166- As Long As She's Nice To Look At

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode one sixty six, As Long as She's Nice to Look At. Last time, we left off with the starving and desperate goths agreeing to become vassals of the Roman Empire. In exchange for 600,000 bushels of wheat and the release of the emperor's sister Galla Placidia, and that's Galla, not Gallia. Thanks to listener Crispin for catching my random vowel insertion. The Goths agreed to settle where the Emperor told them to settle and fight who the Emperor told them to fight. And by the emperor, I of course mean the de facto emperor Constantius the third, who was essentially running the Western Empire at this point in history. Indeed, Constantius' power and prestige will eventually reach such great heights that we will be able to drop the de facto from his title, as Honorius will invite the general to join him in the Imperial College as co emperor of the Western Empire. But we'll get to that in a second. The land the Romans had dangled out in front of the Goths was the Gallic region of Aquitaine, just North of the Pyrenees along the Atlantic Coast. The price for this new homeland would be the destruction of the Vandals and Alans, who still roam free in Hispania. This price is instructive about the political, military, and demographic realities of the Western Empire in the fifth century. You'll note that the major problem in Hispania is not that barbarian elements had settled down and were drawing taxes and supplies from the local communities. No. The real problem was that they were doing it without having signed some kind of treaty with Ravenna. Over in Gaul, for example, a peace had set in not because the barbarian invaders had been sent running back across the Rhine. Peace had set in because those barbarian invaders had made deals with the emperor that allowed them to stay. Usually, those deals were of the land for soldiers variety, but the details varied from tribe to tribe. So the Franks, as you know, already control most of Northeast Gaul. The Goths are about to control a major chunk of Southwest Gaul. And in between, barbarian groups large and small were settling into their new homes West Of The Rhine. So demographically, the provinces of the Western Empire were undergoing a fairly major transformation. The key was that this transformation was taking place under the official auspices of the imperial government, which is to say that that quid pro quo was in place, land for the barbarians, soldiers for the empire. In Hispania, no such quid pro quo existed. Well, that's not entirely accurate. Such a quid pro quo had existed, but the deal had been struck with Maximus and Gorontius rather than Honorius and Constantius. So Ravenna considered the Alans and Vandals to be illegal squatters. And of course, it's not like the Alans and Vandals were helping their cause by diligently passing along taxes. …