Everywhere there was
pressure
and counter-pressure.
Cambridge Medieval History - v1 - Christian Roman Empire and Teutonic Kingdoms
During the decade 305-315 the
bishops of Spain met at Elvira, the bishops of Asia Minor at Ancyra
and at Neocaesarea, the Western bishops generally at Arles ; and the
codes of these four councils are the earliest material preserved in later
Canon Law.
The decisions of such councils had however no currency, in the first
instance, outside their own localities, and even the Council of Arles was a
concilium plenarium only of the West; but the feeling was already gaining
## p. 179 (#209) ############################################
Universal Church Law
179
strength, and it was quite in accordance with the ecclesiastical policy of
Constantine, that uniformity was desirable even in many matters where
it was not essential, and an oecumenical council offered unique oppor-
tunities of arriving at a common understanding. So we find the Council
of Nicaea issuing, side by side with its doctrinal definition, a series of
disciplinary regulations, among which are incorporated, often in a greatly
modified form, some canons of the Eastern Council of Ancyra and some
canons of the Western Council of Arles.
These Nicene canons are the earliest code that can be called Canon
Law of the whole Church, and at least in the West they enjoyed
something like the same finality in the realm of discipline that the
Nicene Creed enjoyed in the realm of doctrine. “ Other canon than the
Nicene canons the Roman church receives not,” “the Nicene canons alone
is the Catholic Church bound to recognise and to follow," writes
Innocent of Rome in the cause of St Chrysostom. Leo does not exclude
quite so rigorously the possibility of additions to the Church's code:
but the Nicene fathers still exercise an authority unhampered by time
or place, “mansuras usque in finem mundi leges ecclesiasticorum canonum
condiderunt, et apud nos et in toto orbe terrarum. ”
The principle was simplicity itself, but it came to be worked
out with a naive disregard of facts. On the one hand the genuine
Nicene code was not accepted quite entire, and where Western tradition
and Nicene rules were inconsistent, it was not always the tradition that
went under: the canon against kneeling at Eastertide is, in all early
versions that we can connect with Rome, entirely absent; the canon
against the validity of Paulianist baptism was misinterpreted to mean
that the Paulianists did not employ the baptismal formula. On the
other hand many early codes that had no sort of real connexion with the
Nicene council sheltered themselves under its name and shared its
authority. The canons of Ancyra, Neocaesarea and Gangra, possibly
also those of Antioch, were all included as Nicene in the early
Gallican collection. The canons of Sardica, probably because of the
occurrence in them of the name of Hosius of Cordova, are in most of
the oldest collections joined without break to the canons of Nicaea :
and a rather acrimonious controversy was carried on between Rome and
Carthage in the years 418 and 419, because Pope Zosimus cited the
Sardican canons as Nicene, and the Africans neither found these canons
in their own copies nor could learn anything about them in the East.
The original form of the collection known as Isidore's was apparently
translated from the Greek under Roman auspices at about this time:
the canons of Nicaea are those “quas sancta Romana recipit ecclesia,"
the codes of the six Greek councils Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra,
Antioch, Laodicea and Constantinople follow, and then the Sardican
canons under the heading “concilium Nicaenum xx episcoporum, quae in
graeco non habentur sed in latino inveniuntur ita. ” A Gallican editor of
CH, P.
12-2
## p. 180 (#210) ############################################
180
Codification of Church Law
this version, later in the fifth century, combines the newer material with
the older tradition in the shape of a canon proposed by Hosius, giving
the sanction of the Nicene or Sardican council to the three codes of
Ancyra, Neocaesarea and Gangra.
We must not suppose that all this juggling with the name Nicene
was in the strict sense fraudulent: we need not doubt the good faith of
St Ambrose when he quoted a canon against digamous clergy as Nicene,
though it is really Neocaesarean, or of St Augustine when he concludes
that the followers of Paul of Samosata did not observe the “rule of
baptism,” because the Nicene canons ordered them to be baptized, or for
that matter of popes Zosimus and Boniface because they made the
most of the Sardican prescriptions about appeals to Rome, which their
manuscripts treated as Nicene. The fact was that the twenty canons of
Nicaea were not sufficient to form a system of law: the new wine must
burst the old bottles, and by hook or by crook the code of authoritative
rules must be enlarged, if it was to be a serviceable guide for the
uniform exercise of church discipline. The spurious canon which the
Gallican Isidore fathers on Hosius puts just this point; “quoniam
multa praetermissa sunt quae ad robur ecclesiasticum pertinent, quae
iam priori synodo. . . constituta sunt,” let these other acts too receive
sanction. In the fourth century the councils had committed their canons
to writing. In the fifth century came the impulse to collect and codify
the extant material into a corpus of Canon Law.
The first steps were taken, as might be expected, in the East.
Somewhere about the year 400, and in the sphere of Constantinople-
Antioch, the canons of half-a-dozen councils, held in that part of
the world during the preceding century, were brought together into a
Vsingle collection and numbered continuously throughout. The editio
princeps, so to say, of this Greek code contained the canons of Nicaea
(20), Ancyra (25), Neocaesarea (14), Gangra (20), Antioch (25), and
Laodicea (59): it was rendered into Latin by the Isidorian collector,
and it was used by the officials of the church of Constantinople at the
Council of Chalcedon, for in the fourth session canons 4 and 5 of Antioch
canon 83” and “
canon 84,” and in the eleventh session
canons 16 and 17 of Antioch as “canon 95" and "canon 96. " The canons
of Constantinople were the first appendix to the code: they are trans-
lated in the Isidorian collection, and they are cited in the acts of
Chalcedon, but in neither case under the continuous numeration.
When Dionysius Exiguus, early in the sixth century, made a quasi-
official book of Canon Law for the Roman church, he found the canons
of Constantinople numbered with the rest, bringing up the total to 165
chapters: his two other Greek authorities, the canons of the Apostles and
the canons of Chalcedon, were numbered independently. The earliest
Syriac version adds to the original nucleus only those of Constantinople
and Chalcedon, with a double system of numeration, the one separate
were read
as
## p. 181 (#211) ############################################
Greek Canon Law
181
for each council, the other continuous throughout the whole series.
And in the digest of Canon Law, published about the middle of the
sixth century by John Scholasticus of Antioch (afterwards intruded as
patriarch of Constantinople), the “great synods of the fathers after the
apostles” are ten in number—i. e. not counting the Apostolic Canons the
councils proper are brought up to ten by the inclusion of Sardica,
Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon-and“ besides these, many
canonical rules were laid down by Basil the Great. ”
Two features in the work of John the Lawyer illustrate the transition
from earlier to later Canon Law. In the first place the list of authorities
is no longer confined strictly to councils, to whose decrees alone canonical
validity as yet attached in the fourth and fifth centuries: a new element
is introduced with the Canons of St Basil, and by the time we arrive at
the end of the seventh century, when the constituent parts of Eastern
Canon Law were finally settled at the Quinisextine council in Trullo, the
enumeration of Greek councils is followed by the enumeration of
individual doctors of the Greek Church, and an equal authority is
attributed to the rules or canons of both. In the second place John
represents a new movement for the arrangement of the material of
Church Law, not on the older historical and chronological method,
by which all the canons of each council were kept together, but on
a system of subject-matter headings, so that in every chapter all the
appropriate rules, however different in date or inconsistent in character,
would be set down in juxtaposition. Three of John's contemporaries
were doing the same sort of thing for Latin Church Law that he had
done for Greek—the deacon Ferrandus of Carthage in his Breviatio
Canonum, Cresconius, also an African, in his Concordia Canonum, and
Martin, bishop of Braga in north-western Spain, in his Capitula. But
the day of the great medieval systematisers was not yet : these tentative
efforts after an orderly system seem to have met at most with local
success, and the business of canonists was still directed in the main to
the enlargement of their codes, rather than to the coordination of the
diverse elements existing side by side in them.
Early Greek Church Law was simple and homogeneous enough, for it
consisted of nothing but Greek councils: even the first beginnings of the
corpus
of Latin Church Law were more complex, because not one element
but three went to its composition. We have seen that its nucleus
consisted in the universal acceptance of the canons of Nicaea, and in the
grafting of the canons of other early councils on to the Nicene stock.
Thus, whereas Greek canon law admitted no purely Latin element (and
in that way had no sort of claim to universality), Latin canon law not
only admitted but centred round Greek material
. Of course, as soon as
the idea of a corpus of ecclesiastical law took shape in the West, a Latin
element was bound to add itself to the Greek; and this Latin element
took two forms. The natural supplement to Greek councils were Latin
CH. 11.
## p. 182 (#212) ############################################
182
Latin Canon Law
that a group
of
some
councils: and every local collector would add to his Greek code the councils
of his own part of the world, Gallic, Spanish, African, as the case might
be. But just about the same time with the commencement of the continu-
ous series of councils whose canons were taken up into our extant Latin
codes, commences a parallel series of papal decretals: the African
councils begin with the Council of Carthage in 390 and the Council
of Hippo in 393, the decretals with the letter of Pope Siricius to
Himerius of Tarragona in 385. Such decretal letters were issued to
churches in most parts of the European West, Illyria included, but
not to north Italy, which looked to Milan, and not to Africa, which
depended on Carthage. As their immediate destination was local,
not one of them is found in the early Western codes so universally as the
Greek councils; on the other hand their circulation was larger than
that of
any
local Western council, and some or others of them are found
in almost every collection. It would even appear
eight decretals of Siricius and Innocent, Zosimus and Celestine, had been
put together and published as a sort of authoritative handbook before
the papacy of Leo (441-461). Outside Rome, there were thus three
elements normally present in a Western code, the Greek, the local,
and the papal. In a Roman collection, the decretals were themselves
the local element: thus Dionysius Exiguus' edition consists of two
parts, the first containing the Greek councils (and by exception the
Carthaginian council of 419), the second containing papal letters from
Siricius down to Gelasius and Anastasius II. But even the code of
Dionysius, though superior to all others in accuracy and convenience,
was made only for Roman use, and for more than two centuries had
only a limited vogue elsewhere. Each district in the West had its
separate Church Law as much as its separate liturgy or its separate
political organisation; and it was not till the union of Gaul and Italy
under one head in the person of Charles the Great, that the collection
of Dionysius, as sent to Charles by Pope Hadrian in 774, was given official
position throughout the Frankish dominions.
## p. 183 (#213) ############################################
183
CHAPTER VII.
EXPANSION OF THE TEUTONS.
The race which played the leading part in history after the break-up
of the Roman Empire was the race known as the Teutons. Their early
history is shrouded in obscurity, an obscurity which only begins to be
lightened about the end of the second century of our era.
Such infor-
mation as we have we owe to Greeks and Romans; and what they give
us is almost exclusively contemporary history, and the few fragmentary
statements referring to earlier conditions, invaluable as they are to us,
do not go far behind their own time. Archaeology alone enables us to
penetrate further back. Without its aid it would be vain to think of
attempting to answer the question of the origin and original distribution
of the Germanic race.
The earliest home of the Teutons was in the countries surrounding
the western extremity of the Baltic Sea, comprising what is now the
south of Sweden, Jutland with Schleswig-Holstein, the German Baltic
coast to about the oder and the islands with which the sea is studded
as far as Gothland. This, not Asia, is the region which, with a certain
extension south, as far, say, as the great mountain chain of central
Germany, may be described as the cradle of the Indo-Germanic race.
According to all appearance, this was the centre from which it impelled
its successive waves of population towards the west, south, and south-east,
to take possession, in the end, of all Europe and even of a part of Asia.
A portion of the Indo-Germanic race, however, remained behind in the
north, to emerge after the lapse of two thousand years into the light of
history as a new people of wonderful homogeneity and remarkable
uniformity of physical type, the people which we know as the Teutons.
The expansion of the Indo-Germanic race and its division into various
nations and groups of nations had in the main been completed during
the Neolithic Period, so that in the Bronze Age-roughly, for the
northern races, B. C. 1500-500—the territories which we have indicated
above belonged exclusively to the Teutons who formed a distinct race
with its own special characteristics and language.
The distinctive feature of the civilisation of these prehistoric
Teutons is the working of bronze. It is well known that in the North-
CH, VII.
## p. 184 (#214) ############################################
184
The Teutons
[B. C. 600—600
a region where the Bronze Age was of long duration—a remarkable degree
of skill was attained in this art. The Northern Teutonic Bronze Age
forms therefore in every respect a striking phenomenon in the general
history of human progress. On the other hand, the advance in culture
which followed the introduction of the use of iron was not at first shared
by the Northern peoples. It was only about s. c. 500, that is to say
quite five hundred years later than in Greece and Italy, in the South
of France and the upper part of the Danube basin, that the use of iron
was introduced among the Teutons. The period of civilisation usually
known as the Hallstatt period, of which the later portion (from about
B. C. 600 onwards) was not less brilliant than the Later Bronze Age,
remained practically unknown to the Teutons.
The nearest neighbours of the Teutons in this earliest period were,
to the south the Kelts, to the east the Baltic peoples (Letts, Lithuanians,
Prussians) and the Slavs, in the extreme north the Finns. How far the
Teutonic territories extended northward, it is difficult to say. The
southern extremity of Scandinavia, that is to say the present Sweden up
to about the lakes, certainly always belonged to them. This is put
beyond doubt by archaeological discoveries. The Teutons therefore have
as good a claim to be considered the original inhabitants of Scandinavia
as their northern neighbours the great Finnish people. It is certain that
even in the earliest times they were expanding in a northerly direction,
and that they settled in the Swedish lake district, as far north as the
Dal Elf, and the southern part of Norway, long before we have any
historical information about these countries. Whether they found them
unoccupied, or whether they drove the Finns steadily backward, cannot
be certainly decided, although the latter is the more probable. The
Sitones whom Tacitus mentions along with the Suiones as the nations
dwelling furthest to the north were certainly Finns.
On the east, the Teutonic territory, which as saw did not
originally extend beyond the Oder, touched on that of the Baltic peoples
who were later known collectively, by a name which is doubtless of
Teutonic derivation, as Aists (Aestii in Tacitus, Germ. 45). To the
south and east of these lay the numerous Slavonic tribes (called Venedi
or Veneti by ancient writers). The land between the Oder and the Vistula
was therefore in the earliest times inhabited, in the north by peoples of
the Letto-Lithuanian linguistic group, and southward by Slavs. On
this side also the Teutons in quite early times forced their way beyond
the boundaries of their original territory. In the sixth century B. C. ,
as can be determined with considerable certainty from archaeo-
logical discoveries, the settlement of these territories by the Teutons
was to a large extent accomplished, the Baltic peoples being forced to
retire eastward, beyond the Vistula, and the Slavs towards the south-east.
It is likely that the conquerors came from the north, from Scandinavia ;
that they sought a new home on the south coast of the Baltic and
we
## p. 185 (#215) ############################################
B. C. 400—300]
Teutons and Kelts
185
towards the east and south-east. To this points also the fact (otherwise
hard to explain) that the tribes which in historic times are settled in
these districts, Goths, Gepidae, Rugii, Lemovii, Burgundii, Charini, Varini
and Vandals, form a separate group, substantially distinguished in customs
and speech from the Western Teutons, but shewing numerous points of
affinity, especially in language and legal usage, to the Northern Teutons.
When, further, a series of Eastern Teutonic names of peoples appear
again in Scandinavia, those for instance of the Goths: Gauthigoth (TaūTOL,
Gautar, Gothland); Greutungi : Greotingi; Rugians: Rugi (Rygir,
Rogaland); Burgundiones: Borgundarholmr ; and when we find in
Jordanes the legend of the Gothic migration asserting that this people
came from Scandinavia (Scandza insula) as the officina gentium aut certe
velut vagina nationum ; the evidence in favour of a gradual settlement of
eastern Germany by immigrants from the north seems irresistible.
By the year B. c. 400, at latest, the Teutons must have reached the
northern base of the Sudetes'. It was only a step further to the settle-
ment of the upper Vistula; and if the Bastarnae, the first Germanic tribe
which comes into the light of history, had their seat here about B. c. 300,
the settlement of the whole basin of the upper Vistula, right up to the
Carpathians, must have been carried out by the Teutons in the course of
the fourth century B. C.
It was with Kelts that the Teutons came in contact towards the
sources of the Oder in the mountains which form the boundary of
Bohemia. Now there is no race to which the Teutons owe so much as
to the Kelts. The whole development of their civilisation was most
strongly influenced by the latter-so much so that in the centuries next
before the Christian era the whole Teutonic race shared a common
civilisation with the Kelts, to whom they stood in a relation of intel-
lectual dependence; in every aspect of public and private life Keltic
influence was reflected. How came it then that a people whose civilisa-
tion shews such marked characteristics as that of the Teutons of the
Later Bronze Age could lose these with such surprising rapidity-
perhaps in the course of a single century ?
The earliest habitat of the Teutons extended, as we have seen, on the
south as far as the Elbe. This river also marks the northern boundary
of the Kelts. All Germany west of the Elbe from the North Sea to the
* This is shewn by the name borrowed from the Keltic for the great central
German range, the Hercynian Forest of the Greeks and Romans, called in Old
High German Fergunna from the Teutonic * Fergunjo (* Fergunia) from the Early
Teutonic= Early Keltic * Perkunia (borrowed, therefore, before the loss of the
p-sound, which took place in Keltic at latest in the fifth century B. C. , and before the
Teutonic sound-shifting), and also by the name for the Kelts in general Walchen or
Walhas or Walhos from the Keltic *Wolkoi (Lat. Volcae), borrowings which can
only be explained by contact with the Kelts who lived on the southern skirts of the
range.
CH. VII.
## p. 186 (#216) ############################################
186
Migrations of the Kelts
[B. C. 1000
Alps was in the possession of the Kelts, at the time when the Teutons
occupied the western shores of the Baltic basin. The vigorous power of
expansion which this race displayed in the last thousand years of the
prehistoric age has left its traces throughout Europe, and even in Asia ;
and that is what gives it such importance in the history of the world.
The whole of Western Europe-France with Belgium and Holland, the
British Isles and the greater part of the Pyrenaean peninsula, in the south
the region of the Alps and the plains of the Po-has been at one time
or another subject to their rule. Eastward, migratory swarms of Kelts
pushed their way down the Danube to the Black Sea and even into Asia
Minor.
The starting-point of this movement was probably in what is now
north-western Germany and the Netherlands, and this region is therefore
to be regarded as the original home of the Keltic race. Place-names
and river-names, the study of which is a most valuable means of
elucidating prehistoric conditions, enable us to prove the existence in
many districts of this original Keltic population? They are scattered
over the whole of western Germany and as far as Brabant and Flanders,
but occur with especial frequency between the Rhine and the Weser.
In the north the Wörpe-Bach (north-east of Bremen) marks the limits
of their distribution, in the east the course of the Leine, down to
Rosoppe; in the south they extend as far as the Main where the Aschaff
(anciently Ascapha) at Aschaffenburg forms the last outpost of their
territory. They are not found on the strip of coast along the North
.
Sea, occupied later by the Chauci and Frisians, nor on the western side
of the Elbe. From this we may safely conclude that these districts
were abandoned by their original Keltic population earlier, indeed
considerably earlier, than those to the west of the Weser, and also that
the expansion of the Teutons westwards proceeded along two distinct
lines, though doubtless almost contemporaneously-one westward along
the North Sea and one in a more southerly direction up the Elbe along
both its banks.
With this view the results of prehistoric archaeology are in complete
agreement.
We have determined the area of distribution of the
Northern Bronze Age—which we saw to be specifically Teutonic—as
consisting, in the earlier period (up to c. B. c. 1000), of Scandinavia and
the Danish islands, and also Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg and West-
1 Among Keltic river-names are the Rhine (Keltic Rēnos from an older * Reinas,
* Rainas), the Main (Old-High-Germ. Moin, in which the Keltic diphthong is
preserved), the Embscher (Embiscara from an older Ambîscara) and the Lippe, also
perhaps the Lahn, Sieg, Ruhr, Leine and even the Weser. The mountain-names
Taunus, Finne and Semana (the old name for the Thuringian Forest) also betray a
Keltic origin. With these must be classed numerous names of places and rivers
which have, sometimes even now, the archaic termination -apa or in High German
-afa, -affa (-epa, -efu, -ipa, -ifa, -upa, -ufa), which is absolutely inexplicable from
the Teutonic but has its parallels in Keltic and points clearly to a Keltic origin.
*
## p. 187 (#217) ############################################
B. C. 1000–200]
Civilisation of the Kelts
187
Pomerania, and therefore bounded on the south-west by the Elbe.
But in the Later Bronze Age (c. B. c. 1000-600) this territory is enlarged
in all directions. On the south and west especially, to judge from the
evidence of excavations, it extends from the point at which the Wartha
flows into the Oder, in a south-westerly direction through the Spreewald
and Fläming districts to the Elbe; then further west to the Harz, and
from there northwards along the Oker and Aller to about the estuary of
the Weser, and finally along the coast-line as far as Holland. In
Thuringia the Keltic peoples maintained their hold somewhat longer.
The northern part of it-above the Unstrut-may have received a
Teutonic population in the course of the fifth century B. C. ; the southern
in the course of the fourth. On the other hand, the whole region
westward from the Weser and the Thuringian Forest as far as the Rhine
was still in the possession of the Kelts about the year B. c. 300, and was
only conquered by the Teutons in the course of the following century'.
It may be taken as the assured result of all the linguistic and
archaeological data, that only about the year B. C. 200 the whole of
north-western Germany was held by the Teutons, who had now reached
the frontier-lines formed by the Rhine and the Main.
About the close of the fifth century B. c. , a new civilisation appears
in the Keltic domain, a civilisation which, from the fine taste and
technical perfection of its productions, deserves in more than one
respect to rank with that of the classical nations. This is the so-called
La Tène Civilisation, which takes its name from a place on the north
side of the Lake of Neuchâtel where especially numerous and varied
remains of it have come to light. Where its centre is to be located we
do not know-somewhere, we may conjecture, in the South of France or
in Switzerland. Starting from this point it spread through all the parts
of Europe, which were not under the sway of the Greek and Roman
civilisation. Following the course of the Rhone, of the Rhine, and of the
Danube, it rapidly conquered all the countries in which Gallic tongues
were spoken and maintained its supremacy until the Graeco-Roman
civilisation deposed it from its primacy.
It was with this highly developed civilisation—so far superior,
especially in its highly advanced knowledge of the working of iron, to
the Northern, which still only made use of bronze—that the Teutons
came in contact in their advance towards the south-west. It is quite
intelligible that the Teutons in the course of their two hundred years of
struggle with the Kelts for the possession of north-western Germany,
should have eagerly adopted the higher civilisation of the Kelts.
| The Keltic local names in -apa—which lie mainly in the country between the
Weser and the Rhine-were unaffected by the Teutonic sound-shifting, therefore
must have been already adopted into the vocabulary of the advancing Teutons.
Then, too, prehistoric remains in this region down to the “Middle La Tène Period”
(C. B. C. 300), and in its southern parts even later, are so distinctively Keltic that
there can be no doubt it was still in Keltic occupation.
CH. VII.
## p. 188 (#218) ############################################
188
Movements of the Teutons
(B. C. 400—200
1
Vague reminiscences of the former supremacy of the Keltic race
survived into historic times. Ac fuit antea tempus cum Germanos Galli
virtute superarent, ultro bella inferrent, propter hominum multitudinem
agrique inopiam trans Rhenum colonias mitterent, writes Caesar-
a piece of information which he must have derived from Gaulish
sources. Here belongs also the Gallic tradition reported by Timagenes!
according to which a part of the nation was said ab insulis extimis
conflurisse et tractibus Transrhenanis crebritate bellorum et adluvione
fervidi maris sedibus suis expulsos. Caesar himself mentions a Keltic
tribe, the Menapii, on the right bank of the lower Rhine.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Keltic Teuriscans of
northern Hungary were originally settled in south-central Germany
between the Erzgebirge and the Harz, but later (about B. C. 400) were
forced out of this district by the pressure of the advancing Germans,
and retired in two sections towards the south and south-east.
About the year B. C. 200 the Teuton occupation of north-west
Germany was, as we have seen, completed, having reached the Rhine on
the west and the Main on the south. But the great forward movement
towards the south-west was not to be stayed by these rivers. Vast
waves of population kept pressing downward from the north, and giving
fresh impetus to the movement. The whole Germanic world must at
that time have been in constant ferment and unrest. Nations were born
and perished.
Everywhere there was pressure and counter-pressure.
Any people that had not the strength to maintain itself against its
neighbours, or to strike out a new path for itself, was swept away. The
tension thus set up first found relief on the Rhenish frontier. About
the middle of the second century B. c. Teutonic hordes swept across the
river and occupied the whole country westward of the lower Rhine as
far as the Ardennes and the Eifel. These hordes were the ancestors of
the later tribes and clans which meet us here in the first dawn of history,
the Eburones, Condrusi, Caeroesi, Paemani, Segni, Nervi, Grudi, and
also of the Texuandri, Sunuci, Baetusii, Caraces, who appear later, as well
,
as of the Tungri, who after the annihilation of the Eburones by Caesar
succeeded to their territory and position of influence. The Treveri, on
the other hand, who had their seat further to the south beyond the
Eifel, were doubtless Kelts? .
The Teutonic invasion of Gaul must have taken place mainly in the
second half of the second century B. C. , but it was still in progress in
Caesar's time.
It may suffice briefly to recall in this connexion the
successful campaign of Ariovistus ; the incursion immediately before
1 Ammianus, xv. 9. 4.
2 That the other tribes which we have just named were of Teutonic origin there
can be no doubt, and the attempt of Müllenhoff to prove that these tribes were
Keltic (Deutsche Altertumskunde, 1². pp. 194 ff. ) must be pronounced to have com-
pletely failed, as is shewn by R. Much (Deutsche Stammsitze, pp. 162 ff. ).
## p. 189 (#219) ############################################
B. C. 58–9]
Teutonic Invasion of Gaul
189
Caesar entered upon his province, of 24,000 Harudi into the country of
the Sequani; the invasion of the Suebi under Nasua and Cimberius in
the year 58 ; and of the Usipetes and Tencteri at the beginning of the
year s. c. 55. That there were even later immigrations of Teutonic hosts
into north-eastern Gaul may be conjectured from the absence of any
mention by Caesar of several of the tribes which were settled here in the
time of the Empire, and this conjecture is raised almost to a certainty
by the known instance of the Tungri.
It was only later, in the time of the migrations of the Cimbri, and
doubtless in connexion therewith, that the frontier formed by the Main
was crossed. It was—to the best of our information-a portion of the
Suebi, previously settled on the northern bank of this river, who were the
first to push across it, and after driving out the Helveti, established
themselves firmly to the south of the river, and were here known under
the name of Marcomanni (Men of the Marches)—the name first meets
us in Caesar, in the enumeration of the peoples led by Ariovistus.
Their country, the Marca, extended south to the Danube. That the
Tulingi (mentioned by Caesar as finetini of the Helveti) were of Germanic
origin is put beyond doubt by their name, which is good German and
forms a pendant to that of the Thuringi. But it will doubtless be
near the truth to see in them not the whole nation of the Marcomanni,
but only a tribe or local division of it, and doubtless its advance-guard
towards the south. In any case it is evident from Caesar's account that
numbering as they did a round 36,000 (B. G. 1. 29. 2), of whom about
8000 were warriors, they formed a united whole with a definite territory
and were not merely a migratory body of Marcomanni gathered together
ad hoc.
A remnant of the old Marcomanni of South Germany, who in the
year B. c. 9 migrated to Bohemia, is doubtless to be found in the Suebi
Nicretes whom we meet with in the time of the Empire on the lower
Neckar. Further to the north, on the southern bank of the Main, near
Mittenberg, we find the name of the Toutoni in an inscription which
came to light in the year 18781. Hereupon certain scholars” have
arrived at the conviction that this locality was the original home of the
Teutones whom we hear of in association with the Cimbri, and so that
they were not of Germanic but of Keltic origin, being of Helvetic race
and identified with the Helvetic local clan of the Twuyevoi of Strabo.
This hypothesis must be absolutely rejected. There must have been
some connexion between those Toutoni and the Teutoni of history. But
to conclude without more ado that the Teutoni were Helveti, South-
German Kelts, is to do direct violence to the whole body of ancient
* C. I. L. xi. 6610, dating perhaps from about the beginning of the second
century A. D. : inter | Toutones | C. . . A. . . | H. . . | F. . . .
? G. Kessima, Westdeutsche Zeitschrift, ix. (1890), p. 213; R. Much, Deutsche
Stammsitze, p. 5.
CH, VII.
## p. 190 (#220) ############################################
190
The Bastarnae
[B. C. 182
tradition, which consistently represents the Teutoni as a people whose
original home was in the North. The simplest solution of the difficulty
is that the Mittenberg Toutoni were a fragment which split off from the
Teutonic peoples during their migration southward, and settled in this
district, just as in north-eastern Gaul a portion of the Cimbri and
Teutones maintained itself as the tribe of the Aduatuci.
The whole process of the expulsion of the Kelts from South Germany
must have been accomplished between B. c. 100 and 70, for Caesar knows
of no Gauls on the right bank of the upper Rhine, and the Helveti had
been living for a considerable time to the south of the head-waters of
the river which, as Caesar tells us, divides Helvetic from German
territory.
The first collision between the Teutons and the Graeco-Roman
world took place far to the east of Gaul. It resulted from a great
migration of the eastern Teutonic tribes in the neighbourhood of the
Vistula, which had carried some of them as far as the shore of the Black
Sea. The chief of these tribes was that of the Bastarnae. Settled, it
would seem, before their exodus near the head-waters of the Vistula they
appear, as early as the beginning of the second century B. C. , near the
estuary of the Danube. The whole region north of the Pruth, from the
Black Sea to the northern slope of the Carpathians, was in their
possession and remained so during all the time that they are known to
history. Another Germanic tribe, doubtless dependent upon them,
meets us in the same district, namely the Sciri from the lower Vistula.
The well known and much discussed “psephisma” of the town of Olbia
in honour of Protogenes mentions them as allied with the Galatai, and
there has been much debate as to what nation is to be understood by
these Talátat, and they have sometimes been conjectured to be Illyrian
Kelts (Scordisci), sometimes Thracian, sometimes the--also Keltic-
Britolages, or the Teutonic Bastarnae, or even the Goths. The majority
of scholars has however decided that these “Galatians” are the
Bastarnae', whose presence in the neighbourhood of Olbia in the year
B. C. 182 is attested by Polybius. There is, indeed, much in favour of
this hypothesis and nothing against it. The inscription then, which is
proved by the character of the writing to be one of the oldest found in
this locality, would have been written about the time of the arrival of
the Bastarnae at the estuary of the Danube, that is to say, about b. c. 200
-180, and would therefore be the earliest documentary evidence for the
entrance of the Germanic tribes on the field of general history.
As early as the year B. c. 182 we find the Bastarnae in negotiations
with Philip of Macedon. Philip's plan was to get rid of the Dardanians,
and after settling his allies on the territory thus vacated to use it as a
base for an expedition against Italy. After long negotiations, the
Bastarnae in 179 abandoned their lately-won territory, crossed the
i So Zeuss and Staehelin.
## p. 191 (#221) ############################################
B. C. 182–100]
Cimbri and Teutons
191
Danube and advanced into Thrace. At this point King Philip died, and
after an unsuccessful battle with the Thracians the Bastarnae began a
retreat to the settlement which they had abandoned; but a detachment of
a
some 30,000 men under Clondicus pressed on into Dardania. With the
aid of the Thracians and Scordiscans and with the connivance of Philip's
successor, Perseus, he pressed the Dardanians hard for a time, but at last
in the winter of 175 he also decided to retire. In Rome the intrigues
of the Macedonian kings had been watched with growing mistrust and
displeasure, which found expression in the despatch of a commission to
investigate the situation in Macedonia and especially on the Dardanian
border. This, therefore, is the first occasion on which the Roman State
had to concern itself with Teutonic affairs. At that time, it is true, the
racial difference between Kelts and Teutons was not yet recognised and
the Bastarnae were therefore supposed to be Gauls. Before very long
(168), we find the Bastarnae again in relations with the King of Macedon.
Twenty thousand men, again under the command of Clondicus, were to
join him in his struggle with the Romans in Paeonia. But Perseus was
blinded by avarice, and failed to keep his promises. Clondicus therefore,
who had already reached the country of the Maedi, promptly turned to
the right-about and marched home through Thrace. From this point
they disappear from history for a time, only to reappear in the
Mithradatic wars as allies of that King, and they consequently appear
also in the list of the nations over whom Pompey triumphed in the
year 61.
In the East, on the frontiers of Europe and Asia, the Germanic
race attracted little notice; but in the West, about the close of the
second century B. C. , it shook the edifice of the Roman State to its
foundations and spread the terror of its name over the whole of Western
Europe. It was the Cimbri, along with their allies the Teutones and
Ambrones, who for half a score of years kept the world in suspense. All
three peoples were doubtless of Germanic stock'. We may take it as
established that the original home of the Cimbri was on the Jutish
peninsula, that of the Teutones somewhere between the Ems and the
Weser, and that of the Ambrones in the same neighbourhood, also on
the North Sea coast. The cause of their migration was the constant
encroachment of the sea upon their coasts, the occasion being an
inundation which devastated their territory, great stretches of it being
engulfed by the sea. This is the account given by ancient writers and
I The arguments which have been alleged in favour of the Keltic origin of the
Teutones, and sometimes also of the Ambrones, and even of the Cimbri, are quite
untenable. Not only the unanimous witness of antiquity which always represents
the Cimbri and Teutones as having their original home on the German North Sea
coast, but also the very names of these peoples which, despite all the contrary
assertions of the Keltic enthusiasts, can be naturally and convincingly explained
from the Teutonic, put their Germanic character beyond doubt.
CH. VII.
## p. 192 (#222) ############################################
192
Cimbri and Teutons
[B. C. 115–100
4.
we have no reason to doubt its truth. The exodus of all three peoples
took place about the same time, and obviously in such a way that from
the first they went forward in close touch with one another. First they
turned southwards, probably following the line of the Elbe, crossed the
Erzgebirge and pressed on into Bohemia, the land of the Boii. Driven
back by the latter, they seem to have made their way along the valley of
the March, southwards to the Danube, and then through Pannonia into
the country of the Scordisci. Here, too, they encountered (in the year
114) such vigorous opposition that they preferred to turn westwards.
That brought them into contact with the Taurisci who had just (B. C.
115) formed a close alliance with the Romans. In the Carnic Alps was
stationed a Roman army under the command of the Consul Cn. Papirius
Carbo, which immediately advanced into Noricum. Carbo's attempt by
means of a treacherous attack to annihilate the Teutons ended in a
severe defeat. The way into Italy now lay open to the victors. But
so great was the awe in which they still held the Roman name, that they
promptly turned away towards the north. Their route led them to the
territory of the Helveti, which then extended from the Lake of Constance
as far as the Main. The Helveti do not seem to have offered any
resistance ; indeed a considerable section of the Helveti-- the Tigurini
and Toygeni-attached themselves to the Teutonic migrants. The
Germanic hosts then crossed the Rhine and pressed on southwards,
plundering as they went.
In s. c. 109 they halted in the valley of the Rhone, on the frontier
of the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, for the protection of
which a strong army under the Consul M. Junius Silanus had taken
the field. The Romans attacked, but were defeated for the second
time. Again the Germans shrank from invading Roman territory
and preferred to plunder and ravage the Gallic districts, which they
completely laid waste. Finally, in the year 105 they appeared once
more on the frontier of “the Province,” this time resolved to attack the
Romans. Of the three armies which opposed them that of the Legate
M. Aurelius Scaurus was first defeated in the territory of the Allobroges.
On 6 October followed the bloody battle of Arausio in which the other
two armies, under the Consul Cn. Mallius Maximus and the Proconsul
Q. Servilius Caepio, in all some 60,000 troops, were completely annihilated.
But instead of marching into Italy, the barbarians once again let the
favourable moment slip, and thus lost the fruits of their victory. They
divided their forces. The Cimbri marched away westwards, first into
the country of the Volcae, then on over the Pyrenees into Spain where
they carried on a desultory and indecisive struggle with the Celtiberi;
the Teutons and Helveti turned northwards to continue the work of
plundering Gaul. In 103 the Cimbrian hosts made their way back to
Gaul and reunited, in the territory of South-Belgic Veliocasses, with
their comrades who had remained behind.
1
## p. 193 (#223) ############################################
B. C. 102–60]
Teutonic Invasion of Gaul
193
Now at last they prepared a march upon Italy. In the spring of
102 the main mass of the united hordes began to move southwards.
Only one section, of about 6000 men—the nucleus of the later tribe
of the Aduatuci-remained behind in Belgica to guard the spoils.
Doubtless with a view to the difficulties of the passage of the Alps,
especially in the matter of supply, the invading host was before long
divided into three columns. The plan was that the Teutones and
Ambrones should make their way into the plain of the Po from the
western side, crossing the Maritime Alps, while the Cimbri and the
Tigurini should make a wide flanking movement and enter from the
north, the former by way of the Tridentine, the latter by way of the
Noric Alps. But the attempt was planned on too vast a scale, and was
wrecked by the military skill of Marius. The Ambrones and Teutones
were annihilated in the double battle near Aquae Sextiae (summer
102), while the fate of the Cimbri overtook them in the following year.
They had already reached the soil of Italy, into which they had forced
their way after a victorious encounter with Quintus Lutatius Catulus on
the Adige, when (30 July 101), on the plains of Vercellae, the so-called
Campi Raudii, they were utterly routed by the united forces of Marius
and Catulus. The Tigurini, who were to form the third invading force,
received the news of the defeat of the Cimbri when they were still on
the Noric Alps, and immediately turned round and retired to their
own country. Thus the great invasion of the northern barbarians was
defeated, and Western Europe could once more breathe freely.
We saw above that about s. c. 100, doubtless in connexion with the
appearance of the Cimbri and Teutones in South Germany, the line
of the Main was crossed by the Germanic peoples, and the settlement
of the territory between that and the Danube began. Less than a
generation later there was another attempt to extend the Germanic
sphere of influence westward over Gaul. About the year B. c. 71, on the
invitation of the powerful tribe of the Sequani, Ariovistus chief of the
Suebi crossed the Rhine with 15,000 warriors to serve as mercenaries to
the Sequani against their neighbours the Aedui. But after the victory
was won, the strangers did not return to their own land but remained
on the western side of the Rhine and established themselves in the
territory of their employers, taking possession of about a third of it,
presumably at its northern extremity. Strengthened by large accessions
from the home-land this Germanic settlement on Gaulish territory-it
consisted of the Vangiones, Nemetes and Tribocci, and finally extended
over the whole of the left side of the Rhine valley, eastward of the
Vosges—soon became a menace to all the surrounding tribes. A united
attempt, in which the Aedui took a leading part, to expel the intruders
by force of arms ended after months of indecisive fighting in a crushing
defeat of the Gauls (at Admagetobriga), apparently in the year B. c. 61. .
Gaul lay defenceless at the feet of the victors, and they did not fail to
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. VII.
13
## p. 194 (#224) ############################################
194
Ariovistus and Caesar
[B. C. 61–58
Thus the power
make the most of their success. The Aedui and all their adherents
were forced to give hostages and to pay a yearly tribute.
bishops of Spain met at Elvira, the bishops of Asia Minor at Ancyra
and at Neocaesarea, the Western bishops generally at Arles ; and the
codes of these four councils are the earliest material preserved in later
Canon Law.
The decisions of such councils had however no currency, in the first
instance, outside their own localities, and even the Council of Arles was a
concilium plenarium only of the West; but the feeling was already gaining
## p. 179 (#209) ############################################
Universal Church Law
179
strength, and it was quite in accordance with the ecclesiastical policy of
Constantine, that uniformity was desirable even in many matters where
it was not essential, and an oecumenical council offered unique oppor-
tunities of arriving at a common understanding. So we find the Council
of Nicaea issuing, side by side with its doctrinal definition, a series of
disciplinary regulations, among which are incorporated, often in a greatly
modified form, some canons of the Eastern Council of Ancyra and some
canons of the Western Council of Arles.
These Nicene canons are the earliest code that can be called Canon
Law of the whole Church, and at least in the West they enjoyed
something like the same finality in the realm of discipline that the
Nicene Creed enjoyed in the realm of doctrine. “ Other canon than the
Nicene canons the Roman church receives not,” “the Nicene canons alone
is the Catholic Church bound to recognise and to follow," writes
Innocent of Rome in the cause of St Chrysostom. Leo does not exclude
quite so rigorously the possibility of additions to the Church's code:
but the Nicene fathers still exercise an authority unhampered by time
or place, “mansuras usque in finem mundi leges ecclesiasticorum canonum
condiderunt, et apud nos et in toto orbe terrarum. ”
The principle was simplicity itself, but it came to be worked
out with a naive disregard of facts. On the one hand the genuine
Nicene code was not accepted quite entire, and where Western tradition
and Nicene rules were inconsistent, it was not always the tradition that
went under: the canon against kneeling at Eastertide is, in all early
versions that we can connect with Rome, entirely absent; the canon
against the validity of Paulianist baptism was misinterpreted to mean
that the Paulianists did not employ the baptismal formula. On the
other hand many early codes that had no sort of real connexion with the
Nicene council sheltered themselves under its name and shared its
authority. The canons of Ancyra, Neocaesarea and Gangra, possibly
also those of Antioch, were all included as Nicene in the early
Gallican collection. The canons of Sardica, probably because of the
occurrence in them of the name of Hosius of Cordova, are in most of
the oldest collections joined without break to the canons of Nicaea :
and a rather acrimonious controversy was carried on between Rome and
Carthage in the years 418 and 419, because Pope Zosimus cited the
Sardican canons as Nicene, and the Africans neither found these canons
in their own copies nor could learn anything about them in the East.
The original form of the collection known as Isidore's was apparently
translated from the Greek under Roman auspices at about this time:
the canons of Nicaea are those “quas sancta Romana recipit ecclesia,"
the codes of the six Greek councils Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra,
Antioch, Laodicea and Constantinople follow, and then the Sardican
canons under the heading “concilium Nicaenum xx episcoporum, quae in
graeco non habentur sed in latino inveniuntur ita. ” A Gallican editor of
CH, P.
12-2
## p. 180 (#210) ############################################
180
Codification of Church Law
this version, later in the fifth century, combines the newer material with
the older tradition in the shape of a canon proposed by Hosius, giving
the sanction of the Nicene or Sardican council to the three codes of
Ancyra, Neocaesarea and Gangra.
We must not suppose that all this juggling with the name Nicene
was in the strict sense fraudulent: we need not doubt the good faith of
St Ambrose when he quoted a canon against digamous clergy as Nicene,
though it is really Neocaesarean, or of St Augustine when he concludes
that the followers of Paul of Samosata did not observe the “rule of
baptism,” because the Nicene canons ordered them to be baptized, or for
that matter of popes Zosimus and Boniface because they made the
most of the Sardican prescriptions about appeals to Rome, which their
manuscripts treated as Nicene. The fact was that the twenty canons of
Nicaea were not sufficient to form a system of law: the new wine must
burst the old bottles, and by hook or by crook the code of authoritative
rules must be enlarged, if it was to be a serviceable guide for the
uniform exercise of church discipline. The spurious canon which the
Gallican Isidore fathers on Hosius puts just this point; “quoniam
multa praetermissa sunt quae ad robur ecclesiasticum pertinent, quae
iam priori synodo. . . constituta sunt,” let these other acts too receive
sanction. In the fourth century the councils had committed their canons
to writing. In the fifth century came the impulse to collect and codify
the extant material into a corpus of Canon Law.
The first steps were taken, as might be expected, in the East.
Somewhere about the year 400, and in the sphere of Constantinople-
Antioch, the canons of half-a-dozen councils, held in that part of
the world during the preceding century, were brought together into a
Vsingle collection and numbered continuously throughout. The editio
princeps, so to say, of this Greek code contained the canons of Nicaea
(20), Ancyra (25), Neocaesarea (14), Gangra (20), Antioch (25), and
Laodicea (59): it was rendered into Latin by the Isidorian collector,
and it was used by the officials of the church of Constantinople at the
Council of Chalcedon, for in the fourth session canons 4 and 5 of Antioch
canon 83” and “
canon 84,” and in the eleventh session
canons 16 and 17 of Antioch as “canon 95" and "canon 96. " The canons
of Constantinople were the first appendix to the code: they are trans-
lated in the Isidorian collection, and they are cited in the acts of
Chalcedon, but in neither case under the continuous numeration.
When Dionysius Exiguus, early in the sixth century, made a quasi-
official book of Canon Law for the Roman church, he found the canons
of Constantinople numbered with the rest, bringing up the total to 165
chapters: his two other Greek authorities, the canons of the Apostles and
the canons of Chalcedon, were numbered independently. The earliest
Syriac version adds to the original nucleus only those of Constantinople
and Chalcedon, with a double system of numeration, the one separate
were read
as
## p. 181 (#211) ############################################
Greek Canon Law
181
for each council, the other continuous throughout the whole series.
And in the digest of Canon Law, published about the middle of the
sixth century by John Scholasticus of Antioch (afterwards intruded as
patriarch of Constantinople), the “great synods of the fathers after the
apostles” are ten in number—i. e. not counting the Apostolic Canons the
councils proper are brought up to ten by the inclusion of Sardica,
Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon-and“ besides these, many
canonical rules were laid down by Basil the Great. ”
Two features in the work of John the Lawyer illustrate the transition
from earlier to later Canon Law. In the first place the list of authorities
is no longer confined strictly to councils, to whose decrees alone canonical
validity as yet attached in the fourth and fifth centuries: a new element
is introduced with the Canons of St Basil, and by the time we arrive at
the end of the seventh century, when the constituent parts of Eastern
Canon Law were finally settled at the Quinisextine council in Trullo, the
enumeration of Greek councils is followed by the enumeration of
individual doctors of the Greek Church, and an equal authority is
attributed to the rules or canons of both. In the second place John
represents a new movement for the arrangement of the material of
Church Law, not on the older historical and chronological method,
by which all the canons of each council were kept together, but on
a system of subject-matter headings, so that in every chapter all the
appropriate rules, however different in date or inconsistent in character,
would be set down in juxtaposition. Three of John's contemporaries
were doing the same sort of thing for Latin Church Law that he had
done for Greek—the deacon Ferrandus of Carthage in his Breviatio
Canonum, Cresconius, also an African, in his Concordia Canonum, and
Martin, bishop of Braga in north-western Spain, in his Capitula. But
the day of the great medieval systematisers was not yet : these tentative
efforts after an orderly system seem to have met at most with local
success, and the business of canonists was still directed in the main to
the enlargement of their codes, rather than to the coordination of the
diverse elements existing side by side in them.
Early Greek Church Law was simple and homogeneous enough, for it
consisted of nothing but Greek councils: even the first beginnings of the
corpus
of Latin Church Law were more complex, because not one element
but three went to its composition. We have seen that its nucleus
consisted in the universal acceptance of the canons of Nicaea, and in the
grafting of the canons of other early councils on to the Nicene stock.
Thus, whereas Greek canon law admitted no purely Latin element (and
in that way had no sort of claim to universality), Latin canon law not
only admitted but centred round Greek material
. Of course, as soon as
the idea of a corpus of ecclesiastical law took shape in the West, a Latin
element was bound to add itself to the Greek; and this Latin element
took two forms. The natural supplement to Greek councils were Latin
CH. 11.
## p. 182 (#212) ############################################
182
Latin Canon Law
that a group
of
some
councils: and every local collector would add to his Greek code the councils
of his own part of the world, Gallic, Spanish, African, as the case might
be. But just about the same time with the commencement of the continu-
ous series of councils whose canons were taken up into our extant Latin
codes, commences a parallel series of papal decretals: the African
councils begin with the Council of Carthage in 390 and the Council
of Hippo in 393, the decretals with the letter of Pope Siricius to
Himerius of Tarragona in 385. Such decretal letters were issued to
churches in most parts of the European West, Illyria included, but
not to north Italy, which looked to Milan, and not to Africa, which
depended on Carthage. As their immediate destination was local,
not one of them is found in the early Western codes so universally as the
Greek councils; on the other hand their circulation was larger than
that of
any
local Western council, and some or others of them are found
in almost every collection. It would even appear
eight decretals of Siricius and Innocent, Zosimus and Celestine, had been
put together and published as a sort of authoritative handbook before
the papacy of Leo (441-461). Outside Rome, there were thus three
elements normally present in a Western code, the Greek, the local,
and the papal. In a Roman collection, the decretals were themselves
the local element: thus Dionysius Exiguus' edition consists of two
parts, the first containing the Greek councils (and by exception the
Carthaginian council of 419), the second containing papal letters from
Siricius down to Gelasius and Anastasius II. But even the code of
Dionysius, though superior to all others in accuracy and convenience,
was made only for Roman use, and for more than two centuries had
only a limited vogue elsewhere. Each district in the West had its
separate Church Law as much as its separate liturgy or its separate
political organisation; and it was not till the union of Gaul and Italy
under one head in the person of Charles the Great, that the collection
of Dionysius, as sent to Charles by Pope Hadrian in 774, was given official
position throughout the Frankish dominions.
## p. 183 (#213) ############################################
183
CHAPTER VII.
EXPANSION OF THE TEUTONS.
The race which played the leading part in history after the break-up
of the Roman Empire was the race known as the Teutons. Their early
history is shrouded in obscurity, an obscurity which only begins to be
lightened about the end of the second century of our era.
Such infor-
mation as we have we owe to Greeks and Romans; and what they give
us is almost exclusively contemporary history, and the few fragmentary
statements referring to earlier conditions, invaluable as they are to us,
do not go far behind their own time. Archaeology alone enables us to
penetrate further back. Without its aid it would be vain to think of
attempting to answer the question of the origin and original distribution
of the Germanic race.
The earliest home of the Teutons was in the countries surrounding
the western extremity of the Baltic Sea, comprising what is now the
south of Sweden, Jutland with Schleswig-Holstein, the German Baltic
coast to about the oder and the islands with which the sea is studded
as far as Gothland. This, not Asia, is the region which, with a certain
extension south, as far, say, as the great mountain chain of central
Germany, may be described as the cradle of the Indo-Germanic race.
According to all appearance, this was the centre from which it impelled
its successive waves of population towards the west, south, and south-east,
to take possession, in the end, of all Europe and even of a part of Asia.
A portion of the Indo-Germanic race, however, remained behind in the
north, to emerge after the lapse of two thousand years into the light of
history as a new people of wonderful homogeneity and remarkable
uniformity of physical type, the people which we know as the Teutons.
The expansion of the Indo-Germanic race and its division into various
nations and groups of nations had in the main been completed during
the Neolithic Period, so that in the Bronze Age-roughly, for the
northern races, B. C. 1500-500—the territories which we have indicated
above belonged exclusively to the Teutons who formed a distinct race
with its own special characteristics and language.
The distinctive feature of the civilisation of these prehistoric
Teutons is the working of bronze. It is well known that in the North-
CH, VII.
## p. 184 (#214) ############################################
184
The Teutons
[B. C. 600—600
a region where the Bronze Age was of long duration—a remarkable degree
of skill was attained in this art. The Northern Teutonic Bronze Age
forms therefore in every respect a striking phenomenon in the general
history of human progress. On the other hand, the advance in culture
which followed the introduction of the use of iron was not at first shared
by the Northern peoples. It was only about s. c. 500, that is to say
quite five hundred years later than in Greece and Italy, in the South
of France and the upper part of the Danube basin, that the use of iron
was introduced among the Teutons. The period of civilisation usually
known as the Hallstatt period, of which the later portion (from about
B. C. 600 onwards) was not less brilliant than the Later Bronze Age,
remained practically unknown to the Teutons.
The nearest neighbours of the Teutons in this earliest period were,
to the south the Kelts, to the east the Baltic peoples (Letts, Lithuanians,
Prussians) and the Slavs, in the extreme north the Finns. How far the
Teutonic territories extended northward, it is difficult to say. The
southern extremity of Scandinavia, that is to say the present Sweden up
to about the lakes, certainly always belonged to them. This is put
beyond doubt by archaeological discoveries. The Teutons therefore have
as good a claim to be considered the original inhabitants of Scandinavia
as their northern neighbours the great Finnish people. It is certain that
even in the earliest times they were expanding in a northerly direction,
and that they settled in the Swedish lake district, as far north as the
Dal Elf, and the southern part of Norway, long before we have any
historical information about these countries. Whether they found them
unoccupied, or whether they drove the Finns steadily backward, cannot
be certainly decided, although the latter is the more probable. The
Sitones whom Tacitus mentions along with the Suiones as the nations
dwelling furthest to the north were certainly Finns.
On the east, the Teutonic territory, which as saw did not
originally extend beyond the Oder, touched on that of the Baltic peoples
who were later known collectively, by a name which is doubtless of
Teutonic derivation, as Aists (Aestii in Tacitus, Germ. 45). To the
south and east of these lay the numerous Slavonic tribes (called Venedi
or Veneti by ancient writers). The land between the Oder and the Vistula
was therefore in the earliest times inhabited, in the north by peoples of
the Letto-Lithuanian linguistic group, and southward by Slavs. On
this side also the Teutons in quite early times forced their way beyond
the boundaries of their original territory. In the sixth century B. C. ,
as can be determined with considerable certainty from archaeo-
logical discoveries, the settlement of these territories by the Teutons
was to a large extent accomplished, the Baltic peoples being forced to
retire eastward, beyond the Vistula, and the Slavs towards the south-east.
It is likely that the conquerors came from the north, from Scandinavia ;
that they sought a new home on the south coast of the Baltic and
we
## p. 185 (#215) ############################################
B. C. 400—300]
Teutons and Kelts
185
towards the east and south-east. To this points also the fact (otherwise
hard to explain) that the tribes which in historic times are settled in
these districts, Goths, Gepidae, Rugii, Lemovii, Burgundii, Charini, Varini
and Vandals, form a separate group, substantially distinguished in customs
and speech from the Western Teutons, but shewing numerous points of
affinity, especially in language and legal usage, to the Northern Teutons.
When, further, a series of Eastern Teutonic names of peoples appear
again in Scandinavia, those for instance of the Goths: Gauthigoth (TaūTOL,
Gautar, Gothland); Greutungi : Greotingi; Rugians: Rugi (Rygir,
Rogaland); Burgundiones: Borgundarholmr ; and when we find in
Jordanes the legend of the Gothic migration asserting that this people
came from Scandinavia (Scandza insula) as the officina gentium aut certe
velut vagina nationum ; the evidence in favour of a gradual settlement of
eastern Germany by immigrants from the north seems irresistible.
By the year B. c. 400, at latest, the Teutons must have reached the
northern base of the Sudetes'. It was only a step further to the settle-
ment of the upper Vistula; and if the Bastarnae, the first Germanic tribe
which comes into the light of history, had their seat here about B. c. 300,
the settlement of the whole basin of the upper Vistula, right up to the
Carpathians, must have been carried out by the Teutons in the course of
the fourth century B. C.
It was with Kelts that the Teutons came in contact towards the
sources of the Oder in the mountains which form the boundary of
Bohemia. Now there is no race to which the Teutons owe so much as
to the Kelts. The whole development of their civilisation was most
strongly influenced by the latter-so much so that in the centuries next
before the Christian era the whole Teutonic race shared a common
civilisation with the Kelts, to whom they stood in a relation of intel-
lectual dependence; in every aspect of public and private life Keltic
influence was reflected. How came it then that a people whose civilisa-
tion shews such marked characteristics as that of the Teutons of the
Later Bronze Age could lose these with such surprising rapidity-
perhaps in the course of a single century ?
The earliest habitat of the Teutons extended, as we have seen, on the
south as far as the Elbe. This river also marks the northern boundary
of the Kelts. All Germany west of the Elbe from the North Sea to the
* This is shewn by the name borrowed from the Keltic for the great central
German range, the Hercynian Forest of the Greeks and Romans, called in Old
High German Fergunna from the Teutonic * Fergunjo (* Fergunia) from the Early
Teutonic= Early Keltic * Perkunia (borrowed, therefore, before the loss of the
p-sound, which took place in Keltic at latest in the fifth century B. C. , and before the
Teutonic sound-shifting), and also by the name for the Kelts in general Walchen or
Walhas or Walhos from the Keltic *Wolkoi (Lat. Volcae), borrowings which can
only be explained by contact with the Kelts who lived on the southern skirts of the
range.
CH. VII.
## p. 186 (#216) ############################################
186
Migrations of the Kelts
[B. C. 1000
Alps was in the possession of the Kelts, at the time when the Teutons
occupied the western shores of the Baltic basin. The vigorous power of
expansion which this race displayed in the last thousand years of the
prehistoric age has left its traces throughout Europe, and even in Asia ;
and that is what gives it such importance in the history of the world.
The whole of Western Europe-France with Belgium and Holland, the
British Isles and the greater part of the Pyrenaean peninsula, in the south
the region of the Alps and the plains of the Po-has been at one time
or another subject to their rule. Eastward, migratory swarms of Kelts
pushed their way down the Danube to the Black Sea and even into Asia
Minor.
The starting-point of this movement was probably in what is now
north-western Germany and the Netherlands, and this region is therefore
to be regarded as the original home of the Keltic race. Place-names
and river-names, the study of which is a most valuable means of
elucidating prehistoric conditions, enable us to prove the existence in
many districts of this original Keltic population? They are scattered
over the whole of western Germany and as far as Brabant and Flanders,
but occur with especial frequency between the Rhine and the Weser.
In the north the Wörpe-Bach (north-east of Bremen) marks the limits
of their distribution, in the east the course of the Leine, down to
Rosoppe; in the south they extend as far as the Main where the Aschaff
(anciently Ascapha) at Aschaffenburg forms the last outpost of their
territory. They are not found on the strip of coast along the North
.
Sea, occupied later by the Chauci and Frisians, nor on the western side
of the Elbe. From this we may safely conclude that these districts
were abandoned by their original Keltic population earlier, indeed
considerably earlier, than those to the west of the Weser, and also that
the expansion of the Teutons westwards proceeded along two distinct
lines, though doubtless almost contemporaneously-one westward along
the North Sea and one in a more southerly direction up the Elbe along
both its banks.
With this view the results of prehistoric archaeology are in complete
agreement.
We have determined the area of distribution of the
Northern Bronze Age—which we saw to be specifically Teutonic—as
consisting, in the earlier period (up to c. B. c. 1000), of Scandinavia and
the Danish islands, and also Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg and West-
1 Among Keltic river-names are the Rhine (Keltic Rēnos from an older * Reinas,
* Rainas), the Main (Old-High-Germ. Moin, in which the Keltic diphthong is
preserved), the Embscher (Embiscara from an older Ambîscara) and the Lippe, also
perhaps the Lahn, Sieg, Ruhr, Leine and even the Weser. The mountain-names
Taunus, Finne and Semana (the old name for the Thuringian Forest) also betray a
Keltic origin. With these must be classed numerous names of places and rivers
which have, sometimes even now, the archaic termination -apa or in High German
-afa, -affa (-epa, -efu, -ipa, -ifa, -upa, -ufa), which is absolutely inexplicable from
the Teutonic but has its parallels in Keltic and points clearly to a Keltic origin.
*
## p. 187 (#217) ############################################
B. C. 1000–200]
Civilisation of the Kelts
187
Pomerania, and therefore bounded on the south-west by the Elbe.
But in the Later Bronze Age (c. B. c. 1000-600) this territory is enlarged
in all directions. On the south and west especially, to judge from the
evidence of excavations, it extends from the point at which the Wartha
flows into the Oder, in a south-westerly direction through the Spreewald
and Fläming districts to the Elbe; then further west to the Harz, and
from there northwards along the Oker and Aller to about the estuary of
the Weser, and finally along the coast-line as far as Holland. In
Thuringia the Keltic peoples maintained their hold somewhat longer.
The northern part of it-above the Unstrut-may have received a
Teutonic population in the course of the fifth century B. C. ; the southern
in the course of the fourth. On the other hand, the whole region
westward from the Weser and the Thuringian Forest as far as the Rhine
was still in the possession of the Kelts about the year B. c. 300, and was
only conquered by the Teutons in the course of the following century'.
It may be taken as the assured result of all the linguistic and
archaeological data, that only about the year B. C. 200 the whole of
north-western Germany was held by the Teutons, who had now reached
the frontier-lines formed by the Rhine and the Main.
About the close of the fifth century B. c. , a new civilisation appears
in the Keltic domain, a civilisation which, from the fine taste and
technical perfection of its productions, deserves in more than one
respect to rank with that of the classical nations. This is the so-called
La Tène Civilisation, which takes its name from a place on the north
side of the Lake of Neuchâtel where especially numerous and varied
remains of it have come to light. Where its centre is to be located we
do not know-somewhere, we may conjecture, in the South of France or
in Switzerland. Starting from this point it spread through all the parts
of Europe, which were not under the sway of the Greek and Roman
civilisation. Following the course of the Rhone, of the Rhine, and of the
Danube, it rapidly conquered all the countries in which Gallic tongues
were spoken and maintained its supremacy until the Graeco-Roman
civilisation deposed it from its primacy.
It was with this highly developed civilisation—so far superior,
especially in its highly advanced knowledge of the working of iron, to
the Northern, which still only made use of bronze—that the Teutons
came in contact in their advance towards the south-west. It is quite
intelligible that the Teutons in the course of their two hundred years of
struggle with the Kelts for the possession of north-western Germany,
should have eagerly adopted the higher civilisation of the Kelts.
| The Keltic local names in -apa—which lie mainly in the country between the
Weser and the Rhine-were unaffected by the Teutonic sound-shifting, therefore
must have been already adopted into the vocabulary of the advancing Teutons.
Then, too, prehistoric remains in this region down to the “Middle La Tène Period”
(C. B. C. 300), and in its southern parts even later, are so distinctively Keltic that
there can be no doubt it was still in Keltic occupation.
CH. VII.
## p. 188 (#218) ############################################
188
Movements of the Teutons
(B. C. 400—200
1
Vague reminiscences of the former supremacy of the Keltic race
survived into historic times. Ac fuit antea tempus cum Germanos Galli
virtute superarent, ultro bella inferrent, propter hominum multitudinem
agrique inopiam trans Rhenum colonias mitterent, writes Caesar-
a piece of information which he must have derived from Gaulish
sources. Here belongs also the Gallic tradition reported by Timagenes!
according to which a part of the nation was said ab insulis extimis
conflurisse et tractibus Transrhenanis crebritate bellorum et adluvione
fervidi maris sedibus suis expulsos. Caesar himself mentions a Keltic
tribe, the Menapii, on the right bank of the lower Rhine.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Keltic Teuriscans of
northern Hungary were originally settled in south-central Germany
between the Erzgebirge and the Harz, but later (about B. C. 400) were
forced out of this district by the pressure of the advancing Germans,
and retired in two sections towards the south and south-east.
About the year B. C. 200 the Teuton occupation of north-west
Germany was, as we have seen, completed, having reached the Rhine on
the west and the Main on the south. But the great forward movement
towards the south-west was not to be stayed by these rivers. Vast
waves of population kept pressing downward from the north, and giving
fresh impetus to the movement. The whole Germanic world must at
that time have been in constant ferment and unrest. Nations were born
and perished.
Everywhere there was pressure and counter-pressure.
Any people that had not the strength to maintain itself against its
neighbours, or to strike out a new path for itself, was swept away. The
tension thus set up first found relief on the Rhenish frontier. About
the middle of the second century B. c. Teutonic hordes swept across the
river and occupied the whole country westward of the lower Rhine as
far as the Ardennes and the Eifel. These hordes were the ancestors of
the later tribes and clans which meet us here in the first dawn of history,
the Eburones, Condrusi, Caeroesi, Paemani, Segni, Nervi, Grudi, and
also of the Texuandri, Sunuci, Baetusii, Caraces, who appear later, as well
,
as of the Tungri, who after the annihilation of the Eburones by Caesar
succeeded to their territory and position of influence. The Treveri, on
the other hand, who had their seat further to the south beyond the
Eifel, were doubtless Kelts? .
The Teutonic invasion of Gaul must have taken place mainly in the
second half of the second century B. C. , but it was still in progress in
Caesar's time.
It may suffice briefly to recall in this connexion the
successful campaign of Ariovistus ; the incursion immediately before
1 Ammianus, xv. 9. 4.
2 That the other tribes which we have just named were of Teutonic origin there
can be no doubt, and the attempt of Müllenhoff to prove that these tribes were
Keltic (Deutsche Altertumskunde, 1². pp. 194 ff. ) must be pronounced to have com-
pletely failed, as is shewn by R. Much (Deutsche Stammsitze, pp. 162 ff. ).
## p. 189 (#219) ############################################
B. C. 58–9]
Teutonic Invasion of Gaul
189
Caesar entered upon his province, of 24,000 Harudi into the country of
the Sequani; the invasion of the Suebi under Nasua and Cimberius in
the year 58 ; and of the Usipetes and Tencteri at the beginning of the
year s. c. 55. That there were even later immigrations of Teutonic hosts
into north-eastern Gaul may be conjectured from the absence of any
mention by Caesar of several of the tribes which were settled here in the
time of the Empire, and this conjecture is raised almost to a certainty
by the known instance of the Tungri.
It was only later, in the time of the migrations of the Cimbri, and
doubtless in connexion therewith, that the frontier formed by the Main
was crossed. It was—to the best of our information-a portion of the
Suebi, previously settled on the northern bank of this river, who were the
first to push across it, and after driving out the Helveti, established
themselves firmly to the south of the river, and were here known under
the name of Marcomanni (Men of the Marches)—the name first meets
us in Caesar, in the enumeration of the peoples led by Ariovistus.
Their country, the Marca, extended south to the Danube. That the
Tulingi (mentioned by Caesar as finetini of the Helveti) were of Germanic
origin is put beyond doubt by their name, which is good German and
forms a pendant to that of the Thuringi. But it will doubtless be
near the truth to see in them not the whole nation of the Marcomanni,
but only a tribe or local division of it, and doubtless its advance-guard
towards the south. In any case it is evident from Caesar's account that
numbering as they did a round 36,000 (B. G. 1. 29. 2), of whom about
8000 were warriors, they formed a united whole with a definite territory
and were not merely a migratory body of Marcomanni gathered together
ad hoc.
A remnant of the old Marcomanni of South Germany, who in the
year B. c. 9 migrated to Bohemia, is doubtless to be found in the Suebi
Nicretes whom we meet with in the time of the Empire on the lower
Neckar. Further to the north, on the southern bank of the Main, near
Mittenberg, we find the name of the Toutoni in an inscription which
came to light in the year 18781. Hereupon certain scholars” have
arrived at the conviction that this locality was the original home of the
Teutones whom we hear of in association with the Cimbri, and so that
they were not of Germanic but of Keltic origin, being of Helvetic race
and identified with the Helvetic local clan of the Twuyevoi of Strabo.
This hypothesis must be absolutely rejected. There must have been
some connexion between those Toutoni and the Teutoni of history. But
to conclude without more ado that the Teutoni were Helveti, South-
German Kelts, is to do direct violence to the whole body of ancient
* C. I. L. xi. 6610, dating perhaps from about the beginning of the second
century A. D. : inter | Toutones | C. . . A. . . | H. . . | F. . . .
? G. Kessima, Westdeutsche Zeitschrift, ix. (1890), p. 213; R. Much, Deutsche
Stammsitze, p. 5.
CH, VII.
## p. 190 (#220) ############################################
190
The Bastarnae
[B. C. 182
tradition, which consistently represents the Teutoni as a people whose
original home was in the North. The simplest solution of the difficulty
is that the Mittenberg Toutoni were a fragment which split off from the
Teutonic peoples during their migration southward, and settled in this
district, just as in north-eastern Gaul a portion of the Cimbri and
Teutones maintained itself as the tribe of the Aduatuci.
The whole process of the expulsion of the Kelts from South Germany
must have been accomplished between B. c. 100 and 70, for Caesar knows
of no Gauls on the right bank of the upper Rhine, and the Helveti had
been living for a considerable time to the south of the head-waters of
the river which, as Caesar tells us, divides Helvetic from German
territory.
The first collision between the Teutons and the Graeco-Roman
world took place far to the east of Gaul. It resulted from a great
migration of the eastern Teutonic tribes in the neighbourhood of the
Vistula, which had carried some of them as far as the shore of the Black
Sea. The chief of these tribes was that of the Bastarnae. Settled, it
would seem, before their exodus near the head-waters of the Vistula they
appear, as early as the beginning of the second century B. C. , near the
estuary of the Danube. The whole region north of the Pruth, from the
Black Sea to the northern slope of the Carpathians, was in their
possession and remained so during all the time that they are known to
history. Another Germanic tribe, doubtless dependent upon them,
meets us in the same district, namely the Sciri from the lower Vistula.
The well known and much discussed “psephisma” of the town of Olbia
in honour of Protogenes mentions them as allied with the Galatai, and
there has been much debate as to what nation is to be understood by
these Talátat, and they have sometimes been conjectured to be Illyrian
Kelts (Scordisci), sometimes Thracian, sometimes the--also Keltic-
Britolages, or the Teutonic Bastarnae, or even the Goths. The majority
of scholars has however decided that these “Galatians” are the
Bastarnae', whose presence in the neighbourhood of Olbia in the year
B. C. 182 is attested by Polybius. There is, indeed, much in favour of
this hypothesis and nothing against it. The inscription then, which is
proved by the character of the writing to be one of the oldest found in
this locality, would have been written about the time of the arrival of
the Bastarnae at the estuary of the Danube, that is to say, about b. c. 200
-180, and would therefore be the earliest documentary evidence for the
entrance of the Germanic tribes on the field of general history.
As early as the year B. c. 182 we find the Bastarnae in negotiations
with Philip of Macedon. Philip's plan was to get rid of the Dardanians,
and after settling his allies on the territory thus vacated to use it as a
base for an expedition against Italy. After long negotiations, the
Bastarnae in 179 abandoned their lately-won territory, crossed the
i So Zeuss and Staehelin.
## p. 191 (#221) ############################################
B. C. 182–100]
Cimbri and Teutons
191
Danube and advanced into Thrace. At this point King Philip died, and
after an unsuccessful battle with the Thracians the Bastarnae began a
retreat to the settlement which they had abandoned; but a detachment of
a
some 30,000 men under Clondicus pressed on into Dardania. With the
aid of the Thracians and Scordiscans and with the connivance of Philip's
successor, Perseus, he pressed the Dardanians hard for a time, but at last
in the winter of 175 he also decided to retire. In Rome the intrigues
of the Macedonian kings had been watched with growing mistrust and
displeasure, which found expression in the despatch of a commission to
investigate the situation in Macedonia and especially on the Dardanian
border. This, therefore, is the first occasion on which the Roman State
had to concern itself with Teutonic affairs. At that time, it is true, the
racial difference between Kelts and Teutons was not yet recognised and
the Bastarnae were therefore supposed to be Gauls. Before very long
(168), we find the Bastarnae again in relations with the King of Macedon.
Twenty thousand men, again under the command of Clondicus, were to
join him in his struggle with the Romans in Paeonia. But Perseus was
blinded by avarice, and failed to keep his promises. Clondicus therefore,
who had already reached the country of the Maedi, promptly turned to
the right-about and marched home through Thrace. From this point
they disappear from history for a time, only to reappear in the
Mithradatic wars as allies of that King, and they consequently appear
also in the list of the nations over whom Pompey triumphed in the
year 61.
In the East, on the frontiers of Europe and Asia, the Germanic
race attracted little notice; but in the West, about the close of the
second century B. C. , it shook the edifice of the Roman State to its
foundations and spread the terror of its name over the whole of Western
Europe. It was the Cimbri, along with their allies the Teutones and
Ambrones, who for half a score of years kept the world in suspense. All
three peoples were doubtless of Germanic stock'. We may take it as
established that the original home of the Cimbri was on the Jutish
peninsula, that of the Teutones somewhere between the Ems and the
Weser, and that of the Ambrones in the same neighbourhood, also on
the North Sea coast. The cause of their migration was the constant
encroachment of the sea upon their coasts, the occasion being an
inundation which devastated their territory, great stretches of it being
engulfed by the sea. This is the account given by ancient writers and
I The arguments which have been alleged in favour of the Keltic origin of the
Teutones, and sometimes also of the Ambrones, and even of the Cimbri, are quite
untenable. Not only the unanimous witness of antiquity which always represents
the Cimbri and Teutones as having their original home on the German North Sea
coast, but also the very names of these peoples which, despite all the contrary
assertions of the Keltic enthusiasts, can be naturally and convincingly explained
from the Teutonic, put their Germanic character beyond doubt.
CH. VII.
## p. 192 (#222) ############################################
192
Cimbri and Teutons
[B. C. 115–100
4.
we have no reason to doubt its truth. The exodus of all three peoples
took place about the same time, and obviously in such a way that from
the first they went forward in close touch with one another. First they
turned southwards, probably following the line of the Elbe, crossed the
Erzgebirge and pressed on into Bohemia, the land of the Boii. Driven
back by the latter, they seem to have made their way along the valley of
the March, southwards to the Danube, and then through Pannonia into
the country of the Scordisci. Here, too, they encountered (in the year
114) such vigorous opposition that they preferred to turn westwards.
That brought them into contact with the Taurisci who had just (B. C.
115) formed a close alliance with the Romans. In the Carnic Alps was
stationed a Roman army under the command of the Consul Cn. Papirius
Carbo, which immediately advanced into Noricum. Carbo's attempt by
means of a treacherous attack to annihilate the Teutons ended in a
severe defeat. The way into Italy now lay open to the victors. But
so great was the awe in which they still held the Roman name, that they
promptly turned away towards the north. Their route led them to the
territory of the Helveti, which then extended from the Lake of Constance
as far as the Main. The Helveti do not seem to have offered any
resistance ; indeed a considerable section of the Helveti-- the Tigurini
and Toygeni-attached themselves to the Teutonic migrants. The
Germanic hosts then crossed the Rhine and pressed on southwards,
plundering as they went.
In s. c. 109 they halted in the valley of the Rhone, on the frontier
of the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, for the protection of
which a strong army under the Consul M. Junius Silanus had taken
the field. The Romans attacked, but were defeated for the second
time. Again the Germans shrank from invading Roman territory
and preferred to plunder and ravage the Gallic districts, which they
completely laid waste. Finally, in the year 105 they appeared once
more on the frontier of “the Province,” this time resolved to attack the
Romans. Of the three armies which opposed them that of the Legate
M. Aurelius Scaurus was first defeated in the territory of the Allobroges.
On 6 October followed the bloody battle of Arausio in which the other
two armies, under the Consul Cn. Mallius Maximus and the Proconsul
Q. Servilius Caepio, in all some 60,000 troops, were completely annihilated.
But instead of marching into Italy, the barbarians once again let the
favourable moment slip, and thus lost the fruits of their victory. They
divided their forces. The Cimbri marched away westwards, first into
the country of the Volcae, then on over the Pyrenees into Spain where
they carried on a desultory and indecisive struggle with the Celtiberi;
the Teutons and Helveti turned northwards to continue the work of
plundering Gaul. In 103 the Cimbrian hosts made their way back to
Gaul and reunited, in the territory of South-Belgic Veliocasses, with
their comrades who had remained behind.
1
## p. 193 (#223) ############################################
B. C. 102–60]
Teutonic Invasion of Gaul
193
Now at last they prepared a march upon Italy. In the spring of
102 the main mass of the united hordes began to move southwards.
Only one section, of about 6000 men—the nucleus of the later tribe
of the Aduatuci-remained behind in Belgica to guard the spoils.
Doubtless with a view to the difficulties of the passage of the Alps,
especially in the matter of supply, the invading host was before long
divided into three columns. The plan was that the Teutones and
Ambrones should make their way into the plain of the Po from the
western side, crossing the Maritime Alps, while the Cimbri and the
Tigurini should make a wide flanking movement and enter from the
north, the former by way of the Tridentine, the latter by way of the
Noric Alps. But the attempt was planned on too vast a scale, and was
wrecked by the military skill of Marius. The Ambrones and Teutones
were annihilated in the double battle near Aquae Sextiae (summer
102), while the fate of the Cimbri overtook them in the following year.
They had already reached the soil of Italy, into which they had forced
their way after a victorious encounter with Quintus Lutatius Catulus on
the Adige, when (30 July 101), on the plains of Vercellae, the so-called
Campi Raudii, they were utterly routed by the united forces of Marius
and Catulus. The Tigurini, who were to form the third invading force,
received the news of the defeat of the Cimbri when they were still on
the Noric Alps, and immediately turned round and retired to their
own country. Thus the great invasion of the northern barbarians was
defeated, and Western Europe could once more breathe freely.
We saw above that about s. c. 100, doubtless in connexion with the
appearance of the Cimbri and Teutones in South Germany, the line
of the Main was crossed by the Germanic peoples, and the settlement
of the territory between that and the Danube began. Less than a
generation later there was another attempt to extend the Germanic
sphere of influence westward over Gaul. About the year B. c. 71, on the
invitation of the powerful tribe of the Sequani, Ariovistus chief of the
Suebi crossed the Rhine with 15,000 warriors to serve as mercenaries to
the Sequani against their neighbours the Aedui. But after the victory
was won, the strangers did not return to their own land but remained
on the western side of the Rhine and established themselves in the
territory of their employers, taking possession of about a third of it,
presumably at its northern extremity. Strengthened by large accessions
from the home-land this Germanic settlement on Gaulish territory-it
consisted of the Vangiones, Nemetes and Tribocci, and finally extended
over the whole of the left side of the Rhine valley, eastward of the
Vosges—soon became a menace to all the surrounding tribes. A united
attempt, in which the Aedui took a leading part, to expel the intruders
by force of arms ended after months of indecisive fighting in a crushing
defeat of the Gauls (at Admagetobriga), apparently in the year B. c. 61. .
Gaul lay defenceless at the feet of the victors, and they did not fail to
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. VII.
13
## p. 194 (#224) ############################################
194
Ariovistus and Caesar
[B. C. 61–58
Thus the power
make the most of their success. The Aedui and all their adherents
were forced to give hostages and to pay a yearly tribute.
