THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 106

The Empire of the Marcomanni

7-08. The Empire of the Marcomanni

The powerful kingdom which this Germanic prince, Marbod, established by bringing in further masses of settlers and by subjugating the surrounding tribes — even the powerful Semnones, the Langobards, the Goths, and the Lugi (Vandals) are said to have acknowledged his suzerainty — had no rival in northern Europe, and with its trained army of 70,000 footmen and 4,000 horse soon became a menace to the Roman Empire. The importance which was attached to it, and to the commanding personality of its ruler by the Romans themselves, is evident from the extraordinary military preparations which Tiberius set on foot (A.D. 6). As is well known, the intervention of the Roman arms was not in the end called for. But what even they might not have been able to accomplish was effected by inner dissension. In the struggle for the supremacy of Germany against Arminius at the head of the Cherusci, and of all the other peoples who flocked to the standard of the liberator Germanae, Marbod was defeated, and the fate of his kingdom was thereby decided. First the Semnones and Langobards ranged themselves on the side of his adversaries, then one tribe after another, so that he found his dominions in the end reduced to their original extent, the country of the Marcomanni. With the ruin of his empire his own fate overtook him. Treachery in his own camp forced him to seek the protection of the Romans.

The fall of its founder did not, however, affect the stability of the Bohemian kingdom of the Suebi. Although the Marcomanni were never afterwards able to regain their ascendancy, they held their own far on into the decline of the ancient world, in the country which they had occupied under Marbod's leadership. Indeed after a time their power was so far revived that, in alliance with the Quadi, they were able to dominate the upper Danube frontier for fully a century.

The earliest mention of the Quadi occurs in the geographer Strabo. He names them among the Suebian tribes who settled within the Hercynian Forest, the mountains which form the frontier of Bohemia. The country which they inhabited is nearly the present Moravia. Its eastern frontier was formed by the March, the ancient Marus. That they were of Suebian origin is clear from the express testimony of Strabo, as well as on linguistic grounds. The only point which remains doubtful is whether even before their coming into Moravia they had formed a political unit, or whether they were a migratory band sent out by one of the great Suebian peoples, perhaps the Semnones, which only developed into a united and independent national community after settling in Moravia. The former, however, is the more probable.

Like their western neighbours the Marcomanni, the Quadi were the successors of a Keltic people. As the Boii had been settled in Bohemia, so in Moravia, from a remote period and down to Caesar's day had been settled the Volcae Tectosages. Seeing that about B.C. 60, the advance of the Teutons from the north over the Erzgebirge and Sudetes caused the Boii to leave their territory, it is probable that at the same time, or a little later, the peoples further to the east became involved in a struggle with the invaders. But whereas the Boii by their prompt retirement escaped the danger, the Tectosages, it would appear, were utterly destroyed. We find the Quadi soon after in possession of their territory, and since we get no hint of the fate of the Moravian Tectosages, the Romans cannot yet have been in possession of the neighbouring country of Noricum. Their destruction must therefore have fallen before B.C. 15, when Noricum passed under the dominion of Rome. If this hypothesis is correct the irruption of the Quadi into Moravia took place shortly after the Boii had left Bohemia; in any case a considerable time before the occupation of that country by the Marcomanni.

To the west of the Marcomanni, between the Bohmer-Wald and the Danube as far up as the river Naab, were settled the Naristi. It is equally uncertain whence they came and when they appeared in this region. It is possible, though that is the most that can be said, that like their eastern neighbours they belonged to the Suebian confederacy — Tacitus certainly counts them as members of it — and that they are to be numbered among those peoples which, according to Strabo, Marbod had settled in the region of the Hercynia Sylva.

Guarding the flanks, as it were, of the southern territories of the Teutons lay two settlements planted by the Romans; in the west the Hermunduri between the upper Main and the Danube, and in the east the Vannianic kingdom of the Suebi. The former came into being B.C. 6, the Roman general, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, having assigned to a band of Hermunduri the eastern part of the territory left free by the migration of the Marcomanni into Bohemia; the latter was created by the settlement of bands of Suebian warriors belonging to the following of the fallen Suebian leaders, Marbod and Casvalda.

The Moras is of course the March, the Cusus, as this Suebian settlement cannot have been very extensive, was probably the Waag, though it may have been the Gran, which lies further to the east. These Suebians of northern Hungary come into notice several times in the course of the first century. As they disappear later, they were probably absorbed by the Quadi. Further towards the northeast, in the Hungarian Erzgebirge, and beyond in the upper region of the Vistula, we find in the first century of our era the Buri and Sidones. The former, who are mentioned as early as Strabo, were probably of Bastarnian, and the latter of Lugian origin; further still, abutting on the eastern flank of the Sidones, were the Burgiones, Ambrones, and Frugundiones, doubtless also Bastarnian.

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