Priscus Attalus (; died after 416) was a Roman senator and urban prefect of Rome who was twice proclaimed emperor in the West in opposition to Honorius, in 409–410 and again in 414–415. On both occasions he was elevated with Visigothic support, first by Alaric I and then by Athaulf, and on both occasions his position depended on his patrons: Alaric deposed him when seeking a settlement with the court at Ravenna, and Athaulf's Visigoths abandoned him when the blockade of Gaul forced their withdrawal into Spain. Modern scholarship is divided over the first elevation, which has been read both as a nomination imposed by Alaric on a compliant senate and as the deliberate act of a senatorial majority that had come to prefer an alternative to Honorius.
A pagan by upbringing, Attalus was baptized as an Arian Christian by the Gothic bishop Sigesarius at the time of his first proclamation, making him the last claimant to the Roman imperial office who did not profess Nicene Christianity. After the collapse of his second reign he was captured, displayed at Rome, mutilated and exiled to Lipari, where he died at an unknown date after 416.
Historical sources No continuous ancient narrative of Attalus survives. The principal source is the lost History of Olympiodorus of Thebes, a work in twenty-two books covering the years 407 to 425 and dedicated to Theodosius II, which is known chiefly from the summary made by the patriarch Photius and from its extensive use by Zosimus in the last book of the New History, as well as by Sozomen and Philostorgius.
R. C. Blockley has argued that Olympiodorus, who described his work as material for a history rather than as a history proper, arranged it topically rather than annalistically. The consequence for Attalus is that Olympiodorus gathered his career into a single retrospective notice (fr. 13) running from the negotiations with Honorius in 409 to his second deposition, mutilation and exile. The same arrangement also introduced error into later writers: because Olympiodorus mentioned the first elevation after his notice of the third siege of Rome, although it had taken place before it, Procopius placed the elevation after the sack of 410. Socrates places it there too, but Blockley holds that he had no clear contact with the Olympiodoran tradition.
The fullest surviving account of the first reign is that of Zosimus, who devotes seven consecutive chapters of his sixth book to the elevation and its aftermath before the text breaks off in 410, four years short of the second usurpation. Ronald Ridley, its modern translator, supposes that the book once went, or was intended to go, down to Alaric's capture of Rome in August of that year. Ridley also finds the narrative doubled in places. On his reading, the senatorial debate over Africa and Jovius' agitation against Attalus at 6.12 are substantially a duplicate of 6.9, while the despatch of Attalus to Rome at 5.46 appears to duplicate that at 5.45, the earlier passage calling him comes sacrarum largitionum and the later prefect of the city, an office he is not thought to have held until late 409.
The Church History of Philostorgius, a Eunomian who wrote between 425 and 433, treats Attalus at 12.3–5. It too survives only in a Photian epitome, and its chapters covering Attalus' second reign and punishment are sparse. The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, written at Constantinople between about 443 and 448, covers the elevation and the African expedition at 9.8–9. Rita Lizzi Testa treats the accounts of Philostorgius, Sozomen and Zosimus as three refractions of the same lost Olympiodoran narrative, differing above all in how much initiative each allows the senate.
The earliest surviving account is in Latin. Within three years of Attalus' capture, Orosius completed his Seven Books of History against the Pagans in 418, at the request of Saint Augustine, as an apologetic work arguing that the calamities of the Christian era were no worse than those that had preceded it. He treats Attalus at 7.42.7–10, within a catalogue of the usurpers put down by Honorius and Constantius which opens with Constantine III. The notice is hostile and retrospective: the usurpation, capture and punishment are compressed into a few sentences, and Alaric is said to have made, unmade, remade and again unmade his emperor (), laughing at the farce and viewing "the comedy of the imperium". In his account of the sack of Rome at 7.39, however, Attalus goes unnamed.
The eastern chronicle tradition is brief and chronologically distorted. Writing at Constantinople in the sixth century, Marcellinus Comes reduces Attalus' career to a single sentence, entered under the year 412. Brian Croke has shown that the date is incorrect and that the notice derives from Orosius 7.42.9. Marcellinus relied on Orosius for western events down to 416 and distributed the contents of Orosius 7.42 across successive consular years, misdating the neighbouring notice of Jovinus and Sebastianus in the same entry. The Chronicon Paschale enters the first usurpation under 411 and does not indicate that the events took place in Italy. Notably, it alone preserves the record of the games held at Constantinople in 416 to mark Attalus' defeat.
Origins and early career
Family and education Philostorgius describes Attalus as being of Ionian stock, pagan in religion, and prefect of the city. Lizzi Testa takes the description to place his family in Asia and treats him as an example of the rapid absorption of provincial elites into the late antique senate, although she acknowledges that the statement lacks corroboration elsewhere. Ridley, citing the same notice of Philostorgius together with Sozomen 9.9, instead takes Attalus himself to have been born at Antioch.
He was the son of Publius Ampelius, proconsul of Achaia in 359 and urban prefect of Rome in 370–372, and became a prominent member of the senate in Rome, where he was a friend of leading pagans such as Symmachus and had attained the rank of vir spectabilis by 394. Ampelius was himself a pagan, a native of Antioch, and a poet of some reputation. As governor of Achaia he was praised by the rhetorician Himerius for coordinating public works financed by the cities of Megara, Sparta and Chalcis. As urban prefect he ordered the arrest of the supporters of the antipope Ursinus should they enter Rome, so aligning himself with the party of Damasus, and presided over the senatorial trial of Iulius Festus Hymetius, reviving in the process the assembly's long-unused judicial competence. Lizzi Testa argues that Attalus took his political bearings from his father before he took them from Symmachus.
While Ampelius governed Achaia, Attalus was enrolled in the school of Himerius at Athens, and Lizzi Testa credits that rhetorical training with the reputation for negotiation that later led the senate to entrust him with repeated embassies. Symmachus addressed him as filius and referred to him as "our son Attalus, vir spectabilis", from which she infers a birth before about 350.
Senatorial embassies and the urban prefecture The senate repeatedly employed him as an envoy. In 398 he was sent to Honorius to seek relief from Stilicho's demand for recruits (tirones) for the war against Gildo, whom the same senators had declared a public enemy at the end of the previous year. Symmachus wrote to officials at court in support of the request and afterwards congratulated Attalus on its success.
During Alaric's first blockade of Rome in the winter of 408–409, the senate opened its own negotiations with the Visigothic camp through two envoys, Basilius, a Spaniard who had been prefect of Rome in 395, and Iohannes, a client of Alaric personally known to him. At the beginning of 409 a further embassy went to Ravenna, Attalus travelling with Caecilianus and Tarrutenius Maximilianus to press for ratification of the peace with Alaric. It achieved nothing on that point, but Honorius promoted its members: Caecilianus was made praetorian prefect of Italy and retained at court, while Attalus was made comes sacrarum largitionum and sent to Rome, where he removed Heliocrates, who had been charged with recovering the property of Stilicho's associates but had proved unwilling to press the confiscations; Heliocrates escaped punishment by taking sanctuary in a church. Lizzi Testa reads the promotions as an attempt by Olympius to reassert Honorius' authority over the senate.
The embassy was attacked by Alaric's Goths on its return, and the detachment of 6,000 men recalled from Dalmatia to garrison the city was intercepted and almost destroyed, all but a hundred of them being lost; Attalus and its commander Valens reached Rome safely. Maximilianus was captured near Rome and ransomed for 30,000 solidi by his father, whom Zosimus names Marinianus. Ridley identifies the envoy not, as RE had it, with a son of the Marcianus who was proconsul of Africa, but with Tarrutenius Maximilianus, consularis of Picenum. A further delegation reached the court in February 409 under an escort provided by Alaric, and Bishop Innocent I travelled with it. Olympius was then dismissed and fled to Dalmatia. Jovius, a friend of Alaric, was in office as praetorian prefect by 1 April, and Attalus was promoted from comes sacrarum largitionum to urban prefect in March. Lizzi Testa takes the escort as a sign that the senate now largely supported Alaric's terms, arguing that Attalus was again among the envoys, and holds that he had a hand in Olympius' fall, notwithstanding that he owed his own first promotion to him. She further notes that he addressed the people in the amphitheatre during the blockade, and doubts that the crowd showed the enthusiasm for the absent Honorius that it had displayed in 400.
Orosius also refers to him as prefect of the city and draws a parallel between the fall of Babylon and the sack of Rome. He compares Attalus to Arbatus, the prefect who killed Sardanapalus at Babylon and transferred the kingdom to the Medes. According to his reading, the attempt succeeded at Babylon but was frustrated in Rome with the aid of a Christian emperor.
First reign (409–410)
Elevation Philostorgius reports that, following the execution of Stilicho in August 408, Stilicho's son Eucherius was killed on Honorius' orders in violation of sanctuary, and that this drove Stilicho's barbarian troops to join Alaric and incited him to war. In the same account, Alaric's first action against Rome was the seizure of Portus, the harbour complex at the Tiber mouth where the city's public grain supply was stored, after which the city was reduced by starvation.
Late in 409, during Alaric's second blockade of the city, the harbour fell again and with it the whole of the city's stored provisions. Faced with certain starvation, the senate accepted Alaric's terms and on 3 November proclaimed Attalus emperor, investing him with the purple and a "crown". He was then baptized by Sigesarius, an Arian bishop of the Goths.