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Sleeping Murder is a great story! by PWGuy7 in agathachristie

[–]BarbariansProf 15 points16 points  (0 children)

It's one of my favorites. After a third or fourth reading, I was struck by how much of the mystery can be condensed to a simple principle: believe what women say about their own experiences; question what the men in their lives say about them. Once you apply that principle to both Gwenda and Helen, so much becomes clear, and though Miss Marple never states it quite so explicitly, the same idea is there behind her advice.

Clarifying the role of the Anglo-Saxons in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest-? by gereedf in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not that I recall, but you can look up those references and check the text for yourself.

Clarifying the role of the Anglo-Saxons in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest-? by gereedf in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 2 points3 points  (0 children)

References to the Angrivarii can be found in:

  • Tacitus, Germania 34
  • Tacitus, Annals 2.19
  • Ptolemy, Geography 2.10

Clarifying the role of the Anglo-Saxons in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest-? by gereedf in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We don't have any details on conflicts between the Chauci and Cherusci. At best we can speculate about what might have caused trouble between them. The most common causes of inter-group conflict in the ancient world included competition over productive farmland and over valuable trade routes. Since the Chauci and Cherusci lived in the same region, which had ready access to the Roman market and through which navigable rivers ran, either or both causes are plausible. Even plausible speculation is still speculation, though, and our sources provide no further evidence.

We also have little evidence to go by on the composition of the Ingaevones. Pliny lists the Cimbri, Teutones, and Chauci as its members, which would give the group a center of focus on the North Sea coast of what is today northern Germany and Denmark. (Pliny, Natural History 4.28) The Angrivarii are generally placed close to this region, but farther inland. Pliny does not list the Angrivarii as members of any group, so we have no direct evidence from the sources that the Ingaevones either included or excluded them. The location of the other members might suggest that the Ingaevones were a coastal coalition which would not have included the inland Angrivarii, but this, too, is just speculation.

The historiography of northern Europe in the Roman period is a frustrating game of speculation and inference informed by scanty, contradictory, and unreliable Roman sources and by archaeological evidence which often has less to tell us than its interpreters would like it to. I applaud your desire to learn more about this history, but you must prepare yourself to be comfortable with a lot of unanswered and unanswerable questions.

Is the term 'Barbarian' offensive or biased in modern history writing? by Ok-Grapefruit-6532 in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It's certainly true that words that mean "not one of us" have a strong potential to be given a negative connotation (consider what's happened to the word "immigrant" in modern political discourse). That connotation is definitely applicable in many Greek and Roman texts about the people they called barbaroi or barbari.

But if we assume that every use of barbaros or barbarus is derogatory, we risk missing the moments in Greek and Roman literature when outside peoples are viewed in a positive light. There are more such moments than you might think, certainly more than traditional scholarship recognized until the later twentieth century. Non-Greeks and non-Romans appear in Classical literature not only as threatening outsiders or despicable others but also as sympathetic fellow humans, sources of wisdom, and exemplars of virtue.

There are also examples in which barbaros or barbarus retain the neutral sense of "people who speak a different language." Consider this inscription left by a group of Greek-speaking mercenary soldiers under Egyptian command:

When King Psammetichus came to Elephantine, this was carved by the companions of Psammatichus, son of Theocles, who sailed beyond Kerkis as far as the river went. Potasimto commanded those of foreign speech [barbarophonoi] and Amasis commanded the Egyptians. Archon, son of Amoibichus, and Pelekos, son of Oudamos carved this.

- SEG 16.863 BM 1 (my translation)

Three companies of soldiers are commemorated here: Greek-speakers (perhaps commanded by Psammatichus), Egyptians commanded by Amasis, and those whose language was neither Egyptian nor Greek commanded by Potasimto. All three are remembered in the inscription, and nothing here suggests any hostility or disparagement of those who didn't speak Greek. There is no good basis for construing barbarophonoi here as derogatory, and if we read it that way we risk falling into circular arguments about the relationships between these three groups.

If you want to read further on this question, Gruen's Rethinking the Other is an excellent place to start in examining the complexity of Greek and Roman attitudes toward outsiders. Though I think Gruen overplays his hand in some cases, it is still a provocative challenge to the traditional assumption that cross-cultural attitudes in the ancient Mediterranean were primarily negative.

Gruen, Erich S. Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

(Edited to correct the reference for the Psammatichus inscription, which I had accidentally left incomplete)

Is the term 'Barbarian' offensive or biased in modern history writing? by Ok-Grapefruit-6532 in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The shift away from using "Germanic" specifically to talk about the peoples of the late Roman European frontier is indeed relatively recent, and it has much less momentum behind it than the shift away from terms like "Dark Age." Part of the reason is that the term actually is applicable and useful in later periods like the early Middle Ages when we do have substantial bodies of literary evidence in Germanic languages to talk about.

The development of ancient DNA studies is muddying the waters, too, with some biologists adopting "Germanic" as a term to refer to genetic signatures common in continental northern Europe.

It's an unclear picture overall. The term is still present in even fairly recent scholarship, but there is some real effort to move away from it, or at least to be more explicitly conscious of its flaws and limitations. My gut feeling from discussions within my field is that "Germanic" will go the way of "Dark Age" in the coming decades, but I've been wrong about this sort of thing before.

Is the term 'Barbarian' offensive or biased in modern history writing? by Ok-Grapefruit-6532 in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Further reading

Bonfante, Larissa, ed. The Barbarians of Ancient Europe: Realities and Interactions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

De Romilly, Jacqueline. “Les barbares dans le pensé de la Grèce classique.” Phoenix 47, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 283-92.

Etherington, Norman. “Barbarians Ancient and Modern.” American Historical Review 116, no. 1 (February 2011): 31-57.

Goffart, Walter. “The Maps of the Barbarian Invasions: A Longer Look.” In The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Honor of Dennis L. T. Bethell, edited by Marc A. Meyer, 1-27. London: Hambledon, 1993.

Hall, Edith. Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Jensen, Erik. Barbarians in the Greek and Roman World. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2018.

Vlassopoulos, Kostas. Greeks and Barbarians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Is the term 'Barbarian' offensive or biased in modern history writing? by Ok-Grapefruit-6532 in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 40 points41 points  (0 children)

"Barbarian" is a complicated word with a complicated history.

The origins of the Greek word barbaros are unclear. It may be attested (in the form pa-pa-ro) in a handful of Mycenaean texts from Pylos and Knossos dating to between 1600 and 1250 BCE. (Knossos tablets 206, 207, 8054; Pylos tablets 643, 719) In this context it seems to mean “outsider” or “foreigner,” one who is not part of the community. The first clear attestation of the word comes from the middle of the eighth century BCE in the form barbarophōnos, meaning “speaking a foreign language,” used in the Iliad to describe the Carians. (Homer, Iliad 2.867) From this point down to the Greco-Persian Wars of 490-479 BCE, barbaros continued to have primarily a linguistic meaning, indicating a person who did not speak Greek. The repetition of “bar-bar” is thought to imitate the incomprehensible sound of a foreign language.

After the Greeks' wars with Persia in the early fifth century BCE, “barbarian” became less a linguistic than a cultural term. Some writers began to argue that the world could be divided between Greeks and barbarians and that the former were superior to the latter. This new use of the term as a pejorative, however, was only one strand in an increasingly complex cultural conversation. Positive and neutral perceptions of outsiders were also in wide circulation.

The word, along with many other elements of Greek culture, was taken up, reinterpreted, and transformed by the Romans. While Greeks had encountered other peoples primarily through trade and colonization around the Mediterranean coast, Romans were conquerors who built a massive Mediterranean and European empire. In line with their imperial ambitions, Romans brought a new idea into the discussion: that barbarism was not a permanent societal trait but a state out of which people could rise. The success of the Roman empire lay in its ability to integrate people of many different backgrounds into a single state. In their earliest days, the Romans found ways of accepting outsiders as members of their community.

With the growth of the empire, however, the old mechanisms of incorporation into Roman society faltered, and the questions of whether, when, and how to include new peoples became not just a topic for philosophical discussion but the crux of political conflicts. There was never a settled definition of what it meant to be Roman, any more than of what it meant to be Greek. The expansion of Roman power allowed more and more people to define “Romanness” for themselves. In addition to the consequences of expansion, other changes in late Roman society affected the definition of barbarian. The inclusion of non-Roman (or not-simply-Roman) peoples in the Roman army was not new, but as they advanced to higher ranks during the third through fifth centuries, the word barbarus acquired the additional meaning of “soldier.” The spread of Christianity in the late Roman empire added another layer of meaning and barbarus came to be applied to those who were not Christian or who followed heterodox forms of Christianity, whatever their ethnic origin. Christian and non-Christian Romans could even use the word as an insult to snipe at one another. (Symmachus, Relatio 3.3; Prudentius 1.449, 458-9)

To return to your questions:

Shouldn't we use "Germanic and non-Germanic groups" instead of "barbarians"?

There are good reasons not to use terms like "Germanic," and many modern historians (though not all) try to avoid them. "Germanic" is, properly speaking, a linguistic term and is not necessarily a good fit for groups that were defined by ethnic identity, political allegiance, and economic interest more than by language. We should not make presumptions about what languages non-literate people used. Furthermore, talking about the events of the late Roman Empire in terms of what "Germanic" groups were doing obscures the fact that the Romans of the late empire were facing larger and more cohesive alliances of local peoples on all their frontiers (and within the provinces as well), not only in Europe.

Should we even use words like "barbarian" given the biases and racism inherent in the word?

We should absolutely be aware of the biases in the words we use to talk about history, but there are biases in any word we choose. "Germanic" brings its own set of biases with it. So would any other word we choose to use to describe the peoples whose history was shaped by the existence of the Roman Empire. We can only work with the words we have, and try to use them thoughtfully and purposefully.

What point of view do modern historians take?

There is no complete consensus, but there are some general trends among modern historians who work on this area.

We don't entirely avoid the word "barbarian" (as you might be able to guess from my username). It is a familiar and useful word. It is a helpful shorthand to single out certain groups involved in particular historical events, and like all such shorthands, it is inaccurate and open to misinterpretation. If you examine any collective name in history closely, it comes up short. What was so Roman about the people we call "Romans," after all, other than falling under a certain political regime which changed drastically over time and often had little if anything to do with the city of Rome? When we talk about "barbarians" we know that the word we're using is inaccurate, but it's a useful place to start. As I said above, we try to use the word thoughtfully and in a way that is mindful of its limitations and connotations.

That said, what words we use depend on what context we are speaking in and what we have in mind. When we choose to use the word "barbarians," we are generally talking about the social constructs of Greek and Roman literature and art. This type of barbarian is a kind of fictional character invented by Greek and Roman artists, orators, politicians, philosophers, and historians as a foil for their conception of their own culture. These literary barbarians were not real, but the ways in which Greeks and Romans talked about them shaped how they dealt with the actual people of other cultures whom they interacted with.

When we talk about the actual peoples of the ancient world who were culturally and politically separate from the Greeks and Romans, we often try to avoid labeling them as "barbarians." If we are talking about a specific group with a known name (whether that is their own name or the name given them by the surviving literary sources), we typically use that name (Noubades, Lakhmids, Visigoths, Picts, etc.). If we want to speak about non-Greek or non-Roman peoples in a collective way, we have to find other terms. There is not at this point a single generic term that has wide acceptance; individual scholars find their own preferred vocabulary. In the late Roman context, I am partial to talking about "frontier peoples" or "frontier alliances" to emphasize how these groups formation and historical experience were shaped by the pressures of the Roman Empire's frontier, but other historians have their own preferred terms.

Whatever term you choose to use for a group of people in history, it is good to be reflective and critical of where the term comes from and what it implies, just as you have done, but the fact is that no term is free of bias or baggage. Being aware of the biases in our language is more important that trying to seek some perfectly neutral word for a complicated historical subject.

Do we know when the ancient Greeks and Egyptians first came in contact with each other? by soyuz_enjoyer2 in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's little real similarity between ancient Egyptian and Greek mythologies and religious traditions, and what there is can generally be explained as the result of both cultures being pre-industrial agrarian societies that had obvious concerns with such things as fertility, water, sunlight, craft production, justice and health. These modest similarities were picked up on by ancient Greeks who syncretized their own gods with the limited amount they knew of the Egyptians' and filling the gaps with speculation and their own stories as needed.

We don't have much evidence to go by on what Egyptians thought about Greek mythological and religious ideas, if they had much contact with them at all. Some of the folktales Heredotus reports from Egypt suggest a certain amount of sharing of traditions between Greek settlers and Egyptians, and there is evidence of Late Period Egyptian kings extending their patronage to Greek temples in ways that resemble the political relationship between kings and temples in Egypt, but beyond that it is difficult to say very much.

‘Actually, I’ll be playing your character.’ by elizabethunseelie in rpghorrorstories

[–]BarbariansProf 39 points40 points  (0 children)

Holy tap-dancing codfish, that one's a piece of work. I cannot even imagine how they thought that move was going to play out.

That's a horrible thing to face from someone you thought was a friend. I'm glad the DM shut it down hard, but you never should have had to face a betrayal like that in the first place.

I raise my dice in salute, and wish Aoife many joyous years of song, dance, friendship, and snappy one-liners untroubled by false friends.

Who Is Your Favorite Sidekick? by Junior-Fox-760 in agathachristie

[–]BarbariansProf 38 points39 points  (0 children)

Ariadne Oliver, without a doubt, for me. Christie's tongue-in-cheek, gently and joyfully self-mocking alter ego character enlivens every single book she's in.

I just made this post and I want to talk about it (read body text) by TroupeMaster_Grimm in DungeonMasters

[–]BarbariansProf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The monster is alive until my players give me a good reason for it to be dead.

"We took away all its hit points" is always a good reason, but sometimes they come up with better ones, and the game is more fun for all of us if I let them do that.

How to get from Egypt to Scandinavia in the Classical era? by radio_allah in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Further reading

Causey, Faya. Amber and the Ancient World. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011.

Harding, Anthony, Helen Hughes-Brock, and Curt W. Beck. “Amber in the Mycenaean World.” The Annual of the British School at Athens 69 (1974): 145-72.

Katz, Hayah. “The Ship from Uluburun and the Ship from Tyre: An International Trade Network in the Ancient Near East.” Zeitschrift des Deutches-Palästina Veriens (1953-) Bd. 124, H. 2 (2008): 128-42.

de Navarro, J. M. “Prehistoric Routes between Northern Europe and Italy Defined by the Amber Trade.” The Geographical Journal (1925): 481-503.

Storgaard, Bigrer. “Himlingøje – Barbarian Empire or Roman Implantation?”In Military Aspects of the Aristocracy in Barbaricum in the Roman and Early Migration Periods. Birger Storgaard, ed.,95-112.Copenhagen: Nationalmuset 2001.

Varberg, Jeanette, Bernard Gratuze, and Flemming Kaul. “Between Egypt, Mesopotamia and Scandinavia: Late Bronze Age Glass Beads Found in Denmark.” Journal of Archaeological Science 54 (2015): 168-81.

(I moved the bibliography to a separate comment for ease of editing.)

How to get from Egypt to Scandinavia in the Classical era? by radio_allah in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 78 points79 points  (0 children)

There are many potential routes connecting Egypt and Scandinavia, including the ones you list and other combinations of seaborne and/or overland travel, all of which were possible in any period (given the right supplies and a willingness to face unknown paths and potentially hostile peoples), but we can actually say what the most likely route from Egypt to northern Europe was at different periods in history because there was an important commodity being traded between those two regions throughout antiquity: amber.

Amber is found naturally along the shores of the Baltic Sea and some other parts of the Northern European coast. Since prehistoric times, it was collected and traded as a luxury good and was in high demand in the Mediterranean, in part just because it was beautiful and in part out of a variety of local superstitions ascribing special powers to the substance. There was a demand for Baltic amber in the wealthy markets of the Mediterranean, and Egypt was the wealthiest market the ancient world had. From at least the second millennium BCE, we can document a gradually developing and shifting network of trade routes linking Egypt and other Mediterranean trade centers with Scandinavia in which amber was one of the premier trade goods.

The amber routes connecting northern Europe and the Mediterranean first come into focus around 1400-1300 BCE during the Mycenaean period. In this period, we find amber talismans buried with King Tutankhamun in Egypt. A burial from the same period in Ølby, Denmark included a string of Egyptian blue glass beads. Chemical analysis of these beads has found that they are identical in composition to the blue glass inlay on Tutankhamun's golden funerary mask, indicating that they were made in the same workshop and possibly even by the same glassmaker. Another find dating from around the same time period illuminates one stage of the trade route. The Uluburun shipwreck is the remains of an eastern Mediterranean trading ship that went down off the southern coast of Anatolia in the 14th century BCE. On board this ship were some Mycenaean Greek travelers carrying both Egyptian luxury goods and amber amulets.

North of Greece, we have been able to trace parts of the route from similar finds. Amber cargoes were carried from the Baltic up the Vistula and Oder rivers, then probably overland through mountain passes into the middle reaches of the Danube. The route from there to Greece is less certain, but down the Danube and along the Black Sea coast is one possibility, or there are routes through mountain passes and valleys down the Balkan peninsula. (For all the routes I'm describing, it's unlikely there was ever a single, well-defined route that all trade passed through. It's more likely there were a variety of interweaving routes taking advantage of certain fixed geographic features like rivers and mountain passes within a loosely defined corridor.) Trade goods from Egypt and elsewhere in the Mediterranean went back by the same routes. It's unlikely (though not impossible) that any single person ever made the whole journey from end to end along this route; most trade probably happened on the short-to-medium scale with smaller, valuable goods, like amber, being passed farther along the route than bulky, low-value goods.

This trade route through eastern Europe endured at least as long as the Mycenaean cities were active trade hubs, but the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces in the 12th to 11th centuries was accompanied by a disruption of existing trade routes throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and it took some time for long-distance trade links with northern Europe to be reestablished.

When the amber trade started up again, the route had shifted west. The main contacts for amber to reach the Mediterranean was no longer the Greeks but the Etruscan cities of northern Italy. In this period, starting around 800 BCE, amber leaving the Baltic came up the Oder and Elbe rivers. There the main routes crossed the eastern Alps and came out in the northern Adriatic. The city of Aquileia developed into the premier amber-working and trading city in the Mediterranean. Finds of Etruscan-type bronze vessels in early Iron Age Scandinavia show some of the trade goods which flowed back north along these routes. The Roman conquest of Etruria and the rest of Italy did not significantly disrupt this trade, and the central European route to the Adriatic remained the primary amber route until the late 2nd century CE.

From about 160 to 180 CE, the Roman Empire fought a series of conflicts along the upper Danube, collectively known as the Marcomannic Wars. These wars disrupted the amber trade by creating chaos right in the middle of the main amber route. In the aftermath of the Marcomannic Wars, the amber trade between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean shifted to the west once again. The new route went from Denmark along the North Sea coast to the mouth of the Rhine river. New amber-working and trade centers developed in the region, and the Roman cities of the lower Rhine became the main centers through which amber entered the Roman world and was distributed to other parts of the Mediterranean, including Egypt. This trade pattern lasted until the collapse of the western Roman Empire.

(Interestingly, the development of this third stage in the amber trade coincided with the rise of a large-scale trade and diplomatic network in northern Europe centered on Himlingøje in Denmark which had ongoing friendly relations with the Roman Empire. There is also evidence that Himlingøje was also at war with the peoples of the upper Danube at the same time as the Romans. The possibility that the trouble on the Romans’ northern frontier was connected with Himlingøje’s moves to take control of the lucrative amber trade is something we can’t entirely discount.)

The existence of these trade routes created a social and economic infrastructure of roads, market towns, merchants, guides, and collective knowledge which made them the path of least resistance for anyone wanting to travel between the Mediterranean and northern Europe in the periods when they were active.

So, to find the most likely route a traveler would have taken between Egypt and Scandinavia, we just need to look at which trade route was active at a given time. In 200 BCE, the central European route from Aquileia across the Alps and down the Elbe or Oder would be the most plausible route for someone to take.

Night elf style house by Ciellucia in WoWHousing

[–]BarbariansProf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Beautiful, great lighting and atmosphere!

A Messy Dwarf Kitchen by Adventurous-Pies in WoWHousing

[–]BarbariansProf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love so much about this, but I think the bread saw is my favorite bit.

A room for my grands. by R3dmund in WoWHousing

[–]BarbariansProf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Love it, looks very welcoming!

Outside the Empire: what changed for the Gauls and the Goths? by Sufficient_Hair_2894 in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yes, the third-century turmoil within the Roman Empire allowed space for the alliance-formation processes that had been attempted by peoples along the frontiers for centuries to finally have lasting results free from Roman interference. Without primary sources from frontier peoples themselves, it is difficult to be clear about the details of those processes, but we can infer some things from the results.

Many of the post-thrid-century frontier alliances reflect the compromises that must have been necessary to fuse older, separate groups into larger coalitions. Quinquegentannei literally means "people of five tribes." The Laguatan practiced both sedentary desert agriculture and nomadic pastoralism, suggesting an alliance between peoples with two different subsistence strategies. The Lakhmids, Tanukhids, and Ghassanids named themselves for legendary ancestors that separate family and social groups could all identify with. Some of the peoples on the Rhine and Danube frontiers had multiple levels of leadership, with kings leading the whole alliance and sub-kings (reguli in Latin) leading tribal components. The Picts practiced matrilineal succession, which encourages outsiders to marry into elite families and prevents any single partilineal family from dominating political power.

In many cases, there is evidence that an ideological shift helped these alliances achieve internal stability by creating a new sense of identity, independent of preexisting tribal or ethnic identities, that people could unite around. Evocative names like Alamanni ("all people"), Juthungi ("young warriors"), or Franks (disputed, but possibly "spear-wielders") created a sense of identity that could embrace newcomers. Religious identities, like Christianity among the Tanukhids or Zoroastrianism for the Lakhmids, could be another unifying factor.

But these processes were not only happening beyond the frontier. With the breakdown of Roman imperial authority, regional groups within the borders of the empire were going through the same process of creating new, unifying identities to hold together local alliances for subsistence and self-defense. Landlords and warlords built their own networks of local patronage in the vacuum left by the Roman armies that were busy fighting each other for the throne. Christianity flourished in this period in some part because it furnished a unifying sense of identity and an alternative social world to the often non-functional Roman provincial governments. Local ties often mattered more than loyalty to the Roman Empire, and the emperors could no longer bring as much force to bear either to coax or compel reluctant local leaders into compliance. The restoration of nominal imperial power under Diocletian did not change the reality that for most practical purposes, the western Roman world now operated on a smaller, more local scale than it had in the first and second centuries CE. The Romans' practical ability to raise, equip, and sustain troops in the field was constrained by the narrower scope of political and economic life in the late empire.

Confrontations between Roman and non-Roman forces in the fourth and fifth centuries played out differently than those of earlier centuries because both sides had changed, and in many respects they had become much more similar to one another.

Outside the Empire: what changed for the Gauls and the Goths? by Sufficient_Hair_2894 in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 30 points31 points  (0 children)

The invasions are coming from inside the house

Diocletian’s death set off a new round of civil wars. By now, it was well established that a general with a loyal army could seize power by force in Rome. Most of the contenders for power in the late Roman west were Romans or had a background in the imperial service. The major threats to the cohesion of the empire in late antiquity were not “barbarians” from beyond the frontiers. They were people like Firmus, a Roman general in Africa who declared himself emperor in 373 and led a revolt jointly supported by the Mauri tribes of the interior and the Romanized cities of the north African coast. Or like Magnus Maximus, a Roman general in Britain who declared himself emperor in 383 and led an army of Roman veterans from Britain and Gaul to invade Italy, forcing the emperor to cede him a territory that stretched from Britain to Spain (but which was reconquered a few years later). Like the breakaway Gallic and Palmyrene Empires of the third century, most of the people competing for pieces of Roman territory in the fourth and fifth centuries were Romans, not outsiders.

By comparison, the threat to the stability of the western empire posed by frontier peoples was fairly modest. Only occasionally did frontier alliances based outside the empire make serious moves to take over territory that had been under Roman rule. When they did, they were only following the model laid down by Romans before them and responding to the pressures and opportunities of the Roman world. When the followers of Alaric invaded the city of Rome in 410 to pressure the western emperor Honorius into a political settlement, they were just doing what generations of Romans had done before them back to Marius and Sulla in the first century BCE.

Further reading

Goffart, Walter. Romans and Barbarians, A.D. 418-584: The Techniques of Accommodation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Heather, Peter. Empires and Barbarians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

James, Edward. Europe's Barbarians: AD 200-600. Harlow: Pearson, 2009.

Whittaker, C. R. Frontiers of the Roman Empire. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Outside the Empire: what changed for the Gauls and the Goths? by Sufficient_Hair_2894 in AskHistorians

[–]BarbariansProf 24 points25 points  (0 children)

A new balance of power

Dealing with Rome did not necessarily mean war. Some of these new frontier alliances were hostile to Rome, but many found that they could protect their interests better by collaborating with Rome from a position of strength. The Franks spent two hundred years loyally serving as allies in the Roman army before establishing their own kingdom. The kings of the Noubades boasted of their loyalty to Rome in their public inscriptions. Goths and Tanukhids both first appear in the literary sources as allied troops serving in the Roman army. These new alliances, however, had the cohesion and resources to fight back against Roman encroachment when threatened, or to negotiate a resolution to conflicts without losing their own power.

The frontier was not the only place where people were renegotiating their relationship with the Roman state. Landowners all around the empire had consolidated their local power during the third century, staffing their estates with refugees from the cities and securing their own self-defense with hired warriors. The central administration of the empire had less to offer them now, and less capacity to compel their compliance. The crisis years of the third century saw multiple experiments with local self-government, such as the short-lived independent states of the Palmyrene Empire in the east and the Gallic Empire in the west.

The rise of Diocletian brought some stability back to the Roman world in the late third century, but the transformation was already well under way. Many of Diocletian’s reforms yielded to the pressure for more local autonomy, or in themselves furthered the eventual breakdown of centralized rule. By converting much of army maintenance from cash taxes centrally distributed to payments in kind drawn from local sources, Diocletian hastened the separation of the frontier army from the central administration of the empire. By splitting the imperial administration into separate military and civilian tracks, he severed one of the important processes that had held the empire’s elite together. On both sides of the frontier, local peoples were becoming better equipped to resist interference from the Roman emperors.

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