Gaiseric is one of the most complex figures of the era of the fall of Rome. The son of a Vandal king and a slave, he received the throne after his younger brother Gunderic, the son of a Vandal king by his lawful wife.
Jordanes describes him as a short and lame man, whose character traits were secrecy, anger and foresight. Some authors attributed the murder of his brother and the massacre of his family to Geiseric, while others justified him.
In 429, the Vandals and Alans who settled in Spain and their families boarded ships, crossed Gibraltar and entered Roman North Africa. Gaiseric led his people on a rapid march from city to city. The Vandals did not have siege engines, so they approached the walls of fortresses under the cover of a human shield from the local population or poisoned springs near cities.
The army of invaders was joined by fugitive slaves, colons, and heretics who professed Arianism and Donatism. The governor of the province, Boniface, retreated with the remnants of his loyal troops to Hippo-Regium. In June 430, Geiseric approached the fortress and began a siege. Boniface defended himself for 14 months.
Later, the governor left Hippo and sailed to Italy. Geiseric made the city his capital. The commander Aspar arrived from the Eastern Empire in Africa, but he could not defeat the Vandals. In 435 the parties made peace. The Vandals received part of the North African lands as federates (allies) of Rome.
The settlers had to supply grain and oil to the center, as well as defend the borders from the Berbers. For several years Geiseric fulfilled the terms of the agreement. In 439, the Romans were pressed by the Goths in Aquitaine and the Suevi in Spain. At this moment, the Vandals captured the rest of Proconsular Africa and Byzacene, where Roman power still remained. By order of the king, new ships were built, and the Vandals began to attack the coasts of Sicily and Italy.
In 441, the Vandals were driven back from Palermo, and a year later they concluded a new treaty with Rome. From now on, Geiseric became the independent ruler of the former Proconsular Africa. The king ordered that time be counted from the year of the capture of Carthage. His son Huneric spent several years in Rome as a hostage. At this time he became engaged to Valentinian's daughter Evdokia.
Solidus of Valentinian III. (Wikimedia Commons)
Situation in Rome
In 454, Emperor Valentinian and his close associate Heraclius killed the commander Aetius. The murder of an influential military leader was followed by reprisals against his supporters. Aetius's enemy was the influential senator Petronius Maximus, who hoped to take his place. However, the emperor did not promote Petronius, and the senator decided to act.
He persuaded two barbarians who served Aetius to avenge their master. On March 16, 455, Valentinian was driving along the Campus Martius. The ruler of the West dismounted to practice archery. At that moment he was attacked and killed by the servants of Aetius.
Maxim convinced the Senate to proclaim him emperor. The new ruler married Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian. The empress's daughter, despite her engagement to Guneric, was married to Petronius' son Maximus Palladius. The new emperor openly patronized the murderers of his predecessor.
Leo the Great and Geiseric: medieval miniature. (Wikimedia Commons)
Fall of Rome: Geiseric and Leo the Great
Petronius Maximus ruled for 70 days. They wrote that Eudoxia, who was forcibly married to him, secretly sent messengers to Geiseric. Perhaps this is a fiction, and the Vandal king decided to act on his own.
Geiseric assembled a fleet and army of Vandals and Moors, and at the end of May his squadron dropped anchor near Rome. Panic began in the city. The emperor was unable to organize a defense and chose to flee. On the outskirts of the city he encountered an outraged crowd. A thrown cobblestone hit Maxim in the temple and killed him. The Romans tore the emperor's body into pieces and mounted one of them on a pole.
No one was able to organize a defense. Bishop Leo of Rome, who had negotiated with Attila three years earlier, tried to save the city. During the meeting, he was unable to convince the barbarian king to spare the city. But Geiseric gave guarantees that there would be no murders in Rome.
On June 2, 455, the Vandals entered Rome and plundered the city for two weeks. Finally, on June 16 they left Rome. Geiseric took with him numerous riches and works of art. The king ordered the copper roof covered with gold to be torn off the temple of Jupiter. The invaders took away the spoils stored in the city, captured by the Emperor Titus in Jerusalem. Hostages from senatorial families, as well as several thousand artisans, went with the vandals to North Africa. Among the noble hostages was the son of Aetius Gaudentius.
G. Leitmann. "The Sack of Rome by the Vandals." (Wikimedia Commons)
The ship on which the vandals were transporting the captured statues sank on the way back, but the rest sailed safely. Among the hostages was the widow of two emperors, Eudoxia, with her daughters Placidia and Eudoxia. The Empress and her daughter Placidia were soon able to leave for, but Eudoxia became the wife of Guneric. Only 16 years later she also moved to the Eastern Empire. The son of Eudoxia and Guneric, Hilderic, at one time inherited the throne of the Vandal kingdom. Many common captives became slaves in North Africa.
Bishop Deogracius of Carthage ordered the sale of church utensils in order to ransom as many people as possible. By order of the bishop, the liberated were housed in two Carthaginian basilicas. Deogratsiy also organized medical care for those of them who were sick.
In 1794, Bishop Henri Gregoire, during a speech at the National Convention, called the destruction of art monuments vandalism. After this, the word “vandalism” began to mean the senseless destruction of cultural and artistic monuments.
The name of the vandals - the barbarians who carried out a two-week destruction of the city of Rome - has long become a household name. But what really happened in 455? And where did the tribes come from, which many ancient historians call the Slavs?
Tribe from Nowhere
Historians still cannot come to a consensus about where the tribes came from, whose name became a household name, and what ethnic group they belonged to. The most common version is the Germans. Contemporary ancient authors wrote about this: Tacitus mentioned “Vandals” as the ancient name of one of the Germanic tribes; Pliny the Elder saw them as representatives of the northeastern Germans.
Later, the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea ranked the Vandals as one of the Gothic tribes, which, in his opinion, came from the shores of the Sea of Azov. But we should not forget that all of the above persons, especially Tacitus and Pliny, as well as other ancient authors, usually did not go into detail about the ethnicity of their “barbarian neighbors.”
At different periods of time they called them Scythians, Celts, or Germans. Naturally, these authors have practically no information about the historical homeland of these tribes, as well as significant evidence about their belonging to the Germans. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the Vandals themselves, who passed through all of Europe and settled on the territory of Carthage, did not preserve any legends about their original habitat by the beginning of the medieval era. The last hope is in archeology, which localizes the Vandal homeland to the territory between the Vistula and Oder rivers. Just next door to the supposed Proto-Slavs - the Wends.
Slavs?
It is easy to imagine how beneficial the version of the Slavic origin of the Vandals is for the Slavic peoples themselves. If you do not take into account the not very brilliant reputation of the pogromists of Rome, the Vandals founded one of the largest states of the early Middle Ages - the kingdom of the Vandals and Alans, which reached the northern shores of Africa. One of the Soviet historians, Kucherenko, wrote that the conquest of the Vandals (Slavs, according to his article) of North Africa led to the strengthening of the Slavic element there, which in the 7th century spread from Africa to Byzantium.
With less pathos, the Vandals were classified as Slavs by Western European chroniclers of the 8th century, who, based on the similarity of names, transferred the name of the disappeared Vandals to the Western Slavs, the Vendians. In later writings, some barbarian tribes of the past - including the Huns and Vandals - finally mixed with the Slavs. Thus, the 11th century chronicler Adam of Bremen reported that the Slavs were called vandals in earlier times. The Allaman annals, which describe the history of the Frankish state, call the Wendish Slavs Vandals.
Modern historians, in attempts to prove the Slavic origin of the Vandals, which would indicate the ancient origin of the Slavic tribes and the presence of early statehood, appeal specifically to these medieval authors, as well as to toponymy, that is, the etymology of geographical names.
Thus, Kucherenko takes the ancient Spanish names Guadalquivir or Sierra Nevada for Slavic place names left by vandals and derived from the Slavic word for “water.” In search of evidence, the latter even refers to the supposedly Slavic type of face depicted on the coins of the Vandal kingdom, where there are mustachioed and bearded people: “The coins of Heraclius and his successors give us a whole gallery of portraits of the Slavs,” Kucherenko reports. Nevertheless, the surviving written monuments allow us to completely reconstruct the phonetic picture of the Vandal language, which in its structure rather resembles the eastern variety of Gothic or Germanic speech.
His Majesty Geiseric, or how Rome burned
Perhaps the most interesting moment in the history of the Vandal tribe was the sack of Rome in 455, which lasted more than two weeks. All cultural treasures that could be loaded onto ships were taken from the Eternal City, thousands of free citizens were captured and sold into slavery.
This act would be remembered later, in the 18th century, by one of the leaders of the Great French Revolution, Abbot Henri Gregoire. In his report to the Estates General, he will introduce the term “vandalism,” denoting merciless barbarity and wanton destruction of cultural monuments.
However, in fairness, it is worth noting that the acts of the Vandals in Rome have nothing to do with vandalism in the modern sense of the term. The sack of the city by Geiseric, on the contrary, was distinguished by its methodical nature, in contrast to the previous one, carried out by the Gothic leader Alaric, when his army destroyed half of the Eternal City. Geiseric, in response to the bloodless surrender of the city, did not expose it to fires and saved the lives of the townspeople. True, this did not stop him from taking out most of the working population from there as future slaves, as well as everything valuable that could be sold.
It must be said that the enemy was called to the city by the Romans themselves, or rather by the wife of the late Emperor Valentian III, Eudoxia, who sought revenge on the usurper, Senator Petronius Maximus, who killed her husband and carried out a coup.
The Roman historian Prosper of Aquitaine claims that Maxim “added fuel to the fire” by allegedly declaring to Eudoxia that he had decided to commit treachery for the sake of his love for her. Angry, she tried to find an ally who could avenge her dishonor and shame. The choice fell on the Vandal king Geiseric - at that time the most influential of the kings of the West. He was already over sixty, and under his leadership the tribe had controlled Africa for about a quarter of a century. His other powerful contemporaries - Attila and Theodoric - had already become history, but he still instilled horror and awe in his neighbors.
It was to him that Eudoxia turned to him with a request to become her defender and avenger of his ally Valentinian. According to Prosper: “She insisted that he, as a friend and ally, since such a great crime had been committed against the royal house, it would be unworthy and wicked not to be an avenger.”
She partially achieved her goal - the usurper Maxim was killed by his own slaves even before the vandals approached. The latter were by no means going to return home empty-handed. Eudoxia herself and other members of the imperial family were also taken by Geiseric to Carthage, and one of the daughters was married to the heir to the throne.
"The most effeminate of all barbarians"
To some extent, Eudoxia brought misfortune to the kingdom of the Vandals. Under her grandson, Hilderic, who, before taking over, spent a long time in Constantinople under the influence of Emperor Justinian, the Vandal kingdom not only lost its military agility, but also experienced a strong religious split between the Arians and the Orthodox.
The Byzantine writer Procopius of Caesarea wrote that the Vandals of “his time” were “the most pampered of the barbarians with whom the Byzantines had to fight.” The subjective point of view of the Byzantine scientist was not far from the truth. Carthage repeated the fate of Rome, which it had once conquered. Taking advantage of the coup d'etat, which resulted in the overthrow of Justinian's favorite, Hilderic, the Byzantine emperor organized an expedition to North Africa. The Vandal kingdom was destroyed, and North Africa became the territory of Byzantium.
They grow to die. Nations are coming who are crushing strongholds that once seemed unshakable. Imperial greatness crumbles to dust. And the glory of the winners lives on for centuries. This happened with the Vandals, whose fame was reminiscent of the glory of Herostratus, who once incinerated the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. The Vandals emerged from the depths of Asia, traveling from the Sea of Azov to the Atlantic. Almost one and a half thousand years ago, the Vandals, having destroyed Rome, disappeared as if they had never existed. Their name became a symbol of the senseless destruction of civilization.
What prompted the Vandals to leave the shores of Maeotis? Perhaps enmity with the Alans. But most likely drought, which was a frequent visitor to the Sea of Azov. Having abandoned their native places, the vandals went to the Baltic.
In the fifth century, the Vandals and Alans entered the territory of modern Hungary. In 407, the tribes stood on the Rhine. Here their path was blocked by the Germanic tribes of the Franks. The battle ended in disaster for the Vandals. More than 23 thousand soldiers died. And with them was King Godagisl.
However, the defeat did not save Gaul. Vandals burned Roman settlements on the territory of what is now France and killed people. The earth turned into a desert. The Vandals did not wait for the invasion of the mighty Goths; they headed to rich Spain. Already in the fall of 409, the Vandal and Alan tribes were involved in the struggle for power between the six rulers of the Roman state. The Roman provinces were tried to be ruled by the protege of the Gothic leader Alaric, Attalus in Rome, Maximus in the north of Spain in Tarragona, the legitimate emperors Honorius in the west and Theodosius in the east, father and son Constantine and Constant in Gaul and Britain.
Vandals sack Rome
Archbishop Isidore of Seville wrote that the Vandals managed to break into Spain after Emperor Constantine executed the brothers Didymus and Veronian on suspicion of usurping the throne. They successfully defended the passes in the Pyrenees with imperial troops. Isidore describes the suffering of ordinary people in Spain during the invasion of the Vandals: “Killing and devastating, far and wide, they set fire to cities and devoured looted supplies, so that the population, out of hunger, even ate human flesh. Mothers ate their children; wild animals, accustomed to feasting on the bodies of those who had fallen from the sword, hunger or pestilence, even attacked the living...”
Very quickly the vandals divided the captured lands. In 411, the warriors of King Gunderic began to possess Gallaecia (northwest Spain), the Suevi received “the westernmost edge of the oceanic sea” and part of Gallaecia, the Alans began to live in the provinces of Cartagena and Lusitania. All the locals began to work for the Vandals, as they had previously worked for the Romans. However, the Vandals oppressed their subjects less; it was more profitable to work for them than for Rome.
The Visigoths of Ataulf drove the Vandals from Spain to northern Africa. King Geiseric killed the Byzantine legions in Libya. In 439, the Vandals settled in Carthage, proclaiming the city the capital of the kingdom.
It was from Carthage that the Vandals dealt a fatal blow to Rome. They took advantage of another turmoil in the empire. Emperor Valentinian III decided to take possession of the wife of the influential senator Petronius Maximus. The Emperor planned a trick. He invited his husband to his palace to play chess. He won the senator's ring. And then he sent it to Maxim’s wife. they say the husband calls his wife to the palace. Maximus's wife came and was raped by Valentinian. The dishonored wife then committed suicide. And Maxim was determined to take revenge. Without further ado, he sent a hitman. The Emperor was stabbed to death with a stiletto right at the parade. In 455, Senator Maximus, having bribed whomever he needed, became emperor himself. Now he was raping the wife of the former ruler of Rome - Eudoxia.
One day, in a fit of passion, Maxim said too much. And he admitted that at his request Valentinian was stabbed to death. Now Eudoxia took revenge. She had no loyal troops. But she was very good at writing letters. She sent one letter to King Geiseric in Carthage. By the way, the empress noted that Rome was defenseless. And there is darkness in it.
The vandals immediately set out on a hike. In June 455, their fleet was already stationed on the Tiber. The Roman authorities offered ransom payments. But the Vandal king sent the Roman delegation home. Crowds of vandals plundered the Eternal City for 14 days. They loaded the ships with 400 tons of gold alone. Even the gilded copper roofs of the temples were torn off. Eudoxia was also dragged to Carthage, where she was married to Guneric, the son of King Geiseric. The vandals made a great depressing impression on the writers of that time with their robbery. This is how their fame as thoughtless destroyers was born.
In the 5th century, Rome, which seemed unshakable, turned out to be powerless before the barbarian tribes. And one of the most impressive moments was the capture and plunder of the Eternal City by the Goths of Alaric, and, even more, by the Vandals of Geiseric in 455.
It is believed that the capture of Rome by the Vandals was provoked by Empress Licinia Eudoxia. She was the wife of Emperor Valentinian III (425 - 455), who did not treat the wife of Senator Petronius Maximus in the best way.
The senator did not show it, but did not forgive the emperor. At the opportunity, he slandered the best Roman commander Aetius, the same one who stopped Attila's Huns in the battle on the Catalaunian fields. Petronius Maxim gave the emperor the idea that Aetius was too popular among the troops and this was dangerous. Valentinian was short-sighted and executed his only and, most importantly, excellent commander.
After this, there was no one to defend Valentinian and soon Maxim organized his murder. Direct reprisals against the emperor were carried out by the Goth Optila, a faithful associate of the executed Aetius. And Maxim, without any problems, achieved the proclamation of himself as emperor.
But this was not enough for Maxim and he decided to marry Licinia Eudoxia, the widow of the murdered emperor. But Eudoxia was against this situation and wrote a letter to Carthage, the king of the Vandal tribe, Geiseric, and said that Rome could be captured with bare hands.
Petronius Maximus was unable to resist Geiseric and the indignant Romans tore him to pieces on the 77th day of his reign. A day later, Geiseric arrived and captured Rome without a fight. The Vandals frolicked in the city for two weeks, raking in all the valuables and collecting prisoners and slaves, including taking Eudoxia and her daughters who invited him.
It is believed that Geiseric's attack led to the terrible sack of Rome, hence the term "vandalism". In any case, Procopius of Caesarea wrote about such destruction, but there are other opinions. For example, Prosper of Aquitaine wrote that Pope Leo I persuaded Geiseric not to plunder the city. But there are works by Viktor Vitensky, who wrote that the barbarians took out prisoners and treasures literally in strings of ships. So it is possible that the minds of contemporaries were amazed not by the fact of the sack, but by the fact that Rome was captured.
After the Vandal raid, apathy reigned in Rome. The Eternal City seemed unshakable, but then something happened that even the three-day sack of the Visigoths in 410 had already faded. And power on the Italian Peninsula ended up in the hands of the commanders of the barbarian tribes: Ricimer, Gundobad and ultimately Odoacer. The emperors became simply pawns in the hands of military leaders, and then Odoacer completely closed the topic of the emperor in the western part of the empire.
And the moral is simple. If Petronius Maximus would not have dragged Eudoxia into his bed, Rome would not have been destroyed, and the empire, you see, would have survived. Yes, and Eudoxia would have continued to live in Rome, and not go into captivity to the Vandals.
