Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric (Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity)

by Michael Kulikowski

  The Peace of 332

  Constantinus had won a major and lasting victory that remained worthy of note two decades later: in 355, when Constantine’s nephew Julian delivered a panegyric to another of Constantine’s sons, the emperor Constantius, the scale of the Gothic victory could still be celebrated.[71] In fact, for more than thirty years after 332 the lower Danube was at peace. Yet despite its evident importance, we know very little about Constantine’s Gothic peace. The limitations of our evidence have encouraged modern scholars into much hypothetical reconstruction along two different lines, the first on the continuity of Gothic leadership, the second on the terms of the peace. In both cases, the testimony of Jordanes is a complicating factor. The real problem is the obscurity of the contemporary fourth-century sources, none of which allows us to gauge how important a king Ariaric was, and none of which tell us how, or whether, he was related to Tervingian leaders of the later fourth century. Instead, we have to infer this information from the limited evidence at our disposal.

  The first clue to doing this lies in the location of Constantine’s first Gothic campaign. Given that it took place in distant Sarmatia, and given the scale of the tribal displacement that preceded it, we can perhaps infer that Ariaric was the ruler of a very substantial polity. Although we cannot be sure that he was the only Gothic king involved in the war of 332, he is the only one attested by name, probably another sign of his importance. We are on less certain ground when it comes to his connection to later Tervingian leaders. It is widely agreed that Ariaric was the grandfather of Athanaric, the powerful Tervingian chieftain against whom the emperor Valens campaigned in the 360s. However, that genealogical connection is based on the hypothetical identification of Ariaric’s unnamed hostage son with the equally unnamed father of Athanaric who is said to have had a statue erected to him in Constantinople.[72] The only ancient source that explicitly connects Ariaric with the Tervingian leaders of the later fourth century is Jordanes.[73] But as we have seen, Jordanes was determined to construct a continuous Gothic history. Given that he elsewhere invents demonstrably spurious connections to provide genealogical continuity, the value of his testimony for Ariaric is suspect. In other words, while some connection between Ariaric and later Tervingian kings is plausible, it can only remain speculative.

  The same holds true for the terms of the treaty. Fourth-century evidence is limited, while Jordanes imposes on it an anachronistic Byzantine interpretation. He supposes that Ariaric’s Goths became foederati, a word that by the sixth century had a technical legal content implying specific responsibilities on the part of both empire and federate allies. In 332, however, the formal status of foederatus did not exist, and the word for treaty, foedus, is not a technical term. Even though many scholars think that the treaty of 332 invented the type of technical foedus known in the sixth century, nothing in the fourth-century evidence makes that plausible. The peace of 332 marks a significant stage in both Roman and Gothic history not because of any legal innovations, but because it was so very decisive. It imposed more than thirty years of peace on the lower Danube or, as bishop Eusebius of Caesarea put it in the Life of Constantine that he wrote shortly after the emperor’s death in 337, ‘the Goths finally learned to serve the Romans’.[74] Indeed, some of the defeated Goths would continue to claim a special loyalty to the Constantinian dynasty for many years, decades later supporting a usurper named Procopius on the grounds of his dynastic connections.[75] In the interim, they offered tribute to the emperor, and provided a large supply of military recruits for the Roman army. Such military service was not explicitly required by the terms of 332, as Eusebius’ testimony makes clear: he is nowhere able to state that Goths served in the army as a result of the treaty, even though elsewhere in his Life he is consistently very enthusiastic, and very specific, about Constantine’s recruitment of defeated barbarians.[76] Regardless, the peace brought benefits to both sides.

  The Peace and the Gothic Economy

  The frontier was opened to trade all along its length, a most unusual measure, given that Roman emperors had for centuries regulated the export of Roman technology outside the empire. Yet the fact that trade surged all along the river is demonstrated by the large number of bronze coins found in the band of territory north of the Danube. Bronze issues of the late 330s to the early 360s dominate the archaeological record, which suggests that the Gothic side of the lower Danube came to be quite thoroughly integrated into the Roman monetary economy in those years. In fact, the distribution of bronze coins in the region immediately beyond the frontier is very nearly as intense as in the Roman province of Scythia itself.[77] That such coins were used for commercial exchange is placed beyond serious doubt by the existence of locally produced imitations of Roman coins which must have been struck to eke out insufficient supplies of genuine Roman coinage in commercial circulation. It must be noted that bronze coin finds are dramatically concentrated right beside the frontier, generally within fifteen or twenty miles of it, but less so in the Gothic regions opposite Scythia and Moesia Secunda than those across the river from Moesia Prima. Although this fact has led some scholars to question the level of monetization of the Gothic economy, the sheer quantity of low-value coinage beyond the frontier make these objections hard to sustain.

  That Roman diplomatic connections with the Gothic elite also increased rapidly from the 330s onwards is suggested by the distribution of Roman silver coins. Much less common in the immediate vicinity of the Danube, silver is instead found in large quantity further north and east, in modern-day Moldova and Ukraine. Unlike the bronze, silver coinage is uncommon in stray finds at industrial and residential sites. Instead, silver siliquae are concentrated in small hoards, for instance one found at Kholmskoě near Lake Kitaj or another at Taraclia in Moldova. The Kholmskoě hoard is especially significant: its ninety-three silver coins of Constantius Ⅱ were all of the same value and type, struck between 351 and 355, bearing the legend VOTIS.ⅩⅩⅩ – MULTIS.ⅩⅩⅩⅩ, and virtually unused. This fact raises some doubts about whether they circulated as money or as bullion. It is possible that our extant finds of silver coinage are not evidence for trade across the frontier – especially since silver siliquae are very rare in the Roman province of Scythia itself – but rather for gift-subsidies to Gothic chieftains whom the empire had an interest in cultivating. All the same, there can be no question that the economy of Gothia was both fairly sophisticated and closely linked to the Roman world. Indeed, archaeological evidence from modern-day Romania, Moldova and Ukraine gives us precious insight into the social and economic world of the fourth-century Goths.

  Gothic Society and Archaeological Evidence

  As we saw in chapter three, it is very rarely possible to assign a particular material culture to a specific barbarian group known from the written sources. Fortunately for us, one of the few places where we can do precisely that is in the area occupied by the so-called Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov culture between the late third and the late fourth centuries. This archaeological culture gets its unwieldy name from two cemeteries, one in modern Romania, one in modern Ukraine, each coincidentally at the edge of the culture’s extension, which lies between the Donets river in the east and the Carpathians and Transylvania in the west. The Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov culture is dated, partly on independent archaeological grounds, to the same period in which the literary sources show the Goths as the dominant political force along the lower Danube and northwest of the Black Sea. Many barbarian groups other than Goths lived within the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov zone and the culture itself is diverse and derived from several different cultural traditions. However, because it is a new development of the later third century – exactly the period in which the written sources attest the growth of Gothic hegemony – it is likely that Gothic leaders inadvertently created a stable political zone at the edge of the Roman empire in which a new material culture could develop out of numerous different antecedents. Because this new Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov culture was the
material context in which Gothic history was embedded, it can help us understand the world of the Goths we meet in our written sources.

  The geography of the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov region shaped the social diversity of its archaeological culture. The culture extended across three major geographic zones. At its northernmost reaches, it occupied the so-called forest steppe, a broad transition zone between the heavily wooded regions of northern Europe and the open plains immediately north of the Black Sea. This northwestern Black Sea region is actually the westernmost end of the great Eurasian plain, which is at its widest breadth in Central Asia and gradually shrinks to a narrow band along the Black Sea coast to the east of the Carpathian mountains. Unlike the forest steppe to its north, this Black Sea steppe was not heavily wooded, and its drier expanses were better suited to the sort of pastoralist exploitation common to the Eurasian steppe than they were to agricultural cultivation. Several important rivers flow through this region into the Black Sea, among them the Dnieper, Bug, and Dniester, as well as the Sireul (Sereth) and Prut, which join the Danube just before it turns east and enters the Black Sea itself. Along these rivers and their many smaller tributaries there is rich land suitable for the intensive cultivation of food crops, particularly grains. Because of these environmental contrasts, the region has always supported two parallel ways of life, settled agricultural populations in the river valleys coexisting alongside semi-nomadic pastoralists in the steppes. These pastoralists have often had strong cultural, and sometimes political, connections to other nomadic groups further to the east, where the Eurasian steppe becomes broader north of the Sea of Azov and the Caucasus. This coexistence of pastoralists beside sedentary farming populations seems to have characterized the region since prehistoric times and certainly continued to do so deep into the middle ages. In the third and fourth centuries, the nomadic population of the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov zone was in regular contact with the settled population: at a site like Kholmskoě, for example, the remains of a nomad camp are present very close to an agricultural village. Although it was commonplace until recently to read such contrasts between pastoralism and agriculture in ethnic terms (for example, Alan and Sarmatian nomads versus sedentary Goths and Taifali), they are better understood by comparison with Arabia in the same period, where the pastoralist bedouin of the deserts lived alongside the settled populations of the oases and desert fringes, politically but not ethnically diverse.

  Agricultural Life

  Despite the presence of pastoralists, the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov culture was fundamentally agricultural and the majority of its population were farmers. Settlements were concentrated along the great river valleys and along their tributaries. Even from the quite limited survey data, it is clear that population was dense, with villages scattered every few kilometres along the rivers. Villages could be quite large, sustaining twelve or fifteen families, along with their livestock – mostly cattle, with sheep/goats (almost indistinguishable archaeologically) or pigs as secondary animals, depending on which was better suited to the local topography. Horses were rare in the agricultural settlements, and presumably confined to the use of elites. For the most part, settlements were well organized, with houses in rows. The houses themselves were built in a fashion known from all over central Europe, which scholars always refer to by their German name of Grubenhäuser (‘sunken houses’). Such Grubenhäuser were half-dug into the ground, with varying amounts of the house – sometimes as little as the roof – projecting above the surface. The houses were generally of wood, and sometimes of wattle and daub, but in regions near to the Black Sea stone floors were common. Regardless, the sunken construction maximized insulation in both winter and summer, very useful in a continental climate with considerable variations in temperatures. Another type of house common throughout the barbaricum was found alongside the Grubenhäuser at many Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov settlements. Called Wohnstallhäuser, these houses were built of timber and entirely above ground, combining within a single structure a dwelling area for the human residents with stalls for the livestock.

  As with the types of houses one finds in the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov zone, there is nothing strikingly unusual about the region’s economy, which conformed to the patterns found in all the agricultural cultures of the barbaricum. The economy of most Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov villages was self-contained. Wheat, millet and barley were the staple grains, and most of what was eaten seems to have been ground at home by hand. Agricultural and woodworking implements made of iron were common, though forge-sites are barely known and we cannot tell whether every village had a blacksmith or whether there were more centralized distribution spots for metal tools. For cooking, hand-made pots were used alongside wheel-turned pottery of considerably higher quality, and many ceramic forms found in the region have long-standing local precedents. Much of this pottery must have been made in the villages where it went on to be used, but there is also evidence for commercial workshops of different types – for instance a well-known glass factory at Komarovo – and for trade in fine wares with the Roman province of Scythia.[78] The bronze and occasionally silver ornaments that are quite common in the grave goods of the region were presumably made in regional workshops and distributed by means of trade. Similarly, workshops for bone combs have been discovered, with production on a scale much too large for purely local consumption.

  Long-Distance Trade

  Trade with the Roman empire and with other more distant regions of the barbaricum is also attested. Although some have argued for substantial imports of basic foodstuffs into Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov regions from the Roman empire, the evidence is debateable. Mediterranean amphorae have been found at Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov sites, presumably a sign of some trade in the grain, oil, and wine that were transported in amphorae. On the other hand, amphorae remains are not extensive and we do not know how widely the Mediterranean preference for olive oil spread beyond the lower Danube – certainly animal fats were preferred to olive oil in most of central Europe. It is similarly hard to imagine an extensive grain trade: various grains, including some not grown inside the empire, were widely cultivated throughout the region, which had historically been able to serve as an important granary for the Greek world of the Mediterranean.[79] Wine, by contrast, might well have been a fairly substantial export into the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov regions, but it will take more detailed study of the amphora evidence for us to be sure.

  Wine, as a relatively high-value item not readily available from local sources, probably served the needs of Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov elites, as presumably did Roman glass and fine ceramics. It is, however, higher-value goods that most clearly demonstrate the existence of this sort of interaction with the empire. We have seen that Roman bronze coins were common close to the frontier and represent the monetization of the local economy. More striking are the large gold coins – multiples of the solidus – worn as medallions inside the barbaricum. In the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov zone, such multipla are known from between the early third and the early fifth century, but fully eighty percent of the finds cluster in the middle of the fourth century, under Constantius Ⅱ, Valentinian, and Valens. These multipla are distributed in a zone between the lower Danube and Black Sea on the one hand, and the Vistula and Oder rivers on the other, which suggests that they passed from the empire to the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov elites and then onwards through a network of treaty relations into east-central Europe. The absence of such medallions from the Upper Danube and the Rhineland suggests that they are a phenomenon specific to the relations between the empire and the Goths, and in turn between Gothic elites and neighbours further to the north. Examples of portable art more representative of Danish, Scandinavian and northwestern German regions, found at Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov sites like the large cemetery at Dančeny, suggest traffic of the same sort in the opposite direction.[80]

  The Elite Population

  In all likelihood, then, trade and dipl
omatic activity between the empire and the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov elites brought Roman luxury goods into the barbaricum, while gift exchange distributed some of those same goods from the immediate vicinity of the frontier into remoter parts of central and northern Europe. Unfortunately, we know somewhat less about Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov elites than we do about other barbarian elites further to the west. Archaeologists have not, for instance, uncovered anything like the same number of fortified sites as were raised by Alamannic chieftains along the upper Rhine. On the other hand, sites like Bašmačka, Aleksandrovka and Gorodok are all distinctly larger than the more usual small villages and all display considerably higher levels of imported Roman amphorae. They were thus probably royal or aristocratic strongholds rather than just farming villages. Traces of fortification confirm that impression. Aleksandrovka, for instance, sited at the confluence of the Inguleč and the Dnieper, was surrounded by a ditch and an earth rampart, and the foundations of the site’s walls were of stone with evidence of three towers, the whole design very reminiscent of the late Greek architecture of the Black Sea coast. Palanca, near the Dniester, Gorodok, on the lower Bug, and Bašmačka, near the Dnieper rapids, also had stone walls.[81] All three sites controlled important east-west routes across the region northwest of the Black Sea.