The Hexamilion, The Forgotten Wall Of The Eastern Roman Empire.

When we talk about the fall of the Western Roman Empire, we often tend to forget that the situation for a long time looked worse for the Eastern Roman Empire than for the Western one. After the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, bands of marauding Goths were ravaging large areas of Thrace, Macedonia, and Illyricum. The East was unable to decisively defeat them, and so they were allowed to effectively settle in the area of Illyricum between the Eastern and Western Roman Empire. Time and time again this would create trouble, as these invaders proved very hard to control. After the death of the Emperor Theodosius, there was a huge power vacuum and chaos. The West and the East were now ruled by two incompetent child emperors. For a while, Alaric the Visigoth was kept in check by the Western Roman magister militum Stilicho, but due to political intrigues between the East and the West, Stilicho, who could have crushed Alaric in 395, could not end the Visigothic threat once and for all. And so that threat continued to fester with brutal consequences. Only one year later in 396, in Stilicho's absence, and with incompetent palace rulers and eunuchs running the East, Alaric suddenly invaded the Peloponnese peninsula without warning, taking the Romans completely by surprise. He overran the small garrison at Thermopylae and entered the Peloponnese peninsula unhindered. The great cities of Antiquity, Corinth, Argos, and even Sparta were overrun and sacked. Not much is known about the loss of life in this quite unknown invasion, nor do we know how many wonderful works of art were destroyed, but we can imagine that it must have been quite devastating. For instance, many inhabitants of Corinth were sold into slavery. It was in the wake of this destruction under the reign of emperor Theodosius II that the decision was made to seal the peninsula off from the north. While fortifications across the Isthmus had existed in various forms since the Persian Wars of Antiquity, the new project was to be of a scale never before seen in the region. Construction likely began in the early 5th century, possibly around 410 or 420 AD as a response to the continued threat of barbarian invasions. This massive defensive fortification became known as the hexamillion, the six-mile wall. And of course we know that the eastern Romans really loved their walls. The Theodosian walls of Constantinople for instance were absolutely crucial in defending the capital, helping the eastern Roman empire to survive far longer than it would have without those walls. And the emperor Anastasius had another quite impressive fortification built about which I talked in this video here. The engineering of the hexamillion was a testament both to the desperation and to the determination of the eastern Roman empire. Spanning roughly 7700 meters, just under 5 miles across the narrowest point of the Isthmus, the wall ran from the shores of the Gulf of Corinth in the west to the Saronic Gulf in the east. It was not merely a wall, but a complex defensive system. If you are a fan of Roman history and you would want to buy an item for yourself or someone else as a present, then you might want to consider the SPQR shop. They produce incredible replicas of Roman history with a very high attention to detail. All their items are carefully handcrafted and I think it will be difficult to find that level of craftsmanship anywhere else. They handcraft Roman coin replicas, rings, pendants, attributes and many other items of Roman history. 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It is an irony of history that the destruction of the old temples and works of art was carried out much more radically by the Romans themselves than by the The wall was fortified with 153 towers, spaced at regular intervals to allow for overlapping fields of fire from archers. These towers served as buttresses, storage depots and living quarters for the garrisons. To the north of the wall, a deep, wide moat was dug, lined with masonry to prevent erosion and stop tunneling. The main entrances were heavily fortified gates, the most prominent being the Hexamilia gate, through which the main road from Athens to Corinth passed. At its height, the wall stood 8 meters tall and was roughly 3 meters thick, a formidable barrier designed to stop cavalry charges and even siege engines. It is interesting to note though, that the locals apparently were quite opposed to the building of the wall. For instance, graffiti was discovered etched on a stone on one of the defensive towers, making fun of the wall's inability to defend against attacks from the sea. Indeed, the wall did not project out into the sea and could just simply be bypassed by ships. There are also numerous alterations of the wall that seem to have been carried out basically almost immediately after the wall was finished, that seem to actively counteract the building of the wall itself. So apparently the locals were quite annoyed by the wall, as it choked the passage of goods and people from and to the Peloponnese peninsula, and it also allowed for a more thorough collection of taxes. But throughout the following centuries, the hexamillion remained in use, though it was very much tied to the health of the empire. When the empire was strong, the wall was maintained, manned and effective. However, when the empire faltered, the wall would fall into disrepair. In the 6th century, the great builder Emperor Justinian significantly repaired and strengthened the fortifications, viewing them as essential to the defense of the empire's European territories against Slavic and Avar incursions. Yet, a wall is only as useful as the people manning it. During the dark ages of the Eastern Roman Empire, as the population dwindled and the imperial treasury ran dry, the hexamillion was often breached or even bypassed completely on sea, leading to the settlement of Slavic tribes within the peninsula. Therefore, later the wall, being robbed of its purpose, began to slowly fall into disrepair. However, in a weird twist of fate, the wall would see a dramatic resurgence a lot later than it was built, namely in the twilight years of the Eastern Roman Empire. By the 15th century, the empire was reduced to Constantinople and the despotate of the Morea in the Peloponnese. The threat was no longer the Goths or the Slavs, but the rising power of the Ottoman Turks. The hexamillion became the last line of defense for Greek independence of the mainland. In 1415, Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos personally supervised a massive restoration of the wall. It was a giant effort that reportedly took only 25 days, achieved by levying heavy taxes and labor requirements on the local elite, the archons, who of course were not very happy about this. Manuel effectively turned the Peloponnese into a fortress island. And for a brief time it seemed to work, providing even a sense of security that allowed the despotate of the Morea to flourish culturally, centered in the city of Mystras. The final and most tragic chapter of the hexamillion belongs to Constantine XI Palaiologos. Before he became the last emperor of the Romans, Constantine served as the despot of the Morea. In 1444, sensing the encroaching Ottoman tide, he refortified the hexamillion yet again. He believed that if Constantinople fell, the Morea could survive as a bastion of Hellenism behind these walls. That belief was tested in December 1446. The Ottoman Sultan Murad II marched south with a massive army to crush the Eastern Roman Empire. Constantine and his brother Thomas defended the hexamillion with a force roughly 20,000 men, a mix of Greeks and Albanian mercenaries. The wall was and the defenders were desperate. For days the Eastern Romans held the line, repelling Ottoman assaults. However, warfare had changed a lot since the days of Alaric. Murad II brought with him the new masters of the battlefield, long super cannons and gunpowder artillery. On December 10, 1446, the Ottoman artillery began a bombardment that the 5th century masonry was never designed to withstand. The stone facings shattered and the rubble core crumbled. Under the cover of the dust and the barrage, the Janissaries launched a final assault. The wall was breached. The slaughter that followed was immense, the defenders were routed, and the Ottomans poured into the Peloponnese, ravaging the countryside as Alaric had done a thousand years prior. The hexamillion had failed not because of lack of courage, but because medieval walls could not stand against modern gunpowder. Following the total collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent conquest of the Despotate of the Moria in 1460, the hexamillion lost its strategic purpose completely. The Ottomans now controlled both sides of the Isthmus. There was no longer a barbarian north to defend against. The entire region was part of the same Sultanate. Under Ottoman occupation, the hexamillion fell into a long, slow decay. It was never fully rebuilt, though the Ottomans did occasionally patch sections of it for local skirmishes or to control bandits. Mostly, however, the Great Wall became a quarry. For 400 years, local villagers and builders stripped the wall of its dressed stones to build houses, churches, and farm walls. The marble of the ancient temples of antiquity, once recycled into the wall by the The wall tells the story of the long decline of the Eastern Roman Empire. It began as a reaction to Alaric's shock invasion of the Peloponnese in 396, and it evolved into the shield of the Moria under Justinian, and then served as the last hope of Hellenism under the Palaiologen dynasty. Its failure in 1446 marked the definitive transition from the age of fortifications to the age of gunpowder. It stands today as a silent testament to the enduring human desire for security in a chaotic world, and the inevitable failure of stone to hold back the tides of history. Thank you so much for watching, dear friends of Roman history. A special thanks to our Patreon and YouTube members, because it is thanks to you that I still continue making videos on this channel. Thank you so much. And if you want to learn more about the other quite unknown fortification wall of the Eastern Romans, the Anastasian Wall, you can watch this video in the upper right corner. But if you want to learn more about the city of Constantinople, you can watch the other video in the lower right corner. I say thanks again to all friends of Roman history, gratias tibiago and benevalete.