The Two Falls of Rome in Late Antiquity by James Moreton Wakeley

Author:James Moreton Wakeley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Actual, more primordial origin, therefore, was of little import when a new people like the relatively well-attested Gothic groups, who often form the basis of such analyses, were being formed amidst the profound social stress of war.

As Wolfram’s description implies, whole groups, as well as individuals, could be grafted into a new people by this process, not least because of the extra fighting power they would add to the confederation. The internal diversity of the ‘Goths ’ who ravaged the Danubian provinces of the Roman Empire after 376 has already been described in Chap. 2: they were comprised of a number of formerly separate Gothic groups, provincial miners, and (barbarian?) deserters from the Roman army. It is possible to turn to Priscus for another revealing example. At some point in the wars following the eventual collapse of Attila’s Empire, a Hunnic war-band became surrounded and cut off by a Roman detachment (Fragments, 49). The barbarians show a willingness to surrender, terms are discussed, and the Roman commander forwards his report of the situation to his senior officers and awaits further orders. This anxious stand-off seems to awaken dormant social tensions within the Hunnic force, and a cunning Roman officer, who interestingly is reported to be of Hunnic descent (49.18), infiltrates the barbarian camp and starts a fight between Goths and Huns.

His strategy seems to be to divide the enemy against itself, thereby making the barbarian force more susceptible to a Roman coup de grâce. The plan is not wholly successful, however, probably because the Goths are merely the most numerous group among ‘the others’ (49.20), meaning that the Hunnic host is not irredeemably divided once the Romans move in, and consequently puts up a far harder fight than expected. If nothing else, episodes such as this demonstrate the profound extent to which casually deployed ethnonyms, ‘Goth’, ‘Roman’, ‘Arab’, or ‘Muslim’, can conceal a far more ambiguous, complex and potentially transient reality. It turns out that there is far more to a name than may first meet the eye.

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