Some other bouts of migration, by contrast, were pretty much entirely political. The Sciri, Rugi, Heruli and Huns all faced, at different moments, a powerfully negative and thoroughly political impetus pushing them out of their existing territories: defeats, respectively, at the hands of the Amal-led Goths, Odovacar and the Lombards, and, in the case of the Huns, the steady erosion of an original position of advantage until their situation became unsustainable. In each case, military defeat destroyed the group’s ability to maintain its independence, even if its victims responded to disaster in a variety of ways. Whereas the Rugi and Heruli (or large numbers of them) moved en masse to different areas, the Sciri seem to have broken down into small groups and negotiated their future piecemeal. The Life of St Severinus refers to a small group of Sciri, not a major force, on its way to Italy. It was remarkable only for the fact that Odovacar was a member of the party.74 The post-Attilan history of the Huns may have combined both types of activity. As we have noted, the mid-460s saw both small groups of Hunnic manpower and two larger concentrations, under the surviving sons of Attila, seek asylum in the east Roman Empire. Economic factors contributed to their choice of direction, but not to the fact that they were on the move in the first place.
The pay and other rewards still available to Roman soldiers were presumably the main reason why so many Sciri and others eventually headed south of the Alps. Larger concentrations of Rugi, Heruli and Huns, likewise (sometimes in more than one group), were forced in the aftermath of defeat either to leave the Middle Danube region or establish dependent relationships with other powers. The nature of these relationships is not made clear in the sources, but again influenced their choice of direction. The Heruli found Gepid hegemony so burdensome that they moved on to a Byzantine allegiance, until the civil war over succession further divided them, leading some back to the Gepids. These refugees were clearly expected to fight for their hosts (whether east Roman or Gepid) and were happy enough, it seems, to do that much, suggesting that this can’t have been at the root of the Heruli’s problem with the Gepids. The refugees may have been expected to provide some kind of economic tribute as well, therefore, but perhaps not as much as they had previously paid to the Huns. The Rugi, perhaps, procured better terms from Theoderic the Amal. Although they swapped sides to Odovacar at one point during the conquest of Italy, they quickly returned to him, and seem to have been content to be part of the Ostrogothic kingdom until 540, a record suggestive of greater contentment than the Heruli enjoyed.75
Unfortunately, we don’t know what terms Dengizich and Hernac, the sons of Attila, sought from Constantinople. Their move on to east Roman territory was preceded by a demand that the Emperor Leo grant them access to markets. The Huns’ declining political hegemony had presumably had economic consequences by the mid-460s, in terms of lost tribute as different subject peoples established their independence, and this erosion of position eventually made accommodation with Constantinople an attractive option. For one of the sons but not the other, the move led to disaster. It is unclear why. The Byzantines presumably perceived a threat in the forces of Dengizich that they did not perceive in Hernac’s. It is noticeable, however, that Hernac appears to have been content with only a very limited territory on Roman soil, right on the frontier in the north of the Dobruja, so perhaps Dengizich was too demanding.76 For all these groups, however, defeat had major consequences. It turned them into political refugees, and forced them to accept sometimes burdensome terms from senior partners. At the very least, it cost them any revenues that had previously accrued to them as the dominant local force, as well as, at least in the case of those Heruli attached to the Gepids, extra tribute that they now had to pay to their ‘hosts’. They were also expected to perform military service. Even though it is impossible to study motivation in detail, the intertwining of economic and political factors in the motivations of all our migrants is clear, with economics having the edge, as you might expect, among the more voluntary migrants, and politics among the involuntary. But because even the voluntary had of necessity to remake political circumstances to their benefit in order to enjoy the wealth they were targeting, they had to operate in large and cohesive groupings. If the size and nature of these migrant groups was not in line with modern examples, the complex nature of their motivation was.
Other aspects of the migration process observable across the span of the Hunnic era recall modern exemplars more closely. The degree to which migration was adopted as a strategy in this era by population groups who already had an established propensity for mobility is striking. The Amal-led Goths who eventually moved on to Italy had, at some point in the recent past, moved from east to west of the Carpathians, then south into the east Roman Balkans, where they remained highly mobile. There the group covered another fifteen hundred kilometres and more, as Theoderic the Amal twisted and turned geographically and politically in his attempt to supplant the Thracian Goths as imperial allies. Although we have much less specific information, the same was seemingly true of the Lombard groups who ended up in the Middle Danube. We have little grasp of the chronology, but somehow they got there from the northern Elbe, almost certainly via a number of intermediary moves – or pauses in a flow, perhaps – that had led to an immediate jumping-off point in Bohemia. The point equally applies to the main losers in the fallout from the Hunnic Empire: the Huns themselves, together with the Rugi, Sciri and Heruli. Again, even if the details are not recoverable in every case, all of these groups first made their way to the Middle Danubian region at some point in the late fourth or early fifth century, and their departures followed within two or, in the case of the Heruli, at most three generations. For the populations of all these groups, migration had become an entrenched strategy, a reflex stored in the collective memory that might be drawn upon in appropriate circumstances; for them it was a possible response to a much wider range of stimuli than to groups without an established history of migration.
The importance of fields of information in influencing the directions of these migrations is also apparent. Information clearly played a critical role in shaping the individual moves of the Amal-led Goths. Theoderic the Amal’s ten-year spell as a hostage in Constantinople finished when he was eighteen, in 472 or thereabouts. This was precisely the right moment for him to return with news both of the much greater wealth accruing to the Thracian Goths as a result of their court connections, and of the fact that these Goths were currently in rebellion against the Emperor Leo because he had assassinated their patron Aspar. That within the year the Amal-led Goths had moved south to attempt to supplant them as Constantinople’s favoured Gothic allies can’t be coincidence. That Theoderic’s Goths had sufficient geographic and political knowledge to understand, later on, that Italy represented another possible destination is equally apparent, but perhaps requires less explanation. Their old home in Pannonia lay on the fringes of the eastern Alpine passes that gave access to northern Italy, and Odovacar, its ruler, was the son of an ancient enemy of the Amal dynasty. As early as 479, a full decade before his forces moved there en masse, Theoderic was already suggesting to Constantinople’s ambassador Adamantius, as they negotiated outside Dyrrhachium, that he might lead some of his troops to Italy on a joint expedition to overthrow him.77
Most of the other migrations stimulated by the collapse of Hunnic power operated within discernibly active fields of information too. It is no surprise, for instance, that groups of Lombards settled in adjacent Bohemia should have realized that Odovacar’s destruction of the kingdom of the Rugi had created a power vacuum into which they might now move. The Sciri, likewise, had formed part of Attila’s army that had raided Italy in 451, and like Theoderic’s Goths were settled close to the routes that led into it. The Heruli who accepted Gepid hegemony and then that of Byzantium remained, of course, within the region where they had been established for at least fifty years, so it is safe to assume that they too understood the implications of the moves they decided to make. This leaves two more interesting cas
es: the Rugi and the wider Herulic diaspora. Somehow or other, the Rugi knew where to find Theoderic after their kingdom had been destroyed by Odovacar in 487. But Theoderic’s career in the east Roman Empire had been spectacularly successful, culminating in a consulship in 484, so it is perhaps no wonder that his not too distant neighbours should have had accurate knowledge of his whereabouts within the Balkans. More arresting is the case of those Heruli who made their way to Scandinavia. In Procopius’ account it is unclear whether they had any idea of where they were going when they first headed north in the aftermath of defeat. You would think not, except for the fact that those Heruli who remained by the Danube were able to find them again, twenty odd years later, when they needed a prince of the royal clan, despite the eighteen hundred or so kilometres that now separated them. The Heruli who moved north perhaps already had contacts or knowledge that suggested Scandinavia as a possible destination, information shared by those who remained close to the Danube. Alternatively, the two groups may have maintained some contact in the meantime. A case in point is the Scandinavian king, Rodulf of the Rani, who later sought refuge at Theoderic’s court in Italy. Vignettes like this make it apparent that you underestimate the circulation of knowledge beyond the old Roman limes at your peril.78
Knowledge could translate into actual movement, however, only where large-scale transfers of population were a practical possibility. Often the ancient sources give us little relevant information, but some migrations were shaped by transport logistics. Like their Gothic predecessors under Alaric from the 390s, the Amal-led Goths travelled with a massive wagon train. The two thousand Gothic wagons captured by the east Romans in 479 were probably not even its full complement. The ambush occurred before Theoderic integrated the Thracian Goths into his command, so that the wagon train of the united Goths (together with the Rugi) who set off for Italy will have been an even more imposing sight. In single file, two thousand wagons will have stretched over perhaps fifteen kilometres. With this monster at their heels, the Amal-led Goths were naturally limited to the Roman road network in the mountainous Balkans. We happen to know that their initial trek in 473 made use of both of the available branches of the great military road from Naissus to Thessalonica; in their later retreat west from the outskirts of Constantinople in 478/9 they plodded along the Via Egnatia. Presumably all their intervening and subsequent moves, likewise, followed the main Roman arteries of communication. It seems extremely unlikely, moreover, that only the Goths made use of wagon trains for transporting possessions and non-combatants. In fact, there are enough references to suggest that they were the characteristic mode of transport of all these migrant groups.79
Perhaps above all, as modern examples would lead us to expect, the ‘shape’ of existing political structures is firmly imprinted upon the action. It was the rising power of the Huns that caused such a gathering of militarily powerful groups in the Middle Danube region in the first place, as they were either brought there by the Huns or were seeking – in vain – to escape their attentions. Nor, without the Huns’ constraining influence, could so many militarized groups have existed in such close proximity to one another, as the violent competition sparked off among them by Attila’s death underlines. The continuing survival of the east Roman Empire as a cohesive state was likewise central to the action. It prompted, for instance, the decision of the Amal-led Goths to head south into its Balkan territories. This landscape was not naturally rich – not nearly as agriculturally productive, for instance, as the old province of Pannonia which the Goths had left behind. The rugged Balkans were an attractive destination, though, because they were close enough to Constantinople to allow the Goths to exert pressure on the authorities there, and hence to try to make them hand over some of the wealth they accrued in tax revenues from their much richer territories of Egypt and the Near East. These Goths’ ultimate choice of destination was also dictated by political structures. If the western Roman Empire had not ceased in the meantime to exist, they could have had no hope of establishing an independent kingdom in the Italian peninsula, nor would the eastern Emperor Zeno have encouraged Theoderic in the enterprise. Similarly with the Lombards: they could not have moved into the Middle Danube in force, had the Hunnic Empire continued to exist.
As mentioned earlier, in the last decade or so it has become fashionable in some quarters to argue that the rise and fall of the Hunnic Empire shows that group identity in the period was highly malleable, and that the process involved little in the way of migration. This is certainly an area where the evidence base is less than we would like it to be. There are enough solid pointers, however, to indicate that both of these stands require modification. The historical evidence, first of all, makes it clear that becoming part of the Hunnic Empire did not mean that one became a Hun. The Empire was an essentially unequal, involuntary confederation. All the participating non-Huns we know about were forced to join, were systematically exploited under its auspices, and eventually fought their way free of its domination. In light of this, it becomes less surprising that larger group identities were not broken apart by participation in its structures. The Huns themselves had a basic interest in maintaining these identities, since being a Hun was to occupy a position of privilege over others, while from the subjects’ perspective holding on to a larger group identity offered the likeliest route, when opportunity arose, of throwing off Hunnic domination.
For many of the groups mentioned in our sources, the information available to us is not good, and for some, particularly the Lombards, seriously deficient; but these observations on identiy sit entirely comfortably alongside the better information, such as there is, about the migratory processes involved in the Empire’s creation and destruction. The Amal-led Goths are consistently described as a large, mixed population, comprising ten thousand-plus warriors on the move with dependent women and children and a wagon train several thousand strong. This description is derived from a variety of contemporary historical sources whose reports are consistent, detailed and circumstantial. It is also the image of these Goths on the move given at the court of their king in Italy. Any evidence can be disputed, but the grounds have to be reasonable, and in this case objections are largely based on only a partial reading of the modern scientific literature on the workings of group identity. In broadest terms, the demographic effect of the Hunnic Empire was to suck large numbers of militarized groups into the heart of central Europe, whether as part of its build-up of power or to take advantage of the chaos of its collapse. Once the constraining influence of Hunnic power had disappeared, such a concentration of military potential could not but generate intense competition in which some of the smaller entities lost their independence, but which, overall, prompted many of the groups to leave the region quite as quickly as they had entered it.
At first sight, the role played by different degrees of development in all this action is not so obvious as, say, in the third-century Germanic expansions. Most of the migratory action examined in this chapter looks initially very political, associated either with Hunnic empire-building or the fallout from that Empire’s collapse. But first impressions can be misleading. The Huns built their war machine in the Middle Danube region precisely because of unequal degrees of development. It was a conveniently situated base from which to launch the raids and protection rackets that would give them a share of the wealth of the Mediterranean as mobilized by the taxation structures of the Roman Empire. And Attila’s demands, recorded for us in detail by Priscus, really were all about cash. Holding the Huns’ war machine together at all, moreover, would have been quite impossible without Roman wealth to lubricate its mechanisms. Variations in the prevailing levels of economic development also dictated, after Attila’s death, the general directions of the moves made by the various groups who wanted to opt out of the competition. The vast majority, as we have seen, moved south, attracted, again, by the wealth of the Mediterranean; but political structures then again enter the frame. Only if a group was content to be broken up and lo
se its political independence, following the path trodden by the last son of Attila and some of the smaller former satellites, could it move permanently south and east towards the Byzantine Empire, whose military strength remained largely intact. Theoderic’s Amal-led Goths were numerous enough to survive there in the short term, but not numerous enough to force Constantinople into a lasting agreement, so that this seeming exception in fact reinforces the point.
For those with grander ambitions, then, south and west were the directions to take. The obstacle posed to western migration in previous eras by west Roman frontier fortifications and the troops that manned them had been removed, and there was no repeat of third-century patterns of expansion, which had seen Germanic groups spill eastwards to become dominant in areas north of the Black Sea (Chapter 4). During the Hunnic imperial period, central and southern Europe periodically witnessed great concentrations of warriors and their families clogging the roads of the region. At more or less the same time, different kinds of migration were affecting the northwestern fringes of the Roman Empire. To complete our survey of the traditional Völkerwanderung, we need now to turn the spotlight on the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks.
Empires and Barbarians Page 35
