Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric (Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity)
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One will get considerably more out of the ancient sources after having read a few studies of them. The literature on Ammianus, in English and every other language, is vast. John Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989) and T. D. Barnes, Ammianus and the Representation of Historical Reality (Ithaca, 1998) are essential. On Claudian, Alan Cameron’s Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970) is unsurpassed. Zosimus has yet to attract the English study he deserves, but one can consult the introduction and commentary to the five-volume French edition by François Paschoud (1979–1993). The literature on Jordanes is large and partisan, for the reasons discussed at length in chapter three, and modern Germanist fantasy is regularly retailed as fact. Two responsible alternatives are Brian Croke, ‘Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes’, Classical Philology 82 (1987): 117–34; and Walter Goffart, ‘Jordanes’ Getica and the disputed authenticity of Gothic origins from Scandinavia’, Speculum 80 (2005): 379–98. For literary reactions to Adrianople, the basic study is Noel Lenski, ‘Initium mali romano imperio: contemporary reactions to the battle of Adrianople’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 127 (1997): 129–68. Almost nothing in English exists on the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov culture apart from summaries in Heather and Matthews, Goths in the Fourth Century, and Heather, Goths. Both of these are broadly accurate treatments of the evidence as it was known in the later 1980s, but lack theoretical rigour in relating archaeological and historical evidence.
Notes
The following abbreviations and editions are used in the notes.
AE
L’Année Epigraphique (Paris, 1888–); cited by year and inscription number.
Ambrose, Ep.
Epistulae et acta, ed. O. Faller and M. Zelzer (4 vols., CSEL 82.1–4). Vienna, 1968–1996.
č Panegyrici Latini, ed. R. Mynors. Oxford, 1964.
Paulinus, V. Ambrosii
A. Bastiaensen, Vita di Cipriani, Vita di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostino. Milan, 1975. pp. 51–124.
Peter the Patrician
FHG 4: 181–91.
PG
Patrologia Graeca.
Philostorgius, HE
Philostorgius Kirchengeschichte mit dem Leben des Lucian von Antiochien und den Fragmenten eines arianischen Historiographen, ed. J. Bidez, rev. F. Winkelmann. Berlin, 1972.
PLS
Patrologia Latina Supplementum.
Procopius, Aed.
Procopii Caesariensis Opera č: De aedificiis libri č, ed. J. Haury, rev. G. Wirth. Leipzig, 1964.
RIC
The Roman Imperial Coinage (10 vols.). London, 1923–1994.
Rufinus, HE
Eusebius Werke č.2: Die Kirchengeschichte, ed. E. Schwartz and Th. Mommsen. Berlin, 1907. pp. 951–1040.
Rutilius, De reditu suo
Rutilius Namatianus: Sur son retour, ed. J. Vessereau and F. Préchac. Paris, 1933.
Socrates, HE
Sokrates Kirchengeschichte, ed. G. C. Hansen. Berlin, 1995.
Sozomen, HE
Sozomenus Kirchengeschichte, ed. J. Bidez, rev. G. C. Hansen. Berlin, 1960.
Synesius, De providentia and De regno
Synesii Cyrenensis opuscula, ed. N. Terzaghi. Rome, 1944.
Tacitus, Germ.
Germania, in Cornelii Taciti opera minora, ed. M. Winterbottom. Oxford, 1975. pp. 35–62.
Tacitus, Hist.
Historiae, ed. E. Koestermann. Leipzig, 1969.
Themistius, Or.
Orationes, ed. G. Downey and A. F. Norman (3 vols.). Leipzig, 1965–1974.
Theodoret, HE
Theodoret Kirchengeschichte, ed. L. Parmentier, rev. G. C. Hansen. Berlin, 1998.
Zosimus, HN
Zosime: Histoire nouvelle, ed. F. Paschoud (3 vols. in 5). Paris, 1970–1993.
Prologue: Before the Gates of Rome
[1] Sources for the foregoing are Zosimus, HN 5.34–50; Sozomen, HE 9.6–7; Olympiodorus, frag. 7.1 (Blockley) = 4 (Müller); 24 (Blockley) = 24 (Müller); Rutilius Namatianus, De reditu suo.
Chapter One: The Goths Before Constantine
[2] For instance the Scythians supposedly recruited into the army by Septimius Severus, in Cassius Dio 75.3, taken as Goths by P. Heather, The Goths (Oxford, 1996), 39.
[3] Dexippus, frag. 20 (Jacoby) = 14 (Müller); 22 (Jacoby) = 16 (Müller).
[4] Jordanes, Getica 91 and Historia Augusta, V. Gord. 31.1: the Historia Augusta is much earlier than Jordanes, but it is more likely that its author – much given to invention and word games – conflated two historical names into one than that Jordanes, a much less adventurous writer, expanded a single name into two. Furthermore, the name Argunt is far less plausible than either Argaith or Guntheric.
[5] Zosimus, HN 1.23.
[6] Lactantius, De mort. pers. 4.1, but ascribing the victory to the Carpi.
[7] Zosimus, HN 1.31–35. In this and the following section, I omit references to the later Byzantine traditions preserved in Syncellus, Cedrenus and particularly Zonaras. Although much valuable information is undoubtedly transmitted in these writers from earlier sources, its precise application is not always clear, as is shown by the best treatment of the subject, B. Bleckmann, Die Reichskrise des č. Jahrhunderts in der spätantiken und byzantinischen Geschichtsschreibung. (Munich, 1992), 156–219.
[8] Zosimus, HN 1.35.
[9] Canons 5–10 (PG 10: 1020–48 at 1037–47). There is a complete translation in P. Heather and J. Matthews, The Goths in the Fourth Century (Liverpool, 1991), 1–11. Note that although the Boradoi of Gregory are probably the Boranoi of Zosimus, we should not correct Gregory’s reading to that of Zosimus, as Heather and Matthews do, as the two words may in fact have slightly different significance.
[10] Dexippus, frag. 25 (Jacoby) = 18 (Müller); Zosimus, HN 1.43; 46.
[11] Zosimus, HN 1.45.
[12] Historia Augusta, V. Aurel. 22.2.
[13] Ammianus, RG 31.5.17, in the aftermath of Adrianople, writes nostalgically of Aurelian’s distant successes. For the raids under Tacitus and Probus, see Zosimus, HN 1.63.1.
[14] Tacitus, Hist. 1.4.
[15] G. Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge, 1998).
[16] Zosimus, HN 1.29–30; Aurelius Victor 32–33; Eutropius 9.7–8; Epitome de Caesaribus 31–32.
[17] For Postumus’ victory see the recently discovered victory altar from Augsburg: L. Bakker, ‘Die Siegesaltar zur Juthungenschlacht von 260 n. Chr. Ein spektakulärer Neufund aus Augusta Vindelicium/Augsburg’, Archäologische Nachrichten 24 (1993): 274–77.
[18] Zosimus, HN 1.42–43; 1.45–46; Eutropius 9.11.
[19] Zosimus, HN 1.63.
[20] Zosimus, HN 1.71–72; Eutropius 9.17–18; Epitome de Caesaribus 37–38; Historia Augusta, V. Prob. 21–22; John of Antioch, frag. 158; 160 (FHG 4: 600).
[21] Aurelius Victor 38.2.
[22] Eutropius 9.18; Historia Augusta, V. Car. 8.
[23] Pan. Lat. 10.4.2; Aurelius Victor 39.18–19; Eutropius 9.20.3. Pan. Lat. 10, delivered by Mamertinus on 21 April 289, is our main evidence for the early campaigns of Maximian.
[24] Pan. Lat. 11.17.1: Tervingi, pars alia Gothorum adiuncta manu Taifalorum.
Chapter Two: The Roman Empire and Barbarian Society
[25] The earliest attestation of the word is an inscription from the 220s: T. Sarnowski, ‘Barbaricum und ein Bellum Bosporanum in einer Inschrift aus Preslav’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 87 (1991): 137–44.
[26] A. Bursche, ‘Contacts between the late Roman empire and north-central Europe’, Antiquaries Journal 76 (1996): 31–50.
[27] M. Speidel, ‘The Roman army in Arabia’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Weltč.8 (1977), 687–730 at 712. This inscription is often thought to refer to a Gothic recruit in Roman service, both because young Guththa’s name may itself mean ‘Goth’ and because he was the son of one Erminarius, a name similar to many recorded later among the Goths. But the main element of the fa
ther’s name (Erman- or Herman-) is not found exclusively among later Goths, and naming a child ‘the Goth’ is more likely to reflect the perspective of an outsider than an insider; perhaps Guththa was the child of a Goth in a non-Gothic environment. All of this is speculative, and it is not at all clear that personal names, in very many societies good evidence for familial relationship, are equally useful in establishing connections to a much broader identity such as that of third-century Goths. For that reason, the Goths (Gouththon te kai Germanon) of Shapur’s monumental inscription are the first certain attestation of Goths in Roman service: see the text at M. Back, Die Sassanidischen Staatsinschriften (Leiden, 1978), 290–91. The opaque evidence of Peter the Patrician, frag. 8 (FHG 4: 186) may refer to these Goths as well.
[28] W. S. Hanson and I. P. Haynes, eds., Roman Dacia: The Making of a Provincial Society, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 56 (Portsmouth, RI, 2004).
Chapter Three: The Search for Gothic Origins
[29] It has now been shown that the real site of the battle was nearly 80 kilometres distance from Detmold at Kalkriese.
[30] Jordanes, Getica 316.
[31] Jordanes, Getica 1.
[32] Jordanes, Getica 2–3.
[33] Jordanes, Getica 65.
[34] Jordanes, Getica 25: velut vagina nationum.
[35] Jordanes, Getica 25–28.
[36] E.g., Jordanes, Getica 68, where the connection is most explicit.
[37] The subtlest and most important work to emerge from this school of thought is Walter Pohl, ‘Aux origines d’une Europe ethnique. Transformations d’identités entre Antiquité et Moyen ge’, AnnalesHSS 60 (2005): 183–208.
[38] Jordanes, Getica 29.
[39] Jordanes, Getica 47.
[40] Jordanes, Getica 28.
[41] Jordanes, Getica 43.
[42] The Gotones mentioned in Tacitus, Germania 44.1 and located somewhere in what is now modern Poland would not be regarded as Goths if Jordanes’ migration stories did not exist.
[43] W. Pohl, ‘Telling the difference: signs of ethnic identity’, in W. Pohl and H. Reimitz, eds., Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800 (Leiden, 1998), 17–69.
[44] But the Greek may actually be a loanword from Sumerian: Jonathan Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago, 2002), 112.
[45] Dexippus, frag. 6.1 (Jacoby) = 24 (Müller); Zosimus, HN 1.37.2, derived from Dexippus.
[46] Codex Theodosianus 14.10.2.
[47] S. Brather, Ethnische Interpretationen in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie: Geschichte, Grundlagen und Alternativen (Berlin, 2004). For a short English introduction to the ideas developed at length in Brather’s large book, see his ‘Ethnic identities as constructions of archaeology: the case of the Alamanni’, in Andrew Gillett, ed., On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2002), 149–76.
[48] E.g., V. Bierbrauer, ‘Archäologie und Geschichte der Goten vom 1.–7. Jahrhundert’, Frühmittelalterlichen Studien 28 (1994): 51–172.
[49] P. Heather, The Goths (Oxford, 1996), 19.
[50] I draw the phrase from R. Reece, ‘Interpreting Roman hoards’, World Archaeology 20 (1988): 261–69, who cites it from M. Jarrett, ‘Magnus Maximus and the end of Roman Britain’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion for 1983 (1983), 22–35 at 22.
[51] Rolf Hachmann, Die Goten und Skandinavien (Berlin, 1970).
[52] Michel Kazanski, Les Goths (Paris, 1993).
[53] Bernard S. Cohen, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, 1996).
Chapter Four: Imperial Politics and the Rise of Gothic Power
[54] For the Sarmatian campaign see T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA, 1981), 299 n. 15. For the Carpic, ibid., 300 n. 30.
[55] Jordanes, Getica 110.
[56] Epitome de Caesaribus 41.3.
[57] Constantine (306/307): Pan. Lat. 6.10.2; 4.16.4–5; 7.4.2; Lactantius, De mort. pers. 29.3; Eusebius, Vita Const. 1.25. Licinius: ILS 660 (27 June 310).
[58] Pan. Lat. 6.2.1.
[59] Pan. Lat. 4.17.1–2; Optatianus, Carm. 10.24–28; Anon. post Dionem 15.1 (FHG 4: 199); RIC 7.185 (Trier 240, 241) for Crispus’ victory over the Franks, ibid. (Trier 237–239) for the Alamanni.
[60] The victories are recorded in Optatianus, Carm. 6.18–21 and Zosimus, HN 2.21. Orig. Const. 21 describes the victory as Gothic, but the numismatic and epigraphic evidence is decisive.
[61] RIC 7.135 (Lyons 209–222); AE (1934), 158.
[62] CIL 1: 2335; for the appropriate date, A. Lippold, ‘Konstantin und die Barbaren (Konfrontation? Integration? Koexistenz?)’, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 85 (1992): 371–91 at 377.
[63] Anon. post Dionem 14.1 (FHG 4: 199).
[64] ILS 8942; ILS 696, before 315.
[65] Alica: Orig. Const. 27, with the emendation of Valesius. The testimony of Jordanes, Getica 111 is garbled. Franks and Constantine: Zosimus, HN 2.15.1. Bonitus: Ammianus, RG 15.5.33.
[66] Julian, Caes. 329B.
[67] Aurelius Victor 41; Epitome de Caesaribus 41.13; Chronicon Paschale, s.a. 328 (Bonn 527); commemorated on coins: RIC 7: 331 (Rome 298); Orig. Const. 35 for the ripa Gothica.
[68] Zosimus, HN 2.31.3.
[69] Descriptio consulum, s.a. 332 (Burgess, 236).
[70] Eusebius, Vita Const. 4.5.1–2; Orig. Const. 31; Aurelius Victor 41.13; Eutropius 10.7.
[71] Julian, Or. 1.9D.
[72] Themistius, Or. 15.191a.
[73] Jordanes, Getica 112.
[74] Eusebius, Vita Const. 4.5.2.
[75] Eunapius, frag. 37 (Blockley) = 37 (Müller); Zosimus, HN 4.10; Ammianus, RG 26.10.3, which puts the number of Procopius’ Gothic supporters at 3,000.
[76] Tribute: Eusebius, Vita Const. 4.5.2; Ammianus, RG 17.12. Military service in 332: Eusebius, Vita Const. 4.5 is vague on the Goths and entirely explicit about the Sarmatians being forced to serve in the army as a condition of peace (Vita Const. 4.6); cf. the late testimony of Jordanes, Getica 112 (Goths send 40,000 troops as a result of the treaty). Service on a case-by-case basis thereafter: Libanius, Or. 59.89 for 348; Ammianus, RG 20.8.1 for 360 and id. 23.2.7 for 363.
[77] See in particular G. L. Duncan, Coin Circulation in the Danubian and Balkan Provinces of the Roman Empire,AD294–578 (London, 1993) and E. Stoljarik, Essays on Monetary Circulation in the North-western Black Sea Region in the Late Roman and Byzantine Periods, Late 3rd Century–Early 13th CenturyAD (Odessa, 1993).
[78] Alexandru Popa, Romains ou barbares? Architecture en pierre dans le barbaricum à l’époque romaine tardive (sur le matériel archéologique du Nord-Ouest du Pont Euxin) (Chisinau [Moldova], 2001), 55–61; Andrei Opait, Local and Imported Ceramics in the Roman Province of Scythia (4th–6th centuriesAD): Aspects of Economic Life in the Province of Scythia, British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1274 (Oxford, 2004).
[79] A. Suceveanu and A. Barnea, La Dobroudja romaine (Bucharest, 1991), 260.
[80] See the articles in Bente Magnus, ed., Roman Gold and the Development of the Early Germanic Kingdoms: Symposium in Stockholm 14–16 November 1997, Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, Konferenser 51 (Stockholm, 2001); Attila Kiss, ‘Die “barbarischen” Könige des 4.–7. Jahrhunderts im Karpatenbecken, als Verbündeten des römischen bzw. byzantinischen Reiches’, Communicationes Archaeologicae Hungariae (1991): 115–28.
[81] Aleksandrovka: Popa, Romains ou barbares, 19–21. Bašmačka: ibid., 22–34. Gorodok: ibid., 42–43. Palanca: ibid., 64–65.