Flavius Aetius was one of the larger-than-life characters of
the late Roman Empire, hailed as “the last of the Romans”
by Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire . Between AD 433 and 454, until he was
murdered by the emperor Valentinian III, Aetius, a general,
was probably the most powerful person in the Roman
Empire. He shaped both domestic and foreign policy, and
fought a series of crucial battles against the barbarians,
and also other Romans in civil wars. He was unique among
powerful generals fighting in civil wars in not seeking the
emperorship himself. Since the end of the second century,
civil war had become a fact of life in the Roman Empire.
Between the death of Marcus Aurelius in AD 180 until the
collapse of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476, there
was hardly a decade that did not see a civil war or a palace
coup against an emperor. Few emperors died of natural
causes or in battle. Most were murdered by usurpers or
their own troops.
Aetius’s career illustrates the changes from Roman
Republic and early Empire to the late Roman Empire. Not
only did his involvement in incessant civil wars and his
power in every aspect of the empire’s business contrast
with the much more limited power of generals and senators
during earlier periods, but it also highlights how the fortunes
of Romans changed radically in the intervening centuries in
other ways.
By the late Roman Empire, the so-called barbarians who
were initially dominated and incorporated into Roman
armies or used as slaves now dominated many parts of the
empire. As a young man, Aetius had been held hostage by
barbarians, first by the Goths under Alaric and then by the
Huns. Roman relations with these barbarians are indicative
of how things had changed since the Republic. Alaric was
both a ferocious enemy and an ally, so much so that in 405
he was appointed one of the senior-most generals of the
Roman army. The arrangement was temporary, however.
By 408, Alaric was fighting against the Romans, invading
Italy and sacking Rome.
The Huns were also both powerful foes and frequent
allies of the Romans. Though they, too, held Aetius
hostage, they later fought alongside him in a civil war. But