Theodoric

exquisite craftsmanship of Celtic and Teutonic jewellery and weaponry puts these peoples on a par with the Romans; and so on. Recently, Richard Rudgley and Terry Jones, in their identically titled books, Barbarians, put up a well-argued case for the defence. Both, however, in my view, ignore the elephant in the sitting-room: the barbarians were illiterate.

Writing alone enables ideas to be recorded and transferred, which in turn allows them to grow and develop. Without writing, sciences, philosophy, literature, etc. — the very building-blocks of civilization — would be inconceivable. All of which is rather stating the obvious. Without writing, societies are prisoners of the immediate, limited by memory and experience as to how to shape their plans and actions. Oral transfer of knowledge can’t compete with libraries.

The virtues and defects of shame-and-honour barbarian warrior societies compared to those of Graeco- Roman civilization need not be examined here, as they have been touched on fully in the text.

The popular image of the barbarian as ferociously brave, but with mind and emotions at the mercy of physical urges, in contrast to the rational Roman, whose ordered intelligence was always firmly in control of his body, is over-simplified and something of a cliche. (Shades of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Highland warriors, and the polite society of Georgian England that was given such a fright by them!) Nevertheless, although based to some extent on Roman propaganda, it does contain a useful grain of truth. However, it’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves that barbarian societies weren’t static, and could evolve quite quickly into ones that could in no way be described as such. The heroic savages described in Beowulf are separated by only a few generations from that great polymath the Venerable Bede.

NOTES

Prologue

the army of the Romans

That this was an East Roman army doesn’t make it any less Roman. The term ‘Roman’ was flexible and inclusive, referring initially to the inhabitants of a small city on the Tiber, then to those of Latium, then Italy, and finally, in AD 212, to all free inhabitants of the empire. Roman emperors could be from many races — Spaniards, Illyrians, Africans, Arab, et al., though never, strangely, German. (The reason, perhaps, was because Germania, never having been conquered by Rome could not be fully accepted by her. An academic once seriously suggested that the rise of Nazism was ultimately due to the fact that, unlike most of the rest of Europe, ‘Germany had never been through the public school of the Roman Empire’!) Claudian, one of the most celebrated late Latin poets, was a Syrian whose mother tongue was Greek. Writing c. 400, he rejoiced that the inhabitants of the empire, though of diverse origins, ‘are all one people’. There exists a mindset which defines East Romans as ‘Byzantines’ — i.e., as different in some way from ‘real’ Romans. But when the Western Empire fell in 476, a fully Roman state continued in the East for nearly two more centuries (after which much of its territory was lost to Arabs and Avars), and its citizens certainly thought of themselves as Romans. (‘Byzantine’ was a term invented by Renaissance scholars and would have had no meaning for contemporaries of the late Ancient World — bar as an alternative to ‘Constantinopolitan’.)

converted to Christianity

According to Joseph Vogt in his The Decline of Rome, ‘it seems probable that the tribes of the great federations were already [Arian] Christian at the time they entered the empire’. Arianism differed from Orthodox Christianity in one key respect: Arians held that, as the Son, Christ was inferior to God the Father, and was therefore excluded from His divinity, a concept which appealed to Germans with their patriarchal society. To Catholic Romans, however, this made Arians heretics as well as barbarians — doubly beyond the pale. Christianity was introduced to Ethiopia at the beginning of the fourth century, but mass conversion of German tribes began only in 341 with Ulfilas’ mission to the Goths.

the blazing hulks. . swept down

The expedition of 468 shows striking parallels with the Spanish Armada. In both cases, the plan was not to engage in a sea battle but to enable a powerful invading force to land. In both cases, the outcome was decided by the use of fireships. In 1588 the Spaniards did at least have sea room to escape downwind. But for Basiliscus’ fleet escape was complicated by the difficulty of avoiding being driven on to the lee shore of the long Cape Bon peninsula. The effects of the disaster were decisive and immediate. In the West the Vandals were reprieved, while Visigoths, Burgundians and Suevi — realizing that there was no longer any central force strong enough to stop them — started carving out independent states from imperial territory. In less than a decade, the empire went from somewhere to nowhere. In 468 much of the Western Empire, though tottering, was still intact and owed allegiance to the Italian centre, an allegiance fortified by the arrival of Anthemius, who inspired genuine hopes of a revival. By 476 the bonds had all dissolved, and in that year the Western Empire came to an end.

vessels piling up on the rocky shore

Square-rigged Roman ships were a good deal less manoeuvrable than modern sailing-vessels. With a following or side wind they could make good progress, but against contrary winds, making seaway was much harder. Of course, galleys (rowed not by slaves, as depicted in the film Ben Hur, but by remiges, a category of seamen separate from the nautae who managed the sails and rigging) could move independently of the wind. According to Adrian Goldsworthy (The Complete Roman Army), experiments with a full- scale replica Roman galley showed that such a vessel could maintain a cruising speed of four knots, twice that if under sail or for short bursts as in a ramming attack.

the Vandals struck

The Vandal fleet consisted of captured Roman ships or vessels constructed by subject Roman shipwrights, sailed and navigated by indigenous north Africans. From these craft, Vandal warriors would board other ships or put ashore as raiding parties.

limped back to the Golden Horn

Procopius lays the blame for the outcome of the great adventure squarely on Basiliscus. But the simple explanation may well be just bad luck with the wind. To accommodate both possibilities, I have portrayed Basiliscus as being willing to fleece Gaiseric (who, according to Procopius, bribed the general to agree to a five-day truce in the hope that the wind would change), while not, consciously, at least, allowing this to affect his strategy.

a fourteen-year-old hostage

In the ancient world, the giving of hostages was more about diplomacy than yielding to punitive coercion. The hostage was often a junior royal, handed over as a pledge of good behaviour or adherence to a treaty. To Rome, the practice provided an opportunity to turn barbarians into lovers of the Roman way of life, therefore less likely to prove hostile.

Chapter 1

styluses and waxed tablets

Known as codices, pairs of hinged waxed boards were the notebooks of the Roman world. Writing, scratched on the waxed surface, could be readily erased by the flattened end of the pointed writing- tool, the stylus.

betting on the Blue or Green team

Blue and green were the respective colours of the rival chariot-racing teams competing in the Hippodrome. These teams inspired fanatical support from their fans, support which had a political dimension (the Blues championed the Establishment, the Greens the people) and could lead to serious rioting, as happened in the Nike riots of 532 which nearly toppled Emperor Justinian.

Aristotle on the subject of the young Alexander

The famous philosopher was the tutor of Alexander aged thirteen to sixteen. Aristotle’s image of the ‘great- souled man’ gave the future king a model for the role he wished to emulate.

Basiliscus. . has taken sanctuary in Hagia Sophia

He was eventually reprieved, thanks to his sister’s intercession with the (justifiably furious) emperor, Leo I. Hagia Sophia/Sancta Sophia (Holy Wisdom) was the predecessor of the present building erected in the sixth century