What makes a barbarian?[1] In the Greek sense of the word it meant anyone who wasn’t Greek, their native tongues just sounding like babbling to Greek ears, and this definition would include the Romans, even after the decisive defeat of Hellenisitc power following the Third and Fourth Macedonian Wars. This posed a slight problem to the Roman sense of superiority, but one that had been countered by Cicero, who in Republic posited that barbarism does not come from language but from manners, this not only conveniently expands non-barbarians to include Romans, but reinforces the divide between civilisation and ‘barbarism’.[2] In the 4th and 5th centuries CE as the barbarians started to become rulers in an increasingly porous empire the transformation of the term which would eventually lead to Jordanes stating that the Goths, who had come to rule Italy, were not barbarians either,[3] and that they were, in fact, natural allies to the Romans against the barbarism of the Huns.[4] Huns from a contemporary source:
They are certainly in the shape of men, however uncouth, and are so hardy that they neither require fire nor well flavored food, but live on the roots of such herbs as they get in the fields, or on the half-raw flesh of any animal, which they merely warm rapidly by placing it between their own thighs and the backs of their horses.
This lurid description comes from a key source from Late Antiquity for historians and classicists, in particular for its descriptions of the various barbarian peoples: Ammianus Marcellus’ work the Res Gestae, a history of the Roman Empire, done in the style of republican and early imperial figures.[5] Ammianus was from Antioch in the Levant, and likely to have grown up in a Greek family, despite his decision to write in Latin.[6] He was a military man and served in the armies of Constantius II and Julian. Only a miniscule portion of his work, the Res Gestae, remains, which covers some 25 years, from 353-378 CE in a history which covered nearly 300, beginning with the reign of Emperor Nerva in 96 CE. But the text which does remain to us covers Ammianus’ own life, and we can see how his own experiences colour his view of the historical events depicted. Ammianus has been traditionally considered one of the most valuable sources from Late Antiquity, Edward Gibbons in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire praises him as ‘an accurate and faithful guide’[7], and his entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary describes him as ‘the last great Latin historian of the Roman empire’[8] In historical works from Antiquity, like Ammianus’, the description of barbarian invasions and conflict can be seen not necessarily as a clinical description of events, but more as a foil to contrast the leadership styles of Emperors, in this case Constantius II and Julian. Ammianus favours the more combative style of Julian than the more conciliatory Constantius.[9]
Ammianus’ description of the Huns is completely unlike when he described the Alamanni or the Sassanid Persians. Ammianus’ Hunnic digression comes not from his personal experience, but from second or third hand sources, and this is likely a factor as to why the passage makes the Huns to be more bestial than human.[10] His dehumanising of the Huns is common among the texts of this period; Greco-Roman writers used them as an example of unbridled rage and ferocity.[11] The only scholar available to us who had first hand interactions with the Huns is Priscus of Panium, who was part of a diplomatic mission to the court of Attila in the 440s CE, and who paints a vastly different picture to his near contemporaries of Hunnic culture. The multinational nature of Attila’s court, with Goths and Scythians in places of note among the Huns, and the prominence of women in society are aspects that Priscus found striking.[12] Guy Halsall states that Ammianus’ description of the Huns draws on descriptions of other peoples from the ends of the earth, and uses similar descriptors that he had used for the Saracens and the Alans, and uses topoi and phrases from Tacitus’ Fenni.[13] Eunapius, the Greek sophist, draws a connection of the Huns with the Royal Scythians from Herodutus’ History in an attempt to place them in the context of earlier Attic literature.[14] The assertion that they eat their meat raw is again tapping into a tradition among Greco-Roman writers when discussing barbarous groups, it is a trait attributed by Classical scholars to various barbarian tribes, as a habit that is a natural extension of barbarism itself.[15] Regardless of the novelty of Ammianus’ description of them, most of the scholars write about the Huns in a similarly awed fashion.
Peter Heather praises Ammianus as a source, as he shows much greater interest in a description of barbarians than many of his contemporaries.[16] While many Roman writers would treat the German tribes as unchanged since Tacitus writing in the 1st century C.E. it is through Ammianus narrative that the Alamanni political structure can be unpicked. Unlike in Tacitus where the various tribes were ruled without kings for the most part, and never hereditary, the Alamanni from Ammianus’ time have more stable governance.[17] He reserves the dehumanising of barbarians to those who fight against the Romans; those who serve Rome, either in the military or administration, he praises, such as the courage of Germanic soldiers, who increasingly made up sections of the Roman army.[18] Zosimus, the late 5th-early 6th century Greek writer, tried to downplay the presence of barbarians within Roman ranks,[19] while Sidonius Apollinaris in a letter to Syagrius the last Roman commander in Gaul, is amused by his friend’s learning Germanic, but chides him to not forget his classics nor his Latin heritage.[20]
Ammianus’ Sassanian Persians, displays the typical attitudes of Greco-Roman writers towards the Persians: the decadent Easterners, who are effeminate and ill-disciplined. He does however, praise them for their modesty, and meritorious in their choices for judges, unlike the Romans, in Ammianus’ view.[21] For him the Roman defeat at Persian hands in the Roman-Persian War of 364 could not possibly have been because of Persian superiority or even parity with Rome on the battlefield, but must be due to the timidity of Jovian, who becomes emperor following Julian’s death at the Battle of Samarra against Sharpur II. This view is shared with Eunapius, who celebrated Julian’s invasion of Persia, and puts the blame on the subsequent defeat and peace treaty on Jovian.[22]
This view of Roman superiority is complicated by the settlement of barbarians within the empire, the peregrini.[23] A number of laws dating from the reign of Valentinian I and Valens give the modern observer an idea of how the peregrini were treated under Roman law, such as a law from roughly 369 CE, which placed restrictions on commercial practices and trade with the barbarians and prohibited the trade of wine, oil, and fish sauce, all three of which were valuable commodities.[24] Another law which shows how the administration were taking steps against integration of the peregrini prohibited the marriage between Romans and barbarians,[25] and Theodosius’ treaty with the Goths in 382 settling them along the Danube explicitly prohibited conubium, the right to intermarry.[26] Despite these various documents how widespread the implementation of the law was is up for debate, as Ralph Mathisen argues,[27] and indeed through material evidence we can see how it was ignored; for example; on the headstone of his wife a Roman citizen from Florence calls her a civis Alammana, a citizen of the Alammani.[28] Jerome in his Epistles when writing on the death of the general Flavius Stilicho, reasons that his supposed betrayal of Rome and subsequent murder were an inevitability of his birth, as a half barbarian traitor,[29] and Bryan Ward-Perkins in his research found that there are many examples of Romans from Late Antiquity that considered that ‘barbarians were uncouth and beneath consideration, or indeed that the best barbarian was a dead barbarian.’[30]
Salvian, a Christian priest from Marseille, is incredibly positive about the barbarians when compared to Ammianus and many other writers in the 4th and 5th centuries, at least on the surface level. Salvian wrote some 40 years later than Ammianus, in the 430s CE, and by that time the Western Empire’s control in Gaul is faltering, with the various barbarian groups gaining greater control of large territories, and increased civil unrest – with the revolt of the bacaudae, groups of peasant militias and brigands. In De Gubernatione Dei (On the Government of God) Salvian tried to answer the question of why this is the case, and why the civilising mission of Rome, and the evangelical mission of the orthodox church was failing. He uses the supposed innocence and harmony barbarians to juxtapose the sins of the Romans: ‘Almost all barbarians, at least those who of one tribe under one king, love one another; almost all Romans persecute each other’[31] This seems like high praise but he is using this strong rhetorical language in order to shock his readers, when writing about the bacaudae and their alliance with the his true feelings about the barbarians becomes apparent.[32] Unlike contemporary Christian thinkers, such as Paulus Orosius and Augustine of Hippo, Salvian does not place the blame for the ending of the empire solely on the shoulders of the pagans and heretics, but also on the inaction of Christians to convert the rest of the Romans. He is pessimistic in outlook, towards barbarians, the corruption of the Church, and the pagans and heretics in Rome.[33] Of the barbarians he states morosely: illi crescunt cotidie nos decrescimus, illi proficiunt nos humiliamur, illi florent et nos arescimus.[34] His defeatest sentiment cannot identify these barbarians as Christians themselves, despite them being Arians, as he strongly associates the Church with the Empire.[35] Salvian does share Ammianus’ and the rest of Roman society’s contempt for the barbarian, however, in his writing he is trying to reconcile the weakening of the empire with the supposed inferiority of the barbarian invader, and so, has to concede that the characteristics of the simplistic life of barbarian are better than the supposed sins of the hedonism of Roman society.
Ammianus’ description of the Huns as bestial men with ‘no need of fire nor of savoury food’ is very much in line with the prejudices and beliefs about barbarians in the Rome of Late Antiquity. The Roman sense of superiority in culture, character, and martial prowess to those outside the empire persisted despite the ongoing waning of the empire in the West, with traditionalist writers, like Ammianus and Eunapius still presenting strength and advocating for aggressive Roman foreign policy, and Salvian and other Christian writers in spite of their dour outlook still found that the Christian piety of the Roman emperors meant superiority over pagan and heretical barbarians. Many of these barbarians would in time become the masters of Europe, and look on the Romans as their antecedents, and themselves as the inheritors of the Empire, Theodoric the Great with his Latin inspired building programmes and stylings in Ravenna, and Charlemagne taking the title of Holy Roman Emperor, declaring himself the true successor of Augustus.
Bibliography
- Burns, Thomas S. Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C. – 400 A. D. Baltimore, 2003.
- Cameron, Averil. The Later Roman Empire. London, 2013.
- Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Halsall, Guy. Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568. Cambridge, 2007.
- Hanson, R. P. C. ‘The Reaction of the Church to the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the Fifth Century’ Vigilae Christianae 26, no. 4 (1972), pp 272-287.
- Heather, Peter. Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe. Oxford, 2009.
- Maas, Michael. Reading in Late Antiquity: A Sourcebook. Oxford, 2010.
- Mathisen, Ralph W. ‘Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani: Concepts of Citizenship and the legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire’. The American Historical Review 111, no. 4 (Oct. 2006), pp 1011-1040.
- Mathisen, Ralph W. ‘Provinciales, Gentiles, and the Marriages between Romans and Barbarians’. The Journal of Roman Studies 99 (2009), pp 140-155.
- Matthews, John. The Roman Empire of Ammianus. London, 1989.
- Matthews, John. ‘Ammianus Marcellanus’ in The Oxford Classical Dictionary
- Moralee, Jason. ‘Maximinus Thrax and the Racial Politics of Late Antiquity’. Greece & Rome 55, no. 1 (Apr. 2008), pp 55-82.
- Rohrbacher, David. The Historians of Late Antiquity. London, 2002.
- Salvian. De Gubernatione Dei. c. 440.
- Thompson, E. A. Romans and Barbarians: The Decline of the Western Empire. Madison, 1982.
- Ward Perkins, Bryan. The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilisation. Oxford, 2005.
[1] N.B. I will be dividing the barbarians into three broad groupings in this discussion, based on their different treatment by Greco-Roman writers: the Sassanian Persians in the Near East, the Germanic tribes beyond the Rhine and the Danube, and the third grouping of the Alans and Huns who appear in this period.
[2] Guy Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568 (Cambridge, 2007), p. 45.
[3] Jason Moralee, ‘Maxinimus Thrax and the Politics of Race in Late Antiquity’ Greece & Rome 55 no. 1 (2008), p. 74.
[4] Bryan Ward Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilisation (Oxford, 2005), p. 36.
[5] David Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity (London, 2002), p. 180.
[6] Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity, p. 14.
[7] Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
[8] John Matthews, ‘Ammianus Marcellinus, c. 330–395 CE’ in Oxford Classical Dictionary
[9] Thomas S. Burns, Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C. – A.D. 400, p. 331.
[10] Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity, p. 226.
[11] Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity, p. 225.
[12] Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity, p. 227.
[13] Halsall, Barbarian Migration and the Roman West, p. 172.
[14] John Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989), p. 335.
[15] Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus, p. 337.
[16] Peter Heather, Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe (Oxford, 2009), p. 37
[17] Heather, Empires and Barbarians, p. 39.
[18] Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity, p. 232.
[19] Burns, Rome and the Barbarians, p. 335.
[20] Sidonius, Letter 5.5 trans. W. B. Anderson (Cambridge MA, 1965) cited in Michael Maas Readings in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2010), p. 352.
[21] Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity, p. 209.
[22] Rohrbacher, The Historians of Late Antiquity, p. 210.
[23] Ralph W. Mathisen, ‘Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani: Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire’ The American Historical Review 111 no. 4 (2006).
[24] Mathisen, ‘Provinciales, Gentiles, and Marriages between Romans and Barbarians’ The Journal of Roman Studies 99 (2009), p. 141.
[25] Mathisen, ‘Marriages between Romans and Barbarians’, p. 67.
[26] Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire (London, 2013), p. 138.
[27] Mathisen, ‘Marriages between Romans and Barbarians’, p. 143
[28] Mathisen, ‘Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani’.
[29] Moralee, ‘Maxinimus Thrax and the Politics of Race in Late Antiquity’, p. 69.
[30] Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome, p. 38
[31] Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei 5.4 trans. Jeremiah O’Sullivan (New York, 1947) cited in Maas Readings in Late Antiquity, p. 353.
[32] Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome, p. 39.
[33] R. P. C. Hanson, ‘The Reaction of the Church to the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the Fifth Century’ Vigilae Christianae 26 no. 4 (1972), p. 277.
[34] Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei 7.11.4 “they increase daily while we diminish; they gain in power while we are humbled; they flourish and we wither away.”
[35] Hanson, ‘The Church and the Collapse of Western Roman Empire’, p. 273.
Historical Matters 