Empires and Barbarians (21 page)

The traditional response to these observations has always been to suppose that Germanic migration was a key ingredient of this strategic revolution. ‘Goths’ were nowhere a presence north of the Black Sea in the first and second centuries
AD
, when Sarmatians and Dacians are the only two groups to be mentioned in the region. The only Goths we hear about at this time were established in northern Poland. So, game, set and match, you might think, to migration? Well, not exactly. It has recently been argued by Michael Kulikowski that the traditional view of the developing situation north of the Black Sea is a ‘text-hindered’ fantasy. This is a term borrowed from the jargon of archaeologists (although Kulikowski is himself not one), and is used to describe a situation where the interpretation of archaeological evidence has been bent out of shape by a determination to make it conform to the available historical evidence. In this instance, among the range of far from wonderful historical materials available to us for the third century is a sixth-century Gothic history, written by a man called Jordanes, which records the migration of Goths to the Black Sea under a certain King Filimer. This account, Kulikowski argues, not only has little credibility in itself, but has also unduly influenced how historians and archaeologists have looked at the other evidence. Without it, in his view, the other archaeological and historical evidence would not make anyone think in terms of migration. What really underlay the troubles of the third century, and the emergence of Gothic domination in the fourth, was not migration at all but sociopolitical reorganization among the region’s existing population: in fact, of broadly the same kind that produced the new Germanic confederations of the late Roman west.
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Is he correct?

Two elements of the argument are convincing. First, there’s not the slightest doubt that socioeconomic and political reorganization – ‘development’ – were an important dimension of the story. The Gothic Tervingi of the fourth century had a complex, confederative political structure, developed social hierarchies, and an economic profile both in production and exchange that went far beyond the norms of first-century Germania. Their political structures were based on hereditary power, and robust enough both to survive major defeats and to develop coherent strategies for overturning their worst consequences.
Second, Kulikowski is right enough that little reliance can be placed on Jordanes. Jordanes was writing three hundred years after the event, and can be shown to have produced a completely anachronistic view of the Gothic world of the fourth century, on which more in a moment.
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If he can be so wrong about fourth-century Gothic history, this must call his account of the third century into question, even if we don’t have enough contemporary sources to be able to check it systematically. Even conceding these points, however, there is still more than enough good-quality evidence to establish that Germanic migration from the north was a major factor in the strategic revolution of the third century.

It does need to be emphasized, first of all, that the change in the nature of the forces Rome was facing across its Lower Danube frontier was much more profound than a mere change in labels. In the first two centuries
AD
, the eastern foothills of the Carpathian range – modern Moldavia and Wallachia – were occupied by a number of Dacian groups who had not been brought under direct Roman rule at the time of Trajan’s conquest of Transylvania. In the course of the third century, they generated a new degree of political unity among themselves and came to be known collectively as the Carpi. The main Sarmatian group immediately north of the Black Sea was the Roxolani, who, together with the Iazyges, had dismantled the dominance of the Germanic-speaking Bastarnae in the region at the start of the first century
AD
. Where the Iazyges had subsequently moved on to the Great Hungarian Plain, west of the Carpathians, the Roxolani stayed east, exercising hegemony over the ancient Greek cities of the Pontus, which retained some independence into the third century. Both Sarmatians and Dacians became at least semi-subdued Roman clients after Trajan’s conquest of Transylvanian Dacia, even though they were not formally incorporated into the Empire. The sudden dominance of Goths and other Germanic-speakers in the region represented, therefore, a major cultural shift. And there is no doubt that the new Gothic masters of the landscape were Germanic-speakers. The Gothic Bible translation was produced for some of them by Ulfila, the descendant of Roman prisoners captured by the Goths from Asia Minor, and its Germanic credentials are irrefutable. The appearance of the Goths thus represents a massive change in the complexion and identity of the forces lined up on Rome’s north-eastern frontier.
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This, of course, was not the first time that Germanic-speakers had
provided the dominant population stratum in the region. The Bastarnae, subdued by the Sarmatians around the beginning of the first millennium, had also been Germanic. So in theory it might be possible to explain the rise of Gothic domination north of the Black Sea in the third century as the re-emergence of those Germanic groups who had been subordinated here in the first. However, a pretty extensive range of evidence suggests, on the contrary, that the immigration of new Germanic-speakers played a critical role in the action.

In the period of Dacian and Sarmatian dominance, groups known as Goths – or perhaps ‘Gothones’ or ‘Guthones’ – inhabited lands far to the north-west, beside the Baltic. Tacitus placed them there at the end of the first century
AD
, and Ptolemy did likewise in the middle of the second, the latter explicitly among a number of groups said to inhabit the mouth of the River Vistula. Philologists have no doubt, despite the varying transliterations into Greek and Latin, that it is the same group name that suddenly shifted its epicentre from northern Poland to the Black Sea in the third century. Nor was it the only group name to do so at this time. Goths get pride of place in our sources and in scholarly discussion, but other Germanic groups participated in the action too. We have already encountered the Heruli, and late third-and early fourth-century sources record the presence in and around the Carpathians, in addition, of Germanic-speaking Gepids, Vandals, Taifali and Rugi. The Rugi, like the Goths, had occupied part of the Baltic littoral in the time of Tacitus, and the likeliest location for Vandals in the same period is north-central Poland, to the south of the Goths and Rugi. The presence of Vandals and Rugi in the Carpathian region, alongside Goths, represents a major relocation of some kind on their part, and all were moving south and east from Poland towards the Pontus. The Heruli are not mentioned by Tacitus, but in the fourth and fifth centuries a second, non-Danubian, group of Heruli again lived far to the north-west, suggesting, again, that our Danubian Heruli may have got there via some kind of migration. The Gepids and Taifali, like the Heruli, are first encountered at the end of the third century, and we will return to the significance of these ‘new’ Germanic-speaking groups later in the chapter.

There is, of course, more that we would like to know, but despite obvious deficiencies the historical evidence in its entirety strongly indicates that a wave of Germanic expansion – moving broadly northwest to south-east – underlay the strategic shift that led Aurelian to
abandon upland Transylvania. This has to be deduced. There is no explicit description of Germanic migration in contemporary Roman sources, which confine themselves to accounts of its effects – attacks by these new groups across the Roman frontier. If ‘Goth’ was the only Germanic group name from north-central Europe to shift its location in these years, you might get away with the argument that it’s a case of accidental resemblance, but, as we have just seen, it isn’t only ‘Goth’. This being so, there is no reason not to accept what the historical evidence is prima facie telling us. In a reversal of the effects of the arrival of the Sarmatian nomads in the first century
AD
, the hegemony of Germanic-speakers east of the Carpathians, lost in the overthrow of the Bastarnae and their allies, was restored by the migration of Goths, Rugi, Heruli and other Germanic-speaking groups in the third century.
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This interim conclusion is only strengthened by two broader aspects of the historical evidence. First, the rise of Gothic power north of the Black Sea eventually led some indigenous groups to evacuate the region entirely. As we shall soon see in more detail, large numbers of Dacian-speaking Carpi (but not all of them) from the Carpathian foothills were admitted into the Roman Empire in the twenty-five years or so after 290
AD
. An increased level of competition between groups already indigenous to the region might conceivably have generated such an exodus, but it is much more consistent with the after-effects of substantial Germanic immigration. Second, the new Gothic populations of the region remained highly mobile, even after moving into the plains south and east of the Carpathians following the exodus of the Carpi. In the 330s, the Gothic Tervingi contemplated moving lock, stock and barrel to the Middle Danubian region, and from the 370s, as we will explore in the next chapter, relocated along with their fellow Gothic Greuthungi to new homes in the Roman Empire. This later mobility is relevant, because, as we have seen, comparative studies have consistently shown that migration is a cultural habit that builds up in particular population groups. Finding Gothic populations mobile in the fourth century provides a further reason for accepting the evidence that they – or their ancestors – had been so in the third. Neither of these points would be conclusive by itself, but both reinforce the historical evidence that Gothic migration played a large role in recasting the strategic situation north of the Black Sea in the third century.
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The archaeological legacy of the Cold War, moreover, again allows us to expand the discussion beyond the limits of the historical sources. Between c.150 and c.220/230
AD
, there occurred a further large-scale south-eastern expansion of the Wielbark cultural system into Polesie and Podlachia first of all, and then on into Volhynia and northern Ukraine. This entirely dwarfed in its geographical scale the earlier Wielbark expansion from around the time of the Marcomannic War. At the same time, Wielbark sites and cemeteries in western Pomerania were falling out of use, so the shift in the Wielbark centre of gravity was huge (
Map 6
). Given that certainly the Goths and probably at least the Rugi, too, among the newly dominant Germanic groups of the Black Sea region had their origins within the Wielbark system in the first and second centuries, these finds are highly suggestive, in fact, of the route followed by some of the Germanic-speakers who ended up by the Black Sea. A ribbon of Wielbark cemeteries of more or less the right date has been traced south along the upper reaches of the River Vistula, and then on to the Upper Dniester (
Map 6
). These certainly tie in chronologically with the sudden appearance of Gothic attackers outside the walls of the city of Histria in 238.
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The really striking development in the north Pontic archaeology of this period, however, was not the further spread of the Wielbark system per se, but the generation of a series of new cultural systems incorporating some Wielbark features. The most important of these was the Cernjachov, which by the middle of the fourth century had spread over a huge area between the Danube and the Don (
Map 6
). This is another case where the date and identity of the system used to be much fought over, but its basic characteristics are now well established. Over five thousand settlements have been identified, and many large bi-ritual cemeteries excavated, the remains showing beyond doubt that the system flourished from the second half of the third century down to the year 400, or just a bit later. Chronologically, as well as geographically, its remains coincide with Gothic dominion in the late Roman period as described in trustworthy contemporary sources, and it is now universally accepted that the system can be taken to reflect the world created by the Goths – and probably our other Germanic-speakers too – north of the Black Sea.

Some elements of the new system strongly recall, or are identical to, their counterparts in the Wielbark system to the north-west, but it is important to recognize that the latter did continue on in its own
right; there was nothing like a total evacuation of northern Poland. Some of the pottery is identical, with handmade bowl-shaped Wielbark ceramics being particularly prevalent in early Cernjachov levels. Otherwise, many of the
fibula
brooch types, and the style of female costume (brooches worn as a pair on each shoulder), are identical with those found in Wielbark areas. Some house-types, particularly the longhouses shared by both humans and animals (German
Wohnstallhäuser
), are likewise common to certain areas, at least, of both systems. It is also striking, although at present a full comparative study is lacking, that the two customs which distinguish Wielbark cemeteries from those found in surrounding areas of north-central Europe are also found in Cernjachov territories. In cemeteries of both systems, two types of burial ritual coexisted: inhumation and cremation. Likewise, the population of Wielbark areas did not bury weapons (or any other iron objects) with their male dead, and the absence of this habit was also a feature of Cernjachov burial ritual.

Other features of the Cernjachov system had different origins. While handmade Wielbark ceramics were commonly used early on, a more sophisticated wheel-made pottery, broadly analogous to provincial Roman types, quickly became characteristic of the system. And if the longhouse certainly had its origins in the Germanic-dominated cultures of north-central Europe, another characteristic dwelling in many Cernjachov areas was the sunken or semi-sunken hut (in German,
Grübenhaus
). These, by contrast, had long been indigenous to the eastern foothills of the Carpathians and beyond, and are not found in Wielbark or any other northern Germanic settlements of the first and second centuries. Excavators have also found occasional examples within Cernjachov cemeteries of a distinctive Sarmatian burial practice: placing possessions on a shelf cut within the grave. A Sarmatian population group thus apparently continued to play its part in the new mix generated by northern Germanic immigration towards the Black Sea.
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