The Oath of Mars

Elite Theory in Late Antiquity

Dear reader, I want to tell you a ghost story - a mystery from the end of Imperial Rome. A mystery passed down to us by the very barbarians that helped cause said end. However, it pertains not only to the ghost of a man - in fact, several men - but the ghost of an idea. As you’ll soon see, were it not for the studious work of some few men, said ghost story and its lessons for us today would now be lost.

Somewhere in the Belgium countryside, there stood a mound. A mound that, in 1653, fancied the eyes of a deaf-mute mason on the search for stone. The Dutch mason, Adrien Quinquin, dug said mound for said stone, but struck gold instead. Said man, mute and deaf, made motions with his hands to his countrymen. Soon, the whole village gathered to see what he had found. Not long after, the local authorities came by too. Understanding quite quickly that the gold was ancient, they cleared the scene until experts could evaluate it properly - and presumably poor old Adrien never got a cent.

Archduke Leopold William, the local administrator, dispatched his historian Jean-Jacques Chifflet to the scene, who documented the grave in a very professional manner. In a portfolio of 367 pages and 27 etchings, it is longer than most PhD theses today. Jacob van Werden and Cornelis Galle the Younger were also present. The location, orientation, and inscriptions of all artifacts were recorded, graphed onto paper, and a full list of artifacts was rendered.

The mound was a burial chamber, and the name on said chamber was:

CHILDIRICI REGIS.

King Childeric I was one of the first Frankish monarchs who governed sections of the declining Roman enterprise. He represents something of a middle between the Roman world and the Medieval. This by itself was quite an impressive tomb to discover! But as the archeologists documented the tomb, they noticed something…most peculiar.

100 gold coins were found, and 200 silver coins. Quite an exact number. Of these, 89 were Solidi, 41 were Denarii, and one was siliqua. The coins found in the tomb were incredibly diverse - some dating back to the Roman Republic over Five centuries before Childeric lived - an antique even for when he was alive. As far as I have read, no other tomb in Gaul that contains coins from the late empire also include coins from the Republic era, Five Centuries prior. So one does have to wonder why it was there, and why this arrangement of coins was so specific? Indeed, as the archeologists recorded the tomb, it became apparent the coins had been arranged in a purposefully and seemingly intelligent way - though, tragically, its exact nature is lost to us. For, in a time that followed, most of this treasure was melted down by thieves and highwaymen to buy bread in those troubled years of French Revolutions. However, with what little information that remains thanks to the labor of those first to document it, something of that ghost story may yet be gleaned from the ashes.

We can also rely on the fact his son, Clovis I, would be the man responsible for arranging the tomb. Clovis was the first King of a unified Frankish aristocracy ruling over a unified Roman Gaul - and whose conversion to Christianity stirred the victory of Catholicism in the west over both Paganism and Arian Christianity. While it may be odd that a Christian would want to record a message from his pagan father for future Franks to find and read, it would be him to whom the responsibility would lay to leave such a message in a bottle as this…

…and there is reason to suspect he did, in fact, wish to leave a message.

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The Oath of Mars

Investigating this Ghost Story thoroughly enough will eventually lead you to something called the Coniuratio Marcelliana. I have no doubt you have probably not heard of it. There are no English Wikipedia article on it, and the ones in Continental languages are vague. It’s a spook; an urban legend. The reason for this is that those who knew about it don’t seem to have wanted us to know about it. As such, we have no direct knowledge on what, exactly, the Coniuratio Marcelliana was. We can, however, infer its members by means of who associated with it. For instance, Aetius was a member, of which Childeric was an officer for. It is my suspicion that Childeric’s membership may have been one of the messages Clovis wanted to express in how he organized his father’s tomb - but I must first attempt to explain why he would.

While I cannot tell you what it was, I can tell you that in English it means “The Conspiracy of Marcelliana”, or more specifically, “The Oath of Mars”. That sounds cooler, doesn’t it? Let’s just call it that. Let me show you historian Edward Stevens describe his own frustrations in trying to understand what the Oath of Mars was. Come now, let us share in his sadness:

Saint Sidonius Apollinaris, who lived in the 5th century, was a Saint, a Bishop, a Poet, and a Roman Senator. Quite an extensive life with many connections - a worthy source to try and figure out what the Oath of Mars was. He says the following on the subject:

And when the Oath of Mars sought to seize the diadem while it was simmering, he had presented himself as a standard-bearer for the noble youth in the faction, a man still new to old age, until eventually, because of the daring exploits of his fortunate audacity, he gave a gleam to the gaping chasm of an interregnum in his obscure lineage. For when the court was vacant and the republic in turmoil, he alone was found who, before many months had passed, dared to ascend the tribunal of illustrious powers to administer the Gauls with fasces rather than codicils, having barely completed the term of his final military service, following the manner of paymasters or rather legal advocates, whose actions end only when dignities begin.

-The Epistle of Sidonius

From this we can sense something of what this Oath was: It involved the Gallic aristocracy, the Frankish nobles, and parts of various Roman institutions. There are a few men we know were members of the Oath. Members include the Gallic Senator Eparchius Avitus, the Italian Senator Petronius Maximus, King Theoderic of the Visigoths, and a host of others. We can tell they attempted to “seize the diadem” - by that it is meant, claim the Roman Throne - and yet, you may find it curious how they planned to do that.

The Oath activated their plans between the reigns of Emperor Avitus, and Emperor Majorian. If you look up the dates of their reign, you will find Avitus’ reign ended 17 October 456, while Majorian’s began 28 December 457. That gap, covering 437 days, is quite a long time. For those 437 days, the Western Empire had no Emperor. It was during that interegum that the Oath began doing something quite unexpected: shifting the center of power out of Italy, and into Gaul. Why would they want to do that?

The answer to this is difficult to explain briefly, but it can be sensed by other means: Of all the provinces of the Western Empire, Gaul’s estates had remained firmly in the hands of its native aristocracy. By that I mean, if we look at the owners of the great estates of North Africa, Italy, Iberia, Britian, and any other part of the Empire, those lands were entitled to the ancient senetorial families of Rome - to which the profits of said lands remained firmly in the hands of said Italians. Gaul was the one hold-out for this trend. An entire province owned and ran by its own native aristocracy. This put the Gallic aristocrats in direct competition with the great families of Rome.

There are a number of reasons why Gaul maintained this exceptional localism, while Italians dominated all other provinces. The most obvious, however, comes from the actions of Julius Casaer - when he took the lands of Gaul by war, he did not take the rights to said lands from its nobles. Rather, he made the native Gallic aristocracy into new Senators in Rome, granting them the privilege to maintain ownership while in the Roman Empire. As a general rule, when Rome conquered lands, the rights to that land fell to the senatorial families, or the imperial court in later years. Julius Caesar made an exception in Gaul because it benefited him politically - namely, it gave him a new voting bloc in the senate. In a sense, he packed the senate the same way some Presidents have packed the courts in the United States.

For this reason, up until the fragmentation of the Western Empire into barbarian states, Gaul’s noble families never lost their lands. But, consequentially, it meant the Western Empire tended to ignore Gaul in favor of protecting the interests of those noble families in the Imperial Core, and their lands far off.

By accident of occasion, this meant that late Roman Gaul was an entirely self-sufficient political entity unto itself. When the Coniuratio formed, it was essentially an alternative institution to the Roman Imperial Court - as the Roman core declined, the Gallic core endured. It is thus best to understand the Coniuratio as an interest group. They sought to protect their native interests in Gaul where the Imperial Court did not - and consequently, when that Imperial Court began to crumble, the Coniuratio became the only stable instituion in all of Western Europe.

The means by which the Oath of Mars went about restoring the empire was a simple theory: A single stable province that could sustain itself, offered the best foundation to rebuild the Empire from. Seizing the diadem did not mean taking the Roman Throne in the city of Rome in Italy, it meant inventing a new throne in Gaul!

However, this ironically made the Oath of Mars the sworn enemy of the very Empire it sought to save. If the Coniuratio succeeded, this new Roman Empire would leave its founding ethnos, Italians, as second-class citizens in their own empire. The Italians could never accept such a relationship, and thus we come to why the Oath of Mars ultimately failed - at least, in this initial attempt.

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The Cause of an Oath

Dear Reader, you might be wondering why Gaul wanted to do this at all. But the reasons become quite clear when you look at how the Imperial Government treated Gaul - a province, again, the Italian aristocracy couldn’t extract much wealth from. From the day the Barbarians crossed the Rhine in 406 AD, to the day Clovis was crowned King of Roman Gaul and Franks in 509 AD, Gaul made repeated requests to the Imperial Government for help in stabilizing the border and restoring order. Every request was denied or ignored. On occasion when a Usurper would rise and attempt to defend the border, Rome would finally send legions to help - by crushing the Gauls. For every attempt to do things civilly, the Italian Aristocracy always responded with jealousy and rage. The reason why the Oath of Mars was formed was simple: Rome wasn’t coming to help, they were on their own.

Initially, the Oath of Mars was an entirely Romano-Gallic institution. It very well may have been a predominantly Pagan institution too, given its name - although, as time went on, they began to sense not even the gods were on their side. At the start, they tried to conduct elite transfer by attracting the outer-families of Italian elite to their side. This did not prove very conductive, as the Italians were not well known for their loyalty near the end of the Imperial Era. As time and time again they found themselves with a Legionary sword on their necks, the Gallic Aristocracy began to wonder if Rome really was worth saving at all. Orientius is known to have described these chaotic failures as such:

Gaul smoked like one huge pyre.

However, there was one group of loyal noblemen who time and time again proved willing to help and support the Gallic aristocracy: The Franks. Within the Frankish nobility, the Gallic land owners found true allies for the goal of a functioning state. This began in little ways as placing the Franks as Foederati - contractual private armies - to defend their cities. Over time, the Franks became administrators and bureaucrat working with the Gallic land owners to best protect their property. Visigoths also proved willing to work with them to restore the empire. Most famously, King Adolf is known to have declared:

At first I wanted to erase the Roman name and convert all Roman territory into a Gothic empire: I longed for Romania to become Gothia, and Adolf to be what Augustus had been. But long experience has taught me that the ungoverned wildness of the Goths will never submit to laws, and that without law a state is not a state. Therefore I have more prudently chosen the different glory of reviving the Roman name with Gothic vigour, and I hope to be acknowledged by posterity as the initiator of a Roman restoration, since it is impossible for me to alter the character of this Empire.

The Oath of Mars was, simply put, forced to shop around for allies. They were the most stable part of the Roman Empire, this was a given. What they needed was an army and patronage to make their plans work. Eventually, they did manage to get one of their men on the Throne: Avitus. Did you know, dear reader, that Emperor Avitus was the First Gallic Emperor? Despite being in the Roman Empire for well on 400 years, it was not until the end that a Gallic man sat on the throne. But as I mentioned, he died. And the Interregnum that followed prior to Majorian saw the dreams of the Oath begin to crumble. Thereafter, the Gauls no longer sought to restore the Roman Empire, but rather to prepare themselves for its collapse. This was a hard truth that none of the Gallic Aristocrats wanted to face, but it was the reality they were forced to face when the Italian Nobility proved unwilling to support this novel approach to stabilize the Empire’s borders.

It seems that, given the choice between letting their Empire crumble to dust, or submit to a stable Gaul leading it, the Italians preferred the ashes. A betrayal of this magnitude permanently damaged the loyalty of the Gallic aristocracy - thereafter, they placed their lot in with the Franks, to which Clovis would inherit the new Status Quo.

And so we come to the end of this Ghost Story that Clovis left us with the Tomb of his Father. A Tomb which is full of memories of better days of the Empire, when Gaul was cherished and not abandoned. It is this reason why the coins of the tomb are all from the Republican era and Early Empire - why no coins exist from the later emperors. Clovis was telling us what his father felt: Rome had abandoned them in favor of the ashes. However, in a sense, the Oath of Mars did win in the end. Clovis would lead a new Roman Empire, now called France.

As we watch France burn today from similar problems the Franks and Gauls faced long ago, perhaps it is time for the Oath of Mars to assemble once more.

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If you would like to learn more about this topic, I greatly recommend the Thesis of Charles Paul Minor III, which I will hyperlink this text to.

There are a number of other sources to explore this topic as well, and Charles does a great job recording them there.

Charles passed away earlier this year, tragically. I would greatly appreciate you honoring his memory by reading his works.