Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge

by Derek Williams

  A further, almost comparable human commotion followed the Second World War, prompted by the collapse of colonialism, the fall and rise of ideologies and the burgeoning of aspirations; with the spread of communications tempting aspirants to move and of cheap transportation, bringing temptation within reach. Countries not affected by these 20th-century migrations are rare. To a degree they are fortunate. On the other hand, there are economic miracles related to movement into places like California, West Germany, Hong Kong and Taiwan which confirm yet again that migrations need not be destructive, for it is usually true that incomers work harder than incumbents.

  With this complex human tide, released since 1945, has come a new vocabulary of flux: refugees, job-seekers, guest workers, foreign advisers, brain-drainers, expatriates, displaced persons, illegal aliens, unlawful immigrants, gate-crashers, tax exiles, Zionists, pursuers of the American dream and so on. In some cases there is no parallel with late antiquity, in others the resemblance is marginal. However, two of our late 20th-century categories of vagrancy do seem to fit 5th-century circumstances, namely ‘economic opportunists’ and ‘asylum seekers’: those seeking a better life and those fearing for life itself. Both imply civilian rather than military impulses and neither suggests destructive intent. A place to settle, land to till, safety from the great churning of tribes which attended the close of the Iron Age: we may guess that food and fear were uppermost in barbarian minds, as they are for the needy and desperate of our own day.

  Was this the reality of the barbarian invasions? Is it closer to the truth than the essentially martial 19th-century image of sword-waving hordes, hurling themselves against the empire’s defences? Were the Angles and Saxons, with a drowning coast in front and frightened tribes behind, a military conspiracy against Britain; or were they a sort of ‘boat people’? Did the Vandals plan their sensational march from the Rhine to Carthage; or were they refugees, set into motion by terror and hunger, who merely stumbled against doors which chanced to be unlocked? Of course, while today’s migrants tend to respect the strength of their host countries, the barbarians came armed and ready to fight for their promised lands. And yet our own century is not without its homeland seekers (like the creators of the Boer Republics, Pakistan and Israel), prepared if necessary to go to war. One way and another, we are well placed to understand the migrations period.

  Perhaps not surprisingly the view of Rome as a noble flame, quenched by barbarism, is no longer in fashion. The ‘Dark Ages’ have been replaced by a creative merger in which Roman and barbarian combine with unexpected ease and (except for Britain) proceed with relative calm into the ‘post-Roman’ or ‘sub-Roman’ era. On the contrary, we now accept that the 5th century’s most destructive event was the Byzantine reconquest of Ostrogothic Italy. Today, more aware of other cultures, accustomed to exotic faces and foreign languages on the street and at school, striving for solutions of togetherness, we are readier to allow the outside nations a hearing. So we should be; for the Romano-barbarian mergers of the 5th century made Europe; Europe made the New World; and all Western peoples are their children.

  List of Abbreviations

  Agr.

  Tacitus, Agricola

  Amm

  Ammianus Marcellinus

  An.

  Tacitus, Annales

  ANRW

  Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt

  Arch.

  Vitruvius, de Architectura

  BAR

  British Archaeological Reports

  dB G

  Caesar, de Bello Gallico

  Ex Ponto

  Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto

  Ger.

  Tacitus, Germania

  Hist.

  Tacitus, The Histories

  JW

  Josephus, The Jewish War

  JRS

  Journal of Roman Studies

  NH

  Pliny, Natural History

  Res Gestae

  Res Gestae Divi Augusti

  RFS

  Congress of Roman Frontier Studies

  RFS, 1

  1st Congress of Roman Frontier Studies (Univ. of Durham, 1949)

  RFS, 6

  Studien zu den Militärgrenzen Roms I (Bonn 1964)

  RFS, 9

  Actes de ixme Congrès International d’Etudes sur les Frontières Romaines (Mamaia, 1972)

  RFS, 13

  Studien zu den Militärgrenzen Roms III. Internationaler Limeskongress (Aalen, 1983)

  Strat.

  Frontinus, Strategematon

  Suet.

  Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars

  Tac.

  Tacitus

  Velleius

  C. Velleius Paterculus, Roman History

  Notes and References

  PROLOGUE: Romans and Barbarians

      1. 56.32.2.

      2. Excepting – if science be broadly defined – Lucretius (99–55 BC) author of de Rerum Natura; Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), antiquity’s foremost recorder of nature and knowledge; and Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria), 2nd-century geographer and astronomer.

      3. L. Musset, The Germanic Invasions (London, 1975) 203.

      4. Arch., 10.1.1.

      5. In the light of present knowledge it may be assumed that the amphorae found in the Bay of Jars, Brazil, are from a random ship, blown off an African coastwise course (as was Cabral, Brazil’s discoverer, in 1500).

      6. Hist., 16.

      7. Immensa Romanae pacis maiestate, NH, 27.1.3.

      8. Tac., Hist., 4.64–5.

      9. Tac., An., 4.5.

    10. Cicero, pro Marco Fronteio.

    11. 5.26.3.

    12. dB G, 6.13.

    13. Pharsalia, 3.339–423.

    14. Probably 2,100 miles, from Germany to the Ukraine.

    15. 75.1.3–5.

    16. Strabo, Geog., 3.4.16: ‘concerned not with rationality but with animal needs and instincts’.

    17. Pliny the Younger to Lucius Verus, 7: ‘I class them rather as thieves than enemies.’

    18. Strabo, 3.3.8: ‘the journey to their lands is long [ … ] and they have lost all instinct for sociability.’

    19. Idem, 4.4.2: ‘as always those who live toward the north are more aggressive.’

    20. Philippic, 1.14.

    21. NH, 3.5.39.

    22. Velleius, 2.117.3.

    23. JW, 2.363.

    24. Agr., 30.4–5.

    25. Dio, 61.33.3.

    26. id., 62.5.5.

  EPISODE 1: The Poet

      1. Usually pronounced with short o as in Thomas.

      2. Durus cautibus, horrens Caucasus, Aeneid, 4, 366–7.

      3. Pliny, NH, 5.31.18.

      4. Geography, 11.5.6.

      5. NH, 6.14.5.

      6. id. 6.5.15.

      7. Geography, 11.2.33.

      8. Artimisia absinthium; German, wermut: both names with alcoholic connections. In Ukrainian, wormwood is chernobyl. The 1987 nuclear incident caused headshaking in the Soviet Union, owing to the prophecy in Revelation, 7.10–11.

      9. Originating as a literary movement in the early 3rd century BC: Theocritus Idylls, 1–11.

    10. Especially John, 10.11.

    11. Judges, 6.3–5.

    12. History, 4.71–72 (text reduced and paraphrased).

    13. So Amm., 31.2.13: in immensum extentas Scythiae solitudines (in the measureless wastes of Scythia); and c.f. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol.2, Ch.12, 358.

    14. 3.351–383.

    15. G. D. Williams, Banished Voices (Cambridge, 1994) 19.

    16. He did, however, manage a monograph on the local fish and animals, Halieut
icon, of which a 136-line fragment survives.

    17. A hereditary knight, not unlike a British baronet.

    18. Tristia, 4.10.26.

    19. id., 4.10.21.

    20. e.g. Don Juan, 5.5.7–8: ‘There’s not a sea the passenger e’er pukes in / Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.’

    21. Moore, Life of Byron, 1.347.

    22. Tristia, 4.10.57.

    23. 56.4.

    24. I, Claudius, (London, 1934).

    25. An., 10.1.

    26. Tristia, 4.18.68.

    27. id., 3.2.6.

    28. Aurelius Victor, de Caesaribus, (4th century) 39.44: pestilens frumentariorum gens (the pestilential race of ‘corn merchants’). The existence of such a service is rarely attested and was never officially acknowledged.

    29. Tristia, 2.207–10.

    30. id., 2.103–4.

    31. id., 3.5.49–50.

    32. id., 1.2.97–8.

    33. id., 4.1.64.

    34. id., 4.1.69–70.

    35. Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis.

    36. Tristia, 5.7.9–21.

    37. The World of the Scythians (Oxford, 1991) 65.

    38. Ex Ponto, 4.9.84.

    39. Hist., 4.64–5.

    40. id., 4.70.

    41. id., 4.75.

    42. id., 4.67.

    43. Strabo, Geog., 17.1.43.

    44. Amm., 32.1.1.

    45. Herodotus, 4.69.

    46. Equivalent to Diana, Roman goddess of hunting and of chastity.

    47. How steppe cavalry found its way west during the migrations period and how the sword symbol may have ended up as King Arthur’s Excalibur, see B. S. Bachrach, A History of the Alans in the West (Minneapolis, 1973), 111.

    48. Amm., 31.2.23.

    49. id., 22.8.4.

    50. id., 31.12.18.

    51. Iliad, 13. Homer’s phrase, ‘the proud mare-milkers’, almost certainly refers to the Scyths.

    52. Strabo, Geog., 7.4.6.

    53. id., ‘it yields thirtyfold, however crudely ploughed.’

    54. id., 7.3.7.

    55. Hist., 4.28. Sindica, today’s Krasnodar.

    56. Panegyricus, 12.3–4.

    57. Amm., 16.10.20.

    58. id., 17.12.1.

    59. Hist., 1.79.

    60. id.

    61. Amm., 17.12.13.

    62. Hist., 4.46.

    63. The Dobruja’s annual rainfall is sixteen inches (400 mm).

    64. Quoted by A. Alfoldi. The Moral Barrier on Rhine and Danube, RFS-1, 13.

    65. Tristia, 3.10. 7–12.

    66. A style now associated with China and Japan.

    67. This tactic, said to have won the Battle of Hastings, probably also had steppe ancestry: Bachrach, op.cit., 92.

    68. Tristia, 3.10.51–70.

    69. id., 3.10. 19–34.

    70. id., 4.4. 55–60.

    71. i.e. falsely named ‘hospitable’.

    72. Tristia, 5.10. 14–22.

    73. Dryden, Love Triumphant, 138.

    74. Tristia, 4.1. 71–84.

    75. Ex Ponto, 1.2. 17–22.

    76. Tristia., 5.10. 23–38.

    77. id., 5.7. 47–8.

    78. id., 5.10. 43–4.

    79. id., 4.1. 66–70.

    80. id., 4.10. 111–114.

    81. id., 1.1. 39–44.

    82. id., 5.7. 47–64.

    83. Ex Ponto, 4.8. 18–22.

    84. Tristia, 4.1.94.

    85. id., 5.2.65–72 and 77–8.

    86. Ex Ponto, 1.2. 57–8.

    87. Tristia, 3.12. 25–34.

    88. id., 3.10. 75–6.

    89. Ex Ponto, 3.8.15.

    90. id., 3.1.23–6.

    91. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Augustus, 63.

    92. Ex Ponto, 1.2. 81–7.

    93. The ara pacis Augustae, a sculptural masterpiece, recovered in the 16th century.

    94. Res Gestae, 2.13.

    95. Velleius, Hist., 2.126.3.

    96. Ex Ponto, 2.5. 17–18.

    97. e.g. Aeneid, 1.278 and 6.851.

    98. Fasti, 2.683–4.

    99. Tristia, 2. 197–200.

  100. Ex Ponto, 1.8.10. In propinctu could also mean ‘in readiness for battle’.

  101. Unlike Tristia, the Pontic Letters were addressed to individuals.

  102. Ex Ponto, 4.7. 7–12.

  103. id., 4.9.75.

  104. id., 4.9. 80–85.

  105. id., 4.13. 18–28.

  106. Mother of Apollo.

  107. Ex Ponto, 4.14. 57–62.

  108. id., 4.14. 23–4.

  109. House of Fame, 3.1.97.

  110. Frances Meres, Palladis Tamia, (London, 1598), 282.

  111. The Fall of Icarus.

  112. Pygmalion (1912).

  113. Leonard Digges (1588–1635).

  114. Wm. Cody (1846–1917), who boasted killing 4,280 buffalo in eighteen months.

  115. Dio, 55. 4–21.

  116. An., 1.6.

  117. Suet., Aug. 19.65.

  118. Tristia, 1.3.85.

  EPISODE 2: The Lawyer

      1. Usually pron. Tyoot in English, Toyt in German.

      2. There is at least one bust of Ovid extant (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).

      3. First proposed by Philipp Cluverius, Germaniae Antiquae (1631).

      4. The Hünnering.

      5. Staatliche Museen, Berlin; with copies in the Kulturgeschichtliches Museum Osnabrück, which also houses objects from the Varus battlefield.

      6. Particularly to his Oath of the Horatii, painted Rome 1785 (Louvre, Paris).

      7. By the Fr. Sculptor F. A. Bartholdi (1884).

      8. Like Czar and Shah, a word derived from Caesar.

      9. Ger., 46.

    10. id.

    11. id., 1.1.

    12. dBG, 4.17–19.

    13. id., 4.19.

    14. Some ten miles downstream from Coblenz.

    15. He crossed again in 53 BC.

    16. Geog., 7.1.2.

    17. Wear, Wye, Vézère, Isère, Isar, Yare, Oise, Ouse, Isonzo, etc.

    18. Strabo, Geog., 7.2.1.

    19. Pourrir = to rot.

    20. e.g. ‘the inscrutible oriental’.

    21. An expression having its origin in Dryden, Conquest of Granada, 1.1: ‘Ere the base laws of servitude began / When wild in woods the noble savage ran.’

    22. In Gk. elektron (associated with words for ‘sun’), origin of our term electricity, due to its generating a charge when rubbed. Latin sucinum, related to sucinus = sappy, seems closest to amber’s true origin.

    23. Compare glass; Ger. glantz = lustre; Fr. glace = ice.

    24. Ger., 45; following Pliny, NH, 37.11.42.

    25. An., 3.53.

    26. NH, 37.45.

    27. An., 2.62.

    28. Notably the Pyhrn Pass (nr. Windischgarsten) due south of Linz.

    29. J. Wielowiejski, Der römisch-pannonisch Limes und die Bernsteinstrasse, RFS, 13 (1983) 799.

    30. Ger., 5.

    31. id.

    32. Evidently replicas, all bearing the same date and still being minted, reputedly in Italy, by some astute entrep
reneur.

    33. Ger., 5 and 42.

    34. id., 23.

    35. id., 72.

    36. Decline and Fall, 9.358 and 359.

    37. dBG, 4. 1–2.

    38. German kochen (to cook) = Latin coquere.

    39. Ger., 16.

    40. Long bridges.

    41. dB G, 1.48.

    42. From clinch or clench, secured by pinning sideways. Planks were overlapped rather than edge-joined.

    43. Danish Nat. Mus., Copenhagen.

    44. Ger., 19.

    45. id., 20.

    46. id., 37.

    47. Boswell, Life of Dr Johnson, (for the year 1778).

    48. Ger., 13 and 14.

    49. Of Franconia-Thuringia.

    50. Sp., tudesco.

    51. Amm., 27.2.2. avers it was dyed.

    52. Ger., 13.

    53. Jewish War, 7.78.

    54. Ger., 13.

    55. Amm., 27.10.5.

    56. dB G, 6.23.

    57. Ger., 15.

    58. Geog., 7.2.3.

    59. Life of Caius Marius, 17.1.

    60. Ger., 9.

    61. Jove’s Day, seen more clearly in It. Jiovedi.