The heaviest financial burden on the state was that of defence, as much as 75 per cent of the total budget in times of war. The empire remained under continuous military threat. While Constantinople itself was virtually impregnable, the Danube
Provinces to the west were not and were ravaged by a succession of Goths, Huns, and, later, Bulgars, Avars, and Slavs. Yet, unlike in the west, the defence policy of the eastern empire never became dictated by outsiders. The people of Constantinople made the point in 400 when they launched a successful uprising against the city garrison, which was under the command of a Goth, Gainas, who appears to have had the ambition to become an eastern Stilicho. Gainas was killed. The lesson was learnt and no emperor allowed a military strong man to take his place. The court of the eastern empire remained civilian rather than military in temper and mixed diplomacy with military confrontation.
Perhaps, as a result, the strategy of dealing with the barbarians was often muddled and inconsistent. An agreement was made with the Visigoth Alaric (397) but it was then repudiated. Similarly Attila’s Huns were bought off by Theodosius II (to the tune of 6,000 pounds of gold in 443) but on Theodosius’ death Marcian refused to continue paying. The eastern empire was fortunate in that in both cases the barbarians then headed to the west, adding to the overwhelming pressures on that part of the empire (see earlier, p. 634). There was little the east was able to offer the west in support. The one major attempt at intervention, the invasion of Africa in 468, was a disastrous failure. When Odoacer deposed the last of the western emperors in 476 he was allowed to survive through default. His overthrow at the hands of Theodoric the Ostrogoth was not as a result of the eastern empire’s strength but, instead, its weakness in not being able to remove Theodoric from its own territory in any other way than granting him a free rein in Italy (see above p. 639).
The empire also faced a continuing threat from the east. The Persian Sasanian empire remained powerful and prided itself on its cultural superiority over the Romans. (It saw the Roman empire as the moon in comparison to itself as the sun.) Neither side was now set on the conquest of the other but tensions persisted. There was continuous dispute over the definition of the borders between the empires in Mesopotamia. Further north, Armenia, traditionally a buffer state, also proved a catalyst for mistrust. Armenia had been Christian since the early fourth century and was increasingly orientated towards the west. The Persians, resentful that Armenia’s autonomy was being compromised, tried in return to impose their own cultural and religious values.
The Persians were also, like the Romans, under intense pressure from the north from nomadic peoples, notably the Huns. This made Lazica, on the eastern edge of the Black Sea, another cockpit of tension. The Persians feared that if they did not control the area nomads would use its passes to attack the fertile lands along the Caspian Sea. The Romans, in their turn, feared the Persians would use the passes to penetrate into the Black Sea, giving them the opportunity of threatening Constantinople. There were border raids, threats, and attempts to buy influence over the border tribes by both sides that kept ancient suspicions alive. Nevertheless the relative lack of major conflict did allow the eastern provinces of the empire some peace and, as has been seen, some prosperity in the fifth and sixth centuries.
World History
