The war began (apparently before the end of 177) with an attack upon
the Quadi, after which the Marcomanni were to be dealt with.
the Quadi, after which the Marcomanni were to be dealt with.
Cambridge Medieval History - v1 - Christian Roman Empire and Teutonic Kingdoms
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. 60–2]
The Marcomanni
197
a
out by one of the great Suebian peoples, perhaps the Semnones, which
only developed into a united and independent national community after
settling in Moravia. The former, however, is the more probable.
Like their western neighbours the Marcomanni, the Quadi were the
successors of a Keltic people. As the Boii had been settled in Bohemia,
so in Moravia, from a remote period and down to Caesar's day had been
settled the Volcae Tectosages. Seeing that about s. c. 60, the advance of
the Teutons from the north over the Erzgebirge and Sudetes caused the
Boii to leave their territory, it is probable that at the same time, or a
little later, the peoples further to the east became involved in a struggle
with the invaders. But whereas the Boii by their prompt retirement
escaped the danger, the Tectosages, it would appear, were utterly
destroyed. We find the Quadi soon after in possession of their territory,
and since we get no hint of the fate of the Moravian Tectosages, the
Romans cannot yet have been in possession of the neighbouring country
of Noricum. Their destruction must therefore have fallen before B. c. 15,
when Noricum passed under the dominion of Rome. If this hypothesis
is correct the irruption of the Quadi into Moravia took place shortly
after the Boii had left Bohemia; in any case a considerable time before
the occupation of that country by the Marcomanni.
To the west of the Marcomanni, between the Böhmer-Wald and the
Danube as far up as the river Naab, were settled the Naristi. It is
equally uncertain whence they came and when they appeared in this
region. It is possible, though that is the most that can be said, that like
their eastern neighbours they belonged to the Suebian confederacy-
Tacitus certainly counts them as members of it—and that they are to
be numbered among those peoples which, according to Strabo, Marbod
had settled in the region of the Hercynia Sylva.
Guarding the flanks, as it were, of the southern territories of the
Teutons lay two settlements planted by the Romans; in the west the
Hermunduri between the upper Main and the Danube, and in the east
the Vannianic kingdom of the Suebi. The former came into being
B. C. 6-2, the Roman general, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, having assigned
to a band of Hermunduri the eastern part of the territory left free by
the migration of the Marcomanni into Bohemia ; the latter was created
by the settlement of bands of Suebian warriors belonging to the following
of the fallen Suebian leaders, Marbod and Casvalda.
The Marus is of course the March, the Cusus, as this Suebian settle-
ment cannot have been very extensive, was probably the Waag, though
it may have been the Gran, which lies further to the east. The Balmou
of Ptolemy are probably identical with these Suebians of northern
Hungary, who come into notice several times in the course of the first
century. As they disappear later, they were probably absorbed by the
Quadi. Further towards the north-east, in the Hungarian Erzgebirge,
and beyond in the upper region of the Vistula, we find in the first
CH. VII.
## p. 198 (#228) ############################################
198
Germany in the First Century
[A. D. 14–167
4
century of our era the Buri and Sidones. The former, who are men-
tioned as early as Strabo, were probably of Bastarnian, and the latter
of Lugian origin; further still, abutting on the eastern flank of the
Sidones, were the Burgiones, Ambrones and Frugundiones, doubtless
also Bastarnian.
If we now review the ethnographic situation in ancient Germany
about the close of the first century A. D. , we find on its western frontier,
in the eastern basin of the lower Rhine, the Chamavi, the Bructeri,
the Usipii, the Tencteri, the Chattuarii and Tubantes ; further in the
interior, on both sides of the Weser, the great tribes of the Chatti and
Cherusci ; further to the north, the Angrivarii; and, on the North Sea
coast, the Chauci and Frisians. In the heart of the country three
powerful Suebian populations have their seat: on the western bank of
the middle Elbe, extending as far south as the Rhaetian frontier, the
Hermunduri ; north of them, on the western bank of the lower Elbe,
the Langobards, and beyond that river, in the basins of the Havel and
the Spree, the Semnones, who were held to be the primitive stock of the
Suebi. The eastern part of the country was mainly occupied by the
Lugii. The tribes too which appear later, in the wars of the Marco-
manni (the Victovali, Asdingi and Lacringi), were doubtless also Vandalic.
Northward in the region of the Wartha and Netze, dwelt the Bur-
gundiones or Burgundi ; further north still, on the Pomeranian Baltic
coast, the Rugii and Lemovi, next to whom on the western side came
(with some other smaller tribes) the Saxons. North of these again, on
the Jutish peninsula, lay the Anglii and Varini. Turning back to the
Vistula again, we find on its eastern bank the Goths, who, apparently by
the beginning of our era, had spread from the shores of its estuary to its
upper waters. In the south, the portion of the Hermunduri which had
its seat between the Main and the Danube formed the first link in
a long chain consisting of Naristi, Marcomanni, Quadi, Buri, and
finally, beyond the confinium Germanorum, the numerous branches of the
Bastarnae.
It was therefore a vast territory which the Germanic races claimed
for their own, and yet, as was soon to appear, it was too narrow for the
energies of these young and vigorous nations. On their north foamed
the sea, to the east yawned the desert steppes of southern Russia : thus
any further expansion could only take a westward or southward direction.
But on the one side as on the other lay the unbroken line of the Roman
frontier.
Any attempt at expansion in either of these directions
must inevitably lead to an immediate collision with the Roman
Empire.
The storm which lowered upon the Bohemian mountains was soon to
burst. Mighty forces were doubtless at work in the interior of Germany
which shortly after the accession of Marcus Aurelius stirred up the whole
mass of nations from the Böhmer-Wald to the Carpathians, and let loose
## p. 199 (#229) ############################################
A. D. 167–174]
Marcus Aurelius
199
a tempest such as the Roman Empire had never before encountered on
its frontiers. In the suminer of 167 hosts of barbarians mustered along
the line of the Danube, ready to make an inroad into Roman territory.
The Praetorian Praefect, Furius Victorinus, was defeated, and slain with
most of his troops ; and the invading food poured forward over the
unprotected provinces. Not until the two Emperors reached the seat of
war (spring 168) was the plundering and ravaging stopped. The bar-
barians then withdrew to the further side of the Danube and declared
their readiness to enter into negotiations? . There, in the winter of 168-9
the plague broke out with fearful violence in the Roman camp, and at
once the complexion of events changed for the worse. In the spring, in
the absence of the Emperors, who on the outbreak of the epidemic had
returned to the capital, the army, weakened and disorganised by disease,
suffered another severe defeat, and the Praetorian Praefect, Macrinius
Vindex, met his death. Following up their victory, the Teutons assumed
the offensive all along the line. A surging mass of peoples-Hermunduri,
Naristi, Marcomanni, Quadi, Lacringi, Buri, Victovali, Asdingi and other
tribes Germanic and lazygic-swept over the provinces of Rhaetia,
Noricum, Pannonia and Daeid. Some detached bands even pushed
their way into North Italy, laid siege to Aquileia, and destroyed Opiter-
LP P.
gium, further to the west.
But the danger passed as quickly as it had arisen. Effective
measures were instantly taken. The flood of invasion was stemmed, and
as it receded the Romans, led by the Emperor in person, took the
aggressive. All the Teutons and Iazyges who remained on the south
bank were forced back across the river. So successful were the Roman
arms that by the year 171 the Quadi sued for peace. In the following
year the Roman army crossed the Danube, and laid waste the country of
the Marcomanni. Thus the two most dangerous adversaries had been sub-
dued and the war seemed over. But by the year 174 the Emperor again
found himself obliged to return to Germany. Scarcely had he entered
the country of the Quadi, when the army was placed in a highly
dangerous position by an enveloping movement of the enemy, and by
want of water. Suddenly a torrent of rain descended”, and legionaries
saw in the “miracle” a proof of the favour of the gods, and were inspired
to fight with splendid valour, and gained a complete victory. This
broke the resistance of the Quadi, and the Marcomanni also were forced
1 I refer to the fragment of Petrus Patricius (6) which Mommsen, Ges.
Schriften, iv. p. 492 n. 1, assigns to the time of Pius.
? There is no reason to doubt either the event itself, or the fact that it appeared
to the minds of contemporaries, especially of Marcus Aurelius himself, as a miracle.
See Harnack, Sitzungsber. der Berl. Akad. 1894, p. 835, and Th. Mommsen, Hermes,
30 (1895), p. 90=Ges. Schriften, iv. p. 498 (against E. Petersen, Mitt. des Arch.
Inst. röm. Abt. 9 (1894), p. 78 and A. von Damaszewski, Rhein. Mus. f. Philol. 49
(1894), p. 612); cf. also J. Geffcken, N. Jahrbuch f. d. Klass. Altertum, 3 (1899),
p. 253. Further literature in Schanz, Gesch. d. röm. Literatur, 'ın? . § 644.
CH. VII.
## p. 200 (#230) ############################################
200
Commodus
(A. D. 176-235
to make peace. In 176 the Emperor returned to Rome, and there
celebrated, along with his son Commodus, a well-deserved triumph.
In 177 Marcus rejoined his army with the purpose of completing the
work of conquest. Two new provinces, Marcomania and Sarmatia, were
to be added to his Empire and were to round off his northern boundary.
The war began (apparently before the end of 177) with an attack upon
the Quadi, after which the Marcomanni were to be dealt with. In the
course of the three-years' war both peoples were so thoroughly exhausted
that when the Emperor suddenly died (17 March 180) their military
strength was already broken.
One of the first acts of Commodus, an unworthy successor of his father,
was to make peace which surrendered to the all but beaten enemy every
advantage that had been wrested from them. The struggle for the lands
to the north of the Danube was at an end. Meanwhile the Romans
were confronted, about the close of the century, with a new and dangerous
enemy in the west, in the angle between the Main and the frontier of
upper Germany and Rhaetia—by the Alemans. As their name indicates',
the Alemans were not a single tribe but a union of tribes—a confederacy.
We hear (somewhat later) the names of several of the component tribes,
the Juthungi, the Brisigavi, the Bucinobantes and the Lentienses.
Whence did they come? No doubt the nucleus of this confederacy was
formed by the southern divisions of the Hermunduri. To these there
may have attached themselves various fragments of peoples which had
split off before and after the Marcomannic war, just as later, towards the
middle of the third century, the Semnones, in the course of a migration
southward, probably joined this confederacy and were absorbed by it.
Before long—as early as 213—the new nation came in contact with
the Romans. So far as can be made out from the confused account
which is given us of their first appearance? they had invaded Rhaetia,
whereupon the Emperor Caracalla took the field against them, flung
them back across the frontier and advanced into their territory carrying all
before him? Before twenty years had passed the Teutons-presumably the
Alemans again-renewed the attack upon the Roman frontier defences.
So threatening was the situation that the Emperor Severus Alexander felt
1 Alemanni (Gothic alamans from the Old Teutonic *alamannez) means "all
people," "all men,” and therefore designates an aggregate of peoples. So the
historian Asinius Quadratus (in Agathias, 1. 6, p. 17): oi 'Alapavoi. . . Súvnavdés
εισιν άνθρωποι και μιγάδες, και τούτο δύναται αυτοίς ή επωνυμία.
: Dio, lxxvii. 13–15, on which see Bang, Hermes, 41 (1906), p. 623; cf. Herodian,
iv. 7. 2-3; Vita Carac. 5. 4. 6; 10. 6.
3 According to the records of the Arval College for the year 213 (C. I. L.
vi. 2086) the members made an offering on 11 August quod dominus n[oster). . .
per limitem Raetiae ad hostes extirpandos barbarorum (terram) introiturus est, ut ea
res ei prospere feliciterque cedat, and on 6 October ob salute[m] victoriamque
Germanicam of the sovereign. Ob victoriam Germanicam is also the cause of the setting
of the inscription in C. I. L. XII. 6459 and the same victoria Germanica appears on
the coins of the year 213 (Cohen, 1v2. 210 n. 645–6).
up
P.
## p. 201 (#231) ############################################
A. D. 235–258]
The Alemanni
201
a
himself obliged to break off his campaign against the Persians, and take
over in person the direction of the operations on the Rhine. Negotia-
tions had already begun before his assassination (March 235), but his
successor, the rough and soldierly Maximin, brought new life into the
campaign. Advancing by forced marches into the country of the
Alemans he drove the barbarians before him without serious resistance,
laid waste their fields and dwellings far and wide, and finally defeated
them far in the interior of their territory.
The result of this campaign, the last war of offence on a large scale
which the Romans waged on the Rhine, was the restoration of security
to the frontier for a period of twenty years. Under Gallienus-probably
about the year 258—the storm broke. With irresistible force the armies
of the Alemans broke through the great chain of frontier fortifications
between the Main and the Danube, and after overpowering the scattered
Roman garrisons, poured like a flood across the whole of the Agri
Decumates, and established themselves permanently in the conquered
territory. At the same time Rhaetia became a prey to them; nay more,
.
a strong force even crossed the Alps and penetrated as far as Ravenna.
The invaders were, it is true, defeated by Gallienus near Milan, and
forced to retreat, but the country at the northern base of the Alps was
lost, and its loss threw open to the Germanic hordes the gates of Italy.
In addition to the Alemans of the upper Rhine, there now appeared,
on the lower course of that river, another dangerous enemy, namely the
Franks. The frontier had scarcely ever been seriously threatened at this
point since the days of Augustus, but now under Gallienus the situation
was altered. Here also there had quietly grown up a confederacy which,
under the name of Franci, the Free, presumably comprised the tribes
formerly met with in these regions, the Chamavi, Sugambri and other
smaller clans. Their name, first heard in the time of Gallienus, was soon
to become even more terrible in the ears of the Romans than that of the
Alemans. The first attack of the new league of peoples upon the Rhine
.
frontier occurred in 253. The districts on the Gaulish bank of the
Rhine soon fell into the hands of the enemy. With great difficulty
Gallienus succeeded in forcing them back across the Rhine. But others
followed them, and there ensued a series of desperate struggles which
lasted till 258. On the whole the Romans had the best of it, even
though their army was not large enough to prevent isolated bands of
Franks from establishing themselves upon the left bank of the Rhine.
In 258 Gallienus was called away to the lower Danube, which
urgently demanded his presence. The confusion which was created in
the Rhine district by the assassination in the following year of the
Emperor's son Valerian who had been left behind as Imperial Resident
at Cologne, by the ambitious general Cassianus Postumus, gave the Franks
a welcome opportunity to make a new inroad into Gaul. Their bands
ranged almost unresisted through the whole country from the Rhine to
CH. VII.
## p. 202 (#232) ############################################
202
The Goths
(A. D. 230—282
the Pyrenees, devastating as they went. Then they pushed on, as the
,
Cimbri had done before them, across the mountains into Spain, and
made havoc of that country for several years, reducing to subjection even
great cities like Tarraco, while, like the Vandals after them, they also
made a foray into Africa. As at the time of the Cimbrian war, the
terror of the Germans spread through all the countries of Western
Europe. Only after a considerable time Postumus-a capable soldier
and a well-intentioned administrator--was able to force the Germanic
hordes out of Gaul and restore peace and security.
But the Rhine
became the frontier of the Empire and remained so as long as the Empire
lasted.
From this time onward begins a period of incessant fighting with the
Teutons of the Rhine-country: with the Alemans in the south and the
Franks in the north. The weakness and exhaustion of the Empire
caused by inner dissensions becomes manifest. If Postumus succeeded
in keeping the Roman possessions on the Gaulish bank of the Rhine
essentially intact, his immediate successors were less successful. The
country was left defenceless, and large portions of it were plundered and
drained of their resources. Probus indeed, whose short reign (276-282)
is a ray of light in these gloomy times, succeeded in clearing them out of
Gaul, and even ventured to assume the offensive on the upper Rhine, in
a brilliant campaign forcing the Alemans back to the further side of the
Neckar. But such successes were but temporary. Only in the time of
Diocletian does a durable improvement on the Rhine frontier set in, an
improvement which was maintained for the next two or three generations.
During this period a third set of invaders, in addition to the Franks and
Alemans, appeared towards the close of the century in the Saxons, the
terror of the British and Gaulish coasts. In the main, however, Gaul
was suffered to enjoy peace; and with peace returned prosperity.
Meanwhile on the shores of the Euxine, there emerges a people
with whose name the world was to ring for centuries, the Goths.
Their original home had been, it would appear, in Scandinavia, and
after their migration to the German Baltic coast they had at first
established themselves about the estuary of the Vistula', then in course
of time they had moved further southward along the right bank of that
river, so that at the beginning of our era they appear as far south as the
neighbourhood of the Bohemian kingdom of the Marcomanni. How
long they remained in this region we do not know, but it is not unlikely
that their eastward migration falls about the time of the great
Marcomannic war. We are equally ignorant of the time occupied by
this migration and the details of its progress; the only thing certain is
that it reached its close not later than c. 230-240.
1 The Gutones on the North Sea coast mentioned by Pytheas in the fourth century
B. C. may have been a branch of this people which had wandered westward, and were
absorbed probably by the Frisians.
## p. 203 (#233) ############################################
A. D. 240–250]
The Goths
203
The territory where the Goths at last took up their abode embraced
the whole of the northern coast of the Black Sea. In the east it was
separated by the Don from that of the Alani, in the west it bordered on
the tract of country northward of the Danube Delta and the Dacian
frontier which had been settled four hundred years earlier by the
Bastarnae and the Sciri. Here the Goths divided into two sections soon
after their immigration, that dwelling more to the west being known
as the Tervingi, “the inhabitants of the forest region,” while the
eastern division was known as the Greutungi, “the inhabitants of the
Steppes. ” For the former the name Visigoths (Vesegoti) came into use',
at latest c. 350, for the latter the name Ostrogoths, designations however
of which the meaning is not absolutely certain, although “ the western
Goths” and “the eastern Goths” was an interpretation already known
to Jordanes. The boundary between them was formed by the Dniester.
Before long there appear alongside of them other Germanic peoples, the
Gepidae, Taifali, Borani, Urugundi and Heruli. The two first of these
had some original link of connexion with them. The Gepidae indeed
appear in the Gothic legend of their migrations as an actual part of
the Gothic nation. Whether they migrated to the Black Sea region
at the same time as the Goths, or followed them later, must remain an
open question.
Towards the end of the reign of Severus Alexander (222-235) the
first indications of the appearance on the northern shores of the Black Sea
of a new and powerful barbarian race, of a most warlike temper, had
already become manifest, when the Greek towns of Olbia and Tyras fell
victims to the sudden descent of an unknown enemy from the North.
A little later, under Gordian III (238–244), its name is found. In the
spring of 238 Gothic war-bands marched southwards, crossed the Danube
with the connivance of the Dacian Carpi and broke into the province of
Lower Moesia, where they captured and plundered the town of Istrus.
The Procurator of the province, Tullius Menophilus (238-241), being
unable to repel the invasion by force of arms, induced the Goths to
retire by the promise of a yearly subsidy. But by 248 they had renewed
their attacks on the Roman frontier in alliance with the Taifali, Asdingi
and Bastarnae. Under the leadership of Argaith and Gunterich their
bands again broke into Lower Moesia, assailed without success the fortified
town of Marcianople and plundered the unfortunate province again.
But these first exploits of the Goths were completely thrown into
the shade by the great invasion of Roman territory made at the
beginning of 250 by the half-legendary King Kniwa at the head of a
powerful army. While the Carpi Aung themselves upon Dacia, the
Gothic attack was directed as before upon Moesia. Thence a strong
1 These names, like the division of the race which they express, may have been
considerably older, and as the occurrence of Greutungi in Scandinavia suggests,
brought by the Goths from their original home.
CH.
VII.
## p. 204 (#234) ############################################
204
Decius
[A. D. 250—265
reverse.
i
detachment pressed onward over the undefended passes of the Balkans
into Thrace, laid siege to Philippopolis, and even despatched a plundering
party into Macedonia. One division of the Gothic army, after vainly
assaulting Novae and Nicopolis, was defeated in the neighbourhood of
the latter town by the Emperor Decius in person, but this success
was immediately counterbalanced by a
The Goths, while
retiring southwards by way of Beroë (Augusta Traiana), the present
Eski-Zaghra, on the southern slope of the Balkans, defeated the Roman
troops who were pursuing them. After this battle the victorious Goths
effected a junction with their countrymen who were investing Philip-
popolis, and that city fell into their hands. The Romans, however, were
now making extensive preparations, in view of which the barbarians
began their retreat. Decius, eager to wipe out the failure at Beroë,
sought to bar their path, and, in the hope of inflicting a crushing defeat
upon them, engaged them near Abrittus, about 30 miles south-east of
Durostorum (Silistria) in June 251. The day, which began well for the
Romans, ended in a fearful disaster, a great part of their army was
destroyed and the Emperor himself and one of his sons were among the
slain. The country from which the barbarians had just retired now lay
once more defenceless before them. They were finally bought off by the
promise of a yearly subsidy.
The Gothic war of 250-251 had revealed in its full extent the
danger which had lain hidden behind the mountains of Dacia. Later
events did little to remove the terrible impression which the invasion of
Kniwa had left behind. On the contrary, the history of the eastern half
of the Empire in the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, Claudius, Aurelian
and Probus is filled with incessant struggles against the Goths and their
allies. For even Asia Minor was not exempt from their ravages; besides
.
;
the bands which swept down by the Balkans and back again there were
now others which came by sea from the Crimea and Lake Maeotis to
ravage a constantly widening area of the coasts of Asia Minor and
which even penetrated to the inland districts. Especially prominent in
these piratical raids were the Borani and Heruli, two peoples who here
appear in history for the first time side by side with the Goths. The
first of these expeditions, made by the Borani in 256 against the town
of Pityus (on the eastern shore of the Black Sea), ended in failure, but
by the following year these same Borani succeeded in capturing and
sacking Pityus and Trapezus. Even more destructive was the expedition
which (spring 258) was undertaken by the West Goths, starting by sea
and land from the port of Tyras. The whole western coast of Bithynia
with the cities of Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Nicaea, Apamea and Prusa,
was ravaged. The years 263, 264 and 265 also witnessed the vasting of
the coast lands of Asia Minor by similar expeditions of the Pontic
Teutons. Ilium, Ephesus with its renowned temple of Artemis,
and Chalcedon, were this time the victims of the barbarians.
But all these exploits were far surpassed in importance by the great
## p. 205 (#235) ############################################
A. D. 267–270]
Claudius
205
a
plundering expedition of the Heruli in the year 207. From Lake
Maeotis a fleet, said to have been five hundred strong, sailed along the
western shore of the Euxine, then through the Bosphorus, where they
made a successful coup-de-main against Byzantium, through the
Propontis, where Cyzicus was captured, and the Hellespont, and onward
past Lemnos and Scyros across the Aegean to Greece. Here on the
classic soil of Attica, Argolis and Laconia the wild hosts of these
barbarians made fearful havoc, and it was long enough before the
bewildered provincial government ventured to oppose them. The
defenders, in whose ranks the historian Dexippus of Athens played
a leading part, gradually gained confidence, and when they had succeeded
in destroying the ships, the invaders were obliged to retreat by the
land route. Beaten by the Roman troops their hosts rolled northwards
through Boeotia, Epirus, Macedonia towards their home, which they
succeeded in reaching although hard pressed by their pursuers and at the
very last compelled by the Emperor Gallienus to fight a battle, in which
they incurred heavy losses, at the river Nestus, on the boundary between
Macedonia and Thrace.
We have seen above how the Danube had been constantly threatened
since the appearance of the Goths on the Black Sea, how invasion after
invasion had descended on Dacia and Moesia. Soon after the accession
of Gallienus (probably 256-7)', Dacia with the exception of the
narrow strip between the Temes and the Danube, which continued to be
held down to the time of Aurelian, together with the portion of Lower
Moesia which lay to the north of the Danube (the present Great
Wallachia), became the prey of the barbarians. Some of the West
Goths settled in Great Wallachia and the Taifali in the Banat; the
northern districts, especially Transylvania, were occupied by the Victovali
and Gepidae, who at this time make their appearance among the
enemies of Rome. The consequence of the loss of Dacia and Trans-
Danubian Moesia was that the Teutons now became on the lower
Danube as well as elsewhere the immediate neighbours of the Empire,
their territory being divided from it only by the river.
Only once in this whole period of inward decay did the imperial
power succeed in winning a decisive victory. That was the achievement
of the Emperor Claudius, whom his grateful contemporaries and succes-
sors have rightly adorned with the honourable title of “Gothicus. " In
the spring of 269 the Teutons made yet another attack upon the Empire,
surpassing all former ones in violence. East Goths and West Goths,
whom tradition here first distinguishes, Bastarnae (Peucini), Gepidae
and Heruli united their forces and advanced with a mighty army
and fleet-estimated in the sources at 300,000 fighting-men and 2000
1 In this year the minting of coins for the province of Dacia breaks off. The
inscriptions found in this country too do not come down beyond the first year of
the reign of Valerian.
CH. VII.
## p. 206 (#236) ############################################
206
Claudius and Aurelian
[A. D. 268-284
ships—against the Danubian frontier. Once more the province of Lower
Moesia bore the brunt of their attack. The land army of the Teutons,
in which lay their main strength, first made an unsuccessful attempt to
take Tomi and Marcianople, then swept like a flood over the interior
of the country, wasting and plundering as they went. Meanwhile the
fleet, which was manned chiefly by Heruli, sailed past Byzantium and
Cyzicus into the Aegean, and appeared before Thessalonica. Part of it
remained there and blockaded the city; the remainder made a great
plundering expedition which bears eloquent testimony to the seamanship
and daring of these Teutons, along the coasts of Macedonia, Greece and
Asia Minor, extending even as far as Crete and Cyprus.
This was the situation when the Emperor Claudius reached the
scene of war. At his approach the besiegers of the hard-pressed
Thessalonica had hastily drawn off northwards and effected a junction
with their kinsmen in Upper Moesia. The hostile forces met near
Naissus. In the desperate struggle which ensued the Teutons suffered
a crushing defeat. What remained of their army was in part cut to
pieces in the pursuit, in part driven into the inhospitable recesses of the
Balkans, where the survivors surrendered. They were partly enrolled in
the Roman army, partly, in pursuance of a policy initiated by the
Emperor Marcus, settled as coloni in the devastated frontier districts.
Thus the danger was averted from the Empire, and the desire of its
restless neighbours beyond the Danube to make expeditions on the great
scale was damped for nearly a hundred years. No doubt the inroads and
piratical voyages of smaller Gothic war-bands continued ; indeed, in the
next fourteen years (270-284), there was fighting with bands of this
kind under Quintillus, Aurelian, Tacitus and Probus, but all these
incursions were easily repelled by the imperial government, which
gained strength under Aurelian and Probus. Just at this time, too,
there broke out a severe internal struggle between the Teutons of the
Euxine and those of the Danube. The first aid called in by the Goths
against the Tervingi was that of the Bastarnae, but the outcome of the
struggle was that the Bastarnae were defeated and compelled to abandon
the territory which they had held so tenaciously for more than five
hundred years. The expelled Bastarnae, said to have numbered 100,000
men, were taken under his protection by the Emperor Probus and settled
in Thrace. After that the Tervingi, supported by the Taifali, made war
on the allied Gepidae and Vandals, while the East Goths fought with
their eastern neighbours the Urugundi, who on their defeat were taken
under the protection of the Alani'. We can see that the whole of the
eastern Germanic world was in a state of wild
uproar.
On the middle Danube there had been no fighting worth mention
1 Mamert. genethl. Maxim. 17 (p. 114 Baehrens) where the impossible Alamanni
is doubtless to be corrected to Alani ; the Burgundii are of course the Urugundi.
Cf. L. Schmidt, Gesch. der Wandalen, p. 14.
## p. 207 (#237) ############################################
A. D. 282–299]
Diocletian, Carausius
207
since the Marcomannic war. We hear indeed of an incursion of the
Marcomanni in the reign of Valerian, but, broadly speaking, the name
of this once so warlike nation may be said to disappear from history.
Their old comrades the Quadi often appear in association with the
lazyges, from the time of Gallienus, when they made a descent upon
Pannonia.
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. 60–2]
The Marcomanni
197
a
out by one of the great Suebian peoples, perhaps the Semnones, which
only developed into a united and independent national community after
settling in Moravia. The former, however, is the more probable.
Like their western neighbours the Marcomanni, the Quadi were the
successors of a Keltic people. As the Boii had been settled in Bohemia,
so in Moravia, from a remote period and down to Caesar's day had been
settled the Volcae Tectosages. Seeing that about s. c. 60, the advance of
the Teutons from the north over the Erzgebirge and Sudetes caused the
Boii to leave their territory, it is probable that at the same time, or a
little later, the peoples further to the east became involved in a struggle
with the invaders. But whereas the Boii by their prompt retirement
escaped the danger, the Tectosages, it would appear, were utterly
destroyed. We find the Quadi soon after in possession of their territory,
and since we get no hint of the fate of the Moravian Tectosages, the
Romans cannot yet have been in possession of the neighbouring country
of Noricum. Their destruction must therefore have fallen before B. c. 15,
when Noricum passed under the dominion of Rome. If this hypothesis
is correct the irruption of the Quadi into Moravia took place shortly
after the Boii had left Bohemia; in any case a considerable time before
the occupation of that country by the Marcomanni.
To the west of the Marcomanni, between the Böhmer-Wald and the
Danube as far up as the river Naab, were settled the Naristi. It is
equally uncertain whence they came and when they appeared in this
region. It is possible, though that is the most that can be said, that like
their eastern neighbours they belonged to the Suebian confederacy-
Tacitus certainly counts them as members of it—and that they are to
be numbered among those peoples which, according to Strabo, Marbod
had settled in the region of the Hercynia Sylva.
Guarding the flanks, as it were, of the southern territories of the
Teutons lay two settlements planted by the Romans; in the west the
Hermunduri between the upper Main and the Danube, and in the east
the Vannianic kingdom of the Suebi. The former came into being
B. C. 6-2, the Roman general, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, having assigned
to a band of Hermunduri the eastern part of the territory left free by
the migration of the Marcomanni into Bohemia ; the latter was created
by the settlement of bands of Suebian warriors belonging to the following
of the fallen Suebian leaders, Marbod and Casvalda.
The Marus is of course the March, the Cusus, as this Suebian settle-
ment cannot have been very extensive, was probably the Waag, though
it may have been the Gran, which lies further to the east. The Balmou
of Ptolemy are probably identical with these Suebians of northern
Hungary, who come into notice several times in the course of the first
century. As they disappear later, they were probably absorbed by the
Quadi. Further towards the north-east, in the Hungarian Erzgebirge,
and beyond in the upper region of the Vistula, we find in the first
CH. VII.
## p. 198 (#228) ############################################
198
Germany in the First Century
[A. D. 14–167
4
century of our era the Buri and Sidones. The former, who are men-
tioned as early as Strabo, were probably of Bastarnian, and the latter
of Lugian origin; further still, abutting on the eastern flank of the
Sidones, were the Burgiones, Ambrones and Frugundiones, doubtless
also Bastarnian.
If we now review the ethnographic situation in ancient Germany
about the close of the first century A. D. , we find on its western frontier,
in the eastern basin of the lower Rhine, the Chamavi, the Bructeri,
the Usipii, the Tencteri, the Chattuarii and Tubantes ; further in the
interior, on both sides of the Weser, the great tribes of the Chatti and
Cherusci ; further to the north, the Angrivarii; and, on the North Sea
coast, the Chauci and Frisians. In the heart of the country three
powerful Suebian populations have their seat: on the western bank of
the middle Elbe, extending as far south as the Rhaetian frontier, the
Hermunduri ; north of them, on the western bank of the lower Elbe,
the Langobards, and beyond that river, in the basins of the Havel and
the Spree, the Semnones, who were held to be the primitive stock of the
Suebi. The eastern part of the country was mainly occupied by the
Lugii. The tribes too which appear later, in the wars of the Marco-
manni (the Victovali, Asdingi and Lacringi), were doubtless also Vandalic.
Northward in the region of the Wartha and Netze, dwelt the Bur-
gundiones or Burgundi ; further north still, on the Pomeranian Baltic
coast, the Rugii and Lemovi, next to whom on the western side came
(with some other smaller tribes) the Saxons. North of these again, on
the Jutish peninsula, lay the Anglii and Varini. Turning back to the
Vistula again, we find on its eastern bank the Goths, who, apparently by
the beginning of our era, had spread from the shores of its estuary to its
upper waters. In the south, the portion of the Hermunduri which had
its seat between the Main and the Danube formed the first link in
a long chain consisting of Naristi, Marcomanni, Quadi, Buri, and
finally, beyond the confinium Germanorum, the numerous branches of the
Bastarnae.
It was therefore a vast territory which the Germanic races claimed
for their own, and yet, as was soon to appear, it was too narrow for the
energies of these young and vigorous nations. On their north foamed
the sea, to the east yawned the desert steppes of southern Russia : thus
any further expansion could only take a westward or southward direction.
But on the one side as on the other lay the unbroken line of the Roman
frontier.
Any attempt at expansion in either of these directions
must inevitably lead to an immediate collision with the Roman
Empire.
The storm which lowered upon the Bohemian mountains was soon to
burst. Mighty forces were doubtless at work in the interior of Germany
which shortly after the accession of Marcus Aurelius stirred up the whole
mass of nations from the Böhmer-Wald to the Carpathians, and let loose
## p. 199 (#229) ############################################
A. D. 167–174]
Marcus Aurelius
199
a tempest such as the Roman Empire had never before encountered on
its frontiers. In the suminer of 167 hosts of barbarians mustered along
the line of the Danube, ready to make an inroad into Roman territory.
The Praetorian Praefect, Furius Victorinus, was defeated, and slain with
most of his troops ; and the invading food poured forward over the
unprotected provinces. Not until the two Emperors reached the seat of
war (spring 168) was the plundering and ravaging stopped. The bar-
barians then withdrew to the further side of the Danube and declared
their readiness to enter into negotiations? . There, in the winter of 168-9
the plague broke out with fearful violence in the Roman camp, and at
once the complexion of events changed for the worse. In the spring, in
the absence of the Emperors, who on the outbreak of the epidemic had
returned to the capital, the army, weakened and disorganised by disease,
suffered another severe defeat, and the Praetorian Praefect, Macrinius
Vindex, met his death. Following up their victory, the Teutons assumed
the offensive all along the line. A surging mass of peoples-Hermunduri,
Naristi, Marcomanni, Quadi, Lacringi, Buri, Victovali, Asdingi and other
tribes Germanic and lazygic-swept over the provinces of Rhaetia,
Noricum, Pannonia and Daeid. Some detached bands even pushed
their way into North Italy, laid siege to Aquileia, and destroyed Opiter-
LP P.
gium, further to the west.
But the danger passed as quickly as it had arisen. Effective
measures were instantly taken. The flood of invasion was stemmed, and
as it receded the Romans, led by the Emperor in person, took the
aggressive. All the Teutons and Iazyges who remained on the south
bank were forced back across the river. So successful were the Roman
arms that by the year 171 the Quadi sued for peace. In the following
year the Roman army crossed the Danube, and laid waste the country of
the Marcomanni. Thus the two most dangerous adversaries had been sub-
dued and the war seemed over. But by the year 174 the Emperor again
found himself obliged to return to Germany. Scarcely had he entered
the country of the Quadi, when the army was placed in a highly
dangerous position by an enveloping movement of the enemy, and by
want of water. Suddenly a torrent of rain descended”, and legionaries
saw in the “miracle” a proof of the favour of the gods, and were inspired
to fight with splendid valour, and gained a complete victory. This
broke the resistance of the Quadi, and the Marcomanni also were forced
1 I refer to the fragment of Petrus Patricius (6) which Mommsen, Ges.
Schriften, iv. p. 492 n. 1, assigns to the time of Pius.
? There is no reason to doubt either the event itself, or the fact that it appeared
to the minds of contemporaries, especially of Marcus Aurelius himself, as a miracle.
See Harnack, Sitzungsber. der Berl. Akad. 1894, p. 835, and Th. Mommsen, Hermes,
30 (1895), p. 90=Ges. Schriften, iv. p. 498 (against E. Petersen, Mitt. des Arch.
Inst. röm. Abt. 9 (1894), p. 78 and A. von Damaszewski, Rhein. Mus. f. Philol. 49
(1894), p. 612); cf. also J. Geffcken, N. Jahrbuch f. d. Klass. Altertum, 3 (1899),
p. 253. Further literature in Schanz, Gesch. d. röm. Literatur, 'ın? . § 644.
CH. VII.
## p. 200 (#230) ############################################
200
Commodus
(A. D. 176-235
to make peace. In 176 the Emperor returned to Rome, and there
celebrated, along with his son Commodus, a well-deserved triumph.
In 177 Marcus rejoined his army with the purpose of completing the
work of conquest. Two new provinces, Marcomania and Sarmatia, were
to be added to his Empire and were to round off his northern boundary.
The war began (apparently before the end of 177) with an attack upon
the Quadi, after which the Marcomanni were to be dealt with. In the
course of the three-years' war both peoples were so thoroughly exhausted
that when the Emperor suddenly died (17 March 180) their military
strength was already broken.
One of the first acts of Commodus, an unworthy successor of his father,
was to make peace which surrendered to the all but beaten enemy every
advantage that had been wrested from them. The struggle for the lands
to the north of the Danube was at an end. Meanwhile the Romans
were confronted, about the close of the century, with a new and dangerous
enemy in the west, in the angle between the Main and the frontier of
upper Germany and Rhaetia—by the Alemans. As their name indicates',
the Alemans were not a single tribe but a union of tribes—a confederacy.
We hear (somewhat later) the names of several of the component tribes,
the Juthungi, the Brisigavi, the Bucinobantes and the Lentienses.
Whence did they come? No doubt the nucleus of this confederacy was
formed by the southern divisions of the Hermunduri. To these there
may have attached themselves various fragments of peoples which had
split off before and after the Marcomannic war, just as later, towards the
middle of the third century, the Semnones, in the course of a migration
southward, probably joined this confederacy and were absorbed by it.
Before long—as early as 213—the new nation came in contact with
the Romans. So far as can be made out from the confused account
which is given us of their first appearance? they had invaded Rhaetia,
whereupon the Emperor Caracalla took the field against them, flung
them back across the frontier and advanced into their territory carrying all
before him? Before twenty years had passed the Teutons-presumably the
Alemans again-renewed the attack upon the Roman frontier defences.
So threatening was the situation that the Emperor Severus Alexander felt
1 Alemanni (Gothic alamans from the Old Teutonic *alamannez) means "all
people," "all men,” and therefore designates an aggregate of peoples. So the
historian Asinius Quadratus (in Agathias, 1. 6, p. 17): oi 'Alapavoi. . . Súvnavdés
εισιν άνθρωποι και μιγάδες, και τούτο δύναται αυτοίς ή επωνυμία.
: Dio, lxxvii. 13–15, on which see Bang, Hermes, 41 (1906), p. 623; cf. Herodian,
iv. 7. 2-3; Vita Carac. 5. 4. 6; 10. 6.
3 According to the records of the Arval College for the year 213 (C. I. L.
vi. 2086) the members made an offering on 11 August quod dominus n[oster). . .
per limitem Raetiae ad hostes extirpandos barbarorum (terram) introiturus est, ut ea
res ei prospere feliciterque cedat, and on 6 October ob salute[m] victoriamque
Germanicam of the sovereign. Ob victoriam Germanicam is also the cause of the setting
of the inscription in C. I. L. XII. 6459 and the same victoria Germanica appears on
the coins of the year 213 (Cohen, 1v2. 210 n. 645–6).
up
P.
## p. 201 (#231) ############################################
A. D. 235–258]
The Alemanni
201
a
himself obliged to break off his campaign against the Persians, and take
over in person the direction of the operations on the Rhine. Negotia-
tions had already begun before his assassination (March 235), but his
successor, the rough and soldierly Maximin, brought new life into the
campaign. Advancing by forced marches into the country of the
Alemans he drove the barbarians before him without serious resistance,
laid waste their fields and dwellings far and wide, and finally defeated
them far in the interior of their territory.
The result of this campaign, the last war of offence on a large scale
which the Romans waged on the Rhine, was the restoration of security
to the frontier for a period of twenty years. Under Gallienus-probably
about the year 258—the storm broke. With irresistible force the armies
of the Alemans broke through the great chain of frontier fortifications
between the Main and the Danube, and after overpowering the scattered
Roman garrisons, poured like a flood across the whole of the Agri
Decumates, and established themselves permanently in the conquered
territory. At the same time Rhaetia became a prey to them; nay more,
.
a strong force even crossed the Alps and penetrated as far as Ravenna.
The invaders were, it is true, defeated by Gallienus near Milan, and
forced to retreat, but the country at the northern base of the Alps was
lost, and its loss threw open to the Germanic hordes the gates of Italy.
In addition to the Alemans of the upper Rhine, there now appeared,
on the lower course of that river, another dangerous enemy, namely the
Franks. The frontier had scarcely ever been seriously threatened at this
point since the days of Augustus, but now under Gallienus the situation
was altered. Here also there had quietly grown up a confederacy which,
under the name of Franci, the Free, presumably comprised the tribes
formerly met with in these regions, the Chamavi, Sugambri and other
smaller clans. Their name, first heard in the time of Gallienus, was soon
to become even more terrible in the ears of the Romans than that of the
Alemans. The first attack of the new league of peoples upon the Rhine
.
frontier occurred in 253. The districts on the Gaulish bank of the
Rhine soon fell into the hands of the enemy. With great difficulty
Gallienus succeeded in forcing them back across the Rhine. But others
followed them, and there ensued a series of desperate struggles which
lasted till 258. On the whole the Romans had the best of it, even
though their army was not large enough to prevent isolated bands of
Franks from establishing themselves upon the left bank of the Rhine.
In 258 Gallienus was called away to the lower Danube, which
urgently demanded his presence. The confusion which was created in
the Rhine district by the assassination in the following year of the
Emperor's son Valerian who had been left behind as Imperial Resident
at Cologne, by the ambitious general Cassianus Postumus, gave the Franks
a welcome opportunity to make a new inroad into Gaul. Their bands
ranged almost unresisted through the whole country from the Rhine to
CH. VII.
## p. 202 (#232) ############################################
202
The Goths
(A. D. 230—282
the Pyrenees, devastating as they went. Then they pushed on, as the
,
Cimbri had done before them, across the mountains into Spain, and
made havoc of that country for several years, reducing to subjection even
great cities like Tarraco, while, like the Vandals after them, they also
made a foray into Africa. As at the time of the Cimbrian war, the
terror of the Germans spread through all the countries of Western
Europe. Only after a considerable time Postumus-a capable soldier
and a well-intentioned administrator--was able to force the Germanic
hordes out of Gaul and restore peace and security.
But the Rhine
became the frontier of the Empire and remained so as long as the Empire
lasted.
From this time onward begins a period of incessant fighting with the
Teutons of the Rhine-country: with the Alemans in the south and the
Franks in the north. The weakness and exhaustion of the Empire
caused by inner dissensions becomes manifest. If Postumus succeeded
in keeping the Roman possessions on the Gaulish bank of the Rhine
essentially intact, his immediate successors were less successful. The
country was left defenceless, and large portions of it were plundered and
drained of their resources. Probus indeed, whose short reign (276-282)
is a ray of light in these gloomy times, succeeded in clearing them out of
Gaul, and even ventured to assume the offensive on the upper Rhine, in
a brilliant campaign forcing the Alemans back to the further side of the
Neckar. But such successes were but temporary. Only in the time of
Diocletian does a durable improvement on the Rhine frontier set in, an
improvement which was maintained for the next two or three generations.
During this period a third set of invaders, in addition to the Franks and
Alemans, appeared towards the close of the century in the Saxons, the
terror of the British and Gaulish coasts. In the main, however, Gaul
was suffered to enjoy peace; and with peace returned prosperity.
Meanwhile on the shores of the Euxine, there emerges a people
with whose name the world was to ring for centuries, the Goths.
Their original home had been, it would appear, in Scandinavia, and
after their migration to the German Baltic coast they had at first
established themselves about the estuary of the Vistula', then in course
of time they had moved further southward along the right bank of that
river, so that at the beginning of our era they appear as far south as the
neighbourhood of the Bohemian kingdom of the Marcomanni. How
long they remained in this region we do not know, but it is not unlikely
that their eastward migration falls about the time of the great
Marcomannic war. We are equally ignorant of the time occupied by
this migration and the details of its progress; the only thing certain is
that it reached its close not later than c. 230-240.
1 The Gutones on the North Sea coast mentioned by Pytheas in the fourth century
B. C. may have been a branch of this people which had wandered westward, and were
absorbed probably by the Frisians.
## p. 203 (#233) ############################################
A. D. 240–250]
The Goths
203
The territory where the Goths at last took up their abode embraced
the whole of the northern coast of the Black Sea. In the east it was
separated by the Don from that of the Alani, in the west it bordered on
the tract of country northward of the Danube Delta and the Dacian
frontier which had been settled four hundred years earlier by the
Bastarnae and the Sciri. Here the Goths divided into two sections soon
after their immigration, that dwelling more to the west being known
as the Tervingi, “the inhabitants of the forest region,” while the
eastern division was known as the Greutungi, “the inhabitants of the
Steppes. ” For the former the name Visigoths (Vesegoti) came into use',
at latest c. 350, for the latter the name Ostrogoths, designations however
of which the meaning is not absolutely certain, although “ the western
Goths” and “the eastern Goths” was an interpretation already known
to Jordanes. The boundary between them was formed by the Dniester.
Before long there appear alongside of them other Germanic peoples, the
Gepidae, Taifali, Borani, Urugundi and Heruli. The two first of these
had some original link of connexion with them. The Gepidae indeed
appear in the Gothic legend of their migrations as an actual part of
the Gothic nation. Whether they migrated to the Black Sea region
at the same time as the Goths, or followed them later, must remain an
open question.
Towards the end of the reign of Severus Alexander (222-235) the
first indications of the appearance on the northern shores of the Black Sea
of a new and powerful barbarian race, of a most warlike temper, had
already become manifest, when the Greek towns of Olbia and Tyras fell
victims to the sudden descent of an unknown enemy from the North.
A little later, under Gordian III (238–244), its name is found. In the
spring of 238 Gothic war-bands marched southwards, crossed the Danube
with the connivance of the Dacian Carpi and broke into the province of
Lower Moesia, where they captured and plundered the town of Istrus.
The Procurator of the province, Tullius Menophilus (238-241), being
unable to repel the invasion by force of arms, induced the Goths to
retire by the promise of a yearly subsidy. But by 248 they had renewed
their attacks on the Roman frontier in alliance with the Taifali, Asdingi
and Bastarnae. Under the leadership of Argaith and Gunterich their
bands again broke into Lower Moesia, assailed without success the fortified
town of Marcianople and plundered the unfortunate province again.
But these first exploits of the Goths were completely thrown into
the shade by the great invasion of Roman territory made at the
beginning of 250 by the half-legendary King Kniwa at the head of a
powerful army. While the Carpi Aung themselves upon Dacia, the
Gothic attack was directed as before upon Moesia. Thence a strong
1 These names, like the division of the race which they express, may have been
considerably older, and as the occurrence of Greutungi in Scandinavia suggests,
brought by the Goths from their original home.
CH.
VII.
## p. 204 (#234) ############################################
204
Decius
[A. D. 250—265
reverse.
i
detachment pressed onward over the undefended passes of the Balkans
into Thrace, laid siege to Philippopolis, and even despatched a plundering
party into Macedonia. One division of the Gothic army, after vainly
assaulting Novae and Nicopolis, was defeated in the neighbourhood of
the latter town by the Emperor Decius in person, but this success
was immediately counterbalanced by a
The Goths, while
retiring southwards by way of Beroë (Augusta Traiana), the present
Eski-Zaghra, on the southern slope of the Balkans, defeated the Roman
troops who were pursuing them. After this battle the victorious Goths
effected a junction with their countrymen who were investing Philip-
popolis, and that city fell into their hands. The Romans, however, were
now making extensive preparations, in view of which the barbarians
began their retreat. Decius, eager to wipe out the failure at Beroë,
sought to bar their path, and, in the hope of inflicting a crushing defeat
upon them, engaged them near Abrittus, about 30 miles south-east of
Durostorum (Silistria) in June 251. The day, which began well for the
Romans, ended in a fearful disaster, a great part of their army was
destroyed and the Emperor himself and one of his sons were among the
slain. The country from which the barbarians had just retired now lay
once more defenceless before them. They were finally bought off by the
promise of a yearly subsidy.
The Gothic war of 250-251 had revealed in its full extent the
danger which had lain hidden behind the mountains of Dacia. Later
events did little to remove the terrible impression which the invasion of
Kniwa had left behind. On the contrary, the history of the eastern half
of the Empire in the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, Claudius, Aurelian
and Probus is filled with incessant struggles against the Goths and their
allies. For even Asia Minor was not exempt from their ravages; besides
.
;
the bands which swept down by the Balkans and back again there were
now others which came by sea from the Crimea and Lake Maeotis to
ravage a constantly widening area of the coasts of Asia Minor and
which even penetrated to the inland districts. Especially prominent in
these piratical raids were the Borani and Heruli, two peoples who here
appear in history for the first time side by side with the Goths. The
first of these expeditions, made by the Borani in 256 against the town
of Pityus (on the eastern shore of the Black Sea), ended in failure, but
by the following year these same Borani succeeded in capturing and
sacking Pityus and Trapezus. Even more destructive was the expedition
which (spring 258) was undertaken by the West Goths, starting by sea
and land from the port of Tyras. The whole western coast of Bithynia
with the cities of Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Nicaea, Apamea and Prusa,
was ravaged. The years 263, 264 and 265 also witnessed the vasting of
the coast lands of Asia Minor by similar expeditions of the Pontic
Teutons. Ilium, Ephesus with its renowned temple of Artemis,
and Chalcedon, were this time the victims of the barbarians.
But all these exploits were far surpassed in importance by the great
## p. 205 (#235) ############################################
A. D. 267–270]
Claudius
205
a
plundering expedition of the Heruli in the year 207. From Lake
Maeotis a fleet, said to have been five hundred strong, sailed along the
western shore of the Euxine, then through the Bosphorus, where they
made a successful coup-de-main against Byzantium, through the
Propontis, where Cyzicus was captured, and the Hellespont, and onward
past Lemnos and Scyros across the Aegean to Greece. Here on the
classic soil of Attica, Argolis and Laconia the wild hosts of these
barbarians made fearful havoc, and it was long enough before the
bewildered provincial government ventured to oppose them. The
defenders, in whose ranks the historian Dexippus of Athens played
a leading part, gradually gained confidence, and when they had succeeded
in destroying the ships, the invaders were obliged to retreat by the
land route. Beaten by the Roman troops their hosts rolled northwards
through Boeotia, Epirus, Macedonia towards their home, which they
succeeded in reaching although hard pressed by their pursuers and at the
very last compelled by the Emperor Gallienus to fight a battle, in which
they incurred heavy losses, at the river Nestus, on the boundary between
Macedonia and Thrace.
We have seen above how the Danube had been constantly threatened
since the appearance of the Goths on the Black Sea, how invasion after
invasion had descended on Dacia and Moesia. Soon after the accession
of Gallienus (probably 256-7)', Dacia with the exception of the
narrow strip between the Temes and the Danube, which continued to be
held down to the time of Aurelian, together with the portion of Lower
Moesia which lay to the north of the Danube (the present Great
Wallachia), became the prey of the barbarians. Some of the West
Goths settled in Great Wallachia and the Taifali in the Banat; the
northern districts, especially Transylvania, were occupied by the Victovali
and Gepidae, who at this time make their appearance among the
enemies of Rome. The consequence of the loss of Dacia and Trans-
Danubian Moesia was that the Teutons now became on the lower
Danube as well as elsewhere the immediate neighbours of the Empire,
their territory being divided from it only by the river.
Only once in this whole period of inward decay did the imperial
power succeed in winning a decisive victory. That was the achievement
of the Emperor Claudius, whom his grateful contemporaries and succes-
sors have rightly adorned with the honourable title of “Gothicus. " In
the spring of 269 the Teutons made yet another attack upon the Empire,
surpassing all former ones in violence. East Goths and West Goths,
whom tradition here first distinguishes, Bastarnae (Peucini), Gepidae
and Heruli united their forces and advanced with a mighty army
and fleet-estimated in the sources at 300,000 fighting-men and 2000
1 In this year the minting of coins for the province of Dacia breaks off. The
inscriptions found in this country too do not come down beyond the first year of
the reign of Valerian.
CH. VII.
## p. 206 (#236) ############################################
206
Claudius and Aurelian
[A. D. 268-284
ships—against the Danubian frontier. Once more the province of Lower
Moesia bore the brunt of their attack. The land army of the Teutons,
in which lay their main strength, first made an unsuccessful attempt to
take Tomi and Marcianople, then swept like a flood over the interior
of the country, wasting and plundering as they went. Meanwhile the
fleet, which was manned chiefly by Heruli, sailed past Byzantium and
Cyzicus into the Aegean, and appeared before Thessalonica. Part of it
remained there and blockaded the city; the remainder made a great
plundering expedition which bears eloquent testimony to the seamanship
and daring of these Teutons, along the coasts of Macedonia, Greece and
Asia Minor, extending even as far as Crete and Cyprus.
This was the situation when the Emperor Claudius reached the
scene of war. At his approach the besiegers of the hard-pressed
Thessalonica had hastily drawn off northwards and effected a junction
with their kinsmen in Upper Moesia. The hostile forces met near
Naissus. In the desperate struggle which ensued the Teutons suffered
a crushing defeat. What remained of their army was in part cut to
pieces in the pursuit, in part driven into the inhospitable recesses of the
Balkans, where the survivors surrendered. They were partly enrolled in
the Roman army, partly, in pursuance of a policy initiated by the
Emperor Marcus, settled as coloni in the devastated frontier districts.
Thus the danger was averted from the Empire, and the desire of its
restless neighbours beyond the Danube to make expeditions on the great
scale was damped for nearly a hundred years. No doubt the inroads and
piratical voyages of smaller Gothic war-bands continued ; indeed, in the
next fourteen years (270-284), there was fighting with bands of this
kind under Quintillus, Aurelian, Tacitus and Probus, but all these
incursions were easily repelled by the imperial government, which
gained strength under Aurelian and Probus. Just at this time, too,
there broke out a severe internal struggle between the Teutons of the
Euxine and those of the Danube. The first aid called in by the Goths
against the Tervingi was that of the Bastarnae, but the outcome of the
struggle was that the Bastarnae were defeated and compelled to abandon
the territory which they had held so tenaciously for more than five
hundred years. The expelled Bastarnae, said to have numbered 100,000
men, were taken under his protection by the Emperor Probus and settled
in Thrace. After that the Tervingi, supported by the Taifali, made war
on the allied Gepidae and Vandals, while the East Goths fought with
their eastern neighbours the Urugundi, who on their defeat were taken
under the protection of the Alani'. We can see that the whole of the
eastern Germanic world was in a state of wild
uproar.
On the middle Danube there had been no fighting worth mention
1 Mamert. genethl. Maxim. 17 (p. 114 Baehrens) where the impossible Alamanni
is doubtless to be corrected to Alani ; the Burgundii are of course the Urugundi.
Cf. L. Schmidt, Gesch. der Wandalen, p. 14.
## p. 207 (#237) ############################################
A. D. 282–299]
Diocletian, Carausius
207
since the Marcomannic war. We hear indeed of an incursion of the
Marcomanni in the reign of Valerian, but, broadly speaking, the name
of this once so warlike nation may be said to disappear from history.
Their old comrades the Quadi often appear in association with the
lazyges, from the time of Gallienus, when they made a descent upon
Pannonia.
