Empires and Barbarians (23 page)

Even Jordanes, in fact, preserves an echo of this more complex reality. All his accounts of Gothic migration incorporate a strong motif of sociopolitical fragmentation. In the Filimer migration a bridge falls down, parting some of the Goths from the main body. Elsewhere, he tells the story of a previous Gothic migration in three ships from Scandinavia. In that case too, one of the ships lags behind, and out of
this separation, so Jordanes tells us, were born the Gepids. Despite the extreme scepticism in vogue in some quarters, there is actually a good chance that both of these stories echo, if at some remove, Gothic oral histories. If so, those histories, while tending to describe migration in terms of kings and peoples, nonetheless preserved something of the deeper reality – that political discontinuity, rather than the uncomplicated transfer of entire pre-existing social units from point A to point B, was a central feature of the action.
³²

On one very simple level, the archaeological evidence also reflects this basic fact. Although the extensive similarities between the Wiel-bark and Cernjachov systems can reasonably be taken to reflect a substantial transfer of population between the two, the Wielbark system itself did not disappear but continued to exist down to the fifth century in broadly its old haunts to the north-west of what became Cernjachov territory. Archaeologists have also begun to identify a number of intermediate material cultural systems, placed geographically between the two. Discussion continues as to whether to view these as entirely separate from the two main systems, or as local variants of one or the other, and any temptation to identify them instantly with any of the groups named in third- and fourth-century sources needs to be resisted. Material cultural boundaries might reflect political boundaries, but, as we have seen, it cannot just be assumed that they do. However interpreted – and it may be that, under closer scrutiny, the whole Cernjachov system will eventually be recategorized into a series of interrelated regional groupings – the
group (generated c.180–220
AD
) and the Ruzycankan and Volhynian groups (generated c.220–60) make it very clear that the material culture generated by the migrants, echoing the new political order, was distinctly non-monolithic. Not all the Wielbark groups involved in the general move south shared in the same outcome. Some followed one historical trajectory which led to their involvement in the creation of the Cernjachov system and the other new groupings, others continued more or less as before but in a new environment, and some chose not to move at all.
³³

The third-century migrations were carried out, therefore, not by total population groups but by a series of subgroups, each operating to some extent independently of one another, very much replicating the pattern of many modern migration flows (
Chapter 1
). Some of the movements associated with the Marcomannic War were probably
similar. The attack on Pannonia which opened the war proper clearly did not involve all the Langobardi. Langobardi in large numbers moved definitively into the same Middle Danubian region only some three hundred and fifty years later, in c.500
AD
, and most had probably continued to live in the northern Elbe region in between. The same was substantially true of Germanic migrations in the third-century west. Here we have even less narrative evidence, but the archaeology shows very clearly that the
Agri Decumates
were not occupied in one fell swoop. As we saw in the last chapter, political power remained devolved among the fourth-century Alamanni, and this probably reflects this earlier period when groups moved into the new landscape piecemeal. Some, it seems, moved in soon after the Romans abandoned the territory in c.260, but elsewhere the process was much slower. Elbe–Germanic materials superseded Rhine–Weser materials on the Middle Main, for instance, only in the early fourth century, the best part of two generations later.
³⁴
In both east and west, therefore, the third century saw fragmented, diverse flows of migration rather than massive land seizures by ‘whole’ peoples. But how exactly should we envisage the population groups who undertook the migrations?

Some of the migrating subgroups were warbands – relatively small groups of a few hundred young men under the leadership of a particularly renowned warrior – on the make. The creation of small organized armed groups (such as that immortalized at Ejsbøl Mose) was a characteristic feature of Germanic society in the Roman period, some led by kings and some of them more egalitarian associations. Hence it is no great surprise that some of the archaeological remains hint at the participation of these kinds of group in the third-century action. East of the Carpathians, a few cemeteries have been unearthed from the early Cernjachov era – Cozia–Iasi, Todireni and Braniste – where, contrary to normal Cernjachov and Wielbark practice, the dead were buried with weapons. All the other equipment found would suggest that the groups interred in these cemeteries were Germanic intruders from the north. The presence of weapons, however, suggests that they originated somewhere outside the Wielbark system, probably from within Przeworsk areas further to the south. The cemeteries are not large, and would be entirely in accord with a picture of small armed Przeworsk groups seeking their fortune.
³⁵
It would be very interesting to have a full study of the age and gender of the populations found in the ribbon of Wielbark cemeteries that stretch along the
Upper Vistula and Dniester. These too might reflect small migratory subgroups similarly skewed in age and gender, rather than a more normal cross-section of humanity. Much of the action in the west is also compatible with this kind of picture, especially since the Agri Decumates were not occupied at one go.

But not all third-century activity is explicable in terms of small groups of a few hundred. The Gothic leader Cniva could not have defeated the Emperor Decius, however restricted the area of his imperial rule, had not the king’s armed following numbered thousands rather than hundreds. The Goths and Heruli defeated around Thessalonica by Claudius are said to have lost several thousand men in the battle. You can obviously doubt the precise accuracy of these figures, but Claudius clearly had a major fight on his hands, and the great sea raid of 268–71, of which this encounter was a part, could not have done so much damage had its component forces been appreciably smaller than losses in the thousands would suggest.
³⁶
The evidence from the Marcomannic War is similar. Some of the action can be explained in terms of warbands, but not all of it. There is Dio’s report, for instance, that the Langobardi and Ubii between them mustered six thousand men for their initial attack on Pannonia, and there was a moment when the Quadi, seeking to escape from Marcus Aurelius’ punitive restrictions, were preparing to ‘migrate in a body to the land of the Semnones’ which lay further north between the Elbe and the Oder.
³⁷
The Romans prevented this projected move with countermeasures of their own, and we cannot be sure that every single member of the group was about to head off north, but the evidence certainly suggests that Germanic groups numbering several thousand could contemplate hitting the road.

That some groups of migrating Germani, at least, were substantial in number is also indicated by the unfolding pattern of events at their points of destination. The Goths and others who made the trek to the Black Sea, for instance, did not operate there in a vacuum. In 238, after their assault on Histria, the Romans granted the attacking Goths an annual subsidy on condition that they withdrew from the city and returned prisoners. This provoked a howl of protest from the local Carpi, who claimed to be ‘more powerful’ than the Goths. The Carpi, as we have seen, were a group of so-called free Dacians established in the Moldavian hinterland of the Carpathians, semi-subdued clients who had not been brought under formal imperial rule. The expansion into
the frontier zone of Goths and other Germanic-speakers brought the migrants into competition with these Dacian groups. And, over time, Gothic power in the region grew directly at the Carpi’s expense. In the end, the Carpi lost out completely. Their political independence was totally dismantled, with large numbers – hundreds of thousands of them, according to Roman sources – being resettled inside the Empire either side of the year 300.
³⁸
Again, precise figures can be doubted, but not the overall picture. The Carpi disappear as an independent political force from the early fourth century, and we have explicit evidence that they were resettled south of the Danube. Likewise, there is not the slightest doubt that Germanic-speaking Goths replaced native Dacian-speakers as the dominant force around the Carpathian system.

It was, as we have seen, a well-established imperial response to competition in the frontier zone to thin it out by taking some suitably cowed immigrants into the Empire. The reception of the Naristi had been part of the solution to the Marcomannic War, Constantius had been ready to do the same with some Limigantes in 359, and there is no reason to doubt the reports that clearing out large numbers of Carpi from the frontier zone about the year 300 was part of the solution to the new problems of the third century. Nor were the Carpi the only losers. Further east, Germanic immigrants subdued the Sarmatian kingdoms and the old Greek cities of the Pontus, and an additional effect of their arrival was to make the Empire evacuate upland Transylvania.
³⁹
Not all the Carpi were transferred south of the Danube, and much of the indigenous population of Transylvania and the Pontic littoral remained in place. Nonetheless, large-scale resettlements and a total reshaping of the strategic situation in the region are clear signs that Rome’s existing arrangements for frontier security had been undermined by what was a major intrusion into the region on the part of a non-indigenous, Germanic-speaking population. For all of this, we do have to be talking of Germanic-speaking groups who could put several thousand fighting men in the field at any one time. Groups numbering just a few hundreds could never have achieved so much.

The pattern in the west was not quite the same. There are no records of conflict on such a large scale, and because the Alamanni were taking possession of abandoned territory in the Agri Decumates, they did not face the same imperative of having to oust sitting tenants. But that still doesn’t mean that all the action was very small-scale. Outside the Agri Decumates, the Alamanni did impose themselves
over other indigenous Germani, such as the Rhine–Weser groups who eventually lost out to them on the Middle Main. This may well have required more consolidated group action. Likewise, as we will explore in more detail in a moment, the Burgundians came in sufficient numbers to preserve their own, distinct east Germanic dialect. Additionally, Burgundians and Alamanni periodically competed with one another in the fourth century, and this could easily have begun already in the third. If so, it will have been another factor pushing the Alamanni into more concerted, group, action – something that is entirely in line with the evidence we have for the whole emergence of their group dynamic.

On the one hand, the Alamannic confederation was the result of a long-drawn-out political process. When we first meet Alamanni in the third century, for instance, the Iuthungi were not part of the confederation. But by the mid-fourth, they were: one among the several cantons among whom protocols of under- and overkingship seem periodically to have operated (
Chapter 2
). This process had begun early in the third century. At one point, it was trendy to argue that the first convincing mention of the Alamannic confederation could not be dated before the 290s. It was then natural to argue that the third-century raiding and land-grabbing on this sector of the Rhine had been conducted by independent warbands, who started to form larger group structures only after seizing the
Agri Decumates
. But this dating was much too late. The Emperor Caracalla was already fighting Alamanni as early as 213. And while the Alamannic confederation did not at this point incorporate all the subgroups who would be part of it in the fourth century, this does suggest that major political reconfiguration was already under way right at the beginning of the third century, which in turn makes it necessary to think of the Alamanni as more than a collection of warbands even at this point.
⁴⁰
This being so, the action in the west was probably quite similar to that unfolding simultaneously east of the Carpathians, involving some larger-scale groups as well, certainly, as warbands.

There is probably a more general logic, in fact, to how such patterns of armed expansion tend to unfold, because the eastern evidence is reminiscent in some key respects of the better-documented flow of Norse expansion into western Europe in the ninth century. Here too, the action started small. The earliest recorded incident involved just three boatloads of Norwegians causing trouble on the
south coast of England around the year 790. It stayed small-scale for about a generation and a half, but then grew as larger confederate bands began to operate in western waters from the 830s, some of them led by ‘kings’ or ‘jarls’, men who were already important in Norse society. The confederative tendency then reached a climax from the 860s in the great army era, when several of the larger groupings began to combine in new ways to achieve ends that required the application of still greater levels of force. In the case of the Vikings, the end in sight was defeating the armies of Anglo-Saxon and Frankish kingdoms. All this strongly recalls the patterns of Germanic expansion visible in the third century. It may well have begun with small-scale raiding, but sacking Roman cities, defeating Roman emperors and appropriating the assets of existing frontier clients all required a much greater level of force, leading, as in the Viking case, to the evolution of new confederations among the migrants so as to generate forces of appropriate size for the new ventures.
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