41 6 Roman and Barbarian 



their ancestral borders, either robbing the living or seizing the estates 

 of the dead.' The jealousy of the West expresses itself in a passage 1 

 referring to the famine created in Rome by the rebellion of Gildo in 

 Africa. Honorius (that is Stilicho) is effusively praised for its relief by 

 importations from other Provinces, chiefly from Gaul. That, owing to 

 the claim of the New Rome to the corn of Egypt, the Old Rome should 

 be so dependent on Africa, is a situation indignantly resented 2 in elo- 

 quent lines. A symptom ominous of imperial failure was the attempt 

 to wrest eastern Illyricum from the rule of Arcadius (407-8) an enter- 

 prise 3 secretly concerted between Stilicho and Alaric. Fugitives from 

 Epirus sought refuge in Italy. Stilicho treated them as prisoners of 

 war from an enemy's country, and handed them over to Italian land- 

 lords as slaves or coloni. When Alaric and his Goths moved towards 

 Italy, some of these refugees, aided by a law issued for their protection, 

 found their way home again. Claudian unblushingly declares 4 that 

 none but Stilicho will be able to heal the empire's wound: 'at length 

 the colonus will return to his own borders and the court will once more 

 be enriched by the tributes of Illyricum.' 



A Roman view of the intruding barbarians and their capacity of 

 peaceful settlement is in one place 5 put into the mouth of Bellona the 

 war-goddess. She addresses a Gothic chief in bitter sarcasm. 'Go and 

 be a thorough ploughman, cleaving the soil: teach your comrades to 

 lay aside the sword and toil at the hoe. Your Gruthungians 6 will make 

 fine cultivators, and tend vineyards in accordance with the seasons/ 

 She taunts him with degenerating from the good old habits of his race, 

 war and plunder, and scornfully describes him as one captured 7 by the 

 glamour of fair dealing, who had rather live as a serf on what is granted 

 him than as a lord on what he takes by force. In short, he is a coward. 

 Now no doubt there were Goths and others, Huns in particular, of this 

 war-loving work-hating type approved by the war-goddess. But abun- 

 dant evidence shews that many, perhaps most, of the barbarians were 

 quite ready to settle down in peace and produce their own food. When 

 Claudian himself speaks 8 of the 'Teuton's ploughshare' as one of the 

 agencies producing corn that relieved famine in Rome, he is most likely 

 referring to the many Germans already settled in Gaul as well as to 

 inhabitants of the 'Germanics,' the two provinces along the Rhine. 



A curious passage 9 in the poem on the Gothic war and Stilicho's 



1 in Eutrop I 401-9. 2 de bello Gildon 49-74. 



3 See Bury, Later Roman empire I 108-9, Seeck, Untergang V 379-80, Dill, Roman 

 Society p 233, Wallon, Esclavage m 276-7. The affair is referred to in cod Th x 10 25 

 (Dec 408). 



4 de cos Stilichonis II 204-7. 6 * n Eutrop II 194-210. 



6 bene rura Gruthungus excolet et certo disponet sidere vites. 



7 quern detinet aequi gloria concessoqtte cupit vixisse colonus quam dominus rapto. 



8 in Eutrop I 406 Teutonicus vomer. * de bell Goth 450-68. 



