The Whole North Into Gaul

[Flavivs Aetivs]

I've done a lot in the past few days, right now I've got several paragraphs of information for each of the foederatic groups, which I plan to add more sources to and edit. I'm am in the process of re-working my section on the Roman Army. This is what I have so far:

However, neither the composition nor the forces contributed to the battle by the Roman field army are recorded by any contemporary author, save Sidonius Apollinaris, who writes:

"Aetius had scarce left the Alps, leading a thin, meager force of auxiliaries without one Roman soldier, vainly and with ill-starred confidence in expecting that the Gothic host would join his camp."

This description certainly does not match that of the once prestigious western army of the fourth century, or of Aetius’ previous campaigns. It also brings up another question, were these forces even Roman? One can make the argument that the Romans still had central field armies at the time, while others have suggested that the Roman army was gone by the time of the battle. Determining definitively what the Roman army was like at this time is impossible, but extensive research has been done into the issue.

Manpower seems to have been the biggest problem at the time, coupled with paying the soldiers already in service. Drinkwater suggests Alemanni may have provided manpower for the army of Flavius Aetius, as the established garrisons along the Rhine provided continued defense against external threats, as well as checks on new internal ones. Ian Hughes suggests that the frequent victories the army experienced under the reign of Aetius would have encouraged recruitment, and manpower wouldn’t have been as significant of an issue because casualties were lower in battles that were won. Either way, it seems that a significant portion of the army was made up of either foederati¸ or barbarians recruited as professional soldiers. Sidonius Apollinaris states that:

"There the Herulian found in thee his match in fleetness, the Hun in javelin throwing, the Frank in swimming, the Sarmatian in use of shield, the Salian in marching, the Gelonian in wielding the scimitar; and in bearing of wounds thou didst surpass any mourning barbarian to whom wailing means self-wounding and tearing the cheeks with steel and gouging the red traces of scars on his threatening face."

Although he makes a does an excellent job of making Avitus seem gifted in the martial arts, there is some truth in this passage. First, looking that he distinguishes between the Salian Franks and the Franks in general, it would seem that he was referring to the Salii as a group of foederati under their own command. The Franks, then, may have been troops recruited into Roman units, just like Romans would have been. Sarmatians are to be expected, this likely again refers to the Alans of Goar and Sambida, who had recently campaigned in Armorica. The Gelonian is a rhetorical device in this instance, and will later be used by Sidonius to describe forces in Attila’s invasion of Gaul. Heruli, however, are surprising. One possibility is that these Heruli were troops serving in Aetius’ Hunnic bucellarius, as the ethnogensis of the Huns could have incorporated Heruls into the standard “Hun” ethnicity. This would further be supported by Orestes’ service at the Hunnic court, who was of Herulic origin. The argument that the field army was no longer composed of Roman troops, at this point, is very strong and likely the case.

Sidonius does provide another reference, which would support the theory that Aetius’ “few and sparse auxiliaries” were actually auxilia palatina, not limitanei. This passage is regarding that Aetius’ bucellarii had been combined into the Palatine bands, and that Majoran had been appointed comes domesticorum in order that he might win over them. The claim that they were “without one roman soldier” could reference the fact that although they were professional Roman infantry, the individual milites were not recruited of Roman stock.Liebschuetz also argues that the garrison forces in the various imperial towns and cities were of Roman stock, or at least Roman regiments manned by Germans, even though the field armies were not.

However, this also comes to the point that the entire tactics of the Roman Army had changed. The contemporary sources show that Aetius favored aggressive campaigning, and so did his generals. Litorius surprised the Gothic forces besieging Narbonne in 437, and defeated them before the Goths could form a battle line. Mons Colubrarius, in 438, routed the Visigoths after a successful ambush, and in 444 the Battle of Vicus Helena surprised the Frankish King Chlodio in the middle of a celebration. Furthermore, the Romans continued to rely on their skills in siege warfare, in both defending and attacking, to defeat their enemies. Majoran successfully defeated a Frankish siege of Tournai in 444 with the local garrison, and the Roman defense of Aquileia almost resulted in the complete abandonment of the campaign of 452 by Attila. The change in Roman tactics in the 5th century shows how the Romans were adapting to both fight the federates, and to utilize these federates effectively.

What do you guys think so far?