Third century battlefield found: Romans fought the Germans later than expected

Now he admitted it - since he has no command of any other language than
English, he's not interested in anything else.

By the way Foofie, this is not an American forum as I was told by the owner
of this site. So brace yourself and learn something from the non-Americans
here.

Okay. I'll take the bait.

How, just a simple question,can you be interested in English history:
why do you leave out the period between -about- AD43 and AD430?

And why, if you don't mind this supplementary question, are you not in Welsh or Scottish, Celtic or Irish history? Don't you think that such influenced the events in English history as well?


I agree that a command of a certain language can be important to understand local history.
However, when I studied history, a working knowledge of modern languages as well as Latin/Greece was thought to be important not only to get access to certain sources but to read general historical sources in the original language.

Besides that, I agree with Set: you are a putz. Even more: you are more narrow minded and mentally blinkered than I feared.

Oh,and Roman history - in so far as related to the thread - isn't "European history" at all, not here nor in other country.

This, in all irony, after Foofie posted this here:


Is your illusory personal acquaintanceship with Walter particularly fullfilling, Foo?

Disclaimer: I vehemently reject to have or have had or will have any illusory or other personal acquaintanceship with Foofie.

Ha!

Foofie could also learn something from Americans here whose horizons are not nearly so limited as his own.

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Two signal factors lead to the contraction of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century. One was the collapse (more or less temporary) of the authority of the Emperor, and the other was the "invasion" of "barbarians."

In the period preceding Caesar's invasion of Gaul, the Germanic people of northern Europe had been in migratory flux. The essential success of the Germanic, and particularly of the Gothic tribes had lead to a population increase which might be referred to as a population explosion. Tribes expanded as the opportunity presented itself, and began to migrate to east and west, and to a lesser extent, to the south. Caesar, whose rise to power, and whose influence with the order of Plebs in Rome alarmed the Senate, was given control of the province of Cisalpine Gaul (which means Gaul "below" the Alps, which in relation to Rome meant Gaul south of the Alps, and, therefore, what we would call northern Italy). The source of his power, much of his popularity, and the fear the Senate bore him was his successful reconciliation of Crassus and Pompey, who were theretofore bitter political rivals. With the support of Crassus and Pompey, Caesar pushed through a measure to distribute public land to the poor (anyone even passingly familiar with the history of the Roman Republic will know that the distribution of public land, and its sequestration by the Senate, were the most constant bone of contention between the social orders of Rome). His success in that venture assured the continued support of the Plebs, the continued antagonism of the Senate, and a political power which could not be ignored. Neither Crassus nor Pompey seemed to know then that Caesar's measures would one day make him the sole political power in Rome--at the time, the cabal of Crassus, Pompey and Caesar was known as the triumvirate, and has since been called by historians the first triumvirate.

Caesar's province actually consisted of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum and Gallia Narbonensis. Narbonensis corresponds roughly to Provence in southern France--i don't know that anyone has ever adequately and convincingly explained why, but Narbonensis was, from the mists of the past, a reliable ally of Rome, even in the days when Rome was poor and beset by many enemies. Rome was your worst enemy if you defied her, but she was your most faithful friend if you were faithful to her, and the Romans saw it as a moral duty to protect her friends. Illyricum was the western Balkans, and corresponds roughly to what was for a time Yugoslavia.

This meant that Caesar governed the provinces which bordered the Germans, at this time of dynamic migration of Germanic tribes. The Germans allied to Celtic tribes north of Narbonensis had defeated and overrun the territory of the Aedui, a Celtic people whose territory spanned the border of northern Narbonensis and "non-Roman" Gaul. At the same time, the Helvetii (roughly, the ancestors of the modern Swiss) were, in response to pressure from the east, pressing to the south and west, which was a threat both to Cisalpine Gaul and to Narbonensis. That was the origin of Caesars campaigns in Transalpine Gaul (Gaul across the Alps), and lead directly to the clash with the Germans which would be a major factor in the military and political policies of the Empire for centuries to come. Due to migratory pressures by Germanic tribes, the Treveri (a Celtic tribe) came into direct conflict with German tribes. The Treveri had supported Caesar in the conquest of Gaul, providing both reliable infantry and an excellent cavalry. In line with their policies, just as the threat to Narbonensis had justified invading Gaul, the threat to loyal tribes on the left bank of the Rhine lead to the Roman invasion of Germany. Rome would thereafter be involved in Germany and in German affairs for five centuries and more.

The migrations which drove German tribes to Gaul and to the borders of the Roman Empire were in large measure the product of the success of and the growing population of the Goths, people we might think of as Swedes (except, of course, that no such thing as a nation of Sweden existed). In the centuries before the Germans and the Romans clashed, Gothic tribes arrived on the southern shores of the Baltic, and began to move up the valleys of the Elbe and the Oder (which is to say, they moved south). Although the name Goths actually refers to several separate tribes, they were known generally by other German tribes as "Gutar," or Goths, and were ethnically sufficiently similar that the name Goth can be reasonably applied to all of those tribes. The height of this migration was in the 3rd century BCE, and it was probably the most significant migration which explains the migratory pressure which drove German tribes west toward Gaul and the Empire.

Due to the increased population density of the Germans in central Europe, the Goths largely continued to migrate. (Some Gothic tribes may have settled in central Europe, but they were absorbed by the local tribes--if the interpretation of ancient texts is correct, they would be the origins of the Vandals.) They began moving to the east, and some eventually came to rest, at least temporarily, in west-central Asia, north of the Black and Caspian Seas. Although nothing can be said for certain on the matter, it appears that Gothic tribes settled all along the littoral of the Baltic east of the mouth of the Elbe, as well as in central Asia.

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China only acquired a genuine empire in the late 3rd century BCE, at the time of the Gothic migrations into central Europe. This empire was founded in about 220 BCE, and is known as the Qin Dynasty. It did not last very long, and was succeeded in about 205 BCE by the Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasties lasted for about 400 years (depending on how one defines Han power, somewhat less than or somewhat more than 400 years). The latter Han dynasty was defunct by the beginning of the 3rd Century CE, and the collapse began in about 190 CE. It was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. As the latter Han was collapsing, three main military and political powers emerged. The last gasp of the Han military was the army headed by Cao-Cao (pronounced "Chow-Chow," it is rendered these days in Pinyin as Tsao-Tsao), who was an almost uniformly successful general, who came back from his one major defeat to rebuild his army and his political base, and to defeat all of his enemies in the field. His rivals were Liu Bei, who ruled in the west, and who claimed to be the rightful successor to the Han emperors; and Sun Che, succeeded by his son Sun Quan, who ruled in the southeast. Cao Pi succeeded Cao-Cao, and ruled in the northeast. During the strife from 190 to 200 CE, the "barbarians" of the Ordos Desert in the Yellow River Loop, and in the Mongolian plateau, and the "barbarians" of the Kansu (or Gansu) corridor (roughly due west of modern Beijing) made constant raids into China. As a result, although the Cao Wei "dynasty" traded with the "barbarians," and largely got along with them, their military tradition impelled them to raid in return, and they succeeded in keeping the tribesmen out of China.

This lead to a migration by the excess population of those tribes (whom we would later, and inaccurately, refer to as "Mongols"), first to the south, and then to the west into central Asia. The Chinese had long referred to these people, from at least as long ago as the foundation of the Qin in the third Century BCE, as the hsiung-nu, or "horse barbarians." The term is as loosely applied as it is to refer to all of these tribes as "Mongols," but some of them seemed to take the name "horse barbarian" as a badge of honor, and the northern Hsiung-nu tribes are the people who were to be known to the Romans as the Huns.

The migration of the Huns put pressure on the tribes of central Asia, driving the Turkic-speaking tribes to the west, which in turn put pressure on the Gothic tribes living to the north of the Capsian and Black Seas, and leading them to migrate back to the west from whence they had originally come. This migration began with the dawn of the 3rd century, although the Huns themselves would not appear on the borders of the Empire until the 4th century. The Goths had learned the military use of the horse form their Turkic neighbors. The "Turks" (once again, a term that covers a multitude of tribal sins) used the bow, as did most nomadic warriors of central Asia and the Mongolian plateau. The Goths, as was the case with most Germans, used the spear. Among the Germanic tribes of the west, the blade of the spear was lengthened and broadened, and the haft was shortened--it would eventually evolve into the short sword of the Saxons. (Short here is a relative term. The Saxon short sword was considerably longer than the Roman gladius, although noticeably shorter than the military long sword which evolved from the preferred long sword of the Celts.) The Goths, using their spears from horse back as the Turks and Huns used their bows, had lengthened the haft of their spears, and shortened and narrowed the blade, leading the lance which was to be the hallmark of European heavy cavalry for almost 1500 years. The arrival of the Goths, and their eventual federation into the Empire in the 5th century, introduced heavy cavalry to the Empire, and lead to supremacy of heavy cavalry over the heavy infantry which had previously been the Roman "Queen of Battles."

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Septimius Severus was a successful Roman general who was born in what is today Libya. His mother was Roman, and his father was probably a Berber, and may have had Phoenician blood from the Carthaginians. Severus was made a senator by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and was given the command of the province of Pannonia, which roughly corresponds to Austria, south of the Danube. At the beginning of what is known in Roman history as Year of the Five Emperors, Severus proclaimed his support of Commodus, and then of Pertinax. When Pertinax was murdered, Severus marched on Rome, and proclaimed that Pertinax had been the rightful emperor, and punished his murderers, forcing the Senate to deify him.

Severus has long had a bad reputation with historians, largely because he was seen as a persecutor of the chrisitans, something which European historians until quite recently would not forgive. But after the murder of Pertinax, Severus fought against several rivals, and the christians backed two of them in succession. Severus certainly persecuted some christians--but not because they were christians, but rather because they had backed the loser, when Severus was the winner. He was a military man, and he made certain that the legions were regularly paid, going to the extent of debasing the currency to acheive that end. That this caused runaway inflation is not something one could expect him to have known--no one at that time understood that aspect of economics. Severus' focus on military operations lead to the recovery of territory previously lost to the enemies of the Empire on the bordes, and new conquests (strips of borderland which provided more security for the borders) which made that the greatest extent of the Empire. Severus was succeeded by his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, although Caracalla was the real power of the throne. Edward Gibbon has called him "the common enemy of mankind," and Dio Cassius commented that he only extended the status of citizen to all freemen of the Empire so he could increase the tax rolls. Caracalla was sufficient unpopular that he was murdered (supposedly, to the relief of everyone) by the commander of the Praetorian Guard, Macrinus, who was then acclaimed emperor. He was in turn deposed by the "Emperor" Elagabalus, a cousin of the Severids, whose grandmother had cajoled and bribed the Third Legion into supporting the boy's claim (he was a boy, about 13 or 14 at that time). When a false rumor circulated that he and his mother had murdered Alexander Severus, considered by most legionaires to be the true successor to Septimius Severus, Elagabalus and his mother were murdered by their own guard. Alexander Severus then succeeded, although he was no older then (about 14) than Elagabalus had been when he took the throne. Alexander Severus was popular with the Legions, who had a rather unrealistic view of how he would restore the glory of Rome, and who seemed to think he was another Septimius Severus. Caracalla had debased the currency of the Empire to the hefty extent of 25% lead in silver coins, and Alexander Severus was put to the shift of debasing it further to pay his legions. No one then understanding inflation or even basic economics, no one understood that they could not pay the Legions as fast as inflation ate away the value of their pay. Although the brief reign of Alexander Severus was actually a relatively good time for the citizens of the Empire, the unrealistic expectations of his Legions were to lead to his doom. He is said to have defeated the newly rising power of the middle East, the Sassanid Empire. Whether or not that is true, it was believed at Rome, so that when in the following year (234 CE), German tribes began to raid across the Rhine and the Danube (once again, this was a response to population pressures from the east--as the Hsiung Nu, or Huns, leaned on the "Turks," who leaned on the Goths, who leaned on everybody else to the west of them), the Legions expected Alexander Severus to march out and defeat them in short order. Severus negotiated with the German tribes however, and was said to have bought them off, or attempted to buy them off. The soldiers didn't like that, considered Severus to have behaved dishonorably, and very soon decided they had had enough, and murdered him in 235 CE.

This lead to a fifty year period of chaos in the Empire during which no single claimant to the imperial throne could make good his claim throughout the Empire. Historians have long thought that the Legions were obliged in this time of turmoil to completely abaondon German territory east of the Rhine and north of the Danube. Modern historians refer to this time as "the Crisis of the Third Century." So . . .

Finding evidence that Roman troops were actually fighting German tribes in Germany in the third century after 235 CE is an extremely significant event in both archaeology and history, whether or not everyone reading here knows it or understands why.[/i]

Just to add something to the thread, though I know many of you know more,
from 180 to 260 gives us Marcus Aurelius to Valerian, with Alexander Severus and Maximinus Thrax in 235, both murdered that year. (via Wiki)
I'm wondering about the relationship, if any, of emperors to battles in those years.


edit - just seeing Set's post.

In another thread, Foofie says that he doesn't believe that there is any significance to Roman artifacts found in Germany. He further states that: "As an American and a New Yorker, that is the extent of my interest. "

Apparently, Foofie believes that he personally is the final arbiter of what is or is not significant, and that the relative significance of anything or any event is to be measured by the degree of his personal interest.

What a putz.

Well, Set's long post was very helpful.

I agree, osso. Thanks to the efforts of Walter and Setanta, this is a fascinating thread.

Please do not include me in this pin head description of what Americans are interested in. If you can't figure out why this historical find is interesting, Foofie, I suggest you go off to another thread - perhaps something having to do with finger painting, masturbation, or the art of making a potato kugel. You are wasting everyone's time with your silly assumptions.

Some other points about the significance of this find. Heretofore, it has been considered axiomatic that imperial authority broke down almost completely in many parts of the Empire, and in particular in the border areas, in the latter third century of the current era. However, if a force of 1000 Legionaires were fighting Germans across the borders of the Empire, it tells quite a different tale. Augustan Legions, (and this was true for Legions for most of the post-Augustan era) consisted of ten cohorts of 600 men each. As has always been true of military formations, they are rarely to be found at full strength, due to those who are absent sick, due to wastage (men who die for reasons other than combat), due to the necessity for replacements to travel to their parent formation. A force of 1000 men implies, therefore, that at least two cohorts would have been involved, and possibly all or parts of three or more formations. Between a cohort and a legion, there is no other formation greater than a cohort and yet smaller than a legion. This means that in any action in which more than one cohort is involved, the action results from the orders of a Legate, which is to say, the commander of a legion.

Legates often, in fact usually, served as governors, especially on the frontiers of the Empire. If a Legate had commanded an action which lead to a battle such as is implied by this archaeological find, it knocks the wind out of the common assumption that the Empire sank into chaos in the fifty years that the Empire was without a confirmed, universally acknowledged Emperor. It further implies that local control by Legates was more real and reliable than has been the assumption. This find gives good reason to question the view which has long been generally accepted of the fragility and unreliability of imperial control within the boundaries of the Empire and on the frontiers. It strongly suggests that the Empire was more resilient than has been thought, and that imperial authority did not necessarily suffer so badly from the internecine struggles for the imperial throne which occurred all too often in Roman imperial history. It also goes a long way to explain why, even after the complete collapse of imperial authority in the late 5th and early 6th centuries, the Empire continued to be an image to be conjured with, and a form to be referred to as a positive example by the rulers of western and central Europe who arose after the Lombard invasion of Italy.

You are correct! I feel a wind coming off of the Atlantic Ocean.

Will follow re more investigation, there and at Varus site. Tnx for the context, Set, I find it exciting. At least to me your intimations re the possible situations "in the field" make good sense.

Of course, I'm from California.

I was not baiting you. Being a peasant, I am only allowed to bait bears.

My interest in English history is really based on an interest in English social history, which is a subset of history in general. This just goes with my interest in the culture that came to the U.S. and was dominant in this country and still is, I believe.

By the way, "putz" actually means ornament or finery in German, I thought? It only has the colloquial meaning of schmuck in Yiddish.

Why should I be interested in the nuances of so much ancient history? My world history class really went over this phase of western civilization quite quickly, and the focus was not on empire bounderies, but more on the changing power balances between the eastern and western empires. This was 45 + years ago; you think I remember everything said in class?

My point is that the interest shown in this thread for the nuances of Roman rule is just what some are interested in. It is a common subject that folks from different countries can share. However, you must have in Germany those literati that value literature of one period or another, of one country or another, or of one genre or another, and the nuances of history is just what had to be learned in a European school (how much American history is taught in Europe?). I would not be surprised if you are also well read, and can hold your own with the literary set too. In other words, you have graced this forum with your presence, and you should not let my questions bother you, as it has others.

Well, that is an existentialist viewpoint.

Only wasting someone's time if they have not yet learned not to read my posts.

I think a value to the original news item (that it was) is to give European readers the feeling that Europeans have a common heritage, so the last thousand years of warfare can be forgotten, and all can be brotherly in the EU today. I tend to see propaganda behind many news items.

I wish there was a smiley for "zipped lips".

American history is taught in German schools twice to three times (depending how the pupils specialise in the last year): first, when you "run through" all history, then some years later, when you look at history more specificly (e.g. 'British Empire') and the third time when you compare etc.

I'm not saying at all that you should be interested in ancient history (and this isn't just a nuance of it!).
But you came here, responded with your peculiar funny posts ...

What a putz. A good thread until this moron comes in and trys to ruin it.