Barbarians- Secrets of the Dark Ages

by Richard Rudgley

  The barbarians were seen as the outsiders, the savages and the enemies of Greece and Rome, peoples to be suppressed, dominated and civilised. But this Mediterranean stranglehold on the enemies within (barbarian Europeans) and without (Asiatic hordes) could not sustain itself for ever, and Rome fell to the inexorable rise of new powers on the world stage. The barbarians were not just bit-part actors in the great dramas of Imperial Rome and the conversion of Europe to Christianity. They were major players in their own right. They acted out their own plots and their own destiny. The vibrant, colourful and often violent lives of the key personalities of the Dark Ages need to be told. The roles they played in the history of our continent were not just those of villains in the theatre of war but of statesmen, artists, visionaries and heroes. This is their epic story.

  This book is divided into three parts. The first part is largely concerned with the story of the Romans, the Celts, the East Germanic (Gothic) peoples and the Huns. We start with the fall of Rome: the conflicts of rival emperors and barbarians, the decay and eventual abandoning of the British outpost, the attack of the Vandals across the river Rhine, the lust for golden treasure among the barbarians on the Danube and those who have sought to profit from it in more recent times. The Goths, the first of the Germanic peoples to adopt writing, were independent yet appreciative of the Roman way of life, which they partly adopted and turned to their advantage. The mysterious Huns, whose name is a by-word for all things barbaric, are shown to be a significant culture in their own right – powerful, organised and fiercely independent.

  The second part of the story traces the history of the Anglo-Saxon world: the West Germanic people's migration from their continental roots to Britain, and their interaction there with the Celts. The fecund mixture of indigenous British culture and the recently arrived immigrants resulted in a society with its own artistic and technological innovations, and the development of distinctive national characteristics. Unearthed by archaeologists, the people's villages, swords, ships and sometimes extravagant burials are enduring reminders of a world of ideas that would otherwise remain unknown.

  The last part follows the Anglo-Saxons on to their conversion to Christianity, and the new wave of learning that was transmitted from remote monasteries. From being a cultural backwater, England began to exert an unexpected and powerful influence on the development of European civilisation. The history of the North Germanic peoples (the Vikings) is recounted too, their epic sea voyages opening up a whole new phase of the European story. From their homeland in the far north, the Scandinavians created a civilisation that shows their legacy was much more than sensational stories of their piracy and raiding expeditions would have us believe. The story ends with the entry into Spain of the first wave of Islamic peoples – a reminder that the Europe we know today owes a cultural and scientific debt to Islamic civilisation that is all too often forgotten.

  Part One

  ROMAN TWILIGHT

  Chapter One

  ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME?

  In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour.

  Edward Gibbon (1737-94), History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  The Romans, like every imperial power since, had a vested interest in propagating their own version of history. There are few written barbarian accounts to contradict the Roman view that their civilisation was the cultural and political centre of the known world. Yet if we read between the lines and look at the significance of discoveries made by archaeologists, many cultural voices can be heard and many barbarian achievements emerge out of the darkness.

  Each and every barbarian society had their own view of the world in which they lived. While they no doubt understood the importance and political power of the empire, they nevertheless still saw their own culture as the centre. There was never a universal consensus that Rome ruled supreme; the barbarians always strove to assert their own rights and interests, whatever the balance of power may have been. Long portrayed as simple-minded barbarians, these ancestral Europeans were much more than that – in many ways their art, their society and their cultural legacy have shaped and moulded the destiny of Europe more than the Roman empire that once held them in its vice-like grip.

  If all roads led to Rome then there at its heart lies one of the most enduring symbols of the ancient world – the Coliseum. It is an enormous monument to the civil engineering skills of the Romans, but it is also an emblem of the barbarity at the heart of the imperial machine. Here, at the place where the roots of empire lay, was a reminder that savagery was hardly the sole prerogative of the European tribesman. In AD 80 the Coliseum opened and 2,000 gladiators are said to have died during the first hundred days for the gratification of the spectators.

  With Roman writers being our main and sometimes only source of information concerning many of the barbarian peoples of the so-called Dark Ages, it is hardly surprising that our vision of this period of history is seen through the distorting lens of Roman bias, custom and propaganda. The Roman empire had a massive impact on the development of European civilisation and its technological and administrative transformation. The Roman roads embody this sense of the continent linking up – the arteries of communication pumping goods, soldiers and ideas from the heartland to the periphery of the empire. Yet Roman rule was not so straightforward and unified, for the empire itself split into two – the western and eastern empires – each with its own agendas, allies and enemies; each with its own destiny. We cannot hope to understand the barbarians unless we have a basic grasp of the history of the Roman empire to which many of them were subject.

  The Growth of Empire

  Rome grew from being simply a city state to become the superpower of the western world over a period of 200 years – the third and second centuries BC. This powerful republic was democratic to an extent but, in reality, it was an oligarchy, a state run by a small cluster of aristocrats who ruled by means of the Senate. The rapid expansion of Roman territorial interests and military requirements necessarily involved administrative problems on an unprecedented scale. The growth of the Roman enterprise required fundamental changes to be made in the way that the whole organisational machinery operated.

  Among these changes was the development of a professional army in the first century BC. The Senate decided, unknowingly to the detriment of their own interests, to make the career soldier reliant on his general for his security in retirement. The State, by not providing a pension or other provision to the army, gave away too much power to the generals, who thought nothing of exercising it in times of crisis. Almost incessant civil wars led to the demise of the republic and the rise of the emperors, the first of whom, Augustus, reigned from 27 BC.

  Although there were constant interactions between the Romans and barbarians throughout the following centuries, the imperial forces managed to keep the upper hand. The time when the barbarians could really shake the foundations of the Roman world was still some way off. It was not really until the third century AD that serious difficulties began for the Romans. At that time, the other superpower of the time, the Persian empire, was going through a major period of change as the Sasanians, a new dynasty of kings, sought to flex their muscles and strove to regain the much larger empire that was under the sway of the Persians long ago before the time of Alexander the Great.

  There were a host of other problems that would need to be dealt with by whoever took the reins of power: the barbarian threat, disease, an ailing economy – an empire with a thousand and one problems. The old guard, that is to say the aristocratic senators of the city of Rome, had long since ceased to get all the top positions in the running of the empire. For this elite, it was bad enough when the senatorial posts and even the imperial seat could be filled by the provincial gentry of Spain or North Africa. One can only imagine their horror when a commone
r named Maximin I became emperor by the popular consent of the Roman army. Even worse, from their point of view, was the fact that he was from the outlying regions of the empire. According to a Greek historian of the time, Herodian, he belonged to a semi-barbarous tribe in Thrace (modern-day Bulgaria and Macedonia). A later historian saw him as having even 'lower' credentials – of mixed barbarian stock, one of his parents being a Goth and the other belonging to the Alan people. This source also tells us that he was born outside the empire – a true barbarian.

  How many of these details we can rely on is difficult to say, but we can be sure he was at least partly barbarian in origin. This gives a clear indication that it was a rapidly changing world and the old order was having to come to terms with some very uncomfortable developments. Yet the Senate was still in a position of strength and backed the murder of Maximin in 238 by some of his own soldiers while he was in the north of Italy.

  Certainly, the line between the Romans and the barbarians was gradually becoming more blurred. It would be wrong to think that the Romans were able to simply dominate the barbarians they encountered. Similarly, the barbarians were not all hell-bent on the destruction of the empire and the looting of its coffers. Many barbarians wanted part of the action themselves, preferring to work inside the imperial system rather than threaten it from without. They had much to gain by doing everything they could to ensure the health of the empire. The Romans were often reliant on barbarian forces as auxiliaries and mercenaries. There were conflicts in many provinces and on many frontiers and, as the decades wore on, the defending of Roman interests was undertaken more and more by both commanders and soldiers on the ground who were of barbarian stock.

  By the 240s the Romans were beginning to feel intense pressure from the Germanic tribes on the Danube frontier. In 246, the then emperor Philip led a successful campaign to beat them back. Only two years later a confederation of Goths, Vandals, Carpi and other motley tribes overran the eastern Balkans. In the resulting upheaval, a new pretender to the throne appeared in the form of Decius, the general who successfully extinguished the barbarian uprising. In 249 he took on Philip and his army in battle and won. His time on the throne was short and he himself was killed in a battle against the Goths in 251.

  Things were generally taking a turn for the worse, and the next twenty years or so saw even greater upheaval. The key to the successful function of the empire was the army, and the key to the army was their wages. Problems with paying them obviously set in motion a host of other problems and the possibility of uprisings, civil wars and power struggles. During this time the coins, meant to be silver, had been debased to being little more than silver-plated bronze. This artificial and transparent attempt to keep the economy buoyant failed and, as the historian Roger Collins has pointed out, no one seems to have been taken in by this – as shown by the sheer size and number of hoards of coins from these troubled times. The size of these hoards shows that their lower intrinsic value was well understood. The number of separate hoards shows that, in these economically unstable times, many people thought the safest place to put your money was in the ground.

  During this time the continent of Europe was racked not just by an economic depression and a partial slide into anarchy, but by outbreaks of plague and starvation. Yet there were outlying regions of the empire, such as Britain, Spain and North Africa, which continued to live in peace and prosperity – the problems of the rest of the empire seemed to leave them comparatively unscathed. Despite these areas of relative calm, a succession of emperors found that they needed to be in two or more places at once. Keeping the empire going in the midst of all these problems was a juggling act in which dropping one of the balls could have disastrous consequences.

  It was against such a backdrop that the institution of having one man at the top supposedly running the empire began to falter. It was a huge task and, although some of the emperors of earlier times had not really been up to the job, the fundamental stability of the empire meant there was no real danger of the whole system collapsing. Things were different now with the difficulties that faced the empire in the late third century, and solutions simply had to be found. Out of dire necessity, the organisation of the Roman empire underwent a major overhaul in the reign of Diocletian, who was in power from 284 to 305. Many of the reforms that took place under his leadership grew out of the ideas and policies of his predecessors, but he was the one to boldly put it all into practice.

  Almost immediately after coming to power, Diocletian decided that two heads were better than one and in 286 chose a general named Maximian to share power with him, initially as a junior partner with the title Caesar and then promoting him the following year to an equal with the title of Augustus. Diocletian was to be in charge of the eastern part of the empire and Maximian the west. It could be said that Diocletian was taking something of a gamble by sharing power in this way – not that his predecessors who had sought to rule single-handedly had been exactly secure. But he seems to have been a good judge of Maximian's character and no attempt to break the partnership was made by his fellow Augustus. Maximian had enough to do without plotting against Diocletian. Keeping his part of the empire in order required him to deal with a host of troublesome barbarians from Saxon pirates in the English Channel to Berber tribesmen in North Africa.

  Diocletian continued to pursue his radical solution when, in the year 293, with the full agreement of Maximian, he split power even further. Each of the Augusti were to be supported by a Caesar – Constantius for the western part of the empire and Galerius in the east. This was kept in the family by marrying off daughters of the respective Augusti to the Caesar of the same half of the empire. Everything seemed to be ticking over and the four rulers were able to contain and pre-empt the rise of rebellious would-be emperors.

  That this new system was anything but a personality cult has been made clear by Roger Collins, one of the few historians who provides a scholarly overview of the whole era. The coins minted at this time do not portray individuals. The same imperial head was used on all the coins and only the inscriptions gave away which of the rulers was being depicted. The message was that the four were, in a sense, part of a greater unified whole.

  Diocletian did not limit his radical reorganisation to the upper echelons alone. He also sought (as did his first major successor, Constantine) to change the structure of the army to suit the needs of the time. Two distinct units were created: the Limitanei and the Comitatenses. The first type, as its name suggests, were frontier units at the limits of the empire whose role was to hold at bay the barbarians outside. The Comitatenses were mobile units of the army who went anywhere there was a need for them. The boundaries of the empire became more clearly delineated on the landscape – massive fortifications were constructed to strengthen the hand of the frontier garrisons. Like any system, it had its strengths and its weaknesses.

  On the plus side, if a frontier was pierced and the Limitanei were unable to stop the enemy, the Comitatenses provided a second line of defence, a second army to be defeated. Even better, if the intelligence they received from their scouts was good enough the mobile units could be standing side by side with the Limitanei before the enemy was even at the gate. On the down side, if the mobile units were far away or otherwise engaged then the fate of a province could be left to the Limitanei. Once the barbarians broke through this barrier, they could run amok at will.

  The turn of the fourth century saw an empire that was increasingly rule-bound, as the emperors sought to keep a firm grip on the reins of power. Christianity had suffered intermittent persecution under the empire but this rose to an unprecedented level under Diocletian's campaign against it that began in 303. The Roman empire had no problem with the diversity of religious groups among its subjects, provided there was no political threat from allegiance to this or that cult or sect. Christianity was different. Unlike many of the other religious groups of the time, the Christians were not laissez-faire. For them, it was all or nothing: if you were n
ot a Christian, the gods you worshipped were not really gods at all but demons – which they believed to be the case with the pagan gods of the empire.

  The refusal of Christians to participate in the state-run ceremonies in which such Roman gods were venerated more as a civil act than a strictly religious one created a major problem. Refusing to be involved in such rituals was an act of sedition; this seems to have been behind Diocletian's decision to persecute them. The Christians were not to be wiped out; indeed, after Diocletian's reign, the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity – thus guaranteeing the Church a very rosy future indeed.

  Constantine and Christianity at the Crossroads

  In 305 the joint reign of Diocletian and Maximian came to an end when they voluntarily stepped down for 'the greater good'. The four-fold division of power was still in place, but within a few short years it was history. After a complex and protracted power struggle for control it all came to a head in a showdown in 312 just outside the city of Rome. The battle of the Milvian Bridge, between the massed forces of Constantine and Maximian's son Maxentius, resulted in the victory of the former and the drowning of the latter in the river Tiber. This defeat of a major enemy meant that Constantine was able to add the territories of Africa and Italy itself to the combined provinces of Spain, Gaul and Britain which he already had under his authority.

  According to the account given by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine (who is known as the father of church history), writing just a few years after the event, Constantine is said to have converted to Christianity because of a vision he had on the eve of the battle of the Milvian Bridge. His success the next day convinced him that God was shining down on him.

  He stayed in Rome after defeating his rival and decided to waste no time in implementing a new building programme on a grand scale. It was he who oversaw the building of the great basilica of St Peter's, along with numerous other architectural innovations. Naturally the Church itself experienced a rapid change of fortune. The previously modest economic standing of the clergy was soon to be a thing of the past. A number of buildings were handed over to the bishops and their riches soon rivalled those held by the conservative forces in the Senate where paganism still reigned. The official Christianity of the emperor was, as the historian John Wallace-Hadrill so aptly put it, Christianity 'with the detonator removed'. Constantine had removed a major threat by incorporating it; however sincere his conversion may have been, it was also a clear instance of his political acumen.