Marcomanni

The Roman Empire under Hadrian (ruled 117–138), showing the location of the Marcomanni in the region of the upper Danube (now northern Austria, part of Bavaria, Germany and Czech Republic)

The Marcomanni were a Germanic people who lived close to the border of the Roman empire, north of the River Danube. They were one of the most important members of the powerful cluster of related Suebian peoples in this region, which also included the Hermunduri, Quadi, Semnones and Langobardi, and they were particularly important to the Romans. They appear in Roman records from approximately 60 BC until about 400 AD.

After a major defeat to the Romans in about 9 BC, the Marcomanni got a new king named Maroboduus, who had grown up in Rome. He subsequently led his people and several others into a region surrounded by forests and mountains in the present day Czech Republic. From his base there, Maroboduus built up a Rome-aligned Suebian empire, but the Langobardi and Semnones left when Maroboduus took the Roman side during the rebellion of Arminius. In the subsequent war among the Germanic peoples, the Marcomanni won. Despite their support for Rome, Roman rulers saw the Marcomanni as a potential threat to the empire, within striking distance of Italy. Over the centuries the Romans sought to control their leaders, limit their power, and they often came into open conflict with them.

In the second century AD, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and his co-emperors, the Romans pursued a major series of bloody wars against the Marcomanni and their allies which are called the Marcomannic wars. At one point the Marcomanni and their allies invaded Italy itself. The tensions behind this war were never resolved, and ended only when Attila and his allies moved from the east into the Middle Danube region and took effective control of it in the 5th century. Some Marcomanni subsequently moved south into the Roman empire, and converted to Christianity. The Langobardi who eventually moved into these areas, and then into Italy, allowed Marcomanni to join them.

Before 9 BC, the homeland of the Marcomanni is not known, but archaeological evidence suggests that they lived near the central Elbe river or Saale. The Marcomanni were first reported by Julius Caesar among the Germanic peoples who were attempting to settle in Gaul in 58 BC under the leadership of Ariovistus, but he did not explain where their homeland was.

Name and origins

It is believed that the name of the Marcomanni derives from a Proto-Germanic word reconstructed as *markō meaning "border, boundary", which is the origin of the English words "march and mark, meaning "frontier", or "border", as for example in the term "Welsh marches". They were therefore "border men".

The Marcomanni already had this name before they encountered the Romans in Gaul in 58 BC, where both the Romans and the Marcomanni were foreigners. Their homeland up until that time, and therefore the frontier or march they originally lived near, is unknown and discussed below.

The time of Caesar and Ariovistus (58 BC)

The Marcomanni first appear in historical records among the confederates of Ariovistus who fought against Julius Caesar in Gaul. Ariovistus led a large group of Germani settlers who had crossed the Rhine from what is now Germany, into what is now France. Caesar's report of his battles mentions the Marcomanni among them only once, in his account of his victory in 58 BC. Caesar wrote that he approached the Germanic camp and forced them to draw up their forces. They "arranged them by tribe (generatim, by gens), at equal distances, the Harudes, Marcomanni, Tribocci, Vangiones, Nemetes, Sedusii, Suebi; and surrounded their whole army with their chariots and wagons, that no hope might be left in flight. On these they placed their women, who, with outstretched hand and in tears, entreated the soldiers, as they went forward to battle, not to deliver them into slavery to the Romans." According to Caesar the Tribocci, Vangiones and Nemetes came from homelands nearby on the Rhine itself, but the others were from further east.

The exact position of the Marcomanni homelands east of the Rhine at this time is not known, but it has been suggested that they lived near to, or even among the Suebi, because later writers describe Marcomanni as part of the Suebian group of peoples. Caesar understood the homeland of the Suebi he faced to be in or near present day Hesse, Franconia, and Thuringia. Caesar makes no mention of any special connection between the Suebi and Marcomanni, who he only mentions them in a list. The Marcomanni may therefore have already been seen as a branch of the Suebi, even this categorization is only found in much later authors such as Strabo and Tacitus. Between Caesar and Strabo there may have been subsequent changes in the relationship between the Suebi and Marcomanni, or in the terminology that was used. Caesar described the Suebi he encountered as the largest and the most warlike Germanic people (gens), who were divided into 100 districts (pagi) who supplied 1000 men each during war. The forces of these pagi were distinct within the Suevi forces, and it is sometimes suggested that the Marcomanni could have been one of these pagi. The Suebi were also able to call upon other peoples (nationes) to supply infantry and cavalry reinforcements.

A later Roman historian, Cassius Dio, mentioned that part of the country where the Marcomanni had been living previously was settled by the Hermunduri in 7 BC with Roman permission, and was apparently west of the Elbe, if we can assume that the events happened in one campaign. However this area is also not easy to identify. This is partly because the Hermunduri themselves were pushed east of the Elbe soon after, by the time of Strabo, who was writing around 20 AD. (Generations later, in the time of Tacitus around 100 AD, the Hermunduri were again friendly with Rome, and their lands were west of the Marcomanni, stretching from the Danube in Raetia, between present day Regensburg and Passau, to the sources of the Elbe, probably including the Vltava.)

On the other hand, archaeological evidence suggests that the Marcomanni and their Suebian neighbours can be strongly associated with the Grossromstedter archaeological culture of the Middle Elbe and Saale river regions. This culture was moving southwest into the region between the Rhine and Werra before the Roman empire entered the region. And after the Roman conquests began it can be found moving into the Bohemian region. It was influenced not only by the older Jastorf culture of this region, but notably also by the Przeworsk culture from further east in present day Poland. The variant which subsequently developed in the old Boii lands is called the Plaňany-Group, and shows the influence of their older Celtic La Tène culture of the Boii, which had itself already come under Przeworsk influence in the generations before the Germanic influx.

The Marcomanni are difficult to distinguish among the various Suebian groups who were bringing the Grossromstedter culture southwards and westwards, into regions that had been inhabited by carriers of the La Tène culture which is associated with Celtic peoples such as the Boii, Volcae Tectosages and Helvetii. This culture already began to influence the Bohemian area before the Roman period. The name of the Marcomanni, which refers to a frontier, may echo an earlier demarcation between such cultures.

Near extermination by the Romans (9 BC)

In the time of Augustus (reigned 27 BC – 14 AD), major invasions of Germania were launched, giving the Romans effective control of the part between the Rhine and Elbe rivers, until the rebellion of Arminius in 9 AD. During this period the Marcomanni suffered at least one major defeat and subsequently moved themselves into a more remote area surrounded by mountains and forests.

In the Res Gestae Divi Augusti which celebrates the reign of Augustus, it is boasted that among the many kings who took refuge with Augustus as suppliants, there was a king of the Marcomanni Suebi. The name of this king is no longer legible on the Monumentum Ancyranum, but it ended with "-rus".

The Roman historians Florus, and Orosius reported that Drusus the elder almost wiped out the Marcomanni as part of a bloody and difficult campaign, and then erected a mound of Marcomanni spoils. This was during his campaigns of 12–9 BC, after he had defeated the Tencteri and Chatti, and before next turning to an alliance of the Cherusci, Suevi, and Sicambri. Another Roman source, Cassius Dio, describes the sequence of events somewhat differently, but does not mention the Marcomanni by name:

Drusus, [...] invaded the country of the Chatti and advanced as far as that of the Suebi, conquering with difficulty the territory traversed and defeating the forces that attacked him only after considerable bloodshed. From there he proceeded to the country of the Cherusci, and crossing the Weser, advanced as far as the Elbe, pillaging everything on his way. [...] Drusus undertook to cross this river, but failing in the attempt, set up trophies and withdrew.

There are doubts, therefore, about the exact sequence of events, and also about the locations of the battles. Scholars are not unanimous about whether the victory over the Marcomanni happened in 9 BC, which was the year of the victory over the Cherusci, Suebi and Sugambri, and then the death of Drusus. The location of the Marcomanni battle is often assumed to be in Franconia but an alternative hypothesis is that it was closer to the Cherusci, in the area of northeastern Hesse and western Thuringia. There are also scholars who propose that the Suebi defeated in the 9 BC campaign were the Marcomanni.

The move to "Bohemia"

According to the accounts of Tacitus, Velleius Paterculus, and Strabo the Marcomanni eventually moved into a part of the large area that had been occupied by the Boii, a region called Baiohaemum, where their allies and fellow Suevi lived, the Quadi. Scholars interpret this placename as clear evidence of the Germanic language. Haemum corresponds to English "home" and German "heim" (Proto-Germanic *haimaz), while the change from boi- to bai- corresponds to normal evolutions in Germanic languages. This is the origin of the modern placename Bohemia although the boundaries may have been quite different. These classical authors place the new settlement area of the Marcomanni within the Hercynian Forest, in an area near present day Bohemia and probably within it. By 6 BC, their king, Maroboduus, had established a powerful kingdom there that Augustus came to perceive as a threat to the Roman Empire. A later Roman historian, Cassius Dio, implies that the Romans settled the Hermunduri in a place where the Marcomanni had previously been living in 7 BC, suggesting that the Marcomanni had left a previous homeland by that year.

• Strabo, writing about 23 AD, appears to have written the earliest surviving mention of the long-term neighbours of the Marcomanni, the Quadi. Strabo described a mountain range running north of the Danube, like a smaller version of the Alps which runs south of it. Within it is the Hercynian forest, and within this forest are tribes of Suebi "similar to (/such as) the tribes of the Coldui [καθάπερ τὰ τῶν κολδούων], in whose territory lies Buiaimon, the royal seat of Maroboduus". King Maroboduus, he wrote, led several peoples into this forested region, including his own people the Marcomanni. Having lived in Rome and been favoured by Augustus he became ruler of Suevi peoples in this forested region, and also over other Suevi living outside it bordering on the Dacians (who he calls Getae). Not only is Strabo's spelling of Quadi with an "L" unexpected when compared to later references, but some scholars also doubt that the Maroboduus lived within Quadi territory. Errors are suspected in the surviving text. He goes on to specify that the Hercynian forest is on the north side of the Suebi, and the Gabreta Forest is on the southern or Roman side.
• A contemporary of Strabo, Velleius Paterculus, also described "Boiohaemum", where Maroboduus and the Marcomanni lived. He said these "plains surrounded by the Hercynian forest" were the only part of Germania which the Romans did not control in the period before the Roman defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD. Velleius also remarked that Maroboduus subjugated all his neighbours either by war or treaty. Hofeneder notes that many modern scholars interpret this to mean that the Quadi were also under his overlordship. Although there is no consensus about this, it is in any case clear that the two peoples were always closely connected during the many centuries in which they appear in records. Velleius said that Maroboduus drilled his Bohemian soldiers to almost Roman standards, and that although his policy was to avoid conflict with Rome, the Romans came to be concerned that he could invade Italy. "Races and individuals who revolted from us [the Romans] found in him a refuge." From a Roman point of view he noted that the closest point of access to Bohemia was via Carnuntum. This was between present-day Vienna and Bratislava, and near the Quadi territory where the Morava river enters the Danube.
• Approximately 100 AD, Tacitus reflected upon the Marcomanni in his time and in the past, saying they "stand first in strength and renown, and their very territory, from which the Boii were driven in a former age, was won by valour", suggesting that they had to defeat the Boii. He also mentioned that both the Marcomanni and their neighbours the Quadi have "kings of their own nation, descended from the noble stock of Maroboduus and Tudrus". However, he noted that they submit to foreigners, and their strength and power depend on Roman influence. Rome supports them by arms, and "more frequently by our money".

The empire of Maroboduus

Maroboduus built up a Rome-aligned Suebian empire. According to Strabo it included the Lugii, Semnones , Hermunduri, and Velleius and Tacitus made it clear that by 5 AD it also included the Langobardi. According to Velleius he could call upon 70,000 experienced infantry and 4,000 cavalry, although these were probably not only Marcomanni.

In 6 AD Augustus aimed to eliminate the last power center in Germania and sent two Roman army groups under Sentius Saturninus and Tiberius to attack the Marcomanni in a pincer movement starting from Roman bases in present day Marktbreit to the west and Carnuntum on the Danube. This did not go ahead because a major revolt started in Pannonia, south of the Danube, which had also only recently been conquered. Maroboduus remained neutral.

In 9 AD, Arminius of the Cherusci began his major revolt against the Romans. He sent the head of the Roman general Varus to Maroboduus, but Maroboduus sent it to Rome. The Langobardi and Semnones, Suebians living near to the Cherusci on the Elbe, defected from this kingdom in the name of freedom, because Maroboduus did not support the revolt, and because he held royal power.

In 17 AD war broke out among these alliances of Germanic peoples, led by Arminius and Maroboduus. Maroboduus requested help from Rome but the Romans reject him. According to Tacitus "he had no right to invoke the aid of Roman arms against the Cherusci, when he had rendered no assistance to the Romans in their conflict with the same enemy". After an indecisive battle, Maroboduus withdrew into the hilly forests of Bohemia in 18 AD. According to Tacitus, the Romans reacted by deliberately sowing discord among the Germani, "urging them to complete the destruction of the now broken power of Maroboduus". This was all in line with the new foreign policy of the emperor Tiberius.

Already in 19 AD, Maroboduus was deposed and exiled by Catualda, who was a prince who had been living in exile among the Gutones on the Baltic coast in what is now Poland. Maroboduus went into exile among the Romans and lived another 18 years in Ravenna.

Vannius

Catualda's victory was short-lived. He was in turn deposed by Vibilius of the Hermunduri that same year he came to power, 19 AD. The subjects of Maroboduus and Catualda, presumably mainly Marcomanni, were moved by the Romans to an area near the Danube, between the Morava and "Cusus" rivers, and placed under the control of the Quadian king Vannius. There are proposals that the Romans were deliberately trying to create a buffer state with this settlement, but there is no consensus about this. The area where Vannius ruled over the Marcomanni exiles is generally considered to have been a distinct state to the Quadi kingdom itself. Unfortunately the Cusus river has not been identified with certainty. However, Slovak archaeological research locates the core area of the Vannius kingdom in the fertile southwestern Slovakian lowlands around Trnava, east of the Little Carpathians.

Vannius personally benefitted from the new situation and became very wealthy and unpopular. He was himself eventually also deposed by Vibilius and the Hermunduri, together with the neighbouring Lugii, in 50/51 AD. Vannius's soldiers during this conflict are described here as infantry, but he also called for cavalry from his Sarmatian allies, the Iazyges. This was coordinated with his nephews Vangio and Sido, who then divided his realm between themselves as loyal Roman client kings. Vannius was defeated and fled with his followers across the Danube, where they were assigned land in Roman Pannonia. This settlement is convincingly associated with Germanic finds from the 1st century AD in Burgenland, west of Lake Neusiedl, within Roman Pannonia.

Marcomannic Wars

Main article: Marcomannic Wars

The light pink area north of the Danube was temporarily occupied by the Romans in 178–179 AD and was meant to become the new Roman province of Marcomannia

Barbarian invasions against the Roman Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century

In the second century AD, the Marcomanni were part of an alliance with other peoples, including the Quadi, Vandals, and Sarmatians, against the Roman Empire. It was probably driven by movements of larger tribes, like the Goths. According to the historian Eutropius, the forces of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius battled against the Marcomannic confederation for three years at the fortress of Carnuntum, in Pannonia. Eutropius compared the war and Aurelius's success against the Marcomanni and their allies to the Punic Wars. The comparison was apt in that the war marked a turning point, had significant Roman defeats, and caused the death of two Praetorian Guard commanders. The war began in 166, when the Marcomanni overwhelmed the defences between Vindobona and Carnuntum, penetrated along the border between the provinces of Pannonia and Noricum, laid waste to Flavia Solva, and could be stopped only shortly before Aquileia, on the Adriatic Sea. The war lasted until Aurelius's death in 180. It would prove to be only a limited success for Rome since the Danube River remained the frontier of the empire until the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Later history

Suebic migrations across Europe

Kingdom of the Suebi in Hispania (green) in 476 AD

The Christianisation of the Marcomanni, at least into a Roman orthodox form of Christianity, seems to have occurred under their queen Fritigil in the late 4th century. She corresponded with Ambrose of Milan to bring about the conversion. That was the last clear evidence of the Marcomanni having a polity, which was possibly now on the Roman side of the Danube. Soon afterward, the Pannonian and Danubian area went into a long period of turmoil.

Possible connections to later peoples

After crossing the Rhine in 406 and the Pyrenees in 409, a group of Suevi that had migrated with Vandals and Alans established itself in the Roman province of Gallaecia (modern Galicia and northern Portugal), where it was considered foederati and founded the Suebi kingdom of Gallaecia. The Suevi were probably a mix of Suevian groups from the area north of Danube and Pannonian basin such as the Marcomanni, Quadi and Buri.

There, Hermeric swore fealty to the emperor in 410. Bracara Augusta, the modern city of Braga in Portugal, had been the capital of Roman Gallaecia and now became the capital of the Suebic Kingdom.

The Danubian area, meanwhile, became the core of Attila the Hunnic Empire, and within it seem to have been many Suebians. One group of them managed to reform into an independent group after the Battle of Nedao in 454, like many other groups that emerged from Attila's confederation. Those Suevi eventually came into conflict with the Ostrogoths, who had lost at Nadao.

Jordanes, the historian of the Goths, reported (Getica 280) that after the Battle of Bolia, the Ostrogoths attacked the Suevi (ruled by a man named Hunimund, who also seemingly led an attack on Passau) by crossing the Danube when it was frozen and going into a high Alpine area held by the confederates of the Suevi at the time, the Alamanni. (He said that several streams start in the area and enter the Danube.) The region held by those Suevi was described as having Bavarians to the east, Franks to the west, Burgundians to the south, and Thuringians to the north. The text seems to indicate that the Suevi had moved into the Alamannic area but that Suevi were seen as distinct from both Alamanni and Bavarians. That was also the first mention of Bavarians, who are also often proposed to have had Marcomanni in their ancestry.

According to historians such as Herwig Wolfram:

The Marcomanni and the Quadi gave up their special names after crossing the Danube, in fact both the emigrants and the groups remaining in Pannonia became Suebi again. The Pannonian Suebi became subjects of the Huns. After the battle at the Nadao they set up their kingdom, and when it fell, they came, successively under Herulian and Longobard rule, south of the Danube under Gothic rule, and eventually again under Longobard rule.

Other

There is a runic alphabet called the Marcomannic runes, but they are not believed to be related to the Marcomanni.

Kings

• Maroboduus, c. 9 BC – 18 AD
• Catualda, 18 – 20
• Ballomar, c. 166? – 172 or 178?
• Attalus (Marcomanni), c. 260/2
• Fredegildus, 4th century
• Fritigil (Queen), 4th century

See also

• Elbe Germanic peoples
• Irminones

Sources

• Beneš, Zdeněk; Bursák, Daniel (2017), "Plaňany-Group in Bohemia. Three case studies with an emphasis on ceramics", in Michałowski; Teska; Niedzielski; Żółkiewski (eds.), Settlements Pottery of the pre-Roman Iron Age in Central European Barbaricum – new research perspectives, Poznań
• Castritius, Helmut (2005), "Sweben § 8-13", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 30 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-018385-6
• Danielisova, Betka (2020), "Bohemia at the End of the La Tène Period: Objects, Materials, Chronology, and Main Development Trends - A Review", Památky Archeologické, doi:10.35686/PA2020.3
• Green, Dennis (2014), "The Boii, Bohemia, Bavaria", in Fries-Knoblach, Janine; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), The Baiuvarii and Thuringi: An Ethnographic Perspective, Series: Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology, Boydell & Brewer, pp. 11–21, ISBN 9781843839156
• Hofeneder, Andreas (2003), "Quaden § 2. Historisches", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 23 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017535-6
• Kehne, Peter (2001a), "Markomannen § 1. Historisches", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 19 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017163-1
• Kehne, Peter (2001b), "Markomannenkrieg § 1. Historisches", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 19 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017163-1
• Kehne, Peter (2001c), "Markomannis", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 19 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, pp. 322–323, ISBN 978-3-11-017163-1
• Kolník, Titus (2003), "Quaden § 3. Historische Angaben und archäologischer Hintergrund", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 23 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017535-6
• Möller, Peter (1986), "Drusus", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 6 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-010468-4
• Scharf, Ralf (2005), "Sweben § 2-7", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 30 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-018385-6
• Steuer, Heiko (2021), „Germanen“ aus Sicht der Archäologie: Neue Thesen zu einem alten Thema, De Gruyter, doi:10.1515/9783110702675
• Tejral, Jaroslav (2001a), "Markomannen § 2. Archäologisches", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 19 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017163-1
• Tejral, Jaroslav (2001b), "Markomannenkrieg § 2. Archäologisches", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 19 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017163-1
• Wolfram, Herwig (1997), The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples (translation of 1990 German ed.), University of California Press

Classical sources

• Caesar De Bello Gallico, at The Latin Library
• Tacitus Germania, at The Latin Library
• Tacitus Annales, at The Latin Library

External links

• "Marcomanni" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.