Theoderic, the Goths, and the Restoration of the Roman Empire

Theoderic, the Goths, and the Restoration of the Roman Empire by Jonathan J. Arnold A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in The University of Michigan 2008 Doctoral Committee: Professor Raymond H. Van Dam, Chair Professor Bruce W. Frier Associate Professor Diane O. Hughes Associate Professor Paolo Squatriti © Jonathan J. Arnold All rights reserved 2008 For Raven, for everything, forever and always. ii Contents Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………ii List of Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………..iv Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: A World Turned Upside-down……………………………………………….10 Chapter 2: Restoring the Republic ………………...……………………………………50 Chapter 3: Romans and Goths: The Other Techniques of Accommodation…..………...99 Chapter 4: Italia Felix …………………..……………………………………………...152 Chapter 5: Restoratio Imperii: Gaul...…………………………………………………..205 Epilogue…………………………………………………………………...…………....275 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………........277 iii Abbreviations AA Auctores Antiquissimi. AnonVal Anonymi Valesiani pars posterior. CassChron Cassiodori Senatoris Chronica ad a. DXIX. CassOratReliquiae Cassiodori Orationum Reliquiae. CCSL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum. CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. CTh Codex Theodosianus. Ep. Epistulae. Fiebiger, vol. 1 Inschriftensammlung zur Geschichte der Ostgermanen. Fiebiger, vol. 2 Inschriftensammlung zur Geschichte der Ostgermanen. Neue Folge. Fiebiger, vol. 3 Inschriftensammlung zur Geschichte der Ostgermanen. Zweite Folge. Fr. Fragmenta. HA, DAur Historia Augusta, Divus Aurelianus. HA, TT Historia Augusta, Tyranni Triginta. Hist. Goth. Isidori Iunioris episcopi Hispalensis historia Gothorum Wandalorum Sueborum ad. a. DCXXIV. ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. LHF Liber Historiae Francorum. LTUR Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae. iv Marc. Com. Marcellini v.c. comitis Chronicon ad a. DXVIII. MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica. NMaj Novellae Maioriani. NVal Novellae Valentiniani. PanTh Ennodius, Panegyricus dictus clementissimo regi Theoderico. PL Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina. PLRE The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. SRL Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum Saec. VI-IX. SRM Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum. VE Ennodius, Vita Epiphanii v Introduction The end of Roman rule in the West was a complicated process that lasted the better part of a century. Ironically, it began in the East in 376 when a population of Goths, later known as Visigoths, appealed to the eastern emperor Valens for admission and settlement within the Roman Empire. Valens, seeing an opportunity for new recruits, agreed, settling these Goths along the Danube as federate allies with the task of defending portions of the frontier. Famine and profiteering, however, led to a rather different outcome. The Goths revolted, winning a decisive victory at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Valens’ army was obliterated and Valens himself lost his life. Such an outcome was a serious blow to Roman prestige, yet within just a few years Valens’ successor, Theodosius I, had reestablished good relations with the Goths and was even using them in a major campaign against a western usurper, Eugenius. Theodosius would die in 395, but by then the Visigoths, led by their strong king Alaric, were becoming a force to be reckoned with in the Balkans. Played by both halves of the Empire in the aftermath of Theodosius’ death, they soon set their eyes on Italy, making an initial foray in the opening years of the fifth century. By 408 they had surrounded Rome and, having been denied their requests for land and booty, they infamously sacked the Eternal City two years later, much to the outrage and dismay of the Roman world. It was within this same context that other barbarians had likewise begun to pick apart the western Empire. In the winter of 405/6 a massive invasion of Gaul was launched by a number of barbarian peoples, the most noteworthy being Sueves, Alans, and Hasding and Siling Vandals. These participants in what has been dubbed the “Great Rhine Crossing” soon picked up momentum, laying waste to the regions of Gaul in their wake. By 409 they had made their way to Hispania, divvying up its provinces and intending to settle there permanently. It was at this point, however, that the western emperor Honorius appealed to the Visigoths, who had recently relocated to Gaul, and 1 promised them a legal settlement in this province should they defeat the barbarians in Hispania. The Visigoths agreed and proved successful in this enterprise, annihilating both the Alans and the Siling Vandals in the process. But their victory would come at a serious price for the western Empire, laying the seeds for the barbarian kingdoms that would soon supplant it in the West. In 428/9, no longer checked by the Visigoths, the Hasding Vandals and the remnants of the Alans crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into North Africa, seizing Carthage by 439. From there, as pirates, they harassed the Mediterranean Sea, even going so far as to sack Rome in 455. The western Empire’s hold on the Mediterranean had been broken, and Vandal North Africa would persist, largely unopposed, for generations. In Gaul, on the other hand, the Visigoths were granted their promised reservation in southwestern Aquitania following their return from Spain; but the Great Rhine Crossing had had other consequences, effectively dissolving the Rhine frontier and allowing those barbarians settled within that region to filter slowly into the Empire. By the time of the Vandal sack of Rome, southeastern Gaul was fast becoming the land of the Burgundians, while the northwest was slowly being transformed into a series of Frankish kingdoms. Though the Visigoths would continued to serve as allies of the Empire into this period, even backing a Gallic emperor in 455, they too would eventually abandon the imperial cause. Under Euric (r. 466-488) the Visigoths rapidly assumed possession of central and Mediterranean Gaul, bringing most of Spain under their sway as well. By 476, then, the western Roman Empire had become unrecognizable as a territorial entity. Barbarians had wrested away nearly all its provinces and its boundaries had been reduced to the Italian peninsula. This was a Roman Empire in name alone, and so it was fitting that in this year yet another barbarian strongman, Odovacer, took a decisive step by deposing the last western emperor and declaring himself king. Italy, like the rest of the West, had devolved into a barbarian kingdom. And though Odovacer himself would be deposed, the fate of this Italian kingdom would remain in the hands of barbarians, ruled by Theoderic and his Ostrogoths until the Justinianic reconquest initiated in 535. A long process, it had taken a century for the western Empire to fall. A rather traditional (and somewhat intentionally anachronistic) political overview like the one just provided should make clear why the “barbarians” tend to dominate 2 modern studies of the late antique and early medieval West. Peoples like the Visigoths and Vandals played significant roles in the transformations witnessed over the course of the fifth century, at times acting as the primary agents of imperial decline, but also, at times, casting their lots with the Empire and attempting to forestall what seems, with hindsight, to have been inevitable. In the process and in the immediate aftermath of Roman rule, the cultural impact of these same peoples was also of fundamental importance, contributing to the forging of those new, post-Roman identities that would define the societies of early medieval (Latin) Christendom and by extension the modern nations of western Europe. Scholars generally agree on these basic points, but their interpretations of this period, emphases, and overall tones have indeed varied greatly over the years. The most traditional of narratives, rather extreme elaborations of the political overview provided above, envision this period from the perspective of a unified Roman Empire and Roman civilization. Privileging both, they offer a crisis or conflict model, where the stereotypically savage barbarians of Greco-Roman literature are imagined as inserting themselves into the Roman world by violent means, disrupting and dismantling the Empire as a political institution and, at their very worst, even destroying Roman civilization itself.1 Here, as is expected, Romans appear as victims, the Empire completely falls, and a decisive break rather depressingly ushers in a dark Middle Ages. If there is any continuity beyond the fifth century, it is dismal and fails to live up to the greatness of the preceding era. Such “disruption” models have endured for centuries and even witnessed a mini revival in recent years.2 But the last three decades have also provided a number of attractive alternatives. The most extreme of these replace an emphasis on Romanness and the Roman Empire with an emphasis on barbarians and barbarian kingdoms, endeavoring to “liberate the barbarians” from unfair Roman (and modern) biases. Members of the so-called “Vienna School,” for example, have utilized ethnogenesis theory in an attempt to shed further light on the origins of barbarian peoples, 1 See, for instance, Musset (1965) or, most recently, Ward-Perkins (2005). The title of the latter, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, is almost as gloomy as its contents. 2 Indeed, the “barbarian conquest” model has its roots in the early sixth century, flowering in the lead-up

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