GERMANIC
![](560px-Bronze_figure_of_a_German_Biblioth%E8que_Nationale.jpg)
Roman
bronze statuette representing a Germanic man with his hair in a
Suebian knot
The
Germanic peoples (from Latin: Germani) are a category of north European
ethnic groups, first mentioned by Graeco-Roman authors. They are
also associated with Germanic languages, which originated and dispersed
among them, and are one of several criteria used to define Germanic
ethnicity.
Although
the English language possesses the adjective Germanic as distinct
from German, it lacks an equivalent distinct noun. The terms Germanic
peoples and Germani are therefore used by modern English-speaking
scholars to avoid confusion with the inhabitants of present-day
Germany ("Deutschland"), including the modern "German"
("Deutsche") people and language.
Starting
with Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE), several Roman Empire authors
placed their homeland, Germania, roughly between the Lower Rhine
(west) and the Vistula Rivers (east), and distinguished them from
other broad categories of peoples better known to Rome, especially
the Celtic Gauls to their southwest, and "Scythian" Sarmatians
to their further east and southeast. Greek writers, in contrast,
consistently categorized the Germanic peoples from east of the Rhine
as Gauls. And with the possible exception of some groups near the
Rhine, there is no evidence that the Germanic peoples called themselves
or their lands "Germanic". Latin and Greek writers report
centuries of historical interactions with Germanic peoples on the
Rhine and Danube River border regions, but from about 400, several
long-established Germanic peoples on the Middle Danube were replaced
by newcomers migrating from the further north or east of Europe.
The description of peoples as Germanic in late antiquity was mainly
restricted to those in the Rhine region, and thus referred to the
Franks especially, and sometimes also the Alamanni.
Broader
modern definitions of the Germanic peoples include peoples who were
not known as Germani or Germanic peoples in their own time, but
who are treated as one group of cultures, mostly because of their
use of Germanic languages. Thus, in modern writing, "Germanic
peoples" is a term which commonly includes peoples who were
not referred to as Germanic by their contemporaries, and spoke distinct
languages, only categorized as Germanic in modern times. Examples
include the late Roman era Goths, and the Norse-speaking Vikings
from Scandinavia.
The
languages of the earliest known Germanic peoples of classical antiquity
have left only fragmentary evidence. The first long texts which
have survived were written outside Germania in the Gothic language
from the region that is today Ukraine. Languages in this family
are widespread today in Europe, and have dispersed worldwide, the
family being represented by major modern languages such as English,
Dutch, Nordic languages and German. The Eastern Germanic branch
of the Germanic language family, once found in what is now Poland
and Ukraine, is extinct.
Apart
from language and geography, proposed connections between the diverse
Germanic peoples described by classical and medieval sources, archaeology,
and linguistics are the subject of ongoing debate among scholars
:
•
On the one hand
there is doubt about whether late Roman-era Germanic peoples should
be treated as unified by any single unique shared culture, collective
consciousness, or even language. For example, the tendency of some
historians to describe late Roman historical events in terms of
Germanic language speakers has been criticized by other scholars
because it implies a single coordinated group. Walter Goffart has
gone so far as to suggest that historians should avoid the term
when discussing that period.
• On
the other hand, there is a related debate concerning the extent
to which any significant Germanic traditions apart from language,
even smaller scale tribal traditions, survived after Roman times,
when new political entities formed in Europe following the collapse
of the Western Roman Empire. Some of these new entities are seen
as precursors of European nation states that have survived into
modern times, such as England and France, and so such proposed connections
back to medieval and classical barbarian nations were important
to many of the Romanticist nationalist movements, which developed
across Europe in modern times. (The most notable of these has been
"Germanicism", which saw Germans especially as direct
heirs of a single Europe-conquering Germanic race and culture –
a popular narrative which helped inspire Nazism.) In contrast, more
complex proposals about continuity today, such as those proposed
by Reinhard Wenskus, tend to focus on the possibility of more limited
"kernels" of cultural traditions, which could be carried
by relatively small groups with, or without, large-scale migrations.
In the 21st century, genetic studies have begun to look more systematically
at questions of ancestry, using both modern and ancient DNA. However,
the connection between modern Germanic languages, ethnicity and
genetic heritage is thought by many scholars to be unlikely to ever
be simple or uncontroversial. Guy Halsall for example writes: "The
danger, barely addressed (at best dismissed as a purely 'ideological'
objection), is of reducing ethnicity to biology and thus to something
close to the nineteenth-century idea of race, at the basis of the
'nation state'."
Definitions
of Germanic peoples :
General :
Julius Caesar published the first basic description, possibly based
on discussions with Gaulish allies during his campaign in Gaul,
of what makes any people or peoples "Germanic", rather
than for example Gaulish. The implied definition involved several
criteria, allowing the possibility of debatable cases. Definitions
of Germanic peoples continue to involve discussion of similar criteria
:
•
Geography : The
Germanic peoples are seen as peoples who originated, before Caesar's
time, from somewhere between the Lower Rhine and Lower Vistula,
so-called "Germania". For Caesar, use of this definition
required knowing which people moved away from this homeland.
• Language
: Tacitus had already referred to Suevian languages as a way of
determining if a people were Germanic. Scholars defined a family
of Germanic languages, which at least some of the Germani spoke,
for example the Suevi.
• Culture
: In the sense of clothing, economy, cults, laws and lifestyle of
the different Germanic peoples, was already used by Tacitus and
Caesar to help distinguish the Germani from other northern peoples.
In modern times, archaeologists study the surviving physical evidence
left by the peoples of Germania, and they have defined various regional
cultures. Of these, there is consensus that at least the Jastorf
culture, between the Elbe and Oder rivers, was Germanic-speaking
already in the time of Caesar. In parallel, other scholars have
looked for textual fragmentary evidence concerning the laws, legends
and cults of these peoples, and scholars such as Dennis Howard Green
have sought clues in the Germanic languages themselves.
In modern times, attempts to define characteristics which unite
all or some of these peoples more objectively, using linguistic
or archaeological criteria, have thus led to the possibility of
the term "Germanic" being used to apply to more peoples,
in other periods and regions. However, these definitions are still
based upon the old definitions, and overlap with them.
Such
modern definitions have focused attention upon uncertainties and
disagreements about the ethnic origins and backgrounds of both early
Roman-era Germanic peoples, and late-Roman Germanic peoples.
Roman
ethnographic writing, from Caesar to Tacitus :
According to all available evidence, the theoretical concept of
the Germanic peoples as a large grouping distinct from the Gauls—whose
homeland was east of the Rhine, and included areas very far from
it—originated with Julius Caesar's published account of his
"Gallic Wars", and specifically those parts concerning
his battles near the Rhine. Importantly for all future conceptions
of what Germanic means, Caesar was apparently the first to categorize
distant peoples such as the Cimbri and the large group of Suevian
peoples as "Germanic". The Suevians and their languages,
which had perhaps never been called Germanic before then, had started
expanding their influence in his time, as Caesar experienced personally.
Caesar's categorization of the Germani was in the context of explaining
his battle against Ariovistus, who had been a Roman ally. He led
a large and armed population, made up of several peoples from east
of the Rhine, including significant Suevian contingents.
Rome
had suffered a history of Gaulish invasions from the distant north,
including those by the Cimbri, whom they had previously categorized
as Gauls. Caesar, while describing his subsequent use of Roman soldiers
deep in Gaulish territory, categorized the Cimbri, together with
the peoples allied under Ariovistus, not as Gaulish, but as "Germanic",
apparently using an ethnic term that was more local to the Rhine
region where he fought Ariovistus. Modern scholars are undecided
about whether the Cimbri were Germanic speakers like the Suevians,
and even where exactly they lived in northern Europe, though it
is likely to have been in or near Jutland. Caesar thus proposed
that these more distant peoples were the cause of invasions into
Italy. His solution was controlling Gaul, and defending the Rhine
as a boundary against these Germani.
Several
Roman writers—Strabo (about 63 BCE – 24 CE), Pliny the
Elder (about 23–79 CE), and especially Tacitus (about 56–120
CE)—followed Caesar's tradition in the next few generations,
by partly defining the Germanic peoples of their time geographically,
according to their presumed homeland. This "Germania magna",
or Greater Germania, was seen as a large wild country roughly east
of the Rhine, and north of the Danube, but not everyone from within
the area bounded by those rivers was ever described by Roman authors
as Germanic, and not all Germani lived there. The opening of Tacitus's
Germania gave a rough definition only :
Germania
is separated from the Gauls, the Rhaetians, and Pannonii, by the
rivers Rhine and Danube. Mountain ranges, or the fear which each
feels for the other, divide it from the Sarmatians and Dacians.
It
is the northern part of Greater Germania, including the North European
Plain, Southern Scandinavia, and the Baltic coast that was presumed
to be the original Germanic homeland by early Roman authors such
as Caesar and Tacitus. (Modern scholars also see the central part
of this area, between the Elbe and the Oder, as the region from
which Germanic languages dispersed.) In the east, Germania magna's
boundaries were unclear according to Tacitus, although geographers
such as Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela took it to be the Vistula. For
Tacitus the boundaries of Germania stretched further, to somewhere
east of the Baltic Sea in the north, and its people blended with
the "Scythian" (or Sarmatian) steppe peoples in the area
of today's Ukraine in the south. In the north, greater Germania
stretched all the way to the relatively unknown Arctic Ocean. In
contrast, in the south of Greater Germania nearer the Danube, the
Germanic peoples were seen by these Roman writers as immigrants
or conquerors, living among other peoples whom they had come to
dominate. More specifically, Tacitus noted various Suevian Germanic-speaking
peoples from the Elbe river in the north, such as the Marcomanni
and Quadi, pushing into the Hercynian forest regions towards the
Danube, where the Gaulish Volcae, Helvetii and Boii had lived.
Roman
writers who added to Caesar's theoretical description, especially
Tacitus, also at least partly defined the Germani by non-geographic
criteria such as their economy, religion, clothing, and language.
Caesar had, for example, previously noted that the Germani had no
druids, and were less interested in farming than Gauls, and also
that Gaulish (lingua gallica) was a language the Germanic King Ariovistus
had to learn. Tacitus mentioned Germanic languages at least three
times, each mention concerning eastern peoples whose ethnicity was
uncertain, and such remarks are seen by some modern authors as evidence
of a unifying Germanic language. His comments are not detailed,
but they indicate that there were Suevian languages (plural) within
the category of Germanic languages, and that customs varied between
different Germanic peoples. For example :
•
The Marsigni
and Buri, near today's southern Silesia, were Suevian in speech
and culture and therefore among the Germani in a region where he
says non-Germanic people also lived.
• The
peoples (gentes) of the Aesti, on the eastern shores of the Baltic
Sea, had the same customs and attire as the Germanic Suevians although
"their language more resembles that of Britain". (They
are seen today as speakers of Baltic languages, a language group
in the same Indo-European language family as Germanic and Celtic.)
• As
mentioned above, the Peucini, called by some Bastarnæ, are
like Germani in their speech, cultivation, and settlements. (Livy,
however, says that their language was like that of the Scordisci,
a Celtic group.)
Tacitus says nothing about the languages of the Germani living near
the Rhine.
Origin
of the "Germanic" terminology :
The etymology of the Latin word "Germani", from which
Latin Germania, and English "Germanic" are derived, is
unknown, although several different proposals have been made. Even
the language from which it derives is a subject of dispute. Whatever
it meant, the name probably applied originally only to a smaller
group of people, the so-called "Germani cisrhenani", whose
Latin scholarly name simply indicates that these were Germani living
on the western side of the Rhine (see below). Tacitus reported that
these Germanic peoples in Gaul, ancestors of the Tungri of his time,
were the first people to be called Germani. According to Tacitus,
their name had transferred to peoples such as those within the alliance
of Ariovistus, as a name having connotations that frightened potential
enemies. While Caesar and Tacitus saw this Rhineland people as Germanic
in the broader sense also, they do not fit easily with the much
broader definitions of "Germanic" used by them or modern
scholars. These original Germani are therefore a significant complication
for all attempts to define the Germanic peoples according to which
side of the Rhine they lived on, or according to their probable
language.
![](640px-Two_types_of_Germani.png)
The two main types of "Germani" in the time of Julius
Caesar. (Approximate positions only.) Later Roman imperial provinces
shown with red shading. On the Rhine are Germania Inferior (north)
and Germania Superior (south).
Caesar described how the country of these Germani cisrhenani stretched
well west of the Lower Rhine, into what is now Belgium, and how
it had done so long before the Romans came into close contact. Neither
Caesar nor Tacitus saw this as clashing with their broader definitions,
because they believed these Germani had moved from east of the Rhine,
where the other Germani lived. But this event was not recent: Caesar
reported that they were already on the west side during the Cimbrian
War (113–101 BCE), generations earlier. The early Germani
on both sides of the Lower Rhine were however distinguished from
the Suevian Germani by Caesar, Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, and Strabo.
Strabo even said that the Germani near the Rhine not only differed
little from the Celts, but also that the Latin-speakers called them
"Germani" because they were the "genuine" Gauls
(which is a possible meaning of Germani in Latin). Modern historical
linguists and archaeologists have also come to doubt that these
western Germani spoke a Germanic language as defined today, or shared
the same material culture, at least at the time of their first contact
with Caesar and the Romans. Caesar himself refers to them also as
Gauls.
The
older concept of the Germani being local to the Rhine, and especially
the west bank of the lower Rhine, remained common among Graeco-Roman
writers for a longer time than the more theoretical and general
concept of Caesar. Cassius Dio writing in Greek in the 3rd century,
consistently called the right-bank Germani of Caesar, the Celts
and their country Keltike. Cassius contrasted them with the "Gauls"
on the left bank of the Rhine, and described Caesar doing the same
in a speech. He reported that the peoples on either side of the
Rhine had long ago taken to using these contrasting names, treating
it as a boundary, but "very anciently both peoples dwelling
on either side of the river were called Celts". For Cassius
Dio, the only Germani and the only Germania were west of the Rhine
within the empire: "some of the Celts (Keltoí), whom
we call Germans (Germanoí)", had "occupied all
the Belgic territory [Belgike] along the Rhine and caused it to
be called Germany [Germanía]".
At
least two well-read 6th century Byzantine writers, Agathias and
Procopius, understood the Franks on the Rhine to effectively be
the old Germani under a new name, since, as Agathias wrote, they
inhabit the banks of the Rhine and the surrounding territory.
Germanic
terminology before Caesar :
All surviving written evidence implying any clear "Germanic"
concept, broad or narrow, from before Julius Caesar is doubtful
and unclear. There are two or three cases to consider.
•
One is the use
of the word Germani in a report describing lost writings of Posidonius
(about 135 – 51 BCE), made by the much later writer Athenaios
(around 190 CE); however, this word may have been added by the later
writer, and if not, probably referred to the Germani cisrhenani.
It says only that the Germani eat roasted meat in separate joints,
and drink milk and unmixed wine.
• A
commemoration in Rome of a triumph in 222 BCE by Marcus Claudius
Marcellus, over Galleis Insubribus et Germ[an(eis)]. This victory
in the Alpine region at the Battle of Clastidium over the Insubres
is known from other sources to have involved a large force of Gaesatae.
It is believed by many scholars that the inscription should originally
have referred to these Gaesatae.
• A
third author sometimes thought to have written about the Germani
is Pytheas of Marseille, who wrote about northern Europe, but his
works have not survived. Later reports of his writings show that
he wrote about the areas and peoples later called Germanic but do
not necessarily show that he called them Germanic. (For example,
Pliny the Elder says he described the Baltic Sea and mentioned a
large country of "Guiones", often interpreted as the Gutones,
described by Tacitus. Their land included an estuary that is one
day's sail from an island where amber was collected, which in turn
neighbours the Teutones, but an alternative interpretation is that
these were (In)guiones on the North Sea coast.)
After Caesar, Roman authors such as Tacitus followed his example
in using the Germanic terminology to refer retroactively to peoples
known to the Romans or Greeks before Caesar. As noted above, the
Cimbri had previously been described as Celtic or Cimmerian, and
Greek writers continued to do so, while Caesar described them as
Germanic. Tacitus and Strabo both proposed with some uncertainty
that the Bastarnae, a large people known to the Graeco-Roman world
before Caesar, from the region of what is now Ukrainian Galicia
and Moldava, might also have had mixed Germanic ancestry, and according
to Tacitus, even a Germanic language. Pliny the Elder categorized
them as a separate major division of the Germani like Istvaeones,
Ingvaeones, and Irminones, but also separate from an eastern group
which contained the Vandals and the Gutones, both in what is now
Poland. (As already mentioned however, Livy said they spoke a language
like that of the Scordisci.)
Later
Roman "Germanic peoples" :
The theoretical descriptions of Germanic peoples by Tacitus, which
have been very influential in modern times, may never have been
commonly read or used in the Roman era. It is clear in any case
that in later Roman times the Rhine frontier (or Limes Germanicus),
the area where Caesar had first come in contact with Suevians and
Germani cisrhenani, was the normal "Germanic" area mentioned
in writing. Walter Goffart has written that "the one incontrovertible
Germanic thing" in the Roman era was "the two Roman provinces
of 'Germania,' on the middle and lower course of the Rhine river"
and: "Whatever 'Germania' had meant to Tacitus, it had narrowed
by the time of St Jerome to an archaic or poetic term for the land
normally called Francia". Edward James similarly wrote :
It
seems clear that in the fourth century 'German' was no longer a
term which included all western barbarians. Ammianus Marcellinus,
in the later fourth century, uses Germania only when he is referring
to the Roman provinces of Upper Germany and Lower Germany; east
of Germania are Alamannia and Francia.
As
an exceptional case, the poet Sidonius Apollinaris, living in what
is now southern France, described the Burgundians of his time as
speaking a "Germanic" tongue and being "Germani".
Wolfram has proposed that this word was chosen not because of a
comparison of languages, but because the Burgundians had come from
the Rhine region, and even argued that the use of this word by Sidonius
might be seen as evidence against Burgundians being speakers of
East Germanic, given that the East Germanic-speaking Goths, also
present in southern France at this time, were never described this
way.
Far
from the Rhine, the Gothic peoples in what is today Ukraine, and
the Anglo-Saxons in the British Isles, were called Germanic in only
one surviving classical text, by Zosimus (5th century), but this
was an instance in which he mistakenly believed he was writing about
Rhineland peoples. Otherwise, Goths and similar peoples such as
the Gepids, were consistently described as Scythian.
Medieval
loss of the "Germanic people" concept :
In the Greek-speaking eastern Roman empire which continued to exist
during the Middle Ages, the concept of "Germanic" was
also lost or distorted. As explained by Walter Pohl, the late Roman
equation of the Franks with the Germani led there to such non-classical
contrasts as the French (West Franks) being Germani and the Germans
(East Franks) being Alamanni, or the Normans in Sicily being Franks,
but the French being "Franks and also Germani". In the
Strategikon of Maurice, written about 600, a contrast is made between
three types of barbarian: Scythians, Slavs, and "blonde-haired"
peoples such as the Franks and Langobards – apparently having
no convenient name to cover them together.
Medieval
writers in western Europe used Caesar's old geographical concept
of Germania, which, like the new Frankish and clerical jurisdictions
of their time, used the Rhine as a frontier marker, although they
did not commonly refer to any contemporary Germani. For example,
Louis the German (Ludovicus Germanicus) was named this way because
he ruled east of the Rhine, and in contrast the kingdom west of
the Rhine was still called Gallia (Gaul) in scholarly Latin.
Writers
using Latin in West Germanic-speaking areas did recognize that those
languages were related (Dutch, English, Lombardic, and German).
To describe this fact they referred to "Teutonic" words
and languages, seeing the nominative as a Latin translation of Theodiscus,
which was a concept that West Germanic speakers used to refer to
themselves. It is the source of the modern words "Dutch",
German "Deutsch", and Italian "Tedesco". Romance
language speakers and others such as the Welsh were contrasted using
words based on another old word, Walhaz, the source of "Welsh",
Wallach, Welsch, Walloon, etc., itself derived from the name of
the Volcae, a Celtic group. Only a small number of writers were
influenced by Tacitus, whose work was known at Fulda Abbey, and
few used terminology such as lingua Germanica instead of theudiscus
sermo.
On
the other hand, there were several more origin myths written after
Jordanes which similarly connected some of the post Roman peoples
to a common origin in Scandinavia. As pointed out by Walter Pohl,
Paul the Deacon even implied that the Goths, like the Lombards,
descended from "Germanic peoples", though it is unclear
if they continued to be "Germanic" after leaving the north.
Frechulf of Lisieux observed that some of his contemporaries believed
that the Goths might belong to the "nationes Theotistae",
like the Franks, and that both the Franks and the Goths might have
come from Scandinavia. It is in this period, the 9th century Carolingian
era, that scholars also first recorded speculation about relationships
between Gothic and West Germanic languages. Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel
believed the Goths spoke a teodisca lingua like the Franks, and
Walafrid Strabo, calling it a theotiscus sermo, was even aware of
their Bible translation. However, though the similarities were noticed,
Gothic would not have been intelligible to a West Germanic speaker.
The
first detailed origins legend of the Anglo-Saxons was by Bede (died
735), and in his case he named the Angles and Saxons of Britain
as peoples who once lived in Germania, like, he says, the Frisians,
Rugians, Danes, Huns, Old Saxons (Antiqui Saxones) and the Bructeri.
He even says that British people still call them, corruptly, "Garmani".
As with Jordanes and the Gutones, there is other evidence, linguistic
and archaeological, which is consistent with his scholarly account,
although this does not prove that Bede's non-scholarly contemporaries
had accurate knowledge of historical details.
In
western Europe then, there was limited scholarly awareness of the
Tacitean "Germanic peoples", and even their potential
connection to the Goths, but much more common was adherence to Caesar's
concept of the geographical meaning of Germania east of the Rhine,
and a perception of similarities between some Germanic languages
– though they were not given this name until much later.
Later
debates :
The influence of Jordanes and the Origo Gentes genre :
The ethnic military kingdoms which formed in the western Roman empire
each developed their own legends about their ethnic origins, the
so-called Origo gentis stories. These often included an ancient
connection to Romans or Trojans, as in the origin stories of the
Franks, Burgundians and English, and they also typically mentioned
the wild east of "Scythia". However, Jordanes (6th century),
who wrote the most detailed surviving Gothic origins story, did
effectively propose a connection to northern regions which much
earlier authors had described as the remotest parts of Germania.
He established a tradition of connecting the earliest origins of
Goths and other peoples to Scandinavia, which was for him a distant
and almost unknown island. He thus connected the Goths (Gothi) not
only with ancient Amazons, Trojans, Huns, and the similarly-named
Getae, but also to the Baltic sea. Some modern writers, such as
Wolfram and Heather, still see this as confirmed by the mention
of similar sounding "Gutones" near the south Baltic coast
in earlier authors such as Tacitus and Ptolemy. Others have noted
that Jordanes himself believed the Goths would have left the region
centuries before those writers, making the identification doubtful.
Indeed, he or his sources must have derived many of the names of
ancient peoples and places from reading old Latin and Greek authors.
Very
influentially, Jordanes called Scandinavia a "womb of nations"
(vagina nationum), asserting that many peoples came from there in
prehistoric times. This idea influenced later origin legends including
the Lombard origin story, written by Paul the Deacon (8th century)
who opens his work with an explanation of the theory. During the
Carolingian renaissance he and other scholars even sometimes used
the Germanic terminology. (See below.) The Scandinavian origin theme
was still influential in medieval times and has even been influential
in early modern speculations about Germanic peoples, for example
in proposals about the origins of not only Goths and Gepids, but
also of Rugians and Burgundians.
The
citing of Jordanes and similar writers to attempt to prove that
the Goths were "Germanic" in more than language continues
to arouse debate among scholars, because while his work is unreliable,
the Baltic connection on its own is consistent with linguistic and
archaeological evidence. However, Walter Goffart in particular has
criticized the methodology of many modern scholars for using Jordanes
and other origins stories as independent sources of real tribal
memories, but only when it matches their beliefs arrived at in other
ways.
Modern
debates :
![](405px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_118-30,_Hermanns-Denkmal,_Jungdeutsche_Tagung.jpg)
An event of the Young German Order at the "Hermannsdenkmal"
monument to Arminius, in 1925. At the time, Germans learned to see
Arminius (often wrongly modernized into "Hermann") as
a "German"
![](422px-Gehrts_Armin_verabschiedet_sich_von_Thusnelda_1884.jpg)
An
1884 painting of Arminius and Thusnelda by German illustrator Johannes
Gehrts. The artwork depicts Arminius saying farewell to his beloved
wife before he goes off into battle
During the Renaissance there was a rediscovery and renewed interest
in secular writings of classical antiquity. By the late 15th century,
Tacitus had become a focus of interest all around Europe, and, among
other effects, this revolutionized ideas in Germany concerning the
history of Germany itself. Tacitus continues to be an important
influence in Germanic studies of antiquity, and is often read together
with the Getica of Jordanes, who wrote much later.
Tacitus's
ethnography won the attention it had formerly been denied because
there now was a Germany, the "German nation" that had
come into existence since the Carolingians, which Tacitus could
now equip with a heaven-sent ancient dignity and pedigree.
In
this context, in the 19th century, the famous folklorist and linguist
Jacob Grimm helped popularize the concept of Germanic languages
as well as of Indo-european languages. Apart from the well-known
Grimm's Fairy Tales, collected with his brother Wilhelm, he published,
for example, Deutsche Mythologie attempting to reconstruct Germanic
mythology, and a German dictionary, Deutsches Wörterbuch, with
detailed etymological proposals attempting to reconstruct the oldest
Germanic language. He also popularized a ne0w idea of these Germanic
speakers, especially those in Germany, as clinging valiantly to
their supposed Germanic civilization over the centuries.
The
subsequent popular modern assertion of strong cultural continuity
between Roman-era Germani and medieval or modern Germanic speakers,
especially Germans, assumed a strong connection between a family
trees of language categories, and both cultural and racial heritages.
The name of the newly defined language family, Germanic, was long
unpopular in other countries such as England, where the medieval
"Teutonic" was seen as less potentially misleading. Similarly,
in Denmark "Gothic" was sometimes used as a term for the
language group uniting the Germani and the Goths, and a modified
Gothonic was proposed by Gudmund Schütte and used locally.
This
romanticist, nationalist approach has been rejected by scholars
in its simplest forms since approximately World War II. For example,
the once common habit of referring to Roman-era Germanic peoples
as "Germans" is discouraged by modern historians, and
modern Germans are no longer seen as the main successors of the
Germani. Not only are ideas associated with Nazism now criticized,
but also other romanticized ideas about the Germanic peoples. For
example, Guy Halsall has mentioned the popularity of the "view
of the peoples of Germania as, essentially, proto-democratic communes
of freemen". Peter Heather has pointed out as well that the
Marxist theory "that some of Europe's barbarians were ultimately
responsible for moving Europe onwards to the feudal model of production
has also lost much of its force".
Further,
some historians now question whether there was any unifying Germanic
culture even in Roman times, and secondly whether there was any
significant continuity at all apart from language, connecting the
Roman era Germanic peoples with the mixed new ethnic groups who
formed in late antiquity. Sceptics of such connections include Walter
Goffart, and others associated with him and the University of Toronto.
Goffart lists four "contentions" about how the Germanic
terminology biases the conclusions of historians, and is therefore
misleading :
1.
Barbarian invasions should not be seen as a single collective movement.
Different barbarian groups moved for their own reasons under their
own leaders.
2. The pressures on the late Empire did not have a united source,
and often came from within.
3. The classical Germanic peoples lacked any unity or center, and
so they should not be seen as a civilization in the way Rome is.
4. We should not, according to Goffart, accept Jordanes as preserving
an authentic oral tradition about a migration from Scandinavia.
On the other hand, the possibility of a small but significant "core
of tradition" (Traditionskern) surviving with the ruling classes
of Roman Germanic peoples, in the societies of new medieval Germanic-speaking
peoples such as the Franks, Alamanni, Anglo-Saxons, and Goths, continues
to be defended by other historians. This Traditionskern concept
is associated for example with the Vienna School of History, initiated
by Reinhard Wenskus, and later represented by scholars such as Herwig
Wolfram and Walter Pohl.
Peter
Heather for example, continues to use the Germanic terminology but
writes that concerning proposals of Germanic continuity, "all
subsequent discussion has accepted and started from Wenskus's basic
observations" and "the Germani in the first millenium
were thus not closed groups with continuous histories". Heather
however believes that such caution now often goes too far in denying
any large scale movements of people in specific cases, as exemplified
by Patrick Amory's explanation of the Ostrogoths and their Kingdom
of Italy.
Another
proponent of relatively significant continuity, Wolf Liebeschuetz,
has argued that the shared use of Germanic languages by, for example,
Anglo-Saxons and Goths, implies that they must have had more links
to Germania than only language. While little concrete evidence has
survived, Liebeschuetz proposes that the existence of Weregild laws,
stipulating compensation payments to avoid blood feuds, must have
been of Germanic origin because such laws were not Roman. Liebeschuetz
also argues that recent sceptical scholars "deprive the ancient
Germans and their constituent tribes of any continuous identity"
and this is "important" because it makes European history
a product of Roman history, not "a joint creation of Roman
and Germans".
![](577px-Nordic_Bronze_Age.png)
Map of the Nordic Bronze Age culture, around 1200 BCE
Prehistoric evidence :
![](640px-Dejbjerg_wagon,_Nationalmuseet_Copenhagen.jpg)
The Dejbjerg wagon, National Museum of Denmark
Archaeological evidence :
![](Archeological_cultures_in_Northern_and_Central_Europe_at_the_late_pre-Roman_Iron_Age.png)
Archeological
cultures of Northern Europe in the late Pre-Roman Iron Age :
|
Jastorf
culture (Germanic/Suebian) |
|
Nordic
(Germanic?) |
|
Harpstedt-Nienburger
(Germanic?) |
|
La
Tène (Celtic) |
|
Przeworsk
culture |
|
Oksywie
culture |
Archaeologists divide the area of Roman-era Germania into several
Iron Age "material cultures". At the time of Caesar, all
had been under the strong influence of the La Tène culture,
an old culture in the south and west of Germania, which is strongly
associated with Celtic-speaking Gauls, including those in Gaul itself.
These La Tène peoples, who included the Germani cisrhenani,
are generally considered unlikely to have spoken Germanic languages
as defined today, though some may have spoken unknown related languages
or Celtic dialects. To the north of these zones however, in southern
Scandinavia and northern Germany, the archaeological cultures started
to become more distinct from La Tène culture during the Iron
Age.
Concerning
Germanic speakers within these northern regions, the relatively
well-defined Jastorf culture matches the areas described by Tacitus,
Pliny the elder and Strabo as Suevian homelands near the lower River
Elbe, and stretching east on the Baltic coast to the Oder river.
The Suevian peoples are seen by scholars as early West Germanic
speakers. There is no consensus about whether neighbouring cultures
in Scandinavia, Poland, and northwestern Germany were also part
of a Germanic (or proto-Germanic)-speaking community at first, but
this group of cultures were related to each other, and in contact.
To the west of the Elbe for example, on what is now the German North
Sea coast, was the so-called Harpstedt-Nienburger Group between
the Jastorf culture and the La Tène influenced cultures of
the Lower Rhine. To the east in what is now northern Poland was
the Oksywie culture, later becoming the Wielbark culture with the
arrival of Jastorf influences, probably representing the entry of
East Germanic speakers. Related also to these and the Jastorf culture
was the Przeworsk culture in southern Poland. It began as strongly
La Tène-influenced local culture, and apparently became at
least partly Germanic-speaking.
The
Jastorf culture came into direct contact with La Tène cultures
on the upper Elbe and Oder rivers, believed to correspond to the
Celtic-speaking peoples such as the Boii and Volcae described in
this area by Roman sources. In the south of their range, the Jastorf
and Przeworsk material cultures spread together, in several directions.
Caesar's
claims :
Unlike archaeologists today, Caesar, the originator of the idea
of the Germanic peoples, believed that in prehistory, before his
time, the Rhine had divided Germani from the Gauls. However, he
observed that there must already have been significant movements
in both directions, over the Rhine. Not only did he believe that
the Germani had a long-standing tendency to make raids and group
movements from the northeast, involving peoples such as the Cimbri
long before him, and the Suevians in his own time, it was also his
understanding that there had been a time when the movement went
in the opposite direction :
And
there was formerly a time when the Gauls excelled the Germans [Germani]
in prowess, and waged war on them offensively, and, on account of
the great number of their people and the insufficiency of their
land, sent colonies over the Rhine. Accordingly, the Volcae Tectosages,
seized on those parts of Germany which are the most fruitful [and
lie] around the Hercynian forest, (which, I perceive, was known
by report to Eratosthenes and some other Greeks, and which they
call Orcynia), and settled there.
Modern
archaeologists, having found no sign of such movements, see the
Gaulish La Tène culture as native to what is now southern
Germany, and the La Tène-influenced cultures on both sides
of the Lower Rhine in this period as quite distinct from the Elbe
Germanic peoples, well into Roman times. On the other hand, the
account of Caesar finds broad agreement with the archaeological
record of the Celtic La Tène culture first expanding to the
north, influencing all cultures there, and then suddenly having
a weaker influence in that area. Subsequently, the Jastorf culture
expanded in all directions from the region between the lower Elbe
and Oder rivers.
Languages
:
Proto-Germanic :
Reconstruction :
All Germanic languages derive from the Proto-Indo-European language
(PIE), which is generally estimated to have been spoken between
4500 and 2500 BCE. They share distinctive characteristics which
set them apart from other Indo-European sub-families of languages,
such as Grimm's and Verner's law, the conservation of the PIE ablaut
system in the Germanic verb system (notably in strong verbs), or
the merger of the vowels a and o qualities (?, a, o > a; a, o
> o). During the Pre-Germanic linguistic period (2500–500
BCE), the proto-language has almost certainly been influenced by
linguistic substrates still noticeable in the Germanic phonology
and lexicon. The leading theory, suggested by archaeological and
genetic evidence, postulates a diffusion of Indo-European languages
from the Pontic–Caspian steppe towards Northern Europe during
the third millennium BCE, via linguistic contacts and migrations
from the Corded Ware culture towards modern-day Denmark, resulting
in cultural mixing with the indigenous Funnelbeaker culture.
Between
around 500 BCE and the beginning of the Common Era, archeological
and linguistic evidence suggest that the Urheimat ('original homeland')
of the Proto-Germanic language, the ancestral idiom of all attested
Germanic dialects, was primarily situated in an area corresponding
to the extent of the Jastorf culture. One piece of evidence is the
presence of early Germanic loanwords in the Finnic and Sámi
languages (e.g. Finnic kuningas, from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz 'king';
rengas, from *hringaz ‘ring’; etc.), with the older
loan layers possibly dating back to an earlier period of intense
contacts between pre-Germanic and Finno-Permic (i.e., Finno-Samic)
speakers. An archeological continuity can also be demonstrated between
the Jastof culture and populations described as Germanic by Roman
sources.
Although
Proto-Germanic is reconstructed dialect-free via the comparative
method, it is almost certain that it was never a uniform proto-language.
The late Jastorf culture occupied so much territory that it is unlikely
that Germanic populations spoke a single dialect, and traces of
early linguistic varieties have been highlighted by scholars.Sister
dialects of Proto-Germanic itself certainly existed, as evidenced
by some recorded Germanic proper names not following Grimm's law,
and the reconstructed Proto-Germanic language was only one among
several dialects spoken at that time by peoples identified as "Germanic"
in Roman sources or archeological data.
Attestation
:
Definite and comprehensive evidence of the use of Germanic lexical
units occurred only after Caesar's conquest of Gaul in the 1st century
BCE, after which contacts with Proto-Germanic speakers began to
intensify. The Alcis, a pair of brother gods worshipped by the Nahanarvali,
are given by Tacitus as a Latinized form of *alhiz (a kind of 'stag'),
and the word sapo ('hair dye') is certainly borrowed from Proto-Germanic
*saipwon (English soap), as evidenced by the parallel Finnish loanword
saipio. The name of the framea, described by Tacitus as a short
spear carried by Germanic warriors, most likely derives from the
compound *fram-ij-an- ('forward-going one'), as suggested by comparable
semantical structures found in early runes (e.g., raun-ij-az 'tester',
on a lancehead) and linguistic cognates attested in the later Old
Norse, Old Saxon and Old High German languages: fremja, fremmian
and fremmen all meant 'to carry out'.
![](640px-Helm_von_Negau;_KHM,_Wien_Inschrift.jpg)
The inscription on the Negau helmet B, carved in the Etruscan
alphabet during the 3rd–2nd c. BCE, is generally regarded
as Proto-Germanic
The origin of the Germanic runes remains controversial, although
it has been stated that they bear a more formal resemblance to North
Italic alphabets (especially the Camunic alphabet; 1st mill. BCE)
than to Latin letters.They are not attested before the beginning
of the Common Era in southern Scandinavia, and the connection between
the two alphabets is therefore uncertain. In the absence of earlier
evidence, it must be assumed that Proto-Germanic speakers living
in Germania were members of preliterate societies. The only pre-Roman
inscription that could be interpreted as Proto-Germanic, written
in the Etruscan alphabet, has not been found in Germania but rather
in the Venetic region. The inscription, engraved on the Negau helmet
in the 3rd–2nd centuries BCE, possibly by a Germanic-speaking
warrior involved in combat in northern Italy, has been interpreted
by some scholars as Harigasti Teiw? (*harja-gastiz 'army-guest'
+ *teiwaz '(war-)god'), which could be an invocation to a war-god
or a mark of ownership engraved by its possessor. The inscription
Fariarix (*farjon- 'ferry' + *rik- 'ruler') carved on tetradrachms
found in Bratislava (mid-1st c. BCE) may indicate the Germanic name
of a Celtic ruler.
The
earliest attested runic inscriptions (Vimose comb, Øvre Stabu
spearhead), initially concentrated in modern Denmark and written
with the Elder Futhark system, are dated to the second half of the
2nd century CE. Their language, named Primitive Norse, Proto-Norse,
or similar terms, and still very close to Proto-Germanic, has been
interpreted as a northern variant of the Northwest Germanic dialects
and the ancestor of the Old Norse language of the Viking Age (8th–11th
c. CE). Based upon its dialect-free character and shared features
with West Germanic languages, some scholars have contended that
it served as a kind of koiné language. The merging of unstressed
Proto-Germanic vowels, attested in runic inscriptions from the 4th
and 5th centuries CE, also suggests that Primitive Norse could not
have been a direct predecessor of West Germanic dialects.
Disintegration
:
By the time Germanic speakers entered written history, their linguistic
territory had stretched farther south, since a Germanic dialect
continuum covered a region roughly located between the Rhine, the
Vistula, the Danube, and southern Scandinavia during the first two
centuries of the Common Era. Neighbouring language varieties diverged
only slightly between each other in this continuum, but remote dialects
were not necessarily mutually intelligible due to accumulated differences
over the distance. East Germanic speakers dwelt on the Baltic sea
coasts and islands, while speakers of the Northwestern dialects
occupied territories in present-day Denmark and bordering parts
of Germany at the earliest date that they can be identified.
In
the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, migrations of East Germanic gentes
from the Baltic Sea coast southeastwards into the hinterland led
to their separation from the dialect continuum. By the late 3rd
century CE, linguistic divergences like the West Germanic loss of
the final consonant -z had already occurred within the "residual"
Northwest dialect continuum, which definitely ended after the 5th-
and 6th-century migrations of Angles, Jutes and part of Saxon groups
towards modern-day England.
Classification
:
Although they have certainly influenced academic views on ancient
Germanic languages up until the 20th century, the traditional groupings
given by contemporary authors such as Pliny and Tacitus are no longer
regarded as fully reliable by modern linguists, who rather base
their reasoning on the attested sound changes and shared mutations
which occurred in geographically distant groups of dialects. The
Germanic languages are traditionally divided between East, North
and West Germanic branches. The modern prevailing view is that North
and West Germanic were also encompassed in a larger subgroup called
Northwest Germanic.
•
Proto-Germanic:
estimated to have been spoken approximatively between the mid-1st
millennium BCE (Jastorf culture) and the mid-1st millennium CE (Migration
Period).
•
Northwest Germanic: mainly characterized by the i-umlaut, and
the shift of the long vowel *e towards a long *a in accented syllables;
it remained a dialect continuum from the migration of East Germanic
speakers in the 2nd–3rd century CE until the 5th–6th
centuries CE;
•
North Germanic or Primitive Norse: initially characterized by
the monophthongization of the sound ai to a (attested from ca.
400 BCE); a uniform northern dialect or koiné attested
in runic inscriptions from the 2nd century CE onward, it remained
practically unchanged until a transitional period that started
in the late 5th century; and Old Norse, a language attested
by runic inscriptions written in the Younger Fuþark from
the beginning of the Viking Age (8th–9th centuries CE);
• West
Germanic: including Old Saxon (attested from the 5th c. CE),
Old English (late 5th c.), Old Frisian (6th c.), Frankish (6th
c.), Old High German (6th c.), and possibly Langobardic (6th
c.), which is only scarcely attested; they are mainly characterized
by the loss of the final consonant -z (attested from the late
3rd century), and by the j-consonant gemination (attested from
ca. 400 BCE); early inscriptions from the West Germanic areas
are found in dedications to matronea in the Rhineland dated
to ca. 160-260 CE; West Germanic remained a "residual"
dialect continuum until the Anglo-Saxon migrations in the 5th–6th
centuries CE;
•
East Germanic, of which only Gothic is attested by both runic
inscriptions (from the 3rd c. CE) and textual evidence (principally
Wulfila's Bible; ca. 350-380). It became extinct after the fall
of the Visigothic Kingdom in the early 8th century. The inclusion
of the Burgundian and Vandalic languages within the East Germanic
group, while plausible, is still uncertain due to their scarce
attestation. The latest attested East Germanic language, Crimean
Gothic, has been partially recorded in the 16th century.
Further internal classifications are still debated among scholars,
as it is unclear whether the internal features shared by several
branches are due to early common innovations or to the later diffusion
of local dialectal innovations. For instance, although Old English
and Old Frisian shared distinctive characteristics such as the
Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law, attested by the 6th century in
inscriptions on both sides of the North Sea, and the use of the
fuþorc system with additional runes to convey innovative
and shared sound changes, it is unclear whether those common features
are really inherited or have rather emerged by connections over
the North Sea.
Classical
subdivisions :
By the 1st century CE, the writings of Pliny the Elder, and Tacitus
reported a division of Germanic peoples into large groupings. Tacitus,
in his Germania, specifically stated that one such division mentioned
"in old songs" (carminibus antiquis) derived three such
groups from three brothers, sons of Mannus, who was son of an earth-born
god, Tuisto. These terms are also sometimes used in older modern
linguistic terminology, attempting to describe the divisions of
later Germanic languages :
•
Ingvaeones, nearest
to the Ocean.
• Herminones
in the interior.
• Istvaeones,
the remainder.
On the other hand, Tacitus wrote in the same passage that some believe
that there are other groups which are just as old as these three,
including "the Marsi, Gambrivii, Suevi, Vandilii". Of
these, he discussed only the Suevi in detail, specifying that they
were a very large grouping, with many peoples, with their own names.
The largest, he said, was the Semnones near the Elbe, who "claim
that they are the oldest and the noblest of the Suebi."
Pliny
the Elder, somewhat similarly, named five races of Germani in his
Historia Naturalis, with the same basic three groups as Tacitus,
plus two more eastern blocks of Germans, the Vandals, and further
east the Bastarnae. He clarifies that the Istvaeones are near the
Rhine, although he gives only one problematic example, the Cimbri.
He also clarifies that the Suevi, though numerous, are actually
in one of the three Mannus groups. His list :
•
The Vandili,
include the Burgundiones, the Varini, the Carini, and the Gutones.
The Varini are listed by Tacitus as being Suevic, and the Gutones
are described by him as Germanic, leaving open the question of whether
they are Suevian.
• The
Ingævones include the Cimbri, the Teutoni, and the Chauci.
• The
Istævones, who "join up to the Rhine", and including
the Cimbri [sic, repeated, probably by error]
• The
Hermiones, forming a fourth, dwell in the interior, and include
the Suevi, the Hermunduri, the Chatti, the Cherusci,
• The
Peucini, who are also the Basternæ, adjoining the Daci.
These accounts and others from the period emphasize that the Suevi
formed an especially large and powerful group. Tacitus speaks also
of a geographical "Suevia" with two halves, one on either
side of the Sudetes. The larger group that the Suevi were part of
according to Pliny, the Hermiones, is mentioned in one other source:
Pomponius Mela, in his slightly earlier Description of the World,
places "the farthest people of Germania, the Hermiones"
somewhere to the east of the Cimbri and the Teutones, apparently
on the Baltic. He did not mention Suevians.
Strabo,
who focused mainly on Germani between the Elbe and Rhine, and does
not mention the sons of Mannus, also set apart the names of Germani
who are not Suevian, in two other groups, similarly implying three
main divisions: "smaller German tribes, as the Cherusci, Chatti,
Gamabrivi, Chattuarii, and next the ocean the Sicambri, Chaubi,
Bructeri, Cimbri, Cauci, Caulci, Campsiani".
From
the perspective of modern linguistic reconstructions, the classical
ethnographers were not helpful in distinguishing two large groups
that spoke types of Germanic very different from the Suevians and
their neighbours, whose languages are the source of modern West
Germanic.
•
The Germanic
peoples of the far north, in Scandinavia, were treated as Suevians
by Tacitus, though their Germanic dialects would evolve into Proto
Norse, and later Old Norse, as spoken by the Vikings, and then the
North Germanic language family of today.
• The
"Gothic peoples" who later formed large nations in the
area that is today Ukraine were not known to Tacitus, Pliny or Strabo,
but their East Germanic languages are presumed to derive from languages
spoken by Pliny's Vandal group (corresponding in part to the group
made up of Gothones, Lemovii and Rugii described by Tacitus, who
lived near the Baltic sea), and possibly also of Bastarnae.
The "Gothic peoples" in the territory of present-day Ukraine
and Romania were seen by Graeco-Roman writers as culturally "Scythian",
and not Germanic, and indeed some of them such as the Alans were
clearly not Germanic-speaking either. Whether the Gothic-speaking
peoples among them had any consciousness of their connections to
other Germanic-speaking peoples is a subject of dispute between
scholars.
History
:
Earliest attestations :
Possible earliest contacts with the classical world (4th –
3rd centuries BCE) :
Before Julius Caesar, Romans and Greeks had very little contact
with northern Europe itself. Pytheas who travelled to Northern Europe
some time in the late 4th century BCE was one of the only sources
of information for later historians. The Romans and Greeks however
had contact with northerners who came south.
The
Bastarnae or Peucini are mentioned in historical sources going back
as far as the 3rd century BCE through the 4th century CE. These
Bastarnae were described by Greek and Roman authors as living in
the territory east of the Carpathian Mountains north of the Danube's
delta at the Black Sea. They were variously described as Celtic
or Scythian, but much later Tacitus, in disagreement with Livy,
said they were similar to the Germani in language. According to
some authors then, they were the first Germani to reach the Greco-Roman
world and the Black Sea area.
In
201–202 BCE, the Macedonians, under the leadership of King
Philip V, conscripted the Bastarnae as soldiers to fight against
the Roman Republic in the Second Macedonian War. They remained a
presence in that area until late in the Roman Empire. The Peucini
were a part of this people who lived on Peuce Island, at the mouth
of the Danube on the Black Sea. King Perseus enlisted the service
of the Bastarnae in 171–168 BCE to fight the Third Macedonian
War. By 29 BCE, they were subdued by the Romans and those that remained
presumably merged into various groups of Goths into the second century
CE.
Another
eastern people known from about 200 BCE and sometimes believed to
be Germanic-speaking, are the Scirii, because they appear in a record
in Olbia on the Black Sea which records that the city had been troubled
by Scythians, Sciri and Galatians. There is a theory that their
name, perhaps meaning pure, was intended to contrast with the Bastarnae,
perhaps meaning mixed, or "bastards". Much later, Pliny
the Elder placed them to the north near the Vistula together with
an otherwise unknown people called the Hirrii. The Hirrii are sometimes
equated with the Harii mentioned by Tacitus in this region, whom
he considered to be Germanic Lugians. These names have also been
compared to that of the Heruli, who are another people from the
area of modern Ukraine, believed to have been Germanic. In later
centuries the Scirii, like the Heruli, and many of the Goths, were
among the peoples who allied with Attila and settled in the Middle
Danube, Pannonian region.
Cimbrian
War (2nd century BCE) :
![](Cimbrians_and_Teutons_invasions.svg.png)
Migrations
of the Cimbri and the Teutons (late 2nd century BCE) and their war
with Rome (113 – 101 BCE)
Late in the 2nd century BCE, Roman and Greek sources recount the
migrations of the far northern "Gauls", the Cimbri, Teutones
and Ambrones. Caesar later classified them as Germanic. They first
appeared in eastern Europe where some researchers propose they may
have been in contact with the Bastarnae and Scordisci. In 113 BCE,
they defeated the Boii at the Battle of Noreia in Noricum.
Their
movements through parts of Gaul, Italy and Hispania resulted in
the Cimbrian War between these groups and the Roman Republic, led
primarily by its Consul, Gaius Marius.
In
Gaul, a combined force of Cimbri and Teutoni and others defeated
the Romans in the Battle of Burdigala (107 BCE) at Bordeaux, in
the Battle of Arausio (105) at Orange in France, and in the Battle
of Tridentum (102) at Trento in Italy. Their further incursions
into Roman Italy were repelled by the Romans at the Battle of Aquae
Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence) in 102 BCE, and the Battle of Vercellae
in 101 BCE (in Vercelli in Piedmont).
One classical source, Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, mentions the northern
Gauls somewhat later, associating them with eastern Europe, saying
that both the Bastarae and the Cimbri were allies of Mithridates
VI.
Germano-Roman
contacts :
Julius Caesar (1st century BCE) :
Caesar campaigned in what is now France from 58-50 BCE, in the period
of the late Roman Republic. As mentioned above, Caesar wrote about
this campaign in a way which introduced the term "Germanic"
to refer to peoples such as the Cimbri and Suevi.
•
63 BCE Ariovistus,
described by Caesar as Germanic, led mixed forces over the Rhine
into Gaul as an ally of the Sequani and Averni in their battle against
the Aedui, who they defeated at the Battle of Magetobriga. He stayed
there on the west of the Rhine. He was also accepted as an ally
by the Roman senate.
• 58
BCE. Caesar, as governor of Gaul, took the side of the Aedui against
Ariovistus and his allies. He reported that Ariovistus had already
settled 120,000 of his people, was demanding land for 24,000 Harudes
who subsequently defeated the Aedui, and had 100 clans of Suevi
coming into Gaul. Caesar defeated Ariovistus at the Battle of Vosges
(58 BC).
Caesar listed people who fought for Ariovistus as the Harudes, Marcomanni,
Tribocci, Vangiones, Nemetes, Sedusii, and "Suevi".
• 55-53
BCE. Controversially, Caesar moved his attention to Northern Gaul.
In 55 BCE he made a show of strength on the Lower Rhine, crossing
it with a quickly made bridge, and then massacring a large migrating
group of Tencteri and Usipetes who crossed the Rhine from the east.
In the winter of 54/53 the Eburones, the largest group of Germani
cisrhenani, revolted against the Romans and then dispersed into
forests and swamps.
Caesar listed some Germani cisrhenani peoples: the Eburones, Condrusi,
Caeraesi, Paemani and Segni. He believed they were related to peoples
on the east bank such as the Sigambri and Ubii. He further believed
the Suevi were pressing such groups over the Rhine from further
east.
Still in the 1st century BCE the term Germani was used by Strabo
(see above) and Cicero in ways clearly influenced by Caesar. Of
the peoples encountered by Caesar, the Tribocci, Vangiones, Nemetes
and Ubii were all found later, on the east of the Rhine, along the
new frontier of the Roman empire.
Julio-Claudian
dynasty (27 BCE – 68 CE) and the Year of Four Emperors (69
CE) :
![](470px-Arminius_pushkin.jpg)
Roman sculpture of a young man sometimes identified as Arminius
During the reign of Augustus from 27 BCE until 14 CE, the Roman
empire became established in Gaul, with the Rhine as a border. This
empire made costly campaigns to pacify and control the large region
between the Rhine and Elbe. In the reign of his successor Tiberius
it became state policy to leave the border at the Rhine, and expand
the empire no further in that direction. The Julio-Claudian dynasty,
the extended family of Augustus, paid close personal attention to
management of this Germanic frontier, establishing a tradition followed
by many future emperors. Major campaigns were led from the Rhine
personally by Nero Claudius Drusus, step-son of Augustus, then by
his brother the future emperor Tiberius; next by the son of Drusus,
Germanicus (father of the future emperor Caligula and grandfather
of Nero).
In
38 BCE, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, consul of Transalpine Gaul, became
the second Roman to lead forces over the Rhine. In 31 BCE Gaius
Carrinas repulsed an attack by Suevi from east of the Rhine. In
25 BCE Marcus Vinicius took vengeance on some Germani in Germania,
who had killed Roman traders. In 17/16 BCE at the Battle of Bibracte
the Sugambri, Usipetes, and Tencteri crossed the Rhine and defeated
the 5th legion under Marcus Lollius, capturing the legion's eagle.
From
13 BCE until 17 CE there were major Roman campaigns across the Rhine
nearly every year, often led by members of the family of Augustus.
First came the pacification of the Usipetes, Sicambri, and Frisians
near the Rhine, then attacks increased further from the Rhine, on
the Chauci, Cherusci, Chatti and Suevi (including the Marcomanni).
These campaigns eventually reached and even crossed the Elbe, and
in 5 CE Tiberius was able to show strength by having a Roman fleet
enter the Elbe and meet the legions in the heart of Germania. However,
within this period two Germanic kings formed large anti-Roman alliances.
Both of them had spent some of their youth in Rome :
•
After 9 BCE,
Maroboduus of the Marcomanni had led his people away from the Roman
activities into the Bohemian area, which was defended by forests
and mountains, and formed alliances with other peoples. Tacitus
referred to him as king of the Suevians. In 6 CE Rome planned an
attack but forces were needed for the Illyrian revolt in the Balkans,
until 9 CE, at which time another problem arose in the north...
• In
9 CE, Arminius of the Cherusci, initially an ally of Rome, drew
the a large unsuspecting Roman force into a trap in northern Germany,
and defeated Publius Quinctilius Varus at the Battle of the Teutoburg
Forest. Tiberius and Germanicus spent the next few years recovering
their dominance of northern Germany. They made Maroboduus an ally,
and he did not assist Arminius.
• 17-18
CE, war broke out between Arminius and Maroboduus, with indecisive
results.
• 19
CE, Maroboduus was deposed by a rival claimant, perhaps supported
by the Romans, and fled to Italy. He died in 37 CE. Germanicus also
died, in Antioch.
• 21
CE. Arminius died, murdered by opponents within his own group.
Strabo, writing in this period in Greek, mentioned that apart from
the area near the Rhine itself, the areas to the east were now inhabited
by the Suevi, "who are also named Germans, but are superior
both in power and number to the others, whom they drove out, and
who have now taken refuge on this side the Rhine". Various
peoples had fallen "prey to the flames of war".
The
Julio-Claudian dynasty also recruited northern Germanic warriors,
particularly men of the Batavi, as personal bodyguards to the Roman
emperor, forming the so-called Numerus Batavorum. After the end
of the dynasty, in 69 AD, the Batavian bodyguard were dissolved
by Galba in 68 because of its loyalty to the old dynasty. The decision
caused deep offense to the Batavi, and contributed to the outbreak
of the Revolt of the Batavi in the following year which united Germani
and Gauls, all connected to Rome but living both within the empire
and outside it, over the Rhine. Their indirect successors were the
Equites singulares Augusti which were, likewise, mainly recruited
from the Germani. They were apparently so similar to the Julio-Claudians'
earlier German Bodyguard that they were given the same nickname,
the "Batavi". Gaius Julius Civilis, a Roman military officer
of Batavian origin, orchestrated the Revolt. The revolt lasted nearly
a year and was ultimately unsuccessful.
Flavian
and Antonine dynasties (70 – 192 CE) :
The Emperor Domitian of the Flavian dynasty faced attacks from the
Chatti in Germania superior, with its capital at Mainz, a large
group which had not been in the alliance of Arminius or Maroboduus.
The Romans claimed victory by 84 CE, and Domitian also improved
the frontier defenses of Roman Germania, consolidating control of
the Agri Decumates, and converting Germania Inferior and Germania
Superior into normal Roman provinces. In 89 CE the Chatti were allies
of Lucius Antonius Saturninus in his failed revolt. Domitian, and
his eventual successor Trajan, also faced increasing concerns about
an alliance on the Danube of the Suevian Marcomanni and Quadi, with
the neighbouring Sarmatian Iazyges; it was in this area that dramatic
events unfolded over the next few generations. Trajan himself expanded
the empire in this region, taking over Dacia.
![](607px-Roman_Empire_125_de.svg.png)
Distribution of Germanic, Venedi (Slavic), and Sarmatian
(Iranian) groups on the frontier of the Roman Empire, 125 AD
The Marcomannic Wars during the time of Marcus Aurelius ended in
approximately 180 CE. Dio Cassius called it the war against the
Germani, noting that Germani was the term used for people who dwell
up in those parts (in the north). A large number of peoples from
north of the Danube were involved, not all Germanic-speaking, and
there is much speculation about what events or plans led to this
situation. Many scholars believe causative pressure was being created
by aggressive movements of peoples further north, for example with
the apparent expansion of the Wielbark culture of the Vistula, probably
representing Gothic peoples who may have pressured Vandal peoples
towards the Danube.
•
In 162 the Chatti
once again attacked the Roman provinces of Raetia (with its capital
at Augsburg) and Germania Superior to their south. During the main
war in 973 they were repulsed from the Rhine frontier to their west,
along with their neighbours the Suevian Hermunduri.
• In
167, during the Antonine plague the Marcomanni, Quadi, and the Sarmatian
Iazyges attacked and pushed their way to Italy where they besieged
Aquileia, triggering the main series of wars. A smaller group of
Lombards also breached the border together with a group called the
Obii, and they were defeated.
Other peoples, perhaps not all of them Germanic, were involved in
various actions—these included the Costoboci, the Hasdingi
and Lacringi Vandals, the Varisci (or Naristi) and the Cotini (not
Germanic according to Tacitus), and possibly also the Buri.
After
these Marcomannic wars, the Middle Danube began to change, and in
the next century the peoples living there tended to be referred
to as Gothic, rather than Germanic.
New
names on the frontiers (170 – 370) :
By the early 3rd century AD, large new groupings of Germanic people
appeared near the Roman frontier, though they were not strongly
unified. The first of these conglomerations mentioned in the historical
sources were the Alamanni (a term meaning "all men") who
appear in Roman texts sometime in the 3rd century CE. These are
believed to have been a mixture of mainly Suevian peoples, who coalesced
in the Agri Decumates. Emperor Severus Alexander was killed by his
own soldiers in 235 CE for paying for peace with the Alamanni, following
which the anti-aristocratic general Maximinus Thrax was elected
to be emperor by the Pannonian army. According to the notoriously
unreliable Augustan History (Historia Augusta), he was born in Thrace
or Moesia to a Gothic father and an Alanic mother,
Secondly,
soon after the appearance of the Alamanni on the Upper Rhine, the
Franks began to be mentioned as occupying the land at the bend of
the lower Rhine. In this case, the collective name was new, but
the original peoples who composed the group were largely local,
and their old names were still mentioned occasionally. The Franks
were still sometimes called Germani as well.
![](624px-Gothic_raids_in_the_3rd_century.jpg)
Gothic invasions of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century
Thirdly, the Goths and other "Gothic peoples" from the
area of today's Poland and Ukraine, many of whom were Germanic-speaking
peoples, began to appear in records of this period.
•
In 238, Goths
crossed the Danube and invaded Histria. The Romans made an agreement
with them, giving them payment and receiving prisoners in exchange.
The Dacian Carpi, who had been paid off by the Romans before then,
complained to the Romans that they were more powerful than the Goths.
• After
his victory in 244, Persian ruler Shapur I recorded his defeat of
the Germanic and Gothic soldiers who were fighting for emperor Gordian
III. Possibly this recruitment resulted from the agreements made
after Histria.
• After
attacks by the Carpi into imperial territory in 246 and 248, Philip
the Arab defeated them and then cut off payments to the Goths. In
250 CE a Gothic king Cniva led Goths with Bastarnae, Carpi, Vandals,
and Taifali into the empire, laying siege to Philippopolis. He followed
his victory there with another on the marshy terrain at Abrittus,
a battle which cost the life of Roman emperor Decius.
• In
253/254, further attacks occurred reaching Thessalonica and possibly
Thrace.
• In
approximately 255-257 there were several raids from the Black sea
coast by "Scythian" peoples, apparently first led by the
Boranes, who were probably a Sarmatian people. These were followed
by bigger raids led by the Herules in 267/268, and a mixed group
of Goths and Herules in 269/270.
In 260 CE, as the Roman Imperial Crisis of the Third Century reached
its climax, Postumus, a Germanic soldier in Roman service, established
the Gallic Empire, which claimed suzerainty over Germania, Gaul,
Hispania and Britannia. Postumus was eventually assassinated by
his own followers, after which the Gallic Empire quickly disintegrated.
The traditional types of border battles with Germani, Sarmatians
and Goths continued on the Rhine and Danube frontiers after this.
•
In the 270s the
emperor Probus fought several Germanic peoples who breached territory
on both the Rhine and the Danube, and tried to maintain Roman control
over the Agri Decumates. He fought not only the Franks and Alamanni,
but also Vandal and Burgundian groups now apparently near the Danube.
• In
the 280s, Carus fought Quadi and Sarmatians.
• In
291, the 11th panegyric praising emperor Maximian was given in Trier;
this marked the first time the Gepids, Tervingi and Taifali were
mentioned. The passage described a battle outside the empire where
the Gepids were fighting on the side of the Vandals, who had been
attacked by Taifali and a "part" of the Goths. The other
part of the Goths had defeated the Burgundians who were supported
by Tervingi and Alemanni.
In the 350s Julian campaigned against the Alamanni and Franks on
the Rhine. One result was that Julian accepted that the Salian Franks
could live within the empire, north of Tongeren.
By
369, the Romans appear to have ceded their large province of Dacia
to the Tervingi, Taifals and Victohali.
Migration
Period (ca. 375 – 568) :
Since its very beginning, the Roman empire had proactively kept
the northern peoples and the potential danger they represented under
control, just as Caesar had proposed. However, the ability to handle
the barbarians in the old way broke down in the late 4th century
and the western part of the empire itself broke down. In addition
to the Franks on the Rhine frontier, and Suevian peoples such as
the Alamanni, a sudden movement of eastern Germanic-speaking "Gothic
peoples" now played an increasing role both inside and outside
imperial territory.
Gothic
entry into the empire :
The Gothic wars of the late 4th century saw a rapid series of major
events: the entry of a large number of Goths in 376; the defeat
of a major Roman army and killing of emperor Valens at the Battle
of Adrianopolis in 378; and a subsequent major settlement treaty
for the Goths which seems to have allowed them significant concessions
compared to traditional treaties with barbarian peoples. While the
eastern empire eventually recovered, the subsequent long-reigning
western emperor Honorius (reigned 393-423) was unable to impose
imperial authority over much of the empire for most of his reign.
In contrast to the eastern empire, in the west the "attempts
of its ruling class to use the Roman-barbarian kings to preserve
the res publica failed".
The
Gothic wars were affected indirectly by the arrival of the nomadic
Huns from Central Asia in the Ukrainian region. Some Gothic peoples,
such as the Gepids and the Greuthungi (sometimes seen as predecessors
of the later Ostrogoths), joined the newly forming Hunnish faction,
and played a prominent role in the Hunnic Empire, where Gothic became
a lingua franca. Based on the description of Socrates Scholasticus,
Guy Halsall has argued that the Hunnish hegemony developed after
a major campaign by Valens against the Goths, which had caused great
damage, but failed to achieve a decisive victory. Peter Heather
has argued that Socrates should be rejected on this point, as inconsistent
with the testimony of Ammianus.
The
Gothic Thervingi, under the leadership of Athanaric, had in any
case borne the impact of the campaign of Valens, and were also losers
against the Huns, but clients of Rome. A new faction under leadership
of Fritigern, a Christian, were given asylum inside the Roman Empire
in 376 CE. They crossed the Danube and became foederati. With the
emperor occupied in the Middle East, the Tervingi were treated badly
and becoming desperate; significant numbers of mounted Greuthungi,
Alans and others were able to cross the river and support a Tervingian
uprising leading to the massive Roman defeat at Adrianople.
Around
382, the Romans and the Goths now within the empire came to agreements
about the terms under which the Goths should live. There is debate
over the exact nature of such agreements, and for example whether
they allowed the continuous semi-independent existence of pre-existing
peoples; however the Goths do appear to have been allowed more privileges
than in traditional settlements with such outside groups. One result
of the comprehensive settlement was that the imperial army now had
a larger number of Goths, including Gothic generals.
Imperial
turmoil :
By 383 a new emperor, Theodosius I, was seen as victorious over
the Goths and having brought the situation back under control. Goths
were a prominent but resented part of the eastern military. The
Greutungi and Alans had been settled in Pannonia by the western
co-emperor Gratian (assassinated in 383) who was himself a Pannonian.
Theodosius died 395, and was succeeded by his sons: Arcadius in
the east, and Honorius, who was still a minor, in the west. The
Western empire had however become destabilized since 383, with several
young emperors including Gratian having previously been murdered.
Court factions and military leaders in the east and west attempted
to control the situation.
Alaric
was a Roman military commander of Gothic background, who first appears
in the record in the time of Theodosius. After the death of Theodosius,
he became one of the various Roman competitors for influence and
power in the difficult situation. The forces he led were described
as mixed barbarian forces, and clearly included many other people
of Gothic background, a phenomenon which had become common in the
Balkans. In an important turning point for Roman history, during
the factional turmoil, his army came to act increasingly as an independent
political entity within the Roman empire, and at some point he came
to be referred to as their king, probably around 401 CE, when he
lost his official Roman title. This is the origin of the Visigoths,
whom the empire later allowed to settle in what is now southwestern
France. While military units had often had their own ethnic history
and symbolism, this is the first time that such a group established
a new kingdom. There is disagreement about whether Alaric or his
family had a royal background, but there is no doubt that this kingdom
was a new entity, very different from any previous Gothic kingdoms.
Invasions
of 401 - 411 :
In the aftermath of the large-scale Gothic entries into the empire,
the Germanic Rhine peoples, the Franks and Alemanni, became more
secure in their positions in 395, when Stilicho made agreements
with them; these treaties allowed him to withdraw the imperial forces
from the Rhine frontier in order to use them in his conflicts with
Alaric and the Eastern empire.
On
the Danube, change was far more dramatic. In the words of Walter
Goffart :
•
Between 401 and
411, four distinct groups of barbarians – different from Alaric's
Goths – invaded Roman territory, all apparently on one-way
journeys, in large-scale efforts to transpose themselves onto imperial
soil and not just plunder and return home.
The
reasons that these invasions apparently all dispersed from the same
area, the Middle Danube, are uncertain. It is most often argued
that the Huns must have already started moving west, and consequently
pressuring the Middle Danube. Peter Heather for example writes that
around 400, "a highly explosive situation was building up in
the Middle Danube, as Goths, Vandals, Alans and other refugees from
the Huns moved west of the Carpathians" into the area of modern
Hungary on the Roman frontier.
Walter
Goffart, in contrast, has pointed out that there is no clear evidence
of new eastern groups arriving in the area immediately before the
great movements, and so it remains possible that the Huns moved
West after these large groups had left the Middle Danube. Goffart's
suggestion is that the example of the Goths, such as those led by
Alaric, had set an example leading to a "common perception,
however indistinct, that warriors could improve their condition
by forcing their existence on the attention of the Empire, demanding
to be dealt with, and exacting a part in the imperial enterprise."
Whatever
the chain of events, the Middle Danube later became the centre of
Attila's loose empire containing many East Germanic people from
the east, who remained there after the death of Attila. The makeup
of peoples in that area, previously the home of the Germanic Marcomanni,
Quadi and non-Germanic Iazyges, changed completely in ways which
had a significant impact on the Roman empire and its European neighbours.
Thereafter, though the new peoples ruling this area still included
Germanic-speakers, as discussed above, they were not described by
Romans as Germani, but rather "Gothic peoples".
•
In 401, Claudian
mentions a Roman victory over a large force including Vandals, in
the province of Raëtia. It is possible that this group was
involved in the later crossing of the Rhine.
• In
405–406, Radagaisus, who was probably Gothic, entered the
empire on the Middle Danube with a very large force of unclearly
defined, but apparently Gothic, composition, and invaded Italy.
He was captured and killed in 406 near Florence and 12000 of his
men recruited into Roman forces.
• A
more successful invasion, apparently also originating from the Middle
Danube, reached the Rhine a few months later. As described by Halsall:
"On 31 December 405 a huge body from the interior of Germania
crossed the Rhine: Siling and Hasding Vandals, Sueves and Alans.
The Franks in the area fought back furiously and even killed the
Vandal king. Significantly no source mentions any defense by Roman
troops." The composition of this group of barbarians, who were
not all Germanic-speaking, indicates that they had traveled from
the area north of the Middle Danube. (The Suevians involved may
well have included remnants of the once powerful Marcomanni and
Quadi.) The non-Germanic Alans were the largest group, and one part
of them under King Goar settled with Roman acquiescence in Gaul,
while the rest of these peoples entered Roman Iberia in 409 and
established kingdoms there, with some travelling further to establish
the Vandal kingdom of North Africa.
• In
411 a Burgundian group established themselves in northern Germania
Superior on the Rhine, between Frankish and Alamanni groups, holding
the cities of Worms, Speyer, and Strassburg. They and a group of
Alans helped establish yet another short-lived claimant to the throne,
Jovinus, who was eventually defeated by the Visigoths cooperating
with Honorius.
Motivated by the ensuing chaos in Gaul, in 406 the Roman army in
Britain elected Constantine "III" as emperor and they
took control there.
In
408, the eastern emperor Arcadius died, leaving a child as successor,
and the west Roman military leader Stilicho was killed. Alaric,
wanting a formal Roman command but unable to negotiate one, invaded
Rome itself, twice, in 401 and 408.
Constantius
III, who became Magister militum by 411, restored order step-by-step,
eventually allowing the Visigoths to settle within the empire in
southwest Gaul. He also committed to retaking control of Iberia,
from the Rhine-crossing groups. When Constantius died in 421, having
been co-emperor himself for one year, Honorius was the only emperor
in the West. However, Honorius died in 423 without an heir. After
this, the Western Roman empire steadily lost control of its provinces.
From
Western Roman Empire to medieval kingdoms (420 – 568) :
This
section needs additional citations for verification.
![](Europe_and_the_Near_East_at_476_AD.png)
Germanic kingdoms and peoples after the end of the Western
Roman Empire in 476 CE
![](Odovacar_Ravenna_477.jpg)
Coin
of Odoacer, Ravenna, 477, with Odoacer in profile, depicted with
a "barbarian" moustache
![](597px-Germanic_kingdoms_526CE.png)
Germanic
kingdoms in 526 CE
![](640px-Invasions_of_the_Roman_Empire_1.png)
2nd
century to 6th century simplified migrations
The Western Roman Empire declined gradually in the 5th and 6th centuries,
and the eastern emperors had only limited control over events in
Italy and the western empire. Germanic speakers, who by now dominated
the Roman military in Europe, and lived both inside and outside
the empire, played many roles in this complex dynamic. Notably,
as the old territory of the western empire came to be ruled on a
regional basis, the barbarian military forces, ruled now by kings,
took over administration with differing levels of success. With
some exceptions, such as the Alans and Bretons, most of these new
political entities identified themselves with a Germanic-speaking
heritage.
In
the 420s, Flavius Aëtius was a general who successfully used
Hunnish forces on several occasions, fighting Roman factions and
various barbarians including Goths and Franks. In 429 he was elevated
to the rank of magister militum in the western empire, which eventually
allowed him to gain control of much of its policy by 433. One of
his first conflicts was with Boniface, a rebellious governor of
the province of Africa in modern Tunisia and Libya. Both sides sought
an alliance with the Vandals based in southern Spain who had acquired
a fleet there. In this context, the Vandal and Alan kingdom of North
Africa and the western Mediterranean would come into being.
In
433 Aëtius was in exile and spent time in the Hunnish domain.
In 434, the Vandals were granted the control of some parts of northwest
Africa, but Aëtius defeated Boniface using Hunnish forces.
In 436 Aëtius defeated the Burgundians on the Rhine with the
help of Hunnish forces.
In 439 the Vandals and their allies captured Carthage. The Romans
made a new agreement recognizing the Visigothic kingdom.
In 440, the Hunnish "empire" as it could now be called,
under Attila and his brother Bleda began a series of attacks over
the Danube into the eastern empire, and the Danubian part of the
western empire. They received enormous payments from the eastern
empire and then focused their attentions to the west, where they
were already familiar with the situation, and in friendly contact
with the African Vandals.
In 442 Aëtius seems to have granted the Alans who had remained
in Gaul a kingdom, apparently including Orléans, possibly
to counter local independent Roman groups (so called Bagaudae, who
also competed for power in Iberia).
In 443 Aëtius settled the Burgundians from the Rhine deeper
in the empire, in Savoy in Gaul.
In 451, the large mixed force of Attila crossed the Rhine but was
defeated by Aetius with forces from the settled barbarians in Gaul:
Visigoths, Franks, Burgundians and Alans.
In 452 Attila attacked Italy, but had to retreat to the Middle Danube
because of an outbreak of disease.
In 453, Aëtius and Attila both died.
In 454, the Hunnish alliance divided and the Huns fought the Battle
of Nedao against their former Germanic vassals. The names of the
peoples who had made up the empire appear in records again. Several
of them were allowed to become federates of the eastern empire in
the Balkans, and others created kingdoms in the Middle Danube.
In the subsequent decades, the Franks and Alamanni tended to remain
in small kingdoms but these began to extend deeper into the empire.
In northern Gaul, a Roman military "King of Franks" also
seems to have existed, Childeric I, whose successor Clovis I established
dominance of the smaller kingdoms of the Franks and Alamanni, whom
they defeated at the Battle of Zülpich in 496.
Compared
to Gaul, what happened in Roman Britain, which was similarly both
isolated from Italy and heavily Romanized, is less clearly recorded.
However the end result was similar, with a Germanic-speaking military
class, the Anglo-Saxons, taking over administration of what remained
of Roman society, and conflict between an unknown number of regional
powers. While major parts of Gaul and Britain redefined themselves
ethnically on the basis of their new rulers, as Francia and England,
in England the main population also became Germanic-speaking. The
exact reasons for the difference are uncertain, but significant
levels of migration played a role.
In
476 Odoacer, a Roman soldier who came from the peoples of the Middle
Danube in the aftermath of the Battle of Nedao, became King of Italy,
removing the last of the western emperors from power. He was murdered
and replaced in 493 by Theoderic the Great, described as King of
the Ostrogoths, one of the most powerful Middle Danube peoples of
the old Hun alliance. Theoderic had been raised up and supported
by the eastern emperors, and his administration continued a sophisticated
Roman administration, in cooperation with the traditional Roman
senatorial class. Similarly, culturally Roman lifestyles continued
in North Africa under the Vandals, in Savoy under the Burgundians,
and within the Visigothic realm.
The
Ostrogothic kingdom ended in 542 when the eastern emperor Justinian
made a last great effort to reconquer the Western Mediterranean.
The conflicts destroyed the Italian senatorial class, and the eastern
empire was also unable to hold Italy for long. In 568 the Lombard
king Alboin, a Suevian people who had entered the Middle Danubian
region from the north conquering and partly absorbing the frontier
peoples there, entered Italy and created the Italian Kingdom of
the Lombards there. These Lombards now included Suevi, Heruli, Gepids,
Bavarians, Bulgars, Avars, Saxons, Goths, and Thuringians. As Peter
Heather has written these "peoples" were no longer peoples
in any traditional sense.
Older
accounts which describe a long period of massive movements of peoples
and military invasions are oversimplified, and describe only specific
incidents. According to Herwig Wolfram, the Germanic peoples did
not and could not "conquer the more advanced Roman world"
nor were they able to "restore it as a political and economic
entity"; instead, he asserts that the empire's "universalism"
was replaced by "tribal particularism" which gave way
to "regional patriotism". The Germanic peoples who overran
the Western Roman Empire probably numbered less than 100,000 people
per group, including approximately 15,000-20,000 warriors. They
constituted a tiny minority of the population in the lands over
which they seized control.
Apart
from the common history many of them had in the Roman military,
and on Roman frontiers, a new and longer-term unifying factor for
the new kingdoms was that by 500, the start of the Middle Ages,
most of the old Western empire had converted to the same Rome-centred
Catholic form of Christianity. A key turning point was the conversion
of Clovis I in 508. Before this point, many of the Germanic kingdoms,
such as those of the Goths and Burgundians, now adhered to Arian
Christianity, a form of Christianity which they perhaps took up
in the time of the Arian emperor Valens, but which was now considered
a heresy.
Early
Middle Ages :
![](640px-Viking_Expansion.svg.png)
Map
showing area of Norse settlements during the Viking Age, including
Norman conquests
In the centuries after 568, the Visigothic kingdom, by now centred
in Spain, was ended by the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th
century. Much of continental catholic Europe became part of a greater
Francia under the Merovingian and then the Carolingian dynasty,
which began with Pepin the Short, the son of Charles Martel. Charles,
though not a king, reconsolidated the Frankish kingdom's dominance
over Saxons, Frisians, Bavarians and Burgundians, and defeated the
Umayyads at the 732 Battle of Tours. Pepin's son Charlemagne conquered
the Lombards in 774, and in an important turning point in European
history, was crowned as emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas
Day, 800 CE. This consolidated a shift in the power structure from
the south to the north, and was also a strong symbolic link to Rome
and the Roman Christianity. The core of the new empire included
what is now France, Germany and the Benelux countries. The empire
laid the foundations for the medieval and early modern ancien regime,
finally destroyed only by the French Revolution. The Frankish-Catholic
way of doing politics and war and religion also had a strong effect
upon all neighbouring regions, including what became England, Spain,
Italy, Austria, and Bohemia.
The
effect of old Germanic culture on this new Latin-using empire is
a topic of dispute, because there was much continuity with the old
Roman legal systems, and the increasingly important Christian religion.
An example which is argued to show an influence of earlier Germanic
culture is law. The new kingdoms created new law codes in Latin,
with occasional Germanic words. These were Roman-influenced, and
under strong church influence all law was increasingly standardized
to accord with Christian philosophy, and old Roman law.
Germanic
languages in western Europe no longer exist apart from the remaining
West Germanic languages of England, the Frankish homelands near
the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, and the large area between
the Rhine and Elbe. With the splitting off of this latter area within
the Frankish empire, the first ever political entity corresponding
loosely to modern "Germany" came into existence.
In
Eastern Europe the once relatively developed periphery of the Roman
world collapsed culturally and economically, and this can be seen
in the Germanic-associated archaeological evidence: in the area
of today's southern Poland and Ukraine the collapse occurred not
long after 400, and by 700 Germanic material culture was entirely
west of the Elbe in the area where the Romans had been active since
Caesar's time, and the Franks were now active. East of the Elbe
was to become mainly Slavic-speaking.
Outside
of the Roman-influenced zone, Germanic-speaking Scandinavia was
in the Vendel period and eventually entered the Viking Age, with
expansion to Britain, Ireland and Iceland in the west and as far
as Russia and Greece in the east. Swedish Vikings, known locally
as the Rus', ventured deep into Russia, where they founded the political
entities of Kievan Rus'. They defeated the Khazar Khaganate and
became the dominant power in Eastern Europe. The dominant language
of these communities came to be East Slavic. By 900 CE the Vikings
also secured a foothold on Frankish soil along the Lower Seine River
valley in what became known as Normandy. On the other hand, the
Scandinavian countries were, starting with Denmark, under the influence
of Germany to their south, and also the lands where they had colonies.
Bit by bit they became Christian, and organized themselves into
Frankish- and Catholic-influenced kingdoms.
![](Holy_Roman_Empire_11th_century_map-en.svg.png)
Kingdom of Germany (Regnum Teutonicum) within the Holy Roman
Empire, circa 1000 AD
Roman descriptions of early Germanic people and culture
:
Caesar and Tacitus gave colorful descriptions of the Germanic peoples,
but scholars note that these need to be viewed cautiously. For one
thing, many of the tropes used, such as those concerning the red
or blond hair, the blue eyes, and the undisciplined emotions of
the Germanic peoples, were old ones that had long been used for
any of the northern peoples such as Gauls. Secondly, the Germanic
descriptions of both authors are recognized as having been intended
to be both critical of Roman moral softness, and pushing for specific
foreign policies.
Tacitus
famously described the Germanic people as ethnically "unmixed",
which had an influence on pre-1945 German racist nationalism. It
was not necessarily meant to be purely positive :
For
my own part, I agree with those who think that the tribes of Germany
are free from all taint of inter-marriages with foreign nations,
and that they appear as a distinct, unmixed race, like none but
themselves. Hence, too, the same physical peculiarities throughout
so vast a population. All have fierce blue eyes, red hair, huge
frames, fit only for a sudden exertion. They are less able to bear
laborious work. Heat and thirst they cannot in the least endure;
to cold and hunger their climate and their soil inure them.
Modern
scholars point out that one way of interpreting such remarks is
that they are consistent with other comments by Tacitus indicating
that the Germanic people lived very remotely, in unattractive countries,
for example in the next part of the text :
Their
country, though somewhat various in appearance, yet generally either
bristles with forests or reeks with swamps; it is more rainy on
the side of Gaul, bleaker on that of Noricum and Pannonia. It is
productive of grain, but unfavourable to fruit-bearing trees; it
is rich in flocks and herds, but these are for the most part undersized,
and even the cattle have not their usual beauty or noble head.
Archaeological
research has revealed that the early Germanic peoples were primarily
agricultural, although husbandry and fishing were important sources
of livelihood depending on the nature of their environment. They
carried out extensive trade with their neighbours, notably exporting
amber, slaves, mercenaries and animal hides, and importing weapons,
metals, glassware and coins in return. They eventually came to excel
at craftsmanship, particularly metalworking. In many cases, ancient
Germanic smiths and other craftsmen produced products of higher
quality than those of the Romans.
Before
Tacitus, Julius Caesar described the Germani and their customs in
his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, though in certain cases it is
still a matter of debate if he refers to Northern Celtic peoples
or clearly identified Germanic peoples. Caesar notes that the Gauls
had earlier dominated and sent colonies into the lands of the Germans,
but that the Gauls had since degenerated under the influence of
Roman civilization, and now considered themselves inferior in military
prowess.
[The
Germani] have neither Druids to preside over sacred offices, nor
do they pay great regard to sacrifices. They rank in the number
of the gods those alone whom they behold, and by whose instrumentality
they are obviously benefited, namely, the sun, fire, and the moon;
they have not heard of the other deities even by report. Their whole
life is occupied in hunting and in the pursuits of the military
art; from childhood they devote themselves to fatigue and hardships.
Those who have remained chaste for the longest time, receive the
greatest commendation among their people; they think that by this
the growth is promoted, by this the physical powers are increased
and the sinews are strengthened. And to have had knowledge of a
woman before the twentieth year they reckon among the most disgraceful
acts; of which matter there is no concealment, because they bathe
promiscuously in the rivers and [only] use skins or small cloaks
of deer's hides, a large portion of the body being in consequence
naked.
They
do not pay much attention to agriculture, and a large portion of
their food consists in milk, cheese, and flesh; nor has any one
a fixed quantity of land or his own individual limits; but the magistrates
and the leading men each year apportion to the groups and families,
who have united together, as much land as, and in the place in which,
they think proper, and the year after compel them to remove elsewhere.
Genetics
:
![](655px-Percentage_of_major_Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_Europe.png)
Percentage
of major Y-DNA haplogroups in Europe; Haplogroup I1 represented
by light blue
In a 2013 book which reviewed studies up until then it was remarked
that: "If and when scientists find ancient Y-DNA from men whom
we can guess spoke Proto-Germanic, it is most likely to be a mixture
of haplogroup I1, R1a1a, R1b-P312 and R1b-106". This was based
purely upon those being the Y-DNA groups judged to be most commonly
shared by speakers of Germanic languages today. However, as remarked
in that book: "All of these are far older than Germanic languages
and some are common among speakers of other languages too."
Source
:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Germanic_peoples