After three years of intermittent sieges and failed negotiations, someone opened the Salarian Gate of Rome to the Gothic general Alaric on August 24, 410. Alaric, infuriated by his failed negotiations with the western emperor Honorius, allowed his Gothic and Germanic soldiers to plunder at will. They set on fire parts of the city, including the Gardens of Sallustius, a lavish green park between the Quirinal and Pincian Hills.Footnote ³ (See Map 1 at the beginning of the book.) The Goths targeted wealthy private homes as well as churches and public buildings in search of portable wealth. Slaves and nobles alike were seized, the former to provide labor, the latter for ransom. After terrorizing the inhabitants from August 24 to August 27, 410, the Goths departed for southern Italy to try to pass by sea to North Africa.Footnote ⁴ News of these events reverberated around the Mediterranean. Jerome, nestled in his monastery in far-off Bethlehem, bemoaned the “fall” of Rome as the end of the world, as the epigraph to this chapter underscores. From his retreat in Palestine, the ascetic Pelagius saw this as the apocalypse and blamed it on the failure of “the order of the nobles.”Footnote ⁵

But by 417, other Romans, like Orosius and Olympiodorus, would write that the city had fully recovered and that apart from a few charred remains, it was as if the sack had never happened.Footnote ⁶ However, neither perspective captures the reality of life in Rome after 410. As I will demonstrate, the responses of Roman elites to 410 did bring about the recovery and resurgence of the city. Nonetheless, the trauma of 410 had long-lasting effects not only on the city and its inhabitants, but also on the political trajectory of Italy and the West.

To appreciate the complex landscape that Roman elites faced in the decade after 410, I begin with a brief outline of what led to the city’s fall. The prolonged negotiations that had preceded that event and the elevation of a senator to be emperor changed the balance of power among Roman senators, imperial officials, the military, and the bishops. The material, social, and political interventions undertaken by these men and women brought about a new equilibrium. Regardless of how one sees the increasing political power claimed by senatorial aristocrats, their efforts – at times in competition with one another and at other times working together with generals and the imperial court – were key to the resurgence of the city. In contrast, the influence of Rome’s bishop on the restoration of the city was diminished in the post-410 decade and only recovered slowly, most notably with the coming of the emperor Valentinian III and his family to the city in the 440s. But by the 420s, due to the contestation for influence among elites and the successful settling of the Goths in Gaul and Spain, the senators of Rome could boast of living in the caput mundi (the head of the world), still the largest city in the western Roman Empire.

The Failure of Honorius and the Imperial Administration, 408–10

Most historians – modern and ancient – blame the western emperor Honorius and the intrigues of the imperial courtiers for the failed negotiations that led to Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410. The sixth-century Greek writer Procopius brilliantly captured the critique. He described how, when the information about the final fall of Rome was relayed to Honorius by his eunuch cook, the emperor was upset only because he thought his pet cock, named Rome, had died; even when the cook corrected him, the emperor expressed merely relief that his cock was still alive. Honorius’s stupidity (amathes), his complete lack of concern for his citizens, along with his foolish reliance on his courtiers convey how unfit for rule Honorius was.Footnote ⁷

This image reflected a literary tradition hostile to this emperor, but the reality of the situation in Italy and the western Mediterranean was more complex. It cannot be explained simply due to the foolishness or detachment of the emperor. In fact, Honorius and his courtiers had been in negotiations with Alaric, a Gothic general, for at least three years prior to the sack, but the emperor had not been able to set a consistent policy in response to his demands. Alaric claimed payment for himself and his followers – fighters, refugees, women, and children. He had fought for the Romans since 395. The breaking of the Rhine frontier in 405–6 by large bands of Germanic troops and an uprising in Britain and Gaul by the usurper Constantine III in 407 had made his service critical.Footnote ⁸ Most recently, Alaric had fought in Illyricum in 406 upon orders from Honorius. But the western emperor changed course and no longer needed Alaric’s services there.Footnote ⁹ Honorius’s commander in chief, the powerful general Stilicho, had persuaded Alaric to move to Gaul to fight for Honorius to suppress the usurper Constantine III.Footnote ¹⁰ Yet Honorius balked at what was represented as Alaric’s changing and excessive demands for payment.

As negotiations with Alaric continued, Roman senatorial aristocrats and the Senate, as a decision-making body, were involved in what was, as Matthews well observed, “a dramatic extension in the range of its political experiences.”Footnote ¹¹ At times, the Senate negotiated with the emperor, with Stilicho, and with Alaric independently. It came together to debate foreign affairs, financial policy, and diplomatic missions. This activity brought real responsibility and power, as well as danger to senators and the city.Footnote ¹² This emerged clearly early in 408, when Alaric moved to Noricum from Epirus on the way to Gaul and, stopping just north of the Alpine passes to Italy, threatened to attack if he was not paid for his recent services to Honorius.Footnote ¹³ The demand for gold was conveyed to Honorius and the Senate by the general Stilicho, commander in chief of the western army who had negotiated with Alaric for Honorius. Stilicho, the son of a Vandal father and a Roman mother, was quite familiar with the late Roman senatorial aristocracy for he had been the beneficiary of Rome’s willingness to incorporate Germans into the highest levels of society. Stilicho had married a Roman aristocratic woman, Serena, cousin of Honorius. Their eldest daughter, Maria, had married Honorius in 398, and after Maria’s death in 407 or 408, their second daughter, Thermantia, also wed Honorius in 408.Footnote ¹⁴

The debate about the Roman response to Alaric’s demands that took place in a Senate meeting held at the imperial palace in Rome was a long and heated one, and accounts of it underscore the decisive role of getting the senators to support Stilicho’s arrangements. Although the first vote of the Senate favored war and no recompense to Alaric, Stilicho persuaded the senators that the payment was justified. A majority of the senators reversed course and provided some 4,000 pounds of gold from their own funds to pay the price demanded for peace.Footnote ¹⁵ This was not, after all, an overwhelming sum since a wealthy senator had a yearly income of about 4,000 pounds of gold.Footnote ¹⁶ Not all senators were happy with this resolution. The aristocrat Lampadius famously decried this action: “This is not a peace but a promise of slavery.”Footnote ¹⁷ Stilicho’s enemies later used this intervention to convince Honorius that the general wanted Rome’s wealth to incite barbarians against the empire.Footnote ¹⁸ Indeed, the wealth of the senators at this juncture is striking, especially in contrast to the financial constraints allegedly faced by Honorius. Soon after this vote, Stilicho convinced Honorius not to travel to Constantinople for the funeral of his brother, the eastern emperor Arcadius, arguing in part, that the trip was too costly.Footnote ¹⁹

Tensions between emperor and general escalated when Honorius left Rome for the relative safety of Pavia, near Ravenna, in May 408.Footnote ²⁰ For his part, Stilicho was said to be unhappy with the emperor’s presence near the army, allegedly concerned that the Roman soldiers would rebel against his leadership.Footnote ²¹ Yet Ravenna was a more secure place to reside, and Honorius was allegedly swayed by this argument by his mother-in-law, Stilicho’s wife, Serena.Footnote ²² Certainly, the emperor’s departure and continued absence from Rome opened new opportunities for misunderstanding between him and the senators, even as it encouraged their independent political action. It is worth underscoring here that the emperor’s sojourn in Ravenna was not intended to be permanent. After 402, Ravenna was another sedes imperii – seat of empire – with the ability to strike coins, but Rome was still viewed as the caput mundi (head of the world), which is why I follow Andrew Gillett and others who argue that Honorius resided there for long intervals from 401 or 402 to 408.Footnote ²³

With Stilicho alive and in control of the military In Italy, Honorius must have felt that the city of Rome was relatively safe. Between 401 and 403, Honorius had substantially restored and extended the wall that Aurelian had built.Footnote ²⁴ (See Map 1.) Rome’s wall did, in fact, withstand sieges twice in 409. But Honorius’s departure, with his body guard, reduced the number of active troops in the city. And the city only had a limited number of armed defenders. After 312, Constantine had eliminated the resident imperial horse guard (equites singulares), and the urban cohorts disappeared over the course of the fourth century, leaving the urban prefect only a limited police force of lightly armed men under his control.Footnote ²⁵ The small number of experienced soldiers in the city was known to Alaric, who, when told that the citizens were trained and ready to fight, mockingly dismissed them by saying that thicker grass was easier to mow than thinner.Footnote ²⁶

The fall of Stilicho in August 408 changed everything. His death led to a significant weakening of the state and its defense. Stilicho, powerful as he was, had created enemies at court. Indeed, our sources blame Honorius for being manipulated by his courtiers, especially the head of the imperial bureau of secretaries, the eunuch, Olympius.Footnote ²⁷ Olympius spread the rumor that Stilicho intended to place his own son, Eucherius, on the eastern throne in place of the son of Honorius’s deceased brother, the eastern emperor Arcadius. This led to a mutiny of the soldiers at Ticinum.Footnote ²⁸ In the purge that followed, Stilicho was executed at Honorius’s command, as were many of the Gothic soldiers who had supported him. Those who could escape fled to Alaric’s army.Footnote ²⁹ At this juncture, in autumn of 408, the Senate followed Honorius’s lead and voted to put Stilicho’s widow, Serena, to death. She, too, was charged with colluding with her husband and their son, Eucherius, who was also hunted down and killed.Footnote ³⁰

The demise of Stilicho unleashed even greater political intrigue at the court in Ravenna, and the upheavals that followed hampered any efforts to protect Rome from attack. Honorius, who must have been aware of and had some hand in Stilicho’s execution, now faced factions jockeying for power. The eunuch Olympius who had engineered Stilicho’s fall, now in charge of the imperial bureaucracy as magister officiorum, soon fell from power, attacked by other eunuchs as being disloyal.Footnote ³¹ By the end of February or March 409, his replacement, the praetorian prefect Jovius, who had started advocating for a policy of conciliation with Alaric, also was removed from office for being “a friend and client of Alaric.”Footnote ³² The eunuch Olympius was recalled from exile only to be removed again from office and finally murdered, ironically, for his part in the murder of Stilicho.Footnote ³³

In these uncertain times, with constant political turnover in Ravenna, the defense of Rome and a negotiated settlement with Alaric was left increasingly to the Senate. Some inhabitants, fearing attack, fled Rome.Footnote ³⁴ But many stayed behind, trusting in the city’s military and civic leadership to protect them. The Senate sent several embassies to Honorius and to Alaric to press for a settlement.Footnote ³⁵ According to Zosimus, Alaric wanted only a “moderate” sum of money, an exchange of hostages, and the concession of land in Pannonia for his people to inhabit.Footnote ³⁶ Encouraged by additional Hunnic and Gothic soldiers, and having summoned his brother-in-law, Athaulf, from Pannonia, Alaric marched through northern Italy to the walls of Rome unopposed. This first siege of the city in 408–9 brought starvation and suffering for the inhabitants.Footnote ³⁷ The Senate took action on its own. It sent an embassy to negotiate with Alaric, headed by a prestigious senator, the former urban prefect Basilius, and a certain tribune, a friend of Alaric named Ioannes.Footnote ³⁸ At the same time, the then-urban prefect and senator Pompeianus turned to traditional religion to try to restore civic confidence; pagan priests from Etruria, who happened to be in Rome, offered to perform public rites on behalf of the city.Footnote ³⁹ According to the Greek historian Zosimus, the bishop of Rome, Innocent I, would have allowed the rite if it was performed in private. The priests, however, refused this stipulation, so, of course, when the city fell, this vignette provided further justification for the sack among pagans.Footnote ⁴⁰ Lizzi Testa, for one, takes this episode as evidence for how great were the religious and social tensions that the siege unearthed.Footnote ⁴¹

But it is worth again emphasizing the role that the Senate took at this juncture. In response to his demands, the Senate sent a second embassy to Alaric, who now was demanding 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, and large quantities of spices and clothing. The Senate then voted to approve this amount and to raise this money based on a census of their own property undertaken by Palladius, the chief financial officer.Footnote ⁴² Although Palladius’s failure to collect the full amount was attributed to greed or sudden poverty by Zosimus, the Senate determined to raise the money by despoiling the statues of the pagan gods, an act that later pagan writers saw as contributing to the fall of the city.Footnote ⁴³

The payment to Alaric gave the Romans a brief respite to get food from the port city nearby. Now more citizens fled the city and Gothic slaves bolted to join Alaric’s forces, swelling their number, allegedly, to more than 40,000.Footnote ⁴⁴ After this payment, the Senate again tried to get the Emperor Honorius to negotiate with Alaric. Indeed, throughout this period, we hear of several embassies undertaken by the Senate to resolve the standoff.Footnote ⁴⁵ And although Honorius was supposed to finally ratify an agreement to release Gothic hostages, he and his courtiers kept delaying their approval. Zosimus reports another senatorial embassy to Ravenna, one including the senators Priscus Attalus, Caecilianus, and Maximianus, which again tried to convince the imperial court to accept their prearranged settlement.Footnote ⁴⁶ The senators even took with them the bishop of Rome, Innocent I, trying to reinforce their position by appealing to Honorius’s piety.Footnote ⁴⁷ Still, Honorius would not act, caught up in shifting internal court politics. But in an attempt to assuage the worsening finances of the senators, Honorius made Priscus Attalus the new chief financial officer (comes sacrarum largitionum), and then soon after, he appointed him as urban prefect of Rome.Footnote ⁴⁸

The career of Priscus Attalus shows the political possibilities for a Roman senator – and for the Senate – in the polyglot capital. Attalus was regarded as one of the leading members in the Senate, although his father had likely come from Antioch and had established himself in Rome in the late fourth century, rising to the office of urban prefect in 371–72 under the emperor Valentinian I. By the turn of the fifth century, Priscus Attalus was well positioned to lead, inheriting status along with property in Sardinia and Rome as well as in the East.Footnote ⁴⁹ As early as 398, he had represented the Senate on an embassy to Honorius that had successfully argued that senators not provide recruits to the army.Footnote ⁵⁰ His status, education, and experience made him a natural choice to represent the Senate on embassies in 409 and gave him a key role in the events that followed.Footnote ⁵¹

The situation in the city turned desperate in the winter of 409 when Alaric seized the city’s port, Portus, and its granaries. Faced with starvation and potential food riots, the Senate accepted all of Alaric’s demands. In a direct challenge to Honorius, the Senate, with the support of Alaric, recognized as emperor Priscus Attalus, one of their own.Footnote ⁵² According to Philostorgius, the Romans – that is, the Senate and citizens – chose Attalus as emperor, and Attalus then appointed Alaric general, the post that he had sought from Honorius.Footnote ⁵³ Attalus, upon his accession, delivered an oration promising to restore the Senate to its “ancient honor.”Footnote ⁵⁴ He also minted coins with a legend that harkened back to Roman traditions – namely, “Invicta Roma Aeterna.”Footnote ⁵⁵ The legend emphasized Rome as the seat of power. His appeal to tradition likely included an openness to paganism; that attitude would explain why Priscus was called a pagan by later writers, although he subsequently was baptized by an Arian bishop, an event that may explain Sozomen’s remark that pagans and Arians were upset by his death.Footnote ⁵⁶

A strand of modern scholarship influenced by hostile ancient writers, sees Priscus Attalus as no more than a “puppet emperor” of Alaric, intended to challenge the authority of the emperor Honorius.Footnote ⁵⁷ But this interpretation does not hold up on closer inspection, as Giovanni Cecconi has demonstrated.Footnote ⁵⁸ Rather, the events show that Attalus was a powerful senator in his own right. Frustrated by a weak and ineffective imperial court, he took the opportunity offered by Alaric to take the throne – with the support of a number of senators. Indeed, for two years, Attalus and the Senate had tried to mediate a compromise between Honorius and Attalus.Footnote ⁵⁹ Attalus’s political experience and prestige, along with his ambition, led to his elevation, but he was not the only senator who saw rebellion as the best means to protect senatorial interests.

The role of the Senate is often overlooked in the events leading up to 410, especially by modern historians who assume this institution was no more than a relic.Footnote ⁶⁰ But throughout these years, the Senate had been deeply involved in the political developments of the day. For this and other reasons, Attalus promised to revive senatorial traditions. He also turned to fellow senators to hold office under his regime. The eminent senators Lampadius and Marcianus accepted positions as praetorian prefect of Italy and urban prefect of Rome, respectively.Footnote ⁶¹ Another senator, Tertullus, accepted the honor of the consulship from the emperor Attalus.Footnote ⁶² Certainly, some senators did not join the new regime. Zosimus relates that the Anicii, one of the most powerful of the established Roman families, were resentful of the “general good fortune” of Rome under Alaric’s control.Footnote ⁶³ Still, enough of the senators approved of their new emperor and this new government to confirm Attalus as emperor and Alaric as his new general.

Priscus Attalus recognized that the survival of his regime and of Rome depended on maintaining the city’s grain supply from Africa. To do that, he would have to remove Africa from Honorius’s control. Attalus appointed a Roman general, Constans, to undertake the assault, even though Alaric had urged employing a Gothic general, Druma, as commander instead.Footnote ⁶⁴ Attalus’s independence as demonstrated by his appointment of a Roman general lends further support for viewing him not as a mere “puppet” of the Gothic general. He also helped Alaric in the negotiations with Honorius, likely seeking to persuade Honorius to repeat his own example since, earlier in 409, Honorius had recognized another rival usurper in Gaul, Constantine III.Footnote ⁶⁵ According to Zosimus, a fearful Honorius was willing to accept this arrangement, and only the arrival of reinforcements from the eastern court changed his mind about making this concession.Footnote ⁶⁶

The failure of Constans, Attalus’s general, to take Africa and ongoing resistance on the part of Attalus and the senators to sending a Gothic general to Africa changed Alaric’s mind about his support for Attalus. Later in the year, Alaric forced Attalus to renounce his office and to return to private life, even as Alaric recommenced what were his final negotiations with Honorius.Footnote ⁶⁷ The blame for the breakdown in this last set of talks varies, depending on the source. But there is a general consensus that the unexpected appearance of Alaric’s enemy, the Goth Sarus, disrupted them.Footnote ⁶⁸ Honorius’s failure to concede led Alaric, in anger and frustration at not receiving an agreement on even a modified request for land for his followers, to turn against Rome.Footnote ⁶⁹

For the third time, Alaric laid siege to the city, but this time someone opened a gate. Procopius attributed this betrayal either to a treacherous woman of the Anician family who had taken pity on the starving urban dwellers or, in an inventive, Homeric-inspired incident, to the treachery of some handsome young barbarians who had been taken into the city as a warranty of peace.Footnote ⁷⁰ Regardless of the culprit, the city fell. Frustration at yet another set of failed negotiations had led Alaric to the walls of Rome again, but if the gate had not been opened, the city could have held out, as Honorius and his couriers had likely believed. It was certainly safer to blame the treachery of one individual or the “barbarians” for the fall of the city than to acknowledge the failed leadership of the emperor Honorius. In any case, on the evening of August 24, 410. Alaric’s men entered unopposed, plundering the city for three days before leaving for greener pastures in southern Italy.Footnote ⁷¹

If we look at the path of Alaric’s men through the city, anger at Roman institutions is visible. His men targeted imperial buildings as well as the homes of senatorial aristocrats, which were also, obviously, rich sites to plunder. As noted earlier, after Alaric’s entrance into the city by the Salarian Gate, the Goths set fire to the Gardens of Sallustius, which were now part of the imperial properties. (See Map 1.)Footnote ⁷² They then went into the center of the city, directing their attention to public buildings in the Forum, notably the Senate House. Churches were also plundered, although, according to Orosius, the Goths (who were Arian Christians) were under orders from Alaric to not burn the city and to respect Christian places of worship.Footnote ⁷³ Orosius describes Alaric’s men leading Christians to safety in St. Peter’s, singing hymns together as they walked.Footnote ⁷⁴ But the evidence, to be discussed concerning Rome’s restoration, shows that Alaric’s men did not entirely respect these commands. They also sacked private houses on the Caelian and Aventine Hills and in Trastevere before departing through the Appian Gate. (See Map 1.)

The terror of these days and some sense of the trauma of these events pervade our sources, which were, by and large, written by witnesses at a distance from the violence.Footnote ⁷⁵ Yet Jerome vividly describes the beating with sticks and the whipping that the elderly virgin Marcella faced at the hands of Gothic invaders who broke into her home looking for gold and treasures. No wonder, then, that she died soon after.Footnote ⁷⁶ The relief felt by Romans that the Goths had gone further south so soon is palpable in a later sermon of the bishop of Rome Leo I (discussed later in this chapter). Alaric had evidently planned to cross to Sicily but was prevented from doing so, likely by a dearth of ships.Footnote ⁷⁷ Alaric’s unexpected death at Cosenza (ancient Cosentia) in Bruttium led to the elevation of his successor and brother-in-law, Athaulf, who in early 411 led the Goths from southern Italy to Gaul. Their departure greatly eased Roman fears of a second attack.Footnote ⁷⁸ However, by late 410 or early 411, a new general had emerged at the court of Honorius, Flavius Constantius, a Roman from the Danubian provinces. He would lead the restoration of political and military stability in the West.Footnote ⁷⁹ He quieted the political intrigue at court and took up the fight against usurpers in Gaul – notably Constantine III in 411 – with the aid of the Goths under Athaulf, who were now paid for their services in 412.Footnote ⁸⁰

It is indicative of the degree of dissatisfaction with Honorius’s rule and fear of punishment that some Romans who had aligned themselves with the Goths followed them from Italy to Gaul; Priscus Attalus left for Gaul, along with his son Ampelius.Footnote ⁸¹ Athaulf tried once more to negotiate a position for himself and food for his people before settling near Narbonne in late 413. Honorius, now faced with another revolt, this one by the general Heraclian who had attacked Ravenna in 413, would not agree to the demands of Athaulf at this date. Fortunately for Honorius, Constantius quickly defeated Heraclian in Italy.Footnote ⁸² But the Goths were not happy with their treatment. Hence, in January 414, Athaulf married Galla Placidia, the uterine sister of Honorius, and Attalus rose to be emperor once more. Attalus even composed a wedding song at the marriage, which took place in the home of a Gallo-Roman aristocrat, accompanied by a number of other Roman and Gallic nobles. Their presence is further proof of the willingness of some Roman aristocrats to align with the Visigoths against an ineffective and distant imperial court in Ravenna.Footnote ⁸³

Only after the murder of Athaulf by one of his slaves in 415 did Honorius find a resolution to the Gothic problem. The new Gothic king Vallia swore allegiance to Honorius and signed a treaty with the Romans in 416. Vallia returned Galla Placidia to Honorius’s court in Ravenna. Attalus, still alive, was also sent back to Rome to be paraded in the triumphal games that Honorius celebrated there in 416. The display of this defeated usurper was intended as a lesson for other Roman aristocrats of the dangers of independent action. In a show of Honorius’s clemency, he cut off only two of Attalus’s fingers and exiled him.Footnote ⁸⁴ By 416, however, the rebuilding of Rome was well under way.

Rome Restored: The Competition for Power after 410

In the three years during which Rome had been under siege, the balance of power had shifted significantly. The emperor Honorius had been vilified as ineffective and uncaring, but he had survived and was now supported by the eminent general, Flavius Constantius. The emperor also sought to rebuild ties with the senators and to reassert his influence and that of the imperial court from Ravenna. Constantius, too, established ties with the senators with whom he could work to restore Roman rule. Indeed, it was in the best interest of the emperor and the general to overlook the collusion of those senators who had supported the usurpation of Attalus and Alaric in an effort to encourage them to remain in or to return to Rome soon after 410. All involved were eager to blame Alaric and his “puppet emperor” Attalus rather than publicize the degree to which senators had conspired with the Gothic general. And aside from Attalus, no other senator is known to have suffered punishment.

As Honorius and Constantius sought to reassert their authority over Rome and to secure senatorial support for their government, they faced a politically active senatorial aristocracy newly engaged in the running of government who had experience in foreign affairs and financial policy. Many of these men saw the possibilities for independent action in a senate that had taken on greater diplomatic importance. Significantly, senatorial aristocrats saw it as incumbent on themselves to retain what Matthews has described as “the tradition of participation in public and political life.”Footnote ⁸⁵ The three years leading up to the fall of the city had allowed, or some would say forced, the Senate and individual senators to make an unusually large number of political and financial decisions independent of the emperor and the court in Ravenna. Senatorial aristocrats returned to rule under Honorius with even greater awareness of their positions in the empire, and they used this new appreciation of their value to rebuild not only the material city but also their own relationships and those with other elites on more equal footing.

Before 410, as Carlos Machado has rightly observed, “political collaboration between Rome and Milan (later Ravenna) was based on a fragile arrangement involving two power-blocks with interests and agendas that did not always coincide.”Footnote ⁸⁶ Machado is referring to the senators active as high officeholders, many from established aristocratic families, who were primarily focused on Rome and Italy. This bloc collaborated with imperial courtiers and bureaucrats who, ever since the reforms of Constantine, were also holders of senatorial rank. The third elite bloc that also was a factor was the military, who also had gained senatorial rank by holding military office, the highest being the illustrious (illustris) rank of master of soldiers (magister militum) or master of the cavalry (magister equitum).Footnote ⁸⁷ There can be no doubt that the importance of the military had increased in light of recent invasions from a host of Gothic, Hunnic, and Vandal armies arriving on the northern frontiers after 405–06. After 411, the general Flavius Constantius led the military response that restored stability in the West.Footnote ⁸⁸ As a reward for his service, Constantius was wed to Galla Placidia, the sister of the emperor Honorius, in January of 417.Footnote ⁸⁹ Constantius was proclaimed augustus by Honorius in February 421.Footnote ⁹⁰

This pattern – one in which power was triangulated among the military generals, imperial courtiers, and senatorial aristocrats – would remain throughout the balance of Honorius’s rule and that of his successor, Valentinian III.Footnote ⁹¹ Importantly, the possibility of attaining power led to greater contestation for influence among elites, whose leadership was critical in restoring Roman rule to what was left of the western empire. And most importantly, in my view, the city of Rome revived as quickly as it did in large part due to this same competition on the part of elites – military, imperial, and senatorial.

My focus in this section of the chapter is on reconstructing the role of senatorial aristocrats because, in my view, they were the essential actors fueling the resurgence of the city of Rome in the decade following 410. Senatorial aristocrats demonstrated remarkable resilience, will, and creativity. They were motivated, in no small part, by their desire for personal advancement, namely, the very traditional desire for honor and power to protect themselves and their family, friends, and clients. Nonetheless, because senatorial aristocrats viewed the city of Rome as the stage on which they acted out their lives and their status, they worked with the support of the emperor and the military to rebuild the city, marshalling their resources to speed up the city’s recovery. Certainly, not all aristocrats were able to return and thrive after 410. But enough did, relying on their properties and rents from estates across Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Gaul, and until the 440s, North Africa, to revive the city of Rome in the decade after 410. They benefitted, too, from an imperial court and a military eager to support these efforts.

The elite contestation for influence that restored the city of Rome also extended to the religious life of the city. The bishop of Rome and the estimated fifty to one hundred priests as well as seven deacons and their subdeacons made up another elite component of late Roman society.Footnote ⁹² As bishop during the sieges and after the sack, Innocent I (401–17) oversaw this new elite as well as a good number of lower clergy (readers, acolytes, exorcists, doorkeepers). Although the bishop of Rome claimed to be the single authoritative leader of the Roman church and hence should play a key role in restoring the city’s community of faithful, Innocent, unlike a modern pope, did not command a highly developed and consolidated monarchic episcopate and structure. Rather, Innocent oversaw a rudimentary bureaucracy and had but limited power to enforce his views on Christian communities in the city or abroad.Footnote ⁹³ Moreover, in the city of Rome, Innocent oversaw a church with ongoing internal divisions. A fiercely contested episcopal election in which clergy and deacons along with a number of secular elites had brawled in the streets had only been resolved to allow the church to come together under Damasus (366–84). But tensions between priests and the bishop’s central assistants, the seven deacons, persisted, a situation that came out into the open in the subsequent papacies of Innocent’s successors Zosimus (417–18) and Boniface (418–22). In addition, in a city as large as Rome, Innocent and his successors faced a number of competing Christian sects; we hear of actions against Manichaeans, Montanists, Priscillianists, and Novatians, the latter of whose churches Innocent seized.Footnote ⁹⁴ These religious realities and competing sects further undermined attempts by the bishops of Rome to claim hegemonic control over all Christians in the city in the early fifth century.

The sack of Rome called the bishop of Rome’s authority further into question, for it was also a crisis of faith, as the Sermons of Augustine delivered in North Africa to refugees from the city in the two years immediately after 410 make vividly clear.Footnote ⁹⁵ Pagans, newly emboldened, blamed the “fall” of Rome on the emperor’s chosen religion; Christians questioned the god who had brought such suffering on the city and its Christian faithful and had allowed the martyria and churches to be plundered. The bishop of Rome, Innocent, who had been part of a failed embassy to Ravenna when the city had fallen, had to face his task of rebuilding Rome while encountering these and other challenges to his authority from within the Christian community of the city.Footnote ⁹⁶ Among those who challenged episcopal authority were the Christian senatorial aristocrats. With their tradition of religious patronage, they continued to sponsor their favored titular churches and clergy in neighborhoods across the city as well as in their private homes. In light of these challenges, the bishops of Rome in the decade after 410 – Innocent, Zosimus, and Boniface – often turned to liturgy to assert their authority and to restore the Christian communities of Rome, foregoing a more public role in restoring the city.

The year 410 dealt a serious blow to Rome’s urban fabric – not only to its population, infrastructure, and wealth – but also to the trust that the inhabitants of the city had in the institutions associated with the imperial state, including the episcopate. In the decade that followed, the restoration of the city fell largely to secular elites. Indeed, there was a notable activism on the part of the senatorial aristocrats and the imperial state that was manifested in the maintenance and repair of the ancient buildings and monuments dear to their identities, like the Senate house; this same activism is discernible in the politics of the period during which senators took on office and new leadership roles in the wake of this attack. Senatorial activism, in my view, grew out of a natural desire for influence as elites strove to reassert themselves in the reviving city in the face of a weakened imperial court. And by the 420s, Rome was enjoying a resurgence, judging by modern measures such as the returning population, housing repairs and constructions, jobs, infrastructure, and quality of life – notably, bread, pork, and games. Thus, although the urban population had not returned to the same levels as existed before 410, the city was certainly growing again. If we use the estimates based on pig bones in southern Italy, there were around 120,000 recipients of the pork dole in Rome in 419 and around 140,000 in 452, statistics that imply a speedy recovery by 419 and a total population numbering between 300,000 and 500,000 residents.Footnote ⁹⁷ This number is a decrease from the estimates of between 700,000 and 1,000,000 residents at the end of the fourth century, but it still made Rome the largest city in the western Mediterranean.Footnote ⁹⁸ To explain this resurgence and the important role that contestation among elites – senatorial aristocrats working along with military and imperial elites – played in bringing Rome back to life, I begin with the key civic leader on the ground, the urban prefect.

Financial Responsibilities and Resources

Controlling the finances related to the feeding and functioning of Rome naturally made the office of the urban prefect, along with that of the emperor, singularly important in restoring the city after 410. Not only did the urban prefect oversee the food supply, he also controlled the funds from the arca vinaria, the treasury responsible for the supply of wine and meat, which was also traditionally used for building repairs. But urban prefects, like modern administrators, always needed more money. Indeed, the urban prefects regularly turned to the emperor’s administrators, specifically to the chief financial officer of the imperial treasury (comes sacrarum largitionum) for additional money. Alternatively, the urban prefect could seek money from the Senate, as did the urban prefect of 376.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Of course, urban prefects could – and did in 414–15 – directly ask the emperor for additional funding. In times of need, they also could use their own monies to avoid food shortages or to supplement the entertainments paid for by the emperor. Certainly, during the siege of 408, the empress Laeta, Gratian’s widow, was not the only aristocrat who shared her supplies with people in need, particularly her clients.Footnote ¹⁵⁰

Count of the Imperial Treasury (comes sacrarum largitionum or CSL).

The office of the count of the imperial treasury was of particular importance to the revival of the aristocracy. This high-ranking financial officer collected the chrysargyron, the taxes on senators, customs duties, and other voluntary payments, and also was in control of mines, state mills, dye works, and minting.Footnote ¹⁵¹ Because this official determined the taxes on individual senators, the choice of a Roman senatorial aristocrat installed in this position underlines the desire on the part of Honorius and his general, Constantius, to work with senators to restore their well-being and to incorporate them in their government. The comes sacrarum largitionum was also a member of the imperial council, or consistory, that advised the emperor (consistorium), a situation that explains why this office was also a springboard for an ambitious senator to reach other high offices and honors.

Honorius appointed members of powerful Roman senatorial families to this office after 410; in 412–14 he appointed a Probus who has been identified as possibly belonging to the senatorial Anicii (see Table 3.2).Footnote ¹⁵² Another man, whose date of service is uncertain but whose office fell before 417, was Lucillus, father of Decius, whose appointment as consular of Tusciae and Umbriae suggests that he too was a member of the Italian senatorial aristocracy (see Table 3.2). Between 415 and 416–19, the noble Petronius Maximus held this post; he was one of the most influential senators of the fifth century. His family was among the high elites of the city, although his uncertain origin has suggested to some scholars how upwardly mobile provincial elites were absorbed into senatorial circles in Rome.Footnote ¹⁵³ In any case, these ties would be helpful to senatorial aristocrats as they sought tax relief in this time of recovery.

Laws and Financial Assistance.

In addition to choosing Roman senatorial aristocrats for key civic offices, Honorius and Constantius passed laws to relieve the tax burdens on this group of landowners as part of their efforts to help the recovery of Italy after 410. In 413 a major tax concession reduced the liability of taxpayers in a number of areas in Campania, Tuscany, Picenum, Samnium Apulia, Calabria, Bruttium, and Lucania; the emperor made this a five-year remission to one-fifth of their former tax assessments. A second law of 418 further reduced the liability of Campania to one-ninth and that of Picenum and Tuscany to one-seventh of their previous levels, with no time limit; the intent was to remove complaints about taxes on abandoned lands as well as to reduce the burdens on those who had returned.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Clearly, Italy had suffered greatly from the wars fought on its soil. Tax relief would help revive its agriculture to levels of production that could sustain its population. Most of the large landowners in these areas were senatorial aristocrats; hence, these concessions speak to the very real pressure the elites put on the government to heal the damage to Italy’s economy as a result of the Gothic presence. That said, the aristocracy perhaps benefitted most from these tax reductions as these taxpayers returned to rebuild their estates and homes in Italy and in Rome.Footnote ¹⁵⁵

Praetorian Prefects of Italy, Africa, and Gaul.

The need for experienced men led Honorius and Constantius to appoint some men who had already held office in the government of Alaric and Attalus to the position of praetorian prefect in the post-410 decade. But since these men would be tied to the court now in Ravenna, they would have been more easily controlled. Certainly, in the praetorian prefects in the decade after 410, we find men who had made their way up to this position by holding offices both at the court and through the traditional civic offices in the run-up to Attalus’s usurpation. For example, from 416 to 421, the office of praetorian prefect was occupied by a Roman senatorial aristocrat, Palladius, who had also served as chief financial officer (CSL) earlier and who had also been tied to the imperial court (see Table 3.4). Ioannes, praetorian prefect from June 412 to June 413 and again in 422, is another interesting case. He had been a high-ranking civic official who had served on the senatorial embassy that had gone to Alaric in 409. Ioannes’s earlier experience in government is, as Carlos Machado rightly notes, “a good illustration of the degree to which court and senators were forced to compromise in order to rebuild the political settlement that had broken with the fall of Stilicho in 408.”Footnote ¹⁵⁶

Circus Races and the Games.

An inhabitant of early fifth-century Rome would probably have said that life had returned to normal when the circus races and the games in the amphitheater had returned. The animal combats, gladiatorial contests, and theatrical performances of pantomimes that constituted the traditional games, along with the circus races, had long been the locus for wealthy senatorial aristocrats to display their status as part of their office-holding duties as well as being the site for imperial munificence. When exactly the circus races and games began again is hard to know, but the circus races and some games were held at the latest in 414 for the visit of Honorius for his vicennalia.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ The celebration was far less elaborate than it had been in the past. When Constantius celebrated his consulship in this same year in Ravenna, he had had to use monies, less than expected, from the seized estates of the usurper Heraclian; only 2,000 pounds of gold emerged.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ The relative poverty of the general contrasts with that of the senators, who although having suffered from the Gothic presence, were recovering financially over this decade. By early 423 to 425, a senator of the Anician family (Probus, son of Olybrius) easily spent 1,200 pounds of gold on his praetorian games.Footnote ¹⁵⁹

Archaeologists support these textual references to the return of the games. One of the central spaces for senatorial elite activity after 410 was the Flavian Amphitheater, or Colosseum, where gladiatorial combats and animal hunts were held. (See Map 1.) A series of inscriptions from the Colosseum through the fifth and well into the early sixth century shows the importance of this space for elite displays of status and accruing honor on the part of senatorial aristocrats, generals, and emperors. The first restoration of the Colosseum after the sack is recorded in an inscription by Iunius Valerius Bellicius, urban prefect between 417 and 423 (see Figure 6). Although not enough of the inscription survives to allow us to know the full nature of the restoration, scholars have hypothesized that these inscriptions can be associated with the reopening of the Colosseum and its purification.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ This connection would have been necessary because archaeologists have found bodies buried next to the Colosseum in contravention of the laws against intramural burials; these internments have been dated to the early fifth century and interpreted as a sign of the desperate nature of the sieges before 410. Hence, Silvia Orlandi posits that one of the first tasks the Romans would have had to do would have been to exhume the bodies and purify the area of the amphitheater under the direction of the urban prefect with the approval of the Senate.

Figure 6 Photo of fragments of the Bellicius inscription from the restoration in the Colosseum. Source Figure 4 from Reference Orlandi, Lipps, Machado and von RummelOrlandi 2013, p. 340.

The return of games to the amphitheater underscores the survival not just of animal hunts but also of gladiatorial combats. Indeed, images of these also appear, as Orlandi has observed, on one of the medallions known as contorniates, which were minted in conjunction with Roman games dated to 413 or 423 that show on one side a bust of Dea Roma with the acclamation “Rome Unconquered, a Fortunate Senate” (Invicta Roma, felix Senatus); the other side displays a scene of gladiatorial combat with the legend “Let the Renewal of the Spectacle/Gladiatorial Game Be Fortunate” (Reparatio muneris feliciter).Footnote ¹⁶¹ These artifacts point to the restoration of gladiatorial games and circuses in Rome by the end of the decade, accomplished with the support of Roman elites and a Christian emperor. Indeed, the earlier 399 law of Honorius that had tried to prevent gladiators from going into the service of senators had not at all closed off this form of entertainment, which arguably continued in the city until 438. Animal hunts and circus games were held long after that, into the sixth century, because senators and emperors wanted to continue them as a means of asserting their own status and power.Footnote ¹⁶²

Rebuilding Relationships: Senators, Emperors, and Generals in Rome

Senatorial, imperial, and military elites took active steps to restore the city in the immediate decade after the Gothic capture of the city. Their focus on Rome may have grown out of necessity; Rome was of renewed importance to the western empire in light of lost territories in Africa, Gaul, Britain, and Spain. Rome – the caput mundi still – could rise again through the efforts of Rome’s leadership. The key figure directing the restoration on the ground, as the evidence indicates, was the holder of the office of urban prefect. This position was consistently filled with members of Roman and Italian elite senatorial families, most of whom had not held high office before 410. With these urban prefects, we see a new generation of senators emerging and lending their talents and considerable resources to the city as they competed for influence. The emperor Honorius encouraged new senators, appointing them in the hope of restoring his relationship with Rome’s aristocracy because he deemed their support critical for the stability of his government. At the same time, Honorius’s government was heavily reliant on the general Constantius. And Roman senators were equally aware of the need to build ties to the general. Not surprisingly, then, the urban prefect in 420, Aurelius Anicius Symmachus, dedicated a statue to honor Constantius, praising him as a “repairer of the state and the father of the most invincible of princes.”Footnote ¹⁶³ This award shows the development of ties between senators and the military, part of the triangulation of power that was the hallmark of Rome in the decades after 410.

After 416, Honorius returned to Ravenna; his authority having been reasserted, he did not contest for power in Rome again in person. His final return was in 423, when his body was laid to rest in the mausoleum of the Theodosian dynasty south of the transept of St. Peter’s.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ His burial in Rome reasserted his family’s support for the city and its ties to Roman imperial traditions of rulership, even as he offered imperial support for the bishop and church of Rome. Indeed, the bishop and the clergy welcomed imperial support because the decade after 410 had been challenging. The bishop of Rome, as we shall see, had to contest to reassert his authority in the face of other elites and non-elites who had been newly empowered by the events of 410. There were competing Christian bishops and sects in Rome who vied for followers with the bishop of Rome. As well, there were internal divisions within the clergy that contributed to the turmoil within the church during this decade, even as other lay elites – senators, emperors, and generals – sought to assert their influence using, as they always had, religion to further their positions in Rome. The ongoing contestation for influence with lay and religious elites thus weakened the bishop of the city and hampered his efforts at recovery until the arrival of new imperial patrons in the later 420s who could help finance rebuilding the Church in Rome.

Rome Resurgent: The City under Valentinian III (425–55)

The resurgence of Rome helps to explain the return of Emperor Valentinian III and his court to the city in the second quarter of the fifth century. It is worth considering these decades under Valentinian III to fully appreciate the revival of Rome so soon after the 410 capture and before moving to Chapter 4 on the crisis of 455.

Because Rome was central to the stability of the empire, the death of Honorius and the usurpation in Rome in 423 by John, a high court official, the former chief of the notaries (primicerius notariorum), were seen as a serious threat to the eastern court and the Theodosian dynasty.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ The eastern emperor, Theodosius II, the nephew of Honorius, refused to acknowledge John and sought to restore legitimate Roman rule. In Constantinople in late 424, Theodosius II thus proclaimed as caesar – junior ruler, as it were – the six-year-old boy Placidus Valentinian, son of Honorius’s sister Galla Placidia and the now deceased general and (briefly) western emperor Flavius Constantius.Footnote ¹⁹⁸ To signal his support, Theodosius II betrothed his one-year-old daughter, Licinia Eudoxia, to Placidus Valentinian, now Valentinian III.Footnote ¹⁹⁹ He also sent a military expedition to Italy. Support for John’s rule fell apart. The Senate reversed its allegiance, and by mid-425 the then urban prefect, Anicius Acilus Glabrio Faustus, made manifest his support for the new regime by dedicating a statue honoring Valentinian III as caesar.Footnote ²⁰⁰

Faustus was likely again urban prefect when in Rome on October 23, 425, Valentinian III was elevated to the position of emperor in a public ceremony, which the city’s mints commemorated by issuing gold coins as gifts to certain supporters and senators.Footnote ²⁰¹ Since he was a child, Valentinian’s mother, Galla Placidia, and the officials in his court took control of administering the state. Thus, for instance, as Mark Humphries underscores, the western court issued laws in the name of Valentinian III and Theodosius II to assert imperial control over Italy and Africa.Footnote ²⁰² The court, located mostly in Ravenna, also passed laws to gain the support of senators and the Senate in Rome. In 426, Valentinian III partially remitted the gold, a virtual tax, traditionally paid to the emperor by the senators, and passed laws dealing with inheritance and succession that would have appealed to wealthy elites.Footnote ²⁰³ Valentinian’s court relied on the military to maintain control. Soon after 425, two powerful but competing Roman generals emerged, Flavius Aetius and Boniface. Indeed, Flavius Aetius, who had originally supported the usurper, had gathered a force of Huns that he later disbanded, but the Romans had continued to rely on a range of Germanic paid soldiers to fight for them now as they had since the late fourth century. Aetius had disbanded the Huns with the fall of John and then changed his allegiance to support Valentinian III.Footnote ²⁰⁴

Valentinian III made an early ceremonial visit to Rome in 425–26 to assert his control, but we cannot track his return visits there with certainty until the 440s, when he was recorded as being there often – between January and March 440, in August 442, from March to December 443, and between 445 and 447 – before taking up permanent residence in 450 until his death on March 16, 455.Footnote ²⁰⁵ The continual presence of the emperor and his court has to be appreciated against the background of recent history. With the exception of Maxentius (306–12), Valentinian III was the first emperor to reside in Rome since the mid third-century Gallienus. The prolonged presence of Valentinian and his court in the city brought new possibilities for advancement and influence, which further fueled the ambitions of Rome’s senatorial aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and military elites alongside their imperial peers.

In this reviving city, all but one of the attested urban prefects under Valentinian III (425–55) were senators from Rome. In the early years, Valentinian sought continuity with the regime of Honorius and reappointed men who had held this office before, such as Faustus and Petronius Maximus. And there continued to be a number of urban prefects drawn from the great senatorial families such as the Petronii, the Acilii, the Glabriones, and the Nicomachi.Footnote ²⁰⁶ Importantly, the majority of Valentinian’s praetorian prefects of Italy also came from distinguished Italo-Roman senatorial families, another indication of the close ties between this emperor and the aristocracy.Footnote ²⁰⁷ Emblematic of the resurging influence of senatorial aristocrats working in close conjunction with the imperial court is the career of Petronius Maximus. His father had spent lavishly on his son’s praetorian games after 410; Olympiodorus claims that Petronius Maximus’s father spent 40 centenaria (which equaled 300,000 solidi, or 4,000 pounds) of gold on these games, dating to approximately 411, an amount twice as much as what Symmachus spent on his son’s games in 402.Footnote ²⁰⁸ This expenditure in the period soon after the 410 capture should be seen as an important reinvestment on the part of this family in a traditional form of civic euergetism intended to gain political influence in a time-honored way. It worked. Petronius was tapped to serve as the key financial figure, the count of the imperial fund, in this critical period of recovery, 416–19, before attaining the position of urban prefect (420–21), an office he held again, likely before his two praetorian prefectures (421?–39, 439–41). He was twice honored as consul (433, 443) as well as named patricius by 445.Footnote ²⁰⁹

Petronius Maximus’s career evidences the status that a wealthy senatorial aristocrat could achieve by holding a combination of traditional senatorial civic offices along with providing service to the imperial court. His life embodied the values that raised him, at least according to the Gallo-Roman aristocrat Sidonius Apollinaris: “His hospitality and character, his wealth and his display, his literary reputation and his magistracies, his estate, and his roll of clients were splendid indeed; the very division of his time was so carefully looked after that it was measured and arranged by the hourly periods of the clock.”Footnote ²¹⁰ Nor was Petronius Maximus alone in gaining power and status through office and patronage. The Roman aristocrat Anicius Acilius Glabrio Faustus, who as urban prefect restored part of the Colosseum, attained the position of praetorian prefect of Italy, Illyria, and Africa, where he worked closely with the imperial administration before attaining his consulship in 438.Footnote ²¹¹

Roman senatorial aristocrats, along with the emperor and his family, also manifested their restored positions in society through their patronage of the church. A prominent fifth-century family that could claim an urban prefect in 412, passed on a house (domus Palmati) to the church of Rome.Footnote ²¹² We do not know the exact circumstances of the donation, but the Bishop of Rome, Sixtus III (432–40) used it as part of the patrimony when building the church of modern St. Maria Maggiore.Footnote ²¹³ Indeed, a decline in population after 410 reduced pressures on Rome’s housing market, a factor that also contributed to making donations of urban houses, along with public baths and bakeries, a more attractive avenue for aristocratic patrons to enhance their status among their fellow worshippers as well as their influence in the church.Footnote ²¹⁴

The donations of Roman aristocrats like Palmatus certainly augmented the wealth of the church of Rome, but such gifts also emphasized the role of elites as religious patrons. As has been well studied, wealthy aristocrats frequently donated private properties, either houses (domus) or apartment blocks (insulae) that became the foundations of a number of Rome’s neighborhood churches – the tituli, or titular churches – whose name refers to the fact that the donors legally owned the properties that they were now giving to the church. Indeed, many of these titular churches continued to bear the names of their private founders or were associated through foundation legends with aristocratic owners. The question persists among scholars as to how much control donors exercised over the titular churches that were donated.Footnote ²¹⁵ Some tensions over this issue do emerge (see Chapter 4). Nonetheless, the donation of elite urban properties after 410 led to the growing wealth of the church and gave more resources to the bishop of Rome to use at his discretion.

The return of the emperor Valentinian III to the city for extended periods of time fueled a construction boom for the church in Rome. Valentinian III and his family were generous benefactors. As Andrew Gillett observed, in the Book of the Popes the donations by Valentinian III represent the largest imperial investment in the Roman church since the time of Constantine.Footnote ²¹⁶ Even if one does not fully accept the accuracy of the amounts listed in the Book of the Popes, the construction projects are impressive: the imperial family (re)built St. Peter in Chains; restored the mosaics and decoration of the Church of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem; and rebuilt St. Paul Outside the Walls as a monumental church and decorated its triumphal arch, donating gold and silver as well as sculptures, structures, and liturgical furnishings to this last church along with doing the same to St. Peter’s in the Vatican and St. John Lateran.Footnote ²¹⁷

Bishop Leo of Rome (440–61), even more than his predecessors Celestine I (422–32) and Sixtus III (432–40), was able to benefit from Valentinian’s support, and he used it to contest for influence with Rome’s senatorial elites not only through church building and decoration but also through the visual manifestation of episcopal authority demonstrated by his control of topography and liturgy. In Leo’s Sermons – which were edited and circulated during his lifetime – we see the bishop of Rome congregating the faithful at St. Peter’s in the Vatican on a regular basis and at new times of the year in a period when most Christians were not yet expected to attend church every Sunday and when there was not yet a set church or place that the bishop of Rome would return to every year for his sermons on the feasts of the martyrs of Rome.Footnote ²¹⁸ Indeed, through the fourth and into the early fifth century, St. Peter’s was used only infrequently for liturgical purposes, mostly at Christmas or for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and was most often a site for commemoration of the dead.Footnote ²¹⁹ But Leo’s sermons highlight St. Peter’s as the focus of episcopal liturgy. Hence Leo’s efforts at centralizing ritual at St. Peter’s – what I call his use of liturgical topography – aimed to make the Vatican sanctuary, not St. John Lateran, as some have proposed, “the religious center … and the symbol of the papacy” in the middle of the fifth century.Footnote ²²⁰

Leo’s use of topography within Christian liturgy should thus be seen as one of the earliest episcopal attempts to contest for space – physically and symbolically – in Rome. Leo encouraged Christians to forego games on civic holidays and to participate instead in communal public worship, most often at St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Since the fourth century, this site had been a locus for conspicuous aristocratic munificence – private burial monuments, funerary banquets, and charity. Drunken feasts “far from the bishop’s conversation” suggest that the rites at St. Peter’s had been hard for the bishop to control, especially since Rome’s aristocrats spent lavishly there into the fifth century.Footnote ²²¹ For example, a senatorial woman named Anastasia and her husband decorated an unidentified structure in the basilica, perhaps the baptistery, in the late fourth century, while another Anastasia, who was married to the consul of 423, paid for the decoration on the façade of the basilica at the request of the bishop Leo.Footnote ²²²

By centralizing episcopal liturgy, including public vigils and fasts, at St. Peter’s, Leo was openly asserting his authority and control in competition with Rome’s aristocracy. Simultaneously, Leo’s use of liturgy at the Vatican site offered a stage to demonstrate his authority in the same space as the imperial family. When Valentinian III and his family came to Rome in 450, they visited St. Peter’s on the day after their arrival to attend a vigil, probably the feast known as the Chair of Peter (cathedra Petri).Footnote ²²³ A little later that year, Valentinian III’s mother, Galla Placidia, along with the assembled Senate, presided over the reburial of Placidia’s long-dead son, Theodosius, in a chapel in St. Peter’s.Footnote ²²⁴ Leo benefitted from the presence of the imperial family as he asserted his religious role also in front of Roman elites.

Elite Contestations after 410: Some Interim Conclusions

The sack of Rome in 410 was a crisis in the eyes of contemporaries, but it also offered new opportunities for Roman elites. The Roman senatorial aristocracy, along with the military elite, may have gained the most in terms of power and influence as they rebuilt their relationships with one another, with imperial courtiers, and with the emperor Honorius. The proliferation of statues to honor senators and generals in public spaces of the city once monopolized by the emperor and the imperial family – in the Forum, the Forum of Trajan, and the Colosseum – was one way of demonstrating their enlarged influence. (See Map 1.) After 410 we see the emperor Honorius reasserting his authority in Rome even as he ceded the active role of defending the city to the military and of administering it to the senatorial aristocracy.

Another indication of the intrusion of senators and generals into the civic life of the city, and a good example of their close ties, is afforded by their interactions as they tried to put a halt to the fighting that overtook Rome over episcopal succession after the death of the Bishop of Rome Zosimus in 418. The then urban prefect, Symmachus, wrote letters to inform the emperor, but he also wrote to the general Constantius for advice about how to proceed. It is fitting that Symmachus addressed his letter to the general as “Lord, forever illustrious and magnificent in all ways, and deservedly sublime and outstanding patron, Constantius.”Footnote ²⁴⁰ Similarly gracious was the general’s reply to the urban prefect, whom he addresses as “your eminence” (tua eximietas).Footnote ²⁴¹ Both the prefect and the general referenced the emperor in their responses, but his consultation of the general is a sign not only of Constantius’s importance but also of his ties to senatorial aristocrats. It is eminently fitting that in addition to the statue to honor Honorius dedicated by this urban prefect in the Theater of Pompey, a statue to Constantius as “the repairer of the republic and parent of the most unconquered princes” was also installed in Rome in 420 by this same urban prefect.Footnote ²⁴²

The year 410 and its aftermath had a significant impact on the church and the bishop of Rome. Although much modern scholarship has traditionally argued that “already by the fifth century the popes had taken over the role of emperors within the city of Rome in authority, patronage, and church benefaction,” the evidence from 410 and the bishops’ responses in the decade following go against that simple transformation.Footnote ²⁴³ Rather, this chapter has shown that especially in the post-410 period, Rome was very much still beholden to secular elites – senatorial, imperial, and military – for patronage, rebuilding, and security. The transition from an imperial to a papal city had clearly not yet happened. On the contrary, Bishop Innocent, while playing a role in the embassy to Honorius and being consulted by the urban prefect on a pagan sacrifice, was an ineffective protector of the city; his responses after 410 focused on liturgy and pastoral care. Conflicts with other Christian sects in the city, such as the followers of Pelagius, as well as the internal divisions within the church clergy took up his attention and limited the civic influence of the bishop in the decade after 410. In contrast, the rebuilding of relationships among senators, emperors, and the military fueled the city’s restoration efforts and allowed these elites to provide strong leadership.

The memories of 410 and elite responses to it shaped the ways in which later senators reacted to subsequent crises, influencing as well, as we shall see, their willingness to work with new leaders in Rome, be they chosen by the eastern emperor or by Ostrogothic kings. Rather than seeing the events of 410 as trapping Rome in a downward spiral, I suggest that we adopt the view of late fifth-century senatorial aristocrats who saw 410 as an opportunity to use this crisis to further their influence. In their eyes, 410 had been a disaster, but over the decade that followed, the damages and losses were viewed against the background of a resurgent Rome, a city in which individuals and groups contested for influence, honor, and wealth. Indeed, part of the difficulties for modern readers seeking to understand what happened to the city and how it recovered comes from the shifting memories of those whose descriptions of 410 were shaped by their own rhetorical goals.Footnote ²⁴⁴

It is not surprising that in a city experiencing growing aristocratic influence, a rising military force, and a resident imperial court open to ecclesiastical elites, one of the most successful of Rome’s senators emerged to seek imperial office – with destructive consequences. Petronius Maximus, as we shall see in Chapter 4, acted, as ambitious senators had done for centuries, by removing his competition. The political crisis that ensued led to the second “fall” of the city during the fifth century, this time to the Vandals in 455. It would be a different set of elites who would have to respond to this new crisis.