CHAPTER V.

THE INVASIONS OF PEOPLES FROM THE RHINE TO THE BLACK SEA

I.

THE MOVEMENTS OF THE PEOPLES ON THE BLACK SEA, DANUBE AND RHINE

 

IT was not only in Europe and Asia Minor that the provinces were swept by ever recurring waves of destructive invasion, as, time and time again, the barriers of the limites gave way. Africa and Egypt, too, suffered under the plundering raids of the neigh­bouring peoples, though, despite considerable devastation, the damage done by these inroads was mainly of a local character. Again, the assaults of the New Persian Empire must definitely be counted among the barbarian invasions. Shapur might claim to be the heir of the great and highly-civilized empire of the Achaemenids, but his imperialism was predatory. His savage devastations dis­qualified him from putting himself at the head of the anti-Roman reaction in the East; one has only to remember the case of Mariades. This was indeed a great piece of good fortune for Rome. But the Persian wars have already been described; the movements of peoples in the Danube basin must now be con­sidered.

Of the older neighbours of Rome on the frontiers it was not the Germans that were the most dangerous. We hear, however, under Valerian and Gallienus, of the plundering of Pannonia by the Quadi in concert with the Sarmatae Iazyges. The Marcomanni, too, at the beginning of the same reign (254) penetrated into Pannonia and, finding no resistance, pushed their raid as far as Ravenna.

As the forces of the Empire were tied down by other military tasks, Gallienus could only bring the Marcomanni to a halt by ceding to them a part of Upper Pannonia—doubtless on the frontier—while he sealed the treaty of peace by taking to himself as secondary wife the beautiful daughter of their king. It is notable how little is heard of the Asdingian Vandals, who, from the time of Marcus Aurelius, had been settled in the east of Hungary. It is likely enough that they often joined in the Gothic invasions of the Danube provinces, but the fact is expressly recorded on one occasion only (under Decius); later, in 270, after a raid on Pan­nonia they suffered a hard blow from Aurelian on the bank of a river in Pannonia. Equally secondary is the part played by the Bastarnae, from their settlements in the delta of the Danube; they are only mentioned quite occasionally as participants in raids, until, under the pressure of new Germanic peoples, they were finally settled by the Emperor Probus in Thrace.

Far more serious was the aggressive spirit of the free Dacian peoples (that is, peoples settled outside the province of Dacia). Disturbed by the displacements of groups of Germanic tribes under Marcus Aurelius, they were never afterwards completely pacified. In the reign of Commodus and at the beginning of the third century these Dacian peoples were the really formidable aggressors; nothing is heard as yet of the Goths and their com­panions in migration. To these free Dacians belong, among others, the Carpi who are often heard of from the time of Caracalla and whose defeats were celebrated by the emperors by the adoption of the title of Dacicus Maximus. Maximinus, for example, took this style as early as 236. In the lost Scythica of Dexippus the Carpi played a leading part. In the fateful year 236 they gave the Romans their share of trouble, but the new governor of Lower Moesia, Tullius Menophilus, succeeded in holding them in check during his term of office. It is to be observed, however, that despite their pre­tensions to be stronger than the Goths, they were more lightly esteemed by the Roman government: the Goths received annual subsidies, while they did not. Besides Moesia, Dacia was the chief object of their visitations; the task of curbing them was rendered ever more difficult by the contemporary inroads of the Goths. Philip succeeded in defeating them after extensive devastations in 245 and the years following, but in 248 they broke out once more. On this occasion the main stroke was de­livered by the Goths: while they turned to the wealthier provinces of Moesia and Thrace, the Carpi poured over unhappy Tran­sylvania; again in 250 under Decius and once again under Gallus and Valerian they continued restless. When Aurelian in 271 marched eastwards, their robber-bands again appeared in the Danube provinces. The title of victory, Dacicus Maximus, borne by Decius and Gallienus, indicates that the free Dacian peoples were still being successfully repulsed; Aurelian himself routed them and was honoured by the title of Carpicus Maximus (272). It seems as if they were now being roughly handled by intrusive German neighbours. To secure peace Aurelian settled large parts of this people within the Empire south of the Danube; and, when the residue joined with the neighbouring Bastarnae in giving further trouble under Diocletian, they too were transferred to Pannonia and other provinces, after Probus had already settled great masses of Bastarnae in Thrace. It was precisely these peoples that found the pressure of the Gothic tribes too much for endurance.

It is clear that it was these Dacian neighbours of the Roman province, together with the other peoples near the limes, who were first invited by the weakening of the Roman frontier defence to undertake continuous raids for plunder; it was only by slow degrees that this role passed to the Goths and the other Germanic peoples, who now begin to make their appearance. The advance of the Goths from East Germany must, it is true, have occurred somewhat earlier, but the occupation of the rich lands of South Russia is bound to have taken up some time, and it was only the rumours of the booty of the Carpi and their companions that brought the Goths to the Danube provinces.

Dexippus begins his description of the invasions of all these peoples, whom he lumps together under the classical name of ‘Scythians,’ with the year 238. But that was not the first time that the Goths had entered the Roman field of vision. When the Illyrian troops were with Severus Alexander in 231—2, fighting the Persians, ‘Germans’ broke into the Danube provinces. By ‘Germans’ are meant not Western Germans only, as has been supposed; for the Goths as early as 238 were receiving annual subsidies from Rome, and must therefore have been already re­sponsible for serious inroads, so that it is probably they who are meant here. Under Maximinus Thrax the Gothic danger must have been acute, for the great campaign, prepared by the Emperor in the winter of 237—8 and frustrated by his rivals, against the German peoples ‘as far as the Ocean,’ can only have been aimed at them. Perhaps it was Gothic invasions that were re­sponsible for bringing the autonomous coinages in Moesia and Thrace to an almost complete standstill under Maximinus.

The plundering of Istros (not far from the mouth of the Danube) by the Goths, reported by Dexippus, did not involve the final de­struction of the city; the other Greek cities of the Black Sea likewise continued to maintain themselves. The coinage of Olbia and Tyras ceased, it is true, under Severus Alexander, and the reason may well lie in the difficulties occasioned by the Goths, but inscriptions both of Istros and of Olbia attest the presence of Roman troops as late as 248 under Philip; in Olbia, traces of Roman life have been found as late as Valerian. But the Gothic raid of 238 certainly did serious damage in Moesia; the sources unfortunately fail to reveal how it ended.

How important the control of this people appeared to the victorious senatorial party is revealed by the fact, that, to replace Decius, the future emperor, their best general, the hero of Aquileia (, M. Tullius Menophilus was sent as governor to Lower Moesia; in his three years of office (238—241) some degree of peace reigned in these lands on the frontier. The fortifi­cations and city-walls were reconditioned, the troops were trained to discipline. It seems that Gordian III on his expedition against the Persians in 242 was compelled to halt at this point to drive bands of Goths from Moesia and Thrace; and the Gothic King Argaithus took advantage of the absence of the Emperor in Asia to make a serious raid on the provinces adjoining the Lower Danube.

The tide of the Gothic offensive rose higher still in the Danube lands under Philip. Its history depends solely on the confused account in Jordanes. He speaks of two inroads under this emperor and his account can hardly be rejected. If Philip in 246 and at the New Year of 248  is called Germanicus Maximus as well as Carpicus Maximus, the former title may refer to the defeat of the Goths in their first invasion. Perhaps it was only after this attack by the Goths that their annual subsidies were withdrawn. Defensive works on the fortified road that, running along the river Aluta, united Moesia to Dacia, and the fortification of Philippopolis in Thrace, prove that Philip did not look on helplessly while the storm broke.

The year 248 brought with it another exceptionally heavy Gothic attack under Argaithus and Gunthericus, with the assist­ance of their companions in migration, the Taifali, who appear now for the first time, and also in association with the Asdingian Vandals, Carpi and Bastarnae. It is possible that the pre­tender, Pacatianus, was proclaimed about May 248 in Upper Moesia, partly in consequence of having gained some passing success over them; but according to Jordanes the finishing off of the war was reserved for Decius, who was sent into the Danube lands with full powers, probably before the end of the year. The activities of Decius must have met with some success, as the confidence that the Danube army reposed in him suggests; but his success consisted rather in confirming the discipline of the troops, in spite of desertions to the enemy, than in actually de­feating the Goths. The only recorded detail is that Marcianopolis, a great city of Lower Moesia, west of Odessus (Varna), was blockaded, but saved from worse harm by the inexperience of the assailants in siegecraft; the terror of the inhabitants is attested by the numerous hoards of coins that were buried on that occasion.

The departure of the Danube army for Italy in the summer of 249 brought the Goths back to Moesia. Their king, Kniva, who led the campaign, set to work in the next year with a deliberation that betrays at every point a strategy on the truly grand scale. The main army, which, as it finally retired towards South Russia, must likewise have come up from the Black Sea, nevertheless makes its break through the Moesian limes far to the west at Oescus; the crossing at this point implies a command of the fortified line of the Aluta, which guarded one of the most important entrances into Transylvania. It is clear, then, that Kniva maintained tactical contact with the hordes that broke into Dacia—according to Lactantius, Carpi. A detachment of the army broke at the same moment into Lower Moesia and pushed on as far as Philippopolis in Thrace; Kniva himself pressed eastward against Novae and was compelled to withdraw by Trebonianus Gallus, the governor of Lower Moesia. This, how­ever, was no real success for Rome, for the Gothic leader had no thoughts of flight, but quietly turned to the interior of the pro­vince. He moved south down the valley of the Iatrus and besieged Nicopolis, where a large part of the population had taken refuge. Meanwhile, the Emperor had his son Herennius Etruscus ap­pointed Caesar, in order to be able to send him in advance as his responsible representative with the detachments of the Danube army, which had been brought into Italy to overcome Philip Very soon afterwards Decius himself hastened from Rome to Moesia, and, near Nicopolis, gained a considerable victory over Kniva, who is said to have lost over 30,000 men. The energetic Emperor further succeeded in clearing Dacia of the Carpi; a Spanish inscription names him Dacicus Maximus as early as the autumn of 250, and before the year was out, he was honoured in Apulum as restitutor Daciarum. But the leader of the defeated Goths was again quick to find the right move. He turned south to unite with his second army. Decius moved after him, but was too slow; the Goths already had the 4000 feet high plateau of the Balkans behind them, when Decius in his turn climbed the Shipka pass. He was hoping to be able to relieve Philippopolis in a few days, but was compelled after his forced march to rest his men and horses at Beroea at the southern foot of the mountains. Here he was taken unawares by Kniva and so completely beaten that he could barely make his escape over the Balkans.

Decius had already had reason to fear that his Thracian troops might mutiny, and it was probably this rebellious spirit in the army that led T. Julius Priscus, the governor who was besieged in Philippopolis, to have himself proclaimed emperor and to join the Goths. It may be that, in return, the soldiers were promised a safe-conduct. But this desperate step failed to save the besieged; thousands of them were butchered at the taking of the city and great numbers of men, including many of senatorial rank, were taken prisoner. Priscus disappears from history; he cannot long have survived his treachery.

Decius fled with the remnant of his army back to the Danube at Oescus, where Gallus stood with his corps still intact, and pre­pared to renew the war. It was still the summer of 250, but Decius was so weak that for nearly a whole year, up to his tragic death, he was not in a position to cross the mountains, but was forced to leave the Goths to wreak their fury on Thrace. He re­stricted himself from the first to the task of awaiting the with­drawal of the enemy, in order to beset them on their return. Yet he failed even to hold the Balkan passes—obviously the most ad­vantageous course—but sent Gallus to the mouth of the Danube, in order to prevent the Goths from crossing, if they took that route; he himself probably remained farther upstream, in order to keep a watch on the western crossings. It must not be forgotten, that it was scarcely possible for him to bring up troops from other parts of the Empire; the risings of pretenders in Rome, Gaul and the East made such a course inadvisable if not impossible.

In May 251, when Herennius Etruscus was made Augustus, new and notable coin-types suddenly appear on the Antoniniani of the mint of Rome, one for Decius, the other for his elder son, both celebrating a ‘Victoria Germanica.’ These must refer to the Gothic war. The victorious engagement thus celebrated can, as things lay, only relate to battles north of the Balkan range. The Goths chose the shortest and most convenient road to the Black Sea and, in view of the defensive attitude of the Romans, must have reached the Dobrudja before it came to a battle.

The Romans had the better of the fighting, but the Goths still retained all their booty and captives. Kniva once again displayed his talent for command when, a month later (June 251), the decision fell. He succeeded in luring the Emperor, who walked incautiously into the trap laid for him ^[6] , into a marshy place near Abrittus (Aptaat-Kalessi) in the Dobrudja and in inflicting upon him a decisive defeat. After Herennius Etruscus had died bravely, Decius fought on, until he too fell on the field of honour.

The Illyrian provinces had already suffered terribly from these invasions. There is no record of the number of cities that perished. It is probable that Marcianopolis, for example, met its fate. On this site has been found an enormous hoard of silver, and nothing but a general catastrophe can have made men forget such a gigantic fortune.

But the failure of the gallant Decius had not only set his crown on the hazard; any barrier that could hold back the barbarian flood was now swept away. Trebonianus Gallus, now proclaimed emperor, found himself compelled, in his desperate plight, to consent officially to the Goths’ quietly carrying off with them their rich booty and their hosts of captives.

The history of the subsequent Gothic raids has been obscured by the fact that the Byzantine writers have run together under Gallus all those later incursions of these peoples that demonstrably took place in later reigns. The reason may be that Dexippus at this point gave in advance a comprehensive survey of the story of raids that were now becoming a matter of course. But we must not infer that the Goths now kept quiet for two whole years. On the contrary, the superior strategy of Kniva and the booty taken, not to speak of the acquiescence of Gallus, were only too calculated to raise the martial spirit of the Germans to the pitch of arrogance. They do, indeed, appear, in return for the annual subsidies that they exacted, to have left Moesia in peace for a time, but they sought compensation elsewhere. In 252 other Goths together with the Borani—apparently a Sarmatian people from South Russia—the East German Burgundians and the Carpi broke into the European provinces, and in 253 made a first expedition by sea to Asia Minor which spread fire and sword as far as Ephesus and Pessinus. In the spring of the same year the Goths under Kniva stirred again and demanded an increase of their sub­sidies. But the governor of Lower Moesia, Aemilius Aemilianus, succeeded in inducing his troops by liberal promises to undertake a counter-attack on the Gothic territory north of the Danube; success brought him proclamation as emperor, and death.

But this bold stroke had no lasting effects. Aemilianus was not even able to clear Thrace of the hostile bands. In 254 the Goths again crossed the Danube, ‘as is their custom,’ laid waste Thrace, and pushed on to Thessalonica, but were driven off with heavy loss. Greece was seized with panic; Thermopylae and the Isthmus were fortified; the walls of Athens, which since Sulla’s time had fallen into decay, were restored. But there was no one able to curb the robber bands in the field. For at the same time the Marcomanni made havoc of Pannonia, while, of the two emperors, one had perforce to take the field against the Germans on the Rhine, and the other was tied down in the East. The position in Illyricum was terrible enough. The details cannot be followed in the authorities. The activity of the mint of Viminacium between 253 and 257 points to some degree of order in Upper Moesia during this period; but the transference of its activity to Cologne shows that the Rhinelands were regarded as of more importance than the payment of the Danube troops. The Gothic peril became so constant that the glacis of the Balkan range was fortified in order to observe and fend off the raiders (‘latrunculi’). The usurpations of 260, in which the desperation of the Danube population expressed itself, only made a weak position weaker still. But from 261 onwards there was some relief; the undisturbed activity of the mint of Siscia points to a re-organization beginning in 262.

Not less terrible were the sufferings of Asia Minor. The Borahi succeeded in inducing the Roman vassal-king of Bosporus to put his fleet at their disposal and, even if they had little success in 254, they conquered Pityus and Trapezus in the next year; in 256 followed a great naval expedition, undertaken by their Gothic neighbours, accompanied along the west coast of the Black Sea by their land-army. After the garrison of Chalcedon had basely left its post despite its superior numbers, that wealthy city fell into the hands of the Goths and was followed by Nicomedia, Nicaea, Prusa and other cities in the neighbourhood; the unresourceful Valerian could do nothing to check them. The anarchy and misery that these raids brought in their train are depicted with all the vividness of actual experience in a pastoral letter of the Bishop of Neocaesarea. And yet Valerian had the effrontery to celebrate the great event as a Victoria Germanica on his issues of Antioch in 257—a boast as well grounded as the parallel announcement of a Victoria Parthica. If in the next decade no further expeditions by sea followed, the credit must be assigned to the efforts of Gallienus; the reputation of Odenathus may have contributed something to the result.

If in the years following 260 the restlessness of the East Germans seems to some extent to have died down, new and more violent waves broke on the Empire at the end of the reign of Gallienus, most probably set in motion by the arrival of new bands of Germans in South Russia and in the northern Danube-basin. First of all, the whole of Asia Minor was swept by marauding bands of warriors brought by sea (267). They were Goths, who, making their way through the Bosporus, laid waste Chalcedon and then plundered the rich city of Nicomedia. There was, it appears, no one to say them nay, when they sailed through the Hellespont and fell upon the cities of Ionia. They reduced to ashes the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus and, on the return, the time-honoured site of Troy. No less wide were their depreda­tions on land; the west of Asia Minor was the first to suffer (Lydia and Phrygia are expressly named after Bithynia); they then passed on to Cappadocia and Galatia. But, when Odenathus, shortly before his death⁵, advanced with his army against them as far as Heraclea Pontica, they were already again on board, carrying with them a booty that included many prisoners, among whom may have been the grandparents of Wulfila, the apostle of the Goths.

This great success stirred up the Black Sea peoples to further endeavours and in the next year they mustered in numbers as yet unparalleled at the mouth of the Dniester; 500 ships, on the most modest estimates, according to others, 2000, put to sea, and, even if the number of 320,000 warriors for the land-army that accom­panied the fleet along the coast is grossly exaggerated, it was probably the strongest German army that trod the soil of the Empire in the third century. The fleet was mainly supplied by the sailor-folk of the Heruli, who seem to have been newcomers to the shores of the Black Sea; the mass of the land-army was formed by bands of Goths, but Bastarnae and fragments of other peoples joined the expedition and spread over Thrace. Byzantium and Chrysopolis were ravaged by the sea forces; but on the Propontis many of their ships were wrecked, and the imperial fleet also attacked with success. Even if an occasional enterprise mis­carried—the invaders failed, for example, to take Tomi and Marcianopolis—they overran all Greece as far south as Sparta, with fire and sword, and Athens fell to their arms. Here the imperial commander Cleodemus assailed them with his fleet, and bands of Athenian volunteers under Dexippus, whose admirable Scythica and Chronica, the best accounts of the history of the period, have unfortunately been lost, inflicted on them considerable losses. Through Boeotia, Epirus, Macedonia they made their way back, aiming for Moesia. The unsuccessful siege of Philippopolis  (which is not to be confused with the siege under Decius) may have happened at this time. It seems to have been another detachment of the fleet that pushed through the Hellespont, repaired the ships at Athos and besieged Cassandreia (Potidaea) and Thessalonica. On the news of the approach of the Emperor Gallienus and'his army, this force advanced to meet him through Doberus and Pelagonia. The advance guard of Dalmatian cavalry cut to pieces 3000 barbarians; then the mass of the army crossed swords with the imperial forces at Naissus. In the grim battle that followed the Romans were at first driven back, but they were skilfully rallied to a surprise attack on the enemy, who left 50,000 men on the field and crowded into a fortified laager. The Herulian chieftain, Naulobatus, who surrendered to Gallienus, was rewarded with the consular insignia, and, perhaps, given employment with his followers in the Roman service. The victory, however, was not exploited to the full because Gallienus was compelled to withdraw the greater part of his army post-haste, to defend himself against the treachery of Aureolus. But in the meantime his general Marcianus successfully prosecuted the operations against the Germans. After the death of Gallienus Claudius came in person to take up the struggle. When the Germans, dying like flies from lack of provisions, withdrew from their laager on Mount Gessax to Macedonia, they were twice defeated by the newly established corps of cavalry and pursued by their opponents, though it appears that early in 269 fresh bands of considerable size crossed the Danube to the assistance of their compatriots. Assailed by famine and plague, the survivors were taken prisoner and made use of as soldiers and farmers. The Herulian fleet, which undertook a fresh expedition in 269, likewise failed to achieve any great success, as the cities, it appears, were well guarded, though the countryfolk were harried far and wide.

II.

THE ABANDONMENT OF DACIA

From these locust-swarms that had for so long been devouring the Danube provinces year by year Dacia had been the worst sufferer. Even before the Gothic storms, she had been vexed by the free Dacians, and, from her geographical position, she was most exposed of all provinces to attack: the Transylvanian Alps simply form one great bridgehead in advance of the Danube front and. this projecting semi-circle lacked an extended con­nection with the limes of Moesia and Pannonia, being separated from both provinces by the vassal-states of the Sarmatae Iazyges and Roxolani, originally created to separate the powerful kingdom of Dacia from the Roman boundaries. After the conquest of Trajan these buffer-states had lost their raison d'être; the fortified roads and regular patrols, that crossed and controlled these strips of land, were not calculated to hold up the drive of powerful peoples. Marcus Aurelius had intended at least to get rid of the gaps to the north and west of Dacia, but the senseless Commodus again left these inlets unstopped, and the north of Hungary kept filling up with fresh arrivals from East Germany, while from the east and south of Transylvania came the heavy pressure of the Goths. The situation of the province was rendered even more difficult by the change of strategy that aimed at parrying hostile offensives not by the cordon on the limes, but by a disposition of the troops in depth. Under this system such an advanced frontier-position as Dacia lost its strategic importance, and stress was no longer laid on its adequate garrisoning. In the process of concentration to the rear the elite corps were withdrawn from the actual frontiers and transferred to important road­junctions in the interior, while the gaps came more and more to be filled with barbarian foederati or militia of inferior quality.

The ancient literary authorities declare that Dacia was lost under Gallienus, but this simply reflects the general tendency to make that emperor responsible for all the evils of his times, a tendency zealously promoted by the hostile party of the Senate. But the discussion of the movements of the Goths has already revealed the fact that the invasions reached their zenith not under Gallienus, as the late Roman historical compendia of the second half of the fourth century maintain (they depend on a literary scheme, that sketches the type of the tyrant in its progressive degeneration), but rather in the years from Decius to the death of Valerian, and that any state of anarchy that the fearful aftermath of 267—269 might produce was nothing new. The evidence of epigraphy and numismatics permits the reconstruction of some such picture as the following.

The normal circulation of coinage was indeed seriously re­duced from the time of Philip onwards, but it was still generally active as late as 253. In the summer of 256 bronze issues for the provincia Dacia were still being struck at the mint of Viminacium. The last surviving official inscriptions fall between 256 and 259. But, where systematic excavations have been made, for example, in Apulum, the chief stronghold of the province, it has become clear that the provision of pay for the troops was still maintained and had not ceased before the beginning of the reign of Aurelian. The road from Orsova to Karansebes, uniting Moesia and Dacia, was held, as late as Gallienus, even more firmly—as the coin­hoards show—than the mountainous country proper; the fact is confirmed by inscriptions of the years of his sole rule.

It has been noted that from the time of Philip vexillationes drawn from the frontier legions were permanently stationed in North Italy; among them were the detachments of the two legions of Dacia, which seem to have gone over in 268 to Postumus with other vexillationes stationed there. But the parent legions themselves were also set in motion. At a date soon after 261 the commander of the Legio XIII Gemina appears in Mehadia, at the southern gateway of Dacia—together, it must be supposed, with his corps, which seems as early as 260 to have taken part in the revolts of Ingenuus and Regalian. Later under Gallienus both legions are found in Southern Pannonia, where the road to Italy crosses the Drave, as a regular garrison for Poetovio. What other troops there may have been in Transylvania, and whether detachments of legions were among them, is un­known. But there is first-hand evidence to prove that until the beginning of 270 the abandonment of the province was not even considered. Types of the very first issue of Aurelian, on the model of Decius, represent the reliance of the Emperor on the might of Illyricum; among them is a Dacia Felix. Then comes a sudden, unexpected change, necessitated by events of a novel character.

The facts are clear. Aurelian after his proclamation hastened to Rome, thence to fight in Pannonia, only to return to North Italy for a severe campaign against the invading Juthungi. In the winter of 270—1 he arranged affairs in Rome and Italy and pre­pared for an expedition against Palmyra. On his way to the East he first cleared the Danube lands and Thrace of marauding bands, then crossed to the northern bank and swiftly defeated the Goths in a series of great battles, in the course of which the chieftain Cannabaudes lost his life. The importance of the victory is underlined in what Ammianus Marcellinus says of the Goths ‘per Aurelianum, acrem virum, et severissimum noxarum ultorem pulsi, per longa saecula siluerunt immobiles.’ The victorious Emperor, then, was complete master of the situation; how came he to the sudden resolve to abandon Dacia.

The explanation is to be found in the general position. Zenobia controlled Egypt, the chief granary of the Empire. The corn-fleets in 271 were no longer reaching Italy from Alexandria; the decision must not be postponed, if Rome was not to go short. As the Gallic Empire was still independent, it was only by the army of the Danube that the East could be subdued. If the Illyrian troops, already weakened by losses, were to be withdrawn (and they did in the sequel bear the brunt of the fighting against Zenobia¹), without surrendering the Danubian provinces to the mercy of the Goths, there was but one course open and that Aurelian took. He ordered the withdrawal of the Roman popula­tion (‘Romanos’) from Dacia, transferred the legions of Dacia to Moesia, to the two gates of Gothic invasions, Ratiaria and Oescus, and named the country Dacia Ripensis. Behind it he carved out of Moesia and Thrace a Dacia Mediterranea, the capital of which, Serdica, received a great new imperial mint. This organized migra­tion of Romans from Dacia to the south side of the Danube, where farmers and recruits for the army were much needed, a migration protected by the prestige of Aurelian’s victories, removed Roman civilization from Dacian soil as completely as Trajan had driven out the earlier Dacian inhabitants of the land.

This strategic withdrawal re-established the Danube frontier for a considerable time, while it also supplied a home to a large section of the Goths, in which they succeeded in forming an in­dependent State as the Visigoths, destined thereafter to be ousted by the Huns and to exercise a deep influence on the fortunes of France and Spain. The other Goths in the Black Sea area, probably ancestors of the Ostrogoths, stirred again in 276; Tacitus, Florian and Probus were to be much plagued by their naval expeditions. From the West Goths, too, came isolated plundering raids southwards. But the great movement was at an end, and the East German Gepidae, who had meanwhile pushed into Eastern Hungary and had fought bitterly with the Goths and Vandals for their settlements, were not in time to share actively in the invasions³.

III.

THE ATTACKS OF THE WEST GERMANS

It is under Caracalla that the name of Alemanni first occurs. It appears that this people is identical with the Semnones, who lived to the west of the Elbe and, encroaching on the lands where the more gifted and civilized Hermunduri had been settled, ex­ercised a dangerous pressure on the limes of Upper Germany and Raetia. Caracalla inflicted a serious defeat on them in 213 and protected the military frontier opposite them with new works of defence. But, twenty years later, they started a destructive offensive against the frontier-districts of Upper Germany and Raetia. The coin-hoards attest the destruction of very many forts in these years (a.d. 233-234). The Raetian limes in what is now Bavaria seems to have been badly shaken over considerable sections at that time, whereas the stretch towards Upper Germany was successfully restored¹. The gentle Severus Alexander failed against them in 234, and it was left for Maximinus Thrax to punish them effectively in the following years. Again there was a temporary relief; everywhere the fortifications were repaired and strengthened. The continuity of coin-hoards in the region of the German limes down to the joint rule of Valerian and Gallienus, together with the inscriptions, shows that life was going on normally in these parts. But the general convulsion of the Empire gave these peoples, too, their chance. They certainly made raids under Gallus, for the expeditionary force concentrated in Raetia in the early autumn of 253 was doubtless intended to avenge their devastations. The sudden withdrawal of the army to Italy had the natural effect of heightening the offensive spirit of the Alemanni. Besides minor incursions, of which our meagre sources preserve no record, they carried out a terribly destructive raid on Gaul and pressed on through Switzerland into Italy. One band made its way as far as Rome itself, but was frightened off by a numerous army, which the Senate had hastily assembled and armed. Gallienus himself now hurried over the Alps. He brought with him the legion VIII Augusta from the Rhine and, on his way, drew the I Adiutrix and II Italica from Pannonia and Noricum; his army, including the Praetorian Guard and the II Parthica (from Albano), had not exceeded some ten thousand men. Yet it sufficed to inflict a crushing defeat on the vastly superior numbers of the Alemanni near Milan. The exact year is not certain, but it must have been either 258 or 259. That Gaul had been visited more than once by these invaders in the years preceding is a very probable assumption.

The blow thus sustained by the Alemanni certainly weakened them and drove them from Italy; but none the less it was soon found impossible to restore and defend the limes area in the angle formed by the upper waters of the Rhine and Danube. Gallienus did, indeed, refortify Vindonissa in 260, to bar the way southward to the Alemanni, and other forts were built at the same time. But the revolt of Postumus, at the end of 260, set the Rhine frontier and the Upper Danube in hostile opposition to one another, and the intervening district along the limes between the two fronts became a no man’s land. The latest inscription from the Raetian limes dates from 256—7; it is to these strips of land along the frontier that the notice, ‘sub principe Gallieno... amissa Raetia’ must apply. The loss is likewise recorded of the districts round the Lahn as far as the Sieg, or even perhaps as the Ruhr, that is to say, the Roman sphere of influence extending from the most northerly part of the frontier barrier.’ The evidence of archaeology and coins suggests that the agri decumates were over­run at the same time.

That Gallienus in 2,68 still meant to hold Raetia in strength is shown by the evidence of Aurelius Victor: Aureolus, the com­mander of the new cavalry corps, stationed in Milan, at the time of his revolt was in Raetia ‘in command of the army.’ Obviously he had called the troops from that province to join him, for the Alemanni immediately afterwards broke through and advanced over the Brenner as far as Lake Garda. After the murder of Gallienus the new emperor Claudius marched against them and dealt them a heavy blow, though unable to exploit his victory strategically, for he was already compelled to turn his arms against the Goths, who had flooded into the Balkans. So it came about that the half of the Alemanni who survived were able to escape homewards, as it seems with no great difficulty. The gate had not been barred and bolted against their invasions. They were not even deterred from invading Italy once again in the very next year. Aurelian was engaged in mastering the Vandals in Pannonia, when he received the tidings that the Alemanni, with their kins­men, the Juthungi, were plundering the fields round Milan. One band was actually in possession of Placentia when he arrived. Near this latter city the Emperor sustained a defeat brought about, it appears, by a surprise attack by night from Alemannic forces hiding in the woods. The Via Aemilia in the direction of Bologna-Ancona was laid open to the foe, and it was not till they had reached the key to Rome on the Via Flaminia that Aurelian overtook them and defeated them decisively on the Metaurus near Fanum Fortunae. As the enemy streamed back northwards, he pursued and defeated them a second time near Ticinum, not far from Milan. The vagrant remnant seems then to have been wiped out. These blows, it must be presumed, fell mainly on the Alemanni; the Juthungi withdrew in an orderly column to the Danube, where they were overtaken and defeated by the Emperor. This severe, but victorious campaign had the effect of finally frightening off the Alemanni and their comrades, at least from Italy. But Raetia was not secured against them until Aurelian, on his way to fight Tetricus in Gaul, cleared Vindelicia of their marauding bands. Probus later threw back the Alemanni over the Neckar on to the foot-hills of the Swabian Alps, a success that marked the complete efficiency of the Roman defensive at least. Raetia could at last draw breath.

In a rapid glance over the raids of the Germans of the Rhine, the remarkable fact emerges that it was not any movements among the German peoples themselves, but simply and solely the loosen­ing of the Roman power that occasioned the storm on the limes. The Franks are no newcomers to the Rhine but only a new league of Bructeri, Chamavi, Salii and others, who had united in order to make head more easily against Rome. This banding together on a considerable scale had in point of fact strengthened them con­siderably and had laid the foundations of the role they were after­wards to play in history. They became active rather later than the Alemanni. As early as 231 they were giving trouble to the Legio I Minervia, but the operations against the Alemanni by Severus Alexander and Maximinus must have had their effects on them as well. It is, however, chiefly the coin-hoards that show how fast and far the sense of insecurity spread along the Rhine and in Gaul. From 253 onwards the situation became difficult in the extreme. It is significant, indeed, that Gallienus thought less of the raids of Marcomanni and Quadi, that even extended to Italy, or of the imperilling of Greece by the Goths, than of the danger on the Rhine. It is at this point that the authorities first mention the Franks as the opponents. In 254, at the latest, the Emperor seems to have reached Gaul. Arrived there, he guarded the Rhine crossings and ejected the scattered bands of invaders.  He even crossed the river to punish the raiders; an expedition of this kind seems to have occurred in 255—its successful termination was celebrated by an inscription of the Twentieth legion. But, as Gallienus had few troops at his disposal and was almost crushed by the vast hordes of the enemy, he eased the situation by con­cluding an alliance with one German prince against the rest—an alliance that actually put a stop to the raids.

Two, or perhaps three, major campaigns fell to the Emperor’s lot before 258. He did not hesitate to set up his headquarters on the front itself in Cologne. Thence he hurried (258 or 259) to Italy against the Alemanni and again (in 260) to Pannonia against Ingenuus; at his departure he left his son, Saloninus, in Cologne. At this moment, in the autumn of 260 (p. 185), his general Postumus succeeded in disposing of an invading band of Germans and used his success to secure his own proclamation as rival emperor. It must be admitted that Postumus defended the Rhine frontier with the same energy as Gallienus and developed the defence further by fortifications and the erection of bridge­heads—depending no less than Gallienus on the aid of German against German. His coins and inscriptions announce German victories in 261 and 264. But the division caused by his pro­clamation sealed the fate of the agri decumates. Even so, his forces were frequently and severely hampered by the need to arm against Gallienus and by heavy fighting against him. That he was not even wholly successful on the defensive is illustrated by the numerous hoards of coins buried in his reign on French soil; they show that the general insecurity rather increased than diminished, as compared with the previous years.

All that he actually achieved was completely lost under his weak successors. Aurelian brought some relief, but it was re­served for Probus to restore order and stability. Under Gallienus and Postumus the Franks took to the sea and plundered, among other places, Tarraco in Spain; under Probus himself one roving band carried out a romantic expedition of exploration and robbery in the lands of the Mediterranean. That the examples cited were not isolated is everywhere shown by the coin-hoards, that were buried at that time along the English Channel and right down the coasts of France.

IV.

THE EFFECTS OF ROME’S STRUGGLE WITH THE GERMANIC WORLD

The movement of the East Germans, thanks to the advances in excavation, is to-day completely intelligible. A general view can be gained of the process by which, in a com­paratively short time, they pushed on from their tiny settlements in Scandinavia to possess a vast area in the east of Europe. Their new settlements were in the main fertile and thinly populated, and so it is evident, that it was not hunger and need or lack of land to cultivate that led them southwards, but sheer excess of youthful energy and love of adventure—just as in the ‘Sturm und Drang’ period of the Celtic race many centuries earlier.

The Goths were men of a mighty stamp; their warriors were giants indeed¹. Sometimes it happened that the attacking Germans were few in numbers and only able to gain the upper hand through the effeminate cowardice of the garrisons of Asia Minor or of the civil population; but even when the Germans came in mass the emperors could usually only lead inconsiderable expeditionary forces against them. There is probably no great exaggeration in the statement that the Juthungi alone possessed 40,000 cavalry and 80,000 foot.

Apart from this wealth of numbers and vitality on the German side, the main cause of their successes lay in the decline of the Empire and the acute crisis on which it had now entered. War on several fronts at once and, still more, the constant risings of pre­tenders drew the armies from the frontiers; it can often be shown that the withdrawal of troops from a section of the frontier immediately provoked a German invasion. Under such conditions with pestilence and war decimating the population, with the citizen body lacking all military efficiency, ready to stand by and watch the raging of these children of nature, with an unexampled financial crisis and revolution of ideas convulsing the world, it was an amazing achievement to be able to ride out the German storm at all. When one remembers that the army even in normal times was too small for its tasks, and that the Empire’s man-power was now terribly on the decline; when one adds that in these times of terrible pressure the whole organization and tactics of the army were remodelled and that a new class of professional commanders had to be trained to replace the dilettanti of the Senate, the achieve­ment, due above all to the soldier-sons of Illyricum and a few gifted personalities, must be rated very high indeed.

It was a great piece of good fortune for Rome that her ad­versaries were so primitive. Instead of fighting in numerically fixed tactical units, the Germans took the field in bands formed through kinship or neighbourhood; discipline in any real sense there was none. After a stout resistance on the field of battle they often collapsed from defective organization of supply, as, for ex­ample, in the Balkans in 269. Inferior equipment and a reluctance to wear helmets were serious handicaps. Furious, unconcerted attacks often led to disaster, and of the siege of cities they could make nothing.

The waves of the mighty inundation did, indeed, slowly sub­side. But the devastation that they left behind them was terrible. The masses of the cultivated classes, who at this time lost their lives or were carried off as slaves, could never again be replaced. Hundreds of cities were taken, and the terrors of those years are attested not only by coin-hoards all over the Empire, but also by the burnt layers turned up everywhere by the archaeologist’s spade as the hall-mark of the epoch. Along with countless treasures of art Rome’s store of gold went as booty, ransom or tribute to the Germans. The export trade from the Rhine to the Danube lands, which, as recent research shows, had attained serious economic importance, was completely checked by the constant threat to the river-frontier, while trade by sea suffered from the raids of the pirates.

Even in modern times war lets loose the basest passions. What wonder, then, if those children of nature revelled in sheer de­struction? If they deliberately burn cities after sacking them, or murder such prisoners as are sick or decrepit? It would not be wholly just to charge them with the moral guilt for all this. The tragedy was not brought about by any ethical inferiority of the German race, but by the clash of two worlds at different levels of culture. As long as the Germans remained in their primitive environment, it was natural that they should earn their daily bread, not in the sweat of their brow, but in blood: ‘volenti non fit iniuria.’ But when they turned this law of violence against the world-State, which was adapted for peace and had based its whole mighty organization on a humane mode of life, their primitive morality proved disastrous to the higher morality of the Empire, little as they can be blamed for it.

It is an observed fact that, the greater the friction, the greater the assimilation to one another of two surfaces in contact; and so even these destructive wars produced a pronounced assimilation of the opposing parties, which, for the Germans, acquired a decisive historical importance.

In order to compete with the armies of Rome, East and West Germans alike united in considerable leagues, which in several instances, such as the Alemanni or the Franks, became the basis for States destined to survive. The rise of this class of leaders is illustrated by the appearance of such personalities as Kniva, the great opponent of Decius. In the later campaigns it becomes plain how quickly the East Germans had assimilated the military technique of the classical world.

The gold extorted from the Roman State or from individuals produced a major economic change in the German world. Gathered at first in mere greed and employed as ornament, this valuable form of property gradually became a regular medium of exchange and was the chief factor in raising the Germans to an advanced stage of money economy. The finds make it possible to follow the process by which gold coinage, streaming into Germany, reached the North and, as early as the fifth century, filled the whole of Scandinavia.

Even stronger in its effects on Germany than the rivalry of opposition was the slow and barely perceptible radiation of the forms of ancient civilization. It will always be remarkable, that this form of peaceful penetration, while beginning much earlier with the West Germans, took a much firmer hold of the East Germans, as the later history of the Goths and Vandals shows. It is not possible here to describe the great influx of Roman export ­trade into free Germany, its passage as far as Scandinavia, and the lively circulation of Roman money in the German sphere; but one fact can be stressed, that the definite settlement of the Goths on the Black Sea and in the basin of the Danube had an extremely invigorating effect on the trade-routes leading from these directions northwards. Plundering raids had already brought great wealth from the Roman provinces to the Germans; but the regular influx of gold, coined or in bars, was first due to the relation of the tribes to the Empire as foederaii and to the em­ployment of individual Germans in. the imperial army.

The years spent in such service gave an education that could not fail to have its consequences. German nobles now began to reach high posts as officers, even if, in the first place, it was only as leaders of their own people serving with Rome. Naulobatus, the Herulian chieftain, who in 268 received consular insignia from Gallienus, doubtless gave in return his services in the army ^[7] ; the ‘Pompeianus Dux, cognomine Francus,’ for example, who played a part in the capture of Zenobia, was certainly a Frank. How rapidly these sturdy warriors made themselves at home at imperial headquarters is illustrated by the anecdote about the Herulian Andonoballus; the debate as to which is preferable—the old hostility or the friendship of the emperor—reminds one at once of the contest of Eriulf and Fravitta at the court of Theodosius the Great. How the spirit of the ancient world came thus to permeate the Germans cannot be shown in detail here. To this must be added—as early as the third century and with increasing force thereafter—the Christian missions in West and East.

Such contacts as these encroached more and more on the original civilization, Celtic in colouring, that the Germans had hitherto possessed. No less influential in this direction than the civilization of Rome was the Graeco-Sarmatian civilization of South Russia, which not only succeeded in transfusing the Gothic peoples, but finally extended as far as the Ugrians in the zone of the wooded steppes and took possession of the Huns as they thrust forward from Asia into a region between the Caucasus and the Caspian This cultural influence can only be grasped today from the material remains, above all, from the characteristic gold jewelry with inlaid stones, which subse­quently became so fashionable among the Franks and Anglo-Saxons. The fact that the ugly Sarmatian habit of de­forming the skull succeeded in establishing itself among the East Germans may, indeed, attest the taking over of deep-seated religious and other ideas over and above the borrowings of art. In all this we can detect the historical preparation of the German peoples for the role that they were destined to play in the Middle Ages.

This will be better understood from a brief survey of the other side of the picture. It has been seen that Rome was unable to make a complete settlement with the intruders. She was glad enough to be able to deflect their hordes or secure their with­drawal by payments of money. These payments developed into a regular system, which, under the decent cover of the old scheme of subordinate foederaii, led on to the new and superior warrior­caste found in the later Germano-Roman States. As early as Caracalla the budget was seriously burdened by the annual sub­sidies paid to barbarian peoples; the movements of the Germans in the third century simply compelled the Empire to include the whole of the surrounding world of the Germans in this system of subsidies, which led directly to the interdependence of the two great powers on one another. It can only be hinted in passing, how many distinct gradations of assistance were possible; conquered princes had to render actual service, others took over the defence of sections of frontier as allies of equal status, under Gallienus, or remained in their own lands to help the emperor against his enemies. It is further to be observed, how varied and extensive were the employments of German material both in regular Roman troops and in national formations in the im­perial army. The serious lack of farmers led, from the time of Marcus Aurelius and, more particularly, from the middle of the third century, to the transplantation of ever-increasing masses of Germans to the soil of the Empire as free or half-free farmers.

While this intermixture of the peoples thus permeated the lowest strata of the population, it also extended upwards into the highest. The grandees of Rome might find it absurd that Cara­calla should appear in public in German dress but it was at least a foreshadowing of what was to be. The Marcomannic secondary wife of Gallienus, in her position of high honour, and the German princes on the council of war of the soldier-emperors illustrate once again the incipient germanization of the court.

A far-reaching process of ancient history moved thus towards its consummation. Rome was first compelled to draw the men to maintain her world-empire from Italy instead of from the capital; the exhaustion of Italy next transferred this role to the civilized provinces of the interior, and, after them, to the rough sons of the frontier-lands. Even these could not for ever bear the brunt of the ceaseless wars of the third century. Rome was now driven to go beyond them to the barbarian world. What she sought was just human raw material, and no more, but the political centre of gravity shifted naturally to the new forces beyond the frontiers, and thereby rendered inevitable the birth of the Germano-Roman States.