06-22-2018, 12:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-22-2018, 02:55 PM by Nathan Ross.)
(06-22-2018, 03:58 AM)Justin I Wrote: What's the source for Alaric having this title?
PLRE 2 (pp 44-45) gives Claudian In Eutrop II 214-18, and Bello Get 496-7 and 535-9 as sources - they suggest Alaric as MVM Per Illyricum 'by 399'.
It is indeed confusing, and one of the most baffling turnarounds in later Roman history; in 396 Alaric was ravaging Greece as leader of a Gothic warband, in 397 he was fighting Stilicho in Greece and then withdrawing into Epirus, and then suddenly a year later he emerges as one of the principal generals of the eastern empire! This gives him access to the arsenals of Illyricum, allowing him to resupply and rearm his troops.
Whenever it happened, the eastern Pr Pr Eutropius appears to have awarded the title to Alaric in order to bring him under some kind of control - if that makes sense - and use him as a tool against Stilicho and the west. Or so it would seem...
As far as I understand it, this went wrong around 400 or so, when the prefecture of Illyricum, temporarily assigned in toto to the east since Theodosius's day, was once more divided between east and west - leaving Alaric in the western part and therefore out of a job. This was why Alaric invaded Italy in the following year - presumably he guessed that the western court would award him a similar title to the one earlier awarded by the east, in order to get rid of him again. It sort of worked too - after a lot of fighting he ended up as (western) Comes Illyrici in c.407...
Looking over all this, I'm struck once more by the apparent inability of the western empire to defend itself very adequately. Stilicho appears to have had virtually no strategic reserves in 401, very little of a field force, and had to assemble an army from scraps. Another suggestion, maybe, that the ND was hopelessly out of date by the turn of the century?
Nathan Ross
