Read Empires and Barbarians Online
Authors: Peter Heather
33
See e.g. Borodzej et al. (1989); Kokowski (1995); Shchukin (2005).
34
See Drinkwater (2007),
chapter 2
and 85–9 (with references).
35
See Ionita (1976).
36
On Heruli casualties, see George Syncellus,
Chronicle
, ed. Bonn, I.717. For other figures from the Aegean expedition (2,000 boats and 320,000 men), see
Historia Augusta
: Claudius 8.1. Cannabaudes’ defeat is said to have cost 5,000 Gothic dead:
Historia Augusta
: Aurelius 22.2. Much of this material derives from the contemporary account of Dexippus. If the parallel with Viking activity is to be taken to the ultimate, one would suspect that relatively small groups made the initial moves, only for their very success to encourage larger entities to participate in the action. The state of the third-century evidence, however, does not make such a chronological progression certain. For further commentary on scale, see Batty (2007), 390ff.
37
Langobardi: Dio 72.1.9. Quadi: Dio 72.20.2 (explicitly
pandemei
, ‘all the people’).
38
For the protest of the Carpi, see Peter the Patrician fr. 8. For the exodus on to Roman soil, see Aurelius Victor,
Caesars
39.43;
Consularia Constantinopolitana
, s.a. 295. See, more generally, Bichir (1976), chapter 14. A total of six campaigns were fought against the Carpi during the reign of the Emperor Galerius (293–311).
39
Naristi: see p. 98. Limigantes: see p. 85. On the Greek cities, the classic works of Minns (1913) and Rostovzeff (1922) remain essential. For an introduction to the archaeological evidence that has since become available, see Batty (2007), 284–9 (with references).
40
Drinkwater (2007), 43–5 rightly rejects the recent tendency to claim that Alamanni did not exist before the 290s, but then attempts to make all the action
of the third century, including the whole settlement of the Agri Decumates, into the result of warband activity. This argument fails to convince.
42
For female burial costume, see note 26 above. For an introduction to the Gothic Bible, see Heather and Matthews (1991),
chapters 5
–
7
. The contrast with the originally Norse Rurikid dynasty, who quickly took Slavic names (see above
Chapter 10
), is extremely striking. See also
Chapter 6
below for discussion of the linguistic evidence from the Anglo-Saxon conquest of lowland Britain.
43
Quadi: Dio 72.20.2. Hasding Vandals: Dio 72. 12.1.
44
‘Commonsense’: Drinkwater (2007), 48. For Burgundian linguistic evidence, see Haubrichs (2003), (forthcoming).
45
For a qualitative definition of ‘mass’ migration, see pp. 31–2 above. If ‘mass’ sounds too redolent of the invasion hypothesis, then alternative terms might be found (perhaps ‘significant’?), but there is surely virtue in bringing first-millennium usage into line with the norms prevailing in specialist migration studies.
46
Panegyrici Latini
3 [11].16–18.
48
On military inscriptions, see Speidel (1977), 716–18; cf. Batty (2007), 384–7. On shipping, see Zosimus 1.32.2–3.
49
I would therefore strongly argue that the ‘interaction’ theme that has been so marked a feature of frontier studies in recent years – e.g. Whittaker (1994); Elton (1996) – must be balanced with a proper appreciation of the frontier’s equally real military function.
50
See pp. 43ff. Oddly, Drinkwater (2007), 48–50, while accepting the evidence for increased competition within the Germanic world, refuses to recognize that this would naturally lead to increased pressure on the Roman frontier, amongst other areas, as groups sought to escape the heightened dangers of their existence. Wells (1999),
chapter 9
is similarly – and equally oddly – ‘internalist’ in interpretation, seeking to locate the causes of third-century disturbances within the frontier zone, and particular the Roman side of it.
51
Ammianus 26.5, 27.1; cf. Drinkwater (2007),
chapter 8
.
52
Tacitus,
Annals
12.25.
53
See e.g. Anokhin (1980); Frolova (1983); Raev (1986).
54
Peter the Patrician fr. 8.
55
The rhythms of Roman frontier management perhaps aided the process. Thinning out the frontier zone periodically, as the Romans did, to reduce overcrowding and the potential for violence (see p. 85), can only have made it easier for more peripheral groups eventually to build up a sufficient manpower advantage to overthrow established Roman clients.
56
Cf.
Chapter 2
above, p. 101. I would in any case strongly argue that freeman and retinue society were unlikely to be completely separate.
57
Jordanes,
Getica
55.282 (‘
ascitis certis ex satellitibus patris et ex populo amatores sibi clientesque consocians
’).
58
For references, see note 10 above, with Kmiecinski (1968) on Odry. Descriptive terms like ‘semi-nomad’ are sometimes used, but to my mind misleadingly. What we’re talking about here are mixed farming populations, who kept many animals, perhaps measured their wealth in cattle, but also engaged in extensive
arable agriculture, despite lacking the techniques to maintain the fertility of individual fields over the long term.
1
Before these tumultuous events of the late fourth century, the western border of Alanic territory lay on the River Don. This just about made them outer clients on Rome’s Lower Danube frontier, especially since the Empire retained strong contacts with the southern Crimea. But they can only be classed as complete outsiders when it comes to the convulsion of 405–8, which affected the Middle Danubian frontier region.
2
The same basic vision of the crisis can be found, amongst other sources, in Ammianus 31; Eunapius frr. (and Zosimus 4.20.3 ff., which is largely but not completely dependent on Eunapius); Socrates,
Historia Ecclesiastica
4.34; Sozomen,
Historia Ecclesiastica
6.37. The total figure of 200,000 is provided by Eunapius fr. 42, whose account is generally vague and rhetorical, and therefore unconvincing by itself: see Paschoud (1971–89), vol. 2, 376 n. 143. The figure has, however, been accepted by some: see e.g. Lenski (2002), 354–5 (with references). On the 10,000 warriors, see Ammianus 31.12.3; these may have represented only the Tervingi: see Heather (1991), 139. On the wagon trains, see Ammianus 31.7, 31.11.4–5, 31.12.1ff. On social dependants, see e.g. Ammianus 31.4.1.ff.; Zosimus 4.20.6.
3
Matthews (1989) stresses Ammianus’ literary artistry, where Barnes (1998) stresses his lack of candour. These two most recent studies disagree on many things but both stress that Ammianus is not a straightforward read. For further comment, see Drijvers & Hunt (1999); G. Kelly (2008).
4
For the ‘more secret’ archive, see Ammianus 14.9.1. For career documents, see Ammianus 28.1.30. For military dispatches, see Sabbah (1978).
5
On the migration topos, see Kulikowski (2002). On causation, see Halsall (2007),
chapter 6
.
6
For examples of the migration topos in action, see pp. 122 and 251 above. Ammianus on warbands: e.g. 14.4; 17.2; 27.2; 28.5. Ammianus on Strasbourg: 16.12.7; 31.8.3.
7
The recruitment of this extra mercenary support has sometimes been confused with the arrival of the Greuthungi alongside the Tervingi. This is a serious mistake: see Heather (1991), 144–5, and Appendix B.
8
On the split of the Tervingi, see Ammianus 31.3.8ff.; 31.4.13. The Greuthungi seem also to have fragmented, in that a leader called Farnobius and his followers, found alongside the main body as it crossed the Danube, then suffered an entirely different fate from the rest: see Ammianus 31.4.12; 31.9.3–4.
9
Only Kulikowski (2002) really dares to suggest that Ammianus might be completely misleading, and even he seems to backtrack substantially in Kulikowski (2007), 123ff., which, while wanting to minimize any unity among the Goths, still accepts that they formed a mixed group of humanity ‘numbered at least in the tens of thousands, and perhaps considerably more’ (p. 130). Among the other anti-migrationists, Halsall (2007) is willing to think in terms of over
10,000 warriors and a total mixed group of 40,000 people; while Goffart (1981), (2006) has never treated the events of 376 in any detail.
10
See Halsall (2007), 170ff., drawing particularly on the analysis of Socrates,
Historia Ecclesiastica
4.33 in Lenski (1995).
11
I therefore remain entirely happy with the analysis of the ‘Ammianus versus Socrates’ issue I offered, with references, in Heather (1986). Halsall’s desire to avoid a sequence of events that would put predatory migration at the heart of causation seems to provide the principal reason for rejecting the contemporary and more detailed Ammianus in favour of the later and less detailed Socrates, but he offers no good reasons based on the historical evidence, and in my view this line of argument allows preconception to justify unsound methodology.
12
Ammianus 31.3.8.
13
Zosimus 4.20.4–5.
14
Ammianus 31.3.2–8.
15
On the Caucasus raid, see Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 51–9 (who does think they came from the Danube). For other Goths north of the Danube in 383, see (Arimer) Achelis (1900); and (Odotheus) Zosimus 4.35.1, 4.37–9.
16
Some Hunnic groups did operate further west before 405–8, but the numbers were very small up to about 400: just the mercenaries who joined the Goths south of the Danube in autumn 377 (see note 7 above) and another Hunnic/Alanic warband found near Raetia in the 380s (Ambrose,
Epistolae
25). Uldin’s force from c.400 was clearly a bit larger, but even his command paled compared to the Hunnic forces that arrived in the Middle Danube after 405–8: see above
Chapter 5
. In general terms, all of this suggests to me that the action of 376 should be viewed rather along the lines of Caesar’s description of the move of the Tenctheri and Usipetes west of the Rhine in the mid-first century
BC
. In that case, an extended series of smaller-scale raids and attacks, rather than one outright invasion, convinced them that they could no longer live securely east of the Rhine: Caesar,
Gallic War
4.1.
17
On discussion, see Ammianus 31.3.8. On persuasion, see Heather (1991), 176–7,179–80.
18
On the archaeology and group identity, see above
Chapter 1
. The particular items within the Cernjachov culture that strike me as a priori promising for distinguishing the immigrant groups are its bone combs, particular
fibulae
and north European, Germanic longhouse types. Unfortunately, no detailed mapping of these items has yet been made.
19
For an introduction to Ulfila, see Heather and Matthews (1991),
chapter 3
. I suspect that the alternative view, of a swift social amalgamation, involves a degree of wishful thinking, largely inspired in reaction to the horrors of the Nazi era, that shrinks from accepting such unequal relationships between relatively bounded groups of human beings. The eastern expansions of the Goths and other Germanic groups in the late Roman period were enthusiastically seized upon by Hitler’s propagandists to justify the poisonous activities of the Third Reich: see Wolfram (1988),
chapter 1
. But a laudable determination to condemn Nazi atrocities becomes muddled thinking if we try to make the past conform to our wish rather than to the reasonable probability of its evidence.
20
Different grades of warrior are not specifically mentioned in the Hadrianople campaign, but they do feature in the evidence for Radagaisus’ Gothic force of 405 (Olympiodorus fr 9.) and Theoderic the Amal’s Ostrogoths (see
Chapter 5
), as well as in later Visigothic laws. Moreover, the
Historia Augusta
’s vivid account of third-century mass Gothic migratory bands, complete with families and slaves, may well be based on fourth-century events (
Historia Augusta
, Claudius 6. 6, 8.2; cf.
Chapter 3
above), and I strongly suspect it was those of lower status that the hard-pressed Tervingi were selling into Roman slavery in return for food on the banks of the Danube: Ammianus 31.4.11.
21
On Carpo-Dacai, see Zosimus 4.34.6. On Cernjachov continuity, see Kazanski (1991).
22
For the Carpi, see
Chapter 3
above. On the Sarmatian move, see
Anonymous Valesianus
6.31.
23
For Goths in the fourth century, see
Chapter 2
. The point about information is also applicable to the minority under Athanaric who moved into Sarmatian territory: this is what the Tervingi as a whole had tried in 332, only to be frustrated by Roman counteraction (see previous note).
24
Noel Lenski (2002), 182ff., 325f. seeks to locate the reason for Valens’ aggression towards Persia in the Goths’ arrival, and thoughts of the extra recruits he could muster from them. I find the argument unconvincing, and remain confident that the Gothic crisis left Valens with very little room for manoeuvre: see Heather (1991), 128ff.
25
Kulikowski (2007), 123ff. implies that the Tervingi and Greuthungi came to the Danube and requested asylum on separate occasions, so that Valens had sequential decisions to make, but this is not what Ammianus’ account suggests (31.4.12–13; 31.5.2–3).
26
Ammianus 31.10; cf. more general frontier studies such as Whittaker (1994).
27
Ammianus 31.5.3–4. This might possibly be Roman paranoia; I don’t think it is.
28
For example, the Goths of Sueridas and Colias (Ammianus 31.6.1); perhaps also the Alamannic unit under Hortarius (Ammianus 29.4.7).