The first
collision
between the Teutons and the Graeco-Roman
world took place far to the east of Gaul.
world took place far to the east of Gaul.
Cambridge Medieval History - v1 - Christian Roman Empire and Teutonic Kingdoms
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. None dared
to oppose the conquerors, who already regarded the whole of Gaul as
,
their prey. They pursued their work deliberately and systematically,
constantly bringing in new swarms of their compatriots, chiefly Suebi and
Marcomanni, and assigning them lands in the territories which they had
subjugated. Settlers came even from Jutland, Endusi and Harudes
24,000 strong, and on their arrival the Sequani were forced to give up
another third of their territory to the new-comers.
of Ariovistus became very formidable. The establishment of a great
Germanic Empire over the whole of Gaul seemed not far distant.
At other points also the Teutons were preparing to cross the Rhine.
It seemed as if the example set by Ariovistus would lead to a general
invasion of Gaul, flood the whole country with Germans, and overwhelm
the Gaulish race. The movement began on the upper Rhine, on the
Helvetic border. The Helveti had been obliged, as we have already
seen, to retire further and further before the pressure of the Germans,
until finally all the country north of the Lake of Constance was lost to
them, and the Rhine became their northern frontier. Even here they
were not allowed to rest. A short time after the appearance of
Ariovistus the Teutons had again endeavoured to enlarge their border
towards the south, and there ensued a long struggle upon the Rhine
frontier. It was only by their utmost efforts that the Helveti were able
to beat off the attacks of their opponents. Weary of the constant
struggle, they at last resolved (B. C. 61) to leave their territory. This,
as we have seen, they did three years later, when some smaller tribes,
among them the Germanic Tulingi (p. 189 sup. ), threw in their lot with
them. The Jura region, the entrance to southern Gaul, thus lay open
to the Teutons. In the same year there appeared on the middle Rhine,
probably in the Taunus region, a powerful Suebian army—a hundred
“gau's ” under the leadership of two brothers named Nasua (perhaps
Masua) and Cimberius—and threatened to invade from this point the
territory of the Treveri on the opposite bank. Finally, there was great
restlessness also on the lower Rhine, among the tribes inhabiting the
right bank, especially among the Usipetes and Tencteri, in consequence
especially of the repeated aggressions of the warlike Suebi.
This was the condition of affairs when Caesar (B. C. 58) took
up
his
command in Gaul. He was well aware of the danger to the Roman
occupation which lay in these wholesale immigrations of Germanic
hordes into Gaulish territory, and it was consequently his first care to
take prompt measures to meet the Teutonic peril
. It is well known
how he performed this task, how he removed the haunting dread of a
general irruption of the Germanic peoples into Keltic territory, and at
the same time established security and order upon the Rhine frontier.
The restoration of the conquered Helveti to their abandoned territory
## p. 195 (#225) ############################################
B. C. 60-A. D. 9]
Teutons and Romans
195
in order that they might continue to serve, but now in the Roman
interest, as a buffer-state, secured Gaul, and especially the valley of the
Rhone, against incursions from the direction of the upper Rhine. His
victory over Ariovistus destroyed the latter's vast levies and with them
his ascendancy, but not—and herein we see again the far-sighted policy
of the conqueror—the work of colonisation begun by the Germanic
ruler. The tribes of the Vangiones, Nemetes and Tribocci which he had
settled in Gaul were allowed to remain where they were, and, like the
Helveti, were placed under the Roman suzerainty while retaining their
racial independence—ut arcerent, non ut custodirentur. But while
Caesar allowed these settlements to remain, he repressed with all the
greater energy all further efforts of expansion on the part of the dwellers
on the upper Rhine. True, the Suebian bands which in 58 had mustered
on the right bank of the river, had retired on receiving news of the
defeat of Ariovistus, so that there was no fighting with them, but the
attempt of Usipetes and Tencteri, in the following year, to find a new
home for themselves in Gaul led to a battle, in which a large portion
of them perished, and the rest were flung back across the Rhine.
Augustus assumed the offensive against the Teutons. Even though
the extension of the Roman dominion as far as the Elbe effected by
the brilliant military successes of the two step-sons of the Emperor
was of short duration—the year A. D. 9 witnessed the loss of the territory
won by the expenditure of so much blood, of which it had been proposed
to make a new province of Germania Magna-yet the Rhine frontier
was secured for a considerable time to come by a belt of fortresses
garrisoned by an army of nearly 80,000 men. This frontier was not
seriously threatened for two hundred years thereafter. Throughout that
period, except for a few insignificant raids, Gaul's eastern neighbour
remained quiescent. It was only in the third century that unrest shewed
itself again, thereafter steadily increasing as time went on. And the
cause of this was the appearance of two powerful confederacies which
thenceforward dominated the history of the Rhineland—the Alemans
and the Franks.
While the expansion of the Teutons towards the west was thus
barred by the Romans, it proceeded the more vigorously in a southward
and south-eastward direction. It is true that but little certain informa-
tion has come down to us. The movements of population, implied by
the appearance of the Marcomanni in Bohemia, of the Quadi in Moravia,
of the Naristi between the Böhmer-Wald and the Danube, of the Buri,
Lacringi, Victovali in the north of the Hungarian lowlands, are all
more or less shrouded in obscurity, and it is but rarely possible to find a
clue to their relations. About B. C. 60 the Boii had been forced by the
advance of the Germanic races from the north to abandon their ancestral
possessions. A portion of them found a dwelling-place in Pannonia,
another portion, on its way from Noricum, joined the Helvetic migra-
CB. VII.
13-2
## p. 196 (#226) ############################################
196
Marbod
[A. D. 6–14
tion. The north of the country thus left unoccupied was immediately
taken up by Hermunduric, Semnonic and Vandalic bands, offshoots of
the three great tribes which flanked Bohemia on the north. From them
were doubtless sprung the peoples who at a later time are met with here
at the southern base of the Sudetes, the Sudini, Bativi and Corconti.
They were followed by the Marcomanni, who, doubtless in consequence
of the military successes of Drusus in Germany, made their way, under
the lead of their chief Marbod, to the further side of the Böhmer-Wald
and occupied the main portion of the former country of the Boii.
The powerful kingdom which this Germanic prince established by
bringing in further masses of settlers and by subjugating the surround-
ing tribes—even the powerful Semnones, the Langobards, the Goths and
the Lugi (Vandals) are said to have acknowledged his suzerainty-had
no rival in northern Europe, and with its trained army of 70,000
footmen and 4000 horse soon became a menace to the Roman Empire.
The importance which was attached to it, and to the commanding
personality of its ruler by the Romans themselves, is evident from the
extraordinary military preparations which Tiberius set on foot (A. D. 6).
As is well known, the intervention of the Roman arms was not in the
end called for. But what even they might not have been able to accom-
plish was effected by inner dissension. In the struggle for the supremacy
of Germany against Arminius at the head of the Cherusci, and of all the
other peoples who flocked to the standard of the liberator Germaniae,
Marbod was defeated, and the fate of his kingdom was thereby decided.
First the Semnones and Langobards ranged themselves on the side of his
adversaries, then one tribe after another, so that he found his dominions
in the end reduced to their original extent, the country of the Marco-
manni. With the ruin of his Empire his own fate overtook him.
.
Treachery in his own camp forced him to seek the protection of the
Romans. The fall of its founder did not, however, affect the stability
of the Bohemian kingdom of the Suebi. Although the Marcomanni
were never afterwards able to regain their ascendancy, they held their
own far on into the decline of the ancient world, in the country which
they had occupied under Marbod's leadership. Indeed after a time their
power was so far revived that, in alliance with the Quadi, they were able
to dominate the upper Danube frontier for fully a century.
The earliest mention of the Quadi occurs in the geographer Strabo.
He names them among the Suebian tribes who settled within the
Hercynian Forest, the mountains which form the frontier of Bohemia.
The country which they inhabited is nearly the present Moravia. Its
eastern frontier was formed by the March, the ancient Marus. That
they were of Suebian origin is clear from the express testimony of
Strabo, as well as on linguistic grounds. The only point which remains
doubtful is whether even before their coming into Moravia they had
formed a political unit, or whether they were a migratory band sent
## p. 197 (#227) ############################################
B. C.
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. None dared
to oppose the conquerors, who already regarded the whole of Gaul as
,
their prey. They pursued their work deliberately and systematically,
constantly bringing in new swarms of their compatriots, chiefly Suebi and
Marcomanni, and assigning them lands in the territories which they had
subjugated. Settlers came even from Jutland, Endusi and Harudes
24,000 strong, and on their arrival the Sequani were forced to give up
another third of their territory to the new-comers.
of Ariovistus became very formidable. The establishment of a great
Germanic Empire over the whole of Gaul seemed not far distant.
At other points also the Teutons were preparing to cross the Rhine.
It seemed as if the example set by Ariovistus would lead to a general
invasion of Gaul, flood the whole country with Germans, and overwhelm
the Gaulish race. The movement began on the upper Rhine, on the
Helvetic border. The Helveti had been obliged, as we have already
seen, to retire further and further before the pressure of the Germans,
until finally all the country north of the Lake of Constance was lost to
them, and the Rhine became their northern frontier. Even here they
were not allowed to rest. A short time after the appearance of
Ariovistus the Teutons had again endeavoured to enlarge their border
towards the south, and there ensued a long struggle upon the Rhine
frontier. It was only by their utmost efforts that the Helveti were able
to beat off the attacks of their opponents. Weary of the constant
struggle, they at last resolved (B. C. 61) to leave their territory. This,
as we have seen, they did three years later, when some smaller tribes,
among them the Germanic Tulingi (p. 189 sup. ), threw in their lot with
them. The Jura region, the entrance to southern Gaul, thus lay open
to the Teutons. In the same year there appeared on the middle Rhine,
probably in the Taunus region, a powerful Suebian army—a hundred
“gau's ” under the leadership of two brothers named Nasua (perhaps
Masua) and Cimberius—and threatened to invade from this point the
territory of the Treveri on the opposite bank. Finally, there was great
restlessness also on the lower Rhine, among the tribes inhabiting the
right bank, especially among the Usipetes and Tencteri, in consequence
especially of the repeated aggressions of the warlike Suebi.
This was the condition of affairs when Caesar (B. C. 58) took
up
his
command in Gaul. He was well aware of the danger to the Roman
occupation which lay in these wholesale immigrations of Germanic
hordes into Gaulish territory, and it was consequently his first care to
take prompt measures to meet the Teutonic peril
. It is well known
how he performed this task, how he removed the haunting dread of a
general irruption of the Germanic peoples into Keltic territory, and at
the same time established security and order upon the Rhine frontier.
The restoration of the conquered Helveti to their abandoned territory
## p. 195 (#225) ############################################
B. C. 60-A. D. 9]
Teutons and Romans
195
in order that they might continue to serve, but now in the Roman
interest, as a buffer-state, secured Gaul, and especially the valley of the
Rhone, against incursions from the direction of the upper Rhine. His
victory over Ariovistus destroyed the latter's vast levies and with them
his ascendancy, but not—and herein we see again the far-sighted policy
of the conqueror—the work of colonisation begun by the Germanic
ruler. The tribes of the Vangiones, Nemetes and Tribocci which he had
settled in Gaul were allowed to remain where they were, and, like the
Helveti, were placed under the Roman suzerainty while retaining their
racial independence—ut arcerent, non ut custodirentur. But while
Caesar allowed these settlements to remain, he repressed with all the
greater energy all further efforts of expansion on the part of the dwellers
on the upper Rhine. True, the Suebian bands which in 58 had mustered
on the right bank of the river, had retired on receiving news of the
defeat of Ariovistus, so that there was no fighting with them, but the
attempt of Usipetes and Tencteri, in the following year, to find a new
home for themselves in Gaul led to a battle, in which a large portion
of them perished, and the rest were flung back across the Rhine.
Augustus assumed the offensive against the Teutons. Even though
the extension of the Roman dominion as far as the Elbe effected by
the brilliant military successes of the two step-sons of the Emperor
was of short duration—the year A. D. 9 witnessed the loss of the territory
won by the expenditure of so much blood, of which it had been proposed
to make a new province of Germania Magna-yet the Rhine frontier
was secured for a considerable time to come by a belt of fortresses
garrisoned by an army of nearly 80,000 men. This frontier was not
seriously threatened for two hundred years thereafter. Throughout that
period, except for a few insignificant raids, Gaul's eastern neighbour
remained quiescent. It was only in the third century that unrest shewed
itself again, thereafter steadily increasing as time went on. And the
cause of this was the appearance of two powerful confederacies which
thenceforward dominated the history of the Rhineland—the Alemans
and the Franks.
While the expansion of the Teutons towards the west was thus
barred by the Romans, it proceeded the more vigorously in a southward
and south-eastward direction. It is true that but little certain informa-
tion has come down to us. The movements of population, implied by
the appearance of the Marcomanni in Bohemia, of the Quadi in Moravia,
of the Naristi between the Böhmer-Wald and the Danube, of the Buri,
Lacringi, Victovali in the north of the Hungarian lowlands, are all
more or less shrouded in obscurity, and it is but rarely possible to find a
clue to their relations. About B. C. 60 the Boii had been forced by the
advance of the Germanic races from the north to abandon their ancestral
possessions. A portion of them found a dwelling-place in Pannonia,
another portion, on its way from Noricum, joined the Helvetic migra-
CB. VII.
13-2
## p. 196 (#226) ############################################
196
Marbod
[A. D. 6–14
tion. The north of the country thus left unoccupied was immediately
taken up by Hermunduric, Semnonic and Vandalic bands, offshoots of
the three great tribes which flanked Bohemia on the north. From them
were doubtless sprung the peoples who at a later time are met with here
at the southern base of the Sudetes, the Sudini, Bativi and Corconti.
They were followed by the Marcomanni, who, doubtless in consequence
of the military successes of Drusus in Germany, made their way, under
the lead of their chief Marbod, to the further side of the Böhmer-Wald
and occupied the main portion of the former country of the Boii.
The powerful kingdom which this Germanic prince established by
bringing in further masses of settlers and by subjugating the surround-
ing tribes—even the powerful Semnones, the Langobards, the Goths and
the Lugi (Vandals) are said to have acknowledged his suzerainty-had
no rival in northern Europe, and with its trained army of 70,000
footmen and 4000 horse soon became a menace to the Roman Empire.
The importance which was attached to it, and to the commanding
personality of its ruler by the Romans themselves, is evident from the
extraordinary military preparations which Tiberius set on foot (A. D. 6).
As is well known, the intervention of the Roman arms was not in the
end called for. But what even they might not have been able to accom-
plish was effected by inner dissension. In the struggle for the supremacy
of Germany against Arminius at the head of the Cherusci, and of all the
other peoples who flocked to the standard of the liberator Germaniae,
Marbod was defeated, and the fate of his kingdom was thereby decided.
First the Semnones and Langobards ranged themselves on the side of his
adversaries, then one tribe after another, so that he found his dominions
in the end reduced to their original extent, the country of the Marco-
manni. With the ruin of his Empire his own fate overtook him.
.
Treachery in his own camp forced him to seek the protection of the
Romans. The fall of its founder did not, however, affect the stability
of the Bohemian kingdom of the Suebi. Although the Marcomanni
were never afterwards able to regain their ascendancy, they held their
own far on into the decline of the ancient world, in the country which
they had occupied under Marbod's leadership. Indeed after a time their
power was so far revived that, in alliance with the Quadi, they were able
to dominate the upper Danube frontier for fully a century.
The earliest mention of the Quadi occurs in the geographer Strabo.
He names them among the Suebian tribes who settled within the
Hercynian Forest, the mountains which form the frontier of Bohemia.
The country which they inhabited is nearly the present Moravia. Its
eastern frontier was formed by the March, the ancient Marus. That
they were of Suebian origin is clear from the express testimony of
Strabo, as well as on linguistic grounds. The only point which remains
doubtful is whether even before their coming into Moravia they had
formed a political unit, or whether they were a migratory band sent
## p. 197 (#227) ############################################
B. C.
