177 - The Burning Ships

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This week, I am going to stick with the basics and re-recommend another classic, The Histories of Rome by Livy. This is the stuff that really fired me up to start producing a podcast in the first place. Cincinnatus, The Twelve Tables, The Secession of the Plebs, Marcus Furius Camillus, The Good Old Days. Just remember to go to audiblepodcast.com forward slash rome so that they know who sent you.

Hello and welcome to The History of Rome, episode 177, The Burning Ships.

In the summer of 465, the quote-unquote emperor Libius Severus died. No one paid him much mind while he was alive, and so no one paid him much mind when he died. But though the emperors of the west had been rendered so ineffectual that it literally didn't matter whether they lived or died, no one thought that a successor wouldn't soon be appointed. The new appointee would be another puppet, of course, but the show must go on, you know.

But while the Mediterranean world wondered who would be the next emperor, a funny thing happened. No next emperor appeared. The virtual king of Italy, Ricomer, was done with all that rot. He was in charge of Italy. He had been in charge of Italy, so why should he have to share power with anyone? So from the summer of 465 until April of 467, he didn't share power with anyone. There just wasn't an emperor of the Western Empire.

Over in Constantinople, the Eastern Emperor Leo was not thrilled about this development, but he was in no immediate position to do anything about it. Through all of 466, the Eastern Empire was dealing with fairly serious raids by the Huns and the Goths. Leo had his hands full, and so Ricomer got away with his de facto kingship. But as 466 gave way to 467, the Western Empire's problems started becoming the Eastern Empire's problems, and so Leo felt obliged to finally do something about the vacant imperial throne in Italy.

And which problem was it that specifically was becoming the Eastern Empire's problem? The Vandals, of course. Genseric was still hankering to get Olibrius in power, and with Ricomer refusing to listen, the Vandal king decided to turn up the heat on Constantinople. So Genseric extended Vandal piracy into eastern waters and started raiding Greece. His strategy, I think, was to trade stopping the piracy in Greece for the elevation of Olibrius. But if this was the point, then it backfired spectacularly. Because mostly, these new raids just made Leo really, really mad, and convinced him that it was finally time to do something about the illegal Vandal kingdom that had been squatting in Roman North Africa for the last 30 years.

But before he could do something about the squatters in North Africa, Leo wanted to make sure that the resources of the West would be properly mustered to help out the cause. And with King Ricomer not exactly the most dependable bloke on the block, Leo decided that it was high time he filled the almost two-year-old imperial vacancy. But who to elevate, who to elevate? He wasn't going to give Genseric the satisfaction of elevating Olibrius, because Olibrius might wind up being even less dependable than Ricomer. Because at some point in here, Genseric had made the grand gesture of releasing the old empress Licinia Eudoxia and her daughter Placidia, and putting them on a boat to Constantinople. Reunited with his wife, or should I say, probably united for the first time with his wife, Olibrius might be thinking that Genseric wasn't such a bad guy after all, and maybe worth allying with if he ever got the chance to be Western Emperor. So for Leo, Olibrius was ruled out.

So who did that leave? Interestingly, it left the man who very nearly became Emperor of the East just before Leo wound up getting the job back in 457, Procopius Anthemius. Anthemius, as you'll recall, was the grandson of the old Praetorian prefect Anthemius, and he was married to the late Emperor Marcian's daughter. Near the end of Marcian's life, the Emperor had heaped honor upon honor upon his son-in-law, and it looked a lot like Marcian himself expected Anthemius to succeed him. But then Leo was crowned instead. This meant that for the last few years, Anthemius had just been kind of lurking around Constantinople, offering a totally plausible alternative should a bunch of conspirators get together and decide to do away with Leo. So Leo decided to kill two birds with one stone. By appointing Anthemius Emperor of the West, he was not only getting a rock-solid military commander, eminently capable of doing his part in the coming war with the Vandals, but he was also getting rid of a dangerous rival.

So in the spring of 467, Anthemius headed off to Italy to assume his new position. But what about Ricomer, you ask? Was he just going to accept Anthemius's elevation? Well maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't, but Anthemius didn't just throw on a backpack and wander into Italy like some random tourist. As he approached the Alps, he swung through Dalmatia and picked up Marcellinus and Marcellinus's army. Then he crossed over into Italy. Ricomer could either get with the program or fight to the death. But just remember that even if you beat me, Leo is probably going to take it personally and turn that armada he's building to fight the Vandals against you. So why don't you just get with the program?

But that said, it's not like Anthemius wasn't aware that he was a Greek-speaking outsider in Italy. Ricomer and the Italian nobility formed a pretty tight clique these days. So for Anthemius, leveraging his way into power was one thing. But staying in power and being able to do anything with that power? That was a whole different ball of wax. So straight away, he arranged a good old-fashioned political marriage between his only daughter and Ricomer. Look, now we're all one big happy family, right? Cool. Good. Because we're about to launch like a six-pronged assault of the Vandals and it's important that we're all on the same page.

At almost exactly the same time, Leo was having these same sorts of thoughts and so he married his daughter to Anthemius' son. So now we're all one big happy family, right? Cool. Because seriously, this is going to be a very complicated operation and we all need to be together on this thing.

But there was one member of this big happy family who wasn't cool. Leo's brother-in-law Basiliscus. And unfortunately for everyone, Basiliscus was about to be named the point man for this very complicated operation. Depending on who you believe, Basiliscus was either too dumb or too clever by half to be leading the invasion. But under pressure from his wife, Leo agreed to put her brother in charge of the war. And it's not like this war was going to be some little PR stunt. The East had sent armies west to keep a lid on the Vandals at least twice before, but both of those were more shows of force or negotiating tactics than anything else. But Leo was going big. This was not about negotiation. This was about conquest.

Our forever exaggerated sources are probably just a little exaggerated, but still, just to give you an idea of the scope of this thing, they say that Leo spent tens of thousands of pounds of gold building a fleet. That he spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of silver. They say that eleven hundred ships bearing a hundred thousand men set sail from Constantinople in the spring of 468. Like I say, this was not about negotiation. This was about conquest.

While this fleet sailed, the western forces prepared to do their part. General Marcellinus and his army were tasked with the mission of dislodging the Vandals from their bases in Sardinia and Sicily, and then providing logistical support to the main eastern invasion army. There is also some scanty evidence that Anthemius tried to either send Roman forces up around through Spain, or that he tried to induce local forces there to join in the campaign, opening up what would have been a fourth front of the war. But it doesn't appear to have come to anything.

At first, the invasion went as well as the Romans might expect, given their firepower. The massive eastern fleet was met by a force of Vandal ships, but the Vandals were completely overmatched and it is reported that hundreds of their ships were sunk. Following this initial victory, the two main fronts of the war were officially opened. A land army was deposited near Tripoli under the direction of a general named Heraclius. This army would approach the Vandal capital of Carthage, while Basiliscus led the rest of the fleet around to blockade the city. Heraclius had no trouble with the locals, and as he approached Carthage, he captured every city he passed. Meanwhile, up north, Marcellinus had opened up the third front of the war off the Italian coast, and after driving the Vandals off Sardinia with relative ease, he turned and began the slightly more difficult task of winning back control of Sicily.

At this point, all was going well, all was going according to plan, and it looked like North Africa would be retaken in a matter of months, if not weeks. But then things started to unravel.

I'm not sure exactly when this happened, but it had to have been shortly after winning back Sicily. But Marcellinus was on the island preparing ships to continue on to North Africa, either as logistical support for the land army, or to simply sail down with an army of his own and join the fight. Whatever he was up to, he never got off the island. He was betrayed by some of his officers and murdered, almost certainly at the instigation of Rickemer, who feared that his rival was gaining too much power. Rickemer then refused to let any of the western ships leave for North Africa. No supply runs, no reinforcements. Ok, well, that's not ideal, but the eastern army is like 100,000 strong, right? More than enough to finish the job on their own.

As I just mentioned, there are two possible explanations for why this invasion is about to turn into such a disaster. The first is that Basiliscus was incompetent, just straight up didn't have what it took to walk a ball over to a can and drop it in, which was just about all that was left for him to do. The other explanation was that he was a sneaky snake, and he botched the thing on purpose. In this telling, Basiliscus had imperial ambitions of his own, and he was in league with the eastern general Aspar to undermine Leo by wrecking the emperor's signature initiative.

As Rickemer had discovered, finding a good puppet was not as easy as you might think, and following Marcian's death, Aspar had pushed for Leo over Anthemius because he thought Leo would be easy to control. But Leo had not been so easy to control, and indeed Aspar suspected that the emperor was in the middle of a little side project to completely shut Aspar and Aspar's Germanic allies out of power. So the thinking goes, Aspar had gotten together with Basiliscus, and the two had hatched a plan to intentionally screw up the invasion to humiliate Leo. This had been a massively expensive campaign. If it ended badly, people would start asking why the emperor had nearly bankrupted the east on some boondoggle in the west. Maybe those questions would get hostile enough that Leo could be overthrown, and Basiliscus installed in his place.

This was a clever plan, but as we will see, probably too clever by half, because, duh, Basiliscus is about to come off looking like quite a fool. And really, who wants a fool for an emperor?

With the noose quickly tightening around his neck, Genseric scrambled to figure a way out of what appeared to be his certain doom. Romans were coming by land, Romans were coming by sea. In a few days, Carthage would be blockaded, and that would probably be all she wrote for the Vandal kingdom of North Africa. But Genseric was a survivor. So as Basiliscus approached, Genseric sent out envoys to meet with the Romans and work something out. These envoys came bearing, let's call them gifts, and they begged Basiliscus to give Genseric a few days to work out the logistics of his surrender. Basiliscus accepted these gifts, and decided that giving the Vandals some breathing space at this critical juncture seemed like a fine idea.

But Genseric isn't planning to surrender, you dummy. He's preparing to fight it out to the death. He just wants to make sure the final battle is fought on his terms. Because he's, you know, smart.

As the Roman fleet sat at anchor twiddling its thumbs and refusing to bring the hammer down on Carthage, Genseric laid his plans carefully. Some of his ships he loaded with every man he could find who could carry a sword. Soldier, civilian, didn't really matter. Here's a spear, you get on this ship. Here's an axe, you get on that ship. But a few of these ships he left empty. These he loaded with flammable material, and ah yes, I can see where this is going. Then Genseric waited until the winds were right. And on the fifth day after buying off Basiliscus, the winds were right.

The Vandal fleet set sail. Maybe Basiliscus thought they were just abandoning the city. Or maybe he realized that he had been duped. Who knows? But as the Vandals approached, some of the ships started coming ahead of the rest, and oh my goodness, those ships are on fire. We should probably do something, and oh, it's too late, isn't it? The fire ships smashed into the totally surprised and tightly bunched Roman fleet, and the fires quickly spread. As soon as the fiery chaos had the Romans thoroughly distracted, the rest of the Vandal fleet descended. Though I'm sure Genseric lost a few ships of his own to the fires, it was nothing compared to the Romans, who lost something like six hundred ships, just about half their fleet. And who knows how many men went down with those ships.

With the invasion in utter bloody, fiery chaos, Basiliscus, who did not go down with any of his ships, decided to throw in the towel and withdraw. If his plan all along had been to botch the invasion to make Leo look bad, then Basiliscus A. totally succeeded, but B. was about to discover something he had obviously overlooked. A debacle of this magnitude might reflect badly on an emperor, but it's also going to reflect really badly on the guy who actually led the debacle. Disgraced, Basiliscus basically had to go into hiding upon his return to Constantinople.

Which is why the whole make Leo look bad explanation, while juicy, is not really a complete meal. Basiliscus had to have known that it would be bad for him too, right? I mean, obviously it wasn't supposed to go down as horribly as it did, but still, what could he have been thinking? Either way, Basiliscus is a dingbat. Seriously, go look this guy up. He is a jackass.

The failed attempt to retake North Africa nearly bankrupted the treasuries of both East and West, and produced no tangible benefits. It would be 65 years before Constantinople made another stab at retaking North Africa. After the failures of 468, however, Anthemius refused to simply give up the ghost and accept that being Emperor of the West basically meant being the kind of ruler of the Italian peninsula. So like Majoran, Anthemius attempted to keep pressing back against the tide of history, and in 469 he instigated a campaign to retake Gaul.

During the uncertain years of the interregnum, when Ricamar ruled alone, the Goths up in Aquitaine became filled with a new expansionist spirit. In 466, Theodoric II had been killed by his far more ambitious younger brother Euric, and under Euric's leadership, the Goths began to spread deeper into both Spain and Gaul, slowly annexing more and more territory. With his treasury drained, Anthemius was unable to halt this spread himself. But he did induce Rheothymus, the king of the Bretons, to fight on Rome's behalf. Possibly coming down from the island of Britain, but more likely coming in from the Brittany peninsula, Rheothymus did indeed march on Rome's behalf, but he was beaten and driven back by the newly empowered Goths.

This brief little war is hardly worth mentioning in itself, but it is interesting in that Rheothymus is one of the possible candidates for the title of historical King Arthur.

The next year saw no time for any kind of positive steps forward for the West, because the brief honeymoon period between Ricamar and Anthemius was about to come to an abrupt end, as we all knew that it would. At some point in 470, a plot to assassinate Anthemius was uncovered in the upper reaches of the imperial court. This plot centered around the master of offices, a man named Romanus, and after the plot was discovered, Anthemius understandably responded by executing Romanus for his treachery. The only hitch was that Romanus was a Ricamar man through and through, and the virtual king of Italy did not appreciate it when one of his close associates was killed by some foreign aristocrat who thought himself emperor.

Immediately after the execution, Ricamar gathered up 6,000 men and marched them into Milan, shutting the gates behind them. Anthemius was down in Rome when Ricamar decided to occupy Milan, and it was very clear to everyone that some kind of civil war was about to break out. But just as things were about to get out of hand, both sides decided to pull back. The bishop of Pavia, a man named Epiphanius, acted as a go-between, and the two rival leaders agreed to a one-year truce. Epiphanius, incidentally, was just getting started on a long and distinguished diplomatic career, and was eventually made Saint Epiphanius. And incidentally, a biography written in the early 500s detailing the bishop's adventures through the crazy post-Roman Western world forms a key primary source for a lot of what we're talking about here today.

Anyway, with a civil war averted, Anthemius took his one-year truce with Ricamar and used it to once again attempt to reassert some control in Gaul, and push back the encroaching Goths. An army led by Anthemius's own son crossed the Alps in 471, but history had turned decisively against the imperial authorities in Italy. The Romans were beaten back, and the Goths wound up stronger than ever, controlling virtually all of southern Gaul, and severing the last link between Rome and the domain of the Swisson, the last remnant of Roman authority left in the north.

With Anthemius failing to make headway in Gaul, his popularity in Italy faltered badly. His standing with the Italians had never been that great, since they all saw him as some foreigner butting his head into their affairs, but they were willing to go along with him since he had the backing of the East, and who knows, maybe he can pull a rabbit out of his hat. But when he failed to pull out the rabbit, they turned on him.

When the one-year truce with Ricamar expired, the virtual king was crouched and ready to pounce. Anthemius's position was so weak that he didn't even bother trying to meet strength with strength. Instead, he feigned an illness and asked for asylum within St. Peter's. This move bought him time to send word to Leo that the natives had gotten restless and that maybe some muscle from the East was in order. But Leo was still reeling from the disastrous misadventure in North Africa, and plus he really didn't have any muscle to send. So instead, he sent one man, who had some standing in the west, to broker another truce—Olibrius.

Now sending Olibrius was perhaps a curious choice. Sure the nobility of the West was bound to at least hear him out—he was, after all, one of them—but at the same time, this is a guy who has a reasonably valid claim to the throne himself. Certainly Genseric would back him at the first chance he got. So how did Leo not think that Olibrius wouldn't just show up, cut a deal with Ricamar, oust Anthemius, and then make common cause with the Vandals? Well for starters, Olibrius had to leave his wife and daughter behind in Constantinople. Which is enough to keep most men honest. But beyond that, there is one other small point of importance.

Leo did not really want Olibrius to broker a truce between Ricamar and Anthemius. What Leo really wanted was for Anthemius' rule to be made perfectly secure. Ricamar threatened that security—Olibrius, with his own claims to power, also threatened that security. So right before the diplomatic mission sailed, Leo went to one of the sub-secretaries, and entrusted him with the real plan. This sub-secretary was given a note for Anthemius' eyes only. I want you to kill Ricamar and Olibrius as soon as you get this.

Next week though, we will see how maybe Leo should not have put this in writing. Ricamar had men stationed all over Italy, and when the diplomatic mission from Constantinople arrived at the port of Ostia, Ricamar had men there too. Men with orders to search everyone and everything aboard to determine whether this thing was on the level. When Ricamar discovered Leo's note, that's going to be the end of Anthemius, even though technically he had nothing to do with anything.