Chapter VI (2)

Here a change had to be effected. Domitian, who was doubtless a good administrator of the empire, but obtuse to the demands of military honour, was followed after the short reign of Nerva by the emperor Trajan, who, first and above all a soldier, not merely tore in pieces that agreement, but also took measures that similar things should not recur. The war against the Suebi and Sarmatae, which was still being continued at Domitian's death (96), was happily ended, as it would seem, under Nerva in the year 97. The new emperor went, even before he held his entrance into the capital of the empire, from the Rhine to the Danube, where he stayed in the winter 98-99, but not to attack the Dacians at once, but to prepare for the war: to this time belongs the construction--joining itself on to the roads formed in upper Germany--of the road completed on the right bank of the Danube in the region of Orsova in the year 100 (p. 153). For the war against the Dacians, in which, as in all his campaigns, he commanded in person, he did not set out till the spring of 101. He crossed the Danube below Viminacium, and advanced against the not far distant capital of the king, Sarmizegetusa. Decebalus with his allies--the Buri and other tribes dwelling to the northward took part in this struggle--offered resolute resistance, and it was only by vehement and bloody conflicts that the Romans cleared their way; the number of the wounded was so great that the emperor put his own wardrobe at the disposal of the physicians. But victory did not waver; one stronghold after another fell; the sisters of the king, the captives from the former war, the standards taken from the armies of Domitian, fell into the hands of the Romans; for the king, intercepted by Trajan himself and by the brave Lusius Quietus, nothing was left but complete surrender (102). Trajan demanded nothing less than the renunciation of the sovereign power and the entrance of the Dacian kingdom into the clientship of Rome. The deserters, the arms, the engines of war, the workmen once supplied for these by Rome, had to be delivered up, and the king personally to kneel before the victor; he divested himself of the right to make war and peace, and promised military service; the fortresses were either razed or delivered to the Romans, and in these, above all in the capital, there remained a Roman garrison. The strong bridge of stone, which Trajan caused to be thrown over the Danube at Drobetae (opposite Turnu Severinului), secured the communication even in the bad season of the year, and gave to the Dacian garrisons a reserve-support in the near legions of upper-Moesia.

[Sidenote: Second Dacian war.]

But the Dacian nation, and above all the king himself, did not know the art of accommodating themselves to dependence, as the kings of Cappadocia and Mauretania had understood it; or rather they had merely taken upon them the yoke in the hope of ridding themselves of it again on the first opportunity. The signs of this were soon apparent. A portion of the arms to be delivered up was kept back; the fortresses were not given over as had been stipulated; an asylum was still granted, moreover, to Roman deserters; portions of territory were wrested from the Jazyges at enmity with the Dacians, or perhaps the occurrence of violations of the frontier on their part was not taken patiently; a lively and suspicious intercourse was maintained with the more remote natives still free. Trajan could not but be convinced that his work was but half done; and, rapid in resolution as he was, he, without entering upon further negotiations, declared war once more against the king three years after the conclusion of peace (105). Gladly would the latter have avoided it; but the demand that he should give himself a captive spoke too clearly. Nothing was left but a struggle of despair, and all were not ready for this; a great part of the Dacians submitted without resistance. The appeal to the neighbouring peoples to enter jointly into measures for warding off the danger that threatened even their freedom and their national existence sounded without effect; Decebalus and the Dacians that remained faithful to him stood alone in this war. The attempts to make away with the imperial general by means of deserters, or to purchase tolerable terms by the release of a high officer taken prisoner, likewise broke down. The emperor marched once more as victor into the enemy's capital, and Decebalus, who up to the last moment had struggled with fate, put himself to death when all was lost (107). This time Trajan made an end; the war concerned no longer the freedom of the people, but its very existence. The native population were driven out from the best part of the land, and these districts were reoccupied with a non-national population brought in from the mountains of Dalmatia, for the mines, and otherwise preponderantly, as it would appear, from Asia Minor. In several regions, no doubt, the old population yet remained, and even the language of the country maintained its ground.[130] These Dacians, as well as the sections dwelling beyond the bounds, still gave trouble to the Romans--subsequently, for example, under Commodus and Maximinus; but they stood isolated, and dwindled away. The danger with which the vigorous Thracian race had several times threatened the Roman rule could not be allowed to recur, and this end Trajan attained. The Rome of Trajan was no longer that of the age of Hannibal; but it was still dangerous to have conquered the Romans.

[Sidenote: Trajan's column.]

The stately column which six years afterwards was erected to the emperor by the imperial senate in the new Forum Trajanum of the capital, and which still adorns it at the present day, is an evidence, to which we possess nothing parallel, of the extent to which the traditional history of the Roman imperial period has suffered havoc. Throughout its height of exactly one hundred Roman feet it is covered with separate representations to the number of one hundred and twenty-four--a chiselled picture-book of the Dacian wars, to which almost everywhere we lack the text. We see the watch-towers of the Romans with their pointed roofs, their palisaded court, their upper gallery, their fire-signals; the town on the bank of the Danube-stream, whose river-god looks on at the Roman warriors, as they march under their standards along the bridge of boats; the emperor himself in his council of war, and then sacrificing at the altar before the walls of the camp. It is narrated that the Buri allied with the Dacians dissuaded Trajan from the war in a Latin sentence written on a huge mushroom; we fancy that we recognise this mushroom placed as a load on a sumpter-animal, jumping from which a barbarian, lying on the ground with his club, points out the mushroom with his finger to the advancing emperor. We see the pitching of the camp, the felling of trees, the fetching of water, the laying of the bridge. The first captive Dacians, easily recognisable by their long-sleeved frocks and their wide trousers, with their hands bound behind their back, and with their long bushy hair grasped by the soldiers, are brought before the emperor. We see the combats, the men hurling spears, the slingers, the sickle-bearers, the archers on foot, the heavy-mailed horsemen also bearing the bow, the dragon-banners of the Dacians, the officers of the enemy adorned with the round cap as the token of their rank, the pine-wood, into which the Dacians carry their wounded, the cut-off heads of the barbarians deposited before the emperor. We see the Dacian village on piles in the middle of the lake, against the round huts of which, with their pointed roof, the burning torches are flying. Women and children sue the emperor for mercy. The wounded are cared for and bound up; badges of honour are distributed to officers and soldiers. Then the conflict proceeds; the hostile entrenchments, partly of wood, partly stone walls, are assailed; the besieging-train advances, the ladders are brought up, the storming-column makes its assault under cover of the _testudo_. Lastly, the king with his train lies at the feet of Trajan; the dragon-banners are in the hands of the Romans; the troops in exultation salute the emperor; Victoria stands before the piled-up arms of the enemy and inscribes the slab recording the victory. Then follow the pictures of the second war, of similar character on the whole to those of the first series. Worthy of notice is one great representation, which, after the king's stronghold has been burnt, appears to show the princes of the Dacians sitting round a kettle and, one after the other, emptying the poison-cup; another, where the head of the brave Dacian king is brought on a tray to the emperor; and lastly, the closing picture, the long series of the conquered with their women, children, and flocks marching away from their home. The emperor himself wrote the history of this war--as Frederick the Great wrote that of the Seven Years' War--and many others after him; all this is lost to us, and as nobody would venture to invent the history of the Seven Years' War from Menzel's pictures, there is left to us only, along with a glimpse into half intelligible details, the painful feeling of a stirring and great historical catastrophe faded for ever and lost even to remembrance.

[Sidenote: Military position on the Danube after Trajan.]

The defence of the frontier in the region of the Danube was not shifted to such a degree, as might well be expected, in consequence of the conversion of Dacia into a Roman province; a change, in the strict sense, of the line of defence did not take place, but the new province was treated on the whole as an eccentric position, which was only connected directly with the Roman territory towards the south along the Danube itself, on the other three sides projected into the barbarian land. The plain of the Theiss, stretching between Pannonia and Dacia continued in the hands of the Jazyges; there have been found remains of old walls, which led from the Danube over the Theiss away to the Dacian mountains, and bounded the region of the Jazyges to the north, but of the time and the authors of these entrenchments nothing certain is known. Bessarabia also is intersected by a double barrier-line which, running from the Pruth to the Dniester, ends at Tyra, and--according to the inadequate reports hitherto before us on the subject--appears to proceed from the Romans.[131] If this was the case, then Moldavia and the south half of Bessarabia as well as the whole of Wallachia were incorporated in the Roman empire. But, though this may have been done nominally, the Roman rule hardly extended effectively to these lands; at least there is, up to the present time, an utter absence of sure proofs of Roman settlement either in eastern Wallachia or in Moldavia and Bessarabia. At any rate, the Danube here remained, much more than the Rhine in Germany, the limit of Roman civilisation and the proper basis of frontier-defence. The positions on it were considerably reinforced. It was a fortunate circumstance for Rome that, while the surge of peoples rose on the Danube, it sank on the Rhine, and the troops that could be there dispensed with were disposable elsewhere.

[Sidenote: Commands increased to five.]

Although under Vespasian probably not more than six legions were stationed on the Danube, their number was subsequently raised by Domitian and Trajan to ten; the two chief commands of Moesia and Pannonia hitherto subsisting were withal divided, the first under Domitian, the second under Trajan, and, as the Dacian was super-added, the whole number of the commanderships on the lower Danube was fixed at five. At the outset, indeed, they seem to have cut off the corner which this stream forms below Durostorum (Silistria)--the modern Dobrudscha--and from the place now called Rassowa, where the river approaches within thirty miles of the sea, in order then to bend almost at a right angle to the north, to have substituted for the river-line a fortified road after the manner of the British (p. 187), which reached the coast at Tomis.[132] This corner, however, was, at least from the time of Hadrian, embraced within the Roman frontier-fortification; for from that time we find lower Moesia, which before Trajan had probably possessed no larger standing garrisons at all, furnished with the three legionary camps of Novae (near Svischtova), Durostorum (Silistria), and Troesmis (Iglitza, near Galatz), of which the last lies in front of that very angle of the Danube. Against the Jazyges the position was strengthened by adding to the upper Moesian camps at Singidunum and Viminacium the lower Pannonian at the confluence of the Theiss with the Danube near Acumincum. Dacia itself was then but weakly garrisoned. The capital, now a colony of Trajan, Sarmizegetusa, lay not far from the chief crossings over the Danube in upper Moesia; here and on the middle Marisus, as well as beyond it in the districts of the gold mines, the Romans chiefly settled; the one legion serving as garrison since Trajan's time in Dacia obtained its headquarters, at least soon afterwards, in this region at Apulum (Karlsburg). Farther to the north Potaissa (Thorda) and Napoca (Klausenburg) were probably also at once taken possession of by the Romans, but it was only gradually that the great Pannono-Dacian military centres pushed farther towards the north. The transference of the lower Pannonian legion from Acumincum to Aquincum, the modern Buda, and the occupation of this commanding military position, fall not later than Hadrian, and probably under him; probably at the same time one of the upper Pannonian legions came to Brigetio (opposite to Comorn). Under Commodus all settlement was prohibited along the northern frontier of Dacia for a breadth of nearly five miles, which must stand connected with the frontier regulations to be subsequently mentioned after the Marcomanian war. At that time also the fortified lines may have originated, which barred this frontier similarly to the upper Germanic. Under Severus one of the legions previously in lower Moesia was brought to Potaissa (Thorda) on the Dacian north frontier.

[Sidenote: Dacia an advanced position.]

But even after these transferences Dacia remained an advanced position on the left bank, covered by mountains and defences, with reference to which it might well be doubtful whether it did more to promote or to impede the general defensive attitude of the Romans. Hadrian, in fact, had thought of giving up this territory, and so regarded its incorporation as a mistake; after the step had once been taken, there certainly preponderated the consideration, if not of the lucrative gold mines of the country, at any rate of the Roman civilisation rapidly developing itself in the region of the Marisus. But he caused at least the superstructure of the stone bridge of the Danube to be removed, as his apprehension of its being used by the enemy outweighed his consideration for the Dacian garrison. The later period released itself from this anxiety; but the eccentric position of Dacia in relation to the rest of the frontier-defence remained.

The sixty years after the Dacian wars of Trajan were for the Danube lands a time of peace and of peaceful development. No doubt there was never entire quiet, particularly at the mouths of the Danube, and even the hazardous expedient of purchasing the security of the frontier from the adjoining restless neighbours, just as was done with Decebalus, by the bestowal of yearly gratuities was further employed;[133] yet the remains of antiquity show at this very time everywhere the flourishing of urban life, and not a few communities, particularly of Pannonia, name as their founder Hadrian or Pius. But upon this stillness followed a storm such as the empire had not yet sustained, and which, although properly but a frontier-war, by its extension over a series of provinces and by its duration for thirteen years shook the empire itself.

[Sidenote: Marcomanian war.]

The war named after the Marcomani was not kindled by any single personage of the type of Hannibal or Decebalus. As little did aggressions on the part of the Romans provoke this war; the emperor Pius injured no neighbour, either powerful or humble, and set on peace almost more than its just value. The realm of Maroboduus and of Vannius had thereafter, perhaps in consequence of the partition under Vangio and Sido (p. 216), become divided into the kingdom of the Marcomani in what is now Bohemia and that of the Quadi in Moravia and upper Hungary. Conflicts with the Romans do not appear to have occurred here; the vassal-relation of the princes of the Quadi was even formally recognised under the reign of Pius by the confirmation asked for. Shiftings of peoples, which lay beyond the Roman horizon, were the proximate cause of the great war. Soon after the death of Pius († 161) masses of Germans, especially Langobardi from the Elbe, but also Marcomani and other bodies of men, appeared in Pannonia, apparently to gain new abodes on the right bank. Pressed hard by the Roman troops who were despatched against them, they sent the prince of the Marcomani, Ballomarius, and with him a representative of each of the ten tribes taking part, to renew their request for assignation of land. But the governor abode by his decision and compelled them to go back over the Danube.

[Sidenote: Its beginning.]

[Sidenote: Invasion of Italy.]

This was the beginning of the great Danubian war.[134] The governor of upper Germany, Gaius Aufidius Victorinus, the father-in-law of Fronto known in literature, had already, about the year 162, to repel an assault of the Chatti, which likewise may have been occasioned by tribes from the Elbe pressing on their rear. Had equally energetic steps been taken, greater mischief might have been averted. But just then the Armenian war had begun, into which the Parthians soon entered; though the troops were not actually sent away from the threatened frontier to the east, for which there is at least no evidence,[135] there was at any rate a want of men to take up the second war at once with energy. This temporising severely avenged itself. Just when people were triumphing in Rome over the kings of the east, on the Danube the Chatti, the Marcomani, the Quadi, the Jazyges burst as with a thunderclap into the Roman territory. Raetia, Noricum, the two Pannonias, Dacia, were inundated at the same moment; in the Dacian mine-district we can still follow the traces of this irruption. What devastations they then wrought in those regions, which for long had seen no enemy, is shown by the fact that several years afterwards the Quadi gave back first 13,000, then 50,000, and the Jazyges even 100,000 Roman captives. Nor did the matter end with the injury done to the provinces. There happened what had not occurred for three hundred years and begun to be accounted as impossible--the barbarians broke through the wall of the Alps and invaded Italy itself; from Raetia they destroyed Opitergium (Oderzo); bands from the Julian Alps invested Aquileia.[136] Defeats of individual Roman divisions must have taken place in various cases; we learn only that one of the commandants of the guard, Victorinus, fell before the enemy, and the ranks of the Roman armies were sorely thinned.

[Sidenote: Pestilence.]

This grave attack befell the state at a most unhappy moment. No doubt the Oriental war was ended; but in its train a pestilence had spread throughout Italy and the west, which swept men away more continuously than the war, and in more fearful measure. When the troops were concentrated, as was necessary, the victims of the pestilence were all the more numerous. As dearth always accompanies pestilence, so on this occasion there appeared with it failure of crops and famine, and severe financial distress; the taxes did not come in, and in the course of the war the emperor saw himself under the necessity of alienating by public auction the jewels of his palace.

[Sidenote: Verus and Marcus.]

There was lack of a fitting leader. A military and political task so extensive and so complicated could, as things stood in Rome, be undertaken by no commissioned general, but only by the ruler himself. Marcus had, with a correct and modest knowledge of his shortcomings, on ascending the throne, placed by his side with equal rights his younger adopted brother Lucius Verus, on the benevolent assumption that the jovial young man--as he was a vigorous fencer and hunter--would also grow into an able general. But the worthy emperor did not possess the sharp glance of one who knows men; the choice had proved as unfortunate as possible; the Parthian war just ended had shown the nominal general to be personally dissolute, and as an officer incapable. The joint regency of Verus was nothing but an additional calamity, which indeed was obviated by his death, that ensued not long after the outbreak of the Marcomanian war (169). Marcus, by his leanings more reflective than inclined to practical life, and not at all a soldier, nor in general a strong personality, undertook the exclusive and personal conduct of the requisite operations. He may, in doing so, have made mistakes enough in detail, and perhaps the long duration of the struggle is partly traceable to this; but the unity of supreme command, his clear insight into the object for which the war was waged, the tenacity of his statesmanly action, above all the rectitude and firmness of the man administering his difficult office with self-forgetful faithfulness, ultimately broke the dangerous assault. This was a merit all the higher, as the success was due more to character than to talent.

[Sidenote: Progress of the war.]

The character of the task set before the Romans is shown by the fact that the government, despite the want of men and money in the first year of this war, had the walls of the capital of Dalmatia, Salonae, and of the capital of Thrace, Philippopolis, restored by its soldiers and at its expense; certainly these were not isolated arrangements. They had to prepare themselves to see the men of the north everywhere investing the great towns of the empire; the terrors of the Gothic expeditions were already knocking at the gates, and were perhaps for this time averted only by the fact that government saw them coming. The immediate superintendence of the military operations, and the regulation, demanded by the state of the case, of the relations to the frontier-peoples and reformation of the existing arrangements on the spot, might neither be omitted nor left to his unprincipled brother or individual leaders. In fact, the position of matters was changed as soon as the two emperors arrived at Aquileia, in order to set out thence with the army to the scene of war. The Germans and Sarmatians, far from united in themselves, and without common leading, felt themselves unequal to such a counter-blow. The masses of invaders everywhere retreated; the Quadi sent in their submission to the imperial generals, and in many cases the leaders of the movement directed against the Romans paid for this reaction with their lives. Lucius thought that the war had demanded victims enough, and advised a return to Rome; but the Marcomani persevered in haughty resistance, and the calamity which had come upon Rome, the hundred thousands of captives dragged away, the successes achieved by the barbarians, imperatively demanded a more vigorous policy and the offensive continuance of the war. The son-in-law of Marcus, Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, as an extraordinary measure took the command in Raetia and Noricum; his able lieutenant, the subsequent emperor, Publius Helvius Pertinax, cleared the Roman territory without difficulty with the first auxiliary legion called up from Pannonia. In spite of the financial distress two new legions were formed, particularly from Illyrian soldiers, in the raising of which no doubt many a previous highway-robber was made a defender of his country; and, as was already stated (pp. 161, 198), the hitherto slight frontier-guard of these two provinces was reinforced by the new legion-camps of Ratisbon and Enns. The emperors themselves went to the upper Pannonian camps. It was above all of consequence to restrict the area within which the fire of war was raging. The barbarians coming from the north, who offered their aid, were not repelled, and fought in Roman pay, so far as they did not--as also occurred--break their word and make common cause with the enemy. The Quadi, who sued for peace and for the confirmation of the new king Furtius, had the latter readily granted to them, and nothing demanded of them but the giving back of the deserters and the captives. Success in some measure attended the attempt to restrict the war to the two chief opponents, the Marcomani and the Jazyges from of old allied with them. Against these two peoples it was carried on in the following years with severe conflicts and not without defeat. We know only isolated details, which do not admit of being brought into set connection. Marcus Claudius Fronto, to whom had been entrusted the commands of upper Moesia and Dacia united as an extraordinary measure, fell about the year 171 in conflict against Germans and Jazyges. The commandant of the guard, Marcus Macrinius Vindex, likewise fell before the enemy. They and other officers of high rank obtained in these years honorary monuments in Rome at the column of Trajan, because they had met death in defence of their fatherland. The barbaric tribes, who had declared for Rome, again partially fell away--such as the Cotini and above all the Quadi, who granted an asylum to the fugitive Marcomani and drove out their vassal-king Furtius, whereupon the emperor Marcus set a price of 1000 gold pieces on the head of his successor Ariogaesus.

[Sidenote: Its issue; and second war.]

Not till the sixth year of the war (172) does the complete conquest of the Marcomani seem to have been achieved, and Marcus to have thereupon assumed the well-deserved title of victory, Germanicus. Then followed the overthrow of the Quadi; lastly in 175 that of the Jazyges, in consequence of which the emperor received the further surname of Conqueror of the Sarmatae. The terms which were laid down for the conquered tribes show that Marcus designed not to punish but to subdue. The Marcomani and the Jazyges, probably also the Quadi, were required to evacuate a border-strip along the river to the breadth of ten, subsequently modified to five, miles. In the strongholds on the right bank of the Danube were placed Roman garrisons, which, among the Marcomani and Quadi alone, amounted together to not less than 20,000 men. All the subdued had to furnish contingents to the Roman army; the Jazyges, for example, 8000 horsemen. Had the emperor not been recalled by the insurrection of Syria, he would have driven the latter entirely from their country, as Trajan drove the Dacians. That Marcus intended to treat the revolted Transdanubians after this model, was confirmed by the further course of events. Hardly was that hindrance removed, when the emperor went back to the Danube and began, just like Trajan, in 178 the second definitive war. The ground put forward for thus declaring war is not known; the aim is doubtless correctly specified to the effect that he purposed to erect two new provinces, Marcomania and Sarmatia. To the Jazyges, who must have shown themselves submissive to the designs of the emperor, their burdensome imposts were for the most part remitted, and, in fact, for intercourse with their kinsmen dwelling to the east of Dacia the Roxolani, right of passage through Dacia was granted to them under fitting supervision--probably just because they were already regarded as Roman subjects. The Marcomani were almost extirpated by sword and famine. The Quadi in despair wished to migrate to the north, and to seek settlements among the Semnones; but even this was not allowed to them, as they had to cultivate the fields in order to provide for the Roman garrisons. After fourteen years of almost uninterrupted warfare, he who was a warrior-prince against his will reached his goal, and the Romans were a second time face to face with the acquisition of the upper Elbe; now, in fact, all that was wanting was the announcement of the wish to retain what was won. Thereupon he died--not yet sixty years of age--in the camp of Vindobona on 17th March 180.

[Sidenote: Results of the Marcomanian war.]

We must not merely acknowledge the resoluteness and tenacity of the ruler, but must also admit that he did what right policy enjoined. The conquest of Dacia by Trajan was a doubtful gain, although in this very Marcomanian war the possession of Dacia not only removed a dangerous element from the ranks of the antagonists of Rome, but probably also had the effect of preventing the host of peoples on the lower Danube, the Bastarnae, Roxolani, and others, from interfering in the war. But after the mighty onset of the Transdanubians to the west of Dacia had made their subjugation a necessity, this could only be accomplished in a definitive way by embracing Bohemia, Moravia, and the plain of the Theiss within the Roman line of defence, although these regions were probably accounted, like Dacia, as having only the position of advanced posts, and the strategical frontier-line was certainly meant to remain the Danube.

[Sidenote: Conclusion of peace by Commodus.]

The successor of Marcus, the emperor Commodus, was present in the camp when his father died, and as he had already for several years nominally shared the throne with his father, he entered with the latter's death at once into possession of unlimited power. Only for a brief time did the nineteen years' old successor allow the men who had enjoyed his father's confidence--his brother-in-law Pompeianus, and others who had borne with Marcus the heavy burden of the war--to rule in his spirit. Commodus was in every respect the opposite of his father; not a scholar, but a fencing-master; as cowardly and weak in character, as his father was resolute and tenacious of purpose; as indolent and forgetful of duty, as his father was active and conscientious. He not merely gave up the idea of incorporating the territory won, but voluntarily granted even to the Marcomani conditions such as they had not ventured to hope for. The regulation of the frontier-traffic under Roman control, and the obligation not to injure their neighbours friendly to the Romans, were matters of course; but the garrisons were withdrawn from their country, and there was retained only the prohibition of settlement on the border-strip. The payment of taxes and the furnishing of recruits were doubtless stipulated for, but the former were soon remitted, and the latter were certainly not furnished. A similar settlement was made with the Quadi; and the other Transdanubians must have been similarly dealt with. Thereby the conquests made were given up, and the work of many years of warfare was in vain; if no more was wished for, a similar arrangement of things might have been reached much earlier. Nevertheless the Marcomanian war secured in these regions the supremacy of Rome for the sequel, in spite of the fact that Rome let slip the prize of victory. It was not by the tribes that had taken part in it that the blow was dealt, to which the Roman world-power succumbed.

[Sidenote: The colonate.]

Another permanent consequence of this war was connected with the removals, to which it gave occasion, of the Transdanubians over into the Roman empire. Of themselves such changes of settlement had occurred at all times; the Sugambri, transplanted under Augustus to Gaul, the Dacians sent to Thrace, were nothing but new subjects or communities of subjects added to those formerly existing, and probably not much different were the 3000 Naristae, whom Marcus allowed to exchange their settlements westward of Bohemia for such settlements within the empire, while the like request was refused to the otherwise unknown Astingi on the Dacian north frontier. But the Germans settled by him not merely in the land of the Danube, but in Italy itself at Ravenna, were neither free subjects nor strictly non-free persons; these were the beginnings of the Roman villanage, the colonate, the influence of which on the agricultural economy of the whole state is to be set forth in another connection. That Ravennate settlement, however, had no permanence; the men rose in revolt and had to be conveyed away, so that the new colonate remained restricted primarily to the provinces, particularly to the lands of the Danube.

[Sidenote: The advancing Northmen.]

The great war on the middle Danube was once more followed by sixty years' time of peace, the blessings of which could not be completely neutralised by the internal misgovernment that was constantly increasing during its course. No doubt various isolated accounts show that the frontier, especially the Dacian, which was most exposed, remained not without trouble; but above all, the stern military government of Severus did its duty here, and at least Marcomani and Quadi appear even under his immediate successors in unconditional dependence, so that the son of Severus could cite a prince of the Quadi before him and lay his head at his feet. The conflicts occurring at this epoch on the lower Danube were of subordinate importance. But probably at this period a comprehensive shifting of peoples from the north-east towards the Black Sea took place, and the Roman frontier-guard on the lower Danube had to confront new and more dangerous opponents. Up to this time the antagonists of the Romans there had been chiefly Sarmatian tribes, among whom the Roxolani came into closest contact with them; of Germans there were settled here at that time only the Bastarnae, who had been long at home in this region. Now the Roxolani disappear, merged possibly among the Carpi apparently akin to them, who thenceforth were the nearest neighbours of the Romans on the lower Danube, perhaps in the valleys of the Seret and Pruth.

[Sidenote: Goths.]

By the side of the Carpi came, likewise as immediate neighbours of the Romans at the mouth of the Danube, the people of the Goths. This Germanic stock migrated, according to the tradition which has been preserved to us, from Scandinavia over the Baltic towards the region of the Vistula, and from this to the Black Sea; in accordance with this the Roman geographers of the second century know them at the Vistula, and Roman history from the first quarter of the third at the north-west coast of the Black Sea. Thenceforth they appear here constantly on the increase; the remains of the Bastarnae retired before them to the right bank of the Danube under the emperor Probus, the remains of the Carpi under the emperor Diocletian, while beyond doubt a great part of the former as of the latter mingled among the Goths and joined them. On the whole this catastrophe may be designated as that of the Gothic war only in the sense in which that which set in under Marcus is called the war of the Marcomani; the whole mass of peoples set in movement by the stream of migration from the north-east to the Black Sea took part in it; and took part all the more, seeing that these attacks took place just as much by land over the lower Danube as by water from the north coasts of the Black Sea, in an inextricable complication of landward and maritime piracy. Not unsuitably, therefore, the learned Athenian who fought in this war and has narrated it, prefers to term it the Scythian, as he includes under this name--which, like the Pelasgian, forms the despair of the historian--all Germanic and non-Germanic enemies of the empire. What is to be told of these expeditions will here be brought together, so far as the confusion of tradition, which is only too much in keeping with the confusion of these fearful times, allows.

[Sidenote: Gothic wars.]

The year 238--a year also of civil war, when there were four emperors--is designated as that in which the war against those here first named Goths began.[137] As the coins of Tyra and Olbia cease with Alexander († 235), these Roman possessions situated beyond the boundary of the empire had doubtless become some years earlier a prey to the new enemy. In that year they first crossed the Danube, and the most northerly of the Moesian coast towns, Istros, was the first victim. Gordianus, who emerged out of the confusions of this time as ruler, is designated as conqueror of the Goths; it is more certain that the Roman government at any rate under him, if not already earlier, agreed to buy off the Gothic incursions.[138] As was natural, the Carpi demanded the same as the emperor had granted to the inferior Goths; when the demand was not granted, they invaded the Roman territory in the year 245. The emperor Philippus--Gordianus was at that time already dead--repulsed them, and energetic action with the combined strength of the great empire would probably here have checked the barbarians.

[Sidenote: Decius.]

[Sidenote: His death.]

[Sidenote: Loss of Dacia.]

But in these years the murderer of an emperor reached the throne as surely as he found in turn his own murderer and successor; it was just in the imperilled regions of the Danube that the army proclaimed against the emperor Philippus first Marinus Pacatianus, and, after he was set aside, Traianus Decius, which latter in fact vanquished his antagonist in Italy, and was acknowledged as ruler. He was an able and brave man, not unworthy of the two names which he bore, and entered, so soon as he could, resolutely into the conflicts on the Danube; but what the civil war waged in the meanwhile had destroyed, could no longer be retrieved. While the Romans were fighting with one another the Goths and the Carpi had united, and had under the Gothic prince Cniva invaded Moesia denuded of troops. The governor of the province, Trebonianus Gallus, threw himself with his force into Nicopolis on the Haemus, and was here besieged by the Goths; these at the same time pillaged Thrace and besieged its capital, the great and strong Philippopolis; indeed they reached as far as Macedonia, and invested Thessalonica, where the governor Priscus found this just a fitting moment to have himself proclaimed as emperor. When Decius arrived to combat at once his rival and the public foe, the former was doubtless without difficulty set aside, and success also attended the relief of Nicopolis, where 30,000 Goths are said to have fallen. But the Goths, retreating to Thrace, conquered in turn at Beroë (Alt-Zagora), threw the Romans back on Moesia, and reduced Nicopolis there as well as Anchialus in Thrace and even Philippopolis, where 100,000 men are said to have come into their power. Thereupon they marched northwards to bring into safety their enormous booty. Decius projected the plan of inflicting a blow on the enemy at the crossing of the Danube. He stationed a division under Gallus on the bank, and hoped to be able to throw the Goths upon this, and to cut off their retreat. But at Abrittus, a place on the Moesian frontier, the fortune of war, or else the treachery of Gallus, decided against them. Decius perished with his son, and Gallus, who was proclaimed as his successor, began his reign by once more assuring to the Goths the annual payments of money (251).[139] This utter defeat of Roman arms as of Roman policy, the fall of the emperor, the first who lost his life in conflict with the barbarians--a piece of news which deeply moved men's minds even in this age demoralised by its familiarity with misfortune--the disgraceful capitulation following thereon, placed in fact the integrity of the empire at stake. Serious crises on the middle Danube, threatening probably the loss of Dacia, must have been the immediate consequence. Once more this was averted; the governor of Pannonia, Marcus Aemilius Aemilianus, a good soldier, achieved an important success of arms, and drove the enemy over the frontier. But Nemesis bore sway. The consequence of this victory, achieved in the name of Gallus, was, that the army renounced allegiance to the betrayer of Decius and chose their general as his successor. Once more therefore civil war took precedence of frontier-defence; and, while Aemilianus no doubt vanquished Gallus in Italy but soon afterwards succumbed to his general Valerianus (254), Dacia was lost for the empire--how, and to whom, we know not.[140] The last coin struck by this province, and the latest inscription found there, are of the year 255, the last coin of the neighbouring Viminacium in upper Moesia of the following year; in the first years of Valerianus and Gallienus therefore the barbarians occupied the Roman territory on the left bank of the Danube, and certainly also pressed across to the right.

Before we pursue further the development of affairs on the lower Danube, it appears necessary to cast a glance at piracy, as it was then in vogue in the eastern half of the Mediterranean, and the maritime expeditions of the Goths and their allies originating from it.

[Sidenote: Piracy on the Black Sea.]

That the Roman fleet could at no time be dispensed with on the Black Sea, and piracy there was probably never extirpated, was implied in the very nature of the Roman rule as it had taken shape on its coasts. The Romans were in firm possession only from about the mouths of the Danube as far as Trapezus. It is true that on the one hand Tyra at the mouth of the Dniester and Olbia on the bay at the mouth of the Dnieper, on the other side the Caucasian harbours in the regions of the modern Suchum-Kaleh, Dioscurias and Pityus, were Roman. The intervening Bosporan kingdom in the Crimea also stood under Roman protection, and had a Roman garrison subject to the governor of Moesia. But on these shores, for the most part far from inviting, there were only those posts formerly held either as old Greek settlements or as Roman fortresses; the coast itself was desolate or in the hands of the natives filling the interior, who, comprehended under the general name of Scythians, mostly of Sarmatian descent, never were, or were to become, subject to the Romans; it was enough if they did not directly lay hands on the Romans or their clients. Accordingly, it is not to be wondered at, that even in the time of Tiberius the pirates of the east coast not merely made the Black Sea insecure, but also landed and levied contributions on the villages and towns of the coast. If, under Pius or Marcus, a band of the Costoboci dwelling on the north-western shore fell upon the inland town Elateia situated in the heart of Phocis, and came to blows under its walls with the citizens, this event, which certainly only by accident stands forth for us as isolated, shows that the same phenomena which preceded the downfall of the government of the senate were now renewed, and even with the imperial power maintaining itself outwardly unshaken not merely individual piratical ships, but squadrons of pirates cruised in the Black and even in the Mediterranean seas. The decline of the government, clearly discernible after the death of Severus, and above all after the end of the last dynasty, manifested itself then, as was natural, especially in the further decay of marine police. The accounts, in detail far from trustworthy, mention already in the time before Decius the appearance of a great fleet of pirates in the Aegean Sea; then under Decius the plundering of the Pamphylian coast and of the Graeco-Asiatic islands; under Gallus maraudings of pirates in Asia Minor as far as Pessinus and Ephesus.[141] These were predatory expeditions. These comrades plundered the coasts far and wide, and made even, as we see, bold raids into the interior; but nothing is mentioned of the destruction of towns, and the pirates shunned coming into collision with Roman troops; the attack was chiefly directed against such regions as had no troops stationed in them.

[Sidenote: Maritime expeditions of the Goths and allies.]

[Sidenote: To Trapezus.]

Under Valerian these expeditions assume a different character. The nature of the raids varies so much from the earlier, that the raid, in itself not specially important, of the Borani against Pityus under Valerian could be designated by intelligent reporters precisely as the beginning of this movement,[142] and that the pirates were for a long time called in Asia by the name of this tribe not otherwise known to us. These expeditions proceed no longer from the old native dwellers beside the Black Sea, but from the hordes pressing behind them. What had hitherto been piracy begins to form a portion of that migratory movement of peoples to which the advance of the Goths on the lower Danube belongs. The peoples taking part in it are very varied and in part little known; in the later expeditions the Germanic Heruli, then dwelling beside the Maeotis, appear to have played a leading part. The Goths also took part, but, so far as sea-voyages are concerned--and tolerably exact reports of these are before us--not in a prominent manner; strictly speaking, these expeditions are more correctly termed Scythian than Gothic. The maritime centre of these aggressions was the mouth of the Dniester, the port of Tyra.[143] The Greek towns of the Bosporus, abandoned through the bankruptcy of the imperial power, without protection to the hordes pressing onward, and expecting to be besieged by them, consented, half under compulsion, half voluntarily, to convey in their vessels, and by their mariners, the inconvenient new neighbours over to the nearest Roman possessions on the north coast of Pontus--for which these neighbours themselves lacked the needful means and the needful skill. It was thus that the expedition against Pityus was brought about. The Borani were landed and, confident of success, sent back the ships. But the resolute commander of Pityus, Successianus, repelled the attack; and the assailants, fearing the arrival of the other Roman garrisons, hastily withdrew, for which they had difficulty in procuring the necessary transports. But the plan was not given up; in the next year they came back, and, as the commandant had meanwhile been changed, the fortress surrendered. The Borani, who this time had retained the Bosporan vessels and had them manned by pressed mariners and Roman captives, possessed themselves of the coast far and wide, and reached as far as Trapezus. Into this well fortified and strongly garrisoned town all had fled, and the barbarians were not in a position for a real siege. But the leadership of the Romans was bad, and the military discipline so on the decline that not even the walls were occupied; so the barbarians scaled them by night, without encountering resistance, and in the great and rich city enormous booty, including a number of ships, fell into their hands. They returned successful from the far distant land to the Maeotis.

[Sidenote: To Bithynia.]

Excited by this success, a second expedition of other but neighbouring Scythian bands was in the following winter directed against Bithynia. It is significant of the unsettled state of things that the instigator of this movement was Chrysogonus, a Greek of Nicomedia, and that he was highly honoured by the barbarians for its successful result. This expedition was undertaken--as the necessary number of ships was not to be procured--partly by land, partly by water; it was only in the neighbourhood of Byzantium that the pirates succeeded in possessing themselves of a considerable number of fishing-boats, and so they arrived along the Asiatic coast at Chalcedon, whose strong garrison on this news ran off. Not merely this town fell into their hands, but also along the coast Nicomedia, Chios, Apamea; in the interior Nicaea and Prusa; Nicomedia and Nicaea they burnt down, and reached the river Rhyndacus. Thence they sailed home, laden with the treasures of the rich land and of its considerable cities.

[Sidenote: To Greece.]

The expedition against Bithynia had already been undertaken in part by land; all the more were the attacks that were directed against European Greece composed of piratical expeditions by land and sea. If Moesia and Thrace were not permanently occupied by the Goths, they yet came and went there as if they were at home, and roved from thence far into Macedonia. Even Achaia expected under Valerian invasion from this side; Thermopylae and the Isthmus were barricaded, and the Athenians set to work to restore their walls that had lain in ruins since the siege by Sulla. The barbarians did not come then, nor by this route. But under Gallienus a fleet of five hundred sail, this time chiefly Heruli, appeared before the port of Byzantium, which, however, had not yet lost its capacity of defence; the ships of the Byzantines successfully repulsed the robbers. These sailed onward, showed themselves on the Asiatic coast before Cyzicus not formerly attacked, and arrived from thence by way of Lemnos and Imbros at Greece proper. Athens, Corinth, Argos, Sparta, were pillaged and destroyed. It was always something that, as in the times of the Persian wars, the citizens of the destroyed Athens, two thousand in number, laid an ambush for the retiring barbarians, and, under the leadership of their equally learned and brave captain, Publius Herennius Dexippus, of the old and noble family of the Kerykes, with support of the Roman fleet, inflicted a notable loss on the pirates. On the return home, which took place in part by the land route, the emperor Gallienus attacked them in Thrace at the river Nestus and put to death a considerable number of their men.[144]

[Sidenote: The imperial government of the Gothic period.]

In order completely to survey the measure of misfortune, we must take into account that in this empire going to shreds, and above all in the provinces overrun by the enemy, one officer after another grasped at the crown, which hardly any longer existed. It is not worth the trouble to record the names of these ephemeral wearers of the purple; it marks the situation that, after the devastation of Bithynia by the pirates, the emperor Valerian omitted to send thither an extraordinary commandant, because every general was, not without reason, regarded by him as a rival. This co-operated to produce the almost thoroughly passive attitude of the government in presence of this sore emergency. Yet, on the other hand, undoubtedly a good part of this irresponsible passiveness is to be traced to the personality of the rulers: Valerian was weak and aged, Gallienus vehement and dissolute, and neither the one nor the other was equal to the guidance of the vessel of the state in a storm. Marcianus, to whom Gallienus after the invasion of Achaia had committed the command in these regions, operated not without success; but the matter did not gain any real turn for the better so long as Gallienus occupied the throne.

[Sidenote: Gothic victories of Claudius.]

[Sidenote: Renewed fortifying of the Danube-frontier.]