In the Eye of the Storm: A Biography of Gregory the Great

By Sigrid Grabner

Rome in the year A.D. 590. A plague is tearing through the city. Pope Pelagius II is dead. Outside the walls, Lombard soldiers are raising their swords. What can save the Eternal City? All eyes, and all hopes, are on the next pope.

Veteran writer Sigrid Grabner tells the dramatic story of Pope Gregory I—a poor monk known now to history as Saint Gregory the Great. Born to a noble family and trained in Roman law, Gregory had been prefect of the city of Rome as a young man, but he gave up his power and wealth to walk in the footsteps of Saint Benedict. Everything changed when he was raised, against his will, to the highest office in Christendom and found himself, as he wrote to one friend, "in the eye of a storm"; at the helm of an "old and rotten ship".

Although Gregory sensed only his inadequacy, he not only steered Rome clear of a shipwreck, but laid the foundations for the future of Europe. In fourteen years as pope, he instituted sweeping financial reforms, ensured legal protection for the poor, developed a system of musical notation, wrote influential works of theology, quieted the Byzantines and the warring Lombards, and led a citywide pilgrimage to the church of Saint Mary Major that, tradition says, brought an end to the plague.

Grabner''s vivid narrative of the life of Pope Gregory I reads like a novel, evoking the landscape of early medieval Italy with humanity and realism. It brings us face-to-face with a man who, for all his weakness, became an instrument in the hand of God and let himself be made great.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Aug 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781642291834

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

An Encounter

Each day is a new journey into the unknown—even when we think we know what awaits us. On that day in May twenty years ago, I was planning to finally explore Monte Celio, one of the seven hills of ancient Rome. I was already familiar with some of the early Christian structures there, like the churches of San Clemente, Santi Quattro Coronati, and San Giovanni e Paulo, the last of which was built atop an ancient Roman residential complex. This time, however, I wanted to experience them all as a whole. People who spend some time together tend to develop a climate of mutual affections and antipathies, and the same is true of buildings. Proud and castle-like, the church of Santi Quattro Coronati appeared to look down on San Clemente with haughty disdain, while San Clemente, modest yet well aware of the treasures she possessed, did not seem to think very much of the church of Santo Stefano, perpetually in restauro, with its lurid scenes of martyrdom painted by Pomarancio. San Giovanni e Paolo, built on the ruins of the Temple of Claudius and atop several ancient Roman homes, appeared to share a certain kinship with San Clemente. Santa Maria in Domnica cared as little for the nearby San Stefano as she did for the petty jealousies of her sisters, but simply enjoyed her view of the city from the top of the hill. None of them, however, wanted anything to do with the nearby military barracks that have existed there since Antiquity; and all of them deferred to the claim of San Giovanni in Laterano as mother church of Christianity.

Near the end of the day, I came down from Monte Celio by way of the street known since ancient times as the Clivus Scauri. As I was walking through the arches spanning this narrow, medieval-looking passage, my gaze fell on the church of San Gregorio Magno, its baroque facade towering high above a steep set of stairs. I really had no interest in visiting a church built in the seventeenth century—compared to what I had been seeing, that was just yesterday. And besides, Gregorio Magno was not on my agenda.

But then again, I did find myself drawn by the view it would offer of the ruins of the imperial palace on nearby Palatine Hill, bathed in the light of the setting sun. My legs heavy, I ascended the stairs. The view was everything I thought it would be: My gaze wandered from the Circus Maximus to the pine-covered Palatine and then down to the busy street between Palatino and Celio, where victorious armies once marched on their way from the Via Appia to the Forum Romanum; I took in the stone ruins of the Aqua Claudia aqueduct, and next to the church of San Paulo e Giovanni, I could make out the great blocks that once formed the base of the Temple of Claudius. It was a panorama that had changed very little since ancient times. The erstwhile marble splendor was gone, but it was more than made up for by the vibrant greens of all the trees and shrubbery.

The effort of climbing the stairs had proved worthwhile, so I decided to keep exploring. The faded frescoes in the church’s atrium told of the works and miracles of Pope Gregory the Great, the basilica’s patron, showing him driving out demons, having visions, healing the sick; Gregory on horseback, before the altar, at the head of a procession—precisely the kinds of things we have long become accustomed to laughing off as the stuff of pious legend. According to the guidebook, the site of the current church is where, fifteen hundred years ago, Gregory’s childhood home had stood; this Roman aristocrat by birth would later convert it into a monastery. One thousand years later, a church was built on the ruins of the monastery in his honor.

As I walked around the baroque interior—like so many others in Rome—and later as I was resting on the steps, I had to admit that there was something about this place that I found deeply moving, but what it was I could not say. Was it the view? Was it the little Benedictine cemetery next door, the three chapels that were closed to the public? Could it be the Indian sisters from Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity and the white-robed Camaldolese monks hurrying past on their way to their monastery next to the church? Maybe it had to do with the surreal calm of the place, so close to the bustling center of town, or the vibrant evening atmosphere descending upon the city?

I went back and looked at the frescoes in the atrium recounting scenes from Gregory’s life, painted by an unknown artist more than a thousand years after Gregory’s death. My neck and eyes started to hurt from looking up, and I gave up trying to understand them. What did this saint from the time of the Barbarian Invasions, a time I knew absolutely nothing about, have to do with me? I was tired after a long day of experiencing more interesting things than I could process. This Gregory fellow must have really made an impression, I thought as I was going down the steps. How else could the memory of such a man have endured for so long?

The next few times I stayed in Rome, I would always end up being drawn back to Clivus Scauri. Pausing for a moment on the steps in front of the church, I would be overcome by a strange sense of unrest. Curiosity and laziness would clash in my head as I wondered whether it might be time to become better acquainted with Gregory. Laziness always won in the end, though, and each time I would tell myself I had other things to do.

On one of these visits with a friend of mine, we were exploring the side chapel on the righthand side of the church when we came across what looked like some kind of junk room. There, amid the building materials and other things that had been left in the room, we noticed an ancient marble chair. We wondered how someone could treat such a precious piece of furniture so irreverently. Making sure that no one would notice us, we tried the chair out; the bare stone, we discovered, almost hugged the body.

A few years later, the chair, with its dull yellow gleam and armrests decorated with the heads of beasts, was placed in the side chapel on the right. The junk room, which by then had been cleaned up and renovated, turned out to be the cell in which Gregory had lived as a monk in the monastery, according to a Latin inscription on the wall: Nocte dieque vigil longo hic defessa labore Gregorius modica membra quiete levat (It is here that Gregory, keeping watch by night and by day, gives reprieve to his weary members, worn out by arduous labor).

I was amazed that whoever had written this inscription had chosen to use the present tense. Gregory was buried in the atrium of Old Saint Peter’s Basilica, and his mortal remains are interred in Saint Peter’s today, so these words could not be referring to his eternal rest. Rather, they testify to an enduring presence: a man, feeling ill and exhausted from his work, is resting here. Right now!

Somewhat perturbed, I went back through the low arched doorway into the side chapel, where my eyes fell upon the marble chair. It may have been part of the furnishings in his father’s home, perhaps later serving Gregory as his bishop’s throne. The lion or griffin heads at the end of the armrests could hardly be recognized as such anymore. I wondered how many hands might have rested on them, stroked them, clenched them, since some craftsman carved them out of marble two thousand years ago. Sumptuous cushions, long since crumbled to dust, probably adorned the chair at one time, protecting the person sitting from the coldness and hardness of the stone. The seat of the chair and the armrests were smooth—as smooth as a pebble worn down over millennia by the constantly moving waves of the ocean.

I do not know how long I stood there contemplating the chair, but I could swear I suddenly saw a slender figure sitting in it, dressed in a monk’s habit. The church was enveloped in the twilight of an early autumn evening, and it looked at me from the semi-darkness, scrutinizing and somewhat startled. I stopped breathing for a moment and froze like a deer in the headlights. At some point I worked up the courage to reach out toward the chair, but there was nothing there. This was the kind of experience that would have piqued my curiosity had I not been more frightened by it than anything else. I knew what it was, though: it was the spirit of this place that had been drawing me back here again and again, the spirit of Gregory. He was trying to get me to understand him, to gain my trust, the way we do when we would really like to be friends with someone. But Gregory as a person seemed too difficult, too alien, too remote, and I did not want to get involved with him.

The next few times I visited Rome, I gave the church of San Gregorio Magno a wide berth. But when the three baroque chapels—named for Saints Silvia, Andrew, and Barbara—in the little former cemetery next to the church were restored and finally open to the public once more, I could no longer resist. All the travel guides recommended going to see them.

I examined the celebrated frescoes that adorn the oratories, painted by Viviani, Guido Reni, and Domenichino. But what drew my attention the most was an imposing stone table from the third century A.D.—a massive slab held up by stone lions, supported in the middle by the stump of a column. This was in the Oratory of Saint Barbara, the oldest of the three chapels, whose ancient outer walls are still clearly visible. Here, in what was once the triclinium, the dining room, Gregory and his mother, Silvia, are said to have fed and waited on twelve of the city’s poor each day, according to an inscription on the surface of the table. I tried to imagine what that must have been like. But fascinated as I was by this table, I had a hard time imagining people dining at it. I spent a while thinking about whether they had covered the stone with a tablecloth in Gregory’s day, and how that might have looked. Neither the frescoes painted by Antonio Viviani at the beginning of the seventeenth century, depicting various saints and events from the history of the monastery, nor the statue from the same time period of Pope Gregory giving his blessing had anything to say to me; they were devotional art from a far-off time. Nevertheless, something was making me uneasy. The shadowy figure of the monk I had encountered years ago in the church next door was right here in front of me, in living color.

Every time I looked at Rome from the Gianicolo, my eyes would instinctively seek out church of San Gregorio Magno, towering above its surroundings. Its facade gleamed in the evening sun and was easy to make out from afar. So that was where Gregory had grown up, in the shadow of the imperial palaces and close to the Roman Forum; that was where he had lived as prefect of Rome, and it was right there that he had laid aside his aristocrat’s garments to become a monk. It was there that the Roman people had gone in their time of need and acclaimed him as pope, not allowing themselves to be deterred by barricaded gates and the decisive no from their chosen candidate.

It was strange how brightly this spot stood out against the dark red of the ruins on the Palatine, as if it were bathed in a supernatural light. There were places in this city more venerable, churches more ancient, works of art more impressive than the ones in Gregorio Magno. Hadn’t this city been shaped by more important figures than Gregory throughout the ages? Why wouldn’t he let go of me?

Some time later I was strolling across Piazza Navona. Next to the easels of the painters in the square, some environmental groups had put up their stands. One young man came right up to me and put a pamphlet in my hand. I was going to just toss it into the next waste-basket I came across, but there were none nearby. So I began to read it, until I came across the following words:

For all that we have received for our livelihoods we have abused shamefully; but everything with which we have committed abuse is turned against us as punishment. The tranquility of peace amongs men we have twisted into vain security; we have loved our pilgrimage on earth instead of dwelling in our homeland; we have put the health of the body in the service of vice; we have made abundant wealth available not for the needs of the body, but for the aberration of sensual pleasure; even the fair mildness of the air we have compelled to serve our love of earthly pleasures. And thus, rightfully so, we are ultimately stricken in the same way by those things which have wickedly served us in surrendering to our vices; as many pleasures as we had undisturbed in the world, so many torments must we later receive from this world.¹

When I looked below the text and read the name of the author, I could hardly believe my eyes: Gregory the Great (540—604).

From then on, I would encounter Gregory not only in Rome, but in other places too, as well as at home. He would show up in the liturgical calendar and in ancient prayers of the Church and appear in books and on postcards. I could no longer avoid him. Little by little, I got hold of his writings, and I began collecting information about him and the time in which he lived. The sixth century opened up to my imagination. I could see the city, laid low by plundering and disease. I could hear the clash of arms as the Lombards pressed against the walls of Rome. I was touched by Gregory’s lament over the state of the world and by the fact that he had been fated to watch over Christendom as shepherd instead of being allowed to withdraw into prayer and solitude. I marveled at the energy it must have taken for this sickly man to confront a world that seemed to have gone mad and to resist it. I eventually became quite familiar with him, though there remained a certain distance between us; this distance owed less to the span of centuries that lay between his time and mine and more to our differing temperaments and tasks in life. Opposites attract, as the old saying goes. An understanding of other points of view about the world and its demands leads to the expansion of one’s own horizons. Only by constantly opening ourselves to questioning do we remain alive. I could feel Gregory speaking to me, and I wanted to understand him.

It was Mahatma Gandhi who said: My writings should be burnt along with my body. My life is my message.² But apart from writings and images, how else are we supposed to get any closer to a life lived long ago, to allow it to affect us? We live in an age in which images are king. The incorruptible eye of the camera appears to convey the truth about people and events. If we cannot see something, it does not count. To visualize someone or something, we need photographs or at least paintings.

We no longer have any contemporary depictions of Gregory, the renowned Consul of God, as it says on his tomb. One thing that has survived, however, is the description of a fresco that still decorated the monastery on the Clivus Scauri in the ninth century, when John the Deacon wrote about it:

His figure was of normal size and well built. His face was not as narrow as his father’s, nor as round as his mother’s, thus appearing to be of an agreeable length, with a certain fullness to it. His beard, like his father’s, was only moderately long and golden brown in color. He was considerably bald, with two small locks of hair in the middle of his forehead that that curled to the right. His head was large and round, and his dark hair was curly and hung down to the middle of his ears; he had a high forehead and eyebrows that were long and arched. His eyes had dark pupils, and although they were not large, they had an open look beneath full eyelids. His nose, thin and straight where it arose between his arched eyebrows, became wider around the middle, somewhat aquiline, and widened at the nostrils. His mouth was red, his lips full and parted; his cheeks were well formed, and his chin protruded pleasantly from his jaw. His skin was dark and fresh-looking, unlike later, when it came to look rather sickly. He had a kindly look on his face; he had beautiful hands, with long pointed fingers well suited to writing.³

In spite of this detailed description, I was unable to picture Gregory in any real way that could have taken the place of that silhouette that had appeared to me for the fraction of a second that I had looked at that marble chair. Likewise, the countless depictions of the pope, mostly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dressed in his miter with a book in his hand and the dove of the Holy Spirit flying over his shoulder, obscured the image in my head more than they enhanced it. It wasn’t until the second time I went back to the triclinium with the imposing table that I became acquainted with the fresco by Antonio Viviani, depicting Gregory in the posture of a writer. He’s shown sitting sideways at a table covered with writing instruments and books, dressed like a pope from the sixteenth century, not very different from how popes still dress today. Over a white vestment he wears the mozzetta—a red mantle—and on top of that, a long green stole; on his head he wears the no-longer-fashionable camauro, a red velvet cap with white fur trim. Behind him is a cloud of light that suggests the outline of a dove, symbolizing the Holy Spirit dictating his wisdom to the writer.

Painted in the style of iconography that was popular at the end of the sixteenth century, the image dispenses with heroic poses altogether. What we see is an ascetic-looking man sitting in a rather uncomfortable position, his head bent over a manuscript, deep in thought and immersed in his writing, far from the world and completely within himself. Here was a snapshot that seemed to come close to Gregory’s nature as it appeared to me from his writings.

I also experienced him differently when I read his writings: as an agile decision-maker and as an old and ailing man, strict to the point of alienating others and shedding tears out of compassion for stricken humanity; determined, sarcastic, kind; upright on his horse, in his chair, contorted with pain; storming heaven with his prayers; lost like a child in a dark forest. Whatever other images came up in my encounters with Gregory over the years, I would always come back to that depiction by the painter Viviani. Gregory’s posture in it conveys concentration, inspiration, meditation, and a love of solitude, but at the same time it gives the impression of drive and determination. This, I decided, could be the shadowy figure I had once seen.

My image of Gregory will always be imperfect, as it has been with any other friend I have had. We can never fathom the full depth of the mystery that is another person. When the voice of Gregory the sixth-century Roman reaches the ear of a person in the twenty-first century, that person’s sense of hearing is what will determine how clear or how distorted that voice comes across. Misunderstandings and misinterpretations are unavoidable, which is no different from when we deal with people in our own day and age.

Gregory and I met unexpectedly; he has become involved in my life, and I have attempted to get closer to him. At first glance, he might seem strange to us today, but once we get to know him better, we discover an amazing person who has something important to tell us. Gregory loved and he suffered; he failed and he grew beyond himself. The world he lived in was no different from our own. History is a mirror into which we can look and see ourselves, always new and always different, depending on our age and experience in life.

Since that first encounter on that day in May more than twenty years ago, Gregory has become my friend, even if I am not always able to fully understand his actions and thoughts in detail and my image of him is animated by my imagination. A friendship thrives on mutual affection, but it also requires a certain degree of distance. With this thought in mind, I would like to tell Gregory’s story.

1

OUT INTO THE WORLD

The bishop of Canosa made regular visits to the abbey and stood high in Benedict’s esteem because of his saintly life. Once while they were discussing Totila’s invasion and the downfall of Rome, the bishop said, The city will be destroyed by this king and left without a single inhabitant. No, Benedict assured him, "Rome will not be destroyed by the barbarians. It will be shaken by tempests and lightnings, hurricanes and earthquakes, until finally it lies buried in its own ruins."

—Gregory, The Dialogues*

To the east of the Palatine, separated from it by a depression, rises the Caelian Hill, one of the seven hills of ancient Rome. At one time, it was covered by a dense oak forest. During the imperial period, wealthy families built homes and palaces with sprawling gardens on its heights. The philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius affectionately referred to it as my Caelian, as it was upon this hill that he had spent his childhood and youth. The slope of the Caelian opposite the Palatine has long been known as the Clivus Scauri. It was here that Gregory, of the ancient Roman family the Anicii, would grow up four hundred years later.

The residents of this neighborhood had front-row seats to both the glory of Rome and its decline. They watched as the imperial palaces on the Palatine rose ever skyward and saw the victorious armies march by on their way to the Forum Romanum. They could hear the roar of the crowd in the nearby Circus Maximus, filled with a hundred thousand people cheering on the charioteers. Also nearby was the Flavian Amphitheater, where all social ranks from senator down to beggar reveled in bloody gladiatorial matches and animal baitings. The Caelian was crossed by the soaring, elegant arches of the Aqua Claudia, one of twelve aqueducts, which supplied the insatiable imperial residences and baths with fresh water from the mountains. It was not far to the city docks on the Tiber, where goods from all over the world arrived on a daily basis: marble from Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, wool from Spain, pottery from Sagunto, glassware from Egypt, woven fabrics from India, jewelry from China, figs from Syria, and wine from Spain, Gaul, Arabia, and all parts of Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor. Only a short stretch of road separated the inhabitants of the Caelian from the temples and basilicas of the Roman Forum and the imperial fora, filled with countless statues. A never-ceasing stream of people on foot, riders on horseback, and litter bearers surged through the political center of the city: soldiers, adventurers, scholars, craftsmen, merchants, artists, and lawyers going about their business or crowding into the markets, stadiums, theaters, baths, taverns, and brothels—people of all races and ethnicities of the then-known world, from Britain to North Africa and from Asia Minor to the shores of the Atlantic. All of them, insofar as they were free citizens, were considered Romans since the edict of the emperor Caracalla and were subject to Roman law. But even a freed slave could climb to the rank of senator or even emperor; Diocletian, for one, had been the son of a freedman. The wealth poured into the capital of the empire from the north and the south, the east and the west, and with it came the flow of people who hoped to have a share in this wealth.

Very little of this bustling activity could be detected from the mansions on the Caelian; their interior spaces were protected by high walls that shielded them from wind, summer heat, and noise. The master of the house could walk through the atrium—roofed, but open at the middle, with a basin to collect rainwater—and then make his way out into the peristyle and the garden there; he could recline at table in the triclinium and be waited on by slaves as he engaged in animated conversation with his guests; he could pursue his studies or conduct business in the library, feeling all the while as far from the all-consuming sprawl of Rome as he would at his villa by the sea or in the mountains of Latium. All of time flowed together into a single void; today was like yesterday, and tomorrow would be like today, even beyond age and death.

Then the emperor Constantine transferred his residence to far-off Byzantium. His successors also avoided ruling the empire from Rome, and it was at this point that cracks began to appear in the structure that once seemed to be made of solid iron. The beauty and magnificence of the public buildings and facilities still commanded the awed admiration of visitors from afar, and noblemen and well-off freedmen still flaunted their wealth, providing bread and circuses so as not to fall victim to one of the mobs of unemployed workers. Time had yet to take its toll on the majestic temples and luxurious baths, but the means to care for and maintain them were increasingly scarce. The emperors lived far away in Constantinople, sometimes in Milan or Ravenna, and it was in those places that they were building monuments for the ages. With each passing decade, Rome descended more and more to the level of a provincial town at the western edge of the crumbling empire. Slowly, the streams of gold and goods that had made it possible for life in the city to be lived in abundance began to dry up. But the people of Rome were spoiled, and they held on fast to their lifestyle, even though they were long past the point of being able to feed and defend themselves. Undaunted by the changing times, they continued to see their city as Head of the World, to which all peoples must be subject. Voices that warned of the barbarians and proclaimed the importance of the ancestral virtues that had made Rome great—justice, hard work, moral purity, thrift—went unheard in the carefree atmosphere that prevailed at the time. Let the barbarians win some victories on far-off borders; the Romans were far superior to them in their sophisticated way of life, in architecture, and in science. What good were difficult virtues when vices made life so much easier? It seems that the words of the historian Tacitus were truer than ever: he had described Rome as a mistress, as the gutter of the empire in which everything abominable and shameful flowed in from all sides and settled down. But those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make deaf and blind. Rome was dancing and whoring itself toward its downfall.

At the time during which the following events would take place, the Head of the World had long been parted from its body. Attracted by the legendary wealth of Rome and confident that it had grown soft and defenseless in its current state, swarms of peoples from the east had descended upon Italy like locusts. They had no idea what nightingales’ tongues tasted like or how to build underfloor heating systems. They still worshiped rocks and trees as gods, and faith in the Christian God was just beginning to slowly take root among them. Their banquets featured no scantily clad dancing girls, and they scorned the practice of pederasty. Powders, cosmetics, outlandish hairstyles and fashions, obscene theatrical performances, melodious verses, fussy manners, learned affectations, libraries, baths, and brothels were alien to them. They liked things simple and rough. They did not negotiate as they searched for their new homeland; instead, they cut down everything that stood in their path, taking what they needed and never asking what Roman law had to say about it. What they lacked in education and in the Romans’ much-vaunted civilization, they made up for with unspent strength and unrestrained will.

The first to make it to Rome were the Visigoths under the command of Alaric. In August 410 they besieged the city, starved it out, and spent three days plundering it. They also extorted the Romans into paying a ransom of five thousand pounds of gold and three thousand pounds of silver in addition to three thousand hides soaked in purple dye, four thousand silken tunics, and three thousand pounds of pepper. In order to raise these tremendous sums, the city government confiscated treasures from closed pagan temples, melting down ornamental columns of silver and gold. Even worse than the loss of valuable material goods was the humiliation: for the first time in seven hundred years,¹ the city had been captured by its enemies.

Just thirty years later, the bishop of Rome, Pope Leo, and his entourage went out unarmed to confront Attila, king of the Huns, and persuade him not to attack the defenseless city. The pope’s audacious trust in God paid off. Attila spared the city, although likely in exchange for no small ransom. But in the face of Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, Leo’s powers of persuasion would come to naught. In June of 455, the Vandals invaded the city from the sea, and whatever had been spared by the Visigoths or replaced by the Romans was now carried off by the Vandals. For fourteen days, they plundered the palaces on the Palatine Hill, the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline, and the homes of distinguished Romans on the Aventine, the Esquiline, and the Caelian. Entire cartloads of statues and gilded bronze roof tiles left Rome for Portus, from whence they were shipped to Gaiseric’s seat of power in Africa. Gaiseric even took the treasures from the Temple in Jerusalem that had once been hauled back to Rome by the emperor Titus. In his wake he left deserted palaces, empty temples, rubble, and corpses. Then, just as the city had barely begun to recover, it was overrun in June of 472 by the Germanic mercenary leader Ricimer and his band of murdering, pillaging men.

Within a single century, the city that once ruled the world had been sacked three times and a large number of its inhabitants lost to murder, deportation, flight, starvation, and disease.

But Fortuna appeared to bestow her favor on the city once more. With the consent of the emperor in Constantinople, the king of the Ostrogoths, Theodoric, established his rule over Italy from his base in Ravenna. For Rome, this was the beginning of better times. In the year 500, Theodoric entered Rome amid great pomp; the Roman people, having suffered a century of humiliation, hailed the barbarian king, who rewarded them with games in the Circus Maximus and the Flavian Amphitheater. He paid homage to the Senate,