01-03-2021, 03:09 PM
Nathan Ross
Theoretical question for you. For the sake of argument, let’s say you invent a time machine, then travel back to 55 BC a few months before crosses Caesar crosses into Germania. You start at the mouth of the Rhine on the northern coast of Germania then walk south east, all the way across the ‘Barbarian’ side of what would become the Roman Empire’s frontier and through all the most prominent lands of ‘Barbaricum’ until 6 months to a year later you round the east coast Black Sea and reach Armenia, for coffee and cake.
Then you do the whole process again accept either a few decades or a century later during the Roman Imperial era, and you repeat the process all the way to the late empire, the migration period and the era of the Hunnic Empire in the 440’s - 450’s AD.
Do you you think you would notice any significant changes social, economic or technological level in the overall Germanic culture’s you’d be passing through generation to generation based on what we know and can theorise today, other then regions changing hands from one Germanic tribe of kingdom to another?
Would the everyday appearance, clothing and level of technological sophistication of the basic Germanic village or royal court and its inhabitants remains exactly the same from 55 BC to 455 AD, with the exception of a few ‘modern’ Roman trinkets here and there.
Initially, I was under the impression that over time traditional Celtic and Germanic style Oppida’s and Hill-Forts may have replaced with fortified Roman styled villa’s with limited industrial capability in the form of armouries, workshops and stables etc, like precursors to the first Medieval Castle’s. At the same time once previously poorly connected villages would be steadily linked together by a more streamlined series of interconnecting roads due to the increased trade tribal unification would enable as a result of close proximity to the Roman Empire’s borders would bring. Maybe also some form of trading posts (not full scale replica Roman towns of course), populated and staffed by either Roman merchants and traders or their ‘Germanic’ middlemen who organised the transport of Roman goods across the border and vice versa. I appreciate as you’ve already commented that there is little to no evidence of large Roman style villas or other urban conglomerates outside of former Roman territories which would indicate the Romans deliberately kept the Barbarians poor and thus underdeveloped, but this contradicts the idea I’ve heard before that the volume of ‘tribute’ (or subsidies, bribes, whatever you want to call it) the Romans paid the Barbarian’s steadily increased as the Empire declined. All this money the Roman were shovelling into the Germans hands year after year must have been spent on something, and while I appreciate the Roman Empire may well have tried to keep skilled Roman engineers and architects out of Barbarian lands I can’t imagine this was always easy to enforce at the best of times, let alone during times of civil war or strife. (Which in the 3rd century was like every Tuesday to Saturday)
If a Germanic or Gothic King made it known he’d pay handsomely for Roman craftsman, then regardless of whatever measures the Romans had in place to prevent the transfer of such skills into Barbarian lands I’m sure those kings would have no shortage of Roman citizens lining up and waiting to take the money and protection. (There is only so much a pre-industrial society can do to secure a few thousand kilometres of border with two seas on either end)
I’m aware that I may simply be overestimating the financial value of tributes and trade dues the Germans and Goths received from the Romans as I haven’t been able to find any specific figures of the incomes of the various kingdoms and how they rose and fell over the lifetime of the Roman Empire. I always just assumed there was a common consensus that what began as a small trickle of gold and silver into the Germans coffers from Augustus to keep the tribes divided and pacified turned into a steady deluge of gold and silver (or equivalent goods like grain, steel etc) until the empire was virtually bankrupted and unable to pay its own bills. If this is true it still raises the question what did the Barbarian’s spend this money on, if it wasn’t improvements to their own infrastructure. The problem I have with the notion that the Germanic Barbarian’s remained the same poorly clothed and equipped rabble lacking in armour, swords or comparable organisation to the Romans is I just don’t see how this rabble could have defeat and conquer the western Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. I’m aware this conquest did not happen overnight, and that in most cases the Germanic Kingdoms often aligned themselves with one side of a Roman civil war in exchange for land to settle, however for the average Germanic warband’s to be considered worth bartering away land for in the first they must already have been equipped to a relatively high standard anyway, otherwise Roman Emperor’s and usurpers both would have had no incentive to recruit them in exchange for land if they could just have raised the same number of troops from the Roman serf population and equipped then from state armouries. If this was the case, the question still remains if the armour and swords the Germans used to equip themselves didn’t come from Roman armouries, where did it come from? (I feel this is a chicken an egg scenario and we may never know the truth for certain)
That undoubtably makes sense from a retrospective and omnipresent perspective, but do you really think hundreds of separate tribes and millions of individuals Germans, Goths and Sythian’s over 500+ year time span could adopt such a hive-minded approach to their own unilateral long term defence? (Particularly considering Germanic tribes were famous for warring with each other just as frequently they warred with Rome)
Humans should think in the long term, but going by history 90% of the time we only think in the short term. I don’t see why it would be any different for the Germans over this period when you consider it was a cumulative cascade of bad decisions for short terms gains that ultimately brought down the Western Roman Empire in under a century. (e.g. the reneging of land grants and later slaughter of the families of Gothic soldiers in 408 AD, which led to the sack of Rome in 410 AD etc)
I think Nathan was referencing the sudden capacity and willingness of the Germanic people’s ability to defeat Roman armies on Roman soil after the mid 2nd century AD, when for the two centuries previous Germans tribes had seemingly lacked the ability to organise such large scale expeditions into Roman territory and defeat the legions on flat open ground. (i.e. not a wooded forest like Teutoburg)
We know what the symptoms of this change in the strategic and tactical outlook for the Empire are. (Defeated roman armies, dead Generals and later Emperors, cities long though ‘safe’ besieged and in some cases sacked etc)
We just don’t know what the cause of this change in fortunes for the Barbarian’s was. It may been something as simple as certain tribes unifying then expanding their strength, forcing others to flee to Rome’s borders. Or it may have been expanding populations meaning there wasn’t enough fertile land for everyone to support themselves, but in this case what caused the increase in population, or likewise what caused these desperate tribes to unify into so called super tribes? I’ve noticed Scandinavia in particular seems to have an odd tendency to act as a kind of demographic release valve for surplus population into Europe, periodically producing ‘cultures of invaders’ every few generations from the Cimbri to the to the Goths to the Saxons to the Vikings. If I had to guess I’d imagine the Baltic Sea serves as something of an miniature Mediterranean, building up a diversified breadbasket for the indigenous population of fertile farmland, fisheries and the capacity for trade by sea and metal craft. Then every few generations climate change causes a temporary economic and agricultural breakdown and several tens of thousands of the local inhabitants have to either find greener pastures to plough or starve, thus you have a never ending cycle of Barbarian warrior cultures migrating south, or later west after the Roman Empire collapses in the West.
It’s believed now it was the Goths migrating south from Scandinavia to modern day Ukraine around 100 AD that triggered the Marcomannic Wars as other tribes with Germania and Sythia scattered to get out of their way, pushing their own neighbouring tribes into the borders of Roman Empire. To be honest I’m not quite quite sure I believe this as the earlier idea of one population driving another to flight has been discredited, and it’s more likely it would be the the ruling elite (the King, his court, his personnel following of warriors and all their families, servants and hangers on. Maybe say 5-10% of a regions total population, but not an entire people. For the remaining 90-95% percent of the population they’d probably just have a foreigner take over as head of their village who would then take their share of their surplus foodstuffs each harvest, if they weren’t killed or enslaved in the initial invasion. I can see this shaking up the tribal landscape politically as this exiles would probably be accepted into the courts of neighbouring tribes, but I can’t see it starting a war in and off itself until you get the larger tribal confederations arising. Despite Hollywood’s addiction to moustache twirling villains very few people want to rule a pile of ash and corpses.
I agree with Nathan in so far that I think there was something of a parasitical relationship between Rome and the Barbarian’s, and I think it was this along with multiple other contributing factors (including possibly Han China on the other side of the world) that eventually morphed the Barbarians into a much more powerful and capable military threat that eventually consumed the western half of the Roman Empire. In the time of Augustus in the early 1st century AD I think this parasitical relationship certainly favoured Rome more then it did the Barbarians as for an empire that was still consolidating its recent gains over freshly conquered people ‘tribute’ in the form of relatively small volumes of gold or items of equal value was probably an economical alternative to over-stretching themselves military or having to deal with both foreign incursions and internal uprising from newly conquered peoples. I think the problem is over the following centuries both trade and tribute from the much wealthier and economically developed Roman Empire eliminated the incentives for the Germanic tribes to fight each other for plunder and wealth, which led to the first tribal confederation and kingdoms, or ‘super-tribes’ as you’ve referred to them. This unification in the face of a potentially common threat probably also had the unintended consequence of reducing civil strife and increasing opportunities for peaceful trade between tribes, which probably would have marginally raised the standard of living within these regions and thus both increased the population and given the average Germanic chieftain or king access to greater funds to equip equip his retinue, either from the greater number of smiths he may have access to as part of a larger confederation or maybe from armour and weapons imported from Rome. (Probably a combination of both)
The result I think was something of a ticking time bomb for the Romans, with the Barbarians growing ever stronger, better organised and more populous with every passing year as a result of perpetual contact with the Roman Empire, and thus requiring ever more tribute to placate. Off course this just becomes a vicious cycle of extortion and violence. Simon MacDowall’s ‘Germanic Warrior’ book does make a clear case that it was contact with the Roman Empire that caused this as Germanic warfare gradually changed from a ritual of raiding and intimidation of one tribe by another to fighting and killing for financial and material reward. Prior to their contact with Rome the professional warriors of a Germanic tribe were oath bound to a single tribal Chieftain however once young Germanic nobles started being hostaged to Rome and inducted into the Roman Army before eventually returning years later to their former homelands they start recruiting retunes of warriors across separate tribal lines with the express purpose of waging long distance wars for plunder and wealth.
The thing is there seems to be frustratingly little information on is how long term contact with the Roman Empire impacted everything outside of the Germanic warrior culture over the roughly 500 period these 2 cultures interacted, as it certainly seems to have effect on the former. Gut instinct tells me the Germanic tribes should have undergone a transformation similar to the Celtic tribes in Gaul prior to the Gallic Wars, accept at an accelerated rate of development as it was contact with the Mediterranean world over several hundred years via Italy that spurned the Gauls into developing towns, clearing and cultivating woodlands into farmlands and building roads, bridges etc. (At least that is my understanding of it)
I would have expected to see something similar occur within the lands of Germania and ‘Greater Barbaricum’ in the roughly 500 years of the Roman Empire existence in the West, and I just find it difficult to believe that as the world was ‘moving on’ around them Germania just went into a state of complete economic, technological and urban stagnation for over 500 years. I can accept that close and easy access to mass produced low cost Roman goods may have priced some fledgling Germanic industries out of business like skilled metalworkers and traders, but then something like that would still require vast improvement to things like roads and transportation to ensure Roman goods could easily reach any part of Germania in mass. The only other explanation I can think is that contact with the Roman world benefitted only the privileged elite of the Germanic society, like how foreign investments in 3rd world counties sometimes keep corrupt politicians and their cronies and thugs in power when their own people are living in poverty and squalor. If a Germanic King could just import Roman grain, wine, armour and weapons for his warriors then he has no need to ensure his expanding population has enough access to arable and cultivated farmland to feed their numbers, as if they revolt the Romanized Germanic elite can easily suppress them with Rome’s material support.
The only thing that doesn’t make any sense to me about this particular scenario is how these Germanic Kingdoms could seemingly so frequently trounce Roman armies as the y did in the Marcomannic Wars, and the later invasions and migrations of the 3rd - 5th centuries if the Romans could so easily cut off their supplies off grain, weapons and armour. In fact the success of these invasions and later migrations would indicate exactly the opposite. That these Germanic Kingdoms possessed logistical and manufacturing capacity comparable to Rome. The only problem with this notion is according to Nathan and others I’ve talked to there does not seem to be any signs of such urban infrastructure existing around this time in Germania and Sythia.
Theoretical question for you. For the sake of argument, let’s say you invent a time machine, then travel back to 55 BC a few months before crosses Caesar crosses into Germania. You start at the mouth of the Rhine on the northern coast of Germania then walk south east, all the way across the ‘Barbarian’ side of what would become the Roman Empire’s frontier and through all the most prominent lands of ‘Barbaricum’ until 6 months to a year later you round the east coast Black Sea and reach Armenia, for coffee and cake.
Then you do the whole process again accept either a few decades or a century later during the Roman Imperial era, and you repeat the process all the way to the late empire, the migration period and the era of the Hunnic Empire in the 440’s - 450’s AD.
Do you you think you would notice any significant changes social, economic or technological level in the overall Germanic culture’s you’d be passing through generation to generation based on what we know and can theorise today, other then regions changing hands from one Germanic tribe of kingdom to another?
Would the everyday appearance, clothing and level of technological sophistication of the basic Germanic village or royal court and its inhabitants remains exactly the same from 55 BC to 455 AD, with the exception of a few ‘modern’ Roman trinkets here and there.
Initially, I was under the impression that over time traditional Celtic and Germanic style Oppida’s and Hill-Forts may have replaced with fortified Roman styled villa’s with limited industrial capability in the form of armouries, workshops and stables etc, like precursors to the first Medieval Castle’s. At the same time once previously poorly connected villages would be steadily linked together by a more streamlined series of interconnecting roads due to the increased trade tribal unification would enable as a result of close proximity to the Roman Empire’s borders would bring. Maybe also some form of trading posts (not full scale replica Roman towns of course), populated and staffed by either Roman merchants and traders or their ‘Germanic’ middlemen who organised the transport of Roman goods across the border and vice versa. I appreciate as you’ve already commented that there is little to no evidence of large Roman style villas or other urban conglomerates outside of former Roman territories which would indicate the Romans deliberately kept the Barbarians poor and thus underdeveloped, but this contradicts the idea I’ve heard before that the volume of ‘tribute’ (or subsidies, bribes, whatever you want to call it) the Romans paid the Barbarian’s steadily increased as the Empire declined. All this money the Roman were shovelling into the Germans hands year after year must have been spent on something, and while I appreciate the Roman Empire may well have tried to keep skilled Roman engineers and architects out of Barbarian lands I can’t imagine this was always easy to enforce at the best of times, let alone during times of civil war or strife. (Which in the 3rd century was like every Tuesday to Saturday)
If a Germanic or Gothic King made it known he’d pay handsomely for Roman craftsman, then regardless of whatever measures the Romans had in place to prevent the transfer of such skills into Barbarian lands I’m sure those kings would have no shortage of Roman citizens lining up and waiting to take the money and protection. (There is only so much a pre-industrial society can do to secure a few thousand kilometres of border with two seas on either end)
I’m aware that I may simply be overestimating the financial value of tributes and trade dues the Germans and Goths received from the Romans as I haven’t been able to find any specific figures of the incomes of the various kingdoms and how they rose and fell over the lifetime of the Roman Empire. I always just assumed there was a common consensus that what began as a small trickle of gold and silver into the Germans coffers from Augustus to keep the tribes divided and pacified turned into a steady deluge of gold and silver (or equivalent goods like grain, steel etc) until the empire was virtually bankrupted and unable to pay its own bills. If this is true it still raises the question what did the Barbarian’s spend this money on, if it wasn’t improvements to their own infrastructure. The problem I have with the notion that the Germanic Barbarian’s remained the same poorly clothed and equipped rabble lacking in armour, swords or comparable organisation to the Romans is I just don’t see how this rabble could have defeat and conquer the western Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. I’m aware this conquest did not happen overnight, and that in most cases the Germanic Kingdoms often aligned themselves with one side of a Roman civil war in exchange for land to settle, however for the average Germanic warband’s to be considered worth bartering away land for in the first they must already have been equipped to a relatively high standard anyway, otherwise Roman Emperor’s and usurpers both would have had no incentive to recruit them in exchange for land if they could just have raised the same number of troops from the Roman serf population and equipped then from state armouries. If this was the case, the question still remains if the armour and swords the Germans used to equip themselves didn’t come from Roman armouries, where did it come from? (I feel this is a chicken an egg scenario and we may never know the truth for certain)
(12-16-2020, 08:20 PM)CaesarAugustus Wrote: "is there any indication that newer urban developments and infrastructure such as roads, towns and large scale land clearance began to take shape beyond the Roman frontier? ... Germanic and Gothic kings and chieftains had a tendency to build themselves Roman styled villa’s in their own lands, likely with the assistance of Roman engineers and architects."
A similar urban development would have made easy a Roman conquest. A lower but spread density instead was a natural defense for Germanic tribes.
That undoubtably makes sense from a retrospective and omnipresent perspective, but do you really think hundreds of separate tribes and millions of individuals Germans, Goths and Sythian’s over 500+ year time span could adopt such a hive-minded approach to their own unilateral long term defence? (Particularly considering Germanic tribes were famous for warring with each other just as frequently they warred with Rome)
Humans should think in the long term, but going by history 90% of the time we only think in the short term. I don’t see why it would be any different for the Germans over this period when you consider it was a cumulative cascade of bad decisions for short terms gains that ultimately brought down the Western Roman Empire in under a century. (e.g. the reneging of land grants and later slaughter of the families of Gothic soldiers in 408 AD, which led to the sack of Rome in 410 AD etc)
(12-22-2020, 01:01 AM)Robert Vermaat Wrote: "Yes, this is one of the great mysteries of the third century. Where did all these barbarians come from, and how were they so effective?"
Why would it be a mystery? I mean the new 'supertribes' like the Saxons and Franks had to come from somewhere - and all the smaller tribes like the Chatti etc. had to go somewhere.. the old smaller tribes c/would sit back when one of them tried a raid, but now they all chimed in, cutting harder, deeper and with more succes.
I think Nathan was referencing the sudden capacity and willingness of the Germanic people’s ability to defeat Roman armies on Roman soil after the mid 2nd century AD, when for the two centuries previous Germans tribes had seemingly lacked the ability to organise such large scale expeditions into Roman territory and defeat the legions on flat open ground. (i.e. not a wooded forest like Teutoburg)
We know what the symptoms of this change in the strategic and tactical outlook for the Empire are. (Defeated roman armies, dead Generals and later Emperors, cities long though ‘safe’ besieged and in some cases sacked etc)
We just don’t know what the cause of this change in fortunes for the Barbarian’s was. It may been something as simple as certain tribes unifying then expanding their strength, forcing others to flee to Rome’s borders. Or it may have been expanding populations meaning there wasn’t enough fertile land for everyone to support themselves, but in this case what caused the increase in population, or likewise what caused these desperate tribes to unify into so called super tribes? I’ve noticed Scandinavia in particular seems to have an odd tendency to act as a kind of demographic release valve for surplus population into Europe, periodically producing ‘cultures of invaders’ every few generations from the Cimbri to the to the Goths to the Saxons to the Vikings. If I had to guess I’d imagine the Baltic Sea serves as something of an miniature Mediterranean, building up a diversified breadbasket for the indigenous population of fertile farmland, fisheries and the capacity for trade by sea and metal craft. Then every few generations climate change causes a temporary economic and agricultural breakdown and several tens of thousands of the local inhabitants have to either find greener pastures to plough or starve, thus you have a never ending cycle of Barbarian warrior cultures migrating south, or later west after the Roman Empire collapses in the West.
It’s believed now it was the Goths migrating south from Scandinavia to modern day Ukraine around 100 AD that triggered the Marcomannic Wars as other tribes with Germania and Sythia scattered to get out of their way, pushing their own neighbouring tribes into the borders of Roman Empire. To be honest I’m not quite quite sure I believe this as the earlier idea of one population driving another to flight has been discredited, and it’s more likely it would be the the ruling elite (the King, his court, his personnel following of warriors and all their families, servants and hangers on. Maybe say 5-10% of a regions total population, but not an entire people. For the remaining 90-95% percent of the population they’d probably just have a foreigner take over as head of their village who would then take their share of their surplus foodstuffs each harvest, if they weren’t killed or enslaved in the initial invasion. I can see this shaking up the tribal landscape politically as this exiles would probably be accepted into the courts of neighbouring tribes, but I can’t see it starting a war in and off itself until you get the larger tribal confederations arising. Despite Hollywood’s addiction to moustache twirling villains very few people want to rule a pile of ash and corpses.
I agree with Nathan in so far that I think there was something of a parasitical relationship between Rome and the Barbarian’s, and I think it was this along with multiple other contributing factors (including possibly Han China on the other side of the world) that eventually morphed the Barbarians into a much more powerful and capable military threat that eventually consumed the western half of the Roman Empire. In the time of Augustus in the early 1st century AD I think this parasitical relationship certainly favoured Rome more then it did the Barbarians as for an empire that was still consolidating its recent gains over freshly conquered people ‘tribute’ in the form of relatively small volumes of gold or items of equal value was probably an economical alternative to over-stretching themselves military or having to deal with both foreign incursions and internal uprising from newly conquered peoples. I think the problem is over the following centuries both trade and tribute from the much wealthier and economically developed Roman Empire eliminated the incentives for the Germanic tribes to fight each other for plunder and wealth, which led to the first tribal confederation and kingdoms, or ‘super-tribes’ as you’ve referred to them. This unification in the face of a potentially common threat probably also had the unintended consequence of reducing civil strife and increasing opportunities for peaceful trade between tribes, which probably would have marginally raised the standard of living within these regions and thus both increased the population and given the average Germanic chieftain or king access to greater funds to equip equip his retinue, either from the greater number of smiths he may have access to as part of a larger confederation or maybe from armour and weapons imported from Rome. (Probably a combination of both)
The result I think was something of a ticking time bomb for the Romans, with the Barbarians growing ever stronger, better organised and more populous with every passing year as a result of perpetual contact with the Roman Empire, and thus requiring ever more tribute to placate. Off course this just becomes a vicious cycle of extortion and violence. Simon MacDowall’s ‘Germanic Warrior’ book does make a clear case that it was contact with the Roman Empire that caused this as Germanic warfare gradually changed from a ritual of raiding and intimidation of one tribe by another to fighting and killing for financial and material reward. Prior to their contact with Rome the professional warriors of a Germanic tribe were oath bound to a single tribal Chieftain however once young Germanic nobles started being hostaged to Rome and inducted into the Roman Army before eventually returning years later to their former homelands they start recruiting retunes of warriors across separate tribal lines with the express purpose of waging long distance wars for plunder and wealth.
The thing is there seems to be frustratingly little information on is how long term contact with the Roman Empire impacted everything outside of the Germanic warrior culture over the roughly 500 period these 2 cultures interacted, as it certainly seems to have effect on the former. Gut instinct tells me the Germanic tribes should have undergone a transformation similar to the Celtic tribes in Gaul prior to the Gallic Wars, accept at an accelerated rate of development as it was contact with the Mediterranean world over several hundred years via Italy that spurned the Gauls into developing towns, clearing and cultivating woodlands into farmlands and building roads, bridges etc. (At least that is my understanding of it)
I would have expected to see something similar occur within the lands of Germania and ‘Greater Barbaricum’ in the roughly 500 years of the Roman Empire existence in the West, and I just find it difficult to believe that as the world was ‘moving on’ around them Germania just went into a state of complete economic, technological and urban stagnation for over 500 years. I can accept that close and easy access to mass produced low cost Roman goods may have priced some fledgling Germanic industries out of business like skilled metalworkers and traders, but then something like that would still require vast improvement to things like roads and transportation to ensure Roman goods could easily reach any part of Germania in mass. The only other explanation I can think is that contact with the Roman world benefitted only the privileged elite of the Germanic society, like how foreign investments in 3rd world counties sometimes keep corrupt politicians and their cronies and thugs in power when their own people are living in poverty and squalor. If a Germanic King could just import Roman grain, wine, armour and weapons for his warriors then he has no need to ensure his expanding population has enough access to arable and cultivated farmland to feed their numbers, as if they revolt the Romanized Germanic elite can easily suppress them with Rome’s material support.
The only thing that doesn’t make any sense to me about this particular scenario is how these Germanic Kingdoms could seemingly so frequently trounce Roman armies as the y did in the Marcomannic Wars, and the later invasions and migrations of the 3rd - 5th centuries if the Romans could so easily cut off their supplies off grain, weapons and armour. In fact the success of these invasions and later migrations would indicate exactly the opposite. That these Germanic Kingdoms possessed logistical and manufacturing capacity comparable to Rome. The only problem with this notion is according to Nathan and others I’ve talked to there does not seem to be any signs of such urban infrastructure existing around this time in Germania and Sythia.
Real Name: Tim Hare
