Family and education

Philostorgius describes Attalus as being of Ionian stock, pagan in religion, and prefect of the city.^[19] Lizzi Testa takes the description to place his family in Asia and treats him as an example of the rapid absorption of provincial elites into the late antique senate, although she acknowledges that the statement lacks corroboration elsewhere.^[20] Ridley, citing the same notice of Philostorgius together with Sozomen 9.9, instead takes Attalus himself to have been born at Antioch.^[8]

He was the son of Publius Ampelius, proconsul of Achaia in 359 and urban prefect of Rome in 370–372, and became a prominent member of the senate in Rome, where he was a friend of leading pagans such as Symmachus and had attained the rank of vir spectabilis by 394.^[8] Ampelius was himself a pagan, a native of Antioch, and a poet of some reputation. As governor of Achaia he was praised by the rhetorician Himerius for coordinating public works financed by the cities of Megara, Sparta and Chalcis. As urban prefect he ordered the arrest of the supporters of the antipope Ursinus should they enter Rome, so aligning himself with the party of Damasus, and presided over the senatorial trial of Iulius Festus Hymetius, reviving in the process the assembly's long-unused judicial competence. Lizzi Testa argues that Attalus took his political bearings from his father before he took them from Symmachus.^[21]

While Ampelius governed Achaia, Attalus was enrolled in the school of Himerius at Athens, and Lizzi Testa credits that rhetorical training with the reputation for negotiation that later led the senate to entrust him with repeated embassies.^[22] Symmachus addressed him as filius and referred to him as "our son Attalus, vir spectabilis", from which she infers a birth before about 350.^[23]

Senatorial embassies and the urban prefecture

The senate repeatedly employed him as an envoy. In 398 he was sent to Honorius to seek relief from Stilicho's demand for recruits (tirones) for the war against Gildo, whom the same senators had declared a public enemy at the end of the previous year. Symmachus wrote to officials at court in support of the request and afterwards congratulated Attalus on its success.^[8][22]

During Alaric's first blockade of Rome in the winter of 408–409, the senate opened its own negotiations with the Visigothic camp through two envoys, Basilius, a Spaniard who had been prefect of Rome in 395, and Iohannes, a client of Alaric personally known to him.^[24] At the beginning of 409 a further embassy went to Ravenna, Attalus travelling with Caecilianus and Tarrutenius Maximilianus to press for ratification of the peace with Alaric. It achieved nothing on that point, but Honorius promoted its members: Caecilianus was made praetorian prefect of Italy and retained at court, while Attalus was made comes sacrarum largitionum and sent to Rome, where he removed Heliocrates, who had been charged with recovering the property of Stilicho's associates but had proved unwilling to press the confiscations; Heliocrates escaped punishment by taking sanctuary in a church. Lizzi Testa reads the promotions as an attempt by Olympius to reassert Honorius' authority over the senate.^[25][8][26]

The embassy was attacked by Alaric's Goths on its return, and the detachment of 6,000 men recalled from Dalmatia to garrison the city was intercepted and almost destroyed, all but a hundred of them being lost; Attalus and its commander Valens reached Rome safely.^[27] Maximilianus was captured near Rome and ransomed for 30,000 solidi by his father, whom Zosimus names Marinianus.^[28] Ridley identifies the envoy not, as RE had it, with a son of the Marcianus who was proconsul of Africa, but with Tarrutenius Maximilianus, consularis of Picenum.^[8] A further delegation reached the court in February 409 under an escort provided by Alaric, and Bishop Innocent I travelled with it. Olympius was then dismissed and fled to Dalmatia. Jovius, a friend of Alaric, was in office as praetorian prefect by 1 April, and Attalus was promoted from comes sacrarum largitionum to urban prefect in March. Lizzi Testa takes the escort as a sign that the senate now largely supported Alaric's terms, arguing that Attalus was again among the envoys, and holds that he had a hand in Olympius' fall, notwithstanding that he owed his own first promotion to him.^[29] She further notes that he addressed the people in the amphitheatre during the blockade, and doubts that the crowd showed the enthusiasm for the absent Honorius that it had displayed in 400.^[30]

Orosius also refers to him as prefect of the city and draws a parallel between the fall of Babylon and the sack of Rome. He compares Attalus to Arbatus, the prefect who killed Sardanapalus at Babylon and transferred the kingdom to the Medes. According to his reading, the attempt succeeded at Babylon but was frustrated in Rome with the aid of a Christian emperor.^[31]

Elevation

Philostorgius reports that, following the execution of Stilicho in August 408, Stilicho's son Eucherius was killed on Honorius' orders in violation of sanctuary, and that this drove Stilicho's barbarian troops to join Alaric and incited him to war.^[32] In the same account, Alaric's first action against Rome was the seizure of Portus, the harbour complex at the Tiber mouth where the city's public grain supply was stored, after which the city was reduced by starvation.^[33]

Late in 409, during Alaric's second blockade of the city, the harbour fell again and with it the whole of the city's stored provisions. Faced with certain starvation, the senate accepted Alaric's terms and on 3 November proclaimed Attalus emperor, investing him with the purple and a "crown".^[34] He was then baptized by Sigesarius, an Arian bishop of the Goths.^[35]

The three surviving accounts differ over how far the senate acted of its own volition. Philostorgius reports that Alaric permitted the Romans a free choice in the matter; Sozomen has him compel them to vote for Attalus; and Zosimus passes over the vote altogether, recording only the investiture.^[10] Philip Amidon regards Philostorgius' version as most probably an error introduced by Photius in epitomizing, and suggests that Philostorgius wrote something closer to Sozomen's account.^[19] Lizzi Testa reaches the opposite conclusion. She prefers Philostorgius on the grounds that he and Sozomen both describe the choice with the verb ψηφίζω (psēphizō, 'to vote'), and that Zosimus retained only the regalia because for a writer of his period it was the investiture ceremonial, rather than any senatorial procedure, that conferred legitimacy. She adds that Zosimus, familiar with the political habits of the later senate at Constantinople, was poorly placed to credit the western senate of 409 with autonomous planning, and that modern scholars trained on Mommsen's Römisches Staatsrecht, which held that Constantine had reduced the senate to a municipal body, inherited the same difficulty.^[10]

On her reading, the elevation was the work of a senatorial majority that had been forming since Stilicho's death and that wished to be rid of Honorius, with the unstated further aim of neutralizing Alaric once a new emperor was in place. She observes that Otto Seeck and Ernst Stein had implicitly followed Philostorgius, and that Maria Cesa, Valerio Neri, Hans Lejdegård and Giovanni Cecconi have since argued that the senate chose Attalus of its own accord even if Alaric forced the timing. She acknowledges that the prevailing view, represented by John Matthews, Peter Heather, Michael Kulikowski and others, treats Attalus as the puppet of a Germanic king-maker, and that the underlying model is sound, since Germanic generals could not themselves take the purple and so supported pliable emperors; she argues only that Attalus is an exception to it.^[10][11]

Government and programme

Attalus appointed Postumius Lampadius as praetorian prefect and Marcianus as prefect of the city. Lizzi Testa identifies the latter, with reservations, as the Marcianus who had ransomed his son from the Goths; Ridley rejects the filiation.^[34][36][8] Ridley doubts a second identification, that of the new praetorian prefect with the Lampadius who in 408 had denounced the senate's payment to Alaric as "slavery rather than peace" and who was perhaps urban prefect in early 398: such a man, he objects, would seem too Christian and too hostile to the barbarians to serve Attalus.^[37] The mastership of the soldiers was divided between Alaric and Valens, previously dux of Dalmatia, though the sources disagree whether Alaric was made magister militum or magister utriusque militiae.^[34] Athaulf was made comes domesticorum equitum,^[38][39] and the post of magister officiorum fell to Iohannes, the primicerius notariorum who had served on the senatorial embassy to Alaric during the previous winter and stood well with him.^[40][41] The consulship went to Tertullus, a pagan whom Olympiodorus praised.^[34][41]

Lizzi Testa reads the distribution as deliberate rather than incidental: every civil office went to a Roman, and the military commands were not placed exclusively in Gothic hands, a point Ridley also makes in noting that both Athaulf and Alaric had Roman colleagues in the major generalships.^[42][39] Of Tertullus, Orosius reports words spoken in the senate house, where he addressed the members as consul and looked forward to the office of pontifex. Orosius treated the claim as an instance of hope wrongly placed in man.^[43]

Attalus took up residence in the palace and addressed the senate on the day after his accession, undertaking to bring the whole world under Roman rule, a programme answering to the hopes of pagans and Arians for a reunited empire.^[34][39] Sozomen reports a promise to restore the ancestral rights (τὰ πάτρια, ta patria) of the assembly, to subject Egypt, and to bring the eastern half of the empire under the rule of Italy. By the ancestral rights Lizzi Testa understands the right of the curia to make emperors, demonstrated by Attalus' own elevation, and perhaps also its right to be consulted on war and peace. No emperor, she notes, had addressed the senate on the day after his accession in decades; she reads the gesture as an evocation of the principate of the first and second centuries. The new administration was welcomed in Rome, and only the Anicii, who controlled much of the city's wealth, are said to have resented it.^[34][44]

That Attalus expected to rule both halves of the empire is supported, on Lizzi Testa's account, by two omissions. He made no attempt to marry Galla Placidia, Honorius' half-sister, who was probably in Rome at the time and would have given him a connection to the Theodosian dynasty; and behind the further undertakings that Zosimus reports but does not specify, she suspects a promise to remove the young Theodosius II. Two laws issued before the sack, on 12 February and 24 April 410, indicate that both Ravenna and Constantinople feared the usurpation might spread.^[45]

Africa and the war against Honorius

Africa and its grain remained in the hands of Heraclian, the comes Africae loyal to Honorius, who had been given the African command in place of Bathanarius as his reward for the murder of Stilicho; his cruelty, avarice and drunkenness were notorious.^[46][38] Alaric urged that a Gothic force under Drumas be sent to remove him. But Attalus, encouraged by seers who promised him Africa without a battle, would not send barbarian troops, and instead dispatched a Roman officer, Constans, with inadequate forces.^[34][47] Lizzi Testa rejects the story of the seers, which she ascribes to Zosimus' need to explain Attalus' downfall as the punishment of arrogance; the size of the force, she argues, indicates that Constans was sent to negotiate Heraclian's defection rather than to fight.^[48] The expedition was defeated, Constans was killed, and the African grain shipments were not restored.^[49][19] Orosius adds that Heraclian also had to defend the province against magistrates sent by Attalus, and was afterwards rewarded with the consulship by Honorius. He presents Heraclian as having been made comes during Attalus' reign.^[43]

Attalus nevertheless advanced on Ravenna with Alaric acting as his general, and demanded that Honorius retire into private life. Philostorgius states that Attalus also required Honorius to purchase his safety by the amputation of his extremities. On the reconstruction followed by Amidon, however, the demand put to Honorius was for his retirement to an isolated place with the trappings but not the substance of office, and the proposal of mutilation was added by the praetorian prefect Jovius, who then changed sides.^[19] Zosimus makes Jovius the praetorian prefect appointed by Attalus, and has him declare that Attalus would leave Honorius neither the title of emperor nor a sound body, but would maim him and exile him to an island.^[50] Ridley doubts each element of the notice: Lampadius, not Jovius, was Attalus' praetorian prefect, Jovius being probably Honorius' own, and it is unlikely that he made such threats openly. What Zosimus appears to have obscured, on his reading, is that it was Attalus who was repelled by Jovius' brutal proposal.^[7] Honorius had assembled ships to flee when 4,000 troops arrived from the East. He set them to guard the walls and resolved to await the outcome of the fighting in Africa, intending, if it went against him, to sail to Theodosius II and abandon the West altogether.^[50][19]

Jovius asked the senate to excuse him from completing the embassy and argued there for a barbarian expedition against Heraclian. Attalus responded by sending further men and money of his own, and Alaric, despairing of the regime, abandoned the siege of Ravenna.^[49] Valens was suspected of treason and killed while Alaric, still nominally loyal to Attalus, reduced the cities of Aemilia that had refused to recognize him, failing only at Bononia before passing into Liguria to enforce recognition there. These northern campaigns Lizzi Testa presents as a joint undertaking of emperor and general rather than the work of Alaric alone.^[49][47] For her, it was the possession of Africa, rather than the fighting in northern Italy or before Ravenna, that decided Attalus' fate and so indirectly brought about the sack of Rome.^[51] Heraclian's blockade of the African ports meanwhile produced a famine at Rome worse than the first, and the crowd in the circus called for a price to be set on human flesh.^[49]

Deposition

Attalus returned to Rome and put the African question to the senate once more. It had at first refused outright to send a barbarian army to the province; on the second occasion it voted almost unanimously to send Gothic troops under Drumas, and Attalus was among the small minority still unwilling to send barbarians out with the Roman army. Alaric, whom Jovius had for some time been urging to overthrow the emperor, thereupon broke with him: he summoned Attalus to Ariminum in about July 410 and deposed him in a public ceremony, taking away his diadem, stripping him of the purple and sending both to Honorius at Ravenna.^[52][53]

Blockley suggests that Alaric's use of Attalus had throughout been calculated: the elevation was intended as much to press Honorius towards a settlement as to replace him, and when Alaric turned instead to negotiating on the basis of recognizing Honorius, Attalus became an obstacle and was removed; the return of the regalia served as a signal of the change of policy.^[54] Philostorgius preserves two explanations of the deposition, the second of which corresponds to Blockley's reading, and places it at Portus rather than at Ariminum.^[55] Alaric then moved on Ravenna to negotiate. Frustrated once more by Honorius, who was influenced by the Goth Sarus, he marched on Rome, imposed a third blockade and entered the city by the Porta Salaria on 24 August 410. News travelled slowly: a law of 24 April shows that Attalus' regime was still believed to be in existence at Constantinople four months before the sack.^[53]

Citations

Bibliography

• Amidon, Philip R. (2007). Philostorgius: Church History. Writings from the Greco-Roman World 23. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. ISBN 978-1-58983-215-2.
• Blockley, R. C. (1981). The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus. Vol. 1. Liverpool: Francis Cairns. ISBN 978-0-905205-07-6.
• Croke, Brian (1995). The Chronicle of Marcellinus: A Translation and Commentary. Byzantina Australiensia 7. Sydney: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies. ISBN 978-0-9593626-6-4.
• Jones, Christopher P. (2014). Between Pagan and Christian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-72520-1.
• Lizzi Testa, Rita (2022). "Just Before the Sack: Between Political Crisis and Religious Anxiety in Rome". Christian Emperors and Roman Elites in Late Antiquity. London: Routledge. pp. 180–225. ISBN 978-1-4724-4084-6.
• Orosius, Paulus (1964) [418]. The Seven Books of History Against the Pagans. The Fathers of the Church 50. Translated by Deferrari, Roy J. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.
• Ridley, Ronald T. (1982). Zosimus: New History. A Translation with Commentary. Byzantina Australiensia 2. Canberra: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies. ISBN 978-0-9593626-0-2.
• Whitby, Michael; Whitby, Mary (1989). Chronicon Paschale 284–628 AD. Translated Texts for Historians 7. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-0-85323-096-0.