Usurpation, Civil War and Barbarian Invasions
When Alexander Severus was killed in 235, rival candidates sprang up in the Balkans, in North Africa and in Italy, the latter promoted by a Roman senate insistent on its prerogatives. Civil war ensued for much of the next decade, and that in turn inspired the major barbarian invasions at which we have already looked, among them the attack by the Gothic king Cniva that ended in the death of Decius at Abrittus in 251. Decius’ successors might win victories over such raiders, but the iron link between invasion and usurpation was impossible to break. This is clearly demonstrated in the reign of Valerian (r. 253–260), who was active mainly in the East, and that of his son and co-emperor Gallienus (r. 253–268) who reigned in the West. Our sources present their reigns as an almost featureless catalogue of disastrous invasions which modern scholars have a very hard time putting in precise chronological order.[16] We need not go into the details here, and instead simply note the way foreign and civil wars fed off each other: when Valerian fought a disastrous Persian campaign that ended in his own capture by the Persian king, many of the eastern provinces fell under the control of a provincial dynasty from Palmyra largely independent of the Italian government of Gallienus. Similarly, every time Gallienus dealt with a threat to the frontiers – raids across the Rhine into Gaul, across the Danube into the Balkans, or Black Sea piracy into Asia Minor and Greece – he was simultaneously confronted by the rebellion of a usurper somewhere else in the empire. Thus Gallienus had to follow up a campaign against Marcomanni on the middle Danube by suppressing the usurper Ingenuus, while the successful defence of Raetia against the Iuthungi by the general Postumus allowed him to seize the imperial purple and inaugurate a separate imperial succession which lasted in Gaul for over a decade.[17] Even when Gallienus attempted to implement military reforms to help him counter this cycle of violence, the reforms themselves could work against him: he created a strong mobile cavalry that allowed him to move swiftly between trouble spots, but soon his general Aureolus, who commanded this new force, seized the purple for himself and Gallienus was murdered in 268, in the course of the campaign to supress him. As we have now come to expect, his death inspired immediate assaults on the frontiers, by ‘Scythians’ in the Balkans and across the Upper Danube into the Alpine provinces as well.
Again, a full list of invaders and usurpers is an arid exercise and one unnecessary here. The successors of Gallienus – Claudius, Aurelian, Probus, and their many short-lived challengers – faced the same succession of problems as their predecessor had done. Claudius successfully defeated an invading army of Scythians twice, at Naissus and in the Haemus mountains, and won for himself the victory title Gothicus which assures us that those Scythians were Goths.[18] We have already seen that Aurelian won a Gothic campaign, but his energies and attentions were constantly distracted by other invasions, some reaching as far as Italy, and by the civil wars in which he suppressed the independent imperial successions in Gaul and the East. Aurelian fell to assassins, and so too did his immediate successor Tacitus, the latter struck down while in hot pursuit of Scythian – perhaps Gothic – raiders deep in the heart of Asia Minor.[19] Though Probus managed to hold the throne for a full six years, he too was killed in a mutiny that broke out in the face of yet another Balkan invasion, and his praetorian prefect Carus was proclaimed emperor by the legions.[20]
The Accession of Diocletian
We get our first indication that authors of the fourth century had come to understand the connection between internal Roman dissension and barbarian invasion with reference to the death of Probus. As the historian Aurelius Victor put it, writing around 360: ‘all the barbarians seized the opportunity to invade when they learned of the death of Probus’.[21] In response, the new emperor Carus left his elder son Carinus in charge of the western provinces and led an army against the Quadi and Sarmatians on the middle Danube before launching the invasion of Persia during which he met his end – supposedly struck by lightning, perhaps the victim of assassination.[22] The accession of Diocletian at Nicomedia in 284 prompted the inevitable war against Carinus. The latter had restored the Rhine frontier in 283, but by marching east to face Diocletian he allowed new barbarian raids on the Gallic coast. Carinus was defeated and killed at the battle of the Margus in 285, and in that same year, the victorious Diocletian campaigned against the Sarmatians on the Danube. He also appointed a colleague in the imperial office, a fellow soldier named Maximian, who campaigned on the Rhine.[23]
This was a significant step and one with major repercussions for the longevity of Diocletian’s regime. By appointing a co-emperor with whom he was on good terms and who would regard him as his benefactor, Diocletian hoped to give himself the breathing space needed to secure his hold on the throne and prevent rival usurpers appearing in parts of the empire where he could not be himself. The plan worked to a degree, although it took time. Only the appointment in 293 of two caesars, or junior emperors, allowed Diocletian and Maximian to suppress several provincial revolts and secure the frontiers. The evidence of these efforts is visible all along the imperial frontiers, for instance in the so-called Saxon shore forts along the Channel and North Sea coasts of what are now England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. More important for the history of Roman relations with the Goths is the Diocletianic programme of fortification along the Danube. This consisted both of brand new constructions, as at Iatrus, and also of enlarged and refurbished early imperial fortifications, as at Augustae and Oescus.
Diocletian and the Goths
Such improvements were not simply measures of passive self-defence – they were also bases from which imperial campaigns could be supplied and supported. Already in the 280s, Diocletian and Maximian showed a renewed imperial willingness to campaign beyond the frontiers, and Maximian’s general Constantius – his caesar after 293 – won several spectacular victories against Franks on the lower Rhine. Meanwhile, Diocletian campaigned on the Danube against Tervingi and Taifali, winning victories in 289 and again in 291. That campaign is significant for us because it marks the first appearance of the Tervingian name in Greek or Latin writing. Our source is a panegyric – a speech in praise of the emperor Maximian, delivered in Gaul in 291 – and it refers to the Tervingi as pars Gothorum, which is to say, a section of the Goths.[24] As we shall see in the following chapters, the Tervingi were throughout the fourth century the most important subdivision of the Goths. They were the Gothic group with which the Roman empire had the most regular dealings, and for that reason they are the one about which we know the most. It was the Tervingi with whom the emperor Constantine would conclude a lasting peace in the 330s; descendants of these same Tervingi made up the majority of the Goths who crossed the Danube into the Roman empire in 376, eventually taking part in the Balkan settlements from which Alaric himself would emerge.
For all these reasons, therefore, this first hint of the Tervingi’s existence will automatically seem significant to the modern historian of the Goths. We cannot, unfortunately, tell just how important these third-century Tervingi were at the time, particularly as they are mentioned in the same breath as the Taifali, a group of barbarians who often appear together with the Goths in later sources, but always in an inferior position. What is more, this couple of lines in the panegyric of 291 is the last we hear of the Tervingi or any other Goths for more than a decade. By that point, the internal politics of the empire had changed dramatically yet again. As we shall see, the joint reign of Diocletian and Maximian broke the vicious political cycle of the preceding half century. In the process of doing so, they reinvented the governmental system of the Roman empire, strengthening the central government and laying the foundations of a political system that lasted for several hundred years. Just as important, by finally establishing a secure hold on the imperial office, Diocletian and his colleagues were also able to secure more stable relations with barbarian groups along the frontiers. We will return to the government of Diocletian and to the imperial frontiers in chapter f
our, paying particular attention to the lower Danube. There, by the 320s, the Goths were unquestionably the dominant political force immediately beyond the frontiers, a position they had achieved partly because the emperors wanted them to. In the meantime, however, we must turn to an important interpretative question which is raised by our discussion of third-century invasion and civil war.
If, as we have suggested, the middle of the third century can be defined by this constant cycle of internal and external violence, we are still left to ask why it was that barbarian groups along the northern frontiers could exploit imperial weakness, and particularly imperial rivalry, so successfully and widely. After all, this ability was something quite new, unknown in the early empire, when imperial generals could rampage at will through the land beyond the imperial frontiers. Then, the central European lands beyond the Rhine and Danube were a patchwork of very small political units that could be brought together for coordinated action only for very short periods of time, if at all. That is the situation depicted in the classic account of Tacitus’ Germania, written in A.D. 98, and corroborated by the political history of the period. The later second and the third centuries stand in very sharp contrast to this early imperial picture. Now, beginning in the 160s and 170s, barbarian groups along the northern frontiers challenged the empire in ways that had always eluded them previously, and did so on a scale never before seen. If we are to understand this exponential growth in the ability of Rome’s northern neighbours to pose a threat to the empire, we need to look at the social and political history of barbarian Europe. There, during the first and second centuries, society was transformed in ways that paralleled changes inside the imperial provinces.
Chapter 2 The Roman Empire and Barbarian Society
Just as an increasingly coherent Roman identity was spreading throughout the Roman provinces, so too were major social changes at work in the barbarian societies of northern and central Europe. Soon after the Antonine Constitution made all the inhabitants of the empire Roman citizens for the first time, a new word appears in our sources to describe the world outside the empire: barbaricum, the land of the barbarians, and the antithesis of the civilization that was synonymous – and coterminous – with the empire.[25] The catalyst for social change in the barbaricum was the simple fact of the empire’s existence and with it the growth of Roman provincial life. That fact is hardly surprising, particularly in light of modern studies showing how advanced and relatively complex societies exert unconscious pressures to change on less developed neighbours. The Roman empire was, by the standards of the ancient world, a very complex state. The sophistication of its economic life and its hierarchies of government impinged upon the peoples who lived in its shadow. As provincials became Romans, so they provided instructive models to neighbouring peoples outside the provincial structure, and offered a conduit by which the more portable aspects of Roman provincial life – from luxury goods to a monetized economy – were transmitted to lands that were not, or not yet, provincial.
We can conceive of Roman cultural influence as a series of concentric circles radiating out beyond the Roman frontier. In the band nearest to the frontier, it can sometimes be hard to distinguish the archaeological culture of the natives from their neighbours on the Roman side of the frontier, at least below the level of the social elite; indeed, the fact of imperial government and its regular demands for taxation may have been the only real factor distinguishing a Pannonian peasant on one side of the Danube from a Quadic peasant on the other. Further away from the frontier, differences became starker. Roman export goods, where they could be found at all, were luxury items and Roman coins circulated as bullion not money. Still further out, in Lithuania or Scandinavia, only the most portable of Roman goods are visible – coins, medallions, and the occasional weapon or piece of armour – and from the Roman perspective, these distant people were half-legendary. Even here, however, one finds traces of Roman economic power imposing itself on the indigenous population: on the island of Gotland, for instance, the quantity of Roman coin finds is out of all proportion to the regional norm and seems to suggest a regional distribution centre to other parts of ancient Scandinavia. Such distant regions had products that were valued inside the empire – semi-precious material like amber, but also slaves and raw materials like animal pelts. Such materials leave no trace in the archaeological record available to us, but we can still study the regional distribution of Roman products in central Europe. Such distribution patterns indicate the existence of well-established trade routes from east to west and, especially, from north to south, and it is likely that supplying the economic needs of the Roman empire helped to organize political units far beyond the Roman frontier.[26]
Barbarians and the Roman Army
Be that as it may, economic and political interdependence is strikingly visible closer to the imperial frontier, particularly in the context of the Roman army. From the first century onwards, many barbarians served in the Roman army, and the proportion of such barbarians probably increased as the provincialization of the imperial interior made army service less and less attractive to Roman civilians. The benefits of service in the army to a barbarian from beyond the frontier were substantial – not only did service in an auxiliary (non-citizen) unit pay well, it brought with it Roman citizenship after honourable discharge and often a substantial discharge bonus. As we shall see, the Goths were enmeshed in this pattern of service with the Roman army from very early in their history. Even if the famous inscription of a soldier’s son named Guththa, who died in Arabia in 208, may or may not refer to a Goth, Gothic troops are definitely attested among the Roman units defeated by the Persian king Shapur and commemorated by him in a famous inscription.[27] Service in the Roman army had profound effects on Rome’s neighbours, and not just those who enlisted. Many barbarians who served in the army became entirely acclimatized to a Roman way of life, living out their lives inside the empire and dying there as Roman citizens after long years of service. Others, however, returned to their home communities beyond the frontier, bringing with them Roman habits and tastes, along with Roman money and products of different sorts. Their presence contributed to the demand for more Roman products beyond the frontiers, which helped increase trade between the empire and its neighbours. Roman installations on the frontiers found a ready market for their goods among barbarians close to the frontier, and Roman coins that found their way out into barbarian lands often found their way back through trade.
Depending upon one’s political standpoint, this sort of economic influence may seem quite sinister or it might seem benign. Either way, it certainly represents what modern commentators call ‘soft power’. Rome’s ‘hard power’ was equally enormous, and could have a painfully severe impact on its neighbours when it was exercised. Even in times of peace, Roman military power was always present as a threat. As we saw in the last chapter, military victories were a vital legitimizing device for imperial power and very few emperors were secure enough on their thrones to pass up the occasional aggressive war. The need for imperial victories translated into periodic assaults upon the neighbours, the imposition of tribute, the taking of hostages, the collection of slaves, the pillaging of villages by Roman soldiers. Roman military pressure was by no means relentless – it could hardly be so after the imperial frontiers ceased to expand – but it was never beyond the realm of possibility. Every generation born along the imperial frontier at some point experienced the attentions of the Roman military. The empire and its army were thus in and of themselves an ongoing spur to social change in the barbarian societies that flanked the imperial provinces: barbarian leaders had every incentive to make themselves more potent militarily.
Imperial Policy Towards Barbarian Kings
Paradoxically, this drift towards greater military competence amongst the barbarians was only exacerbated by direct Roman interference in barbarian life. Roman dogma held that all barbarians were dangerous and that it was therefore best to keep them at odds with one another as much
as possible. In order to keep barbarian leaders in a state of mutual hostility, Roman emperors frequently subsidized some kings directly. This support built up royal prestige and hence governing capacity, while reducing the importance of those leaders who were denied the same support. This type of interference allowed emperors to manage not just relations between barbarians and the empire, but also the relationships among different barbarian groups. Along the barbarian fringe of the empire, access to luxury goods – whether coin or the various items that could be made from the same precious metals as coin – was often as important as the items themselves. The ability to acquire wealth meant the ability to redistribute it, and to be able to give gifts enforced a leader’s own social dominance. In other words, conspicuous wealth translated into active power. For these purposes, gold and silver were especially important, and were the dominant medium for storing wealth. Distribution patterns of silver coinage beyond the Roman frontier tend to vary according to the political importance of particular regions at particular times: in Germania, for instance, we find huge concentration of 70,000 silver denarii in just a few decades between the reigns of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180) and Septimius Severus (r. 193–211), when campaigning along that frontier was regular and intense. What that and other evidence demonstrates is that emperors and their generals regularly manipulated political life in the barbaricum through economic subsidy. Yet this strategy, however necessary it might seem within the mental paradigms of Roman government and however effective it might be, was also fraught with dangers.
Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric (Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity) Page 4