Empires and Barbarians

by Peter Heather

  6 Procopius, Wars 8.40.5 mentions that attacks began in the time of Justin. Slavic raids of different kinds feature regularly in Procopius’ narrative of Justinian’s reign: Curta (2001), chapter 3 offers a good recent analysis.

  7 See Barford (2001), 41f.; Curta (2001), 228–46.

  8 Jordanes, Getica 5.34–5; cf. Tacitus, Germania 46.2 (on the Venedi) and 46.4 (on what lay beyond). For further references to the Venedi, see Pliny, Natural History 4.97; Ptolemy, Geography 3.5.1 and 7.

  9 The ‘tree argument’ was first made by the Polish botanist Rostafinski in 1908: Curta (2001), 7–8. Rusanova published entirely in Russian; for discussion of her work with full references, see Curta (2001), 230ff.

  10 See Curta (1999), (2001), especially 39–43 (Jordanes); 230ff. (Rusanova); chapters 3 and 6 (the Slavs’ dynamic transformation via contact with eastern Rome).

  11 Godlowski (1983); Parczewski (1993), (1997: an English summary); Kazanski (1999), chapter 2; cf. Barford (2001), 41ff. (who remains open-minded).

  12 Jordanes, Getica 48.247 (Boz and the Antae), with Heather (1989) establishing the chronology (see p. 234 above); 50.265–6 (Hunnic and other settlements on the Danube: see p. 223 above).

  13 Dolukhnaov (1996) is good on the background of the long-term development of the simple farming cultures of eastern Europe.

  14 For useful introductions to the linguistic evidence, see Birnbaum (1993); Nichols (1998).

  15 Procopius, Wars 7.29.1–3 (547 AD); 7.38 (548 AD); 7.40 (550 AD). Procopius elsewhere reports that the raids were annual: Secret History 18.20; cf. Curta (2001), 75–89.

  16 Turris: Procopius, Wars 7.14.32–5. On forts more generally, see Curta (2001), 150ff.

  17 On the Avars, see e.g. Pohl (1988), (2003); Whitby (1988); with Daim (2003) for an introduction in English to the archaeological materials of the Avar Empire.

  18 See Whitby (1988), especially 156ff.

  19 On the Persian war, see Chapter 7 above. On the disasters of the 610s: John of Nikiu, Chronicle 109; Miracles of St Demetrius I.12, 13–15; II.1, 2. The siege of Constantinople is recounted in Chronicon Paschale AD a. 626.

  20 Miracles of St Demetrius II.4, 5. Miracle II.4 names the Runchine, Strymon and Sagoudatae Slavs as attacking Thessalonica at this point; Miracle II.1 adds the names of the Baiounitae and Buzetae. For the transplanting, see Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6180 (687/8 AD). Justinian later tried to use them to fight the Arabs, but they changed sides at the crucial moment in the battle of Sebastopol in 692: Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6184 (691/2 AD), where the figure of 30,000 appears. For archaeological materials from the north and west Balkans, see Kazanski (1999), 85–6, 137; Barford (2001), 58–62, 67ff.

  21 The seven Slavic tribes: Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6171 (678/9 AD). For the developing archaeological picture, see Kazanski (1999), 138; Barford (2001), 62ff., with references. For an introduction to the Bulgars, see Gyuzelev (1979).

  22 Miracles of St Demetrius II.4, with De Administrando Imperio 49–50 on Patras. For the archaeology, see Kazanski (1999), 85f., 137; Barford (2001), 67f.; and in particular the correctly critical account of Curta (2001), 233–4, responding in part to overly enthusiastic past attempts to use these materials to ‘prove’ the Chronicle of Monemvasia’s account of an early and massive Slavicization of the Peloponnese: see e.g. Charanis (1950).

  23 De Administrando Imperio 30 and 31 (respectively Croat and Byzantine versions of the arrival of the Croats); 32 (the Serbs). Samo: Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48; cf. 4.72 (on the Bulgars). For further comment, see Pohl (2003). Scholarly opinion divides on how much credence to give the De Administrando’s account.

  24 For further comment, see Barford (2001), 73–5; Curta (2001), 64–6, with references. An Iranian origin to some of the names recorded of Antae leaders has also been argued for, but the etymologies continue to be contested.

  25 For references, see note 21 above.

  26 The Geographer’s information underlies all accounts of ninth-century Slavic central Europe, and discussion of the preceding centuries is always framed with this outcome in mind. Ninth-century Carolingian diplomatic manoeuvring concentrated on groups within this area: the Elbe Slavs, the Bohemians, and the Moravians.

  27 For the tenth century, see Chapter 10. For the Roman era, see Map 1.

  28 512 AD: Procopius, Wars 6.15.1–2. Hildegesius: Procopius, Wars 7.35.16–22; cf. Curta (2001), 82, with full references to other secondary literature, on Slovakia as his likely recruiting ground. Samo: Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48, 68.

  29 The literature is enormous, but for recent general accounts see Brachmann (1997); Parczewski (1997); Kazanski (1999), 83–96; Barford (2001), 39–44; Brather (2001). These draw on and update such earlier accounts as Donat and Fischer (1994); Szydlowski (1980); Brachmann (1978); Herrmann (1968)

  30 On the new wheel-turned potteries, see Barford (2001), 63ff., 76–9, 104–12; Brather (2001); cf. Brather (1996). For the older view of a second migration, see Brachmann (1978), with references.

  31 For a general discussion, see Godlowski (1980), (1983), with pp. 371ff above. The departure of the Lombards for Italy in 568 greatly changed the complexion of archaeological patterns in the Middle Danube region.

  32 Barford (2001), 53–4, 65–6, with references.

  33 For the basic information, see Kobylinski (1997); Barford (2001), 65–7, 76–7. For an introduction to older views, see Herrmann (1983). Sukow-Dziedzice burial customs are not known; they must have have consisted of some archaeologically invisible rite such as surface disposal or cremation of the body without any additional, identifying objects.

  34 See Kobylinski (1997).

  35 For references, see note 33 above.

  36 For useful introductions, see Franklin & Shepard (1996), 71ff.; Goehrke (1992), 34–43.

  37 For the linguistic evidence, see note 14 above.

  38 For the evidence, see Goehrke (1992), 14–19; Parczewski (1993); Kazanski (1999), 96–120; Barford (2001), 55–6, 82–5, 96–8. The term ‘Slavic-dominated’ is a carefully chosen formulation to remind the reader that the old assumptions of culture-historical interpretation may be as misleading in the Slavic era as in its Germanic predecessor: see Chapter 1 above.

  39 For an outline and further information, see Goehrke (1992), 20–33; Barford (2001), 85–9, 96–9.

  40 The different possible answers are nicely defined by two recent books on early Slavic history. Kazanski (1999), especially 120–42, argues that overall similarities in lifestyle between the Prague-Korchak, Penkovka, and Kolochin cultures suggests that if the first two were Slavic, then so was the third. In his view, much of the East European Plain, the territory covered by the Kolochin culture, was already Slavic-speaking in c.500 AD (cf. Map 16). Korchak/Penkovka expansion from the seventh century onwards represented a political but not a linguistic revolution. Barford (2001) would identify the generation of Prague–Korchak itself as a moment of primary Slavicization, when Balts and Slavs really came to distinguish themselves from one another. For him, therefore, the spread north and east of Prague-Korchak in the seventh century, followed by the generation of the Luka Raikovetskaia, Volyntsevo, and Romny-Borshevo traditions, represents not just a political revolution, but the moment when Slavs first came to dominate the landscape, albeit while absorbing much of the indigenous population into their new social structures.

  41 The mixed group of 1,600 Huns, Antae and Sclavenes: Procopius, Wars 5.27.1; the 3,000 Slavs: Procopius, Wars 7.38. Hildegesius: Procopius, Wars 7.35.16–22. The 5,000 Slavs at Thessalonica: Miracles of St Demetrius I.12.

  42 Possibly also consistent with some kind of ‘wave of advance’ model is the fact that the same names seem to have been used by different Slavic groups who found themselves in very different places at the end of the migration process. The usual explanation adopted for this phenomenon is that originally unified groups split into fragments, which moved in different directions as Slavic migration progressed. Such a process might also explain why Prague-Korchak, Penkovka, and even
some Kolochin materials have been found intermixed with one another in the Balkans (see note 40 above). The problem remains, however, that the best-documented examples of multiply appearing names refer to Serbs and Croats, who appear to have been military specialists (see pp. 424–5 above), rather than the small conservative type of social grouping that carried Korchak culture in its complete form across the European landscape.

  43 Strategicon of Maurice 11.4. Given the relatively small size of the groups in which they operated, this preference presumably reflected a desire for additional protection, rather than an inherent love of difficult terrain. On the IndoEuropean wave of advance, see Renfrew (1987).

  44 For references, see notes 20 and 22 above. The political context also provides good reasons why the Balkan settlements would have been undertaken by larger units. In the case of the Peloponnese, likewise, the named Slavic groups were distinct from a local Greek-speaking population, so, once again, the named units would appear to have been properly Slavic, as opposed to the result of any reorganization among native and immigrant populations.

  45 Musocius: Theophylact 6.8.13–6.9.15. Ardagastes: Theophylact 1.7.5, 6.7.1–5, 6.9.1–6. Perigastes: Theophylact 7.4.8 ff. Dabritas: Menander fr.21. The quarrel over the prisoners: Theophylact 6.11.4–21. On the sociopolitical transformation of the Slavs nearest the east Roman frontier, see Curta (2001), especially chapter 7. To keep matters in proportion, a total group population of c.10,000 individuals could not have fielded more than one or two thousand fighting men, and was much smaller – by as much as a factor of ten – than some of the migrant groups attested among the Germani of the Hunnic era (see Chapter 4).

  46 For references, see notes 23 and 24 above; for the 5,000 ‘elite’ Slavs at Thessalonica, see note 41 above.

  47 For general references, see note 39 above. For Novotroistkoe, see Liapushkin (1958).

  48 Maurice, Strategicon 11.4.

  49 For Bohemia, see Godja (1988); cf., more generally, Kolendo (1997). For pollen studies, see Brachmann (1978), 31–2; Herrmann (1983), 87–9. Discontinuity is also the theme of Henning (1991). On Germanic culture collapse, see also pp. 371ff.

  50 Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48. On agriculture and its expansion, see Barford (2001), chapter 8, (2005), with full references. Really good information on population expansion is limited to only a few areas, but the field-walking and surveying project in Greater Poland has established that population densities increased from less than 1 person per square kilometre in c.500 AD to 3 per square kilometre by 900 AD, to 7 per square kilometre by 1200 AD: see Barford (2001), 89–91, with references. Indications from agricultural technology tell the same story in qualitative terms. For example, ploughs only came into use at all in the more northerly reaches of the Russian forest zone with the spread of Slavic dominance there in the second half of the first millennium: see Levaskova (1994).

  51 For references, see note 33 above.

  52 See Halsall (2007), 383ff.

  53 On the Chronicle of Monemvasia, see Charanis (1950). For Patras and Ragusa, see De Administrando Imperio 49–50; cf. (on the Salona evacuation) Whitby (1988), 189–90, with references.

  54 See Chapter 4 above.

  55 Urbanczyk (1997b), (2005). There is no explicit historical evidence to support this view of an exploited Germanic peasantry, but, as a kind of parallel, highly exploited Roman peasantry certainly sometimes sought refuge in (perhaps relative) tax havens beyond the frontier. One aspect of the Emperor Constantius’ activities north of the Danube in 358, as we have seen, was to ‘liberate’ peasantry who had cleared off north of the frontier: see Chapter 3.

  56 Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48; cf. Urbanczyk (2002).

  57 This might also explain how Slavs came to take over some Germanic river and place names, the island of Rügen and Silesia, for example, seemingly named after the Rugi and the Siling Vandals respectively.

  58 See Henning (1991), correcting and exposing the political bias of the DDR era in Herrman (1984), (1985), 33ff.

  59 Topirus: Procopius, Wars 7.39. The events of 594: Theophylact, 7.2.1–10.

  60 This provides an alternative explanation – and a much more convincing one – to the ideologically generated nationalist models of ‘submerged’ Slavs living under the rule of just a small Germanic-speaking elite.

  61 See Chapter 10.

  62 For an excellent overview, see Barford (2001), chapters 3–8.

  63 ‘When [Vinitharius] attacked . . .’: Jordanes, Getica 48.247, with note 12 above.

  64 Chronicon Paschale (626 AD); cf. the more general accounts of Avar–Slav relations in Whitby (1988), 80ff.; Curta (2001), 90ff.

  65 Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48.

  66 The Mogilany group predates the arrival of the Avars, but they may have given added momentum to the generation of the Sukow-Dziedzice system, although, as we have seen, the internal chronology is as yet too unclear to allow too much emphasis to be given to this point: for references, see note 33 above.

  67 For useful introductions to the history and archaeology of the Avar Empire, see Pohl (2003); Daim (2003).

  68 See p. 203 above.

  69 On Dulcinea, see Curta (2006), 56–7.

  70 The Slavs’ dugouts: Chronicon Paschale (626 AD); Miracles of St Demetrius II.1.

  71 Buko (2005), chapter 3.

  9. VIKING DIASPORAS

  1 ‘From Hernar in Norway one should keep sailing west to reach Hvarf in Greenland and then you are sailing north of Shetland, so that it can only be seen if visibility is very good; but south of the Faroes, so that the sea appears halfway up their mountain slopes; but so far south of Iceland that one only becomes aware of birds and whales from it’: from the fourteenth-century Hauksbok, quoted in Bill (1997), 198.

  2 There is a strong tendency from a British perspective to distinguish two ages of major Viking invasion: one in the ninth century, and another right at the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh. The latter, however, was substantially different in character, being organized by a centralized Danish monarchy and involving little in the way of actual migration; it will therefore be considered in Chapter 10.

  3 On the logistics of sailing these northern waters, see Crawford (1987), chapter 1.

  4 There is an almost infinite bibliography on the Viking raids in the west, but, between them, Nelson (1997), Keynes (1997) and O Corrain (1997) provide an excellent introduction, usefully supplemented by the appropriate chapters in Forte et al. (2005) and Loyn (1995).

  5 See Crawford (1987), chapter 4 (place names); 136ff. (types of settlement); cf. Ritchie (1993). Hints of what must have been happening in the north emerge from the action unfolding in Ireland (see following note).

  6 See for example the Chronicle of Ireland for the years 807, 811, 812 and 813; the record of attacks becomes pretty much annual from 821, suggesting that the assault on Ireland intensified just a little before that on England and the continent. The Chronicle of Ireland (848 AD) calls the Viking leader Tomrair a tanaise rig, in Irish terms an heir apparent or second in command to a king (Charles-Edwards (2006), vol. 2, 11). He may well have been an ‘earl’ (Old Norse, Jarl), therefore, rather than a ‘king’: see further below. The action in England and on the continent is well covered in Nelson (1997); Keynes (1997).

  7 For further detail, see Nelson (1997); Keynes (1997); Coupland (1995), 190–7.

  8 See O Corrain (1997), with the very helpful commentary of Charles-Edwards (2006) in the notes to his translation of the Chronicle of Ireland. On the two kings, see the ground-breaking work of Smyth (1977). Something more of the actual death of Reginharius is reported in the Translatio of St Germanus: see Nelson (1997).

  9 For useful summaries, see Coupland (1995), 197–201; Keynes (1997). The narrative of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is itself excellent (in early medieval terms!) for these years.

  10 On the nature of the Great Armies, see especially Brooks (1979); cf. Smyth (1977). The switching of manpower back and forth between England and the continent can be followed in
more detail in Nelson (1997) and Keynes (1997).

  11 Studies of Alfred’s reforms abound, but Brooks (1979) is an extremely helpful introduction. It can be supplemented in greater detail by e.g. Smyth (1995); Abels (1998). Many of the relevant texts are conveniently collected and translated in Keynes and Lapidge (1983).

  12 For further detail, see Nelson (1997); O Corrain (1997).

  13 For Brittany, see J. Smith (1992), 196–200; Searle (1988), 29–33. For (somewhat) contrasting introductions to the history of Normandy, see Bates (1982); Searle (1988), especially chapters 5 and 8.

  14 For Orkney, see Crawford (1987), 51ff., with Rafnsson (1997) on Iceland and the Atlantic diaspora.

  15 For a broad summary, see O Corrain (1997); for a much more detailed, indeed slightly controversial treatment, see Smyth (1979).

  16 Various materials have come down to us in excerpts made in the Middle Ages from Ibn Rusteh – see Wiet (1957) – Ibn Jaqub – see Miquel (1966) – and Ibn Fadlan – see Canard (1973); cf. Melnikova (1996), 52–4.

  17 For the ‘rapids’, see De Administrando Imperio, chapter 9. For trade treaties, see Russian Primary Chronicle (911 and 944 AD). For an introduction to the debate, with full sources, see Franklin and Shepard (1996), 27–50; Melnikova (1996), 47–9; Duczko (2004), 3ff.

  18 Ibn Fadlan also makes the Rus sound like Nordic stereotypes: tall and fair, with reddish complexions.

  19 Russian Primary Chronicle (860–2 AD). For the textual tradition, see the introduction to the translation of Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor (1953), with the further thoughts of Franklin and Shepard (1996), 27ff.; Melnikova (1996), chapters 7–8.

  20 Noonan (1997) provides an excellent introduction; the comprehensive treatment is now Duczko (2004).

  21 Ibn Jaqub, Relation (see note 16).

  22 Life of St Anskar 30. On Ottar, see Lund (1984); cf. Melnikova (1996), 49–52.

  23 As we shall see in Chapter 10, there is good reason to suppose that many of the slaves were also being acquired from indigenous intermediaries.

  24 Ibn Jaqub, Relation (see note 16). For the winter circuit of the Rus in the first half of the tenth century, see De Administrando Imperio 9.