published by H. Grégoire, BCH 31 (1907): 321–27. Others await publication: for example, in the Menil Foundation Collection in Houston, Texas (G. Vikan and J. Nesbitt, Security in Byzantium: Locking, Sealing, Weighing , Dumbarton Oaks Publications 2 [1980], 37), and in the British Museum (personal communication from Chris Entwhistle).
[92] Stein 1949, 779 n. 4; D. Feissel, Rev.Num. 6 sér. 28 (1986), 132–42.
A [
In the headings to laws as preserved in the Theodosian Code and Novels of Justinian, the standard formula was praefectus urbi (with Conslantinopolitanae understood, but normally omitted where there was no likelihood of confusion); or in Greek
According to the standard manuals, a certain Clearchus was prefect of Constantinople between 8 May 400 and 22 March 402. It has often been assumed that "Perses" was a nickname of some sort borne by
[95] CIG 4.8611.
[96] Cameron, in CLRE 9–10.
[97] Sorlin-Dorigny 1876, 90.
[98] Revue archéologique , 3d ser., vol. 31 (1897): 109.
[99] Chron.Pasch., p. 543.9 = Chron.Min. 1.239.
[102] McCormick objects that "elsewhere Eunapius calls Rome and Constantinople by their proper names" (1986, 118 n. 167), but that does not mean that he never used any other formula, and it could be, for example, that he was parodying the fact that Perses himself had used this rather pretentious style.
Clearchus.[103] But though Eunapius was fond of making puns on proper names,[104] there is no parallel for a nickname substituted for the true name, except for the rather different case of a brigand to whom he gives the name Cercio (frag. 18.4) after the brigand killed by Theseus. If Clearchus is, as usually assumed, the son of the Clearchus who held the prefecture of Constantinople in 372–73 and 382–84 and was consul in 384, he came from a well-to-do Greek family.[105] Why then "Persian"?
There is another possibility. Clearchus is not securely attested in the prefecture before 21 September 401.[106] The law usually cited as evidence for 8 May 400 is dated by the MSS to 8 May 399 (Theodoro consule ).[107] Since another man, Severinus, was still in office on 25 September 399,[108] this date must be in error. But there is no good reason to change the year to 400 rather than 401, 402, or even 403 (the first consulate of Theodosius II, perhaps confused with Theodorus). That would leave two years between the last attestation of Severinus (September 399) and the first secure attestation of Clearchus (September 401). Obviously another man might have held the post in the summer of 400, during and after the massacre of 12 July.
In the circumstances, one might propose Hormisdas the Persian, son of the Hormisdas who deserted to Rome in 324, son in his turn of the Persian king Hormisdas II. The youngest Hormisdas was proconsul of Asia in 365–66 and commanded troops for Theodosius I in 379.[109] He is the only Eastern dignitary of the age who was regularly styled "the Persian."[110] An even simpler alternative is that the prefect of the summer of 400 was actually called Perses, a name not otherwise known from this period, but not to be rejected on principle.
With Eunapius frag. 68 referred to the massacre, we have in the ascription of the destruction of the Goths to the "hand of God" a telling parallel to the explanation of Socrates and Sozomen in terms of angels and Synesius's invocation of Providence. The pagan Eunapius was angry to see the god of the Christians given credit for the deeds of the emperor and his brave troops.[111] But if the "deeds" in question were not in fact
[103] Mazzarino 1942, 362; Matthews, CR 22 (1974): 102; Baldwin 1976, 5.
[104] On Leo in frags. 67.6 and 67.7; on Hierax in frags. 71.2, 71.3, 72 ad fin. ; on Arbazakios in frag. 71.
[105] PLRE I.211–12.
[106] Cod. Theod. 6.26.12.
[107] Cod. Theod. 13.1.16.
[108] Cod. Theod. 6.12.1.
[109] PLRE 1.444.
[110] So Eunapius himself, frag. 34.8; and Zos. 4.30.5.
[111] Is this Eunapius's own purely idiosyncratic reaction to Perses' pictures (in which case we should probably have to suppose that he had seen them himself)? Or is he reflect-ing a more widely held distaste for such radical new victory iconography, not necessarily confined to pagans (as MacCormack 1981, 11, seems to imply)?
a regular imperial victory, but the massacre of civilians in a Catholic church,[112] there was a more pressing reason for official commemoration of the event to be as imprecise as possible. The usual victory iconography would hardly do. But who could quarrel with a pictorial representation of barbarians fleeing before the wrath of God? Who could quarrel with divine Providence?[113]
II—
Gaïnas and Tribigild
The new prefect Caesarius did his best to salvage the situation. Synesius describes, with real or affected outrage, how even after the massacre Typhos "asked for negotiations with the barbarians, scheming again to admit the enemy army on the grounds that no irremediable evil had occurred" (121B). Synesius professes astonishment that even this manifest treachery did not bring immediate retribution down on Typhos's head, but Gaïnas himself had played no part in the massacre, and it was the Goths, for the most part unarmed civilians, who had been the victims. Synesius's evident anxiety not to offend Gaïnas in book 1, written in the days immediately after the massacre,[114] is enough to show that there was a short-lived fear that he would take revenge. Such fear tells against Socrates' claim that Arcadius declared Gaïnas a public enemy before the massacre.[115] There may have been several days of negotiations
[112] Socrates mentions the burning of the church but does not actually say that Goths were inside it at the time; Synesius refers callously to the Egyptians "smoking them out like wasps, together with their temples and priests" (121A). But according to Zosimus, "the more devout Christians considered that a grave defilement had been perpetrated in the midst of their city" (5.19.5).
[113] Cf. McCormick 1986, 195, on the standard use of scriptural quotation to introduce later Byzantine victory proclamations.
[114] See chapter 8, section III.
before Gaïnas finally made the irrevocable decision to follow the same path as Tribigild and Alaric.
Who was responsible for the declaration of war on Gaïnas and the dispatch of Fravitta? According to Demougeot, it was Caesarius, "looking for a compromise with the antibarbarian party."[116] They were happy with Fravitta because, though a Goth, he was "one of those rare foreigners converted to Greek paganism."[117] There is not a word about nationalists or compromise in any of our sources."[118] Which nationalists, anyway? Aurelian, Saturninus, and John were still in exile. This explanation inadequately and unnecessarily attempts to palliate the unwelcome, but obvious, fact that it was the supposedly pro-barbarian Caesarius who took prompt and decisive action against Gaïnas. In reality there is neither problem nor paradox. There was no pro-barbarian party. Caesarius had already enjoyed and still held the highest honors the Roman state could offer. Why should he have wished to collaborate with an incompetent and unpopular barbarian? As soon as the situation allowed, he did what he could to eliminate the problem.
Where did Fravitta and his army come from? Demougeot assumed that the army consisted of citizen soldiers and deserters from Gaïnas's army, an improvised force hastily trained by Fravitta.[119] There may well have been a certain number of deserters, and there were also the 3,500 guardsmen. But the core of the army must have been some portion of the troops already under Fravitta's command in his capacity as magister militum per Orientem .
It is hard to believe that in a matter of weeks Fravitta could have improvised and trained from deserters and raw recruits an army capable of defeating the army of the magister militum praesentalis .[120] On the other hand the Eastern army must have been somewhere. The Notitia dignitatum gives a complete list of the thirty-five units "sub dispositione viri
[116] Demougeot 1951, 259–60.
[118] Against the strange notion that these (nonexistent) nationalists were sympathetic to paganism, see above, chapter 3, section I.
[119] Demougeot 1951, 260.
[120] Indeed Gaïnas had probably absorbed in addition what remained of the forces of his late fellow praesentalis , Leo.
illustris magistri militum per Orientem."[121] It is true that the Eastern part of the Notitia as we have it dates from no later than ca. 394.[122] But when raising the army he took west with him, Theodosius will not have disturbed the troops on the eastern frontier,[123] essential to its protection against the very real threat of a Persian invasion. Just such a threat had in fact suddenly arisen in the course of 399.[124] Even if false, the alarm betrays an instinctive apprehension that Persia would exploit any deflection of the Roman war effort in the East, such as Tribigild's rebellion. Whatever the differences between Rufinus, Eutropius, Aurelian, and Caesarius, it is not easy to believe that any of the four would have dared to weaken the defense of the eastern frontier.
The civilian ministers of Arcadius may have feared the ambitions of the magistri militum praesentales , who were stationed at court: Eutropius seems not to have appointed one at all between ca. 395 (the dismissal of Timasius) and 399 (the appointment of Leo and Gaïnas). But there is solid evidence for magistri militum per Orientem continuously from 393 to 398: Addaeus from 393 to 396 and Simplicius from December 396 to March 398.[125] Zosimus does not give Fravitta's rank at the time of his appointment to the command against Gaïnas in the summer of 400 but reports that he had "freed the entire East from Cilicia to Phoenice and Palestine from bandits" (5.20.1). To have campaigned over so wide an area he must have been magister militum per Orientem . In confirmation, a fragment that is clearly extracted from the passage of Eunapius on which Zosimus here depends describes Fravitta specifically as "general of the East" (
[121] ND Or . 7, as reconstructed by Hoffmann 1969 (Beilage, pp. 4–5).
[122] Indeed it has been plausibly suggested that our text descends from a copy of the official Eastern Notitia in the possession of an Eastern bureaucrat in Theodosius's army when he marched west against Eugenius in 394. This copy then remained in the West, where Western lists were added and maintained to a somewhat later date: Hoffmann 1969, 52–53, 516–19; Barnes 1978, 82.
[123] Indeed there is good reason to believe that the defense of the eastern frontier had remained unchanged in its essentials since Diocletian: Jones 1964a, 3:357.
[124] Cameron 1970a, 140.
[125] PLRE 1.13, II.1013–14; Demandt 1970, 728.
with which Zosimus credits him suggest at least one campaigning season, and there is no reason to doubt that he was the direct successor of Simplicius, in office possibly from late 398, but certainly by 399.[128] The normal peacetime headquarters of the MVM per Orientem was Antioch; he is bound to have followed the movements of Tribigild and Gaïnas throughout 399–400, poised to take appropriate action.
One source actually refers to the existence of the eastern frontier army before the massacre. According to Socrates, one night Gaïnas sent his barbarians to burn down the palace.[129] They were repulsed by a band of angels in the form of gigantic warriors and reported the presence of this "large and noble army" to their leader. Gaïnas did not believe them, "for he knew that the bulk of the Roman army was some way away, stationed among the cities."[130] Of course, the context is not reassuring. Not to mention the angels disguised as soldiers, it is most unlikely that the barbarians attempted to burn the palace in the first place. Nonetheless, the army at the disposal of the magister militum per Orientem was indeed "some way away," dispersed among the various eastern frontier provinces.[131]
It is worth exploring why Fravitta did not act earlier. If Gaïnas had really seized Constantinople in April 400 and held it by force till 12 July, Fravitta could not have stood idly by. If Gaïnas had really joined forces with Tribigild the previous summer and helped him plunder Asia, as Zosimus alleges, Fravitta could hardly have ignored that either.[132] A simple and revealing explanation of such protracted inaction suggests itself.
Historians have always taken it for granted that Gaïnas really did join forces with Tribigild in the summer of 399, openly revealing himself as a rebel long before he "seized" Constantinople in April 400. Certainly contemporaries believed that the two were in league. It was natural, perhaps inevitable, that in retrospect Gaïnas should be thought to have planned every stage of his coup in advance. According to Zosimus, he
[128] So Demandt 1970, 728.
[129] HE 6.6.
[131] See map 4 in Jones 1964a and map 3 ("Kleinasien und Orient") in Hoffmann 1970.
[132] Though if there really was a Persian threat, it is possible that part at least of the eastern frontier army was being mobilized in case of invasion.
and Tribigild planned the whole thing in Constantinople early in 399 before Tribigild went out to Phrygia. The fullest and most recent modern discussion, by Paschoud, sees no reason to doubt this version.[133] But apart from serious internal improbabilities in Zosimus's account, analyzed below, both Claudian and Synesius tell against it.
In his narrative Synesius says only that the barbarian general and his troops "were waging an unsuccessful war against a rebellious contingent of their own people" (108B). But a few lines later Typhos's wife alleges that Osiris was planning to accuse the general of treason on the grounds "that he was fighting a collusive war, the barbarians pursuing a common policy with divided armies" (108C). This is another neat illustration of the way book 1 avoids accusing Gaïnas outright: the narrative is neutral, with the accusation coming in a speech by a character presumed to be lying. If called, the author can disavow it.[134] The status of the allegation is therefore unclear. Synesius no doubt believed it. He had freely predicted barbarian treachery in De regno . But his very evasiveness here suggests that it was less than established fact.
Early though the testimony of Synesius is, even book 1 was not written till after the massacre. Book 2 of Claudian's In Eutropium seems to have been written before Eutropius's fall. It is true that the elegiac preface and proem (lines 1–23) allude to his exile (August 399), but the rest of the book (24–602) presupposes that he was still in power. In particular, responsibility for the outbreak and success of Trigibild's rebellion is laid squarely on Eutropius. An elaborate section (376–461) describes how Leo's incompetence allowed Tribigild to destroy the Roman army and rampage unchecked through Pamphylia and Pisidia. The book closes with a denunciation of Eutropius that merges into an appeal to Stilicho for rescue (550–90). Lines 562–83 review Tribigild's revolt, claiming that Eutropius ignored it and thought only of dancing and feasting; to compensate for the revenue from the lost provinces he simply divides those that remain in half! The concluding appeal to Stilicho begs:
eripe me tandem servilibus eripe regnis.
(In Eutr . II.593)
Save me, save me at last from the servile kingdom.
[133] Paschoud 1986,124f., quoting earlier bibliography.
[134] This crucial distinction between narrative and speech is fatally blurred in Seeck's paraphrase: "Der Hauptmann der fremden Söldner führt Krieg gegen einem abgefallenen Theil seiner eigenen Genossen, und es regt sich der Verdacht, daß er mit dem Feinde im Einverständnis sei" (1894, 443).
The two leitmotifs of the poem are eunuch and slave. There are twenty-nine references to Eutropius's one-time servile status, some extended.[135] There can be no doubt that the "servile kingdom" means the East under the rule of Eutropius. In line 517, the Easterners are alleged to admit that they deserve punishment for "entrusting themselves to the governance of slaves" (qui se tradiderint famulis ). At 535 a suppliant Aurora, addressing Stilicho, refers to herself as "a plaything of slaves" (ludibrium famulis ). Usage and context put it beyond doubt that Stilicho is being asked to rescue the East from Eutropius because he is both unable and unwilling to stop Tribigild. It follows that the appeal was written before Eutropius's fall, when it could still be alleged that only Stilicho could stop Tribigild.[136]
Of course it did not happen this way. Gaïnas intervened instead, using the threat of Tribigild's superior strength to persuade Arcadius to depose Eutropius. Six months later he seized power himself. Claudian evidently had no idea of these developments when he wrote book 2 of In Eutropium .[137] Paschoud claims that Claudian's account is "not irreconcilable with the version of an early agreement between the two Gothic generals"[138] But the motive Claudian assigns for Tribigild's revolt is his own indignation at being treated worse than Alaric. It is true, as Paschoud observes, that Gaïnas had the same grievance, but the key fact is that Claudian applies it only to Tribigild. Moreover, Leo's defeat is attributed entirely to his own incompetence, which is used as another stick with which to beat Eutropius. Seeck argued that Claudian did not mention Gaïnas because he was Stilicho's secret agent in the East;[139] but it was for himself, not Stilicho, that Gaïnas seized power a few months later. And in any case it is not true that Gaïnas's part in the story is entirely suppressed. At 578f. Claudian describes how the Greuthungi lay waste Lydia and Asia, "relying not on their own valor or their numbers,"
sed inertia nutrit
proditioque ducum, quorum per crimina miles
captivis dat terga suis.
[135] 1.26, 30–44, 58–77, 83, 100–109, 122, 125, 142, 148–50, 176–77, 184–86, 212, 252, 276, 310–11, 478–81, 507–13; 2pr.3, 29–30, 62; 2.56, 69, 81, 132, 319, 351–53, 517, 535, 593. For the motif of the eunuch, see above, p. 135 n. 105.
[136] Cameron 1970a, 136f., unconvincingly disputed by Döpp 1978, 187f.; 1980, 161f.
[137] As observed long ago by Gibbon: "The conspiracy of Gainas and Tribigild, which is attested by the Greek historians, had not reached the ears of Claudian, who attributes the revolt of the Ostrogoth to his own martial spirit and the advice of his wife" (1909, 389 n. 27).
[138] Paschoud 1986, 125.
[139] Against this notion see Cameron 1970a, 148; Döpp 1980, 164.
But the treachery and feebleness of our leaders helps them;
it is through their crimes that our soldiers flee before their own slaves.
The feebleness obviously points to Leo, but the treachery can refer only to Gaïnas. Clearly for Claudian Gaïnas's treachery became an element in the story only after Leo's defeat. As even Zosimus's account makes clear (5.14.1–2), the two Roman generals divided their task; Leo marched into Phrygia, where Tribigild had been last reported, while Gaïnas stayed by the Hellespont, in case Tribigild marched north to cross into Europe. In the event he marched south, pursued by Leo, and Gaïnas did not march south until Leo had met with disaster. It cannot have been until then that the first suspicions arose of Gaïnas's collusion, prompted by his evident (and understandable) reluctance to engage the victorious Tribigild.
It is worth taking a closer look at Zosimus's account. At first sight, the sheer number of treacherous acts he details might seem to leave little room for doubt. In fact what we find is one after another of those all too familiar unfulfilled intentions—not surprisingly, seeing how little the early movements of Gaïnas and Tribigild suit the hypothesis of collusion. Instead of joining forces as soon as possible, Gaïnas waited by the Hellespont while Tribigild marched off in the opposite direction. At 5.14.3 Zosimus claims to know that Gaïnas began by ordering Tribigild to march north to the Hellespont, but Tribigild "was afraid of the troops stationed there" (Gaïnas's army?) and so marched south into Pisidia. If the plan had been carried through, "all Asia would have been taken." At 5.15.4 we are told once more that if Tribigild had marched east into Lydia instead of west into Pamphylia, all Ionia would have fallen, followed by the whole East as far as Egypt. Why then did he march west? The unfulfilled intentions even continue after the two Goths had allegedly joined forces: for example, he claims that they planned to take Sardis together but were foiled by unexpected spring rains (5.18.5).
The disproportionate detail in Zosimus's narrative of Tribigild's revolt derives from local information;[140] much of the action took place not far from the native city of his source, Eunapius of Sardis. Most of the incidents related are doubtless true enough, but the motives inevitably are all guesswork. We gain a lively insight into the fears and conjectures of people who suffered from "those aimless and destructive marches and countermarches,"[141] people who knew only that two Roman magistri
[140] 5.13–19 (nine pages in Paschoud's edition), "a copious and circumstantial narrative (which he might have reserved for more important events)," according to Gibbon, ed. Bury (1909), 7:387 n. 21.
[141] E. A. Thompson 1982, 42.
militum had failed to stop one rebel, and who suspected the worst. It was easy for such people to believe that even while far away by the Hellespont Gaïnas "secretly sent forces to assist Tribigild" (5.15.3) or sent "his barbarians" to corrupt and harass the various Roman units that were threatening Tribigild from all sides (5.17.1).[142]
Like the Tacitean Tiberius, even when Gaïnas does the right thing, it is from the wrong motive. For example, at one point Tribigild appeals to him in desperation; Gaïnas is distressed but, not wishing to reveal his hand, dispatches Leo against Tribigild (5.16.5)! In the event Tribigild inflicted a surprise defeat on Leo, allegedly with Gaïnas's secret help, but if Gaïnas had really wanted to protect Tribigild, he might better have sent Leo on some other errand and temporized.
Not only are all these secret acts and plans hard to believe; they would have been harder still to execute and involved Gaïnas himself in considerable risk.[143] Tribigild had only a very small force to begin with, and Gaïnas could not have counted on the revolt spreading in the way it did.[144] Nor was it a foregone conclusion that Eutropius would select Gaïnas, whom Zosimus admits he treated badly, to send against Tribigild. Furthermore, how far could Gaïnas trust xTribigild? Suppose that, having defeated Leo, Tribigild had turned on Gaïnas too? Suppose Alaric had intervened?[145] How could Gaïnas possibly have calculated on being able to manipulate to his own advantage so many imponderables?
Zosimus describes a meeting between Arcadius and Gaïnas in probably the fall of 399 at which "it was obvious to everyone that he was moving toward revolution." Once again, unfulfilled intentions, and Zosimus adds that Gaïnas himself behaved as though his intentions were still undetected (5.18.4). There is in fact no secure evidence that he ever joined forces with Tribigild. According to Zosimus (5.18.9), after reaching Chalcedon Gaïnas "ordered Tribigild to follow him." On the conspiracy theory, we should certainly expect to find Tribigild sharing in Gaïnas's triumph, but in fact Zosimus never mentions him again. Indeed, according to Philostorgius, who also drew on Eunapius, "after
[142] A claim incredibly taken quite seriously by Paschoud, comm. pp. 136–37.
[143] Ridley (1982) comments laconically on 5.15.3: "It is difficult to see how Gaïnas could have managed this."
[144] Zos. 5.13.4, 15.2. As Bellona assures Tribigild:
cunctaris adhuc, numerumque tuorum
respicis exiguumque manum? tu rumpe quietem;
bella dabunt socios.
(Claud. In Eutr . 2.220–22)
[145] See below, pp. 328–33.
suffering many losses, [Tribigild] escaped to the Hellespont and, crossing thence into Thrace, was killed soon afterwards."[146]
It was not till he marched into Thrace a few days after the massacre that Gaïnas first stepped outside the law. Up till then he had done nothing to warrant interference by Fravitta without instructions from Arcadius. To be sure he had exploited Tribigild's victories to his own advantage; he had prevaricated and bullied and blackmailed, but each time Arcadius had been intimidated and had acquiesced. It was Arcadius, not Gaïnas, who had dismissed first Eutropius and then Aurelian. When refused his Arian church within the walls, Gaïnas had meekly accepted defeat. And even when the people of Constantinople had risen up and massacred 7,000 of his fellow countrymen,[147] he did not take the immediate revenge the city expected.
It must have been an unbearably tense interval, through which Caesarius successfully stalled. To Synesius's highly tendentious representation of this period it is instructive to compare Claudian's account of Rufinus's behavior during Alaric's brief siege of Constantinople in 395:
Rufinus rejoices in the beleaguered city and exults in its misfortunes . . . . From time to time he laughs. He has only one regret: it is not his hand that strikes the blows. He watches the whole countryside ablaze by his own orders .[148] . . . He boasts that to him alone the enemy camp opens its gates and that he is allowed to parley with them. Whenever he goes forth to arrange some marvelous truce his companions throng around him, and . . . Rufinus himself in their midst drapes tawny skins about his breast.[149]
Since Alaric did leave, it is apparent that Rufinus arranged a satisfactory truce. Yet Claudian does not flinch from alleging that it was he who had arranged the siege in the first place. Synesius similarly makes Typhos's former allies testify "that Typhos had surrendered key positions and all but arranged the siege himself, so that the holy city might be gripped by a reign of terror" (123A). He is no more to be believed than Claudian, especially since this testimony is given at the wholly imaginary trial.
As to Caesarius's conduct when Constantinople was effectively "besieged"—that is, in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, when Gaïnas had withdrawn "a little distance away" (119C–D) from Constan-
[146] HE 11.8, p. 138.25–27 Bidez-Winkelmann; Eunap. frag. 75.7 (= 67.11 Blockley) may allude to Tribigild's death.
[147] For the figure 7,000, Zos. 5.19.4.
[148] praeceptis incensa suis, In Ruf . 1.71; for the text here, see Cameron 1968b, 392, accepted in the new text of J. B. Hall (1985).
[149] In Ruf . 2.61–85.
tinople, but before he retreated further into Thrace—Synesius charges that "he demanded that they negotiate with the barbarians, and was again working to admit the enemy army, claiming that no irreparable damage had been done" (121B). But the people stoutly and righteously resisted him, Synesius continues, "and in general his tyranny was as good as dead, since the force that sustained it had been driven from the city." Thus he implies that Caesarius's excuses were presented to the people of Constantinople—to whom indeed they might sound pretty feeble. But the claim "that no irreparable damage had been done" makes much better sense as palliation extended to Gaïnas. It was his fellow Goths who suffered what damage had been done, and he who, with an army encamped not far away, might be expected to seek revenge. Synesius himself, writing book 1 at just that time, took great pains to transfer all responsibility for his hero's fall from the Scythian general to Typhos: clearly he too feared to offend Gaïnas. It was Caesarius's responsibility as PPO to conciliate Gaïnas. He will have wanted to "readmit the enemy army" to Roman service, to prevent it from attacking the city as an enemy in deed. Naturally he had to minimize the effects of the riot and offer to repair what he could.[150]
In the event, these negotiations came to nothing. Gaïnas was not reconciled, but neither did he attack Constantinople. Even before the extension and reinforcement of the walls under Theodosius II, it would not have been easy for him to take the city by force. Alaric did not even try.[151] Nor is it likely that Gaïnas could have counted on the loyalty of his men if he had made the attempt. What finally drove him to turn his back on all his hopes and march off into Thrace was perhaps the news that Fravitta was on his way. It was not till then, surely, that Arcadius finally dared to pronounce him a public enemy.
It is significant that Synesius's narrative leaps straight from the massacre of July to Aurelian's return in September.[152] To be sure, he was writing before Fravitta's victory and Gaïnas's death at the hand of Uldin the Hun. But the campaign must have been under way by the time Aurelian
[150] It may be significant that Synesius mentions Typhos's negotiations immediately after his "indignant protest" over the burning of the church and "Scythianizing religious beliefs." Caesarius could hardly have conceded anything to Gothic Arianism (cf. below, p. 328), but Synesius is only concerned to represent his sympathy in the most unattractive light possible. It would not be unreasonable if his offers to repair damage had included something like a new Gothic Catholic church.
[151] Nor did the Goths who attacked the city in 378 immediately after their defeat of Valens at Adrianople: Amm. Marc. 31.16.4–7.
[152] On the date, see below, section III.
returned. He makes no attempt to assign Aurelian any credit even for his own return. The technique is reminiscent of Claudian. Naturally Synesius did not want to report that it was another Goth who had rescued the situation. Least of all did he want to allow Typhos any credit. But in all plausibility he could not allow Aurelian any either. So he said nothing. Aurelian's return is simply recorded, without explanation.
Yet it must have been Caesarius who claimed the political credit for suppressing the rebellion—and for bringing back the exiles. However much Synesius might muddy the waters with talk of treachery and malice, the fact remains that it was Aurelian's policies that provoked Gaïnas's revolt and Caesarius's that brought it to a rapid and successful conclusion. It was not Aurelian, but the brother Synesius caricatured as a barbarian-lover who sent the barbarian packing. The man who allows his opponent to play his only card does not deserve to get back into the game. It is not surprising that Caesarius remained in office for another two and a half years.
III—
Aurelian's Return
Seeck was in no hurry to bring Aurelian back from exile, since he was not planning to make him prefect again till late in 401. That way he could reconcile established facts with his own theories: the fact that Arcadius rewarded Fravitta with the consulate for 401 for his victory over Gaïnas with his theory that Aurelian immediately had him tried for treason and executed. His explanation of the paradox is that Arcadius's honors fell in December 400, while Aurelian did not return till early in 401.[153] But Aurelian was back before Synesius left Constantinople, since book 2 describes his return (124A). And the exigencies of the sailing season mean that Synesius left no later than early November 400.
The case for postponing the return till the spring of 401 rests mainly on Zosimus 5.22.3,[154] which describes the death of Gaïnas at the hand of Uldin the Hun, the sending of Gaïnas's head to Constantinople, and Fravitta's subsequent mopping up of deserters in Thrace. Gaïnas's head did not reach Constantinople till January or February 401.[155] It is clear that this chapter of Zosimus refers to 401.
The account of Fravitta's expedition breaks off abruptly, thanks to
[153] Seeck 1913, 326.
[154] Following Seeck 1913, 326: e.g., Mazzarino 1942, 224.
[155] See below, section IV.
the loss of a leaf in the Vatican codex. The text resumes halfway through what is apparently the return of the exiles:
. . . decided [singular] to cross, and they, fearing they would be harshly treated if they fell in with him, disembarked near Epirus. Thinking of their own safety, which the gravity of their offenses made very precarious, they gave their prisoners a chance to escape; others, however, say they bought their release. Whatever the manner of their escape, they unexpectedly returned to Constantinople and appeared before the emperor, the senate, and everyone else.
The sequence of the chapters implies a date well into 401. But it is never safe to place much trust in Zosimus's chronology, and this part of his narrative may be more confused than most. The next sentence begins: "Henceforth the empress's hatred for John, the Christian bishop, increased." And the very next sentence after that claims that "after the return of John and the others, she became his open enemy." Why, Paschoud has recently asked, does Zosimus link Eudoxia's feud with Chrysostom so closely to the return of the exiles?[156] His own answer is that Zosimus has confused Count John the exile with John Chrysostom the bishop.
The suggestion is not absurd; Zosimus is certainly very careless, and such a confusion would neatly explain the emphatic link here between the two Johns. But it is not the only possible explanation. All three exiles were hostile to Chrysostom. Both Aurelian and Saturninus were followers of the monk Isaac,[157] who took a prominent part in the attack on Chrysostom.[158] According to Palladius, Saturninus's widow, Castricia, was one of a band of fanatical anti-Johannites who carried on the fight after her husband's death.[159] As for John, the eleventh charge against Chrysostom at the Synod of the Oak was "informing against the Count John during the mutiny of the soldiers."[160] No other mutiny took place at Constantinople at this period, and it is difficult to imagine what this could refer to except the coup of Gaïnas.[161] The obvious guess is that Chrysostom had refused John sanctuary in a church.[162] The accusation
[156] Paschoud 1985a, 43–61.
[157] Vita Isaaci 4.14 and 4.18.
[158] Liebeschuetz 1984a, 90f.
[159] Palladius Dialogus de vita S. Iohannis Chrysostomi 16, p. 25.13 Coleman-Norton.
[160] Photius Bibl. cod. 59, p. 18a.19.
[161] So, for example, Liebeschuetz 1984a, 98; Albert 1984, 155. There is nothing to be said for the interpretation offered in PLRE (II.593, Ioannes 1) that John was "accused by John Chrysostom . . . of inciting a mutiny in the army." Count John was a civilian, and why should the bishop John have taken it upon himself to interfere in a military matter?
[162] A. Moulard, Saint Jean Chrysostome: Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris 1949), 300.
may, like many of the others, have been unfair or unfounded.[163] But it certainly suggests that Chrysostom was felt by contemporaries to have played an equivocal role in the confrontation with Gaïnas.
After 400 his Gothic missionary activities must have looked less innocent than they did at the time. And the very fact that he was selected to lead the embassy to Gaïnas in Thrace shows that he was felt to be a man Gaïnas might listen to. The ecclesiastical historians all praise the courage with which he stood up to Gaïnas's demand for an Arian church inside Constantinople. But they wrote after his rehabilitation and the defeat of his enemies, and even if this is not to be interpreted as "an attempt to counter John's reputation of having been excessively pro-Gaïnas,"[164] it was an issue on which, as patriarch, he simply could not give way. It is significant that the unpublished contemporary Life of Chrysostom, whose value has recently been recognized by F. van Ommeslaeghe, reveals that despite his opposition to Gaïnas on this issue, his enemies alleged that "he had wanted to sacrifice to [Gaïnas] the interests of Church and Empire alike."[165]
Count John may then have had personal, as well as political and religious, grounds for his hostility to Chrysostom, and since he was in addition closely enough associated with the empress to be reputed her lover, it is not surprising that the return of these three anti-Johannites should have changed Eudoxia's attitude. There is a perfectly reasonable alternative to Paschoud's explanation. Whether Zosimus confused the two Johns or simply knew the connection between the exiles, the empress, and Chrysostom, either cause could have led him to link the return of the exiles with the campaign against Chrysostom. If so, he need not have mentioned their return at its correct point in the strict chronological sequence of his narrative. It was not, after all, a detail of any importance in itself. Its importance lay rather in the impetus it gave to the campaign against Chrysostom.
Several passages of Synesius strongly suggest that the exiles returned in the fall of 400. First there is the reference to Osiris's "eponymous year." This flagrant anachronism in the Egyptian context only makes sense if it was intended to evoke Aurelian's consulate. It would have been an obvious and unnecessary lie if Aurelian did not return till 401. Second, there is Ep . 61, where Synesius's regret that he did not say good-bye to Aurelian, his "dear friend and consul," clearly implies that
[163] If true, Chrysostom's refusal of sanctuary to John would naturally have been compared unfavorably with his granting of sanctuary to Eutropius the previous year.
[164] Liebeschuetz 1984a, 99.
[165] Ommeslaeghe 1979, 152.
he was present in Constantinople before Synesius left. If so, then he was back before the mare clausum , mid-November at latest—perhaps a little earlier than that, since Synesius also claims that book 2 of De providentia was written "after the return of the best men" and at their invitation. We also have to allow a couple of weeks at least for the preparations for the consular games, which Synesius apparently witnessed before finishing book 2 and leaving himself.
All in all the exiles must have been back by late September or October. It is easy to believe that their guards saw no need to keep a close watch the moment things started to go badly with Gaïnas. After the massacre in Constantinople on 12 July and Gaïnas's retreat to Thrace soon after, it must have been obvious that he had lost control of the situation. Zosimus's fragmentary narrative does not make it clear where the hostages were sent originally, but at the moment of their escape the party had just "disembarked near Epirus." This was a long way from the now-doubtful protection of Gaïnas. It is not surprising that the guards should have begun "to think of their own safety" and let their prisoners go free. They will not have waited till Gaïnas was actually defeated by Fravitta at the end of the year.
It is instructive to contrast the quite different explanation offered by Synesius for the return of the exiles: "The people demanded Osiris, seeing no other salvation for their affairs" (121C). Evidently he was anxious to play up the importance of Aurelian's return, but the formulation of his narrative, still theoretically set in Egyptian Thebes, is hardly appropriate to the circumstances of Constantinople in 400. It was not up to the people or even to Caesarius to recall Aurelian and his fellows. It was Gaïnas who had exiled them. Zosimus makes it clear that their return, though welcome, was unexpected, perhaps even the result of bribery. That was not good enough for Synesius; he does his best to suggest, quite falsely, that Aurelian's return was a consequence of the waning influence of Caesarius.
IV—
Fravitta
Hitherto the execution of Fravitta in (it has been assumed) 401 has been seen as the culmination of Aurelian's anti-Germanism, an inevitable part of his purge of Caesarius's administration. But now that we have eliminated both Caesarius's fall from and Aurelian's return to the prefecture, how are we to interpret Fravitta's death? Did he indeed die in 401? Was he executed? Were Caesarius and his supposed pro-German administration responsible, unexpectedly and ungratefully turning on
the architect of Caesarius's own success? Or was Aurelian working his will behind the scenes, perhaps exploiting John's influence on the empress Eudoxia?
In fact, the sources give clear answers. Four writers describe Fravitta's victory over Gaïnas: Socrates, Sozomen, Eunapius (a fragment), and (abridging Eunapius) Zosimus. Of the four, the fairly detailed narratives of Socrates (HE 6.6), Sozomen (HE 9.4), and Zosimus (5.21) do not even mention Fravitta's death. On the contrary, each of them reports that the emperor honored him with the consulate for the following year, 401. We have three fragments from what was evidently a full account by Eunapius (frags. 82, 85–86 = FGrH 4.49–51). Fravitta's death is mentioned only in the two later fragments (frags. 85–86), which have no connection with the ample account of his reception in Constantinople after the victory (frag. 82). Arcadius asked him what reward he wanted; Fravitta replied only that he be allowed to worship god in his ancestral fashion, which Arcadius graciously granted, adding the consulate as well. Eunapius took this opening to describe Fravitta's paganism, and this much survives in Zosimus's abridgment. They also both report that some people accused Fravitta of not pushing home his advantage after the battle and deliberately letting Gaïnas escape. Yet the one thing they do not do is what modern historians find so self-evident: link Fravitta's death with this accusation of treachery.
The ecclesiastical historians do not even mention the accusation of treachery; their account of Fravitta, if less detailed, is as favorable as that of the two pagan writers. Yet if Fravitta was really executed for treason soon after his victory, as modern writers assume, we should expect at least one of the four to have mentioned so striking and relevant a fact. We should certainly have expected Eunapius or Zosimus, for whom Fravitta was the incarnation of virtue and military expertise, to accuse Arcadius, whom both despised, of ingratitude. It might be added that the entry "Fravithos" in the Suda lexicon (= frag. 80), clearly compiled from Eunapius and purporting to give a summary of his career, again praises him for his virtue and military skill, without a word about execution deserved or undeserved. In short, there is nothing in our relatively abundant documentation to suggest that Fravitta was executed either for treason or soon after the victory that brought him the consulate for 401.
Quite the contrary. He made a triumphal entry into Constantinople,[166] an honor granted to few private citizens. And his victory was
commemorated by two monuments. First, on the narrative reliefs of the triumphal column erected by Arcadius on the Xerolophos hill in 402.[167] The column itself was pulled down ca. 1716,[168] but a number of sketches of the reliefs survive. There can be little doubt that one at least of these drawings depicts a general making a triumphal entry into the city on horseback, followed by a group of barbarian captives.[169] It must be Fravitta's triumphal entry described above. Then there is the "marble liburna" in the heart of the city, not far from the Milion and the Augusteon.[170] Fravitta made devastating use of the light galley known as liburna when Gaïnas's army tried to cross the Hellespont on rafts. Both Zosimus (5.20.3–4) and a fragment attributed to Eunapius single out his liburnas for special comment.[171] There had been no imperial sea victory since that of Constantine over Licinius in 324, and given the prominent role played by the liburna in the battle of 400, there can be no doubt that the marble liburna commemorated Fravitta's victory. The immense amount of workmanship required by the spiral reliefs of the column must have taken some time; the colossal statue of Arcadius on its top was not dedicated till 421.[172] One of the reliefs on the base,[173] obviously the first stage in the project, already shows Arcadius and Honorius as consuls. Clearly the design alone, not to mention the execution, must postdate their joint consulate in January 402. If Fravitta really is portrayed in any of the reliefs on the column itself, he can hardly have suffered rapid disgrace. Moreover, if he had been tried for treason and executed in his consular
[167] Janin 1964, 82–84, 439–40. The date is given by Theophanes, p. 77.24 de Boor.
[168] The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague , vol. 1: 1708–1720 , ed. R. Halsband (Oxford 1965), 402 ("about 2 year befor I came," 10 April 1718).
[169] The fullest discussion, with bibliography, is that of Becatti 1960, 151–264; see too McCormick 1986, 49–50, and figs. 2–5 on pp. 52–55. Some have identified the horseman as Arcadius, but if the drawing can be depended on, he wears no diadem. It has also been suggested that some of the reliefs may commemorate victories by Theodosius I, but Theodosius erected his own column in 386, and he won no further victories over barbarians after that date. All Theodosius's victories would have been commemorated already on his own column, and it would be strange if they had been repeated on Arcadius's. The precedent of earlier triumphal monuments, colossal arches as well as columns, lends support to the assumption that only Arcadius's victories would have been depicted (in general, see R. Brilliant, Visual Narratives [Ithaca, N.Y. 1984], chap. 3). Arcadius's only other victory over barbarians was Eutropius's campaign against the Huns, which is not likely to have been very prominently featured in a monument erected after his disgrace.
[170] "liburnam marmoream, navalis victoriae monumentum," in Notitia urbis Constantinopolitanae 5.11, p. 232 Seeck, with Janin 1964, 59.
[172] Marcellinus and Chron. Pasch. , s.a.; Chron. Min. II.75. The column of Marcus Aurelius was dedicated in 180 and not completed till 193.
[173] Becatti 1960, 257; R. Grigg, Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 469 n. 3.
year, he would surely, like Eutropius, have suffered damnatio memoriae . The fact that our fairly abundant documentation for his consulate shows no such sign effectively excludes this possibility.[174]
How then did Fravitta die—and when? The evidence all comes from three fragments of Eunapius, where the story is not told in connection with the victory over Gaïnas, but as part of what looks like a long digression on a personal bête noire of Eunapius's called Hierax (frags. 85–87 Müller). First, the date. Historians from Seeck to Mazzarino and Demougeot have stated, as though there could be no question or doubt, that he was executed in 401.[175] For Seeck, he was attacked by the "anti-German party" the moment the exiles were back; for Mazzarino, it was Alaric's invasion of Italy in the fall of 401 that provided the pretext. Fravitta was removed from his command and tried for high treason together with Caesarius, who had been deposed from his prefecture following the return of the exiles. The "trial" is inferred from the entirely fictitious trial jointly conducted by the gods and the people of Constantinople in De providentia 122D–123B. Both Fravitta and Caesarius are imagined to have been found guilty and condemned to death,[176] though Caesarius was spared through his brother's intercession. Yet unless we emend a law, he is still attested as prefect in 403.[177] And why did Synesius say nothing about Fravitta's share in this trial? According to Demougeot, it was to cover up this "injustice" that Eunapius blamed Fravitta's death on the private intrigues of Hierax. But why should he have covered up an injustice done to one of his heroes by one of his villains? Why not rather proclaim it loud and clear? And that still leaves Synesius's silence to be explained.
Synesius's silence is easy to explain. He was writing book 2 of De providentia by September 400, well before the end of Fravitta's campaign against Gaïnas. And even if the trial he describes at 122D–123C were not, as it is, wholly imaginary, it is quite clearly placed before Osiris's return. Indeed, the alleged clamor for Typhos's punishment is linked to
[175] Seeck 1913, 326; Mazzarino 1942, 224; Demougeot 1951, 265.
[176] So even Albert (1984, 78).
[177] CJ 7.41.2 (11 June).
the clamor for Osiris's return, twin demands of the same alleged popular movement. This is the only evidence there is for a trial associated with the revolt of Gaïnas.
It is obvious from frags. 85–87 that Eunapius gave copious detailed information about the circumstances surrounding Fravitta's death. The fact that it is not mentioned by Zosimus is no problem in itself, since Zosimus abridged Eunapius fairly drastically. The question is, To what point in Zosimus's narrative do the Eunapian fragments correspond?
According to Blockley, the relevant part of Zosimus's narrative has fallen out of the surviving text in a lacuna between 5.25 and 5.26.[178] Such a lacuna is marked in Mendelssohn's text and Ridley's translation—but incorrectly. There is indeed an abrupt break in the narrative at this point, reflecting Zosimus's change in sources. A certain abruptness was to be expected, since Eunapius's history stopped in 404 and Olympiodorus's, on which the remainder of Zosimus's work is based, did not begin until 407.[179] But there is no sign in the Vatican MS of physical damage or loss, as Paschoud has recently confirmed.[180] Paschoud himself suggests that the story of Fravitta's end is lost in the undoubted lacuna between 5.22 and 5.23 already mentioned. One page has been torn out of the Vatican MS here. It would have contained around fifty-two lines in Mendelssohn's edition. The text breaks off in the middle of Fravitta's mopping-up operations of 401 and resumes with the return of the exiles. If it was on this missing page that Zosimus told the story of Fravitta's death, the order of narration would support the traditional date.
Yet there is a fatal objection to this hypothesis. According to Eunapius frag. 85 (quoted in full below), a major role in the plot that brought Fravitta down was played by Count John.[181] But according to Zosimus's own text John was in exile between 5.18.8 and the end of the lacuna. Paschoud implausibly argues that Zosimus erred here; that Count John was not exiled with Saturninus and Aurelian. It is true that Zosimus is the only source to record John's name among the exiles, but that can be easily explained by his youth and relative unimportance at the time.[182] Even if Paschoud is right in his suggestion that Zosimus confused Count John and John Chrysostom (which is more than doubtful), the main basis for such a confusion must have been the fact that both
[178] Blockley 1980, 173–74.
[179] Paschoud 1971, lviii.
[180] Paschoud 1985a, 46–47. Paschoud has also shown Cameron a photo of the relevant page of Vat. gr. 156.
[181] John is not actually attested as count before 404 (PLRE II.593, Ioannes 1), but we so style him to avoid confusion with John Chrysostom in the present context.
[182] Note that at 121C Synesius refers to a plurality of unnamed fellow exiles expelled together with Osiris.
Johns went into and returned from exile in quick succession. If no John went into exile in 400, how can Zosimus have thought that the John who returned was Chrysostom? In any case, the accusation at the Synod of the Oak that Chrysostom informed against Count John "during the mutiny of the soldiers" makes it virtually certain that John suffered during Gäinas's seizure of Constantinople.[183] And a long-misattributed homily of Chrysostom has now revealed the occasion on which Chrysostom "informed" on John, at a moment when soldiers were threatening the emperor.[184]
Paschoud further points out that if Count John had been in exile during the summer of 400, he could not have been the father of the baby Theodosius II, born on 10 April 401.[185] But he goes too far in concluding that the rumor could not have started unless John were known to have spent the summer of 400 in Constantinople. Rumors notoriously disregard unwelcome facts. Furthermore, on the chronology here proposed for the return of the exiles, they could in fact have been back in time for it to be theoretically possible for John to be the father.
There is no serious reason to doubt that John was one of the exiles. So Fravitta's death, in which he played a part, cannot have been described in the missing page of Zosimus. The alternative is that Zosimus simply omitted the story of Fravitta's death, as he omitted so many other details in the much fuller narrative of Eunapius. It would be rash to make far-reaching inferences from the silences of so incompetent a historian, but the relevant fragments of Eunapius do suggest a reason: his detailed account belonged in the category of biographical anecdote rather than political history. Zosimus naturally tended to omit much of the more scurrilous biographical material that so enlivens the pages of Eunapius.
Nonetheless, the Eunapian fragments must correlate somehow with Zosimus's narrative. The only safe guide to follow for Eunapius here is the sequence of fragments in the Constantinian Excerpta de sententiis .[186] No study of the chronology of fragments preserved in any of the Constantinian Excerpta has yet found any clear case of an individual fragment out of sequence.[187] The relevant fragments are
[183] See above, p. 234, for the accusation that Chrysostom informed against John "during the mutiny of the soldiers."
[184] Cameron 1988a.
[185] Paschoud 1985a, 54–55.
[186] That is to say, we are omitting from consideration in this context fragments preserved in the Suda and similar sources, since their place in the sequence can only be conjectural.
[187] See, for example, J. M. Moore, The Manuscript Tradition of Polybius (Cambridge 1965), 125; Brunt 1980, 477–94; Croke 1983, 297–308; the undoubtedly misplaced fragments of Malchus given as nos. 18 and 19 by Müller are almost certainly "a case of simplemisplacement of a page" (Blockley 1981, 124 and 1984, 152–53, arguing against R. M. Errington 1983, 82–110).
|
We may begin with frag. 86M = 71.4B:
While being ravaged by the Isaurian war, Pamphylia found the blows of the Isaurians pure gold. Just as in a thunderstorm a thunderbolt is more to be feared than a flash of lightning (the latter only frightens whereas the former kills), so too our noble Hierax from Alexandria made the Isaurians, in truth most dreadful to see and hear, look like a dainty little flower on a green spring day, as he investigated and gathered together everything he needed to kill Fravitta (
). And having made off with it in secret, he tried to escape.
The Isaurian invasions mentioned here can be dated with certainty to 404.[188] So Hierax's activity in Pamphylia, presumably as governor,[189] cannot be dated before then. But what was he investigating? And what did it have to do with Fravitta? It has so far been taken for granted that 
means "after the murder of Fravitta."[190] But
[188] On the strength of Zos. 5.25, Soz. HE 9.25, and Chrysostom Ep. 14.4 (PG 52.617); see Maenchen-Helfen 1973, 62–63; Paschoud's n. 52 on Zos. 5.25.
[189] He is listed as consularis of Pamphylia in 404 by PLRE II.556.
[190] So, for example, Blockley and Müller ("post Fravittae caedem").
ception is a restricted usage implying immediate or inevitable succession of one thing or person to another, in either a spatial or a temporal sense. Since the usage is amply documented in the grammars and lexica, it will be enough to cite one famous example from Xenophon (Mem. 3.14.2):
, "for example, Galba, Vitellius, Otho, and after them Vespasian and Titus" (VS 455, p. 5.9). Here the context is quite explicitly the rapid succession of short-lived emperors. This usage cannot be extended to the fragment about Hierax and Fravitta.Moreover, even supposing such a temporal meaning there, what would the point be? On the traditional chronology Fravitta was condemned for treason in 401. Why are Hierax's depredations in far-off Pamphylia being linked to Fravitta's death in Constantinople three years earlier? PLRE assumes that he was made governor of Pamphylia "as a reward" for his part in Fravitta's death.[192]
). It has been assumed hitherto that this refers to no more than theft and extortion, undertaken purely from motives of avarice. 
In this, as in many other examples of
[192] So too by implication Paschoud 1985b, 280: "[Hierax] joua un rôle dans la mise à mort de Fravitta et fut ensuite gouverneur."
[194] Kühner-Gerth, II.1 , 502f.; and above all Karin Hult, Syntactic Variation in Greek of the Fifth CenturyA.D. , Studia latina et graeca Gothoburgensia 52 (Göteborg 1990), 74, 89, 102, 115; note especially p. 225: "Eunapius has a rather high frequency of prepositional final expressions." We are grateful to Dr. Hult for fruitful correspondence on this point.
date of Fravitta's death it seems worth setting out every example in Eunapius. In the first five cases, all from the Vitae Sophistarum , the version given is that of W. C. Wright, the Loeb translator, always sensitive to this idiom:
1. VS 478, p. 51.16:
2. VS 488, p. 70.11:
3. VS 492, p. 78.2:
4. VS 498, p. 88.5:
5. VS 504, p. 100.22:
6. Frag. 74M = 66.2.21B: 
"it seems to me just like drinking something bitter or pungent to cure oneself"
7. Frag. 87M = 72.1.29B: men robbed by a thieving governor: 
, "refusing to endure the abuses, went to the praetorian prefect to lay charges of robbery"
8. Frag. 1.67B (FHG IV, p. 13a): Lycurgus the Spartan lawgiver: 
, "everyone knows about the testimony of the god to him, declaring him divine on account of his work in legislation" (Blockley, again following Müller: ("dei . . . diserte deum vocitantis ob ferendarum legum sapientiam"). If correctly so construed, this would be the closest parallel to the Fravitta example. But it cannot be correct. Eunapius is evidently alluding to the famous oracle (much quoted in late antiquity)[195] Lycurgus is said to have received when he went to Delphi to ask for a new constitution for Sparta. After
[195] Testimonia are cited in H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle (Oxford 1956), 2:89, no. 216; and J. Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley 1978), 270, Q7.
greeting him as a god, Apollo granted his request for a constitution. That is to say, his legislation was still in the future at the time he was greeted as a god. Presumably once again final: "calling him a god to establish his laws."
To return to frag. 86M = 71.4B, Hierax was turning his province upside down "to kill Fravitta," that is to say, he was searching for evidence "for the purpose of killing Fravitta." Such an interpretation is strongly supported by the word order. Given its position at the end of the clause, the prepositional phrase
On this interpretation, a plausible and intelligible scenario can be reconstructed. Before being appointed to the command against Gaïnas, Fravitta had successfully "freed the entire East, from Cilicia to Phoenice and Palestine, from the plague of brigands" in his capacity as magister militum per Orientem .[197] Since Cilicia adjoins Isauria, the obvious inference is that the "brigands" in question were Isaurians, who made regular incursions into the neighboring provinces of Cilicia and Pamphylia, and sometimes even farther afield.[198] It is surely no coincidence that it was during his governorship of Pamphylia that Hierax gathered this evidence against Fravitta, who had perhaps taken the opportunity to do a little plundering of his own while pursuing Isaurians—or had at any rate been accused of so doing. Hierax would be in a position to gather evidence at first hand in Pamphylia.
Frag. 87 describes how the vicarius Herennianus subsequently arrested Hierax and "made him pay more to escape than he had stolen and thus inflicted upon him a fitting penalty for the murder of Fravitta," in
[197] Zos. 5.20.1; Eunap. frag. 69.2B = 80M.
[198] J. Rougé, REA 68 (1966): 282f.; R. Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (Oxford 1968), 43f.
fact 4,000 solidi (frag. 86). As an illustration Eunapius compares the sale of provincial governorships under the empress Pulcheria,[199] when prosecution of offending governors would result in confiscation of ill-gotten gains by the prefect in return for acquittal. He describes a man buying himself whichever governorship he wanted, "wherever he craved to commit his crimes or had enemies ." Clearly this is what Hierax had done, secured himself Pamphylia both to make his fortune and to dig up whatever he could against a personal enemy, Fravitta. On this hypothesis everything falls into place—but only if we date Fravitta's death after Hierax's return from Pamphylia. If so, it could not be earlier than 405.
Eunapius evidently disliked Hierax (cf. frag. 83) as much as he admired Fravitta, and we should beware of accepting without qualification his picture of a purely personal vendetta. Eunapius frag. 85, which is important enough to quote in full, touches on wider political issues:
He directed his words at John: "But it is you who are responsible for all these troubles, you who break up the concord between our emperors, undermining, dissolving, and destroying this most heavenly and divine arrangement with your plots. It is a most blessed thing, an invincible and adamantine bulwark, when emperors in two separate bodies hold a single empire." Those present when these things were said fearfully shook their heads in silent disagreement; for he seemed to be speaking good sense to them. But they were afraid of John, and each was preoccupied with the thought of his own gain (for licentiousness lavishes honor even on the wicked, as it is said), and so, heedless of the public weal, they made John their leader, the crafty hirer of Hierax, and took Fravitta's life.
There seems no reason to doubt that this is Count John, and in favor of the later date here proposed for Fravitta's death it should be noted that it is not till 404 that John is first attested in a major office, comes sacrarum largitionum . The reference to the destruction of concord between Arcadius and Honorius also has chronological implications. It has so far been assumed that with the supposed restoration in 402 of the Aurelian whose consulate Stilicho had refused to recognize in 400 relations between East and West sunk to a new low and stayed there for several years. This a priori assumption is not borne out by facts long accessible but still unexploited.
Stilicho did not recognize the Eastern consuls of 399 and 400, but
[199] We agree with Paschoud (1985b, 280–81) that Eunapius is citing an illustration from his own day, a decade after the actual cutoff point of his history. Blockley improbably suggests emending Pulcheria to Eudoxia (1980, 175–76).
he did recognize Fravitta's consulate in 401,[200] and in 402 Arcadius and Honorius assumed the consulate together. Solidi of Eudoxia proclaiming SALVS ORIENTIS FELICITAS OCCIDENTIS[201] must refer to an occasion later than Eudoxia's proclamation (9.i.400) but earlier than her death (6.x.404) when the East was "saved," and this can only have been the defeat of Gaïnas. And while coin legends might be dismissed as clichés, not to be pressed too closely, we can hardly sidestep the column of Arcadius.
Despite the loss of the monument itself, a number of detailed drawings give a fairly accurate picture of the base. Its
three carved sides, in the manner of a panegyric, celebrated the mutual triumph and concord of [Arcadius and Honorius] . . . . On all three sides the emperors were shown standing side by side in order to display their concord, neither one being exalted over the other.[202]
Roma and Constantinopolis stand beneath arches on each side of the second register on the eastern face, flanking representatives from the senates of both cities, bearing crown gold.[203] On the third register Arcadius and Honorius stand in the center, each holding aloft in his right hand the consular mappa . Next to Arcadius, as G. Becatti rightly saw,[204] stands his chief minister, the praetorian prefect: Caesarius. Next to Honorius stands a figure in a chlamys: Stilicho.
More suggestive still, in the top register two winged victories or angels support a rectangular frame in which are shown two diminutive figures who flank and support a large cross. Apparently these figures are Arcadius and Honorius again.[205] As Robert Grigg has shown, the best commentary comes from the coinage. First, the reverse of a solidus with
[200] Fravitta's name does not appear on Roman inscriptions at the beginning of the year, whence it was inferred in CLRE (p. 337) either that he was not recognized at once or that there was a delay in proclamation. The latter is more likely. Fravitta must have been designated very late in the year, and it would not be surprising if the news was late reaching Rome.
[201] J. Sabatier, Description générale des monnaies byzantines , vol. 1 (Paris 1862), s.v. Eudoxia I, pl. IV.25; Demougeot 1951, 264; A. A. Boyce, Festal and Dated Coins of the Roman Empire: Four Notes , ANS Num. Notes and Mon. 153 (New York 1965), 86; R. Grigg, Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 478. Eastern coins with the legend CONCORDIA AVGVSTORUM (R. A. G. Carson, Principal Coins of the Romans [London 1981], no. 1574) might as easily refer to 396 as 402.
[202] Grigg 1977, 469.
[203] A. Grabar, Lempereur[*] dans lart[*] byzantin (Strasbourg 1936), 229; Becatti 1960, 256.
[204] Becatti 1960, 257. But we differ from him in identifying the emperor on the left, flanked by a chlamydatus , as Honorius, flanked by Stilicho.
[205] Becatti 1960, 258; Grigg 1977, 472.
the legend SALVS REIPVBLICAE minted at Rome (467/72) that shows Anthemius and Leo facing each other in military attire, holding a tall cross between them.[206] Anthemius, an Easterner who had just become emperor of the West, was anxious to stress that despite recent hostility he could count on the support of his Eastern colleague. We may compare Sidonius's panegyric of Anthemius, congratulating the East on sharing in Rome's triumphs: valeat divisio regni , "farewell, division of empire!"[207] Then there is a bronze coin minted at Thessalonica under Theodosius (II?) bearing the legend CONCORDIA AVGVSTORVM on an almost identical reverse.[208] Presumably this issue commemorated some occasion when the East rendered military assistance to the West.[209] The original motif, of course, was two emperors jointly holding a victorious standard; it was Christianized by the transformation of the standard into a cross. It is therefore a symbol of peace and concord. Here too we may compare a striking literary parallel, the following words from a homily on peace delivered in the autumn of 402 by Eudoxia's ecclesiastical favorite, Severian of Gabala, and intended to symbolize his (short-lived) reconciliation with Chrysostom:
Just as the best painters often try to illustrate unanimity of spirit by placing behind emperors or brothers who are also magistrates[210] a Concordia in female form who embraces with both arms those she unifies in order to show that the divided bodies are one in mind, so the Peace of Christ unifies by embracing those who are divided.[211]
Writing as he was in 402, we can hardly doubt that what Severian had in mind was pictorial representations of the concord of Arcadius and Honorius. The preceding sentence illustrates how his thoughts were preoccupied by imperial imagery at the time:
Just as in the case of an imperial adventus the streets are swept and the colonnades decorated with all sorts of beautiful objects so that there should be nothing unworthy of the emperor's gaze.
[206] J. P. C. Kent, Roman Coins (New York 1978), 762; Grigg 1977, 474.
[207] Pan. Anthem. 66. For more detail, W. E. Kaegi, Byzantium and the Decline of Rome (Princeton 1968), 35f.
[208] Sabatier 1862, 1: pl. V.11; Grigg 1977, 474–75.
[209] See Grigg 1977, 475, for the various possibilities.
[210] Perhaps a reference to paintings of Aurelian and Caesarius: see above, pp. 181–82.
Compare too the following from another homily of Severian from about the same date:[212]
I am singing the praises of the pair of brothers and the harmony of the empire (
), as Holy Scripture verifies: "Brother being helped by brother is like a strong city and a fortified palace."[213] "These are the two anointed sons who stand near the Lord of the whole world."[214]
It is fascinating to see how aptly Severian can illustrate the theme with biblical quotations; fascinating too to see how similarly it is expressed by both Christian preacher and pagan sophist. With Eunapius's "invincible and adamantine bulwark" we may compare Severian's quotation from Zechariah, "a strong city and a fortified palace." Both also stress the divine origin of this dual earthly kingship and its unity despite division between the brothers. But there is an important difference: whereas the speaker in Eunapius frag. 85, presumably Fravitta, accuses John of trying to undermine the concord, according to Severian it had only just been reestablished: "The truth has shone forth and falsehood runs away; concord has shone forth and discord has fled."[215] When Severian wrote in the autumn of 402 this emphasis on the restoration of concord between East and West was something new; this is why his attention was caught by its pictorial representation. But by the period of which Eunapius was writing, the situation had changed.
The accusation that John was undermining the new imperial concord implies the previous existence of concord. This would make little sense in 401–2, which saw the much vaunted restoration of concord after six years of almost open war. In 403 Stilicho recognized the first consulate of Arcadius's infant son Theodosius. But for the next two years he returned to his earlier policy of not recognizing Eastern consuls, repudiating Aristaenetus (404) and Anthemius (405).[216] In 404–5 Fravitta's accusation would make sense. By now relations were clearly deteriorating.[217]
We are fortunate enough to possess an official letter of protest from
[213] Prov. 18.19; the only MS (Sinait. gr. 491; text published by Wenger 1952,48) omits a few words ("like a strong, tall city, and is mighty like a fortified palace," Septuagint).
[214] Zech. 4.14, with Grigg 1977, 479.
[215] On the text of this passage, see below, appendix 2.
[216] The evidence is all assembled in CLRE under these years.
[217] It was in 405 that Anthemius became consul and took over the prefecture.
ca. June 404 in which Honorius lists a series of recent iniuriae he has suffered at the hand of his brother.[218] It will be noted that this period of concord coincides exactly with Caesarius's tenure of the praetorian prefecture, from mid-400 to late 403.
It would be an oversimplification to see Caesarius and Fravitta as favoring Stilicho. They did not invite Stilicho to return to the East and exercise the regency over Arcadius to which he laid claim. Nor is it likely that Stilicho's half-German blood had been the main source of Aurelian's hostility. As self-proclaimed regent of both Arcadius and Honorius, if Stilicho had returned to the East, he would no more have tolerated Caesarius as a rival than Aurelian. The difference between the Western policies of Aurelian and Caesarius was probably more a question of style than of substance. Aurelian continued Eutropius's unrealistic policy of confrontation, whereas Caesarius, while no more acceding to Stilicho's demands than Aurelian or Eutropius, was prepared at any rate to recognize him as Honorius's chief minister.
Support of entente between East and West may have been one source of the hostility that eventually brought Fravitta down, though all the passage of Eunapius tells us is that in his own defense Fravitta accused his accusers of subverting the ideal concordia Augustorum to which all paid lip service, implying that such as John were not fit to accuse a patriot like himself. There is certainly no hint of antibarbarian sentiment. Indeed, Eunapius claims that most even of John's followers agreed in their hearts with Fravitta. It need not be true, but it would have been an absurd thing to say if the accusers had, as popularly supposed, been a baying pack of barbarophobes. Nor is it likely, four years after the event, that the main basis of the accusation was collusion with Gaïnas. Fravitta's fall might perhaps be connected rather with the departure of the moderate Caesarius from the prefecture, Hierax providing timely ammunition.
The main consequence of this redating of Fravitta's death is that it can no longer be seen as the logical culmination of a successful process of de-Germanization of the state, requiring no other explanation. According to Jones (following Seeck and the communis opinio ) there was "a revulsion against the employment of Germans in high military commands" after the fall of Gaïnas, though Jones does go on to remark that
[218] Epistulae imperatorum pontificum aliorum, CSEL 35, ed. Guenther, 85, no. 38: Eudoxia's proclamation as Augusta; concealment of Alaric's devastation of Illyricum in 403–4 (in case Stilicho intervened in eastern territory again, as in 395 and 396); the treatment of Chrysostom. Honorius protests: "haec ego quamvis crebris iniuriis lacessitus tacere debuerim nec coniunctissimum fratrem . . . tam fideliter admonere."
"our information is admittedly very incomplete" and adds that "by the 420s the feeling against German magistri militum had evidently waned."[219] When it is pointed out that in the period between 400 and Arcadius's death in 408 we know the name of only one magister militum besides Fravitta, and that an Armenian, Arbazacius, the weakness of the argument from silence stands out more clearly still.
The year after Arcadius's death we find as magister militum a man whose name suggests that he was of Persian origin: Varanes, cos. 410. The next Gothic general of note is Plinta, significantly enough an Arian, first attested as magister militum in his consular year 419. But to have won so high an honor (the first Gothic consul since Fravitta), his career must have begun under Arcadius. Then there is Ardabur (cos. 427), not attested as magister militum before 424, but whose son Aspar (cos. 434) may have held the same rank in the same year, and in any case by 431. Clearly Ardabur too must have been winning his spurs as early as the reign of Arcadius.
If Fravitta's disgrace and death fell as late as 405, the traditional picture of barbarians being feverishly replaced by native stock in the immediate aftermath of Gaïnas's rebellion has to be abandoned. The only two magistri militum on record between Gaïnas's fall and Arcadius's death were non-Romans. The ranking general during most of this period was Fravitta, a former consul who had saved the state.
It is also instructive to find a cultivated Greek intellectual like Eunapius, who shared Synesius's enthusiasm for Neoplatonism, taking Fravitta's part so warmly. The main reason is no doubt their shared paganism. Yet Eunapius's admiration was surely based on something more than the bare fact that Fravitta was not a Christian. According to Zosimus (here closely following Eunapius), Fravitta "was a Hellene, not just by habit (
[219] Jones 1964a, 1:181.
drew his sword and ran his comrade through on the spot. Here was a man who had made an irrevocable choice. Fl. Fravitta,[220] as he was henceforth to be known, learned Greek and by 400 could no doubt boast an acceptable veneer of Greek culture. His paganism was probably less of a handicap in society than the Arianism of Gaïnas and most other Goths in Roman service. Pagans were lost souls ripe for conversion, whereas heretics were damned forever. Fravitta was not an uncouth soldier out of his element in the drawing rooms of Constantinople. His children were doubtless as Hellenized, and perhaps as Christian, as Eudoxia, daughter of the Frankish general Bauto, selected to be the wife and mother of Roman emperors. While we need not believe that Fravitta actually spoke the flowery words Eunapius puts in his mouth in frag. 85, the picture of Fravitta holding his own in the cut and thrust of Byzantine politics may not be so far from the mark. This was why he made enemies, not just because he was a Goth.
Nothing certain is known of his posterity, but it is difficult to doubt that he was related to Fravitta, presbyter of the church of St. Thecla, mentioned in the Acta of the Council of Chalcedon in 450,[221] and later briefly patriarch of Constantinople in 489.[222] Since presbyters had to be at least thirty, he must have been very old by the time he became patriarch, an honor he was to enjoy for only three months and seventeen days. Patriarch Fravitta may actually have been the son (or at any rate grandson) of the conqueror of Gaïnas.[223]
[220] On the use of the praenomen, see CLRE , pp. 36–40; Cameron 1988b, 26–33.
[221] ACO II.5.132.4.
[222] Nicephorus Opusc. hist., p. 116.26 de Boor (specifying that he had formerly been presbyter of St. Thecla).
[223] Fravitta is described as a young man in the early 380s (Eunap. frag. 60M = 59B), and so at least forty by 400. Any children he had must have been born by ca. 405.