last of them was wiped out by the Saxon invaders in 491.
Chapter 50
370 ‘we shall establish our supremacy in the most telling manner possible’. It has been said that the Council of Chalcedon (October 451), ‘the accursed Council’ to the monophysites, split the East Roman Empire irreparably, ultimately facilitating the Muslim conquest of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria in the seventh century. This is a fallacy. The imperial administration, coupled with the heroic struggle against Attila (and later that of Heraclius against an aggressive Persia), forged a strong, unified, and patriotic state, in which the Emperor, from Marcian onwards, came to be seen as the ‘little father’ of his people, and a conscientious arbiter in theological disputes. Although the findings of the Council undoubtedly created strains within the empire, they were never serious enough to harm its fabric.
371 ‘the saint’s right arm. . now rested across the withered chest’. Some places seem to have the property not only of arresting the process of decay in a corpse, but of preserving the flexibility of muscles and ligaments. A notable example of this is to be found in St Michan’s Church, Dublin, where the corpses of (reputed) crusaders have been preserved, their limbs still perfectly pliable, by the moisture-absorbing magnesium limestone of the vault.
Chapter 51
379 ‘news of the King’s death’. Following Attila’s demise in 453, his German subjects successfully rebelled, and his empire, without Attila’s huge personality to hold it together, rapidly disintegrated, leaving no mark on posterity except a memory of slaughter and destruction on an epic scale.
Chapter 52
382 ‘Valentinian approached the apparatus’. For a description of a seance using the type of apparatus described in this chapter, see Ammianus Marcellinus,
383 ‘the imprisoning of a popular charioteer’. This was carried out by the army commander at Thessalonica, who was then lynched by the mob. As punishment, Theodosius I had seven thousand citizens massacred. In consequence, Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, refused to admit the Emperor to Mass until he had done penance. A spectacular demonstration of the growing power of the Church, and a harbinger of the medieval doctrine of ‘the Two Swords’. Theodosius kneeling before Ambrose: the image has an eerie parallel to that of Emperor Henry IV of Germany at Canossa, barefoot in the snow before Pope Gregory VII.
Chapter 54
397 ‘a few great villas on the Caelian. . made to serve as hospices’. One such was the House of the Valerii, which remained derelict and unsaleable for some years after the sack of Rome.
409 ‘the twelve centuries assigned to the lifetime of his city’. 753 BC is the date generally accepted for the founding of Rome. The twelfth century would then elapse in AD 447. The Western Empire actually fell in 476. Allowing for some latitude in dating such a distant event as the founding of the city, the prophecy is uncannily accurate.
Afterword
411 ‘not only did he save Europe from Asiatic domination’. The consequences of a Hunnish conquest would have been potentially both devastating and permanent. Gibbon cites instances where whole tracts of Central Asia were reduced in a few years to uninhabitable deserts by invading nomads, whose destruction of forests, irrigation, and infrastructure had effects which lasted for centuries if not permanently.
412 ‘From it developed European medieval civilization’. The building-blocks of medieval Christendom were already in process of formation by the time of the late empire. Feudalism: protection in return for service — was concomitant with a breakdown of security, with powerful landlords recruiting bands of armed retainers, or
1 The Balkans had already been virtually lost to the Avars, a warrior people from the Steppes.
