Theodoric

FOURTEEN

From the battlements surmounting St Barbara’s Gate, Julian watched the flotilla creeping across the Bosphorus from Chrysopolis on the Asiatic shore. Licking his lips nervously, he glanced at the array of brazen tubes poking between the crenellations. ‘These things had better work,’ he snapped at Menander, the engineer in charge of a revolutionary new weapons system intended to counter Theoderic’s assault on Constantinople.

‘Don’t worry, General,’ replied the other calmly. ‘They performed perfectly during the trials yesterday. Those chaps have a nasty surprise coming to them.’ And he nodded towards the fleet of impounded vessels crammed with Ostrogoths, the van of which was already grounding on the narrow strip of shore below the city’s sea-walls.

Should Menander’s contraptions prove ineffective, he, Julian, would be in serious trouble. Sourly, the general reflected on the events leading up to this crisis — events for which he was being made to shoulder the blame. It all went back to the confrontation between Strabo and Theoderic at the Shipka Pass. Julian had engineered the clash, but unfortunately it had backfired badly. The empire had paid dearly for his miscalculation. Full of fury and resentment, his trust in the word of Romans shattered, Theoderic had gone on the rampage, sacking Stobi and slaughtering its defenders, then embarking on a campaign of devastation and pillage throughout Thrace. The death of Strabo and the consequent unification of all the Ostrogoths under Theoderic made the latter a doubly dangerous foe. However, Zeno’s attempts to mollify Theoderic — heaping him with gold and honours, making him a ‘Friend of the Emperor’, consul and Magister Militum praesentalis, the top post in the army — had been largely successful. (Julian, a career soldier who had come a long way from his first appointment as a lowly decurion of horse, had been especially resentful of this last preferment. He had expected to be appointed to the post himself, but had been fobbed off with the lesser assignment of Magister Militum per Thracias.) And then, just when it seemed that fences had been mended with Theoderic, this wretched business of Illus had blown up.

Illus, an ambitious general and, like Zeno, an Isaurian, had at first supported Basiliscus in his short-lived usurpation ten years previously. However, realizing in time that he had backed a loser, he had switched his allegiance to Zeno — temporarily, as it transpired. In the year of Theoderic’s consulship he had made his own bid for the purple, coming out openly against the Eastern Emperor. To meet this fresh threat, Zeno had turned to the old ally who had helped him regain his throne from Basiliscus: Theoderic. With a mixed force of Gothic warriors and regular Roman troops (including Thracian units under a seething Julian), Theoderic loyally set out for Isauria. The army had advanced no farther than Nicomedia, the first major city in Asia, when a messenger came secretly to Julian in camp. The man revealed that he had come from Theoderic’s brother Thiudimund, with this warning: the Amal king was planning to join forces with Illus; together they would then overthrow Zeno and replace him with his rival Isaurian. Julian couldn’t believe his luck. If he acted swiftly, he could bring about the humiliation, perhaps downfall, of his old adversary. At the same time, he would be ingratiating himself with the emperor, and no doubt the coveted post of Magister Militum praesentalis would soon be his. Minutes later, a dispatch rider was posting westward for the capital; within hours rather than days, Theoderic would surely be receiving the order — written in purple ink and bearing the emperor’s seal — for his recall. .

And so it had transpired. In bitterness and fury, Theoderic had returned to his base at Novae, whence he had vented his feelings of betrayal in a series of devastating raids on Thrace. Within these last few weeks, he had escalated his offensive by launching a major assault on Constantinople itself: pillaging suburbs, cutting the Aqueduct of Valens, the conduit to the city’s main water supply, and now mounting this sea-borne attack on the capital’s soft underbelly, unprotected by the great landward-facing Walls of Theodosius.

The expected imperial gratitude for divulging Theoderic’s reported treachery had not been forthcoming. To Julian’s consternation, when he told Zeno that the source of his information was Thiudimund, the emperor had reacted with rage and disbelief.

‘Thiudimund slanders his brother — and you believe him!’ Zeno had stormed. ‘Good God, man, everyone knows that their relationship is poisonous, and that Thiudimund wouldn’t overlook the slightest opportunity to do his brother down. Everyone but Flavius Julianus it would seem. Well, thanks to you, we’ve got the most powerful barbarian nation in Europe in a state of war against us. For your sake, you’d better pray that Theoderic’s assault on the capital doesn’t succeed.’

‘Jacite!’* On Menander’s command, the stubby tongues of flame wavering from the mouths of the row of tubes were suddenly transformed into roaring jets, as his team began to work the pump-handles of the reservoirs containing a mixture of bitumen, sulphur and naphtha. The leading Goths swarming up the ladders propped against the sea-walls were engulfed in a fiery blast. Human torches, they dropped, screaming, to the beach; water flung on them by their horrified companions had no effect. Relentlessly, the flames continued to burn — through skin and muscle to the very bone.

The success of the new weapon was instantaneous and total. Witnessing the fate of the first to scale the ladders, the Goths — individual warriors who, unlike Roman troops, couldn’t be ordered into battle against their will — refused to press on with the attack, and the fleet retreated to the Asiatic shore. Soon afterwards, Theoderic called off the investment of the city, and marched his host back to their Moesian heartland.

‘Well, thanks to your new weapon, this “Greek fire”, as the Goths are calling it,’ Zeno reluctantly conceded to Julian, ‘we’ve now got a breathing-space from the attentions of Theoderic. For the moment.’ The pair, together with Thalassios (now Magister Excubitorum, commander of the crack Isaurian unit from which was drawn the emperor’s personal bodyguard), were holding a council of war in the capital’s Great Palace. ‘But we can’t allow things to drift. After that debacle at the Shipka Pass, and more recently his recall from the Illus expedition’ — Zeno paused, to glare meaningfully at Julian — ‘Theoderic’s never going to trust us again. We now have to treat him as a permanent enemy — one who’s going to continue blackmailing us, by beating up the Balkans, into granting more and more concessions of land, and subsidies in gold. Any suggestions, gentlemen?’

‘Serenity, let’s not keep on appeasing Theoderic,’ declared Julian. Playing up to his nickname of ‘Alexander’, bestowed on account of his uncanny resemblance to the famous Macedonian, Julian was tricked out in Ancient Greek-style armour, which had the effect of making him appear both formidable and faintly ridiculous. ‘The Goths, after all, are just barbarians. If we were to mobilize a big enough Roman army, we could take him on and destroy him.’

‘And risk another Adrianople?’ sneered Zeno. ‘I think not. I suspect that, if pushed, Theoderic might prove to be as effective a tactician as Fritigern.’

‘What we need is another Strabo,’ put in Thalassios. ‘Pitting one barbarian against another — that’s a game the Romans have long been masters of.’

‘“Divide et impera” — good point,’ replied Zeno. ‘Trouble is, my friend, the Ostrogoths are all united now, and, inconveniently, we haven’t any rival barbarians within the empire.’

‘But outside the empire. .’ murmured Julian, as an idea formed in his mind. Enthusiastically, he began to expound his plan.

Alone in a reception chamber, Zeno rose from his throne as Theoderic entered. ‘Greetings, my dear old friend,’ he declared, with a warmth that was only half simulated. Despite the bad blood that now flowed like a river between them, he liked the tall German with the frank blue eyes and thoughtful, slightly troubled expression — this man who, in the past, had proved himself a loyal Friend of Rome, and to whom, indeed, Zeno owed his throne. ‘We have a proposition which may interest you,’ he continued, waving the other to a chair.

‘Your “propositions” I have heard before, Zeno. I would remind you that my bodyguard of loyal Goths is just outside this palace, and ten thousand of my warriors are encamped beyond the city walls.’

‘Well, no one can blame you for taking precautions.’ Dropping the imperial ‘we’, Zeno continued, ‘I confess that in our dealings in the past, I may sometimes have allowed myself to be swayed by wrong advice. But let’s try to put such misunderstandings behind us. I need someone to take over in Italy as my vicegerent. Who better than my friend and former ally Theoderic Amalo?’

‘But, Odovacar-’ exclaimed Theoderic, stunned.

‘-has shown himself to be a renegade, threatening to send warriors to help Illus in Isauria, against me. Why, I can’t imagine, except that power must have gone to his head. Granted, he’s made a reasonable fist of running things in Italy, but he can’t be allowed to flex his muscles in the East. He must therefore be removed. The last claimant to the imperial throne in the West, Julius Nepos, died eight years ago.* So, this is where you come in. Interested?’

Theoderic felt himself drowning in a tide of conflicting emotions. Vicegerent of the Eastern Emperor! It was a heady thought — next to the purple and the diadem, no higher role existed in the Roman world. His ambition to be accepted by the Roman state, an ambition which had been cruelly manipulated and thwarted in the past, would be fulfilled beyond his wildest dreams. And why had Zeno thrown in that remark about Julius Nepos, unless to suggest to Theoderic that the imperial throne was still vacant, and that therefore. .? Resolutely, he banned his thoughts from pursuing such intoxicating speculation — for the moment, anyway. Then, inside his mind, Theoderic seemed to hear the voice of Timothy urging caution: ‘He’s using you, Deric, employing the old, old trick of setting barbarian against barbarian — finally to rid the Eastern Empire of those troublesome Ostrogoths. Odovacar’s just an excuse; the Scirian’s posture over Illus is little more than sword-rattling, a reminder that, in the sphere of power politics, he can’t be overlooked. Anyway, what’s the vicegerency? An empty title which it costs Zeno nothing to bestow. A fiction devised to preserve the comforting illusion that the “one and Indivisible Empire” still continues in the West, under the aegis of the Eastern Emperor. Remember, Deric, the ABC I taught you when dealing with the Romans. A: accept nothing; B: believe nobody; C: check everything.’

But the pull of Rome (which also held out a solution to the problem of his remaining within the empire, which Severinus had pointed out to him) proved too strong. Seduced by glittering images of semi-imperial status — riding in state through the venerable City; saluted by senators from ancient noble families; acclaimed by throngs of cheering Romans. . He heard himself reply, ‘I accept.’

Then, unbidden, the opening words of Myrddin’s prophecy rang in his head: ‘A horse comes from the land of the live eagle to that of the dead one, where he fights and kills a boar that has come there before him.’ The meaning was suddenly clear. The eagle, the enduring symbol of Rome. The live one — the Empire of the East; the dead, the now defunct Western Empire. A horse, long the totem of the Ostrogoths. A boar, the motif of the royal house of the Sciri. The Ostrogoths would come from the Eastern Empire to Italy, where they would defeat Odovacar. Wonder tinged with dread swept over Theoderic.

The sheer immensity of the enterprise to which he was now committed began to dawn on him. The task was staggering in its implications: the migration not just of the warrior host, but of a whole people, to the number of two hundred thousand souls, involving the organization of transport, food supplies, equipment, planning and following a route of nearly a thousand miles through sometimes hostile tribal territory and difficult terrain. The challenge called for someone with the vision and authority of a Moses. Thus far in his career, he had proved himself a successful warlord: good at plundering, sacking cities, holding his own (just) against rival Goths, and Romans — hardly a glittering record. Now, at thirty-four, the call upon his leadership was of uncharted, infinitely greater dimensions. Would he prove equal to the test?

* ‘Fire!’ (Literally, ‘Hurl!’; orders in the East Roman army were still given in Latin.)

* In 480 — i.e., after the deposition of the last Western Emperor, but still leaving open the possibility that the throne could, in theory at least, be occupied again.