Neither Useful Nor Honourable: the End of Roman Gaul

In AD475, four men sat in a room in Arles and destroyed the Roman Empire.

It was probably summer, and the four men were probably accompanied by others. They met with a representative of the Visigothic king, Euric, so it was very likely to have been in summer. But despite all the others in the room, they were the ones charged by the western emperor, Julius Nepos, with the negotiations he instructed them to undertake.

The four men were all bishops: Leontius was bishop of Arles, and as a friend of Pope Hilary, had established his see as the leading one of Gaul. Then there was Basilius of Aix, Graecus of Marseille and Faustus of Riez, the Briton considered the foremost Christian writer of his day. The men they met were not Visigoths by background; they were Roman officials who had changed sides to save their own hides. In Euric’s delegation, perhaps leading it, would have been Victorius, who Euric made Duke of Aquitania Prima in 479. He may have been, or been related to, another Victorius of Aquitaine, a contemporary intellectual and mathematician.

A year before, Euric’s troops had occupied Provence. Julius Nepos wanted it back. The negotiation with Euric’s men was to determine what price might be needed. They would have had in their minds the Battle of Arles in 458, in which the Visigothic king Theodoric, elder brother of Euric, had been massively defeated by the Romans under Majorian. Now Euric (who had overthrown his brother) had broken the pact (foedus) which governed de facto Visigothic rule in southern Gaul.

Euric promised the Romans could have Provence back, if he could have the Auvergne (Arvernia). The bishops agreed to this on behalf of the emperor. With Roman connivance, Euric invaded the Auvergne and took it in 475. Then he invaded Provence again and seized that in 476. The loss of Gaul was a catastrophe, and Odoacer used this to depose the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus and seize power.

Arles had become the capital of Gaul in the early fifth century, when Trier, an imperial capital a mere twenty five years earlier, was abruptly abandoned. Leontius would have had in his mind the substantial fees and earnings Arles received because of the Elisii Campi (Elysian Fields), now known as the Alyscamps. This was a highly fashionable burial ground, so popular that people were ferried across the Mediterranean from North Africa to be interred there. Even the guild of Rhone bargemen made a small fortune ferrying the dead of the empire to the must-have funeral they aspired to. They had to be stacked three deep to be accommodated there.

Around the table, next to Leontius no doubt, was Faustus of Riez. He was the leading clergyman of his day for theology. He was aged about 48 and British, and travelled back to Britain from time to time, testing the still widespread belief that his homeland was being devastated by the Anglo-Saxons. Faustus was quite probably the son of the British king we call Vortigern. The Historia Britonnum refers to St Germanus of Auxerre returning from Britain to Gaul with an illegitimate and allegedly incestuous son of Vortigern called Faustus (‘Lucky’) to make the boy a priest, and the ages match. In addition, Faustus of Riez was known as a ‘semi-Pelagian’, one holding  a modified version of the teachings of Pelagius, a Briton condemned as a heretic a generation back. Germanus had travelled to Britain to resolve a dispute between the teachings of the Church and the popular philosophy of Pelagius.

Basilius of Aix must have been a young man, because he was still bishop in AD500, when he caused to be built a spanking new cathedral, on top of the Forum, which survived for centuries until being destroyed in Saracen raids. But we can imagine the young bishop (not so uncommon, as life expectancy was quite low) thinking about how he might be able to remodel his city for the glory of God, and perhaps himself. The baptistery of Aix cathedral was built over a temple to Apollo and survives to this day. His name suggests he might have been of Greek ancestry, but there were other Greek settlements along the coast.

Graecus of Marseille sounds like he ought to be of Greek ancestry, but since Marseille was so Greek, the name holds no distinction. Perhaps it was a nickname which became his church name. He was an older man, and had a reputation as a bit of a maverick. Faustus had rebuked him harshly for espousing Nestorianism, a Christian sect that became a heresy (Ralph Mathiesen Ruricius of Limoges and Friends: A collection of letters from Visigothic Gaul, Liverpool University Press, 1999). So in that room in Arles, there would have been little love lost between Faustus and Graecus.

We should pause for a moment to consider what these four men had done: they had handed fellow Romans, who had managed to hold the Visigoths at bay, over to the enemy. They had in doing so betrayed their friend and fellow bishop, Sidonius Apollinaris. They had failed to see that Euric had already conquered Provence once, and knew how to do it again.

Once he had taken Arvernia and its capital Arvernis (formerly Augustonemetum and from the 9^th century Claremontum (now Clermont-Ferrand)), and taken Sidonius prisoner, transporting him in chains to Liviana, near Carcasso (modern Carcassonne), then to Bordeaux, putting him in prison there for some time, Euric almost surrounded Provence, enabling him to take it anyway.

Sidonius wrote letters, and eventually published nine books of them, in emulation of Pliny the Younger (all translations derived from O.M. Dalton, 1915 Loeb edition). If he imagined there would be a tenth book compiled by his admirers, that never occurred, although several people tried to engage him in writing the history of his times.

But Letter 7.7 to Graecus of Marseille is the bitter gall of a man who has been betrayed by his friends. It came after a siege of the Auvergne for four years (471-5) by the Visigoths. Clermont was his wife’s home town, but he had adopted its defence as his life’s cause.

Letter 7.7 is quietly furious at the betrayal: ‘Our enslavement is the price paid for the safety of others’ he says, adding that he now finds himself ‘amidst an unconquerable, yet alien people’ . Sidonius knew that Vercingetorix had been king of the Arveni facing Caesar and echoes Lucan’s Pharsalia in condemning ‘the servitude of the Arvernians who dared once to call themselves “brothers of Latium” and counted themselves “a people sprung from Trojan blood”’.

The sense of betrayal Sidonius expresses is keen: ‘you are the channel through which embassies come and go; to you first of all, although the emperor is absent, peace is not only reported when negotiated, but entrusted to be negotiated’ , adding later ‘you are surrounded by those most holy pontiffs, Leontius, Faustus, and Graecus; you have a middle place among them in the location of your city and in seniority, and you are the centre of their loving circle; you four are the channels through which the unfortunate treaties flow; through your hands pass the compacts and stipulations of both realms’.

Sidonius sums up his condemnation with these words: ‘You should be ashamed of this peace treaty for it is neither useful nor honourable’.

So who was Sidonius?

Sidonius Apollinaris was born  in Lyon on 5 November 430; he came from a rich family with a long history of public office. His grandfather Apollinaris was praetorian prefect of Gaul  for part of AD408, replacing a certain Limenius, but had quit in protest at the corruption of politics. In one of his letters, Sidonius talks of visiting his grandfather’s grave, which was neglected and overgrown, and mourned this; but his grandfather had been a rebel, prefect for Constantine III, so maybe somebody held a grudge.

The father of Sidonius was also Praetorian Prefect of the Gauls, as was Tonantius Ferreolus, a kinsman, related to Sidonius by blood and marriage. The father in law of Sidonius, Marcus Avitus, was Prefect in 439 and the father of Avitus, Flavius Julius Agricola, had been Prefect in 416 ­– 421. Marcus Avitus, the candidate of the Visigoths, was acclaimed emperor by their king Theodoric in Toulouse, the Visigothic capital, 455 after the assassination of Valentinian III. Sidonius wrote a panegyric to his own father in law on his elevation. He grew up and lived within the nexus of power.

With the coming of Christianity into the power structures of the Roman Empire, a new channel was opened for status and display. Bishops were elected by their parishioners and for life; decurions were expressly forbidden to enter the Church, but several time, so the law must have been quite ineffective. Constantine had given bishops the power to run courts and dispense summary justice. And while bishops were forbidden to marry, there has never been a law preventing a married man becoming a bishop. Sidonius had sons and daughters too. A middle aged bishop with grown up sons to effectively inherit episcopal power was far from unusual.

Had Avitus held the throne for any time, he might well have made Sidonius Prefect of Gaul. However Avitus, once the richest man in Gaul, was deposed as emperor, but then made Bishop of Placentia (modern Piacenza). Although that didn’t stop Avitus being murdered, it does show that becoming a bishop was an alternative route to power.

Forgiven his connection to Avitus, Sidonius rose again to become Urban Prefect of Rome, a position he had to resign from because his friend Arvandus was found guilty of treason for supporting the Visigothic king Euric. The epitaph of Sidonius, discovered recently, stresses his civic roles

noble through his titles, powerful through his office, head of the administration, magistrate at the court, quiet amid the world's billowing waves, then managing the turmoil of lawsuits, he imposed laws on the barbarian fury; for the realms that were involved in an armed conflict he restored peace by his great prudence.

His death is noted at ‘August 22, under the reign of Zeno’, as if the Roman Empire still existed at that time. By that date in AD489, there had been no western emperor for thirteen years. Note it stresses his public role, not his clerical one.

Making ex-leaders into bishops was a kind of exile. Once tonsured as priests, they could not in theory return to civilian life. Julius Nepos, once dethroned, was made Bishop of Salona, the capital of Dalmatia, the former province, which he had ruled for a long time before briefly becoming emperor. All of this can be dated back to St Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who had been the local provincial governor before that.

Sidonius also attacks (Ep.7.6, to Basilius, dated 474) the damage to the Church:

Diocese and parish lie waste without ministers. You may see the rotten roofs of churches fallen in, the doors unhinged and blocked by growing brambles. More grievous still, you may see the cattle not only lying in the half-ruined porticoes, but grazing beside altars green with weeds. And this desolation is not found in country parishes alone; even the congregations of urban churches begin to fall away.

Noting that ‘Bordeaux, Périgueux, Rodez, Limoges, Javols, Eauze, Bazas, Comminges, Auch, and many another city are all like bodies which have lost their heads through the death of their respective bishops. No successors have been appointed to fill their places’ and that ‘for every bishop snatched from our midst, the faith of a population is imperilled. I need not mention your colleagues Crocus and Simplicius, removed alike from their thrones and suffering a common exile’. He ends the letter

To you these miserable treaties are submitted, the pacts and agreements of two kingdoms pass through your hands. Do your best, as far as the royal condescension suffers you, to obtain for our bishops the right of ordination in those parts of Gaul now included within the Gothic boundaries, that if we cannot keep them by treaty for the Roman State, we may at least hold them by religion for the Roman Church.

This shows a change in perception from Rome as state to Roman as the body of the faithful. In Ireland at about the same time, St Patrick was telling the soldiers of the king of Strathclyde ‘you are not Romans but demons’, when they were never politically Romans in the first place.

Sidonius adds a comment about the successes of Euric:

I must confess that formidable as the mighty Goth may be, I dread him less as the assailant of our walls than as the subverter of our Christian laws. They say that the mere mention of the name of Catholic so embitters his countenance and heart that one might take him for the chief priest of his Arian sect rather than for the monarch of his nation. Omnipotent in arms, keen-witted, and in the full vigour of life, he yet makes this single mistake – he attributes his success in his designs and enterprises to the orthodoxy of his belief, whereas the real cause lies in mere earthly fortune.

The thinking behind this comment is that of Orosius: the victories of the enemy cannot be because God favours them, but because of simple numbers and main force. It should be noted that Arians called themselves Catholics; Sidonius is engaging in a little rhetoric here.

In a letter (Ep. 7.1, dated 474) to Mamertus, bishop of Vienne, Sidonius refers to

earthquake, shattering the outer palace walls with frequent shocks; now fire, piling mounds of glowing ash upon proud houses fallen in ruin; now, amazing spectacle! wild deer grown ominously tame, making their lairs in the very forum. You saw the city being emptied of its inhabitants, rich and poor taking to flight.

The earthquake of September 470 is recorded by Gregory of Tours, quoting the now lost Chronicle of Angers (Historiae 2.18,19). Mamertus invented Church Rogations, still practised today; by doing so, he encouraged the panicked people of Vienne to return to the city. The bishop remaining in his city seems to have been crucial to that city’s survival. If a bishop left it and settled his see elsewhere, the former see tended to collapse and the latter to survive. In addition, where no replacement bishop could be appointed after a bishop died or was exiled, there were sometimes too few bishops left to ordain another, something which Sidonius alludes to in his letter (Ep.7.5, dated 472) to Agroeclus, bishop of Sens, a famous grammarian, where he says ‘Clermont is the last of all the cities in Aquitanica Prima which the fortune of war has left to Rome; the number of provincial bishops is therefore inadequate to the election of a new prelate at Bourges, unless we have the support of the metropolitans’.

Sidonius ends Letter 7.7 with unerring bitterness:

I ask your pardon for telling you hard truths; my distress must take all colour of abuse from what I say. You think too little of the general good; when you meet in council, you are less concerned to relieve public perils than to advance private fortunes. By the long repetition of such acts you begin to be regarded as the last instead of the first among your fellow provincials.
But how long are these feats of yours to last? Our ancestors will cease to glory in the name of Rome if they have no longer descendants to bear their memory. Oh, break this infamous peace at any cost; there are pretexts enough to your hand. We are ready, if needs must, to continue the struggle and to undergo more sieges and starvations. But if we are to be betrayed, we whom force failed to conquer, we shall know beyond a doubt that a barbarous and cowardly transaction was inspired by you. … The other conquered regions have only servitude to expect; Auvergne must prepare for punishment. If you can hold out no help in our extremity, seek to obtain of Heaven by your unceasing prayers that though our liberty be doomed, our race at least may live. Provide land for the exile, prepare a ransom for the captive, make provision for the emigrant. If our own walls must offer an open breach to the enemy, let yours be never shut against your friends.

That the Auvergne was singled out for punishment does bring to mind the famous practice of the pharmakos of Marseille, where someone was singled out as a scapegoat for all society’s ills, kept apart and eventually killed. Letter 7.7 was written to Graecus of Marseille, a bishop who must have been aware of the ancient practice, and I think Sidonius is hinting at it to make Graecus squirm.

We are beginning to see a picture of former imperial officials starting to become rulers of new semi-autonomous states: Syagrius in what became Neustria, Julius Nepos in Dalmatia, Theodoric in Acquitaine, Childeric, father of Clovis, in Belgica Secunda, under the guidance of St Remigius (and portrayed in Roman uniform on his seal ring) and Sidonius in the Auvergne. As the former urban prefect of Rome, Sidonius became de facto the ruler of the Auvergne.

We should end as Sidonius ended Book 7 of his letters (Ep.7.18 to Constantius of Lyon, the author of the Vita of St Germanus of Auxerre, dated 479):

while Christ is my defender I will never suffer my judgement to be enslaved; I know as well as any one that with regard to this side of my character there are two opinions: the timid call me rash, the resolute a lover of freedom; I myself strongly feel that the man who has to hide his real opinions cuts a very abject figure.

  

The Altar of Victory and Religious Conflict in the Fourth Century

There was nothing inevitable about the triumph of Christianity. The short reign of Julian ‘the Apostate’ in AD359-63 may have been ended by his assassination in the midst of battle at the hands of Christians, as they later claimed. Had he lived, paganism, then known as Hellenism, might have survived better. Julian wanted religious freedom and stopped using taxpayers’ money to build Christian churches.

A later and neglected emperor also proposed religious freedom. He was Eugenius, who is called a usurper in Roman histories. However, he was appointed perfectly regularly by the Roman Senate as Western Emperor from 22 August 392 to 6 September 394, when he was murdered after losing the Battle of the River Frigidus to Theodosius.

 Although he was himself a Christian, Eugenius recognised the traditional Roman beliefs and rededicated the Temple of Venus and Rome, restored the Altar of Victory within the Curia (the Senate building, still standing and now a church), a source of contention and held by many pagans to be a deliberate provocation. The arrival of Eugenius at the imperial palace in Milan caused St Ambrose to leave his see. Eugenius also fired most of the senior imperial officers including the praetorian prefect of Italy and the urban prefect of Rome. Although he relied on the Frankish army commander Arbogast, he was not ruled by him (unlike Honorius, utterly dependent on Stilicho from AD395 to 407). This picture of him used for his coins shows him bearded, like Julian, and not shaven like Constantine and the other emperors whom Julian called ‘beard haters’ (they took too much care in their appearance, unlike the Hellenes, according to Julian in his book Misapogon, the Beard Hater).

Emperor Eugenius, Bearded

There was therefore a window of opportunity from the reign of Julian to that of Eugenius for the older religion to hold its own. Clearly the religion of the emperor was a crucial factor, as elite Romans could feel the benefits of imperial favour if they accepted certain religious beliefs. Christianity was itself riven by conflict between Catholic and Arian factions, which held rival Church Councils to condemn each other. This reached a head when the Christian philosopher Priscillian was executed by the Western Emperor Maximus in Trier in AD385 on trumped-up charges of sorcery: Christians had begun to murder each other. Even St Ambrose and St Martin of Tours opposed this judicial murder, on the grounds that Christian rulers ought not to execute priests for doctrinal matters.

While the Christians were beginning to slaughter each other, the pagans were holding dinner parties.

A fictionalised account of one of these is the book Saturnalia by Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, probably an African, around AD390. The form of this book owes much to the classical table talk works such as the Symposium of Plato, Table Talk (Ton Hepta Sothon Symposion) of Plutarch and the Attic Nights (Noctes Atticae) of Aulus Gellius. The party was held at the house of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, who died in AD384. One person’s dinner party is someone else’s conspiracy.

Vettius was a leading figure in the late flowering of paganism in the empire. He was a politician and author, and held numerous priesthoods in the ancient colleges of Roman cults. He had to know Greek because he was a quindecimvir sacri faciundi, one of the fifteen men who were permitted to consult the Sibylline Books at times of national crisis; the books were burnt by Stilicho in 405.

Vettius and his wife Aconia Fabia Paulina lived in middle of Rome in a palace amid huge gardens, the Horti Vettiani, close to the Termini railway station, which was excavated in the late 19^th century; this is where they celebrated Saturnalia with Macrobius and friends. In the year of his death, AD384, he was urban prefect and consul-designate for 385. Although his death at the age of 69 was not abnormal, it was very convenient. The actual western consul for 385 was Arcadius, the future emperor, and the eastern consul was Bauto, a powerful Frank, whose daughter he would marry a decade later. Would it be too far-fetched to wonder whether Theodosius tried to cancel the consulship of Vettius and when he refused, had the old man bumped off? 1 January 385 was Arcadius’s eighth birthday, so maybe the consulship was a rather elaborate birthday present?

We do have a quite long dedicatory verse from Paulina, Vettius’s wife:

The splendor of my kinship granted me no greater gift than this: that I seemed fit to be your wife. For in my husband’s name, Agorius, I find my light and grace. You, created from proud seed, have shone on fatherland, on senate, and on spouse with rightness of conduct, of learning, and of mind. You won the crown of virtue in this way.    Whatever has been penned in either tongue by sages free to enter heaven’s door (whether poetry composed in expert lines, or prose that’s uttered with a looser voice), you’ve read, and left it better than you found.    But these are little things. You piously in mind’s most secret parts had hid away the mysteries you learned of sacred rites. The many-faceted numen of the gods you knew to worship; and your faithful spouse you bound to you as colleague in the rites, now sharing what you knew of gods and men.    Why speak of earthly powers, public praise, and joys men seek with sighs? You called them fleeting, counted them as small, while you won glory in the priestly garb.    The goodness of your teaching, husband, freed me from death’s lot; you took me, pure, to temples, made me servant to the gods, stood by while I was steeped in mystery. Devoted consort, you honored me with blood of bull, baptized me priestess of Cybele and Attis; readied me for Grecian Ceres’ rites; and taught me Hecate’s dark secrets three.    On your account, all praise me as devout; because you spread my name throughout the world, I, once unknown, am recognized by all. How could my husband’s spouse not win applause? Rome’s matrons look to me as paradigm, and if their sons resemble yours they think them handsome. Women and men alike now long to be upon the honor roll which you, as master, introduced of old.    Now all these things are gone, and I, your wife, am wasting in my grief. I had been blest if gods had granted me the sooner grave. But, husband, even so I’m blest: for yours I am, and was, and after death will be.

(translation made by Peter Donnelly)

Statue of a Vestal Virgin, believed a replica

The cult of Vesta remained important, and Vettius was a priest in that cult and associated with the Vestal Virgins, as was his friend, the author Symmachus. Even Christian emperors like Valentinian I and Gratian respected Vettius and allowed such things as the restoration of the Porticus of the Di Consentes in AD367, the last pagan shrine allowed in Rome; these are the classic ‘twelve Olympians’, the ‘gods we have consented to’, the set brought over from the Greek world in the fourth century BC. It may not be a coincidence that the emperor, Valentinian, was gravely ill that year and made his son Gratian co-Augustus with him in the event of his sudden death. Permission to restore the Porticus may have been conditional on pagans praying for the restored health of the emperor; in any case, it was not a good time to be making enemies.

Porticus of the Di Consentes, Rome (restored)

Vettius made an important contribution to order in Rome by settling a vicious papal dispute between a faction loyal to Ursinus and one loyal to Damasus, both of whom were ordained pope late in 366; hundreds on both sides died in major riots. Vettius, urban prefect for 367 ruled in favour of Damasus, who continued as pop until 384. Is it a coincidence that both Vettius and the pope died so closely together? Information on the dispute is found in Ammianus, Jerome and many others; an excellent modern commentary on the incident is by Maijastina Kahlos ‘Vettius Agorius Praetextatus and the Rivalry Between 
the Bishops in Rome in 366-367’ in Acta Philologica Fennica Vol. XXXI, 1997.

The murderous struggle between Ursinus and Damasus was not one of conflict between Catholics and Arians, but a straight shot for power between nobles for whom the papacy was the supreme prize: the pope couldn’t be fired by anyone, least of all the emperor. According to Jerome, Vettius joked with Damasus ‘Make me bishop of Rome, and I’ll become a Christian’.

Kahlos proposes that Vettius’ ability to solve this dispute was not because as a pagan he was outside of the struggle. However, he had the backing and confidence of the emperor; the previous urban prefect, Viventius, a Pannonian, ran away from the mobs to lie low in the suburbs, but maybe Vettius was made of sterner stuff. Ammianus refers to his virtus and common touch. It does seem, however, that Vettius was allowed to restore the Porticus of the Di Consentes in 367 by a sick emperor and with the connivance of a newly pope as a reward for choosing Damasus over Ursinus.

Emperor Valentinian II

The key incident which soured relations between Christians and Hellenes in the late fourth century, and which led to much damage to the empire, was the Altar of Victory Crisis. This was a gold statue placed in the Senate House in 29BC by Augustus to mark the Battle of Actium; it carried an ancient figure of Nike captured in 272BC. Constantius II had it removed in AD357, but it was restored after a couple of years by Julian, then removed again by order of Gratian in 382; after his death in battle in 383, Symmachus and Vettius wrote to Valentinian II in 384 for it to be restored, but this was denied because of the influence of Ambrose of Milan, as was a further petition to Theodosius in 391. Eugenius restored it in 392-4, and it was again removed in 394 or later by Theodosius or Stilicho and is never heard of again. Given the aggressive anti-Hellene attitudes of both men and their bishops, it was probably melted down for its gold and jewels.

Augustan coin showing gold statue of the Altar of Victory

After the death of Vettius, the head of the Vestals, Coelia Concordia, raised a statue to him at the Temple of Vesta. She turned out to be the final Chief Vestal, as her beliefs were suppressed in 391 on the orders of Theodosius, occupying Rome after the defeat of Maximus in 388, and the temple and its supporting building were seized in 394 and turned over to house more of Rome’s bloated quasi-military civil service. The fate of the second temple at Alba Longa is unknown.

In turn, Vettius’ widow, Paulina, raised a statue in honour of Coelia Concordia, the base of which has been found in excavations of the couple’s house. Coelia seems to have lived on for many years.

Even amongst the Christian and other non-classical believers in Rome, the idea developed that because Rome had deserted the gods, the gods had deserted Rome. Classical Roman public religion had never been theological, but rather transactional. The Latin tag is Do Ut Des, I (the supplicant) give so that thou (the god) mayst give. Acts of piety included restoring and even building new temples.

This sentiment of desertion led to the revision of history to downplay Rome’s increasing weakness and dependence on peripheral and adversarial people, such as the Goths, Franks, Sarmatians and Arabs, seen in Orosius’ revisionist Septem Historiae Adversus Paganos, issued shortly after that. From the reign of Valens onward, it became necessary for the emperor to be backed by a warlord, who would hold a series of Roman titles and dignities, but who would work outside the traditional Roman systems.

Bauto, mentioned above, is a good example of early success. He was a Frank, and rose to be consul in AD385. His son was Arbogast, the power behind the throne of Valentinian II and Eugenius. Theodosius in AD394 defeated Arbogast, who is believed to have committed suicide shortly after; neither of them was to see Bauto’s daughter Eudoxia marry Theodosius’s son Arcadius in May 395 and become the de factor ruler of the eastern empire and mother to joint rulers Theodosius II and Aelia Pulcheria, his sister. Bauto was a Frank and a Catholic, which contradicts the idea that the Franks were all pagans.

Another powerful figure was Victor, a Romanised Sarmatian. The Sarmatians were an Iranian people living in what is now Ukraine. They alternated between being Roman allies and Roman adversaries, as so many people did, and served as far west as Britain as armoured cavalry, both men and horses wearing chainmail, as can be seen on the Arch of Trajan in this picture.

Sarmatians in Chainmail, Arch of Titus

 Victor served Rome loyally and rose to become Consul in AD369. He married the daughter of Arab queen Mavia (Mawiyaa), someone who deserves to be better known. Her story is quite similar to that of the famous Zenobia of Palmyra a century earlier in that she took over in AD375 from her husband Al-Hawari as ruler of the Tanukh, an Arab people who had come to dominate Syria and Palestine.

The Tanukh were strongly Christian and looked to Constantinople to provide them with bishops. However Valens, with his usual ability to make the wrong decision, was an Arian and they were Catholics, and he sent them an Arian bishop, whom they rejected. Mavia met a monk called Moses, whom she raised to be the bishop, probably of Aleppo. Commanding her own armies, she swept across Roman Arabia, Syria, Palestine and threatened Egypt, easily beating the Romans.

The Romans had to sue for peace, which she accepted on her own terms: formal recognition of Moses as a Catholic bishop. She then married her daughter Chasidat to the imperial commander Victor. Tanukh cavalry forces then supported Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in AD378, which of course the Romans and Arabs together lost to the Visigoths. Sidelined by the new emperor, Theodosius, the Tanukh eventually rebelled again in AD383; Mavia outlived them all, dying in Anasartha (Khanasir) a town east of Aleppo in AD425, having ruled her tribal alliance for fifty years.

Victor was powerful enough within the eastern empire to confront his emperor, Valens, about the latter’s Arianism and antagonism of the Goths. He tried in vain to have Valens wait until western imperial forces could arrive at Adrianople, but was ignored, and tried to rescue Valens from the field of battle and successfully enabled his own troops to emerge unscathed. He seems also to have died in AD383.

We seem to be finding a lot of people dying in 383-4 and again in 393-4. All of them seem to be connected with the Arian-Catholic and Catholic-Hellene disputes, added to which seem to be the malign influence of the emperor Theodosius I, adding imperial politics to Christian hatred to ignite fear and hatred of Hellenes.

Emperor Theodosius I, Unbearded

In the late fourth century, we have a curious mix where orthodox Catholic Christian barbarians – Franks, Arabs and Sarmatians from the Ukraine – were trying to correct doctrinal disputes between heterodox Christian emperors, while wise and educated followers of traditional Roman religion were brokering peace between Christian mobs and were rewarded with the right to co-exist. It is possible to see that that they might have survived and through their wisdom prevented the terminal stage of the western empire from happening.