The Fall of Rome by HISTORY ROMAN Ford Michael Curtis

Author:HISTORY ROMAN Ford, Michael Curtis [HISTORY ROMAN Ford, Michael Curtis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, General
ISBN: 0312945280
Google: dg47mAEACAAJ
Amazon: B000V770PU
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2007-05-14T22:00:00+00:00

II

Ricimer stood on the bridge of the Roman flagship, anchored just offshore of the tiny North African port of Mercurion, the site of a crumbling temple to Hermes, forty miles southeast of Gaiseric’s capital, mighty Carthage. Low brown hills extended as far as he could see, patched here and there with the fields of wheat and olive groves that had at one time made this one of the wealthiest of Roman provinces. Yet history here was fickle. For nearly a millennium Carthage had been a threat; thrice Rome had conquered and destroyed it, and each time it had found the resources to revive, and eventually to threaten again. This time, however, the danger came not from the Carthaginians, who were, at best, a dying race of slaves and peasants, no longer the proud warriors of Hannibal’s time. Now it was from the Vandals, a Germanic people utterly incongruous in these hot desert climes with their reddened skin and large bodies, who had conquered Carthage several decades before. Driven from eastern Europe by the Huns, they had stormed Rome’s legions at the Rhine and crossed Europe as far as Hispania, where they were at last stopped by running out of land—they had met the sea, the end of the world, and could go no further. Rome, in an effort to remove the Vandals from the rich Iberian trading ports and silver mines on which they squatted, convinced them to set sail across the narrow strait dividing Europe from Africa, and to take the long empty coastline of Mauretania, as far down the western coast as the tribe might care to go. Rome then happily regained its wealthy legacy of Hispania and Lusitania.

Abysmal foresight, thought Ricimer. Unbeknownst to Rome, the Vandals had no intention of remaining on the dry, worthless territories to which they had been pointed. Within months of the landing, Vandal settlements had already sprung up far to the east of the Pillars of Hercules. Their progress was inexorable, and like an aqueduct slowly collapsing in an earthquake, column by column, the African provinces fell.

One after another, the beautiful cities along Africa’s northern coast, Tripolis, Caesarea, Rusguniae, a string of Roman pearls with centuries of trading and cultural ties with the mother country, were conquered in an orgy of fire and blood. Even the great bishop Augustine was unable to hold back the slaughter and, besieged in the fortified town of Hippo, had died of a combination of old age, starvation, and sheer fury. Eventually the Vandals seized Carthage itself, along with all the agricultural territories and wealth of Numidia. With that, the entire southern Mediterranean lay open to their grasp. Originally a forest people, the Vandals now took to the sea like porpoises. Every port sprouted new ship works and became bastions of Vandal sea operations. Extortion and looting became the norm, and Rome’s Mediterranean islands—Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily—were reduced to Vandal pirate strongholds. The coasts of Hispania and Gaul were laid waste, and not even Rome was spared,

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