Gainas (
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
: Γαϊνάς) was a
Gothic leader who served the
Eastern Roman Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...
as ''
magister militum
(Latin for "master of soldiers"; : ) was a top-level military command used in the late Roman Empire, dating from the reign of Constantine the Great. The term referred to the senior military officer (equivalent to a war theatre commander, the e ...
'' during the reigns of
Theodosius I
Theodosius I ( ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. He won two civil wars and was instrumental in establishing the Nicene Creed as the orthodox doctrine for Nicene C ...
and
Arcadius
Arcadius ( ; 377 – 1 May 408) was Roman emperor from 383 to his death in 408. He was the eldest son of the ''Augustus'' Theodosius I () and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla, and the brother of Honorius (). Arcadius ruled the eastern half of ...
. He played an important role in the events in the eastern part of the empire by the end of the 4th century.
Career
Gainas began his military career as a common foot-soldier, but later commanded the barbarian contingent of Theodosius' army against the usurper
Eugenius
Eugenius (died 6 September 394) was a Western Roman emperor from 392 to 394, unrecognized by the Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius I. While Christian himself, Eugenius capitalized on the discontent in the West caused by Theodosius' religious p ...
in 394. Under the command of Gainas, a man of "no lineage", was the young
Alaric of the
Balti dynasty The Balt dynasty Roger Collins, ''Visigothic Spain, 409–711'' (Blackwell, 2008), p. 45.A. Barbero and M. I. Loring, "The Formation of the Sueve and Visigothic Kingdoms in Spain", in Paul Fouracre (ed.), ''The New Cambridge Medieval History'', Vol ...
. In 395, during the
Revolt of Alaric I
The revolt of Alaric I was a military conflict between the Roman Empire and a rebel army, probably composed mainly of Goths. This war consisted a number of armed conflicts in the period between 395 and 398, interspersed with periods of negotiation ...
,
Stilicho
Stilicho (; – 22 August 408) was a military commander in the Roman army who, for a time, became the most powerful man in the Western Roman Empire. He was partly of Vandal origins and married to Serena, the niece of emperor Theodosius I. He b ...
sent him with his troops, under the cover of strengthening the armies of the East, to depose the prefect
Rufinus, who was hostile to Stilicho. Gainas murdered
Rufinus, but the eunuch
Eutropius, who was likewise Stilicho's enemy, gained power. Gainas remained mostly unrewarded by the influential eunuch, which increased his resentment.

In 399 he finally rose in stature by replacing ''magister militum'' Leo. This was after the latter failed to quell the insurrection of the
Ostrogoths
The Ostrogoths () were a Roman-era Germanic peoples, Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Goths, Gothic kingdoms within the Western Roman Empire, drawing upon the large Gothic populatio ...
in
Asia Minor
Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...
, led by the chieftain
Tribigild Tribigild, also called Tarbigilus (; ; 399) was an Ostrogothic general whose rebellion against the Eastern Roman Empire precipitated a major political crisis during the reign of Emperor Arcadius.
Tribigild appears in the historical record as the l ...
, who was also hostile to Eutropius. Gainas too failed to put down the invasions; according to some sources, Gainas was conspiring with Tribigild in order to effect the downfall of Eutropius. After suffering repeated failures against the Ostrogoths, who continued devastating the provinces of Asia Minor, Gainas advised Arcadius to accept Tribigild's terms, which included the death of Eutropius. Gainas then showed his true colors, openly joining Tribigild with all his forces; he forced Arcadius to sign a treaty whereby the Goths would be allowed to settle in Thrace, entrusted with the defense of that frontier against the barbarians beyond the Danube. Gainas proceeded to install his forces in Constantinople, where he ruled for several months. He attempted in effect to copy the success of Stilicho in the West and posed a danger to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire. He deposed all the anti-Goth officials and had Eutropius executed, though he had previously only been banished; after the intervention of
St. John Chrysostom the others were spared.
[
While a somewhat competent military commander, the zealous ]Arian
Arianism (, ) is a Christological doctrine which rejects the traditional notion of the Trinity and considers Jesus to be a creation of God, and therefore distinct from God. It is named after its major proponent, Arius (). It is considered he ...
Gainas was patently unable to administer a city of 200–400,000 whose Greco-Roman populace intensely resented barbarian Goths and Arian Christians. Gainas' compromises with Tribigild led to rumors that he had colluded with Tribigild, his kinsman; when he returned to Constantinople
Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...
in 400, riots broke out. He attempted to evacuate his soldiers but even then the citizens of Constantinople managed to trap and kill 7,000 armed Goths.
In response, Gainas and his forces attempted to flee back across the Hellespont
The Dardanelles ( ; ; ), also known as the Strait of Gallipoli (after the Gallipoli peninsula) and in classical antiquity as the Hellespont ( ; ), is a narrow, natural strait and internationally significant waterway in northwestern Turkey t ...
, but their rag-tag ''ad hoc'' fleet was met and destroyed by another Goth in Imperial service, Fravitta
Flavius Fravitta ( Greek: ; died 404/405) was a leader of the Goths and a top-ranking officer in the army of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Fravitta was a member of the Thervingi aristocracy. He was also a pagan, and for this reason he was praised by ...
, who was subsequently made consul for 401 but was later accused of treason and executed as well. After this battle, Gainas fled across the Danube and was caught by the Huns
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was par ...
under Uldin
Uldin, also spelled Huldin (died before 412), is the first Hunnic ruler whose historicity is undisputed.
Etymology
The name is recorded as ''Ουλδης'' (Ouldes) by Sozomen, ''Uldin'' by Orosius, and ''Huldin'' by Marcellinus Comes. On the ...
. Gainas was killed, and his head was sent by Uldin to Arcadius c. 400 as a diplomatic gift
A diplomatic gift is a gift given by a :diplomat, politician or leader when visiting a foreign country. Usually the gift is reciprocated by the host. The use of diplomatic gifts dates back to the ancient world and givers have competed to outdo e ...
.[
After the revolt, Arcadius erected the ]Column of Arcadius
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...
, on which friezes depicted his triumph over Gainas.
Gainas' usurpation is the subject of the
Egyptian Tale
' and might also be the subject of the speech
On Imperial Rule
' by Synesius of Cyrene who may have represented an anti-barbarian faction within the Byzantine nobility.
Herwig Wolfram, the historian of the Goths,[Wolfram (1979) 1988:135.] notes that the death of Gainas marks an end to the relatively pluralistic Gothic tribal development with independent warbands: "thereafter only two ethnogeneses were possible: that of the Roman Goths within the empire and that of the Hunnic Goths at its doorstep".
See also
* Revolt of Alaric I
The revolt of Alaric I was a military conflict between the Roman Empire and a rebel army, probably composed mainly of Goths. This war consisted a number of armed conflicts in the period between 395 and 398, interspersed with periods of negotiation ...
* Gothic Revolt of Tribigild
The Gothic Revolt of Tribigild was a revolt in 399–400 of the Goths in Anatolia (Eastern Roman Empire) that caused a major political crisis during the reign of Emperor Arcadius (395-408). The uprising was led by Tribigild, leader of a unit of Go ...
Notes
References
*Zosimus Zosimus, Zosimos, Zosima or Zosimas may refer to:
People
*
* Rufus and Zosimus (died 107), Christian saints
* Zosimus (martyr) (died 110), Christian martyr who was executed in Umbria, Italy
* Zosimos of Panopolis, also known as ''Zosimus Alch ...
Book
*Socrates of Constantinople
Socrates of Constantinople ( 380 – after 439), also known as Socrates Scholasticus (), was a 5th-century Greek Christian church historian, a contemporary of Sozomen and Theodoret.
He is the author of a ''Historia Ecclesiastica'' ("Church Hist ...
Book V
*Sozomen
Salamanes Hermias Sozomenos (; ; c. 400 – c. 450 AD), also known as Sozomen, was a Roman lawyer and historian of the Christian Church.
Family and home
Sozoman was born around 400 in Bethelia, a small town near Gaza, into a wealthy Christia ...
Book VII
*Theodoret
Theodoret of Cyrus or Cyrrhus (; AD 393 – 458/466) was an influential theologian of the School of Antioch, biblical commentator, and Christian bishop of Cyrrhus (423–457).
He played a pivotal role in several 5th-century Byzantine ...
Book
* George of Alexandria, Life of St. Chrysostom, in Photios
Photius I of Constantinople (, ''Phōtios''; 815 – 6 February 893), also spelled ''Photius''Fr. Justin Taylor, essay "Canon Law in the Age of the Fathers" (published in Jordan Hite, T.O.R., and Daniel J. Ward, O.S.B., "Readings, Cases, Mate ...
, Myriobiblon, 96
* Alan Cameron and Jacqueline Long, ''Barbarian and Politics at the Court of Arcadius'', Berkeley et Los Angeles, 1993.
* Alexander Kazhdan
Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan (; 3 September 1922 – 29 May 1997) was a Soviet and American Byzantinist. Among his publications was the three-volume ''Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium'', a comprehensive encyclopedic work containing over than 5,000 ...
(éd.), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium
The ''Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium'' (ODB) is a three-volume historical dictionary published by the English Oxford University Press. With more than 5,000 entries, it contains comprehensive information in English on topics relating to the Byzan ...
, 3 vols., Oxford University Press, 1991 ({{ISBN, 0-19-504652-8)
* (fr) André Piganiol, ''L'Empire chrétien'', PUF, Paris, 1972.
* Herwig Wolfram, ''History of the Goths'' (1978) tr., 1988.
4th-century births
400 deaths
4th-century Byzantine military personnel
5th-century Byzantine people
4th-century Christians
5th-century Christians
4th-century Gothic people
4th-century rebels
Byzantine people of Gothic descent
Comites rei militaris
Gothic warriors
Magistri militum
Roman consuls designate
Arian Christians
Year of birth unknown