The Fall of the Roman Empire by Michael Grant Read Free Book Online

which could easily be transferred to his son or other members of his family. Moreover, the Emperor was their paymaster: any break in Imperial continuity might jeopardize their wages.
    From AD 97 onwards, throughout the greater part of the second century, a new formula was tried, according to which Emperors 'adopted' and virtually nominated their successors, men from outside their own families, chosen for their suitability alone. But after that, successive rulers returned to the practice of seeking to establish their own dynasties.
    Yet each dynasty in turn, if it ever got off the ground at all, almost immediately collapsed. For, although the army favoured dynasties in theory, it very rapidly became tired of them in practice, owing to recurring discontent with the qualities of individual Emperors. And it was the army, during this entire period, which still continued to place one monarch after another on the throne.
    In 364, Valentinian 1 became yet another of these army nominees. And even Symmachus, an old-fashioned conservative aristocrat, believed, or professed to believe, that this was reasonable enough. For the army, he observed in 369, is better qualified to appoint Emperors than anyone else, since 'the Senate and political institutions are slothful and disused'. The historian Ammianus also supported the army's Emperor-making role, though he liked to think, somewhat over-optimistically, that its decisions were normally preceded by a process of due deliberation among leading men.
    The unidentifiable groups of biographers who compiled the Historia Augusta disagreed, vociferously praising those rulers from the past whom they believed to have been nominated by the Senate. In consequence, these writers revived and repeated the ancient concept that Imperial rule could not be hereditary, and denied that birth should play any part whatever in determining the succession.
    Valentinian 1, like many an earlier Emperor, held the opposite view, and wanted to establish his own dynasty. Moreover, although he did not come from an Imperial family himself, he felt in a strong enough position to turn the army's preference for heredity to his own advantage. For when, in 367, he promoted his son Gratian to be co-Emperor, he was careful to stage a wholly military ceremony, at which he commended the youth to the soldiers. At this ceremony, after they had acclaimed their new ruler with loud shouts and clashing weapons, Valentinian invested him with the Imperial robes, and declared: 'Behold, my dear Gratian, you now wear, as we had all hoped, the Imperial robes, bestowed upon you under favourable auspices by my will and that of our fellow-soldiers.'
    Valentinian's attempt to found a new ruling house, with military support, proved extraordinarily successful. For this dynasty, strengthened by the inclusion of Theodosius 1 through a marriage alliance, lasted for no less than ninety-one years - one of the longest durations in Imperial history, and a remarkable example of continuity at such a disturbed period.
    By way of contrast, the death of the last representative of this house, Valentinian III, although he personally had been little better than a cypher, was followed by a period of unprecedented instability, during which, as we have seen, there was a rapid succession of transient Emperors. Indeed, the instability was final and fatal, for with the last of them the Western Empire came to an end.
    In the ancient Roman experience, the most perilous phenomenon was the constant succession of military figures who engineered revolts and coups d'etat in order to set themselves up in place of the established ruler of the day. Their uprisings produced dangerous fragmentations and breakaways of provinces. The men who at different periods and in different regions were declared Emperors by some part of the army, even if they did not usually succeed in maintaining themselves for any appreciable length of time, were lamentably numerous, continuing to erupt one