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[Flavivs Aetivs]

Foederati of Anthemius, 468 AD



These men are federate soldiers hired for the Africa Campaign of 468. By this era in Roman History, the Western Roman Army was no more; it had died with Aetius in 454. Therefore the generals of the time (Ricimer, Majoran, Orestes, etc) had to rely entirely on federate mercenaries. An excellent example is of Sidonius Apollinaris' account of how they hired mercenary troops to defend Augustonemetum (Clermont-Ferrard) against the Visigoths. However the loyalty of these troops did not lie with Rome, and the fact that their commanders were Barbarian made them susceptible to revolt. Many emperors of this era met their deaths at the hands of these men, and ultimately it was the Foederati who brought down the Western Empire in 476.

These particular men are equipped with a banded helmet and arming cap, and the man on the right possesses a hood or "Cucullus." The man on the left is armed with an Angon and a germanic Type-1 Sword, and the man on the right owns only a contus, as it is likely that is all he could afford. Both have Belts of Gallic origin, and wear simple boots. Although they are barbarian, they are trained and fight in a style similar to the old Western Field Army, which is no longer around to combat the invaders.

In the background sails a Triaconter of the Eastern Roman Empire, which continued to maintain a fleet. It is an intermediary warship between the Liburna of the Republic and the Dromon of Byzantium, utilizing new technology like skeleton-first construction, a spur instead of the dated ram, and it possesses triangular sails. In reality the Empire did not have any warships larger than a monoreme, as is shown, and relied heavily on merchant vessels to supply warships and troop transports.

This was the third attempt to re-take Africa: the first was by Aetius in 440, but the Eastern Fleet never arrived and the campaign was over before it started. The second was by Aetius' prodigious general Majoran in 460, but the 300 Roman warships he had built to cross the straits of Gibraltar were destroyed when the Vandals paid the inhabitants of Carthaginiensis to burn the fleet. Ricimer had Majoran killed before he could build the ships needed to cross the straits again. The third was in 468, after Leo I had gotten sick of Vandal raiding in the Eastern mediterranean and put the new emperor Anthemius on the throne.

The Africa campaign would ultimately end in failure, but it was truly the last hope of the western empire. The error that sealed the fate of the west (if it had not already been sealed 40 years prior when the Vandals first set foot in Africa) was that Basilicus did not deploy his troops onto the shore, and the Vandals attacked the Roman fleet with fireships which destroyed it at the Battle of Cape Bon. This was the largest military undertaking of late antiquity, and Africa would remain in Barbarian hands for another 50 years.