Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

504 18. the north-western provinces
Some aspects of this were long-standing: there is nothing new in the injustice
described by Salvian; all that was new was the opportunity to opt out,
an opportunity afforded specifically by the crisis in Gaul in the 430s and
440s. Those opting out might on occasion have belonged to the lower
orders of society, but others among the disaffected could have been regional
potentes looking to create a local power structure in a vacuum left by a failing
imperial government. These bagaudae may have had something in common
with the rebellious Nori and Juthungi mentioned by Hydatius, 31 who were
active further east before being put down by Aetius, and with the other
bandit groups of the region who appear later in the Vita Severini. 32 Yet not
everyone wanted to opt out: the Britons, in their rebellion against
Constantine, were apparently looking for a rapprochement with Honorius.
Further south we also find a debate, albeit of a somewhat different kind,
over whether to remain inside the empire or to opt out. As the emperors
failed to protect their subjects, the extent to which one should co-operate
with the barbarians became an increasingly significant issue. The question
appears to have been central to Sidonius at the time of the trial of
Arvandus, sometime praetorian prefect of Gaul, who seems not to have
regarded as treasonable correspondence with Euric, urging him to attack
the British supporters of the emperor Anthemius and to divide Gaul with
the Burgundians. 33 In other words, there was a range of possible reactions
to the failure of imperial governmental structures, and it is the opening up,
and the subsequent closing down, of these possibilities which is the hallmark
of this ‘sub-Roman’ period.
To investigate this further, it is useful to consider reactions to the failure
of the military, not least because this failure is one of the central criteria for
the end of the Roman world, 34 a point that was already perceived in the
early sixth century: Eugippius, for instance, explicitly links the survival of
the empire with the payment of Roman troops, 35 And Sidonius may have
come to similar conclusions a generation earlier. 36 The run-down of the
Roman army was something which affected different provinces at different
moments. Britain, having seen the majority of its troops withdrawn to the
continent by Constantine III in c. 407, was apparently appealing for military
aid, without success, around 410; in other regions of the north-west a
Roman military presence was spasmodic until the 450s, 37 and in Noricum
it seems to have lasted even longer. The end of the Roman army and the
lack of a standing army in the successor states was to have a momentous
effect on social and economic structures. The barbarian kingdoms founded
31 Hydat. Chron. nn. 83, 85: compare Chronicle of 452 106 (431).
32 Eugippius, Vita Severini 10 (scamarae) ed. P. Régerat, SChrét. 374 (Paris 1991); see also 2.
33 Sid. Ap. Ep. 1.7; Harries (1994) 159–66. 34 Cf. the seminal article of Wickham (1984).
35 Eugippius, Vita Severini 20, 1, ed. P. Régerat, SChrét. 374 (Paris 1991). 36 Sid. Ap. Ep. 2.1, 4.
37 Wood (1987) 258–60.
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