The Latest News from 300 AD

Thinking about the Roman Empire and Steve Reeves movies

Been a minute. What can you do? Life, man. Anyway, I’ll do my best to be less of a stranger, because I know in 2024 you’re all waiting anxiously at your inbox for the latest missive about Blue Demon movies and what some drank at some bar. Anyway, with that said, here’s some old news.

I’m sending this multi-parter article because enough work went into that I’d hate to see it go to waste. It’s also a cautionary tale, like my epic recounting of the Labors of Hercules, which was an excerpt from an abandoned book project about sword and sandal films, or my half-assed history of the Pastry War, a rambling account I cut from my book, Cocktails & Capers, even though at some point I thought, “You can’t possibly understand El Santo movies without this crucial background info about the era in which lucha libre was invented.”

What follows was part of a mad scheme to construct a semi-legitimate ancient history book out of a series of reviews of fantastical, mostly B-movie epics of exceedingly dubious accuracy. I started this project using two movies: Last Woman of Shang (1964), a big-budget film from Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers set during the Shang Dynasty (1766 BC to 1122 BC); and Goliath and the Barbarians (1959), a rousing sword and sandal actioner from Italy starring American bodybuilder Steve Reeves, fresh off his success in a couple of Hercules films, and Cuban bombshell Chelo Alonso.

Here’s the historical context you need to review Goliath and the Barbarians: the film is set during the Lombard invasion of the tattered remnants of the Western Roman Empire in 568 AD. The end. And it’s dubious to claim that you even need that much.

As you will see, that sentence does indeed appear. But let this be a lesson. I decided, sitting in the library surrounded by reference material, that you couldn’t really understand the Lombard invasion without understanding the Migration Period, which began in the 4th century AD, and the utterly insane jumble of wars, alliances, betrayals, and shifting alliances that characterized the waning days of the Roman Empire and the early transition into medieval Europe.

None of this is important to Goliath and the Barbarians, but as my conceit was to use such films as a springboard for actual history I dove in and was almost immediately crushed by the weight of my own ambition. This is partially because the particular period I picked is profoundly confusing; partly because I have a day job and couldn’t dedicate myself entirely to this mad scheme; and partly because I’m sort of lazy and easily distracted. So in the end, I gave up on what I still think would be a pretty fun project.

But not before I’d taken a first-draft tour of the tumultuous century from 350 AD to 500 AD—roughly from the arrival of the Goths on the outskirts of the Roman Empire to the arrival of Attila the Hun, at which point I ran out of steam and ended on a cliffhanger that will likely never be fulfilled, like a TV show that didn’t realize it was about to be canceled. I didn’t even get to writing about Goliath and the Barbarians (let alone Last Woman of Shang). So here’s that taken care of: the movie is pretty good, and the score for the American version, by Les Baxter, is phenomenal.

I wanted to showcase the writing somehow, even though it is, as I said, a first draft, lacking in footnotes and missing a lot of the jokes I planned to insert. So it’s not as funny or as accurate as I intended it to eventually be. It was all I could do just to sort out the Constantiuses, Constantines, and Valentinians. Not to mention that I’m pretty sure I lose the thread at various points and introduce a number of historical inaccuracies—though no more than did Goliath and the Barbarians.

So what you have below, and coming in probably at least two more dispatches (I told you it got out of hand), is the first bit of a very unpolished, unproofed, unreliable history—which, come to think of it, is most history. If nothing else, I hope you learn a thing or two about Alaric. That dude fuckin’ hated Emperor Honorius.

The Coming of the Barbarians

Goliath and the Barbarians was the third of five sword and sandal epics in which Steve Reeves starred in 1959. It was released on June 30, a little over a week after his second such film, The White Warrior, released on June 21. Like The White Warrior, Goliath and the Barbarians is technically not an ancient world epic in the vein of Reeves’ two spectacularly popular Hercules films. But also like The White Warrior, and most of Reeves’ subsequent films, it still pretty much is.

The film is set during the Lombard invasion of the tattered remnants of the Western Roman Empire in 568 AD. This places it centuries after the era in which Hercules was bounding across the globe in search of adventure and people he could accidentally slay while in a drunken haze, but no great effort is put into differentiating Reeves’ character, the noble woodsman Emiliano, from his iconic turn as the Greek demigod.

The period in which Goliath and the Barbarians takes place is known broadly as the Migration Period. It began roughly in the 4th century A.D. Rome, the mighty powerhouse of western civilization, was in the midst of its very prolonged death throes. This caused a period of great instability and upheaval, as the deaths of empires tend to do, and set off a vast wave of migration across Europe sparked by the desire to distance oneself from the crumbling mess or the desire to conquer lands Rome was no longer powerful enough to defend. This was the era of sprawling hosts from the north and east descending upon the decrepit empire. Most famous, and most aggressive, among the many peoples flowing into Roman lands were the Huns and the Goths — rather fond of warring with one another as well as setting their sites on the spoils of Rome.

Rome and the Germanic Goth tribes had been at war since before the ascension of Julius Caesar, who cemented his power over the Roman military largely thanks to his campaigns in the north. By the time of Attila, however, the Roman solution to the border was less militaristic and more diplomatic. The tribes—which were often more advanced and complex than the term “barbarians” implies—were negotiated with, attained a certain autonomy, and also served as a buffer (and source of soldiers) against even unrulier distant neighbors. This peace was shattered when an official from the Visigoths, one of the most powerful Germanic tribes, was murdered while ostensibly under the protection of Roman lieutenant Lupicinus, sparking what became known as the Gothic War, which ebbed and flowed between 376 and 382 AD.

Goths had been trickling into the empire since roughly 376 AD, seeking refuge from a hollerin’ bunch of ruffians known as the Huns, who had been careening all over central Asia and eastern Europe. We’ll get to them later. By this time, the empire had become so large that it had split into two distincy entities: the Western (in Mediolanum—modern-day Milan—at the time, rather than Rome itself) and Eastern (run out of Constantinople and known these days as Istanbul) empires. The emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Valens, was actually happy to see the Goths. He needed soldiers, and these so-called barbarians would be an excellent source. Standard operating procedure in Rome was to absorb migrant populations, recruit a large number of them into the army, then disperse the rest across the empire in small groups, so that no sense of a unified migrant population could be sustained, thus making their assimilation into Roman culture quicker and more complete and the threat they posed to Roman power negligible. Valens saw no reason this wouldn’t work when it came to the Goths. Things didn’t exactly go as planned. 

For starters, Valens was so desperate for military manpower that he forewent the age-old method of breaking the population up into smaller groups. The Goths were allowed to settle en masse. Because he planned to draft many of the men into the army, and because he was low on funds and materials to equip an army, another old rule—the confiscation of weapons—was also largely disregarded. Part of the Roman agreement was to provide food for the Goths while they awaited relocation to their permanent settlements in Thrace, but Roman logistics proved inadequate for the task. Food shortages were rampant, and they were exacerbated by graft among Roman officers, who would sometimes neglect to distribute victuals in favor of selling them for their own personal enrichment.

Particularly problematic in this regard was a Roman military commander named Lupicinus. In an effort to quell growing discontent among the Goths, Lupicinus attempted to march them further south. This, however, only opened the door for more Goths to cross into Roman territory. What’s more, Lupicinus treated the Goths rather shabbily when they reached their destination of Marcianople, which is in modern-day Bulgaria. Lupicinus forbade Goths from doing business with local merchants, further inflaming food shortages and fanning discontent. When it was reported that a group of Goths had mugged and murdered Roman soldiers, Lupicinus reacted by seizing the Goth leaders (in town for a meeting with Lupicinus) and executing their assistants.

This went down poorly.

The Goths, led now by a hellraiser named Fritigern, graduated from discontent to open rebellion, slaughtering Lupicinus’ army (but not Lupicinus himself) at the Battle of Marcianople in 376. The Gothic War had begun.

The Gothic War

The war went badly for Emperor Valens. Gothic hordes, bolstered by slaves of Rome who found themselves suddenly free and with an axe to grind, pillaged the territories of Eastern Rome, amassing a vast train of wagons that served as a sort of mobile fortress. What’s more, a significant portion of Roman legions were made up of Goths, and they seemed more enthusiastic about going to war with Rome than about waging war against their kin.  It was only by appealing to the Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Gratian, that Valens was able to avoid complete calamity.

After a vicious engagement known as the Battle of the Willows in 377, the two sides retreated to their respective fortresses to recover. The Romans hoped the coming winter would decimate the Gothic ranks, and that might have been the case had not the Goths struck up bargains with groups of Hun mercenaries. Even then, Rome might have prevailed had Valens not been a victim of bad intelligence and worse hubris.

Expecting to meet a Gothic host of modest size, impatient at waiting for Gratian to mop up his own barbarian war in the West and join him, and hungry for a sliver of personal glory, Valens decided to march out—against Gratian’s advice—to engage Fritigern’s force. Once again, things went badly for Valens. His legions were battle-weary and poorly rested. The Goths, despite the hope that winter would starve them, were in pretty good shape by the time Valens’ forces were in the area. And there were a lot more Goths than Valens had been led to believe.

Valens’ big offensive, the Battle of Adrianople, took place in August of 378. It was a bloodbath. By the end, some two-thirds of the army of Eastern Rome was destroyed. Emperor Valens vanished, presumed slain or having sneaked off into the woods wearing a fake mustache and a hat. Disastrous though the battle was, the city of Adrianople near where the battle occurred, did not fall to the subsequent Gothic siege. Nor did the capital of the Eastern Empire, Constantinople, which although emperor-less, was well-fortified and reinforced by local Arab garrisons that were none to jolly themselves on the Goths sacking the city.

Thrust suddenly into the role of de facto emperor, a military commander named Julius, panicked. Fearing additional settlements of Goths scattered across the Eastern Empire might rally to Fritigern’s banner, he ordered whole populations massacred. This, surprisingly, did little to quell the hostilities.

Eventually, a man by the name of Theodosius ascended to emperor of the East and relieved Julius of the political office, but he enjoyed little success against Fritigern. Depleted of soldiers, Theodosius resorted to drafting farmers, who were none too pleased, and hired more mercenaries. He marched south to confront a host of Goths, but his army disintegrated along the way, the victim of mass desertion and the fact that many of the mercenaries were offered a better deal from the Goths. 

With the East in shambles, Western emperor Gratian finally got serious about throwing the weight of the Western Roman army into the fray. Still the Gothic army persisted, and with victory elusive for both sides, they finally sat down to talk peace. On October 8, 382 AD, the Gothic War came to an end. Fritigern’s Goths settled in Roman territory as a unified people but part of Rome and subject to military service. They soon became known as Visigoths. Fritigern himself is never mentioned as part of the peace process and doesn’t surface again in any historical accounts. It was a grueling journey to arrive where they were likely to have arrived years earlier had Lupicinus not made a fateful decision during dinner one night in 376. With the war over and the Goths now part of the Empire, it seemed like things might settle down. They didn’t.

The city of Rome hadn’t been the political seat of the Western Empire since 286 AD, when the capital moved to Mediolanum/Milan.  But Rome was Rome, politicians in residence or not. It was the spiritual home first of the Republic and then of the Empire. It was the scrappy little city that became a giant and had not been conquered in nearly 800 years, not since Gallic king Brennus sacked the town around 390 BC, when it was still getting started (and which you can learn about via Amazons of Rome, 1961 and Brennus, Enemy of Rome, 1963). The Empire may have been reeling, and it may have been exhausted both in the East and West from warfare, but as long as the city of Rome still shone, so too did the Roman Empire.

That all came crashing down in 410 AD.

TO BE CONTINUED!!!