The Historians' History of the World 06

A bold adventurer of Suevian descent, the patrician Ricimer, acquired as leader of the foreign troops the highest power in the state, and for nineteen years raised emperors and overturned them at his pleasure. Within twenty-one years nine ascended the throne. Even the ablest, and the one among them of eminent talents, Majorian, succumbed to the stealthy cunning and superior military strength of the barbarian mercenaries. Their pretensions rose higher until they demanded a third of the territories of Italy; and in Odoacer, an officer of the bodyguard, they found the man who procured them their desire after he had forced the abdication, in 476, of the last emperor of Rome, an immature youth who bore the proud names of Romulus and Augustulus.

[476-568 A.D.]

Until the year 480 the emperor Nepos, driven from Italy, reigned in Dalmatia; Odoacer accepted from Zeno, the emperor of the East, the title of administrator, and reigned over Italy according to the old forms.

So at least in appearance. In reality it was a Germanic kingdom which was raised on the foundation of the Eternal City which had ruled the world for seven centuries. We now therefore consider the year 476 as that of the fall of Western Rome, which up till then had stood for 109 years, with short interruptions, as a separate empire, in fact, at all events, if not in public recognition. With its fall, and Odoacer’s elevation, the great work of expansion, distinction, and building up anew, which we call the migration of races, was completed. Now the ground was clear for the German colonisation on Roman territory, already in progress at various points since the year 411.

Suevi, Vandals and Alans, Burgundiones and Visigoths, had founded new kingdoms in Spain, Gaul, and Africa, some transitional, some of more permanent duration, whose origin and progress were closely bound up with the history of Western Rome. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the most powerful of all the German tribes arose, the Franks under Childeric’s son Clovis, who in the year 486 destroyed the last remnant of Roman supremacy in western Europe—that of Syagrius over a great part of northern Gaul—by the battle of Soissons. This outer limb, as far as it had any connection with the main body, belonged to the empire of Eastern Rome.

Ostrogoths and Langobardi (Lombards) took part in the destruction of Western Rome only in the second and third periods, not the first, which was in so far an advantage that they drove out again their former conquerors and possessors from the heart of the empire.

The moment of settlement for them came when, leaving their former country, they prepared for colonisation on Roman territory—that is, for the conquest of Italy; this was for the Ostrogoths in the year 488, for the Lombards in 568.e [For it was in April of the latter year that the Lombards, under Alboin, entered Italy. Fifteen years before Narses had dealt a death blow to the Ostrogothic kingdom, and Italy once more became a part of the Roman Empire. But now the exarch was left but a small district to rule over and the peninsula passed forever from undivided Roman rule.]

A FULFILLED AUGURY

[476 A.D.]

It is not to be imagined that the fall of the Roman Empire in the West created so much stir among contemporaries as it has since done in history. A century of constant reverse had led up to it. It was predicted by religion, foreseen by politicians, and expected, as one might say, at a fixed date.

An inexplicable fatality hovered over Rome from its cradle. It cannot be denied that the failure of the town of Romulus, or the decline of its power at the end of twelve centuries, was predicted almost from its birth. The story of the portent of the twelve vultures appearing to its founder on the Mount Palatine, embodied this instinctive belief, fortified by all the authority of augural science. The Tuscan soothsayers had, in effect, declared the twelve vultures to signify twelve centuries of power, after which the fate of Rome would be consummated.

This political faith, already strong in the brightest days of the republican epoch, was transmitted from generation to generation, proudly when the end was far distant; fearfully, as it drew near. Even as the historic date of the foundation was disputed, so there was disagreement as to its end. The soothsayers all calculated in their own way as they themselves understood it, but all expected it.