The western usurper Magnus Maximus holds a peculiar place in the history of Late Antiquity.Footnote 1 As commander of an imperial army stationed in Britain, he made a bid for the purple against the ruling emperor Gratian in 383.Footnote 2 He managed to suborn most of Gratian's troops in Gaul and have the fleeing emperor assassinated, after which he quickly established his sovereignty over the rest of Gaul and Spain. For a few years Maximus maintained recognition from the Eastern emperor Theodosius, so long as he refrained from extending his dominion over the Central Empire of Gratian's younger brother Valentinian II. When he eventually did march on Italy in 387, Valentinian fled to Thessaloniki and managed to broker military succour from his Eastern colleague. The following year, Maximus was defeated in several set-piece battles, apprehended and executed.
This bare-bones survey of his five-year reign does not make Maximus particularly stand out. Indeed, he could be compared to earlier Western usurpers who managed to establish themselves against a reigning dynasty for several years until finally vanquished, such as Magnentius or Postumus.Footnote 3 Yet, in hindsight, Maximus does stand out for several reasons. He was the last soldier-emperor to conduct effective government from Trier, which had received a quasi-continuous imperial presence since the time of the Tetrarchy a century earlier. The abandonment of this imperial residence on the Rhine would contribute significantly to the breakdown of this frontier a generation later.Footnote 4 Maximus also holds the dubious honour of being the first emperor to have executed a Christian on the charge of heresy.Footnote 5 As emperor, he made a conspicuous display of his Christian credentials in communication with the bishop of Rome, stressing among other things his early baptism.Footnote 6 It has also been plausibly suggested that Maximus was the first emperor to station on special conditions barbarian auxiliaries in Britain, such as Irish and Saxons.Footnote 7 This would become a recurring phenomenon on the continent during the early fifth century. The aim of this note is to revisit Maximus’ alleged role in what probably was the most (in)famous barbarian settlement on imperial soil in Late Antiquity: that of the Gothic Tervingi and Greuthungi in 376.
Maximus’ career before his rise to power is shrouded in obscurity. Given his downfall and subsequent abolitio memoriae, it was inevitable that Symmachus would expunge his panegyric to the usurper, though the modern scholar wishes it were still extant.Footnote 8 That being said, it is clear he was of Spanish origin and affiliated to the Theodosian family, either as a relative or more likely as a client.Footnote 9 From Ammianus and Zosimus we learn that he served under the eponymous father of Theodosius in Britain and Africa.Footnote 10 His previous service on the island was probably a factor in him eventually receiving a command there, though its exact nature is disputed. It has been suggested, however, that, between his African sojourn and British command, he served on the Danube either as dux Moesiae or dux Scythiae. This presupposition essentially rests on his identification with a namesake mentioned by Ammianus. This Maximus, together with the comes rei militaris Lupicinus, was blamed for the inept organisation of settling the Greuthungi south of the Danube in 376–77.
During this time, when the barriers of our frontier were unlocked and the realm of savagery was spreading far and wide columns of armed men like glowing ashes from Aetna, when our difficulties and imminent dangers called for military reformers who were most distinguished for the fame of their exploits: then it was, as if at the choice of some adverse deity, that men were gathered together and given command of armies who bore stained reputations. At their head were two rivals in recklessness: one was Lupicinus, commanding general in Thrace, the other Maximus, a pernicious leader (dux exitiosus). Their treacherous greed was the source of all our evils. I say nothing of other crimes which these two men, or at least others with their permission, with the worst of motives committed against the foreign new-comers, who were as yet blameless; but one melancholy and unheard-of act shall be mentioned, of which, even if they were their own judges of their own case, they could not be acquitted by any excuse.Footnote 11
It was John Matthews who first conjectured that these two Maximi were actually one and the same person.Footnote 12 This identification has received some followers and was championed recently by Anthony Birley.Footnote 13 Besides having the same name, the identification essentially rests on two further arguments: progression in the chain of command as a quid pro quo for supporting Theodosius I and Ammianus possibly echoing Pacatus’ description of Magnus Maximus as a homo funebris (‘murderous man’), when describing the dux Maximus as exitiosus (‘pernicious’).Footnote 14 Let us first begin with the most attractive aspect of this theory.
If Magnus Maximus was the dux based in Thrace c. 377, one has to explain how he ended up in Britain six years later at the latest. The suggested answer is that he may have been part of the Eastern faction that was instrumental in the elevation of Theodosius I.Footnote 15 Considering Maximus had already been part of the Theodosian entourage, the new Eastern emperor could not have ignored this type of windfall. As a result, Maximus was given a command in Britain. This suggestion further helps to explain Zosimus’ enigmatic comment that Maximus felt slighted that Theodosius was deemed worthy of a throne, while he had not even received a respectable command.Footnote 16 By 383, Maximus’ resentment certainly would have reached its peak when Theodosius elevated his firstborn son Arcadius to Augustus, nota bene without Gratian's permission, at which point he may have felt it was high time to carve out a position for himself in the imperial college. Attractive as it is, this scenario is not without difficulties.
It has often been assumed that on the eve of his usurpation, Maximus was serving as comes Britanniarum.Footnote 17 This is unlikely, since this office was most probably only formalised under Stilicho.Footnote 18 In Birley's own reconstruction, Maximus ended as dux Britanniarum. Around the time of his usurpation, he had scored a victory over the Picts and Scoti.Footnote 19 While one cannot exclude the possibility that Maximus had been comes of the littoral tract, his victory over enemies habitually descending on Britain from the north indicates that he was probably operating closer to Hadrian's Wall than the Channel. However, there are no known cases of a dux from one frontier province becoming dux of another. Such a scenario could theoretically be alluring for a dux aspiring to expand his scope of climbing up the ladder, by moving to a new province closer to a centre of imperial patronage. In this regard, there could have been no worse transfer for Maximus than moving from the lower Danube, conveniently near Constantinople, to Britain, whose peripheral position from imperial residences made it a volatile province in the late Roman Empire. This was virtually the equivalent of a demotion.
Alternatively, Maximus may have been given a position as comes rei militaris. This certainly would have counted as a promotion, even though duces and comites remained only at spectabilis rank. However, before the formalisation of the position of comes Britanniarum we know of only two comites rei militares operating in Britain. These are the elder Gratian in the 340s and the elder Theodosius in 367.Footnote 20 The latter is instructive, because he crossed over to Britain with continental comitatenses at the instruction of Valentinian I and immediately returned to Gaul at the end of his campaign.Footnote 21 This poses the greatest hitch to the aforementioned reconstruction of Magnus Maximus’ transfer to Britain: it works from the presumption that Theodosius I as Eastern emperor was in a position to grant a Western command before 383. Quod non. Between Theodosius’ accession in 379 and his own downfall in 383, Gratian's military entourage kept a short leash on the allocation of commands in his realm. Even more so, the elevation of Valentinian II in 375 had already been used to settle scores regarding which men were going to keep their command, lose their command or receive a new command.Footnote 22 Throughout Gratian's reign, Theodosius found himself in an inferior position, scrambling what precious little military resources he could to the Balkans and spending the next three years containing the Goths. Relations between the two emperors were never cordial.Footnote 23 Hence it is simply inconceivable that Theodosius could have exercised any prerogative to award a distinctively Western command to Magnus Maximus, if the latter had previously been based in Thrace. The problems do not stop there.
It should be pointed out that the name Maximus is ubiquitous. The first volume of the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire alone records 11 namesakes who were late Roman officials and (near) contemporaries of Ammianus.Footnote 24 Furthermore, Ammianus seems prima facie to hold neutral opinions of the Maximus serving the elder Theodosius in Africa and the usurper whom Sextus Rusticius Julianus served as praefectus urbanus, both of whom we plausibly can identify as Magnus Maximus. Yet Ammianus utterly despised the dux in Thrace. If one wishes to identify the dux Maximus with Magnus Maximus, it should be on the basis of other sources that can help to back up this claim. Here one should note that Ammianus is not the only author who was aware of a Maximus who served in Thrace and kick-started the Gothic uprising.
In his chronicle, Jerome leaves out Lupicinus, who shared with Maximus exitiosus the onus of the debacle, and singles out the latter as the guilty party.Footnote 25 Jerome ends his chronicle before Magnus’ usurpation, yet he does refer to the latter event in later work. In his letter to Heliodorus, written c. 396, he compiles a catalogue of calamities that had befallen the Empire in recent decades. Jerome mentions both usurpations, such as Magnus Maximus’ and Eugenius’, and barbarian depravations in the Illyrians provinces, such as those by the Goths.Footnote 26 The church father clearly distinguishes these as different disasters, and does not attempt to identify Maximus as the man responsible for barbarian brutality in the Balkans. This pattern is also noticeable among other authors. Zosimus allocates space in his history to the Danubian duces, without trying to identify their identity or specific command, but the context makes it clear that these must be Lupicinus and Maximus.Footnote 27 Still, he makes no attempt to draw a connection between this Maximus and Magnus Maximus when he introduces the latter.Footnote 28 More revealing is Orosius’ account, where both the dux Maximus and the tyrannus Maximus are mentioned in the same work. Following Jerome, he also squarely places the blame for the events culminating in Valens’ fatal Gothic War on the shoulders of the dux Maximus.Footnote 29 Yet despite acknowledging that Magnus Maximus was a usurper, Orosius is a rare pro-Theodosian source who has good things to say about the former.Footnote 30 Clearly, to Orosius these two Maximi were not the same person. One could try to argue away these sources as jejune, and it has to be conceded that on fourth-century matters they ordinarily pale in comparison to the splendour of Ammianus’ narrative. Nonetheless, we are faced here with at least three different literary traditions that do not try explicitly to identify Magnus Maximus as a Thracian-based dux in 377. Given that the Gothic insurrection and the violent overthrow of Gratian are two of the most heinous imperial events of the late fourth century, occurring within six years of one another, we could reasonably expect that at least somebody would have clearly recorded that one and the same person was to blame for both?
This ultimately brings us back to the question of how Pacatus may have treated the matter. Birley's argument that Ammianus was familiar with Pacatus’ language carries some weight based on internal evidence.Footnote 31 Yet one wonders why Pacatus did not gratefully pounce upon such ammunition for his vituperation of the usurper, i.e. that Magnus Maximus may have been the engineer of the imperial fiasco supreme of the fourth century. It could be countered that the Gothic crisis was a general embarrassment, one during which Theodosius also suffered setbacks, and that it was thus wiser to remain silent on the matter altogether.Footnote 32 However, as two scholars astutely observe: ‘There is a school of thought that maintains lofty silence is the best way to deal with criticism. That was not Pacatus’ way.’Footnote 33 The settlement of the Goths in the Balkans under Theodosius has remained a never-ceasing point of contention, both for sources then and scholars now. Some contemporary accusations that Theodosius had acquiesced to the Goths probably stuck, since Pacatus gives proper attention to their exemplary service as soldiers.Footnote 34 In another clear break with previous tradition, the Gallic rhetor repeatedly and unambiguously names Maximus and allocates substantial space to him.Footnote 35 A choice trope of late Roman panegyrists was comparing and contrasting their subjects of praise with their antagonists, to the obvious glory of the former and glaring detriment of the latter.Footnote 36 Pacatus employs the same trick when describing Maximus as a low-born servant to Theodosius, scion of a noble house.Footnote 37 Considering the Gothic pandemonium of 377–82, it would have been an excellent opportunity for a spin doctor to strike a sharp disparity between a commander whom he celebrated as a paragon of proper conduct, and a commander who had turned original Gothic recruitment into an omnishambles of epic proportions. Pacatus did not do this, for the very simple reason that the latter man was not Magnus Maximus.
Surveying all these considerations, it is probably best finally to put to rest the idea that Magnus Maximus was Ammianus’ dux exitiosus.
