Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire

7 None of Them Were Germans: Northern Barbarians in Late Antiquity

Chapter 7 None ofThem Were Germans: Northern Barbarians in Late Antiquity A second, and particularly prevalent problem is the term "Germanic" itself. ... [I]t was suggested that the term "Germanic" be dropped completely in this volume, but to substitute it with "barbarians" would only mean adopting another (Roman) ideology which, in the final analysis, is as inadequate as "Germanic." The only neutral alternative, therefore, would be to simply speak oflate antique and early medieval peoples and kingdoms, but, ofcourse, this would merely be evading the problem. -H.-W Goetz, "Introduction" to Regna and Gentes. The title of this chapter draws attention to the absence of "Germans ;' "the Germanic;' and "Germany" from the Migration Age. None of the participants called themselves by such a name, and even late Roman observers, whose ancestors had placed the term into circulation, used it rarely. When they did, they almost invariably meant it in the narrow sense of western barbarian peoples, such as the Franks, who lived more or less near the one incontrovertibly Germanic thing, namely, the two Roman provinces of "Gerrnania," on the middle and lower course of the Rhine river.1 Whether or not, as Goetz suggests above, the term "Germanic" evokes a "Roman ideology" is a matter of opinion; the certainty is that modern uses of "German" or "Germanic" in the Migration Age, unless more meticulous than they normally are, introduce glaring anachronisms wherever they are deployed. It mayor may not be true that "barbarian" evokes a Roman ideology, but it is certain that the term was in current use in late antiquity, and that it continued to be standard in the Middle Ages and beyond . Its meaning may be open to debate; its use may be politically incorrect; but there is no doubt at all that, in contexts calling for general terms, "barbarian " is appropriate to late antique usage whereas "Germanic" is grossly anachronistic .' There is also a third course, namely, to pay the actors the compliment of using their own names and to become conversant with minor ones as well as with stars. Only a few names of barbarian peoples-Goths, Franks, Vandals, 188 Chapter7 Saxons-are household words, but that is just a matter of training. With a little practice, "Sarrnatian" and "Gepid" can also become familiar. The multiplicity of names for "barbarians" brings home the pivotal lesson that the Roman Empire faced many different peoples beyond its frontiers-not a collectivity whose packing into a single term has served for many centuries mainly to distort the past.' This chapter is concerned with the barbarian peoples in late antiquity, both in general, as a collective phenomenon dealt with by Rome, and severally, in case studies of seven less prominent peoples of the Migration Age and of their respective destinies. A final part, centering on the last phase of Gothic rule in Italy, attempts to show that ethnicity was radically inadequate at that time as a basis for political cohesion. Late Roman Conditions and Barbarian Penetration The main difference in the relations between northern barbarians and the Roman Empire in the early and the later periods is that, whereas the barbarians were excluded from the earlier Empire except under due control, the authorities of the later Empire allowed them to have a continually expanding role in imperial society. The phrase "barbarization of the Empire" has long been used to describe late Roman conditions; the phenomenon is analogous to the contemporary "Christianization." The Empire that disposed of its former religions wholesale, and exchanged them for a once-alien monotheistic creed, also underwent a social transformation in which foreigners (originally) from beyond the borders-rarely from remote distances-were both more needed and more accepted than they had ever been. From the third century, large and increasing numbers of foreigners were taken into the armed forces, and their leaders were given high military rank and honorific dignities; from the late fourth century and into the fifth, whole nations were allowed onto imperial soil as "treaty peoples " (foederati), from the fifth century as well, more or less independent (barbarian ) kingdoms on Roman soil were authorized to exist and rule Roman provincials; and, in the sixth century, the emperor Justinian tried and in part succeeded in eliminating these "foreign" dominations over Romans, leaving only a few,but large, western ones to survive. The barbarians in late antiquity did not materialize out of the blue on the Roman frontiers. They had always been there, face to face, more or less, with the imperial armies...