The Barbarians Who Sacked Rome Came Into

the Empire as Refugees

http://gatesofvienna.net/2016/11/thebarbarians-who-sacked-rome-came-into-theempire-as-refugees/
Posted on November 30, 2016 by Baron Bodissey

In his latest essay, Emmet Scott explores the parallels between the barbarian
invasions of Rome in the 4th century A.D. with the migrant invasions of Europe
in the 21st century.

The Barbarians Who Sacked Rome Came Into the Empire as Refugees

by Emmet Scott
Over the past century many commentators have remarked on the parallels
between the modern West and ancient Rome in its period of decadence and
decline. The most influential proponent of the idea, perhaps, has been Oswald
Spengler, whose Decline of the West is now widely viewed as a classic of
conservative thought. As might be imagined, progressives have consistently
sneered at the idea, but, then again, they would scarcely be progressives if they
didnt. One is reminded of the Chinese saying: When a fool sees the Tao [Truth]
he laughs. If he did not laugh it would not be the Tao.
The parallels between decadent Rome and the modern West are actually there.
And they are uncanny, and they are becoming more numerous by the day.
In 410 A.D. the walls of Rome were breached and the city plundered by a
barbarian army under the leadership of Alaric the Goth. This was the first time
since the Gallic sack of the city around 390 B.C. that the imperial metropolis had
been entered by a hostile enemy. The fall of Rome shocked the world at the
time, but what is not generally known nowadays is that the Gothic army that
carried out the atrocity had entered the Empire thirty years earlier as refugees.
Until the second half of the fourth century the Goths had inhabited a vast
swathe of territory taking what now comprises Romania as well as the Ukraine.
In 375, however, they were attacked by the Huns, a tribe of nomad warriors
from central Asia who had been moving steadily westwards during the preceding
century and a half. In the ensuing war the Goths suffered a crushing defeat and
large numbers of them fled westwards towards the Roman Empire. By the
summer of 376 an enormous host of Goths, generally estimated at around
100,000, arrived at the River Danube and pleaded with the Roman authorities to
be allowed into the Empire.
The Eastern Emperor Valens, at that moment stationed in Antioch, eventually
gave permission for the Therving tribe, which comprised about half the total
number of Gothic refugees, to be ferried across the river. For at least two
centuries prior to this the Romans had actively recruited barbarians into the
army (necessary because of Romes abysmally low birth-rate) and Valens
reasoned that the Goths would provide a valuable pool of new and cheap
recruits. The operation to ferry these people across the Danube was an
enormous and costly one and took several weeks to complete and, as Ammianus
Marcellinus sarcastically comments, diligent care was taken that no future
destroyer of the Roman state should be left behind, even if he were smitten by a
fatal disease.
Unsurprisingly, within a few weeks of their entry into the Empire, the first
clashes with the Roman authorities occurred, and by the end of the summer the
Goths were at war with Rome. After several military disasters, the Emperor
Valens made a hasty return to Constantinople to personally take charge of the
campaign, and was killed in battle at Adrianople in 378 just two years after he
had sanctioned the mass immigration.

But worse was to come. A decade and a half of uneasy peace was terminated in
395 by a renewed Gothic war, this time under the leadership of Alaric.
Commanding an enormous host of warriors (who were in fact officially soldiers in
the Roman army) Alaric moved south from Thrace into Greece, a land which he
proceeded to devastate. City after city was taken, its male population
massacred, its female population raped and sold into slavery, and its wealth
plundered. Finally, in 396 the Western Empire bestirred itself and its greatest
general Stilicho was dispatched with a sizeable force to the relief of Hellas. After
a lengthy game of cat and mouse around the Peloponnesian Peninsula the Goths
were trapped by the superior science and tactics of the Roman general.
Unfortunately, however, Stilicho did not prosecute the siege to its conclusion
and the Goths effected a daring escape and made their way to Epirus.
At this moment a Greek political philosopher named Synesius published a
widely-discussed treatise on the present emergency and the measures that
needed to be taken. He exhorted the emperor to, revive the courage of his
subjects by the example of manly virtue; to banish luxury from the court and
from the camp; to substitute, in the place of barbarian mercenaries, an army of
men in the defence of their laws and of their property to rouse the indolent
citizen from his dream of pleasure. At the head of such troops who might
deserve the name, and would display the spirit, of Romans, he [encouraged the
emperor] never to lay down his arms till he had chased them [the barbarians]
far away into the solitudes of Scythia, or had reduced them to the state of
ignominious servitude In the words of Gibbon, The court of [Emperor]
Arcadius indulged the zeal, applauded the eloquence, and neglected the advice
of Synesius. Instead of exile in the solitudes of Scythia, Alaric was actually
promoted to the rank of master-general of the province of Eastern Illyricum, and
the Roman provincials, remarks Gibbon, were justly indignant that the ruin of
Greece and Epirus should be so liberally rewarded.
Does all of this sound eerily familiar? Yet even worse was to come; for the
patriot who had saved Greece from Alaric, the general Stilicho, was himself only
a decade later denounced by the Roman ruling class and murdered, along with
his entire family. This was after Stilicho had saved Italy from a second attack by
Alaric, as well as from another barbarian host led by one Rhadagastus which had
crossed the Alps and devastated the Po Valley.
What kind of society brings in barbarians who cannot be assimilated in order to
replace the children it refused to have; which excuses and rewards the horrific
crimes of those barbarians; and which punishes patriots who try to stop the
depredations of the said barbarians?

Previous posts by Emmet Scott:

201
6

Jul

13 The Myth of the Primeval Matriarchy

Aug
Sep

1
The Sunni-Shia Divide and Islams Puzzling Origins
16 The Decline and Fall of the Catholic West
The African Slave Trade: The Islamic Connection
Oct 8
This entry was posted in Europe, History, Immigration, Middle East by Baron Bodissey.
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