Aetius, ‘The Last of the Romans’

Honorius had died in 423. The western army elevated one John to succeed him but the eastern emperor, Theodosius II, disapproved and installed a 6-year-old, Valen-tinian III, as his choice. In effect power was in the hands of Valentinian’s mother, Galla Placidia, the granddaughter of Valentinian I. Galla Placidia had had a most unsettled life. Taken off by the Visigoths as a hostage after the sack of Rome, she had married the Visigothic leader, Athaulf. Returned to the Romans after his death, she then married Constantius, Honorius’ new strong man. The young Valentinian was the result. His father had died in 421 and Galla Placidia had taken refuge in Constantinople. It was from there that she was restored to Italy. She was a strong woman and for ten years she held her own against her army officers. In 433, however, she was outmanoeuvred by her magister militum, Aetius, who now became the dominant figure in the western empire and remained so for the next twenty years.

Aetius had spent some years of his youth as a hostage with the Huns but he had managed to build such good relationships with his captors that he was able to raise his own armies from them. It was these forces he used in his attempts to defend the empire. Aetius’ focus remained a narrow one. He made no attempt to defend or regain Africa, Spain, or Britain and in 442 he acquiesced in a treaty between the emperor and Gaiseric in which Valentinian’s daughter Eudocia was to marry Gaiseric’s son Huneric. His immediate concern was to sustain the imperial presence in Gaul. By this time both the Visigoths and the Burgundians were well established there and Aetius felt it crucial to exercise more effective control over them. He had some success in containing the Visigoths and one of the finds in the Roman Forum has been the pedestal of a statue dedicated to him by a grateful senate in 439 that praises him for ‘having returned Gaul to the Roman empire’. In 443 he also crushed the Burgundians and set them up as a third federate kingdom around Lake Geneva (doubtless hoping that they would be more controllable there than in the north).

Aetius’ success depended on a constant supply of Hunnic mercenaries drawn from a society that had remained small scale and decentralized. However, in the 430s the Huns seem to have undergone the same sort of transformation as the Goths had in the 380s with consolidation under a central leader. By 445 this was one Attila. Under Attila’s leadership the Huns took a more aggressive attitude towards the empire. They now started raiding the Balkans and the eastern emperor Theodosius had to pay them subsidies to desist. When Theodosius died in 450, however, the new emperor in the east, Marcian, refused to continue the subsidies and the Huns turned their attentions to Gaul.

The attacks meant the total collapse of Aetius’ strategy. The main source of his troops was being turned against him and concentrated on the area he was most determined to preserve within the empire. He had no option but to call on his former enemies, the Visigoths and Burgundians, to join with other German tribes in repulsing the Huns. This they did successfully at the Battle of Catalaunian Plains (west of Troyes in Champagne) in 451 after which Attila retreated. In the following year, however, he was back raiding Italy. Significantly there was little resistance. Aquileia was one of the provincial capitals sacked, but a failure of supplies appears to have dissuaded Attila from attacking Rome. (An alternative version has the pope Leo I, aided by the miraculous presence of St Peter, turning Attila back from the city.) The empire seemed at his mercy when, fortuitously, he died in 453 and his forces disintegrated.

The strategy of Aetius was now thoroughly discredited. He had not even been able to defend Italy. His enemies now saw their opportunity. Aetius was summoned to the emperor’s presence in Ravenna and executed, possibly by Valentinian himself. Six months later some officers loyal to Aetius had their revenge and struck down Valentinian. His death brought to an end the dynasty founded by Valentinian I ninety years before.