The Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson

But it was not only from the east that Rome was threatened. All kinds of barbarian hordes were pouring across the west. Wild men from Gothland – in Sweden – had moved south to the Black Sea and become pirates; in 251 they had fought a battle against the ‘barrack emperor’ Decius and killed him. At about the same time, a German tribe called the Franks (who would later give their name to France) crossed the Rhine into Gaul, while another tribe, the Alemanni, invaded Alsace. In 376 the Visigoths, or West Goths, crossed the Danube, defeated the Roman army and killed the emperor Valens. But their aim was not conquest; they were fleeing from the Huns and only wanted to be allowed to settle in the relative security of the Roman Empire; they won their point, and many of them became defenders of the empire. So did many other barbarians, including members of a tribe called the Vandals. But in 406, the German branch of the Vandals also crossed into Gaul, then went down into Spain across the Pyrenees and set up a kingdom there. Twenty years later they had crossed the sea and taken Carthage. In 407, the Romans had been forced to summon their legions from Britain to try to stem the tide of invaders.

One of the most remarkable of these was a Goth named Alaric, who had applied to become a Roman commander and been turned down. The Roman Empire now had two emperors, the two sons of Theodosius the Great – Honorius (in Rome) and Arcadius (in Constantinople) – neither of them men of much force of character. Honorius was supported and defended by a Vandal general named Stilicho – he had even married Stilicho’s daughter. For a while, Alaric supported Arcadius. Then Alaric grew tired of the general untrustworthiness of these effete Romans and went raiding on his own account. He plundered Thrace and Dacia, and then crossed to Greece. He left a terrible trail of destruction behind him – one ancient historian compares the devastated Athens to the bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered victim. Gibbon mentions that his men killed the males, burnt the villages, and made off with cattle and all the attractive females. Stilicho hurried to Greece, and finally trapped the Goths at the foot of a mountain. Their water supply was diverted and, as they began to suffer from thirst, Stilicho decided that he could afford to relax and went off to attend a public festival with games (‘and lascivious dances’ adds Gibbon – this bachelor historian seems to dwell on rapes and orgies with a certain morbid satisfaction). Stilicho’s soldiers wandered off to look for plunder, and the wily Alaric led his men through the Roman lines, across thirty miles of rough country and over the Gulf of Corinth. He had vanished before Stilicho had time to grasp what was happening.

Five years later, in 402, Stilicho frustrated an attempt of the Goths to land in Italy, and in 406 he defeated an invading army of barbarians at Florence. With a record like this, he should have been regarded as above suspicion. But Honorius’s court was the usual Roman hotbed of intrigue, and rumours went around that Stilicho was in league with the Goths. Honorius, who was a fool and a weakling, was willing to listen. He disliked his barbarian soldiers; and, being a religious bigot, objected to the fact that many of them were still pagans. Removing Stilicho and his barbarians would obviously be a complicated undertaking, but not beyond the enterprise – and treachery – of a Roman emperor. One day, at a signal from Honorius, Roman troops at Pavia grabbed many of Stilicho’s friends and murdered them. Stilicho, still failing to grasp the enormity of the betrayal, took refuge in a church in Ravenna. He was lured out on a promise of safety, and promptly executed. Like Nero’s general Corbulo, he probably muttered ‘Serves me right.’

At another signal, there was a massacre of barbarian families in cities all over Italy. The decision was stupid as well as criminal, for these barbarians had proved themselves loyal to Rome. Now there was nothing to stop Alaric, and he marched his Goths straight to the walls of Rome.

The Romans found it hard to believe they were not dreaming. It seemed incredible that this unwashed barbarian was threatening the imperial capital. But as Alaric prevented food and water from getting into the city, they began to realise that their situation was perilous. The Romans were furious, and their sense of outrage was directed at Stilicho’s widow, who was accused of corresponding with Alaric and strangled on the orders of the senate. Then outrage turned to depression as they began to starve. Five and a half centuries after the siege of Carthage, the Romans were tasting their own medicine. The rich managed to stay alive; the poor died by the thousand. They began to practise cannibalism. Inevitably, the rotting corpses caused disease, and as the plague swept the city, ambassadors went to ask Alaric what he would take to go away. Alaric finally agreed to a vast sum in gold and silver (and, oddly enough, pepper, used for preserving meat).

But there was no money in the treasury. Honorius and his court had moved to Ravenna – the emperor had decided it made a safer capital than Rome since it was surrounded by marshes. Negotiations dragged on; Alaric besieged Rome again, then marched on Ravenna. Honorius allowed some of his allies to slip out, make a surprise attack, and slip back before Alaric had time to recover his wits. This was the last straw. In a violent rage, Alaric marched again on Rome, once again besieged it, and this time succeeded in breaking in. It was mid-August, 410 A.D., and the first time invaders had been inside the city for more than six hundred years. Still smarting from the surprise attack, Alaric’s men raped and slaughtered with the abandonment of soldiers who had become bored, resentful and sex-starved. ‘The brutal soldiers,’ says Gibbon with a sigh of regret, ‘satisfied their sensual appetites without consulting either the inclination or the duties of their female captives,’ and he goes on to discuss the interesting question of whether a virgin who had been violated can still be regarded as ‘chaste’ and therefore still a virgin.

In Ravenna, one of Honorius’s eunuchs brought him the news. Honorius apparently kept chickens and was particularly fond of a cock named Roma. When the eunuch said ‘Rome is lost,’ Honorius gave a yelp of agony. ‘That’s impossible. He was just eating out of my hand.’ When told that the eunuch meant the city, not the bird, he gave a sigh of relief.

After six days the Goths left Rome, which now had nothing more to offer them, and marched south, taking Nola and Capua on the way. Alaric’s fleet sailed for North Africa; but his luck had run out. They were scattered by winter storms, and Alaric died shortly afterwards.

It was the beginning, not the end, of Rome’s troubles; but the story of its remaining sixty-five years as the capital of an empire has a curiously repetitive air. Honorius’s successor, the emperor Valentinian III, was also lazy, foppish and vicious. During his unfortunately long reign, the Vandals crossed from Spain to North Africa and devastated the Roman province there with a thoroughness that has made their name a byword for mindless destruction. Valentinian’s sister was a nymphomaniac named Honoria, who got herself pregnant by the court chamberlain and was packed off to the care of some religious aunts in Constantinople. Bored and sex-starved, she wrote a letter to a sinister barbarian named Attila the Hun, begging him to come and rescue her. Attila was a descendant of the Mongols who had been driven out of northern China, and Honoria was undoubtedly unaware that he was short and squat, with a face like an ape. Attila probably had no sexual interest in Honoria; he already had several dozen wives and, to a puritanical savage, the knowledge that she had already got herself pregnant would seem disgusting. But the opportunity for blackmail was too good to miss; so Attila sent Valentinian a message asking for his sister’s hand, and demanding half the empire as dowry. Valentinian refused indignantly, and Attila declared war. Fortunately for Italy, he decided that Gaul would be an easier target, and swept across Europe, capturing city after city. If he had captured France, present day Englishmen and Frenchmen would probably have slit eyes and yellow features. But a Roman general defeated him at Chalons, and Attila led his army back into Italy, where Valentinian was forced to bribe him to go away. Soon after this, Attila died in a manner worthy of a conqueror, bursting an artery in the act of taking the maidenhead of a beautiful virgin.

Valentinian himself was eventually murdered by a general named Maximus, whose wife he had raped. Maximus made the mistake of marrying Valentinian’s empress Eudoxia, who disliked him so much that she sent a message to the Vandals in North Africa asking them to come and save her. Honoria’s example should have taught her better. The Vandals came and sacked Rome, and when Eudoxia rushed with outstretched hands to meet them, stripped her of her jewellery and carried her and her two daughters off to Africa as slaves.