Battle of the Frigidus
In the Battle of Frigidus in today's Slovenia , the (East) Roman Emperor Theodosius I was victorious on 5./6. September 394 over his (West) Roman rivals Arbogast and Eugenius . It was one of the greatest battles in the history of the Roman Empire , and it also meant the final victory of Christianity over the ancient Roman religion . The battle fought with great doggedness is considered to be one of the bloodiest in all of ancient times .
prehistory
Arbogast, a military leader of Frankish origin in Western Roman services was among the young emperor Valentinian II. As Heermeister managed the climb to the real master of the West. When the emperor was found hanged in Vienne in May 392 , Arbogast was - directly or indirectly - responsible for the death, also because three months later Arbogast had his protégé Eugenius , a rhetoric teacher and court official, proclaimed the new Western Roman emperor.
Arbogast himself was a pagan, and the moderate Christian Eugenius was tolerant of paganism, which earned him the support of many old-believing senators , but at the same time had to provoke Theodosius I , the emperor of the eastern half of the empire, as this was just about to happen in those years. to upgrade Christianity to the state religion in its part of the empire. Eugenius initially tried in vain for the support of the Christian bishops and for recognition by Theodosius, only then did he partially meet the Old Believers. Now Theodosius, who as the highest-ranking emperor ( senior Augustus ) actually had to decide on the appointment of lower emperors , had the welcome opportunity to intervene in the West. Anti-pagan legislation was tightened again at the end of 392.
Theodosius ignored the offers to negotiate his opponents, asking for an allowance of Eugenius, but raised his younger son Honorius 393 demonstratively to co-emperor of the West, banned all non-Christian cults and mobilized a mighty army of allegedly 100,000 soldiers, which he partly the commander Stilicho imputed ; the army also included over 20,000 Visigoths , which probably already by Alaric I were out. Some modern researchers, however, doubt the high figures given in the ancient sources; David S. Potter , for example, assumes that Theodosius was only able to muster a maximum of 40,000 men (however, plus the visigotic foederati ). In any case, pagans and Christians fought on both sides - right up to the management level, which is a clear sign that the conflict is not primarily to be understood as a religious war: it was rather a political conflict between the emperor and the usurper, the was only charged religiously in retrospect.
Course of the battle
The campaign of Theodosius and the battle itself are shrouded in numerous legends, as in retrospect they were hyped up into a battle of fate between Christianity and paganism, so that the exact course of events is controversial.
The transition to Italy, which was secured by the Claustra Alpium Iuliarum , a system of fortifications and barrier walls in the Julian Alps, was of strategic importance . As archaeological evidence suggests, its center, the Ad Pirum fort on the Via Gemina road between Emona (Ljubljana) and Aquileia on the Hrušica pass in the Birnbaumer Forest , was forcibly captured by Theodosius's troops. The historical sources, on the other hand, suggest that the pass had been cleared by the western army before the arrival of the eastern troops. According to the church historian Theodoret , the emperor spent the night before the battle praying here. In a dream John the Baptist and the apostle Philip appeared to him and ordered him to organize his troops for battle. A soldier had the same dream.
On the descent from the top of the pass, the army of Theodosius struck a contingent of Arbogast troops, who had hidden in the gorges of the mountains and were under the command of Arbitio. After the written promise of monetary payments, Arbitio and his troops went over to Theodosius.
Theodosius's troops met the main armed forces of Eugenius, commanded by Arbogast, near Castra ( Ajdovščina ) in the valley of the Vipava (Wippach). The Frigidus is usually identified with the Hubelj river, which now flows through Ajdovščina, according to other opinions it is the Vipava or the lower reaches of the Isonzo . The exact location of the battle is unknown, but it is commonly located in the area of the present-day villages of Vrhpolje , Duplje and Zemono . According to a recent theory, the battle took a little further up the hill at Sanabor and Col instead.
The pagan historian Zosimos reports that Eugenius' troops, who had already felt themselves victorious, were surprised at dinner. It is said that a large statue of Jupiter had been erected on the part of Eugenius to encourage the Gentiles among men.
Several ancient historians testify that the battle was interrupted by one night, i.e. over two days. The fighting on both sides evidently with extreme bitterness and cruelty. In particular the Gothic foederati , which Theodosius was the first to attack the enemy, suffered heavy losses on the first day of the battle - Orosius speaks of over 10,000 Goths slain, which corresponds to about every second man. Also Bacurius , a Master of the Soldiers of Theodosius, was killed in action.
On the second day, Theodosius finally achieved victory, according to the Christian reading with God's help: After Theodosius had prayed to God from a raised rock, where the enemy and his own troops could see him, a suddenly occurring strong wind should raise the troops' projectiles of Eugenius and driven the dust into the eyes of the soldiers. In fact, the bora , a cold and gusty fall wind, which is still feared in this area today , is one of the strongest winds in the world. The representation of the suddenly appearing wind is already attested in the early source of Rufinus of Aquileia , but it recalls similar miracles that are said to have occurred in other battles, which is why some historians doubt the truthfulness. Eventually the army of the East gained the upper hand, Eugenius was captured and killed by soldiers that same day. Arbogast fled and (two days later?) Committed suicide.
After the victory, Theodosius took Eugenius' captive soldiers into his army and granted the prominent pagans amnesty, but no tolerance. Theodosius was able to triumphantly enter Italy and in fact unite the Roman Empire one last time under a single ruler ( de iure , however, he ruled together with his two sons as co-emperors).
consequences
Theodosius died four months later on January 17, 395 in Milan , so that the Roman Empire now effectively split into two parts , which were ruled by his two sons Arcadius and Honorius . The most devastating effect of the battle was certainly the - permanent - military weakening of Western Rome: Its core troops ( Comitatenses ) seem to have been largely wiped out at the Frigidus, an irreplaceable loss that was bitterly avenged shortly afterwards, since it was Western Rome - completely especially after the conquest of his rich North African provinces by the Vandals - from then on it became more and more difficult to assert oneself against external enemies, which finally led to the dissolution of the western half of the empire in the late 5th century AD.
The fact that the Gothic federates , who had paid the highest blood toll on the Eastern Roman side, did not feel sufficiently rewarded for this, since after Theodosius' death, the Romans no longer felt bound by the foedus , which was closed by the latter, also proved to be momentous the Goths rebelled against the government in Ravenna in 395 . A few years later, their leader Alaric, who repeatedly referred to the supposed ingratitude of the Romans, was able to use the knowledge of the Julian Alps he had gained during the battle to safely lead the Goths to Italy and plunder Rome .
meaning
The Battle of Frigidus is traditionally seen as a clash of two different worldviews: According to this reading, the Christian Theodosius I defeated the last representative of ancient paganism and the values on which the millennial Roman Empire rested. After the Battle of Frigidus, Christianity became the only permitted belief in the empire . The prohibition of paganism and with it its downfall are indeed one of the deepest changes in cultural history in antiquity .
However, as mentioned, modern research indicates that pagans and Christians fought on both sides and that both Theodosius and Eugenius were Christians. As a result, the civil war that culminated in the Battle of Frigidus is generally no longer viewed as a religious conflict today, although Eugenius, if he had been victorious, would probably have pursued a relatively tolerant religious policy. In 394 it was not about a renewal of paganism, but only about power in the Imperium Romanum .
swell
The history of the Christian Rufinus of Aquileia is an early source of the prehistory and the course of the Battle of Frigidus . The historians and theologians Paulus Orosius ( Historiae adversum Paganos , 7.35) and Theodoret also describe the battle from a Christian perspective . Zosimos , on the other hand, offers a description from a pagan perspective .
Commemoration
On the occasion of the 1600th anniversary of the Battle of Frigidus, the Slovenian Post issued a special stamp in 1994 . In the same year a stone cross was erected above Vrhpolje , whose T-shape is supposed to commemorate the emperor Theodosius.
Remarks
- ↑ Thilo Ulbert (ed.): Ad Pirum (Hrušica). Late Roman fortification of the pass in the Julian Alps (= Munich Contributions to Pre- and Early History. Vol. 31). Beck, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-406-07981-4 .
- ^ H. Leppin: Theodosius the great. On the way to the Christian empire. P. 217.
- ↑ O. Seeck, G. Veith: The battle on Frigidus. Pp. 459-463.
- ↑ Andrej Štekar: Poskus lociranja bitke pri Frigidu leta 394 na območju med Sanaborjem in Colombier (Attempt to locate the place of the battle of Frigidus (394) in the area between Sanabor and Col). In: Annales Ser. hist. sociol. 23, 1, 2013, pp. 1-14. (PDF)
- ↑ O. Seeck, G. Veith: The battle on Frigidus. P. 461.
- ↑ Alexander Demandt : History of late antiquity: the Roman Empire from Diocletian to Justinian 284–565 AD. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-406-57241-3 , p. 110.
- ↑ 1600. obletnica bitke pri Frigidu (reki Vipavi pri Ajdovščini). Pošta Slovenije, accessed September 19, 2014 .
- ↑ The Theodosius Cross over Vrhpolje near Vipava. Slovenian tourism information portal, accessed on September 19, 2014 .
literature
- Alan Cameron : The Last Pagans of Rome . Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York 2011, pp. 93-131.
- Thomas Grünewald : The last struggle of paganism in Rome? In: Historia 41, 1992, pp. 462-487.
- Hartmut Leppin : Theodosius the Great. On the way to the Christian empire. (= Design of antiquity ). Primus Verlag , Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-471-4 , pp. 217-220.
- David Potter: The Roman Empire at Bay. AD 180-395 , London 2004, pp. 532f.
- Otto Seeck , Georg Veith: The battle on Frigidus. In: Klio 13, 1913, pp. 451-467.
- Matthias Springer : The Battle of the Frigidus as a source and literary history problem. In: Rajko Bratoz (Ed.): Westillyricum and Northeast Italy in the late Roman period , Ljubljana 1996, pp. 45–94.
- Joachim Szidat : The usurpation of Eugenius. In: Historia 28, 1979, pp. 487-508.