Ricimer

Ricimer (18th century representation)

Libius Severus on an ace . The Ricimer monogram is embossed on the back.

Flavius ​​Ricimer or Rikimer (* around 405 ; † August 18, 472 ) was Magister militum (army master) and Patricius of the Western Roman Empire .

Life

Ricimer was born between 405 and 420 and was an Arian Christian , son of a nobleman from the Suebi people and a daughter of the Visigoth rex Wallia . He was born in the Roman Empire, probably Hispania , was raised in a Roman school, and made a career in the Imperial Army. He spent his youth at the court of Emperor Valentinian III. where he gained combat experience as an officer under Aëtius . He later served under Valentinians magister militum in the western part of the Roman Empire.

Ricimer and Avitus

The murders of Aëtius and Valentinian in 454 and 455 respectively created a power vacuum in the West. Initially, a group around the Roman senator Petronius Maximus tried to gain control of the imperial throne, but Maximus was slain by the angry population at the end of May 455 after a few weeks of rule in connection with the siege of Rome by the vandal Geiseric . After Geiseric had plundered Rome but did not appoint a new emperor, the Gallic senator Avitus was made emperor under pressure from the Gallo-Roman aristocracy and with the support of the Visigothic foederati remaining Roman troops in Italy. The officer Remistus acted as the first master . The actual sphere of influence of West Rome was now essentially reduced to Italy , the Alpine region, much of southern Gaul and parts of Hispania , with the government already losing control of Hispania. Ricimer set up a new army and fleet, which he recruited in particular from the Germanic mercenaries who were just available to him, but which also included regular Roman troops.

After leaving Rome in 455, Geiseric left behind a powerful fleet that blocked the Italian coast, considering Avitus to be his enemy. Ricimer succeeded in defeating the Vandals 456 in a sea battle near Corsica and in a land battle near Agrigento in Sicily . Strengthened by the popularity thus gained, Ricimer apparently won the approval of the Senate for a revolt against Emperor Avitus and his first master and patricius Remistus. Remistus was killed, Avitus was defeated a little later in an alliance with the Guard Commander Majorian on October 16, 456 in a bloody battle near Piacenza . The emperor, whose Visigoth allies fought against Vandals and Suebi far away in Spain, was taken prisoner on the run, deposed and initially made bishop of Piacenza, although the Visigoths hurried to his aid, but shortly afterwards killed. The focus of the Western Roman Empire thus shifted from Gaul back to Italy. The peninsula was to form Ricimer's central power base from then on.

Ricimer and Majorian

Ricimer was made first army master and patricius by Leo , the new Eastern Roman emperor , in February 457 and soon afterwards supported the elevation of his old comrade Majorian to Western Roman emperor, who, after some hesitation, was also accepted by Leo as a fellow ruler. Majorian was by no means a puppet of Ricimer, but his partner; Both were initially united by the goal of securing Italy and retaking Africa from the Vandals. In a speech to the Roman Senate, the new emperor declared that he would share the military high command with his patricius Ricimer.

Majorian proved to be a good regent and soon became increasingly independent. He himself went to Spain at the head of an army via Gaul, where he broke the Visigoth resistance, but was defeated (apparently by betrayal) in 460 near modern Cartagena by Geiseric ( Battle of Cartagena ) while attempting a campaign to organize against him in order to wrest Africa from the vandals: Geiseric was able to destroy the Roman ships and thus prevent the invasion. After that the emperor retired to Gaul and did not return to Italy for months. Ricimer meanwhile, for reasons that were not clear, took Majorian by surprise, who had finally made his way to Rome, and arranged for his execution on August 7, 461, five days after the successful coup . The army master then took out a number of imperial privileges and also appeared in inscriptions in the place of the emperor; but after a while he decided to raise another Augustus .

Ricimer and Libius Severus

Ricimer spent the rest of his life as the de facto ruler of what was left of the Western Roman Empire, with his way of wielding power making him one of the most controversial figures of the time. Perhaps because of his Arianism and his “barbaric” origins, Ricimer did not even consider accepting the title of Augustus (Emperor), but his power over the emperors residing in Ravenna or Rome gave him prestige and influence among the mostly Germanic warriors who are now Gaul , Controlled Spain and Africa . This gave him two options: to dissolve the imperial court in Ravenna and to officially act as dux or governor of the emperor in Constantinople , or to put his own figures on the throne and rule through them. He chose the second way and possibly even went so far as to put his name on the coins next to those of the emperor (the interpretation of the coins is controversial); Everything indicates that he was not only interested in personal power, but also in preserving the empire. Westrom thus finally became a community controlled by a military junta .

Majorian's successor chosen by Ricimer was Senator Libius Severus , who was more docile than Majorian, but faced the disapproval of Leo in the east and the rivalry of Aegidius in Gaul. Aegidius, who had been appointed magister militum per Gallias by his friend Majorian, renounced Ricimer in early 462 and tried to secure Roman Gaul single-handedly with the help of the local troops. Ricimer now installed Agrippinus , an old rival of Aegidius, who had previously been deposed , as the new army master for Gaul, who mobilized the Visigoths against Aegidius; but this was able to assert itself in northern Gaul. Severus, meanwhile, was never recognized by Ostrom as the legitimate emperor of the west. After his death in 465 - possibly due to the poison administered by Ricimer, but this is pure speculation - the emperor-maker ruled for over 18 months without an emperor. During this time, the Eastern Roman Emperor Leo was considered the ruler of the entire Roman Empire and was recognized as such in the West.

Ricimer and Anthemius

But influential circles in Italy, soldiers as well as senators, still demanded an Augustus of the West of his own . Finally, after a lengthy debate in which he and his enemy Geiserich tried to impose their own emperor candidates on Leo, Ricimer finally accepted Leo's proposal to Anthemius , who came to Italy with strong Eastern Roman troops in 467. Only in this way was it possible to give the west a chance of survival with eastern help by planning an attack on Geiserich. Ricimer married Anthemius' daughter and cooperated for some time with his new emperor and father-in-law. The goal was to finally return North Africa to Ravenna's control.

In the great vandal campaign that Leo and Anthemius waged against Geiseric in 468, Ricimer commanded part of the Roman armed forces. Later sources assumed that he had secretly wanted the expedition to fail, which ultimately happened. However, Ricimer undoubtedly had no interest in Geiserich's victory, so that it is difficult to clarify what actually happened; any fault of the army master is very unlikely. But when Anthemius tried, after the defeat, in 470, to take military action against Ricimer's friend and relative, the Visigoth king Eurich , who had terminated the alliance with Rome at the end of 468, and to bring Gaul back under Roman control, it seemed to be an increasing alienation between Emperor and army master to have come. In addition, the campaign failed because the imperial army led by Anthemius' son Anthemiolus was defeated by the Visigoths. From then on, Anthemius, who made himself increasingly unpopular in Italy, no longer had a military power base.

Ricimer and Olybrius

In 471 the conflict escalated. At the end of 470, the emperor had the magister officiorum Romanus executed because he had apparently aspired to the throne. But since Romanus had been a follower of Ricimer, he now moved with an army from Foederati to Mediolanum to declare war on Anthemius. Epiphanius (* 438/439, † 496), the Bishop of Pavia, brokered a brief armistice, after the end of which Ricimer and his army again stood before Rome, where Anthemius now resided. Now the army master was apparently looking for an alliance with his previous mortal enemies, the vandals: he proclaimed Olybrius emperor, the candidate Geiseric had favored for years, and conquered the city on July 1, 472 after a three-month siege. Anthemius was killed, and Rome became the prey for Ricimer's soldiers; this was the third looting of the Eternal City since 410. However, he died unexpectedly only two months later of a fever and hemorrhage . The title of patricius passed on to his nephew Gundobad , whom the Italian army now elected as leader.

rating

For a long time Ricimer was seen as a “barbarian” who only pursued his own interests, while more recent research sees him more and more often as a Roman general and a thoroughly loyal servant of the empire. However, Ricimer was completely focused on Italy and North Africa, which were vital for the supply of the peninsula, and inevitably put the interests of Gaul and Hispania on the back burner. The almost two decades in which he effectively ruled the Western Roman Empire were characterized by a progressive disintegration, which accelerated under Ricimer, since the legitimacy of his position of power outside Italy was not accepted.

The reputation of the western empire and the civil administration had eroded more and more in the course of the fifth century, so that in view of the difficult situation, more and more power rested in the hands of the military. These were partly of Roman ( Flavius ​​Constantius , Bonifatius , Aëtius, Aegidius, Orestes ), partly of "barbaric" origin ( Stilicho , Ricimer, Gundobad, Odoacer ); However, what all these late antique warlords had in common was that they increasingly placed particular interests and the well-being of their respective followers above the common good and thus made a decisive contribution to the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire.

literature

• Friedrich Anders: Flavius ​​Ricimer. Power and impotence of the western Roman army master in the second half of the 5th century (= European university publications. Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences. Vol. 1077). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-61264-4 (also: Berlin, Humboldt University, dissertation, 2009) ( review by Timo Stickler ).
• Henning Börm : Westrom. From Honorius to Justinian (= Urban pocket books. Vol. 735). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-17-023276-1 , p. 94 ff.
• John B. Bury : History of the Later Roman Empire. From the death of Theodosius I. to the death of Justinian. Volume 1. Dover, New York NY 1958, (reprinted from 1923 edition).
• Max Flomen: The Original Godfather. Ricimer and the Fall of Rome. In: Hirundo. Vol. 7, 2008/2009, ZDB -ID 2604525-4 , pp. 9-17, digitized version (PDF; 291.85 kB) .
• Andrew Gillett: The Birth of Ricimer. In: Historia . Vol. 44, No. 3, 1995, pp. 380-384, JSTOR 4436388 .
• Stefan Krautschick: Ricimer - a German as a strong man in Italy. In: Barbara Scardigli, Piergiuseppe Scardigli (ed.): Germani in Italia. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome 1994, ISBN 88-8080-004-3 , pp. 269-287.
• Guy Lacam: Ricimer. Un Barbare au service de Rome. Amateurs de Livres et al., Paris 1986, ISBN 2-905053-17-8 (also: Lille, university, dissertation).
• Penny MacGeorge: Late Roman Warlords. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2002, ISBN 0-19-925244-0 , p. 167 ff.
• John Michael O'Flynn: Generalissimos of the western Roman Empire. University of Alberta Press, Edmonton 1983, ISBN 0-88864-031-5 .
• Leighton Robert Scott: Antibarbarian Sentiment and the "Barbarian" General in Roman Imperial Service: The Case of Ricimer. In: János Harmatta (Ed.): Proceedings of the VIIth Congress of the International Federation of the Societies of Classical Studies. = Actes du VIIe Congrès de la Fédération Internationale des Associations d'Études Classiques. Volume 2. Akademiai Kiadó, Budapest 1984, ISBN 963-05-2930-0 , pp. 23-33.

Remarks

1. ↑ Nov. Maior. 1.
2. ^ Friedrich Anders: Flavius ​​Ricimer. Power and impotence of the western Roman army master in the second half of the 5th century (= European university publications. Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences. Vol. 1077). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-61264-4 (also: Berlin, Humboldt University, dissertation, 2009), pp. 357-361.
3. ↑ On this Friedrich Anders: Flavius ​​Ricimer. Power and impotence of the western Roman army master in the second half of the 5th century (= European university publications. Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences. Vol. 1077). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-61264-4 (also: Berlin, Humboldt-Universität, dissertation, 2009), pp. 173-179.