Empires and Barbarians (20 page)

The countermeasures of Marcus Aurelius defused the immediate crisis of the 160s effectively enough, and peace returned to Rome’s European frontiers for the best part of two generations. The third century, however, was to witness trouble on a still greater scale. The problems were made all the worse by the fact that the same era saw the rise to prominence of the Sasanian dynasty, which turned the Near East, largely equivalent to modern Iraq and Iran, into a superpower to rival Rome. The Sasanians were much the greatest threat, destroying the armies of three Roman emperors – even capturing the last of them, Valerian, and leading him in chains behind Shapur I, Sasanian Shah-an-shah, ‘King of kings’. When Valerian died, they flayed his corpse and pickled his skin as a victory trophy. This new threat naturally forced Roman military resources eastwards, and events on the Rhine and the Danube have to be seen in this context. If the Sasanians had not exploded into history simultaneously, Rome’s third-century European antagonists would never have enjoyed such freedom of action.
¹²

In western Europe, on the Rhine and the Upper Danubian frontiers, the third-century crisis involved a moderate amount of migration and a larger dose of political reorganization. This was precisely the era in which the new Germanic confederations we examined in the last chapter began to appear. The Alamanni appear as enemies of Rome for the first time in 213, when the Emperor Caracalla launched a punitive or pre-emptive campaign against them. The Alamanni were
presumably already posing some kind of threat at that point, but our sources, limited as they are, indicate that it increased dramatically from the 230s. One particularly large Alamannic attack occurred in 242, and such raids were then apparently more or less continuous through the 240s and 250s, although this picture emerges from a scatter of fragmentary historical, archaeological and above all coin-hoard evidence, since no continuous narrative sources survive. But by about 260, at the very latest, the Alamanni and other groups in the region were causing seriously substantial difficulties. Some were already receiving Roman subsidies, and a famous votive altar, recovered from Mainz, records a Roman counterstrike in which thousands of prisoners taken in a raid on Italy were recovered. Most arresting of all, in 261 or thereabouts (the Roman state never trumpeted its defeats) the so-called
Agri Decumates
, land that had been occupied since early in the first century (
Map 5
), was abandoned.

As far as we can tell, this wasn’t exactly an Alamannic conquest. It was more a question of the then Emperor in the west, Postumus, deciding to withdraw much-needed troops from the region for the defence of strategically more important areas. It is testimony, nonetheless, to the level of pressure being exerted on the frontier, and the withdrawal failed to solve the problem. More Alamannic assaults are recorded in the late 260s and mid-270s, vivid evidence of which has come to light in the form of the unlucky thirteen individuals who were brutally killed, dismembered and partly scalped before the remains were thrown down the well of their farm at Regensburg-Harting. The situation on the new frontier was finally stabilized by further Roman campaigning in the late third and early fourth centuries under the Tetrarchs and the Emperor Constantine, which initiated the more stable pattern of fourth-century client-state relations that we observed in
Chapter 2
.
¹³

Although much of this crisis was clearly stimulated by the extra military power that was one result of overall Germanic development and the new political confederations it generated, two bouts of migration also played a significant role. First, following the Roman withdrawal, the Alamanni moved into the Agri Decumates, which is where they were happily ensconced in the fourth century. They had not come from far. What exactly it meant to be an Alamann in the third century is much disputed, and we will return to the issue later in the chapter. But all the physical evidence from the Agri Decumates –
of jewellery, ceramic types and modes of burial – indicates that its new Germanic masters had their origins not very far to the east, in the lands of the so-called Elbe-Germanic triangle, west of the River Elbe from Bohemia in the south to Mecklenburg in the north (
Map 5
).

Second, established just to the rear of the Alamanni in the fourth century, but still within occasional reach of Roman diplomacy, lay the territory of the Burgundians. Unlike the Alamanni, who were an entirely new political formation of the late Roman period, Burgundians were already known to Tacitus and Ptolemy in the first and second centuries. At that point, they held lands much further to the east (now occupied by modern Poland). They were one-time members of the Vandalic world, living somewhere between the Oder and the Vistula. Thus, by the fourth century some Burgundians had moved around five hundred kilometres westwards. The historical evidence indicates that at this point they were established somewhere on the middle stretches of the River Main, and there is some archaeological confirmation. Materials are not plentiful, but a cluster of sword burials have been excavated in broadly the same area. The materials found in these graves resemble items found earlier in east Germanic territories, and are quite distinct from materials associated with groups from the Elbe-Germanic triangle. It is important, though, to acknowledge the limitations of the evidence. Up to the third century and indeed beyond, east Germanic populations universally cremated their dead, and the Main sword burials are inhumations. The historical evidence also locates fourth-century Burgundians most firmly in the Kocher valley, but no east Germanic materials have been unearthed there. Some migration is clear enough, then, on the part of both Alamanni and Burgundians, but its nature, scale and causation need to be examined with care.
¹⁴

If the third-century crisis was serious enough on the Rhine, the action was much more explosive further east. Where the Marcomannic War had unfolded largely on the Middle Danube plain, this time the worst of the fighting occurred to the east of the Carpathians, in the wide stretches of territory bordering the northern shores of the Black Sea. It began in 238, with a recorded attack by some Goths on the city of Histria, close to the point where the River Danube runs into the Black Sea (
Map 6
). This inaugurated an initial run of largely Gothic attacks upon the Roman Empire, all launched across its Lower Danube frontier between the Carpathians and the Black Sea. It’s impossible to
reconstruct anything like a full narrative of these assaults, but they peaked around the year 250. In 249, the east Balkan city of Marcianople was ransacked by the Gothic followers of two leaders – Argaith and Guntheric – and the violence escalated quickly.

In the spring of 250, another Gothic leader by the name of Cniva broke through the Roman frontier and crossed the Danube at the old legionary fortress of Oescus, which guarded one of the river’s easiest crossings. He then marched into the heart of the Balkans, capturing the city of Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv in Bulgaria) south of the Haemus Mountains, where he overwintered. The following year, the Emperor Decius attempted to intercept the then retreating Goths, but was himself defeated and killed at Abrittus.
¹⁵
This was a huge disaster. On one level, it was even worse than the more famous defeat in the Teutoburger Wald. For the first time, a reigning emperor had been cut down in a battle with barbarians. On another, however, the situation was less serious than it might appear. At the time of Decius’ death, the Empire was in the midst of immense internal political upheaval, one knock-on effect from the huge crisis stimulated within the Roman system by the emergence of the rival Sasanian superpower. Decius was the ruler of only part of Roman Europe and North Africa, and had led into battle only a relatively small percentage of the imperial army. It was a major defeat, but troop losses were not so huge as to pose a structural threat to imperial integrity. This shows up clearly in subsequent events. Some further attacks followed across the Danube in 253 and 254, but they achieved little, and the Goths then abandoned the Danubian line of attack. The natural conclusion is that Decius’ successors had effectively closed it off.

Shortly afterwards, mixed groups of raiders exploited a second line of attack, crossing the Black Sea to Asia Minor by ship in three successive years, 255–7.
¹⁶
The first expedition, unsuccessful, was directed at Pityus on the south-eastern shore of the Black Sea. The second successfully sacked both the previous year’s target and the city of Trapezus (modern Trabzon). These initial raids were undertaken by what our main source calls ‘Boranoi’, a name that perhaps just means ‘northerners’. The third, seemingly much more substantial, expedition of 257, this one explicitly including Goths, caused widespread devastation in Bithynia and the Propontis, inflicting damage on the cities of Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Nicaea, Apamea and Prusa. There is then a gap in our sources – which, for all their problems, again probably
reflects a cessation or lessening in the intensity of the attacks – until 268, when an enormous maritime expedition left the northern shores of the Black Sea. It was composed again partly of Goths but also of some other Germani, notably Heruli. The new expedition did not sail straight across the Black Sea but moved along its northern and western coasts, keeping within sight of land and raiding some coastal cities, such as Anchialus, as it went. Other assaults on Tomi, Marcianople, Cyzicus and Byzantium were beaten off. The raiders then forced the Dardanelles, and spilled out into the Aegean. For the first time, northern sea raiders had broken into Rome’s Mediterranean lake. There the expedition divided into three main groups. These attacked, respectively, the northern Balkans around Thessalonica, Attica, and the coastal hinterland of Asia Minor. The Emperor Gallienus began the counterattack in the Balkans, but it was his successor Claudius who inflicted a massive defeat on the Balkan groups in 269, winning the sobriquet ‘Gothicus’ – ‘victor over the Goths’ – for his efforts. The struggle against the Heruli around Athens was led amongst others by the historian Dexippus, while the third group, led by the chieftains Respa, Veduc and Thuruar, was eventually driven back into the Black Sea in 269, but not before it had wreaked havoc. The islands of Rhodes and Cyprus were devastated, as were the cities of Side and Ilium on the mainland. The raid’s most dramatic casualty was perhaps the legendary temple of Diana at Ephesus.
¹⁷

The Roman response was fierce. Not only was each of the individual groups defeated, but no major raid ever again broke through the Dardanelles. As with the Danube after the defeat of Decius, one can only presume that effective countermeasures were put in place to seal off the line of attack. Not that this was the end of the Gothic problem. A further attack across the Danube occurred in 270, when Anchialus and Nicopolis were sacked, but the new Emperor Aurelian then led his forces north of the river in 271 and thoroughly defeated a Gothic leader called Cannabaudes, who had presumably been responsible for the latest outrages. Aurelian’s counterattack nipped the new threat in the bud. The mid-270s saw some further sea-borne raids, which plundered the Pontus in particular, but no further assaults over the Danube into the Roman Balkans. Not only had the Emperor’s defeat of the Goths brought some relief, but he had also organized, more or less simultaneously, a planned evacuation of Transylvanian Dacia.
¹⁸

As with the parallel withdrawal from the
Agri Decumates
in the west, our information about the abandonment of Dacia is limited. But both narrative evidence and the coin hoards indicate that most of the attacks of the third century had skirted Dacia’s frontiers and entered the Balkans proper, or crossed the Black Sea into Asia Minor, rather than directly affecting the province itself. This withdrawal would again appear to have been more by strategic design, therefore, than a headlong retreat from direct military disaster. On one level, Aurelian probably had it in mind to shorten his frontier lines. Dacia was a projecting salient north of the Danube, which needed defending on three sides. By evacuating it, the Roman frontier in south-eastern Europe could be reduced by something like eight hundred kilometres. It also gave the troublesome outsiders a new prize to squabble over, diverting them from making further attacks on Roman territory. Writing in the fourth century, Eutropius notes that Dacia was ‘now’ (369) divided between the Taifali, Victohali and Tervingi. Aurelian’s combination of military success and strategic withdrawal took much of the steam out of the cross-border attacks, but it was to be another generation before order was fully restored on Rome’s Danube frontier.
¹⁹
As on the Rhine, further campaigns by the Tetrarchs and Constantine were required fully to force the Goths and others into the semi-client status in which we encountered them in the last chapter.

But who exactly were the Goths who feature so strongly in the third-century action, and what underlay these two or three generations of large-scale disturbance on the east European frontiers of the Roman Empire?

There is no doubt at all that the emergence of Gothic domination represented a complete revolution in the nature of the threat facing the Roman Empire across its Lower Danube frontier. In the first and second centuries, Rome had mostly faced a mixture of nomadic Iranian-speaking Sarmatians and settled Dacian-speakers in this theatre of operations. By the fourth century, groups labelled ‘Goth’ had become the main focus of Roman campaigning and diplomacy in the region. The Gothic Tervingi, as we saw in
Chapter 2
, became the Empire’s main client beyond the Lower Danube, and as the events we have just summarized demonstrate so clearly, the intervening century had seen a huge increase in the military threat posed to the Empire across both its land and its water frontiers. There had been no attacks
via Dacia, across the Black Sea or through the Dardanelles on anything like a similar scale in the first and second centuries.