Aspar and the Struggle for the Eastern Roman Empire, AD 421–71

Ronald A. Bleeker, Aspar and the Struggle for the Eastern Roman Empire, AD 421–71 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2022). 9781350279261.

Reviewed by Stuart McCunn, University of New Haven, smccunn@newhaven.edu.

Ronald A. Bleeker’s Aspar and the Struggle for the Eastern Roman Empire, AD 421–71 is the first English-language biography of the East Roman warlord and patrician Aspar. Students of the fifth century will almost certainly recognize the name of the man who served as the chief power behind the throne from the mid-450s through 471, and so a monograph on this key figure is long overdue.

It has to be stated at the outset that this book is heavily inspired by Jeroen Wijnendaele’s biography of Bonifatius.1 This connection is noted clearly in the introduction, which explicitly thanks Wijnendaele for reviewing an early draft. Both books are biographies (or more accurately career summaries) of a late Roman warlord that use the biographical format to define the nature of their subject’s position while also drawing broader conclusions about the late Roman state. Both books take a strict chronological approach to their subjects’ careers, although this book makes itself more accessible to beginners by starting with a detailed background to the topic that helps place Aspar’s career into context.

Given the similarity in topic and the existence of other excellent studies of late Roman warlordism (most notably Penny MacGeorge’s Late Roman Warlords and John Michael O’Flynn’s Generalissimos of the Western Roman Empire), it might reasonably be asked what sets this book apart.2 The answer Bleeker provides is that all previous monographs on late Roman warlords have focused primarily on the late Roman West. The reasons for this western focus are obvious: the Western Empire simply had more warlords, and their appearance coincided with a dramatic political collapse. Scholars have long focused on the fall of the Western Empire, and it is unsurprising that fifth-century warlordism has been viewed through that frame. Yet the rise of warlords was not restricted to Western generals. By focusing instead on the most successful warlord of the Eastern Empire, this book considers the topic from a different perspective. Rather than explaining the collapse of the West, Bleeker attempts to answer what is to my mind a more difficult question: Why did the East survive?

This is a worthy ambition and a bold statement of intent, which makes it all the more impressive that the book largely achieves what it sets out to do. The author is a retired lawyer, which perhaps accounts for his ability to keep doggedly on topic, even amidst a variety of different and complicated themes. We rarely drift away from the focus on Aspar. Background details are given when necessary; but they are covered concisely and all extraneous discussions are mercilessly pruned. There are numerous areas where topics I would consider important get dropped (particularly in the discussion of barbarian identity), but what we are given is just enough to understand Aspar’s life. The one area where I think the book could have allowed itself a little more leeway is the discussion of other warlords. Aspar did not exist in isolation, and while we do get discussion of affairs in the West when they apply to Aspar, some more explicit comparisons would have been informative.

As might be expected from a biography, the book generally sidelines explanations based on broader societal causes (often called the longue durée approach) in favor of ones based on the immediate circumstances. Major political and military changes are credited to individual decisions, which are themselves determined by expediency and a balancing of interests and goals. Broader themes and cultural shifts are acknowledged, but anyone looking for an analysis of the evolving trends of late antiquity would be advised to look elsewhere.

The book is divided along strictly chronological lines. Apart from two introductory chapters that lay the scene for the fifth century and detail Aspar’s family background, each chapter covers a single phase of Aspar’s career as defined by a set range of dates. Some chapters (such as Chapter 8) cover a single year, while others cover up to ten years. This approach provides an easy to follow narrative and is also a very useful way of avoiding anachronism. It is easy to anticipate Aspar’s role as an éminence grise when that represents the best documented period of his career. The choice of Aspar’s subordinate Marcian as emperor, for example, while clearly a win for Aspar, is seen here as the result of a compromise between several feuding factions, with the most notable kingmaker being not Aspar but Pulcheria, sister of the recently deceased Theodosius II. The elevation of Leo I was a clearer demonstration of Aspar’s power, since most of his rivals were dead or gone by then; yet here too the limits faced by Eastern warlords are laid clear in Aspar’s struggles with his chosen emperor.

One of the important things that this analysis reveals is just how restricted Aspar’s power truly was. Even when he was the leading man in the state, he could never ignore the interests of rival power groups. It is clear that fifth-century Constantinople was riven by feuding factions, but our sources are not always detailed about who they were composed of and what motivated them. While a complete reconstruction of the various factions is impossible at this date, much of this book is spent reconstructing the actions and motives of the key players as they have come down to us. Bleeker does manage to isolate a few of Aspar’s key policies (most notably his opposition to any anti-Vandal campaign), and plausibly views times when these policies were violated as an indication of Aspar losing an undocumented power struggle at court. The Vandal campaign of 468 (led by Aspar’s rival and Leo’s brother-in-law) is a prime example: its failure marked the humiliation of the anti-Aspar factions, and was followed by an intensification in Aspar’s efforts to have Leo elevate Aspar’s son Patricius as his successor.

Many later historians identified these factions as representatives of outside ethnic groups vying for control of a collapsing Rome. By this line of reasoning, Aspar represented a “barbarian faction,” while Zeno and others represented an “Isaurian faction.” Bleeker’s explanation is much more pragmatic and ultimately plausible: the factions are formed around individuals competing amongst each other for personal power. Rather than Aspar seeking some broader aims for the benefit of his barbarian brethren, he was seeking personal advancement for himself and his family. The succession was the main source of contention: Aspar’s goal was to get Patricius established as Leo’s heir. Competitors for the succession included Leo’s brother-in-law Basiliscus and his son-in-law Zeno. This is an entirely ordinary sort of power struggle in Roman politics, and when viewed in those terms there seems little need for a broader explanation. This argument is not new, and indeed represents the current orthodoxy, but it is presented well here and explains fifth-century politics in a way that clears aside many of the more complicated questions.

While the idea of ethnic factions is discarded, this does not mean that ethnic identity and the role it played in late Roman society is ignored. The book does an excellent, if succinct, job of placing Aspar within the broader and more complicated context of ethnicity in late antiquity. Aspar has often been presented as a barbarian, even by authors writing at the time, but as Bleeker makes clear, his career was as quintessentially Roman as his father’s before him. While he was of Alan ancestry, barbarian blood was not an impediment to high status: many emperors had barbarian ancestors. Aspar was a second-generation immigrant who had the crucial ability to “play the Roman,” but there were still two factors that set him apart from ordinary Romans. First, he had an obviously foreign name (although this had not always been an impediment to others). Second, he was an Arian rather than an orthodox Christian. These, more than biological notions of race, made him something of an outsider to Roman society. The fact that Aspar made a choice to preserve these distinctions shows that his non-Roman identity was important to him even as he adopted a Roman identity as well. Bleeker does a good job of making his case succinctly here, refusing to get drawn into larger questions of ethnogenesis and explaining just enough to allow discussion on Aspar’s identity.

Bleeker’s book does an excellent job overall of exploring Aspar’s life and the implications of his career for the survival of the Eastern Empire. It does not present a radical challenge to the established consensus, but it presents an uncommon viewpoint effectively and with skill. It is up to date on the latest research in English, although it would have benefitted from consulting some of the more significant non-Anglophone scholarship.#3 The book is a valuable addition to the scholarship of the fifth century. It presents a different perspective, and does so with a clear focus that makes the book suitable both for scholars and those unfamiliar with the period.

Table of Contents

1. Why Does Aspar Matter? (1–6)
2. “Barbarians” and “Heretics” (7–16)
3. Aspar’s Antecedents (17–31)
4. Ardaburius the Elder and Aspar: Persia and Italy (421–5) (33–49)
5. Aspar in Africa: The War with the Vandals (431–5) (51–63)
6. Aspar and Attila: The Wars with the Huns (440–50) (65–91)
7. Aspar and the Choice of Marcian (450–7) (93–110)
8. Aspar and the Choice of Leo (457) (111–18)
9. Beginnings of the Struggle with Leo (457–65) (119–29)
10. The Rise of Zeno (465–7) (131–40)
11. Leo’s African Gamble (467–8) (141–55)
12. Aspar’s Apogee and Defeat (469–71) (157–75)
13. Aftermath (471–91) (177–94)
14. Conclusions (195–207)

Notes

1. Jeroen Wijnendaele, The Last of the Romans: Bonifatius – Warlord and Comes Africae (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).

2. Penny MacGeorge, Late Roman Warlords (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); John Michael O’Flynn, Generalissimos of the Western Roman Empire (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1983).

3. Particularly relevant are Christine Delaplace, La fin de l’Empire romain d’Occident: Rome et les Wisigoths. De 382 à 534. (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015); Timo Stickler, Aetius: Gestaltungsspielräume eines Heermeisters im ausgehenden Weströmischen Reich. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2002).

Discussion

1. What drew you to Aspar and Late Roman history initially, especially since your background is in law and not in history? 

I have always been interested in studying Roman history. My interest came to focus on why in the fifth century the East Roman empire survived whereas the West Roman state did not. Although many answers have been suggested, I was struck by the fact that both states had similar political issues but the outcomes were very different. Almost a century ago, F. Lot remarked: “In the East it was not the same. Leo was perhaps more suspicious and Aspar more lenient.” This book is my attempt to explore that difference. 

2. Due to your strict biographical approach, you generally avoided larger themes. Were there any broader questions which you regretted being unable to discuss?

As you say, this is a biography focused on Aspar’s involvement in several key episodes in the history of East Rome in the fifth century. Larger themes for possible study might be (a) clarifying the East Roman system of military commands in this period (a recent book proposes a new interpretation) or (b) the role of religious groups and figures in East Roman politics in the mid-fifth century. Also, while the role of imperial women such as Pulcheria and Galla Placidia has been well studied, a further examination of both Eudocia and Verina, and their daughters, might be of interest.