The Ostrogoths Enter the Western Empire.
By J.
In another place we shall have to give in full the history of Attila; here we can only give that portion which is essential to the understanding of the establishment of the independence of the Ostrogoths. Suffice it therefore, to say, in this place, that before the raid into Gaul, Attila had demanded the hand of the Princess Honoria—the daughter of Placidia, sister to Valentinian III.—and his offer was rejected. The next year after the battle of Châlons he renewed his demand, and it being again rejected, he, A. D. 452, again took the field; passed the Alps; invaded Italy, ravaging the country as he went; took possession of the royal palace of Milan; and “declared his resolution of carrying his victorious arms to the gates of Rome.” Valentinian III. had fled to Rome, and it was there decided by him, the Senate, and the people, to send a “solemn and suppliant embassy,” headed by Pope Leo the Great, to deprecate the wrath of Attila. “The barbarian monarch listened with favorable, and even respectful attention; and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by the immense ransom, or dowry, of the Princess Honoria.” “Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return more dreadful, and more implacable, if his bride, the Princess Honoria, were not delivered to his ambassadors within the term stipulated by the treaty. Yet, in the meanwhile, Attila relieved his tender anxiety, by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his innumerable wives. Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp and festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch, oppressed with wine and sleep, retired at a late hour, from the banquet to the nuptial bed. His attendants continued to respect his pleasures, or his repose, the greatest part of the ensuing day, till the unusual silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and after attempting to awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside, hiding her face with her veil, and lamenting her own danger as well as the death [A. D. 453] of the king, who had expired during the night. An artery had suddenly burst; and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated by a torrent of blood, which, instead of finding a passage through the nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach.” “The revolution which subverted the empire of the Huns, established the fame of Attila, whose genius alone had sustained the huge and disjointed fabric. After his death, the boldest chieftains aspired to the rank of kings; the most powerful kings refused to acknowledge a superior; and the numerous sons, whom so many various mothers bore to the deceased monarch, divided and disputed, like a private inheritance, the sovereign command of the nations of Germany and Scythia. The bold Ardaric felt and resented the disgrace of this servile partition; and his subjects, the warlike Gepidæ, with the Ostrogoths, under the conduct of three valiant brothers, encouraged their allies to vindicate the rights of freedom and royalty. In a bloody and decisive conflict on the banks of the river Netad, in Pannonia, the lance of the Gepidæ, the sword of the Goths, the arrows of the Huns, the Suevie infantry, the light arms of the Heruli, and the heavy weapons of the Alani, encountered or supported each other; and the victory of Ardaric was accompanied with the slaughter of thirty thousand of his enemies. “Ellac, the eldest son of Attila, lost his life and crown in the memorable battle of Netad; his early valor had raised him to the throne of the Acatzires, a Scythian people, whom he subdued; and his father, who loved the superior merit, would have envied the death of Ellac. His brother Dengisich, with an army of Huns, still formidable in their flight and ruin, maintained his ground above fifteen years on the banks of the Danube. The palace of Attila, with the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Euxine, became the seat of a new power, which was erected by Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ. “The Pannonian conquests from Vienna to Sirmium, were occupied by the Ostrogoths; and the settlements of the tribes, who had so bravely asserted their native freedom, were irregularly distributed, according to the measure of their respective strength.”—Id. chap. 35, par. 15, 16.” From their Pannonian possessions the Ostrogoths first exert and enlarge their power at the expense of the Eastern Empire; afterwards, in A. D. 488, they turn from that entirely, and enlarge their dominions toward the West. “When the Hunnish Empire broke in pieces on the death of Attila [A. D. 453], the East-Goths recovered their full independence. They now entered into relations with the Empire, and settled on lands in Pannonia. During the greater part of the latter half of the fifth century, the East-Goths play in Southeastern Europe nearly the same part which the West-Goths played [there] in the century before. They were seen going to and fro, in every conceivable relation of friendship and enmity with the Eastern Roman power, till, just as the West-Goths had done before them, they pass from the East to the West.”—Encyclopedia Britannica, article Goths, par. 14. It was under the reign of the great Theodoric that the Ostrogothic power was extended into the West; and of the course of events from the establishment of their independence, up to his accession to the Gothic throne, A. D. 475, we read as follows:— “Theodoric the Ostrogoth, the fourteenth in lineal descent of the royal line of the Amali, was born in the neighborhood of Vienna [A. D. 455] two years after the death of Attila. A recent victory had restored the independence of the Ostrogoths; and the three brothers, Walamir, Theodemir, and Widimir, who ruled that warlike nation with united counsels, had separately pitched their habitations in the fertile though desolate province of Pannonia. The Huns still threatened their revolted subjects, but their hasty attack was repelled by the single forces of Walamir, and the news of his victory reached the distant camp of his brother in the same auspicious moment that the favorite concubine of Theodemir was delivered of a son and heir. In the eighth year of his age, Theodoric was reluctantly yielded by his father to the public interest, as the pledge of the alliance which Leo, emperor of the East, had consented to purchase by an annual subsidy of three hundred pounds of gold. The royal hostage was educated at Constantinople with care and tenderness. His body was formed to all the exercises of war, his mind was expanded by the habits of liberal conversation; he frequented the schools of the most skillful masters; but he disdained or neglected the arts of Greece; and so ignorant did he always remain of the first elements of science, that a rude mark was contrived to represent the signature of the illiterate king of Italy.—The four first letters of his name (ΘΣΥΔ) were inscribed on a gold plate, and when it was fixed on the paper, the king drew his pen through the intervals.—[Note.] As soon as he had attained the age of eighteen, he was restored to the wishes of the Ostrogoths, whom the emperor aspired to gain by liberality and confidence. “Walamir had fallen in battle; the youngest of the brothers, Widimir, had led away into Italy and Gaul an army of barbarians, and the whole nation acknowledged [A. D. 455–475] for their king the father of Theodoric. His ferocious subjects admired the strength and stature of their young prince; and he soon convinced them that he had not degenerated from the valor of his ancestors. At the head of six thousand volunteers, he secretly left the camp in quest of adventures, descended the Danube as far as Singidunum, or Belgrade, and soon returned to his father with the spoils of a Sarmatian king whom he had vanquished and slain. Such triumphs, however, were productive only of fame, and the invincible Ostrogoths were reduced to extreme distress by the want of clothing and food. They unanimously resolved to desert their Pannonian encampments, and boldly to advance into the warm and wealthy neighborhood of the Byzantine court, which already maintained in pride and luxury so many bands of confederate Goths. After proving, by some acts of hostility that they could be dangerous, or at least troublesome enemies, the Ostrogoths sold at a high price their reconciliation and fidelity, accepted a donative of lands and money, and were intrusted with the defense of the Lower Danube, under the command of Theodoric, who succeeded after his father’s death, to the hereditary throne of the Amali.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 39, par. 2. Although Gibbon says they “resolved to desert their Pannonian encampments,” it must not be understood that this is spoken of the whole nation, nor that these renounced either their claim or their possessions there; because the history that follows as we shall see later, clearly shows that the Ostrogoths dwelt there and that their superior power was exercised and gratefully acknowledged over all Pannonia, during the whole fifty-one-years’ reign of Theodoric. But before following the Ostrogoths further, we must find the remaining ones of the ten kingdoms. J.