III—
The Antibarbarian Tirade
The most strikingly concrete part of the De regno , and the most important to the historian, is the long section (22A–26C) criticizing the dependence of the Roman state on "Scythians," by which are meant Goths. Unfortunately it has in the past been misinterpreted on every level. The Goths in question have been identified as those led by Tribigild in the rebellion of 399–400; Synesius's tirade against them has been supposed to reflect the policy of the new prefect Aurelian, the leader of the nationalist party, whose avowed aim is believed to have been to rid the Eastern empire of barbarians; many have thought that the entire passage was directed against Gaïnas.[14] All the assumptions embraced by
[11] Though not attested as magister officiorum until January 404 (PLRE II.94), Anthemius clearly exercised considerable influence before winning the prefecture itself in June/July 405, since he was ordinary consul in January 405. To receive such an honor, he must have been holding high office for several years. That of magister officiorum is an obvious vacancy; no other name is attested after Hosius in December 398.
[12] K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (1978), 189f.
[13] See too Eunap. frag. 75.6 Mueller = 67.10 Blockley.
[14] E.g., Albert 1984, 54–63.
these contentions are false. Gaïnas could only have been a target, for example, if Synesius had been writing as late as the fall of Eutropius, at the end of July 399. But the De regno cannot be that late; in fact it cannot be later than the first half of 398. Not only does the passage make perfectly satisfactory sense in terms of the new date, but its details strongly support an earlier date in their own terms.
In the first place, a number of passages make it clear that Synesius was warning of a disaster that at the time of writing was yet to come. It is a "rock of Tantalus suspended over the state by fragile cords" (22B). The Scythians "will fall upon us the first moment they think the attempt will succeed" (22B). The shepherd must not mix wolves with his dogs, "for the moment they notice any weakness or slackness in the dogs, they will attack them, flock, shepherd, and all" (22A). The oblique comment that "only a fool or a prophet" would not be apprehensive of the Gothic danger (22B) means either someone too obtuse to appreciate these threats or someone who has foreknowledge that they will come to nothing. Then there is 24D: "You must remove the foreign body causing the disease before the abscess festering beneath the surface erupts, before the hostility of these dwellers in our land is exposed. For evils may be overcome when they are just beginning (
That makes eight separate warnings looking to barbarian trouble in the future . Goths in Roman territory are an abscess festering beneath the skin; their hostility is not yet exposed; they will attack when they see a weakness, when they think they will succeed. One of two conclusions must follow. Either Synesius really was writing before there was any serious barbarian trouble or he was writing afterwards and pretending to have foreseen the trouble. That would make the entire speech a dramatic fiction and the antibarbarian section a post eventum prophecy. To be sure, Synesius did employ this technique in book 1 of De providentia , where a god lists as the signs that will presage the expulsion of the barbarians portents that had already happened at the time of writing in the middle of A.D. 400. The beauty of post eventum prophecy is precisely the advantage of detail that hindsight affords. Specificity reinforces the thesis. Moreover, De providentia is set in the distant past, purporting to prove that history repeats itself. But there could be little point in pretending that Synesius had delivered De regno a mere twelve months earlier, especially since any contemporary would see through the pretence. Synesius's antibarbarian invective is in any case so general that he could
not have claimed to foresee anything so precise as Tribigild's revolt and Gaïnas's disloyalty. Indeed, if anything, his warnings suggest a revolt by Alaric that never happened. This very inconclusiveness argues against the hypothesis of retrospective exploitation of knowledge of 400.
Synesius wrote at a time when he felt that his contemporaries were underestimating the dangers of current policies simply because no serious consequences had yet been identified. He could not possibly have taken this tone or stance as late as the autumn of 399, when Tribigild's rebellion was six months old and Gaïnas's collusion plain to all. As for the prophecy that slaves would join any barbarian rebellion (24C), though hindsight reminds us that slaves did join Tribigild's rebellion in Phrygia,[15] Synesius does not describe anything so distant. He is in fact concerned with the danger literally at his own doorstep. As he had said only a page earlier, "every house, however humble, has a Scythian slave. The butler, the cook, the water-carrier, all are Scythians, and the servants who carry through the streets on their shoulders the litters on which their masters sit, these are all Scythians" (23D). Synesius even had a Scythian slave of his own.[16] His fear was that even though the expected Gothic rebellion might take place in the provinces, the slaves of Constantinople would rise up and join. This did not happen in 400.
After the reference to the rock of Tantalus, Synesius adds: "The first skirmishes are already taking place, and many parts of the empire are aflame." There has long been general agreement that he refers here to the outbreak of Tribigild's revolt. But
[15] Zos. 5.13.4; cf. Claud. In Eutr . 2.222, "bella dabunt socios." Claudian uses the future tense because he is describing in retrospect advice given to Tribigild before the revolt.
[16] Calv. Enc . 77B.
cases in history of warning about the stable door after the horse has bolted.
In the second place, as Peter Heather has recently shown in an important paper,[17] Synesius's detailed account of the history of the Goths (25A–D) fits Alaric in Illyricum, not Tribigild in Phrygia. For Synesius, the Goths are a people "always fleeing their own country," driven out by one invader after another. Finally they came as suppliants to the Romans (the treaty of 376), but then became insolent (the battle of Adrianople in 378), and paid the penalty to Theodosius (various engagements between 379 and 381). Theodosius then took pity on them, gave them offices (i.e., Roman commands) and even Roman land (the treaty of 382). Unfortunately, "the barbarian does not know the meaning of goodness: from then right up to the present moment," Synesius remarks, "they have treated us with derision."
This is a fairly accurate summary of the history of the Tervingi, the main body of Visigothic immigrants, from 376 to the 390s.[18] Those who were given Roman commands included Modares, Munderic, Fravitta, Gaïnas, and probably Tribigild.[19] Most conspicuous among those who remained with the federates in the lands granted by the treaty of 382 and who according to Synesius "treated us with derision" was the young chieftain Alaric. Alaric led a rebellion in 391, and though he served under Theodosius in the campaign against Eugenius in 394, he rebelled again almost immediately. In 395 he briefly laid siege to Constantinople and left only after receiving from Rufinus some sort of promise of high command. It was never fulfilled. From 395 to 397 Alaric devastated the Balkans continuously until Eutropius finally saved the situation by appointing him magister militum per Illyricum .[20]
Alaric's repeated treachery over many years matches Synesius's description perfectly. But it does not at all match the Greuthungi led to rebellion by Tribigild in 399.[21] The Greuthungi crossed the Danube in 386 under their chief Odothaeus, not as suppliants but as invaders.[22] They
[17] Heather 1988, 152–72.
[18] The fullest recent narrative account is E. Demougeot, La formation de lEurope[*] et les invasions barbares , vol. 2.1 (Paris 1979), 134–69.
[19] Roman commands—that is to say, regular commands in the Roman army as opposed to irregular service as federates, like Alaric. See E. A. Thompson, Romans and Barbarians (1982), 41–42.
[20] Demandt 1970, 730.
[21] As Albert seems to be uncomfortably aware. He acknowledges that Synesius's account fits "vor allem der terwingischen Goten," but argues that "in diese kompromittierende Nachbarschaft wird also Gaïnas gesetzt, ungeachtet der Differenzen, die ihn und seine Gefolgsleute von Alarich und seinem Volk trennten, und ohne auf den völlig unterschiedlichen Lebensweg des Gaïnas einzugehen" (1984, 59).
[22] For the sources, Seeck 1913, 208 and 519; Paschoud 1979, 426–29.
were defeated by Theodosius's general Promotus and settled en bloc in Phrygia.[23] Once there they are not known to have caused any trouble till 399.
These Greuthungi, being in effect prisoners of war, and so understandably called captivi by Claudian (In Eutr . 2.582), will not have been given the favorable terms accorded to the Tervingi. Compare here another passage of De regno: "Only a foolhardy man or a prophet would look without fear on this mass of differently bred youth living according to their customs and practicing the art of war in this country" (22A). In the preceding sentence Synesius had warned against giving arms to those "not born and brought up under Roman law." Once again, the remark suits the Tervingi in Illyricum,[24] not the Greuthungi in Phrygia; for the Tervingi were indeed allowed to live in Roman territory under their own customs and laws. Although they were liable to military service if the emperor should call on them, they served in their own units under their own tribal commanders.[25] The old tribal organization and loyalties therefore remained intact. It was not Synesius alone who found this the most disturbing aspect of the Gothic settlement in the Balkans.[26]
But Odothaeus's Greuthungi will have been treated like other dediticii ,[27] segregated into a number of small units settled in different places precisely so as to break up old tribal organization and loyalties as far as possible. They were then known (in Gaul at least) as laeti and were expected to furnish recruits.[28] That is to say, they would normally serve in regular army units under Roman discipline and officers. Whereas the optimates at any rate among the Tervingi were presumably given land in freehold, the Greuthungi will have become coloni , tenants who at this date were little more than serfs.[29] Claudian draws precisely this distinction between them:
concessoque cupit vixisse colonus
quam dominus rapto.
(In Eutr . 2.205–6)
[23] Zos. 4.35, 4.38, 5.13; Claud. In Eutr . 2.174f.; Seeck 1913, 306–7; so already Güldenpenning 1885, 100.
[24] So, for example, Jones 1964a, 157 n. 46.
[25] On the terms of the treaty of 382 see Lippold 1980, 31–32, with Demougeot 1974, 143–60.
[26] Amm. Marc. 31.16.8; cf. Straub 1943, 255f.; Pavan 1964, 41f.
[27] The technical term for those who surrendered unconditionally to Rome and accepted whatever terms were imposed: A. Momigliano, Ricerche sullorganizzazione[*] della Giudea sotto il dominio romano (1934), 2–5; Jones (1960) 1968, 130f.
[28] Laeti: Jones 1964a, 620; Hoffmann 1969, 139 and passim (see the index in Hoffman 1970, 252); Liebeschuetz 1990, 12–13, 100–101. The name laeti is not found in the East.
[29] G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (Ithaca, N.Y. 1981), 158–60, 247, 249–53.
He is happy to live as a tenant on sufferance
rather than a master on plunder.
According to Zosimus (5.13.2), Tribigild was the commander "of the barbarian, not the Roman troops in Phrygia." This has often been taken to imply that he was the leader of a band of federates, and it may well be what Zosimus himself thought. For example, at 5.16.1 he says Tribigild marched into Pamphylia "with his barbarians." But he also repeatedly refers to Gaïnas and "his barbarians." Zosimus may have believed that both, like Alaric, led barbarian hordes. But he was certainly wrong about Gaïnas, who led a regular field army, whatever its ethnic composition.
According to Philostorgius, Tribigild had the rank of comes , and his troops were stationed at Nacoleia.[30] F. Paschoud doubted whether "this Gothic federate" really held a Roman rank,[31] but Socrates and Sozomen claim that Tribigild was a kinsman of Gaïnas.[32] There seems no obvious reason why this detail should have been invented: the probability is that Tribigild was not a Greuthung at all,[33] but a Tervingian who had enlisted in the Roman army with Gaïnas and Fravitta long ago under Theodosius.[34] Indeed this would explain why he was so disgruntled and why he made common cause with Gaïnas. Both were men who after twenty years' loyal service had gradually risen through the ranks to the modest rank of comes . Alaric won himself a mastership of the soldiers at one stroke simply by burning and looting.
One possibility is that Tribigild was a regular officer in command of barbarian federates. This is the post Gaïnas had held on Theodosius's western expedition of 394, likewise with the rank of comes .[35] But federates were only enlisted for the duration of specific campaigns and then dismissed.[36] According to Socrates, Tribigild was "tribune of the troops
[30] HE 11.8, p. 138.17 Bidez-Winkelmann.
[31] Paschoud 1986, 126.
[32] Socr. HE 6.6; Soz. HE 8.4.2.
[33] As often assumed, and explicitly stated in PLRE II.1125.
[34] If Tribigild was related to Gaïnas by marriage, the possibility that he was a Greuthung would be left open. But it is unlikely that an ambitious man would have contracted so disadvantageous a match—or one outside his tribe.
[35] Zos. 4.57.2, 4.58.2; cf. Demandt 1970, 733.
[36] Indeed this is doubtless the cause of much of what our sources dismiss as barbarian treachery. When federates were dismissed their subsidies were discontinued. Of course, the Romans had always used barbarian federates this way, paying them ad hoc . When such federates returned to their usual way of life beyond the frontiers, that caused no problems. The problems started when discarded federates were forced to turn to a life of plunder within the frontiers. The Germans who served Rome so loyally during most of the fourth century were trained to follow experienced officers and received pay, equipment, and bonuses until they retired with a pension. Before we condemn Gothic federates too readily for their treachery, we should take into account the fact that they enjoyed none of these advantages.
stationed in Phrygia."[37] "Tribune" was the normal title for commanders of regular units,[38] and the phrase as a whole implies that both Tribigild and his unit were regular army. Tribunes were often given the rank of comes[39] An unusually precise passage of Claudian corroborates this inference:
legio pridem Romana Gruthungi,
iura quibus victis dedimus, quibus arva domusque
praebuimus.
(In Eutr. 2.576–78 )
The Greuthungi were once a Roman legion;
we conquered them and gave them laws, we let them have
fields and homes.
If the Greuthungi were a Roman legion that obeyed Roman laws before their rebellion, they cannot have been federates.[40] It was common for even elite units to be recruited from laeti and barbarians.[41] A regular military base for elite Roman units in the neighborhood of Nacoleia happens to be well documented, from at any rate the mid-fourth century down to the reign of Justinian.[42] It was no doubt to supply recruits for these units that Theodosius had settled the defeated Greuthungi there in 386.
The fact that it was in 399 that they revolted suggests a connection with the expedition against the Huns the year before. We learn from Claudian that Eutropius's army consisted largely of Goths,[43] among them presumably the Greuthungi from Nacoleia, and perhaps a contingent of Alaric's Tervingi as well. According to Zosimus (5.15.3), Tribigild had only just arrived from Constantinople when the revolt began, which accords well enough with Claudian's account of his return from
[38] Jones 1964a, 372, with note 16.
[39] Jones 1964a, 372.
[40] In Eutr . 2.176 describes Tribigild more vaguely as "Geticae dux improbus alae." But even here ala may be used in its technical sense of a cavalry unit (G. Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, 3d ed. [1985], 145–48); Tribigild certainly had cavalry (Zos. 5.15.5, 5.16.3).
[41] Jones 1964a, 621.
[42] See particularly the epitaph of a ducenarius in the crack regiment of the Cornuti seniores from Nacoleia dated to 356, published with valuable commentary by Thomas Drew-Bear, HSCP 81 (1977): 257–74. A senator is attested at the nearby city of Dorylaion (Drew-Bear, Glotta 50 [1972]: 220), as also is the schola gentilium iuniorum (Drew-Bear and W. Eck, Chiron 6 [1976]: 305–7). See also Theophanes, p. 236.16f. In 562 Justinian transferred units of the scholae stationed in various bases in Asia Minor (including Dorylaion) to Thrace.
[43] "adloquiturque Getas," In Eutr . 1.242; Seeck 1913, 564; Demougeot 1951, 224; Albert 1979, 630.
court vacuus donis , indignant at the haughty eunuch's insults.[44] He had evidently been trying to get better terms of some sort.
Though he shares the affectation common at the period of designating all Goths as "Scythians,"[45] it is difficult to believe that Synesius was unaware of the different origin, location, treatment, and behavior of Alaric's Goths and Tribigild's Goths. Claudian, though living in the West since 395, draws a sharp distinction between the two groups in book 2 of his In Eutropium (174–229), written at Milan late in 399. Bellona comes upon Tribigild trudging home with empty hands from the meeting with Eutropius. Taking on the form of his wife, she urges him to imitate the boldness of Alaric's Goths, who have conquered Greece: "The Greuthungians will make good farmers. . . . Happy those other women whose glory is seen in the towns their husbands have conquered . . . whose servants are fair captives of Argos or Thessaly." She reproaches him for timidly sticking to treaties while "the man who lately ravaged Achaea and devastated defenseless Epirus is master of Illyricum; he now enters as a friend within the walls that he once besieged, and administers justice to those whose wives he has raped and whose children he has murdered." Here there is an interesting parallel with Synesius. At De regno 23C he draws a vivid picture of a skin-clad warrior briefly changing into a toga and sitting in the senate, right at the front by the consul.[46] To have enjoyed the precedence (
Synesius's arrogant Goth who mocks the toga must be either Alaric or Gaïnas. It was Gaïnas, according to Albert,[49] because Alaric was not a central figure in the crisis of 399–400. Again, this argument relies solely on the presupposition of a later date for the speech. It was not till the
[44] In Eutr . 2.178, 192.
[45] See, for example, the indexes to Julian and Themistius. Huns, on the other hand, usually appear as "Massagetae" (see Maenchen-Helfen 1973, 3–7).
[46] The passage is quoted in full above.
[47] PLRE II.1013–14; Demand 1970, 728.
[48] PLRE 1.372 mistakenly allows the possibility that Fravitta was MVM as early as 395; see rather Demandt 1970, 728.
[49] Albert 1984, 56.
outbreak of Tribigild's rebellion in the spring of 399 that Gaïnas was even promoted to the rank of MVM,[50] and not till late summer that any suspicion of his own disloyalty can have arisen. Our sources, writing after the event, not unnaturally assumed that he was in league with Tribigild from the start,[51] but obviously no one can have suspected this at the time or he would never have been appointed to the command against Tribigild in the first place. Since Synesius certainly wrote well before Eutropius's fall in August 399, this consideration seems to rule out Gaïnas too. For Albert, the Goth had to be Gaïnas going to and fro between Phrygia and Constantinople in the summer of 399, not Alaric far away in Illyricum. But Gaïnas was not some skin-clad ruffian out of place in the big city. Even the hostile Zosimus refers to Gaïnas as one of the senators distressed at Eutropius's maladministration.[52] As a Roman officer of some twenty years' standing, he must have spoken fluent Latin, and perhaps Greek too; at any rate, the Ancyrene monk Nilus addressed him a series of letters in Greek.[53] He lived in a grand palace in Constantinople.[54] We can hardly doubt that he normally wore Roman dress. But Alaric was an authentic prince of the Gothic royal house. As for the likelihood of his paying visits to Constantinople, we may compare Claudian's picture, written in the summer of 399, of Alaric striding impudently into cities he had once besieged. It is immaterial whether or not Alaric really did pay official visits as MVM either to Constantinople or to cities he had once besieged. The point is that the Romans would do nothing to stop this arrogance if he wanted to. Both Synesius and Claudian use their images to reinforce the sense of affront and shock: it was a disgrace that a barbarian chieftain with Roman blood on his hands should be honorably received as a Roman magistrate.
Since the Gothic villain of De providentia is so clearly Gaïnas, it might be thought implausible to identify the Gothic villain of De regno differently. Synesius did much to confuse the issue by reusing several points from the antibarbarian tirade of De regno in the old beggarwoman's outburst against Gaïnas's Goths in De providentia (118A–B). Nevertheless,
[50] See the full discussion by Demandt 1970, 733–36.
[51] So Synesius De prov . 108C; Zos. 5.13.2, 5.14.3 and 5: see chapter 6, section II for full discussion.
[53] Ep . 1.70, 79, 114–16, 205–6, 286, in PG 79; it must be added that there are some doubts about the authenticity of this correspondence, though the letters to Gaïnas are among the least suspicious items (Cameron 1976b, 187).
[54] T. Preger, ed., Scriptores originum Constantinopolitanarum (Leipzig 1907), 2:252.5.
the lapse of time and the rapid succession of events between the two works must not be overlooked. In 398, when Synesius composed De regno , there cannot have seemed any reason to single out one small settlement of Greuthungi in Phrygia; nor in fact did Synesius do so. Gaïnas was still merely an unemployed count cooling his heels at court. No one could have identified him as a future public enemy. When he had been promoted against Tribigild and used his position to topple two successive ministries, however, all the stakes were changed. In the heat of crisis, persuasion and the careful marshaling of facts were no longer needed.[55] But some two years earlier, it was Alaric who must have seemed the real danger, the man who had rebelled so often in the past. There was no telling how long he would honor the agreement recently concluded with Eutropius. Its terms were a fresh, humiliating insult for the Romans, on top of the threat Alaric continued to represent in the Balkans. How much longer would he be satisfied with the plunder of Greece? How much more Roman gold would it take to keep him away from Constantinople?
Stilicho had twice attempted a military solution, in 395 and 396. On both occasions he failed.[56] Since he did fail, his propagandist Claudian is understandably vague about both campaigns, and Zosimus, here as elsewhere, is curiously ill informed about Alaric between 394 and 402. Stilicho's expedition of 396 put Eutropius on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand his position would be threatened if Stilicho defeated Alaric when he had failed; yet at the same time he could not allow Alaric's depredations to continue indefinitely. At some point he declared Stilicho a public enemy; whether before or after his ignominious withdrawal is unfortunately uncertain.[57] If Stilicho had failed twice, how could Eutropius expect one of his own armies to face Alaric?
In the modern accounts that see everything in terms of a struggle for power between pro- and antibarbarian parties, Eutropius has always been classified as pro-barbarian.[58] Not by his choice. In fact, he kept Alaric waiting nearly three years for the command he had perhaps been promised by Rufinus. The cost to the Balkans was terrible. Gaïnas too seems to have been given no command between Rufinus's murder in November 395 and his appointment against Tribigild. And Claudian depicts Tribigild leaving an audience with Eutropius empty-handed:
[55] For the charge that Gaïnas was being ungrateful, compare Theod. HE 5.32.
[56] Cameron 1970a, 156–88.
[57] Paschoud 1986, 113–15. He would have had a better pretext afterward, if he had accused Stilicho of collusion; but there is no way of deciding. For the mystery about Stilicho's failure, see Cameron 1970a, 168–76.
[58] So first Güldenpenning 1885, 93.
viso tum forte redibat
Eutropio vacuus donis.
(In Eutr. 2.177–78)
The poem goes on to blame Tribigild's rebellion on Eutropius's folly and mismanagement. Indeed, it can hardly be doubted that it was precisely because he did not treat Gaïnas and Tribigild as he had treated Alaric that they resorted to Alaric's tactics. But by appointing Alaric to the Illyrican command he laid himself wide open to the charge of philobarbarism at its most shameful.
Much of the advice Synesius offers in De regno is conventional: Arcadius cannot be the master of men until he is master of himself. Much is also utopian: the good king will not need to impose high taxes to pay an army because he will not make enemies (27D)! The two points that stand out for their emphasis and actuality are the attack on Eutropius and the attack on barbarians. The two themes must be connected. Synesius is attacking Eutropius for his barbarian policy.
Synesius draws the connection with surprising delicacy, however—a point to whose implications we shall be returning. The passage that identifies Eutropius most clearly does so to illustrate how far Arcadius goes in preferring a crew of asinine boobs to "sensible men" who can "express a philosophical concept clearly and tersely" (15A–B). In itself the accusation is fairly vague and exclusively moral. But as Synesius repeatedly emphasizes, philosophy's demands on Arcadius are the whole substance of his speech. He equates listening to his speech with "allowing philosophy to dwell with you" in the proem (1B), and he closes with the thought that in the single word philosophy he has summed up all his thoughts on kingship (32A). He even speaks of philosophy as a separate entity that controls the speech (4D, 26A, 32B–C). Synesius intends the moral argument to carry weight in its own right. It is part of the same radical approach that makes piety the "pedestal" for Synesius's "statue" of the ideal king (9D). But the speech as a whole amounts to practical, if unrealistic, advice on how Arcadius is to live up to his role as philosophy requires him to:
philosophy demanded of the king that he should often mix with the military and not keep to his palace, for it taught us that goodwill toward him, his only real safeguard, was fortified by this daily intercourse. This once admitted, in the company of what race of soldiers should a philosopher devoted to his king desire that he should train his body and dwell in the camps?
This passage (21C–D) introduces the whole antibarbarian tirade. Synesius does not try to claim that Eutropius directly prevents Arcadius
from acting as a warrior-king, personally involved with a native army whose loyalty blood and nurture alike guarantee,[59] but that the isolation and irresponsibility eunuch-rule fosters prevent him from the proper understanding of his role, which in turn requires him to act. Again, it is a radical, intellectual approach; but the antibarbarian tirade works out its practical consequences: policies Arcadius himself is not taking the trouble to direct have brought the empire into danger.
Synesius has come in for a good deal of admiration over the years for his sagacity in diagnosing in the East a key factor in the fall of the West: Lacombrade comments: "Aussi nest-il[*] pas inutile, pour apprécier à sa juste valeur la clairvoyance politique de Synésios et des milieux byzantins cultivés de cette fin du IVe siècle, de lui opposer laveuglement[*] fatal dont la Rome occidentale est victime à la même date."[60] Elsewhere Lacombrade writes of "lhonnete[*] clairvoyance dun[*] patriote vigilant," going so far as to compare De regno to Demosthenes' First Philippic .[61] Does Synesius really deserve such credit? Not, at any rate, on the traditional date and interpretation of De regno . If writing in the autumn of 399, he was forecasting that the Goths would attack when they had already attacked. And what was his solution? "Let them be excluded from magistracies and deprived of the privilege of sitting in the senate" (23B); and let us raise a native army with the spirit to drive them out or make them till the soil (26B).[62] The bland recommendation to raise a national army would have raised a smile in any Roman court: emperors had been trying and failing to raise a national army for centuries.
How could Synesius have made such feeble and irrelevant recommendations as late as the autumn of 399? At that moment all three Eastern magistri militum were Goths: Alaric, of proven disloyalty; Gaïnas, suspected of collusion with the rebellious Tribigild; and Fravitta, in command of all remaining Eastern troops, on whom everything depended. It was the most serious crisis that had faced the Eastern court since its establishment at Constantinople. This was not the moment to debate
[59] One may contrast the panegyrical approach Claudian applies to Honorius at III Cons. Hon. 73–87, where although too young to be allowed to do it, he desires to march out with his father against Arbogast and Eugenius; or Synesius to Osiris at De providentia 91D–92A: "While still a youth Osiris shared in the generalship with the men appointed to that office: the law did not permit arms to someone so young, but he ruled their will as if he were their mind, and used the generals as his hands."
[60] Lacombrade 1951b, 26.
[61] Lacombrade 1951b, 86; Cracco Ruggini (1972, 285) also writes of Synesius's "courageous" speech—or rather speeches, since she apparently thought that he delivered De providentia , as well as De regno , before Arcadius.
long-term options like new methods of recruitment or turning the Goths into farmers. But if he was writing in 398, these recommendations, if still utopian,[63] were at any rate not superfluous. Alaric was then a problem for the future.
Not only is it intrinsically implausible to identify the objects of Synesius's antibarbarian tirade as the revolt of Tribigild and treachery of Gaïnas, but its main section clearly alludes to Eutropius's agreement with Alaric in 396 or 397.[64] To resentment at this humiliating treaty would have been added apprehension at the large number of Goths present in Eutropius's expeditionary force against the Huns in early 398. As for the "first skirmishes" (
