This point is worth dwelling on, because while it might again seem entirely natural from a modern perspective, it is also telling us something important about how the new exchange networks operated. As soon as you stop to think about it, such an outcome can only be reflecting the fact that kings and their entourage were organizing the profits accruing from economic development for their own benefit. On one level, possession of military muscle enabled kings to exact a percentage of the new agricultural surplus now being generated. They could then use this not only to feed their retinues but also to trade on to the Roman world, getting precious metal coins, or wine and olive oil, or whatever else they desired, in return.
But military muscle was also crucial to securing the lion’s share of the profits from some of the other new trade flows. Think about the slave trade. Slaves do not volunteer. Someone was rounding them up in Germanic society to sell them on to the Roman traders, and this will not have been a peaceful process. This line of thought also suggests, incidentally, a further possible context for the massacred retinue unearthed at Ejsbøl Mose. If they were a slave-trading outfit, you can quite see why such methodical fury was vented upon them. And even the amber trade was no gentle process of wandering along the Baltic shore picking up whatever had washed up overnight. One of the most startling finds to emerge from northern Poland in recent years has been a series of wooden causeways, many kilometres long, establishing a network of routes across boggy territory near the Baltic Sea. Carbon-14 and dendrochronology have established that these were laid down around the birth of Christ and then maintained for the best part of two hundred years. They have been interpreted, surely correctly, as servicing the northern end of the Amber Route. But all this took a huge effort. In other words, it must have been enormously worth someone’s while to go to this much trouble. In return for their effort, they were clearly receiving a substantial cut of the profits from the trade, presumably in the forms of tolls of one kind or another. Interestingly, ‘toll’ in Germanic languages is another loan word from Latin, suggesting that the concept did not exist among the Germani before the Empire became their immediate neighbour. And, of course, where taking this kind of percentage from a trade flow was so obviously profitable, others would have been interested in a share of the action. Here again, military strength counted. You could employ it to force those of lesser status to do the physical work of building and maintaining the causeways, and also to prevent any other armed group from taking over what was clearly such a nice little earner.54
Contrary to the bland neo-classical platitudes of 1980s-style trickle-down theories, economic development is not always or not straightforwardly, at least, a good thing. Increasing wealth in Germanic society during the Roman period set off major and in some cases seriously violent struggles for its disproportionate control. In some developing areas of the economy, the adverse effects were perhaps not so bad. It is notoriously hard to tax agricultural production, and higher outputs were anyway dependent upon having plenty of labour available, at least for arable agriculture, so that the demands of kings and their warbands, some of whom may anyway have been recruited from the wealthier farmers, perhaps did not impinge too heavily. Other aspects of economic development, however, were much nastier for those caught up on the wrong side: slaves obviously, but I wonder too about iron-mining since, in the Roman world at least, being condemned to the mines was a form of capital punishment. And even at the top end of society, the struggle to control the new wealth could have serious consequences. Ejsbøl Mose is one of over thirty weapons deposits known from the bogs of northern Europe, most of which were laid down between 200 and 400 AD – explicit testimony to the level of violence set loose in the Germanic world for control of all this burgeoning wealth. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that these struggles were limited to just those areas that happened to have convenient bogs and lakes available for disposing of the defeated. Tacitus refers to a first-century votive ritual which involved hanging the dead and their weaponry from trees. Weapons deposits of this kind would not survive to be excavated by archaeologists, and I am inclined to think that accident of survival is the reason for the direct evidence of violent competition being confined to areas around the North Sea, rather than that the proximity of water made the Germani of this area particularly quarrelsome.55
It is not a new idea to discuss trade with the Roman Empire when trying to understand the transformation of Germanic society in the early centuries AD. But, as has reasonably been pointed out, trade on its own never looked like a powerful enough explanatory mechanism, since large quantities of Roman goods have not turned up everywhere. The case for the importance of such trade becomes much more convincing, however, when you factor in not just the new wealth flows themselves, but the consequent struggles for their control. It was this knock-on effect, rather than the mere existence of the new wealth, that had the really transformative effect. Various groups within the Germanic world responded dynamically to the fact that the new wealth existed by seizing control of its profits, and, in doing so, helped remake the sociopolitical structures of the world around them.
This extra dimension of argument belongs alongside those which in the area of post-colonial studies have attracted the general label ‘agency’. The point here is that earlier analyses (‘colonial’ rather than ‘post-colonial’ ones, as it were) tended to explore the effects that more developed societies have upon less developed ones in too passive a fashion. The fundamental point of ‘agency’ (although much ink has been spilled over more precise definitions) is to stress that indigenous groups respond to outside stimuli by taking hold of certain possibilities (and not others) for their own reasons and according to their own priorities. In this instance, we see exposure to the economic opportunities presented by contact with Rome taking a number of forms, and being seized on in different ways by different groups. Some learned to expand agricultural production, some exported iron or amber, and still others set up slave-trading operations. Not only did the consequent increase in inequality provide the economic basis for larger political confederations by the fourth century, but this is also reflected in the patchy distribution of Roman goods observable in the archaeological record. The particular concentrations of goods in the intermediate zone up to the Elbe were presumably created by Germanic groups able to dominate some specific new flow of wealth out of the Roman Empire, which they used to pay for the items found by archaeologists. The beneficiaries of the slave trade of the ninth and tenth centuries, for instance, are certainly visible archaeologically through the fruits of their trade, as well as being identified in the historical texts (not true of the Roman era), so it is not unreasonable to apply the same principle to the Germani around the Roman Empire.56 But even adding in a dynamic indigenous response to the existence of the new wealth flows doesn’t come close, in my view, to establishing the full extent of Rome’s role in the transformation of the Germanic world. For that, we also need to explore how the Empire set about maintaining long-term stability along its frontiers.
The Art of Client Management
In 1967 some gravel-digging in the River Rhine itself, close to the old Roman city of Civitas Nemetum (modern Speyer), led to the discovery of loot from a Roman villa. Careful excavation over the next sixteen years reconstructed the full story. The finds were there because late in the third century some Alamannic raiders had been trying to get their booty back home across the Rhine when their boats were ambushed and sunk by Roman river patrol ships. Called lusoriae, the latter were light, oar-driven warships equipped with rams and a well armed crew. An everyday kind of frontier story, except for what the raiders were trying to get home. They had with them an extraordinary seven hundred kilograms’ worth of booty packed into three or four carts which they were rafting across to the east bank of the Rhine. On close inspection, the loot proved to be the entire contents of probably a single Roman villa, and the raiders were interested in every piece of metalwork they could find. The only items missing from the hoard were rich
solid silverware and high-value personal jewellery. Either the lord and lady of the house got away before the attack, or else the very high-value loot was transported separately. In the carts, however, was a vast mound of silver-plate from the dining room, the entire equipment from the kitchen (including 51 cauldrons, 25 bowls and basins and 20 iron ladles), enough agricultural implements – everything from pruning hooks to anvils – to run a substantial farm, some votive objects from the villa’s shrine, and 39 good-quality silver coins.57
The nature of this extraordinary hoard makes clear the depth of the problem facing the Empire in one dimension of frontier relations. We naturally think of barbarian raiders being interested in gold and silver, and plenty of rich plundered objects have turned up over the years from various hoards of the Roman era. But the total range of desirable goods was massively wider. Because the economy of the Germanic world was so much less developed than its Roman counterpart, all of these goods were directly useful to the raiders, or could be sold on to someone else, whether Alamannic farmer or housewife, or even to an Alamannic smith for reworking. This is just about the most vivid illustration of the kind of booty your average raider targeted ever to be unearthed, but historical sources make it clear that banditry, perhaps often on a smaller scale than this amazingly comprehensive house-clearing exercise, was endemic all along Rome’s frontiers.
The fact that the legions’ advance had halted at different moments in the first century, broadly along the line of the Rivers Rhine and Danube, did not mean, therefore, that lands beyond the frontier could be left to their own devices. On the contrary, there was a huge propensity for cross-border raiding, the natural result of two very different levels of economic development sitting side by side. Nor, as has sometimes been argued, did the Empire go suddenly from attack to defence. Frontier security demanded a much more proactive response, and throughout most of its history Rome maintained a general military superiority all along its European frontiers, backed up by aggressive diplomacy. These policies turned its closest neighbours effectively into client states.58
The methods used remained pretty constant throughout the life of the Empire, and had profound effects upon patterns of sociopolitical development within the Germanic world. For an excellent case study from the fourth century, we can turn to Ammianus’ account of the response of the Emperor Constantius II to trouble on the Middle Danube in the years 358/9. Constantius’ first step, like every emperor before him, was to establish military superiority. Starting just after the spring equinox, when the opposition thought they were still safe, he threw a pontoon bridge over the Danube and came upon the Sarmatians unexpectedly. The results were nasty:
The greater number, since fear clogged their steps, were cut down; if speed saved any from death, they hid in the obscure mountain gorges and saw their country perishing by the sword.
In the following weeks, the campaign was quickly extended to the neighbouring Quadi and all the other frontier groups of the region. The Emperor then used this military superiority to dictate what he hoped would be a lasting diplomatic settlement. One by one, the groups and their leaders came, or were forced to come, to hear the Emperor’s judgement.
Not all groups were treated in the same way. To some Constantius =showed favour. One prince of the Sarmatians, Zizais, had mastered the script:
On seeing the emperor, he threw aside his weapons and fell flat on his breast as if lying lifeless. And since the use of his voice failed him from fear at the very time when he should have made his plea, he excited all the greater compassion; but, after several attempts, interrupted by sobbing, he was able to set forth only a little of what he tried to ask.
Barbarians were expected to show subservience to the divinely ordained might of Rome, as Zizais was perfectly well aware, and as the iconography of barbarians on Roman coins and monuments emphasized. Barbarians were always presented lying down in submission at the bottom of any pictorial scene, often literally under an emperor’s feet (Plate 7). The Sarmatian’s approach may well have been calculated, therefore, and it produced the desired result. Constantius decided to restore the political independence of Zizais’ followers, who had been held as junior partners in an unequal coalition, and raised the prince himself to the status of independent king. Rearranging the political alliance systems currently in operation on this part of the frontier after the fashion that best suited Rome’s interests was, in fact, was one of Constantius’ chief preoccupations. This meant breaking up over-large and therefore – from a Roman perspective – potentially dangerous alliances. Where Zizais gained, others lost. Araharius, a king of the Quadi, was denuded, despite his protests, of the services of his Sarmatian underking Usafer, who, like Zizais, was restored to independence. Sometimes the interference could be much more violent. Another tactic, which occurs three times in the twenty-four years covered by Ammianus’ narrative, was to invite potentially problematic frontier dynasts to dinner and then either murder or kidnap them.59
Aside from political restructuring, various other measures were enacted: securing economic returns for the Empire on the military effort it had just expended, combined with strictures to enforce the new settlement once the legions had withdrawn. Some measures were standard, such as extracting drafts of young men from the groups submitting to him to serve as military recruits. This, as we have seen, was one of several ways in which young Germani had entered Roman armies throughout the Empire’s existence. Hostages were also extracted from each of group, usually young men of high status. They were not treated as prisoners, exactly, once on Roman soil, but were sometimes executed when agreements broke down. Any Roman captives were also returned to imperial soil. In other respects, the details of agreements differed. According to the amount of blame the emperor decided to allocate to any particular group for the original trouble, it might have to supply labour, raw materials and food; or it might, on the other hand, be granted privileged trading status. Diplomatic subsidies were, in addition, a standard feature of Rome’s diplomatic armoury. In the past, some historians have doubted this, supposing payments to barbarian leaders to be a sign of Rome’s military weakness in the late period. This is mistaken. We would call such subsidies ‘foreign aid’, and they were utilized throughout Rome’s history, even after major Roman victories. After he crushed the Alamanni at Strasbourg, for instance, Julian granted the defeated kings annual subsidies. The reason is simple. Subsidies helped keep in power the kings with whom Rome had just made its agreements. As such, they were an excellent investment.60
Apart from all this diplomatic detail, one further preoccupation emerges from Constantius’ intervention. The Empire did not want the immediate hinterland of its frontier to become too crowded, for two reasons. First, this would mean that there were too many groups with an opportunity to raid Roman territory. Second, as the establishment and reorganization of all the over- and underkingships shows, frontier groups were always in political competition with one another, and their jockeying for position stood more chance of spilling over into violence on Roman soil when there were more groups playing the game. In this instance, Constantius and his advisers eventually decided that a key part of the new settlement was to make one group of Sarmatians, the Limigantes (again, a coalition), move away from the immediate frontier zone. This was not something the Limigantes wished to do, so further military intimidation was required and duly delivered. After two of their subgroups, the Amicenses and Picenses, had been brutalized, the rest surrendered and agreed to depart. The region seemed set for peace – but not quite yet. A year later, in 359, some of the Limigantes returned, saying that they would prefer to move into the Empire itself, as tax-paying tributaries, rather than continue to occupy their assigned lands so far from the frontier.
What happened next is rather mysterious. Ammianus blames it all on the Limigantes’ bad faith, but then he would. An agreement in principle seems to have been reached. The Sarmatians were to be allowed across the river and to enter the imperial presence, Constantius having retur
ned to the region with his army. Then, at the crucial moment, something went wrong. Instead of surrendering, the Sarmatians attacked the Emperor, or so Ammianus says, and the Romans responded:
So eagerly did our forces rush forth in their desire to . . . vent their wrath on the treacherous foe, that they butchered everything in their way, trampling under foot without mercy the living, as well as those dying or dead; and before their hands were sated with slaughter of the savages, the dead lay piled in heaps.
Perhaps the Limigantes did act in bad faith, or Constantius maybe wanted to put down a clear marker that his orders had to be obeyed – or, just as likely, the tragedy resulted from mistrust and confusion. But throughout its history, the Empire did on occasions use the acquisition of outside population groups as one technique for managing the frontier. While the consequent gain to the Empire in terms of taxpayers and potential soldiers was part of the calculation, so too was a concern to prevent potentially dangerous overcrowding.61
This portfolio of methods was applied very generally. Occasional major military interventions made it possible to construct region-wide diplomatic settlements, which broke up dangerous coalitions, identified and rewarded friends and punished enemies, while a mixture of stick and carrot – the fear engendered by punishing campaigns and hostage-taking combined with targeted foreign aid and trading privileges – was used to make sure that the new settlement held beyond the short term. The methods were effective, but not, of course, perfect. From a Roman perspective, their success can be measured in terms of the life expectancy of the settlements. By my reckoning, the average fourth-century diplomatic settlement on the Rhine and Danube frontiers lasted about twenty to twenty-five years – one generation, in other words – per major military intervention. This was probably a fair return on the amount of force expended, and about as much as could reasonably be expected. It is important to understand, however, that the whole system was sustained by occasional but decisive Roman campaigning. The frontier groups were part of a Roman world system, but terms and conditions were not arrived at by free, mutual agreement. Rome consistently used military force to maintain its preponderance.
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