Empires and Barbarians

by Peter Heather

  The methods of Roman diplomacy are fascinating in themselves and have their own scholarly literature. They also advanced the transformation of Germanic society. To understand why this was so, we must again reckon with populations on the far side of the Roman frontier as active agents in the story. Roman diplomacy certainly had some important direct effects, but that is not the whole story. Groups and individuals within Germania responded in a variety of ways to the stimuli applied by the totality of Roman foreign policy over four centuries, and this response is just as important as the original imperial interference.

  The transformative potential of one aspect of Roman diplomacy has received due attention over the years: annual subsidies. These could take the form not just of cash or bullion, but also of highly valued Roman commodities, such as intricate jewellery or richly woven cloths. In the Byzantine era, foodstuffs unavailable in the target economy were sometimes used, and this may have been the case in earlier eras. The point of the subsidies, as we have seen, was to reinforce the power of a reasonably compliant frontier king, so that he would have a real stake in maintaining peace on the frontier. Subsidies tended to strengthen existing monarchies. But it is important to realize that, like the amber or slave trades, diplomatic subsidies represented a major flow of new wealth into the Germanic world, and, as was also the case with the profits of trade, the appearance of new wealth sparked off competition among potential recipients. Losing their subsidy may have been one element in the Limigantes’ unwillingness to be resettled further away from the frontier, an extra downside in being demoted (in Rome’s eyes) from overkingdom to underkingdom status. Certainly, any diminution in the size or quality of the annual gifts could cause crisis, as it did when Valentinian unilaterally reduced those of the Alamanni in 364, and we have specific examples of groups moving into the frontier region precisely to overwhelm the current recipients of any subsidies and receive them in their place. Competition for the control of the flow of subsidies thus multiplied its transformative effect, and meant that Rome was sometimes left awarding gifts to the victors in struggles beyond its capacity to control.62

  But subsidies were only part of an overall Roman diplomatic strategy whose other aspects also had powerful effects. Take, for instance, the periodic military interventions, which seem to have averaged out in the fourth century at about one substantial campaign per generation in each sector of the frontier. These interventions classically took the form of burning down everything you could find until the local kings came into the imperial presence to make their submission, when all the diplomatic manoeuvring and subsidy reallocation would begin. The economic effects of these burnt-earth interventions are worth careful consideration. We have no precise information from the fourth century, of course, but an interesting analogy is provided by medieval estate records from areas subject to similar levels of terrorism. Those of the Archbishop of York’s lands, subject to cross-border raiding from Scotland in the fourteenth century, for instance, show that it took revenues – a decent proxy for ‘output’ – a full generation to recover. This was because raiders, alongside grabbing moveable goods that might be easily replaced, also targeted the capital items of agriculture such as ploughing animals (approximating, in the medieval context, to tractors), which were very expensive, not to mention housing and other major items. The costs of replacing all this meant that revenues were reduced for twenty or more years.

  If you factor this kind of economic effect back into the pattern of Roman frontier strategy, then, particularly in periods and areas where conflict was fairly constant, living next to the Roman Empire would be a substantial hindrance to economic development, and this is again suggested by the archaeological record. Alongside the other frontier areas where Roman imports became plentiful in the early Roman centuries, for instance, the Rhine/Weser region stands out as an exception. Few Roman imports have been found there and settlement remained much less dense until the later second century. This reflects the particular hostility between many of the groups of this region and the Empire, the Rhine/Weser being the heartland of the Cherusci and of Arminius’ rebellion which destroyed Varus’ legions in the Teutoburger Wald in 9 AD. The one area in the fifth-century west that seems to have enjoyed economic expansion at a time when the wheels were otherwise generally coming off the west Roman economy was the territory of the Alamanni, where there is good evidence of deforestation and of the expansion of agriculture and settlement, and hence by implication of population expansion as well. To my mind this is not surprising, since the contemporary reduction in the power of the west Roman state meant that it had stopped burning down Alamannic villages once per generation and regularly stealing agricultural surpluses. It was also in the fifth century that the observable tendency towards political unification among the Alamanni reached its climax, with the emergence finally of a single, unchallenged king. Again, this is not so surprising given that Rome’s countervailing interference, bent, as we have seen, on regularly removing emergent dominant figures, had ceased to be effective.63

  It is also worth thinking about this and all the other aspects of Roman diplomatic strategy from an Alamannic – or general frontier-client – perspective. The regular destruction of villages could only have caused huge resentment, and Ammianus often refers to ill-feeling towards Rome on the other side of the frontier. In fact, even the less violent aspects of Roman intrusion, creating as it did winners and losers, must have been highly resented by the losers. The kind of grovelling expected in public ceremonies and so well mastered by Zizais can’t exactly have been welcome to those from whom it was required. And while Zizais may have been happy to have his political independence established, his former overking, who lost command of established rights over Zizais’ followers, can only have been hugely irritated. Ammianus records, likewise, that another former overking, Araharius, was angered when he was denuded of his subjects. Additionally, the Empire would occasionally decide – as in the case of the Limigantes – that particular barbarian groups could no longer carry on living where they had long been established, and, as we have seen, was happy to use terror to enforce that decision. This is only one of a series of high-handed actions on the part of the Romans that appear in Ammianus’ narrative. Valentinian I, for instance, altered agreements unilaterally when it suited him, both lowering, without consultation, the value of annual gifts made to Alamannic leaders, as we have seen, and constructing fortifications where it had previously been agreed that none would be placed. There are also hints in the sources that emperors would arbitrarily swap around ‘favoured ally’ status in a region so as to ensure the requisite level of subservience. Most ferociously, emperors were happy to authorize the elimination of frontier kings who posed too great a threat. The picture of Roman frontier management which emerges from all this is clear enough. The regular burning of neighbouring villages was backed up by a repertoire of aggressive diplomatic manoeuvres, which did not stop short of assassination.

  If you consider all this from a non-Roman viewpoint, it becomes apparent that we need to factor into the equation a weight of oppressive Roman domination. The resentment among the many on the receiving end shows up in several different ways in the historical narratives. At the lowest level, it is evident in the willingness with which frontier groups engaged in petty and grander larceny. Raiding across the frontier was very general, and of course represented yet another Rome-emanating flow of new wealth to be squabbled over, and whose control might have transformative political effects in the Germanic world. More strikingly, resentment lay at the heart of the willingness of would-be dynasts to mount larger-scale rebellions, whether that of Arminius in the first century (whose explicit cause was taxation demands) or that of Chnodomarius in the fourth, where feelings ran high enough, as we have seen, for a sitting king, Gundomadus, to be ousted for refusing to participate.

  A major factor to take into account when trying to understand the transformation of Germanic societies in this period, therefore, is four centuries’ worth of ill-fee
ling caused by Rome’s heavy-handed military and diplomatic aggression.

  Two lines of explanation have recently been offered for the militarization of the Germani in the Roman period, evident in the increasing deposition of weapons: one, that the Germani were serving in increasing numbers as Roman auxiliary soldiers; second, that Roman campaigning east of the Rhine increased the status of warriors. As has rightly been observed, though representative of opposite reactions to Roman power – the first to its opportunities, the second to its threat – the two explanations are not remotely incompatible. Different elements among the Germanic population surely did respond along each of these lines, perhaps even the same persons at different points in their lives.64 I would only stress that the negative reaction to Roman power must be taken seriously, and its role in political consolidation acknowledged.

  For militarization, as we have seen, went far beyond burying the dead with weapons. A whole new language for political leadership evolved in the Roman period, which stressed the importance of war. Rulers became war leaders literally by definition and this transformation wasn’t just achieved by force. The Germanic political community in the late Roman period still involved many others beyond kings and their immediate retinues, and the consent of this (freeman?) community to the process of political consolidation represented by the rise of military kingship was required. Here again, positive and negative worked happily side by side. A militarily effective king, as many have argued, was one more likely to win Roman recognition as a good partner to do frontier business with, and hence attract worthwhile subsidies and gifts. But he was also someone – like Athanaric and Macrianus – who was inherently more capable of resisting the more outrageous demands and intrusions of Roman imperial power. These two figures, it seems to me, show both the importance of anti-Roman sentiment and the limits to its expression by the fourth century. Both gained esteem and power in their own societies by resisting Roman intrusion, but both were willing enough to do deals when the Empire – for whatever reason – backed off and offered more acceptable terms.65 They vividly illustrate the tightrope that even the prime beneficiaries of the unfolding processes of political centralization among the Germani had to tread.

  GLOBALIZATION

  Contact with Rome on many levels, all operating simultaneously and often in overlapping fashion, drove the transformation of the Germanic world. The economic demands of the frontier, combined possibly with transfers of technique and technology, stimulated the intensification of agricultural production upon which all the other changes rested. Many individuals served as auxiliary troops in the Roman army and brought their pay or their retirement bonuses home with them, while, at least at times and places enjoying settled relations, Roman coins were adopted as an efficient mechanism for encouraging exchange. New trade networks grew up, carrying perhaps a substantial trade in iron ore and certainly significant ones in slaves and amber. And just as important as all the new wealth rolling around in the Germanic world was the fact that these latter two trades required much more complex forms of organization. It wasn’t simply a case of Roman buyer meets Germanic producer. The northern Amber Route and the violent networks of the slave trade both emphasize that the new wealth did not gently wash over Germanic society in an all-embracing fashion. Particular groups organized themselves, often militarily, to extract disproportionate advantage from the new opportunities presented by the legionaries’ advance to the Rhine and the Danube. Diplomatic and political contacts generated new wealth flows, too, and kings organized military power through their retinues so as to benefit disproportionately from the extra trading rights and annual subsidies that came their way.

  At the same time, a range of other contacts with the Empire were also driving change forward. Annual subsidies came with a price tag attached, being one strand in a much broader repertoire of Roman techniques for managing the frontier. As well as receiving subsidies, sometimes frontier groups of Germani came under heavy military assault from the Empire. They also felt the weight of intrusive manipulation, which dictated where they lived, who they could be allied with and ruled by, and regularly demanded goods, services and even people. Their public life was required to operate within a framework of overt and demeaning subservience to Roman authority. The resentment of these client states showed itself in endemic small-scale raiding across the frontier. In my view, it also had the more profound effect of legitimizing the new type of military kingship that came to the fore among the Germani at this period, and which provided the bedrock of the greater political consolidation observable in the new confederations. Military kings had the muscle to demand more resources from their own societies, and to take greater benefits from the new wealth flows, but they also offered greater protection for their followers from the excesses of imperial intrusion.

  In other words, the ‘positive’ and the ‘negative’ types of contact that grew up between the Germanic world and its imperial neighbour – although the use of such words always begs the question: positive or negative for whom? – had the same overall effect. As relations intensified, both pushed forward the process of political consolidation. What we’re observing, in effect, is an early example of globalization. A thoroughly undeveloped, essentially subsistence agricultural economy with little diversification of production, trade or social stratification suddenly found itself alongside the highly developed economy and powerful state structures of the Roman Empire. Both the new wealth, and the struggles to control its flows and to limit Roman aggression, then, produced the more stratified social structures upon which the new political entities could come into existence. Between them, Empire and indigenous response generated the new Germania of the late Roman period.

  Not, of course, that pre-Roman Germanic society had existed in some state of primeval bliss. As we have seen, there already existed a great differential in development between largely Germanic-dominated Jastorf north-central Europe and largely Celtic-dominated La Tène western Europe long before the legions pushed out from the Mediterranean rim. And, as we have also seen, relatively undeveloped Jastorf societies had already begun to reorganize themselves to gain a greater share of the wealth of their more developed La Tène neighbours even before the legions arrived on their doorstep. The figure of Ariovistus nicely illustrates the transformative effects that tend to follow when neighbouring societies are marked by very different levels of wealth, and these were already beginning to work themselves out before Rome came to the party. But in the early centuries AD, La Tène Europe was replaced by the still richer, politically more monolithic and militarily much more powerful Roman Empire. As a result, the power both of the original outside stimuli, and the resulting internal responses to those stimuli (‘agency’), increased dramatically.

  It is likely that prevailing disparities amongst the Germani themselves would have eventually generated larger, more consolidated political units even without the arrival of Rome. But the dynamic interaction with the Empire accelerated that process by many centuries. Even this much, however, tells less than the full story of how contact with the Empire transformed ancient Germania. We also need to explore the migratory phenomena that were unfolding simultaneously in some corners of Germanic society, alongside social and political transformation.

  3

  ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME?

  IN THE SUMMER OF 172 AD, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius found himself in dire straits. The fires of war had been blazing all along Rome’s European frontiers since 166, especially in the Middle Danubian sector where Marcus was now embroiled. One of his key commanders, the praetorian prefect Vindex, had already been killed north of the Danube, fighting the Germanic Marcomanni of Bohemia. The Emperor was himself leading a second Roman thrust against the Quadi of Slovakia. It was a burning-hot summer and the Romans, advancing through hostile territory, had no choice but to endure full battle order in heavy armour. The Quadi knew the country and knew that the Romans were coming. Rather than giving battle, they lured them up country, ever further from their supply trai
n. Then they sprang the trap. The Romans were caught without supplies, and without water too; the Quadi were all around them, with no need to fight:

  They were expecting to capture [the Romans] easily because of their heat and thirst. So they posted guards all about and hemmed them in to prevent their getting water anywhere; for the barbarians were far superior in numbers. The Romans as a result were in a terrible plight from fatigue, wounds, the heat of the sun and thirst, and so could neither fight nor retreat, but were standing in the line . . . scorched by the heat.

  The situation looked set for disaster

  [w]hen suddenly many clouds gathered and a mighty rain, not without divine intervention, burst upon them . . . At first all turned their faces upwards and received the water in their mouths; then some held out their shields and some their helmets to catch it, and they not only took deep draughts themselves, but also gave their horses to drink. And when the barbarians now charged upon them, they drank and fought at the same time.

  The water energized the Romans and forced the Quadi to fight, since it ruined any hope of capitulation from thirst and heat exhaustion. Thunder and lightning – some of the bolts reportedly hitting the barbarians – completed the scene and Marcus emerged from the trap, with his army intact and a famous victory under his belt.