on the left bank, covered by mountains and defences, with reference
to which it might well be doubtful whether it did more to promote or
to impede the general defensive attitude of the Romans. Hadrian, in
fact, had thought of giving up this territory, and so regarded its
incorporation as a mistake; after the step had once been taken, there
certainly preponderated the consideration, if not of the lucrative gold
mines of the country, at any rate of the Roman civilisation rapidly
developing itself in the region of the Marisus. But he caused at least
the superstructure of the stone bridge of the Danube to be removed,
as his apprehension of its being used by the enemy outweighed his
consideration for the Dacian garrison. The later period released itself
from this anxiety; but the eccentric position of Dacia in relation to
the rest of the frontier-defence remained.
The sixty years after the Dacian wars of Trajan were for the Danube
lands a time of peace and of peaceful development. No doubt there was
never entire quiet, particularly at the mouths of the Danube, and even
the hazardous expedient of purchasing the security of the frontier from
the adjoining restless neighbours, just as was done with Decebalus, by
the bestowal of yearly gratuities was further employed;[133] yet the
remains of antiquity show at this very time everywhere the flourishing
of urban life, and not a few communities, particularly of Pannonia,
name as their founder Hadrian or Pius. But upon this stillness
followed a storm such as the empire had not yet sustained, and which,
although properly but a frontier-war, by its extension over a series
of provinces and by its duration for thirteen years shook the empire
itself.
[Sidenote: Marcomanian war.]
The war named after the Marcomani was not kindled by any single
personage of the type of Hannibal or Decebalus. As little did
aggressions on the part of the Romans provoke this war; the emperor
Pius injured no neighbour, either powerful or humble, and set on
peace almost more than its just value. The realm of Maroboduus and
of Vannius had thereafter, perhaps in consequence of the partition
under Vangio and Sido (p. 216), become divided into the kingdom of
the Marcomani in what is now Bohemia and that of the Quadi in Moravia
and upper Hungary. Conflicts with the Romans do not appear to have
occurred here; the vassal-relation of the princes of the Quadi was even
formally recognised under the reign of Pius by the confirmation asked
for. Shiftings of peoples, which lay beyond the Roman horizon, were
the proximate cause of the great war. Soon after the death of Pius (†
161) masses of Germans, especially Langobardi from the Elbe, but also
Marcomani and other bodies of men, appeared in Pannonia, apparently to
gain new abodes on the right bank. Pressed hard by the Roman troops who
were despatched against them, they sent the prince of the Marcomani,
Ballomarius, and with him a representative of each of the ten tribes
taking part, to renew their request for assignation of land. But the
governor abode by his decision and compelled them to go back over the
Danube.
[Sidenote: Its beginning.]
[Sidenote: Invasion of Italy.]
This was the beginning of the great Danubian war.[134] The governor
of upper Germany, Gaius Aufidius Victorinus, the father-in-law of
Fronto known in literature, had already, about the year 162, to repel
an assault of the Chatti, which likewise may have been occasioned by
tribes from the Elbe pressing on their rear. Had equally energetic
steps been taken, greater mischief might have been averted. But just
then the Armenian war had begun, into which the Parthians soon entered;
though the troops were not actually sent away from the threatened
frontier to the east, for which there is at least no evidence,[135]
there was at any rate a want of men to take up the second war at once
with energy. This temporising severely avenged itself. Just when
people were triumphing in Rome over the kings of the east, on the
Danube the Chatti, the Marcomani, the Quadi, the Jazyges burst as
with a thunderclap into the Roman territory. Raetia, Noricum, the two
Pannonias, Dacia, were inundated at the same moment; in the Dacian
mine-district we can still follow the traces of this irruption. What
devastations they then wrought in those regions, which for long had
seen no enemy, is shown by the fact that several years afterwards
the Quadi gave back first 13,000, then 50,000, and the Jazyges even
100,000 Roman captives. Nor did the matter end with the injury done to
the provinces. There happened what had not occurred for three hundred
years and begun to be accounted as impossible--the barbarians broke
through the wall of the Alps and invaded Italy itself; from Raetia they
destroyed Opitergium (Oderzo); bands from the Julian Alps invested
Aquileia.[136] Defeats of individual Roman divisions must have taken
place in various cases; we learn only that one of the commandants of
the guard, Victorinus, fell before the enemy, and the ranks of the
Roman armies were sorely thinned.
[Sidenote: Pestilence.]
This grave attack befell the state at a most unhappy moment. No doubt
the Oriental war was ended; but in its train a pestilence had spread
throughout Italy and the west, which swept men away more continuously
than the war, and in more fearful measure. When the troops were
concentrated, as was necessary, the victims of the pestilence were all
the more numerous. As dearth always accompanies pestilence, so on this
occasion there appeared with it failure of crops and famine, and severe
financial distress; the taxes did not come in, and in the course of the
war the emperor saw himself under the necessity of alienating by public
auction the jewels of his palace.
[Sidenote: Verus and Marcus.]
There was lack of a fitting leader. A military and political task
so extensive and so complicated could, as things stood in Rome, be
undertaken by no commissioned general, but only by the ruler himself.
Marcus had, with a correct and modest knowledge of his shortcomings,
on ascending the throne, placed by his side with equal rights his
younger adopted brother Lucius Verus, on the benevolent assumption that
the jovial young man--as he was a vigorous fencer and hunter--would
also grow into an able general. But the worthy emperor did not
possess the sharp glance of one who knows men; the choice had proved
as unfortunate as possible; the Parthian war just ended had shown
the nominal general to be personally dissolute, and as an officer
incapable. The joint regency of Verus was nothing but an additional
calamity, which indeed was obviated by his death, that ensued not
long after the outbreak of the Marcomanian war (169). Marcus, by his
leanings more reflective than inclined to practical life, and not at
all a soldier, nor in general a strong personality, undertook the
exclusive and personal conduct of the requisite operations. He may, in
doing so, have made mistakes enough in detail, and perhaps the long
duration of the struggle is partly traceable to this; but the unity
of supreme command, his clear insight into the object for which the
war was waged, the tenacity of his statesmanly action, above all the
rectitude and firmness of the man administering his difficult office
with self-forgetful faithfulness, ultimately broke the dangerous
assault. This was a merit all the higher, as the success was due more
to character than to talent.
[Sidenote: Progress of the war.]
The character of the task set before the Romans is shown by the fact
that the government, despite the want of men and money in the first
year of this war, had the walls of the capital of Dalmatia, Salonae,
and of the capital of Thrace, Philippopolis, restored by its soldiers
and at its expense; certainly these were not isolated arrangements.
They had to prepare themselves to see the men of the north everywhere
investing the great towns of the empire; the terrors of the Gothic
expeditions were already knocking at the gates, and were perhaps for
this time averted only by the fact that government saw them coming.
The immediate superintendence of the military operations, and the
regulation, demanded by the state of the case, of the relations to
the frontier-peoples and reformation of the existing arrangements
on the spot, might neither be omitted nor left to his unprincipled
brother or individual leaders. In fact, the position of matters was
changed as soon as the two emperors arrived at Aquileia, in order
to set out thence with the army to the scene of war. The Germans
and Sarmatians, far from united in themselves, and without common
leading, felt themselves unequal to such a counter-blow. The masses of
invaders everywhere retreated; the Quadi sent in their submission to
the imperial generals, and in many cases the leaders of the movement
directed against the Romans paid for this reaction with their lives.
Lucius thought that the war had demanded victims enough, and advised
a return to Rome; but the Marcomani persevered in haughty resistance,
and the calamity which had come upon Rome, the hundred thousands of
captives dragged away, the successes achieved by the barbarians,
imperatively demanded a more vigorous policy and the offensive
continuance of the war. The son-in-law of Marcus, Tiberius Claudius
Pompeianus, as an extraordinary measure took the command in Raetia
and Noricum; his able lieutenant, the subsequent emperor, Publius
Helvius Pertinax, cleared the Roman territory without difficulty with
the first auxiliary legion called up from Pannonia. In spite of the
financial distress two new legions were formed, particularly from
Illyrian soldiers, in the raising of which no doubt many a previous
highway-robber was made a defender of his country; and, as was already
stated (pp. 161, 198), the hitherto slight frontier-guard of these
two provinces was reinforced by the new legion-camps of Ratisbon and
Enns. The emperors themselves went to the upper Pannonian camps. It was
above all of consequence to restrict the area within which the fire
of war was raging. The barbarians coming from the north, who offered
their aid, were not repelled, and fought in Roman pay, so far as they
did not--as also occurred--break their word and make common cause with
the enemy. The Quadi, who sued for peace and for the confirmation of
the new king Furtius, had the latter readily granted to them, and
nothing demanded of them but the giving back of the deserters and the
captives. Success in some measure attended the attempt to restrict the
war to the two chief opponents, the Marcomani and the Jazyges from of
old allied with them. Against these two peoples it was carried on in
the following years with severe conflicts and not without defeat. We
know only isolated details, which do not admit of being brought into
set connection. Marcus Claudius Fronto, to whom had been entrusted the
commands of upper Moesia and Dacia united as an extraordinary measure,
fell about the year 171 in conflict against Germans and Jazyges. The
commandant of the guard, Marcus Macrinius Vindex, likewise fell before
the enemy. They and other officers of high rank obtained in these years
honorary monuments in Rome at the column of Trajan, because they had
met death in defence of their fatherland. The barbaric tribes, who had
declared for Rome, again partially fell away--such as the Cotini and
above all the Quadi, who granted an asylum to the fugitive Marcomani
and drove out their vassal-king Furtius, whereupon the emperor Marcus
set a price of 1000 gold pieces on the head of his successor Ariogaesus.
[Sidenote: Its issue; and second war.]
Not till the sixth year of the war (172) does the complete conquest
of the Marcomani seem to have been achieved, and Marcus to have
thereupon assumed the well-deserved title of victory, Germanicus.
Then followed the overthrow of the Quadi; lastly in 175 that of the
Jazyges, in consequence of which the emperor received the further
surname of Conqueror of the Sarmatae. The terms which were laid down
for the conquered tribes show that Marcus designed not to punish but to
subdue. The Marcomani and the Jazyges, probably also the Quadi, were
required to evacuate a border-strip along the river to the breadth of
ten, subsequently modified to five, miles. In the strongholds on the
right bank of the Danube were placed Roman garrisons, which, among the
Marcomani and Quadi alone, amounted together to not less than 20,000
men. All the subdued had to furnish contingents to the Roman army; the
Jazyges, for example, 8000 horsemen. Had the emperor not been recalled
by the insurrection of Syria, he would have driven the latter entirely
from their country, as Trajan drove the Dacians. That Marcus intended
to treat the revolted Transdanubians after this model, was confirmed
by the further course of events. Hardly was that hindrance removed,
when the emperor went back to the Danube and began, just like Trajan,
in 178 the second definitive war. The ground put forward for thus
declaring war is not known; the aim is doubtless correctly specified
to the effect that he purposed to erect two new provinces, Marcomania
and Sarmatia. To the Jazyges, who must have shown themselves submissive
to the designs of the emperor, their burdensome imposts were for the
most part remitted, and, in fact, for intercourse with their kinsmen
dwelling to the east of Dacia the Roxolani, right of passage through
Dacia was granted to them under fitting supervision--probably just
because they were already regarded as Roman subjects. The Marcomani
were almost extirpated by sword and famine. The Quadi in despair wished
to migrate to the north, and to seek settlements among the Semnones;
but even this was not allowed to them, as they had to cultivate the
fields in order to provide for the Roman garrisons. After fourteen
years of almost uninterrupted warfare, he who was a warrior-prince
against his will reached his goal, and the Romans were a second time
face to face with the acquisition of the upper Elbe; now, in fact, all
that was wanting was the announcement of the wish to retain what was
won. Thereupon he died--not yet sixty years of age--in the camp of
Vindobona on 17th March 180.
[Sidenote: Results of the Marcomanian war.]
We must not merely acknowledge the resoluteness and tenacity of the
ruler, but must also admit that he did what right policy enjoined. The
conquest of Dacia by Trajan was a doubtful gain, although in this very
Marcomanian war the possession of Dacia not only removed a dangerous
element from the ranks of the antagonists of Rome, but probably also
had the effect of preventing the host of peoples on the lower Danube,
the Bastarnae, Roxolani, and others, from interfering in the war. But
after the mighty onset of the Transdanubians to the west of Dacia had
made their subjugation a necessity, this could only be accomplished in
a definitive way by embracing Bohemia, Moravia, and the plain of the
Theiss within the Roman line of defence, although these regions were
probably accounted, like Dacia, as having only the position of advanced
posts, and the strategical frontier-line was certainly meant to remain
the Danube.
[Sidenote: Conclusion of peace by Commodus.]
The successor of Marcus, the emperor Commodus, was present in the camp
when his father died, and as he had already for several years nominally
shared the throne with his father, he entered with the latter's death
at once into possession of unlimited power. Only for a brief time did
the nineteen years' old successor allow the men who had enjoyed his
father's confidence--his brother-in-law Pompeianus, and others who
had borne with Marcus the heavy burden of the war--to rule in his
spirit. Commodus was in every respect the opposite of his father; not
a scholar, but a fencing-master; as cowardly and weak in character,
as his father was resolute and tenacious of purpose; as indolent and
forgetful of duty, as his father was active and conscientious. He
not merely gave up the idea of incorporating the territory won, but
voluntarily granted even to the Marcomani conditions such as they
had not ventured to hope for. The regulation of the frontier-traffic
under Roman control, and the obligation not to injure their neighbours
friendly to the Romans, were matters of course; but the garrisons
were withdrawn from their country, and there was retained only the
prohibition of settlement on the border-strip. The payment of taxes
and the furnishing of recruits were doubtless stipulated for, but
the former were soon remitted, and the latter were certainly not
furnished. A similar settlement was made with the Quadi; and the
other Transdanubians must have been similarly dealt with. Thereby the
conquests made were given up, and the work of many years of warfare was
in vain; if no more was wished for, a similar arrangement of things
might have been reached much earlier. Nevertheless the Marcomanian war
secured in these regions the supremacy of Rome for the sequel, in spite
of the fact that Rome let slip the prize of victory. It was not by the
tribes that had taken part in it that the blow was dealt, to which the
Roman world-power succumbed.
[Sidenote: The colonate.]
Another permanent consequence of this war was connected with the
removals, to which it gave occasion, of the Transdanubians over into
the Roman empire. Of themselves such changes of settlement had occurred
at all times; the Sugambri, transplanted under Augustus to Gaul, the
Dacians sent to Thrace, were nothing but new subjects or communities
of subjects added to those formerly existing, and probably not much
different were the 3000 Naristae, whom Marcus allowed to exchange their
settlements westward of Bohemia for such settlements within the empire,
while the like request was refused to the otherwise unknown Astingi on
the Dacian north frontier. But the Germans settled by him not merely in
the land of the Danube, but in Italy itself at Ravenna, were neither
free subjects nor strictly non-free persons; these were the beginnings
of the Roman villanage, the colonate, the influence of which on the
agricultural economy of the whole state is to be set forth in another
connection. That Ravennate settlement, however, had no permanence;
the men rose in revolt and had to be conveyed away, so that the new
colonate remained restricted primarily to the provinces, particularly
to the lands of the Danube.
[Sidenote: The advancing Northmen.]
The great war on the middle Danube was once more followed by sixty
years' time of peace, the blessings of which could not be completely
neutralised by the internal misgovernment that was constantly
increasing during its course. No doubt various isolated accounts show
that the frontier, especially the Dacian, which was most exposed,
remained not without trouble; but above all, the stern military
government of Severus did its duty here, and at least Marcomani and
Quadi appear even under his immediate successors in unconditional
dependence, so that the son of Severus could cite a prince of the Quadi
before him and lay his head at his feet. The conflicts occurring
at this epoch on the lower Danube were of subordinate importance.
But probably at this period a comprehensive shifting of peoples
from the north-east towards the Black Sea took place, and the Roman
frontier-guard on the lower Danube had to confront new and more
dangerous opponents. Up to this time the antagonists of the Romans
there had been chiefly Sarmatian tribes, among whom the Roxolani came
into closest contact with them; of Germans there were settled here at
that time only the Bastarnae, who had been long at home in this region.
Now the Roxolani disappear, merged possibly among the Carpi apparently
akin to them, who thenceforth were the nearest neighbours of the Romans
on the lower Danube, perhaps in the valleys of the Seret and Pruth.
[Sidenote: Goths.]
By the side of the Carpi came, likewise as immediate neighbours of
the Romans at the mouth of the Danube, the people of the Goths. This
Germanic stock migrated, according to the tradition which has been
preserved to us, from Scandinavia over the Baltic towards the region of
the Vistula, and from this to the Black Sea; in accordance with this
the Roman geographers of the second century know them at the Vistula,
and Roman history from the first quarter of the third at the north-west
coast of the Black Sea. Thenceforth they appear here constantly on the
increase; the remains of the Bastarnae retired before them to the right
bank of the Danube under the emperor Probus, the remains of the Carpi
under the emperor Diocletian, while beyond doubt a great part of the
former as of the latter mingled among the Goths and joined them. On
the whole this catastrophe may be designated as that of the Gothic war
only in the sense in which that which set in under Marcus is called the
war of the Marcomani; the whole mass of peoples set in movement by the
stream of migration from the north-east to the Black Sea took part in
it; and took part all the more, seeing that these attacks took place
just as much by land over the lower Danube as by water from the north
coasts of the Black Sea, in an inextricable complication of landward
and maritime piracy. Not unsuitably, therefore, the learned Athenian
who fought in this war and has narrated it, prefers to term it the
Scythian, as he includes under this name--which, like the Pelasgian,
forms the despair of the historian--all Germanic and non-Germanic
enemies of the empire. What is to be told of these expeditions will
here be brought together, so far as the confusion of tradition, which
is only too much in keeping with the confusion of these fearful times,
allows.
[Sidenote: Gothic wars.]
The year 238--a year also of civil war, when there were four
emperors--is designated as that in which the war against those here
first named Goths began.[137] As the coins of Tyra and Olbia cease with
Alexander († 235), these Roman possessions situated beyond the boundary
of the empire had doubtless become some years earlier a prey to the
new enemy. In that year they first crossed the Danube, and the most
northerly of the Moesian coast towns, Istros, was the first victim.
Gordianus, who emerged out of the confusions of this time as ruler, is
designated as conqueror of the Goths; it is more certain that the Roman
government at any rate under him, if not already earlier, agreed to buy
off the Gothic incursions.[138] As was natural, the Carpi demanded the
same as the emperor had granted to the inferior Goths; when the demand
was not granted, they invaded the Roman territory in the year 245. The
emperor Philippus--Gordianus was at that time already dead--repulsed
them, and energetic action with the combined strength of the great
empire would probably here have checked the barbarians.
[Sidenote: Decius.]
[Sidenote: His death.]
[Sidenote: Loss of Dacia.]
But in these years the murderer of an emperor reached the throne as
surely as he found in turn his own murderer and successor; it was
just in the imperilled regions of the Danube that the army proclaimed
against the emperor Philippus first Marinus Pacatianus, and, after he
was set aside, Traianus Decius, which latter in fact vanquished his
antagonist in Italy, and was acknowledged as ruler. He was an able and
brave man, not unworthy of the two names which he bore, and entered, so
soon as he could, resolutely into the conflicts on the Danube; but what
the civil war waged in the meanwhile had destroyed, could no longer be
retrieved. While the Romans were fighting with one another the Goths
and the Carpi had united, and had under the Gothic prince Cniva invaded
Moesia denuded of troops. The governor of the province, Trebonianus
Gallus, threw himself with his force into Nicopolis on the Haemus, and
was here besieged by the Goths; these at the same time pillaged Thrace
and besieged its capital, the great and strong Philippopolis; indeed
they reached as far as Macedonia, and invested Thessalonica, where
the governor Priscus found this just a fitting moment to have himself
proclaimed as emperor. When Decius arrived to combat at once his rival
and the public foe, the former was doubtless without difficulty set
aside, and success also attended the relief of Nicopolis, where 30,000
Goths are said to have fallen. But the Goths, retreating to Thrace,
conquered in turn at Beroë (Alt-Zagora), threw the Romans back on
Moesia, and reduced Nicopolis there as well as Anchialus in Thrace
and even Philippopolis, where 100,000 men are said to have come into
their power. Thereupon they marched northwards to bring into safety
their enormous booty. Decius projected the plan of inflicting a blow
on the enemy at the crossing of the Danube. He stationed a division
under Gallus on the bank, and hoped to be able to throw the Goths upon
this, and to cut off their retreat. But at Abrittus, a place on the
Moesian frontier, the fortune of war, or else the treachery of Gallus,
decided against them. Decius perished with his son, and Gallus, who was
proclaimed as his successor, began his reign by once more assuring to
the Goths the annual payments of money (251).[139] This utter defeat
of Roman arms as of Roman policy, the fall of the emperor, the first
who lost his life in conflict with the barbarians--a piece of news
which deeply moved men's minds even in this age demoralised by its
familiarity with misfortune--the disgraceful capitulation following
thereon, placed in fact the integrity of the empire at stake. Serious
crises on the middle Danube, threatening probably the loss of Dacia,
must have been the immediate consequence. Once more this was averted;
the governor of Pannonia, Marcus Aemilius Aemilianus, a good soldier,
achieved an important success of arms, and drove the enemy over the
frontier. But Nemesis bore sway. The consequence of this victory,
achieved in the name of Gallus, was, that the army renounced allegiance
to the betrayer of Decius and chose their general as his successor.
Once more therefore civil war took precedence of frontier-defence;
and, while Aemilianus no doubt vanquished Gallus in Italy but soon
afterwards succumbed to his general Valerianus (254), Dacia was lost
for the empire--how, and to whom, we know not.[140] The last coin
struck by this province, and the latest inscription found there, are
of the year 255, the last coin of the neighbouring Viminacium in upper
Moesia of the following year; in the first years of Valerianus and
Gallienus therefore the barbarians occupied the Roman territory on the
left bank of the Danube, and certainly also pressed across to the
right.
Before we pursue further the development of affairs on the lower
Danube, it appears necessary to cast a glance at piracy, as it was then
in vogue in the eastern half of the Mediterranean, and the maritime
expeditions of the Goths and their allies originating from it.
[Sidenote: Piracy on the Black Sea.]
That the Roman fleet could at no time be dispensed with on the Black
Sea, and piracy there was probably never extirpated, was implied in
the very nature of the Roman rule as it had taken shape on its coasts.
The Romans were in firm possession only from about the mouths of the
Danube as far as Trapezus. It is true that on the one hand Tyra at
the mouth of the Dniester and Olbia on the bay at the mouth of the
Dnieper, on the other side the Caucasian harbours in the regions
of the modern Suchum-Kaleh, Dioscurias and Pityus, were Roman. The
intervening Bosporan kingdom in the Crimea also stood under Roman
protection, and had a Roman garrison subject to the governor of Moesia.
But on these shores, for the most part far from inviting, there were
only those posts formerly held either as old Greek settlements or
as Roman fortresses; the coast itself was desolate or in the hands
of the natives filling the interior, who, comprehended under the
general name of Scythians, mostly of Sarmatian descent, never were,
or were to become, subject to the Romans; it was enough if they did
not directly lay hands on the Romans or their clients. Accordingly,
it is not to be wondered at, that even in the time of Tiberius the
pirates of the east coast not merely made the Black Sea insecure, but
also landed and levied contributions on the villages and towns of the
coast. If, under Pius or Marcus, a band of the Costoboci dwelling on
the north-western shore fell upon the inland town Elateia situated
in the heart of Phocis, and came to blows under its walls with the
citizens, this event, which certainly only by accident stands forth
for us as isolated, shows that the same phenomena which preceded the
downfall of the government of the senate were now renewed, and even
with the imperial power maintaining itself outwardly unshaken not
merely individual piratical ships, but squadrons of pirates cruised
in the Black and even in the Mediterranean seas. The decline of the
government, clearly discernible after the death of Severus, and above
all after the end of the last dynasty, manifested itself then, as
was natural, especially in the further decay of marine police. The
accounts, in detail far from trustworthy, mention already in the time
before Decius the appearance of a great fleet of pirates in the Aegean
Sea; then under Decius the plundering of the Pamphylian coast and of
the Graeco-Asiatic islands; under Gallus maraudings of pirates in
Asia Minor as far as Pessinus and Ephesus.[141] These were predatory
expeditions. These comrades plundered the coasts far and wide, and made
even, as we see, bold raids into the interior; but nothing is mentioned
of the destruction of towns, and the pirates shunned coming into
collision with Roman troops; the attack was chiefly directed against
such regions as had no troops stationed in them.
[Sidenote: Maritime expeditions of the Goths and allies.]
[Sidenote: To Trapezus.]
Under Valerian these expeditions assume a different character. The
nature of the raids varies so much from the earlier, that the raid,
in itself not specially important, of the Borani against Pityus under
Valerian could be designated by intelligent reporters precisely as the
beginning of this movement,[142] and that the pirates were for a long
time called in Asia by the name of this tribe not otherwise known to
us. These expeditions proceed no longer from the old native dwellers
beside the Black Sea, but from the hordes pressing behind them. What
had hitherto been piracy begins to form a portion of that migratory
movement of peoples to which the advance of the Goths on the lower
Danube belongs. The peoples taking part in it are very varied and in
part little known; in the later expeditions the Germanic Heruli, then
dwelling beside the Maeotis, appear to have played a leading part. The
Goths also took part, but, so far as sea-voyages are concerned--and
tolerably exact reports of these are before us--not in a prominent
manner; strictly speaking, these expeditions are more correctly termed
Scythian than Gothic. The maritime centre of these aggressions was
the mouth of the Dniester, the port of Tyra.[143] The Greek towns of
the Bosporus, abandoned through the bankruptcy of the imperial power,
without protection to the hordes pressing onward, and expecting to be
besieged by them, consented, half under compulsion, half voluntarily,
to convey in their vessels, and by their mariners, the inconvenient new
neighbours over to the nearest Roman possessions on the north coast
of Pontus--for which these neighbours themselves lacked the needful
means and the needful skill. It was thus that the expedition against
Pityus was brought about. The Borani were landed and, confident of
success, sent back the ships. But the resolute commander of Pityus,
Successianus, repelled the attack; and the assailants, fearing the
arrival of the other Roman garrisons, hastily withdrew, for which they
had difficulty in procuring the necessary transports. But the plan was
not given up; in the next year they came back, and, as the commandant
had meanwhile been changed, the fortress surrendered. The Borani, who
this time had retained the Bosporan vessels and had them manned by
pressed mariners and Roman captives, possessed themselves of the coast
far and wide, and reached as far as Trapezus. Into this well fortified
and strongly garrisoned town all had fled, and the barbarians were not
in a position for a real siege. But the leadership of the Romans was
bad, and the military discipline so on the decline that not even the
walls were occupied; so the barbarians scaled them by night, without
encountering resistance, and in the great and rich city enormous booty,
including a number of ships, fell into their hands. They returned
successful from the far distant land to the Maeotis.
[Sidenote: To Bithynia.]
Excited by this success, a second expedition of other but neighbouring
Scythian bands was in the following winter directed against Bithynia.
It is significant of the unsettled state of things that the instigator
of this movement was Chrysogonus, a Greek of Nicomedia, and that he
was highly honoured by the barbarians for its successful result. This
expedition was undertaken--as the necessary number of ships was not
to be procured--partly by land, partly by water; it was only in the
neighbourhood of Byzantium that the pirates succeeded in possessing
themselves of a considerable number of fishing-boats, and so they
arrived along the Asiatic coast at Chalcedon, whose strong garrison
on this news ran off. Not merely this town fell into their hands, but
also along the coast Nicomedia, Chios, Apamea; in the interior Nicaea
and Prusa; Nicomedia and Nicaea they burnt down, and reached the river
Rhyndacus. Thence they sailed home, laden with the treasures of the
rich land and of its considerable cities.
[Sidenote: To Greece.]
The expedition against Bithynia had already been undertaken in part by
land; all the more were the attacks that were directed against European
Greece composed of piratical expeditions by land and sea. If Moesia
and Thrace were not permanently occupied by the Goths, they yet came
and went there as if they were at home, and roved from thence far into
Macedonia. Even Achaia expected under Valerian invasion from this side;
Thermopylae and the Isthmus were barricaded, and the Athenians set to
work to restore their walls that had lain in ruins since the siege by
Sulla. The barbarians did not come then, nor by this route. But under
Gallienus a fleet of five hundred sail, this time chiefly Heruli,
appeared before the port of Byzantium, which, however, had not yet
lost its capacity of defence; the ships of the Byzantines successfully
repulsed the robbers. These sailed onward, showed themselves on the
Asiatic coast before Cyzicus not formerly attacked, and arrived
from thence by way of Lemnos and Imbros at Greece proper. Athens,
Corinth, Argos, Sparta, were pillaged and destroyed. It was always
something that, as in the times of the Persian wars, the citizens of
the destroyed Athens, two thousand in number, laid an ambush for the
retiring barbarians, and, under the leadership of their equally learned
and brave captain, Publius Herennius Dexippus, of the old and noble
family of the Kerykes, with support of the Roman fleet, inflicted a
notable loss on the pirates. On the return home, which took place in
part by the land route, the emperor Gallienus attacked them in Thrace
at the river Nestus and put to death a considerable number of their
men.[144]
[Sidenote: The imperial government of the Gothic period.]
In order completely to survey the measure of misfortune, we must take
into account that in this empire going to shreds, and above all in
the provinces overrun by the enemy, one officer after another grasped
at the crown, which hardly any longer existed. It is not worth the
trouble to record the names of these ephemeral wearers of the purple;
it marks the situation that, after the devastation of Bithynia by the
pirates, the emperor Valerian omitted to send thither an extraordinary
commandant, because every general was, not without reason, regarded
by him as a rival. This co-operated to produce the almost thoroughly
passive attitude of the government in presence of this sore emergency.
Yet, on the other hand, undoubtedly a good part of this irresponsible
passiveness is to be traced to the personality of the rulers: Valerian
was weak and aged, Gallienus vehement and dissolute, and neither the
one nor the other was equal to the guidance of the vessel of the state
in a storm. Marcianus, to whom Gallienus after the invasion of Achaia
had committed the command in these regions, operated not without
success; but the matter did not gain any real turn for the better so
long as Gallienus occupied the throne.
[Sidenote: Gothic victories of Claudius.]
[Sidenote: Renewed fortifying of the Danube-frontier.]
After the murder of Gallienus (268), perhaps on the news of it, the
barbarians, again led by the Heruli, but this time with united forces,
undertook an assault on the imperial frontier, such as there had not
been hitherto, with a powerful fleet, and probably at the same time by
land from the Danube.[145] The fleet had much to suffer from storms in
the Propontis; then it divided, and the Goths advanced partly against
Thessaly and Greece, partly against Crete and Rhodes; the chief mass
resorted to Macedonia and thence penetrated into the interior, beyond
doubt in combination with the bands that had marched into Thrace. But
the emperor Claudius, who marched up in person with a strong force,
brought relief at length to the Thessalonians oft besieged but now
reduced to extremity; he drove the Goths before him up the valley of
the Axius (Vardar) and onward over the mountains to upper Moesia; after
various conflicts, with changing fortune of war, he achieved here in
the Morava valley near Naissus a brilliant victory, in which 50,000
of the enemy are said to have fallen. The Goths retired broken up,
first in the direction towards Macedonia, then through Thrace to the
Haemus, in order to put the Danube between themselves and the enemy. A
quarrel in the Roman camp, this time between infantry and cavalry, had
almost given them once more a respite; but, when it came to fighting,
the cavalry could not bear to leave their comrades in the lurch, and
so the united army was once more victorious. A severe pestilence,
which raged in all the years of distress, but especially then in those
regions, and above all in the armies, did great injury doubtless to the
Romans--the emperor Claudius himself succumbed to it--but the great
army of the Northmen was utterly extirpated, and the numerous captives
were incorporated in the Roman armies or made serfs. The hydra of
military revolutions, too, was in some measure subdued; Claudius, and
after him Aurelian, were masters in the empire after another fashion
than could be said of Gallienus. The renewal of the fleet, towards
which a beginning had been made under Gallienus, would not be wanting.
The Dacia of Trajan was, and remained, lost; Aurelian withdrew the
posts still holding out there, and gave to the possessors dislodged or
inclined for emigration new dwellings on the Moesian bank. But Thrace
and Moesia, which for a time had belonged more to the Goths than to the
Romans, returned under Roman rule, and at least the frontier of the
Danube was once more fortified.
[Sidenote: Character of the Gothic wars.]
We may not assign to these Gothic and Scythian expeditions by land and
by sea, which fill up the twenty years 250-269, such significance, as
if the hordes moving forth had been minded to take permanent possession
of the countries which they traversed. Such a plan cannot be shown to
have existed even for Moesia and Thrace, to say nothing of the more
remote coasts; hardly, moreover, were the assailants numerous enough
to undertake invasions proper. As the bad government of the last
rulers, and above all the untrustworthiness of the troops, far more
than the superior power of the barbarians, called forth the flooding
of the territory by land and sea robbers, so the re-establishment
of internal order and the energetic demeanour of the government of
themselves brought its deliverance. The Roman state could not yet be
broken if it did not break itself. But still it was a great work to
rally the government again as Claudius had done it. We know somewhat
less even of him than of most regents of this time, as the probably
fictitious carrying back of the Constantinian pedigree to him has
repainted his portrait after the tame pattern of perfection; but this
very association, as well as the numberless coins struck in his honour
after his death, show that he was regarded by the next generation
as the deliverer of the state, and in this it cannot have been
mistaken. These Scythian expeditions were at all events a prelude of
the later migration of peoples; and the destruction of cities, which
distinguishes them from the ordinary piratic voyages, took place at
that time to such an extent that the prosperity as well as the culture
of Greece and Asia Minor never recovered from it.
[Sidenote: The Danubian wars to the end of the 3d century.]
On the re-established frontier of the Danube Aurelian consolidated the
victory achieved, inasmuch as he conducted the defensive once more
offensively, and, crossing the Danube at its mouth, defeated beyond it
not only the Carpi, who thenceforth stood in client-relation to the
Romans, but also the Goths under king Canabaudes. His successor Probus
took, as was already stated, the remains of the Bastarnae, hard pressed
by the Goths, over to the Roman bank, just as Diocletian in the year
295 took the remnant of the Carpi. This points to the fact that beyond
the river the empire of the Goths was consolidating; but they came
no further. The border-fortresses were reinforced; counter-Aquincum
(_contra Aquincum_, Pesth) was constructed in the year 294. The piratic
expeditions did not entirely disappear. Under Tacitus hordes from
the Maeotis appeared in Cilicia. The Franks, whom Probus had settled
on the Black Sea, procured for themselves vessels, and sailed home
to their North Sea, after plundering by the way on the Sicilian and
African coasts. By land, too, there was no cessation of arms, as indeed
all the numerous Sarmatian victories of Diocletian, and a part of his
Germanic, would fall to the regions of the Danube; but it was only
under Constantine that matters again came to a serious war with the
Goths, which had a successful issue. The preponderance of Rome was
re-established after the Gothic victory of Claudius as firmly as before.
[Sidenote: Illyrising of the military force and of the government.]
The war-history which we have just unfolded did not fail to react
with general and lasting effect upon the internal organisation of the
Roman political and military system. It has already been pointed out
that the corps of the Rhine, holding in the early imperial period the
leading position in the army, yielded their primacy already under
Trajan to the legions of the Danube. While under Augustus six legions
were stationed in the region of the Danube and eight in that of the
Rhine, after the Dacian wars of Domitian and Trajan in the second
century the Rhine-camps numbered only four, the camps of the Danube
ten, and after the Marcomanian war even twelve, legions. Inasmuch as
since Hadrian's time the Italian element, apart from the officers, had
disappeared from the army, and, taken on the whole, every regiment
was recruited in the district in which it was quartered, the most of
the soldiers of the Danubian army, and not less the centurions who
rose from the ranks, were natives of Pannonia, Dacia, Moesia, Thrace.
The new legions formed under Marcus proceeded from Illyricum, and
the extraordinary supplemental levies which the troops then needed
were probably likewise taken chiefly from the districts in which the
armies were stationed. Thus the primacy of the Danubian armies, which
the war of the three emperors in the time of Severus established and
increased, was at the same time a primacy of Illyrian soldiers; and
this reached a very emphatic expression in the reform of the guard
under Severus. This primacy did not, properly speaking, affect the
higher spheres of government, so long as the position of officer still
coincided with that of imperial official, although the equestrian
career was accessible to the common soldier through the intervening
link of the centurionate at all times, and thus the Illyrians early
found their way into that career; as indeed, already, in the year 235,
a native Thracian, Gaius Julius Varus Maximinus, in the year 248 a
native Pannonian, Trajanus Decius, had in this way attained even to
the purple. But when Gallienus, in a distrust certainly but too well
justified, excluded the class of senators from serving as officers,
what had hitherto held good as to the soldiers became necessarily
extended to the officers also. It was thus simply a matter of course
that the soldiers belonging to the army of the Danube, and mostly
springing from Illyrian districts, played thenceforth the first
part also in government, and, so far as the army made the emperors,
these were likewise as to the majority Illyrians. Thus Gallienus was
followed by Claudius the Dardanian, Aurelianus from Moesia, Probus
from Pannonia, Diocletianus from Dalmatia, Maximianus from Pannonia,
Constantius from Dardania, Galerius from Serdica; as to the last
named, an author writing under the Constantinian dynasty brings into
prominence their descent from Illyricum, and adds that they, with
little culture but good preliminary training by labour in the field
and service in war, had been excellent rulers. Such service as the
Albanians for a long time rendered to the Turkish empire, their
predecessors likewise rendered to the Roman imperial state, when this
had arrived at similar disorder and similar barbarism. Only, the
Illyrian regeneration of the Roman imperial order may not be conceived
of as a national reorganisation; it was simply the propping up, by
soldiers, of an empire utterly reduced through the misgovernment of
rulers of gentler birth. Italy had wholly ceased to be military; and
history does not acknowledge the ruler's right without the warrior's
power.
Footnotes.
[118: The baptistery is perhaps the tomb of the emperor.]
[119: That there were no legions stationed on the Danube itself in the
year 50, follows from Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 29; otherwise it would not
have been necessary to send a legion thither to receive the accession
of the Suebi. The laying out also of the Claudian Savaria suits better,
if the town was then Norican, than if it already belonged to Pannonia;
and, as the assignment of this town to Pannonia coincides certainly as
to time with the like severance of Carnuntum and with the transference
of the legion thither, all this may probably have taken place only in
the period after Claudius. The small number also of inscriptions of
Italici found in the camps of the Danube (_Eph. Ep._ v. p. 225) points
to their later origin. Certainly there have been found in Carnuntum
some epitaphs of soldiers of the 15th legion which, from their outward
form and from the absence of cognomen, appear to be older (Hirschfeld,
_Arch. Epigraph. Mittheilungen_, v. 217). Such determinations of date
cannot claim full certainty, where a decade is concerned; nevertheless
it must be conceded that the former arguments also furnish no full
proofs, and the translocation may have begun earlier, possibly under
Nero. For the construction or extension of this camp by Vespasian we
have the evidence of the inscription, attesting such a structure, of
Carnuntum, dating from the year 73 (Hirschfeld, _l.c._).]
[120: We know whole sets of Thracian, Getic, Dacian names of places
and persons. Remarkable in a linguistic point of view is a group
of personal names compounded with _-centhus_: _Bithicenthus_,
_Zipacenthus_, _Disacenthus_, _Tracicenthus_, _Linicenthus_ (_Bull. de
Corr. Hell._ vi. 179), of which the first two also frequently occur
isolated in their other half (_Bithus_, _Zipa_). A similar group
is formed by the compounds with _-poris_, such as _Mucaporis_ (as
Thracian, _Bull._ _l.c._, as Dacian in numerous cases), _Cetriporis_,
_Rhaskyporis_, _Bithoporis_, _Dirdiporis_.]
[121: Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 64, says this expressly. Of free Thracians,
viewed from the Roman stand-point, there were at that time none;
but the Thracian mountains, and especially the Rhodope of the
Bessi, maintained even in the state of peace an attitude as regards
the princes installed by Rome, that could hardly be designated as
subjection; they acknowledged the king doubtless, but obeyed him, as
Tacitus says (_l.c._ and iv. 46, 51), only when it suited them.]
[122: We have still a Greek epigram, dedicated to Cotys by Antipater of
Thessalonica (_Anthol. Planud._ iv. 75), the same poet who celebrated
also the conqueror of the Thracians, Piso (p. 24), and a Latin epistle
in verse addressed to Cotys by Ovid (_ex Ponto_, ii. 9).]
[123: It is one of the most seriously felt blanks of the Roman imperial
history that the standing quarters of the two legions, which formed
under the Julio-Claudian emperors the garrison of Moesia, the 4th
Scythica and the 5th Macedonica (at least these were stationed there
in the year 33; _C. I. L._ iii. 1698) cannot hitherto be pointed out
with certainty. Probably they were Viminacium and Singidunum in what
was afterwards upper Moesia. Among the legion-camps of lower Moesia,
of which that of Troesmis in particular has numerous monuments to
show, none appear to be older than Hadrian's time; the remains of the
upper-Moesian are hitherto so scanty that they at least do not hinder
our carrying back their origin a century further. When the king of
Thrace in the year 18 takes arms against the Bastarnae and Scythians
(Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 65), this could not have been put forward even as
a pretext, had lower-Moesian legionary camps been already at that time
in existence. This very narrative shows that the warlike power of this
vassal-prince was not inconsiderable, and that the setting aside of an
uncompliant king of Thrace demanded caution.]
[124: That the _regnum Vannianum_ (Plin. _H. N._ iv. 12, 81), the
Suebian state (Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 29; _Hist._ iii. 5, 21), must be
referred, not merely, as might appear from Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 63,
to the dwellings of the people that went over with Maroboduus and
Catualda, but to the whole territory of the Marcomani and Quadi, is
shown clearly by the second report, _Ann._ xii. 29, 30, since here,
as opponents of Vannius alongside of his own insurgent subjects,
there appear the peoples bordering on Bohemia to the west and north,
the Hermunduri and Lugii. As boundary towards the east Pliny _l.c._
designates the region of Carnuntum (_Germanorum ibi confinium_) more
exactly the river Marus or Duria, which separates the Suebi and the
_regnum Vannianum_ from their eastern neighbours, whether we may refer
the _dirimens eos_ with Müllenhoff (_Sitzungsberichte der Berliner
Akademie_ 1883, p. 871) to the Jazyges, or, as is more natural, to
the Bastarnae. In reality both doubtless bordered, the Jazyges on the
south, the Bastarnae on the north, with the Quadi of the March valley.
Accordingly the Marus is the March, and the demarcation is formed by
the small Carpathians that stretch between the March and the Waag.
If thus those retainers were settled _inter flumen Marum et Cusum_,
then the Cusus not elsewhere mentioned is, provided the statement is
correct, not the Waag, or even, as Müllenhoff supposed, the Eipel
falling into the Danube below Gran, but an affluent of the Danube
westward of the March, perhaps the Gusen near Linz. The narrative in
Tacitus xii. 29, 30, also requires the territory of Vannius to have
reached to the west even beyond the March. The subscription to the
first book of the _Meditations_ of the emperor Marcus ἐν Κουάδοις πρὸς
τῷ Γρανούᾳ, proves doubtless that then the state of the Quadi stretched
as far as the river Gran; but this state is not coincident with the
_regnum Vannianum_.]
[125: _Regibus Bastarnarum et Roxolanorum filios, Dacorum fratrum
captos aut hostibus ereptos remisit_ (Orelli, 750) is miswritten; it
must run _fratres_, or at any rate _fratrum filios_. In like manner
afterwards _per quae_ is to be read for _per quem_ and _rege_ instead
of _regem_.]
[126: In Pannonia there were stationed about the year 70 two legions,
the 13th Gemina and the 15th Apollinaris, in room of which latter
during its participation in the Armenian war for some time the 7th
Gemina came in (_C. I. L._ iii. p. 482). Of the two legions added
later, 1st Adiutrix and 2d Adiutrix, the first still at the beginning
of the reign of Trajan lay in upper Germany (p. 159, note 1), and can
only have come to Pannonia under Trajan; the second stationed under
Vespasian in Britain can only have come to Pannonia under Domitian
(p. 174, note 4). The Moesian army numbered after the union with the
Dalmatian under Vespasian probably but four legions, consequently as
many as the two armies together previously--the later upper-Moesian,
4th Flavia and 7th Claudia, and the later lower-Moesian, 1st Italica
and 5th Macedonica. The positions shifted by the marching to and fro of
the year of the four emperors (Marquardt, _Staatsverw._ ii. 435), which
temporarily brought these legions to Moesia, need not deceive us. The
subsequent third lower-Moesian legion, the Eleventh, was still under
Trajan stationed in upper Germany.]
[127: Josephus, _Bell. Iud._ vii. 4, 3: πλείοσι καὶ μείζοσι φυλακαῖς
τὸν τόπον διέλαβεν ὡς εἶναι τοῖς βαρβάροις τὴν διάβασιν τελέως
ἀδύνατον. By this seems meant the transference of the two Dalmatian
legions to Moesia. Whither they were transferred we do not know.
According to the Roman custom elsewhere it is more probable that they
were stationed in the environs of the previous headquarters Viminacium
than in the remote region of the mouths of the Danube. The camp there
probably originated only at the division of the Moesian command and
at the erection of the independent province of lower Moesia under
Domitian.]
[128: The chronology of the Dacian war is involved in much uncertainty.
That it had begun already before the war with the Chatti (83), we
learn from the Carthaginian inscription (_C. I. L._ viii. 1082) of
a soldier decorated three times by Domitian, in the Dacian, in the
German, and again in the Dacian war. Eusebius puts the outbreak of
the war, or rather the first great conflict, in the year Abr. 2101 or
2102 = A.D. 85 (more exactly 1 Oct. 84-30 Sept. 85) or 86, the triumph
in the year 2106 = 90; these numbers indeed have no claim to complete
trustworthiness. With some probability the triumph is placed in the
year 89 (Henzen, _Acta Arval._ p. 116).]
[129: The fragment, Dio, lxvii. 7, 1, Dind., stands in the sequence of
the Ursinian excerpts before lxvii. 5, 1, 2, 3, and belongs also in the
order of events to a time before the negotiation with the Lugii. Comp.
_Hermes_, iii. 115.]
[130: Arrian, _Tact._ 44, mentions among the changes which Hadrian
introduced into the cavalry, that he allowed to the several divisions
their national battle-cries: Κελτικοὺς μὲν τοῖς Κελτοῖς ἱππεῦσιν,
Γετικοὺς δὲ τοῖς Γέταις, Ῥαιτικοὺς δὲ ὅσοι ἐκ Ῥαίτων.]
[131: The walls, which, three mètres in height and two mètres in
thickness, with broad outer fosse and many remains of forts, stretch
in two almost parallel lines, partly--to the length of ninety-four
miles--from the left bank of the Pruth by way of Tabak and Tatarbunar
to Dniester-Liman, between Akerman and the Black Sea; partly--to the
length of sixty-two miles--from Leowa on the Pruth to the Dniester
below Bendery (Petermann, _Geograph. Mittheilungen_, 1857, p. 129),
may perhaps be also Roman; but there has not been as yet any exact
settlement of this point.]
[132: According to von Vincke's estimate (_Monatsberichte über die
Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde in Berlin_ in the years
1839-40, p. 197 f.; comp. in von Moltke's _Briefe über Zustände in
der Turkei_, the letter of 2d Nov. 1837), as well as according to the
delineations and plans of Dr. C. Schuchhardt communicated to me, three
barriers were here constructed. The south-most and probably oldest is
a simple earthen wall with (singularly) a fosse in front of it towards
the south; whether of Roman origin may be doubtful. The two other lines
are an earthen wall, even now at many places as high as three mètres,
and a lower wall, once lined with stones, which often run close beside
each other and elsewhere again are miles apart. We might hold them as
the two lines of defence of a fortified road, though in the eastern
half the earthen wall, in the more southern half the stone-wall, is
the more northerly, and they cross in the middle. At one spot the
earthen wall (here more southerly) forms the rear of a fort constructed
behind the stone-wall. The earthen wall is covered on the north side
by a deep, on the south side by a shallow, fosse; each fosse is closed
off by a bank. A fosse lies also in front of the stone-wall to the
north. Behind the earthen wall, and mostly resting on it, are found
forts distant from each other seven hundred and fifty mètres; others
at irregular distances of the like kind behind the stone-wall. All the
lines keep behind the Karasu-lakes as the natural basis of defence;
from the point where this ceases, they are carried as far as the sea
with slight regard to the character of the ground. The town Tomis lies
outside of the wall and to the north of it; but its fortress-walls are
put in connection with the barrier-fortification by a special wall.]
[133: _Vita Hadriani_ 6: _cum rege Roxolanorum qui de imminutis
stipendiis querebatur cognito negotio pacem composuit_.]
[134: _Vita Marci_ 14: _gentibus quae pulsae a superioribus barbaris
fugerant nisi reciperentur bellum inferentibus_. Dio, in Petrus
Patricius, _fr._ 6, says: Λαγγιβάρδων καὶ Ὀβίων (otherwise unknown)
ἑξακισχιλίων Ἴστρον περαιωθέντων τῶν περὶ Βίνδικα (perhaps already then
_praef. praetorio_, in which case the guard would be marched out on
account of this occurrence), ἱππέων ἐξελασάντων καὶ τῶν ἀμφὶ Κάνδιδον
πεζῶν ἐπιφθασάντων εἰς παντελῆ φυγήν οἱ βάρβαροι ἐτράποντο· ἐφ' οἷς
οὗτω πραχθεῖσιν ἐν δέει καταστάντες ἐκ πρώτης ἐπιχειρήσεως οἱ βάρβαροι
πρέσβεις παρὰ Αἴλιον Βάσσον τὴν Παιονίαν διέποντα στέλλουσι Βαλλομάριόν
τε τὸν βασιλέα Μαρκομάνων καὶ ἑτέρους δέκα, κατ' ἔθνος ἐπιλεξάμενοι
ἕνα· καὶ ὅρκοις τὴν εἰρήνην οἱ πρέσβεις πιστωσάμενοι οἴκαδε χωροῦσιν.
That this incident falls before the outbreak of the war, is shown by
its position; _fr._ 7 of Patricius is an excerpt from Dio, lxxi. 11, 2.]
[135: The Moesian army gave away soldiers to the Armenian war
(Hirschfeld, _Arch. epig. Mitth._ vi. 41); but here the frontier was
not endangered.]
[136: The participation of the Germans on the right of the Rhine is
attested by Dio, lxxi. 3, and only thereby are the measures explained
which Marcus adopted for Raetia and Noricum. The position of Oderzo
also speaks for the view that these assailants came over the Brenner.]
[137: The alleged first mention of the Goths in the biography of
Caracalla, c. 10, rests on a misunderstanding. If really a senator
allowed himself the malicious jest of assigning to the murderer of Geta
the name Geticus, because he on his march from the Danube to the east
had conquered some Getic hordes (_tumultuariis proeliis_), he meant
Dacians, not the Goths, scarcely at that time dwelling there and hardly
known to the Roman public, whose identification with the Getae was
certainly only a later invention.--We may add that the statement that
the emperor Maximinus (235-238) was the son of a Goth settled in the
neighbouring Thrace, carries us still further back; yet not much weight
is to be attached to it.]
[138: Petrus Patricius _fr._ 8. The administration of the legate of
lower Moesia here mentioned, Tullius Menophilus, is fixed by coins
certainly to the time of Gordian, and with probability to 238-240
(Borghesi, _Opp._ ii. 227). As the beginning of the Gothic war and
the destruction of Istros are fixed by Dexippus (_vita Max. et Balb._
16) at 238, it is natural to bring into connection with these events
the undertaking of tribute; at any rate it was then renewed. The vain
sieges of Marcianopolis and Philippopolis by the Goths (Dexippus,
_fr._ 18, 19) may have followed on the capture of Istros. Jordanes,
_Get._ 16, 92, puts the former under Philippus, but is in chronological
questions not a valid witness.]
[139: The reports of these occurrences in Zosimus, i. 21-24, Zonaras,
xii. 20, Ammianus, xxxi. 5, 16, 17 (which accounts, down to that
concerning Philippopolis, are fixed as belonging to this time by the
fact that the latter recurs in Zosimus), although all fragmentary or in
disorder, may have flowed from the report of Dexippus, of which _fr._
16, 19, are preserved, and may be in some measure combined. The same
source lies at the bottom of the imperial biographies and Jordanes; but
both have disfigured and falsified it to such a degree that use can be
made of their statements only with great caution. Victor, _Caes._ 29,
is independent.]
[140: Perhaps the irruption of the Marcomani in Zosimus, i. 29, refers
to this.]
[141: Ammianus, xxxi. 5, 15; _duobus navium milibus perrupto Bosporo
et litoribus Propontidis Scythicarum gentium catervae transgressae
ediderunt quidem acerbas terra marique strages: sed amissa suorum
parte maxima reverterunt_; whereupon the catastrophe of the Decii
is narrated, and into this is inwoven the further notice: _obsessae
Pamphyliae civitates_ (to which must belong the siege of Side in
Dexippus himself, fr. 23), _insulæ populatæ complures_, as also the
siege of Cyzicus. If in this retrospect all is not confused--which
cannot well be assumed to be the case with Ammianus--this falls before
those naval expeditions which begin with the siege of Pityus, and are
more a part of the migration of peoples than piratical raids. The
number of the ships might indeed be transferred hither by error of
memory from the expedition of the year 269. To the same connection
belongs the notice in Zosimus, i. 28, as to the Scythian expeditions
into Asia and Cappadocia as far as Ephesus and Pessinus. The account
as to Ephesus in the biography of Gallienus, c. 6, is the same, but
transposed as to time.]
[142: In the case of Zosimus himself we should not expect complete
understanding of the matter; but his voucher Dexippus, who was a
contemporary and took part in the matter, knew well why he termed the
Bithynian expedition the δευτέρα ἔφοδος (Zos. i. 35); and even in
Zosimus we discern clearly the contrast, intended by Dexippus, between
the expedition of the Borani against Pityus and Trapezus and the
traditional piratic voyages. In the biography of Gallienus the Scythian
expedition to Cappadocia, narrated at c. 11, under the year 264, must
be that to Trapezus, just as the Bithynian therewith connected must
be that which Zosimus terms the second; here indeed everything is
confused.]
[143: This is said by Zosimus, i. 42, and follows also from the
relation of the Bosporans to the first (i. 32), and that of the first
to the second expedition (i. 34).]
[144: The report of Dexippus as to this expedition is given in extract
by Syncellus, p. 717 (where ἀνελόντος must be read for ἀνελόντες),
Zosimus, i. 39, and the biographer of Gallienus, c. 13. _Fr._ 22 is
a portion of his own narrative. In the continuator of Dio, on whom
Zonaras depends, the event is placed under Claudius, through error or
through falsification, which grudged this victory to Gallienus. The
biography of Gallienus narrates the incident apparently twice, first
shortly in c. 6 under the year 262; then better, under or after 265, in
c. 13.]
[145: In our traditional accounts this expedition appears as a pure
sea-voyage, undertaken with (probably) 2000 ships (so the biography
of Claudius; the numbers 6000 and 900, between which the tradition in
Zosimus, i. 42, wavers, are probably both corrupt) and 320,000 men. It
is, however, far from credible that Dexippus, to whom these statements
must be traced back, can have put the latter figure in this way. On the
other hand, considering the direction of the expedition, in the first
instance against Tomis and Marcianopolis, it is more than probable that
in it the procedure described by Zos. i. 34 was followed, and a portion
marched by land; and under this supposition even a contemporary might
well estimate the number of assailants at that figure. The course of
the campaign, particularly the place of the decisive battle, shows that
they had by no means to do merely with a fleet.]