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the north-western provinces 503
We may also be able to go some way towards understanding the nature
of the bagaudae: according to the Chronicle of 452 they were mainly servile;
according to Salvian of Marseilles, writing in the 440s, they were essentially
those oppressed by social circumstances, the government and the law. 25 It
might be possible to go further still, if we add to this information that of
a unique late Roman comedy called the Querolus, which describes a lawless,
egalitarian society north of the Loire. 26 An all-embracing interpretation of
peasant unrest can be squeezed from these diverse clues. 27
There are, however, grave problems with this reading. First, there is
nothing in the evidence for Britain to suggest that the rebellion was classbased.
It seems rather to have been a rebellion against Constantine III,
intended to facilitate renewed contact with and help from Honorius at
Ravenna. 28 If the Aremorican rebellion really was modelled on the British,
then it is unlikely to have been a servile movement: if it were a servile movement,
which may be implied by the Querolus, then Zosimus’ linking of the
two events is likely to be wrong. As for the rebellion of Tibatto in the 430s,
this could be lower-class, but by 437 the rebels were seeking an accord with
the emperor, or rather with Aetius. The subsequent rebellion in the late
440s was led by a doctor, Eudoxius, whom the Chronicle of 452 seems not to
have seen as servile. With regard to the Spanish bagaudae, nothing about
them, other than their geographical origin, is known, though the fact that
Basilius teamed up with the Suevic king Rechiarius may suggest that he was
a capable warlord rather than a peasant.
There is a second point: our knowledge of the bagaudae is transmitted
through a series of texts, each of which has a very different agenda. The
Querolus was written to please the circle of Exuperantius, who had subdued
a bagaudic revolt in Aremorica in 417: 29 its author could afford to laugh at
the libertarians north of the Loire. The concerns of the De Gubernatione Dei
are entirely different: Salvian’s explanation for the disasters of his own time,
like that of other Gallic and Italian moralists of the period, involved a
radical critique of the social, economic and moral structures of the fifthcentury
empire, and for Salvian the bagaudae afforded one opportunity to
expose Gallic corruption. Hydatius, himself a bishop, knew of bagaudae
as the murderers of a bishop – not surprisingly, they receive no sympathy
from him. These pieces may all belong to different jig-saws.
We are on safer ground, with regard to the bagaudae, if we place them
within a much broader spectrum of reactions to the failure of Roman rule. 30
25 Salv. De Gub. Dei v.22, 24–6, ed. F. Pauly, CSEL 8 (Vienna 1883).
26 Querolus sive Aulularia ed. G. Ranstrand (Göteborg 1951) p. 7: see Thompson (1952) 11–23. Most
recently, and critically, see Drinkwater (1992). 27 E.g. Thompson (1952). 28 Wood (1984) 5–6.
29 Rutilius Namatianus, De reditu suo i lines 213–16, ed. E. Doblhofer (Heidelberg 1972–7).
30 Van Dam, Leadership and Community 25–56; Drinkwater (1992).
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