The little-known but extraordinary barbarian treasures of the Danube have come down the ages to us in two basic and very different forms: as the contents of rich burials and as hoards of treasure temporarily hidden in the earth to be recovered later by their owners. For reasons unknown, in many cases the owners failed to return to claim their deposits, leaving them to be found by the treasure hunters and archaeologists of future generations. One such hoard is the fabulous barbarian treasure of Pietroasa. Most of this dates from the fifth century, but at least one of the silver platters seems to have been made in the fourth century beyond the borders of the empire in territory dominated by the Goths.
Pietroasa is a village in the Wallachia region of Romania, to the north of the capital Bucharest. This particular tale begins in 1837 with two local peasants named Ion Lemnaru and Stan Avram, one being the father-in-law of the other. Together they were quarrying limestone when, to their great surprise, their digging revealed a number of objects embedded in the mud. Cleaning them off, they saw an array of golden treasures appear before their eyes: rings, a bowl, a tray, a jug…
Secretly, they bagged up the treasure and told no one what they had found, unsure of what to do with this most unexpected gift – or curse – from the earth. A year later, their house had to be demolished, so they got one of their relatives to hold on to the hot property for them. The next chapter in the story has the two peasants starting work on constructing a bridge for a builder named Verusi. Believing that their new boss was both trustworthy and more worldly-wise than themselves, they let him in on their big secret. He offered (but clearly not out of the goodness of his heart) to take a piece from the hoard to a Bucharest jeweller in order to obtain a valuation.
On his return from the capital two things were clear in his mind. He now knew – or thought he knew – something of the true value of the pieces, and he was sure that the peasants had no idea of the magnitude of what they had found. For a paltry sum of money and a few clothes he persuaded them into handing over the treasure. As the hoard weighed 88 pounds (about 40 kilos), he got himself a real bargain and they were well and truly duped.
Then the plot thickens as the tenant farmer for whom the two peasants usually worked got involved, putting together the rumours he had heard. He wanted part of the action and a substantial part at that. Verusi's greed prevented him being generous and, in exchange for the farmer's silence, he offered a single golden trinket and a small one-off cash payment. Insulted, the farmer blew the whistle on the unfortunate peasants by letting the local bishop (who was the actual owner of the land on which the treasure was dug up) in on the secret.
Verusi was not about to give up without a fight, and split up the trove and buried it near the recently built bridge. As the official investigation got under way, a letter of Verusi's was discovered, hinting at the whereabouts of the treasure. Nearly half the original 20 carat treasure (weighing just under 44 pounds) was uncovered, making it one of the single biggest treasures ever unearthed from the soils of Europe. The other half remains undiscovered to this day.
The case came to trial two years later in 1839. But the hapless peasants languishing in jail did not live until the end of it. As if to prove justice is blind, the swindling and conniving Verusi was acquitted of the charges against him. The hoard became a national treasure – and that should have been where the story ends. But the restless golden hoard seemed to have a wanderlust all of its own…
By 1867 the magnificent treasure was fully restored and after an international tour took pride of place in the National Museum in Bucharest. It was open to the public gaze in a display case, but what one particularly observant (and criminally minded) visitor to the museum noticed was that the display case was sometimes left unlocked at the end of the day by the rather desultory security guards. On a dark and stormy winter's night (it really was!) the eagle-eyed cat burglar broke through the ceiling of the room containing the treasure, the sound of this forcible entry being covered by the noise of the storm raging outside. He lowered himself down on a rope until he was in reach of the treasure. Having misjudged the size of swag bag required for the job, he was obliged to manhandle the objects, distorting and partially crushing them in the process.
He made his getaway undetected and unsuspected. As the horrified museum staff wandered around in a daze the next day, one of the curators noticed something gleaming in the snow outside. The thief had dropped it in his haste to leave the scene of the crime. The police wasted no time in tracking down the guilty parties. The thief's fence was caught in the nick of time as he was preparing to melt down a golden neck ring. The arrests were made, the punishments meted out and the treasure returned to the museum. There it remained until the middle of World War I when it was moved to Russia for 'safe-keeping'. The Communist authorities held on to it until 1956 when they deigned to return it to their satellite state.
No doubt to the great relief of the Romanian government, the story stops there. But what of the other half of the story – the other 44 pounds of golden treasure hidden by Verusi? Did he return after the dust had settled and dig up the hoard in the dead of night and have it melted down so that he could sell it undetected? Did he leave it where he had buried it for fear of being caught again? And, if so, did he take his dark secret to the grave or pass the precious information on to an accomplice? Or did he simply forget where he had buried it, or had someone built on top of it so that he could not dig it up without their collusion? All these questions remain unanswered. Yet it seems possible, even likely, that buried in Mother Earth somewhere near the quiet village of Pietroasa lies a hoard as spectacular and substantial as that treasure that lies in the bosom of the Romanian nation in the National Museum in Bucharest.
Chapter Four
THE GOTHS:
A ROMAN HORROR STORY
Now from this island of Scandza, as from a hive of races or a womb of nations, the Goths are said to have come forth long ago…
Jordanes, sixth-century Gothic writer
In the year 376 one of the greatest mass migrations in an age of movement was already under way. A mighty force of Huns was on the move from east to west, pushing other barbarian tribes aside. A vast number of Gothic refugees found themselves on the banks of the river Danube, the frontier of the Roman empire. They were a desperate people seeking sanctuary in the comparative safety of the troubled bosom of the Roman empire. The emperor Valens agreed to let them in on one condition – that they would fight on behalf of the Roman cause; for this, they would receive land on which they could be secure and perhaps even settle. The Goths were not about to get a better offer from elsewhere and agreed to the emperor's terms.
Once they were inside the empire, the trouble began. But before we continue with this story in which the emperor's decision to let them in was to haunt him, we must turn back to earlier times to find out how and why the Goths found themselves in such a predicament in the first place. We must go back to the dark and mythical roots of this Germanic people that lie entangled in the prehistoric past of north-eastern Europe.
The major written source for the early chapters of the Gothic story is the work of a sixth-century Gothic author named Jordanes, who lived in Constantinople. His book Getica, or The Origins and Acts of the Goths as it is sometimes known, was written in Latin around 550. He drew on a number of sources, including the oral traditions of the Gothic nation themselves and on another work (which has not survived to our day), the Gothic History written by Cassiodorus in the 520s. Cassiodorus was at the court of the most famous of the Gothic leaders – Theoderic, king of the Ostrogoths, whose extraordinary life is the subject of the next chapter. There are other scattered references to the Goths in the writings of Greek and Roman authors from AD 200 onwards. Yet none of these offers either the detail or the overview supplied by Jordanes. According to Peter Heather, who has written the definitive history of this barbarian people, the three central themes of Jordanes' account have shaped our understanding of the Goths ever since.
Firstly, the ancient Goth places the homeland of his people in Scandinavia. He tells us that from there they crossed the Baltic Sea and made their way across Poland until they reached the Black Sea. Jordanes also says that from the third century at the latest the Goths were divided into two groups, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. The third point he makes is that these two groups were ruled by ancient royal lineages, the Balthi and the Amal respectively.
Investigating the Gothic Underground
Although none of these assertions of Jordanes can be taken simply at face value, they are a very useful way to investigate the obscure history of the Goths. His own account of the early migrations of the Goths was based largely on the oral traditions of his people. Nowadays, in the light of archaeological investigations in eastern Europe, we can try to link this shadowy history with tangible evidence from under the ground. Are there enough archaeological clues to either prove or disprove his idea that the Goths should trace their roots back over the Baltic to a Scandinavian homeland? The short answer to this question is no. The archaeological trail runs cold. There are not enough links between the sites either side of the Baltic to prove it. The ultimate roots of the Goths remain in the realm of mystery and there seems little chance that this will change. We can get no further back in the Gothic story with the aid of either history or archaeology.
We simply cannot work out whether they actually came from Scandinavia, but there is some archaeological evidence that is convincingly linked to the Goths as they moved south from Poland down to the shores of the Black Sea. There are two archaeological cultures that fit the bill and can be associated with the Goths. One is the Wielbark culture of northern Poland, and the other is the Cernjačhov culture of the region to the north of the Black Sea. The scanty written sources place the Goths in Poland in the first century AD, which fits well with the earliest phase of the Wielbark culture identified by the archaeologists. In the following two centuries the typical finds associated with the Wielbark culture spread out in a southerly direction exactly as the Goths were supposed to have done according to the fragmentary ancient writings available.
A number of types of artefacts (including pottery, brooches and items associated with women's fashions and clothing) can be found not only in the numerous sites of the Wielbark culture but also in those belonging to the Cernjačhov culture. Likewise, there are strong connections to other cultural practices that are very similar in the archaeology of both Poland and the Black Sea, such as the way they built their houses. In the cemeteries belonging to the Wielbark culture there is clear evidence that people were both cremated and buried. And, unlike their neighbours, the graves of their men did not have any weapons buried with them.
Neither of these two traits of the Wielbark is particularly remarkable in itself, but both were unusual in that part of the world and distinguished them not just from the practices of their neighbours but also from the people who had lived in the very same area before them. Cremation (but not burial) had been practised by the other cultures around them and these others also placed weapons in the male graves. The people of the Wielbark culture were different and their archaeology gives us some idea of how they can be linked to the Cernjačhov culture. The two cultures differ in a number of ways but the burial of men without weapons seems to have a cultural practice that was transmitted from the Wielbark to the Cernjačhov culture. We cannot help but think that one moving population is behind this transmission: the Goths.
The literary sources tie in neatly with the archaeology. The spread of Wielbark culture in Poland in the first and second centuries AD echoes the literary accounts of the presence and migration of the Goths southwards. There is a gradual thinning out of Wielbark sites in the third and fourth centuries. This, along with the arrival of the burial without weapons and distinctive clusters of Wielbark objects in the Cernjačhov cultural zone, marks a Gothic migration to the south. It is the material evidence that shows their movement from one area to the other.
The timing too is right, for the appearance of Wielbark traits in Cernjačhov culture in the third and fourth centuries coincides with the time when the written sources tell us that the Goths were present in the region. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that by the fourth century the Goths ruled the land between the river Danube and the river Don. This dovetails with the area in which archaeological sites belonging to the Cernjačhov culture have been found.
So the archaeology of the Goths has been traced from northern Poland all the way to the Black Sea, and this part of Jordanes' story seems to be corroborated by material evidence that has been dug up from under the ground. It seems that these archaeological finds are the remains of Gothic material culture, but we must be careful not to over-simplify things. The Goths were not a rigid ethnic unit that remained unchanged throughout their early history and long-range migrations. The actual make-up of their societies was much more complicated. They must have merged and split with many other groups over the centuries, so a certain looseness and flexibility must be borne in mind when thinking about their culture.
A Shifting Mosaic of People
The fluid nature of Gothic society becomes easier to understand when we consider how they organised themselves during this early phase of their history. Jordanes is not writing history in the way we do today. In his account, the epic journey of the whole of the Gothic people from Poland to the Black Sea takes place under the leadership of a single man whom he calls Filimer. This was not the way it would really have happened. It is possible that before they left northern Poland they may have all been part of a single kingdom, but this is by no means certain. What made the Goths what they were was not so much their ethnic unity or even their language. It was their name, a banner under which a multi-ethnic group could gather, and the fact that it was an organisation under the leadership of a royal Gothic clan.
There was no unified Gothic state as such and the various branches of the Goths would have migrated gradually under the rule of different chiefs. What is reflected in the archaeological remains are some of the distinctive but very general cultural traits that were part of Gothic life. In the widest sense they were one people and probably spoke dialects of the same language, but they were not unified politically under a single leader. They would not have moved in one great mass across Poland to the Black Sea. Smaller groups, temporary alliances and vying chieftains would have characterised their life at this time.
To see how this fluid arrangement of Gothic groups eventually coagulated into more permanent kingdoms of later times, we must now turn our attention to their role in the Roman world. The Goths enter history as a problem for the Romans. By the 230s they are attacking Roman interests across the Danube. Towards the end of the decade in 238 they sack the city of Histria on the river. Their withdrawal is agreed on the understanding that the Romans pay them off annually. To pay or not to pay was always something of a dilemma. By caving in too easily, the Romans were simply encouraging other Gothic chieftains to try their luck but, on the other hand, it was sometimes simply the best (and sometimes, in the greater scheme of things, cheaper) option to pay out.
The size and frequency of their raids increase in later years. In 249 another city, Marcianople, falls into the hands of two Gothic chieftains named Argaith and Guntheric. The following year Cniva, another of the numerous Gothic chieftains, takes Philippopolis. Things take a more dramatic turn when Cniva defeats a Roman army and kills the emperor Decius in the process. Soon the Goths and other barbarian peoples with whom they team up find another means to force their way into the empire.
The Goths and their allies prove themselves more than competent pirates, organising large-scale raids across the waters of the Black Sea. By the 260s such barbarian alliances were reaping rewards far and wide as they burst into the Aegean – plundering Greece, Cyprus, and Asia Minor, where, as if to prove their barbarian credentials, they vandalised the temple of Diana at Ephesus (in modern-day Turkey). In the third century this was as good as it got for the Got
hs. The Romans managed to get the raiding down to a more manageable level by a mixture of punitive expeditions into Gothic territory and more effective defensive measures.
To return to the version of the Gothic story written by Jordanes, and his assertion that the Goths were split into two groups – the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths: Ammianus wrote of two groups of Goths that existed in the fourth century called the Greuthungi and the Tervingi. They have been readily identified with the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths respectively. This is, unfortunately, too simple an equation. The Ostrogoths and Visigoths really only came into being as distinct groups in the fifth century. Both were composite entities and the Visigoths comprised parts of both the Greuthungi and Tervingi as well as other kinds of Goths who belonged to neither of these two groups. The internal divisions of the Goths were still in a constant state of flux.
The arrival of the Goths on the Danube frontier of the empire in 376 was simply another stage on an epic journey that had led them from northern Poland and would not finally end for some of them until they reached southern Spain. This was truly an age of migration on a continent-wide scale. But the significance of this particular stage in the journey was that they were just on the verge of their fateful entry inside the empire. The Huns were undoubtedly the reason for the Goths' presence on the Danube. It was a famous example of the so-called 'domino effect' where one group moves into the territory of another, and so on. This kind of explanation for the movements of peoples was also one put forward by writers at the time. Ambrose of Milan, writing around 380, wrote: 'The Huns threw themselves upon the Alans, the Alans upon the Goths, the Goths upon the Taifali and Sarmatae.'
Barbarians- Secrets of the Dark Ages Page 5
