Barbarization?

[Nathan Ross]

If indeed most soldiers of the army are supposed to be non-Roman volunteers... how on earth do we get the problem that Alaric and his troops were still outside of the regular army...?

I suspect that these Goths were different to those Goths...!

We tend to think of 'Goths' or whatever as one undifferentiated mass, but I would think the sons of men originally settled as laeti or foederati in Pannonia in the 380s, for example, and subsequently enlisted into the regular army would see themselves as quite distinct from newcomers from other places.

I can't tell from the sources if those troops were all non-Roman, or all wore red ribbons.. how did they tell one family from another? ... my feeling when reading this is that the purge was directed at non-Roman troops, and not a certain bband of Goths?

I believe the story of this event in AD408 comes solely from Olympiodorus, who I haven't read, but Zosimus's version (based heavily upon his) suggests that Sarus was in command of a large body of Gothic foederati based around Ravenna, while the regular field army was based at Ticinum. The wives and families of these foederati were billeted in Roman cities - either Ravenna or elsewhere - perhaps as a sort of insurance policy?

When news of the mutiny at Ticinum arrived, and not knowing whether Honorius was alive or dead, Stilicho "engaged the cities, in which were any women or children belonging to the Barbarians, not to afford reception to any of the Barbarians if they should come to them" - presumably so the insurance policy would remain in force and the foederati would not go on the rampage!

However, following the death of Stilicho, "The soldiers who were in the city... fell upon all the women and children in the city, who belonged to the Barbarians. Having, as by a preconcerted signal, destroyed every individual of them, they plundered them of all they possessed. When this was known to the relations of those who were murdered, they assembled together from all quarters. Being highly incensed against the Romans ... they all resolved to join with Alaric, and to assist him in a war against Rome. Having therefore collected to the number of thirty thousand men, they fixed themselves in whatever place they pleased."

It appears from this that it was only the Gothic women and children in Ravenna itself that were killed, but that it was indeed Roman troops who killed them: whoever the 'soldiers' in the city might have been (scholae, perhaps, or city militia, or even Hunnic mercenaries?). It's also unclear whether this was a deliberate act of policy, or just a spontaneous outbreak of violence and robbery. The field army troops at Ticinum were not involved though.

The 30,000 Gothic foederati themselves, however, who were presumably encamped in various places nearby, were not themselves attacked or massacred, but instead took off to join Alaric.

a hybrid military culture - how would one make that visible anyway?

Are there not plentiful studies - often citing Ellen Swift, among others - of the apparent cultural cross-pollination between Roman and Barbarian from the later 4th century onwards, particularly in the military but also in the civilian sphere? I can't be certain myself, as it's a fairly new field for me, and currents of academic opinion seem to flow rapidly back and forth, and often at cross purposes!

But we seem to have evidence of later Roman military styles appearing in barbarian contexts (east of the Rhine, for example), or in civilian contexts, or of women being buried with what appear to be 'military' belt fittings - all suggesting that the borders distinguishing a 'Roman soldier' from a 'barbarian warrior' (or 'foederati soldier'), or 'Germanic chief' (or even 'Germanic chief's wife'!) were a lot less certain than we might like, and determining who might have been occupying this or that fort or settlement is next to impossible without inscriptional or literary evidence, perhaps.

Constantine III and/or the troops present in NE Gaul clearly number enough to make plundering all the cities of Gaul unattractive for the invaders

I'm not sure - we'd still have to ask why Mainz was apparently in the hands of the Burgundii and Alans in AD411... We could be looking at a steady flow of successive barbarian groups through an apparently rather porous border from c.405 onwards, with whatever Roman authorities that remained struggling to make agreeements with them each in turn.

Perhaps it was the collapse of Roman authority in the province that caused these outside groups to come in, rather than some massive invasion that caused the collapse of authority? But this is getting into the territory of one of those notorious academic disputes, I know!

Constantine III, I would think, had only the troops he had brought with him from Britain, supported by foedarati (so clearly not all the invaders headed off to the Pyrennes). If we can believe Orosius, he appears to have sent the remains of the 'mutinous soldiers of Gaul' to Spain. I doubt there were enough remaining troops in Gaul before his arrival to have much effect on the movements of the invaders in 406-411.

Roman forces are still present in the provinces and indeed also in Gaul. Procopius wrote about them... fable or real?

What Procopius might have meant by a 'Roman unit' is anybody's guess. My guess would be that this might have been one of the old units brought over by Constantine III from Britain still maintaining itself after all that time... but who knows?

*about the Pannonian limes - apparently Carnuntum might have been destroyed by an earthquake in c.350, which would explain why Ammianus thought it was 'deserted and in ruins'! But Vindobona has a destruction layer dated by coin hoard to c.395, and no subsequent construction either there or at other sites (this is from Mocsy), so it looks like the Danube frontier in Pannonia did not last much beyond c.400.*