The Transformation of Frontiers From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians by Walter Pohl Ian Wood Helmut Reimitz sie A - - > eS = 5 tial 2 “1693 BRILL LEIDEN * BOSTON 2001This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A G.LP. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress, ISBN 90 04 11115 8 © Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. Alll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, wi prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items f granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to ‘The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA, Fees are subject to change. internal or personal use is PRINTED IN THE: NETHERLANDSCONTENTS Introduction: Drawing frontiers Lan Wood Frontiers of the late Roman Empire: Perceptions and realities eeeeecreee 5 Javier Arce The late Roman art of client management ial defence in the fourth century west 15 Péer Heather Ripa Gothica and litus Saxonicum 69 Evangelos. Chyysos Concepts of realm and frontiers from late antiquity to th early Middle Ages: Some preliminary remarks 73 Hans-Werner Godz Invisible boundaries and places of power: Notions of liminality and centrality in the early Middle Ages 83 Dick Harrison On the supposed frontier between the reguum Visigothorum and Byzantine Hispania 95 Gisela Ripoll Lopez Frontiers in Lombard Italy: The laws of Ratehis and Aistulf .... 117 Walter Pohl Byzantine belts and Avar birds. Diplomacy, trade and cultural wansfer in the eighth century. .... a seceeeneee M43 Falko Daim Conversion and c rol: The establishment of liturgical frontiers in Carolingian Pannonia 189 Helmut Reimitz Missionaries and the Christian frontier 209 Tan Woodvi CONTENTS: Elbe, Saale and the frontiers of the Carolingian empire Matthias Hardt The creation of the Carolingian frontier system c. 800... 233 Herwig Wolfiam Conclusion: The transformation of frontiers 247 Walter Pohl Abbreviations. ...... 261 Bibliography Sources ......... c ‘Tim nnene © LOR Literature 2... nse . oven seonsnnaes cece 7 267 Index 289INTRODUCTION: DRAWING FRONTIERS Tan Wood The second plenary conference of the European Science Foundation’s programme on the Transformation of the Roman World was held at Le Bischenberg, near Obernai in Alsace, from the 2st to 24th of April, 1996. As in the case of the first plenary conference, which had been held at Mérida two years previously, a general theme was chosen to provide a focus for the meeting, although on this occasion there were fewer plenary lectures, so as to provide more time for the various differ- ent working groups to continue with their own work. The individual teams were, however, encouraged to consider the issue of frontiers within the context of their own intellectual interests. This volume, therefore, comprises versions of some papers which were delivered at Le Bischen- berg, together with articles largely from Working Group 1, whose con- cern with Imperium, Gentes et Regua clearly overlapped with the topic of frontiers in one of its many possible meanings. As with the theme of ‘Modes of Communication’, that of ‘Frontiers’ was chosen as being a topic which was relevant in one way or another to all those involved in the project. Chronologically the Transformation of the Roman World self be seen as a frontier between the clas- ‘al and medieval periods. Culturally, Europe between 300 and 900 can be seen to be criss-crossed with frontiers, linguistic, artistic, reli- gious and philosophical, So too, there are economic frontiers to be mapped and explained. In choosing ‘frontiers’ as a theme which might draw all the sections of the project together, there was no intention to limit the issue to the matter of political borders. Leaving aside the range of subject matter, ‘frontiers’ also raise the possibility of a range of different approaches, ‘There is, of course, the classic approach of Limeyforschungen—meticulous study of the Roman frontiers in archaeological and documentary terms. The archacology of the limes has, equally, and increasingly been interpreted according to new models of economic distribution. At the same time the subject nat- urally invites appeal to other intellectual traditions: frontiers as defined by anthropologists in terms of purity and taboos—one thinks instinc- tively of Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger—or in terms of the ‘Other’, as exemplified by a work like Stephen Greenblatt’s Marvellous Possessions.2 IAN WOOD Some of this range will be found in the present collection. Other vol- umes from the project contain or will contain pieces which might rea- sonably have been included here, but which have instead been reserved for volumes prepared by individual teams, Indeed, to a large extent this volume has become a production of Working Group 1, concerned as it was with empires and kingdoms. As a result the political interpreta- tion of frontiers has come to the fore. Although the theme did not have to be understood solely in terms of the Roman dimes or the Carolingian Marches, both these topics are almost inevitably present in this volume. Frontiers of empires, even more the various concepts of imperial frontiers, are a dominant feature of the articles that follow. Roman imperial strategy is at the heart of the contributions of Peter Heather and Evangelos Chrysos—while the fourth- century critique of that strategy offered by the anonymous author of the De Rebus Bellicis is the subject of the paper of Javier Arce. The prob- lematical nature of another imperial frontier, that established following Justinian’s intervention in Spain, is the concem of Gisela Ripoll. The frontiers of the Carolingian state concern both Herwig Wolfram and Matthias Hardt. Chronoligically sandwiched between the frontiers of the Roman/Byzantine and Carolingian Empire are those of Lombard Italy, discussed by Walter Pohl, An overview of the history of concepts of frontier held by the Roman Empire, the successor states and the Carolingian Empire is provided by the contribution of Hans Werner- Goetz. Throughout these papers concept and reality is an abiding theme— and it is one that could clearly have been applied to the frontiers of other early medieval states. The Anglo-Saxons are a notable absence. Perhaps the frontiers between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are too little known and too little evidenced to have provided material for compa- rable discussion, with one exception: Offa’s Dyke. Built, it seems, in response to British counterattacks against Mercian aggression, it appar- ently ignores earlier local boundaries, which may still be traced in the bounds of parishes. Such local boundaries are, as Walter Pohl notes in his conclusion to this volume, often of great antiquity, yet the Dyke ignores them, seemingly (although this has not always been accepted) for the purpose of defence. There may also be an ideological issue in- volved: Matthias Hardt, in his contribution to this volume, raises the question as to whether Charlemagne’s eastern frontier was not inspired by what was taken to be the Roman imperial pattern of defence: Offa may have anticipated the great Frank, for it is possible to see Hadrian’s Wall as one of the sources of the inspiration for the Dyke—there are,INTRODUCTION 3 of course, plenty of other such sources: earlier dykes to be found in south-west England and the Welsh borders, and even the Danevirke of southern Jutland, yet the Roman imperial monument of Hadrian’s Wall may have inspired Offa as much as the Rhine limes may have influ- enced Charlemagne. Some frontier markers were built to last, even if they soon became obsolete. Yet even those frontiers were permeable. The permeability of boundaries has been much discussed in recent scholarship,! and it is illustrated here in the study of certain treasures from Avar territory pro- vided by Falko Daim: the question of identifying what is and is not Byzantine points both towards gift-giving and exchange and also towards copying and emulation—themes which have already attracted attention in this series.” Concepts of the frontier, and attendant strategic and diplomatic real- ities are at the heart of the majority of the articles which follow. Differ- ent, but related questions dominate those that remain—all of which, significantly, make much of religious issues. Dick Harrison uses the di- chotomy of Centre and Periphery to tum the question of the frontier inside-out, looking primarily at centres, and holy centres in particular. Ecclesiastical boundaries concern Helmut Reimitz in his examination of the canons of a council held on the banks of the Danube, following the Carolingian defeat of the Avars. Finally, Ian Wood goes one step further into the unknown to employ the concept of the ‘Other’ in order to map psychological boundaries of early medieval missionaries. These essays make no attempt to address the topic of frontiers in all its possible facets—even the conference at Le Bischenberg had no ambi- tion of that sort. Walter Pohl’s conclusion notes one obvious gap in his discussion of Isidore’s definition of a boundary. Different interpretations of the subject of frontiers will be found in other volumes of the series. Moreover the whole ESF programme devoted to the Transformation of the Roman World may be said to address the chronological bound- ary between the End of Antiquity and the Beginning of the Middle Ages. This, then, is a collection of papers which has come largely from one working group of the European Science Foundation’s programme, responding to a topic which in different ways was important for all the other groups involved in the project. Pethaps the most notable example is CR, Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empirg 4 Social and Economic Study (Baltimore, 1994 ® M, Schmaucer, “Imperial representation or barbaric imitation? "The imperial brooches (Kaiserfibeln)”, Strategies of Distinction: the Construction of Etimic Communities, 300-800, eds W. Pohl and H. Reimitz (Leiden, 1998), pp. 281-96.FRONTIERS OF THE LATE ROMAN EMPIRE: PERCEPTIONS AND REALITIES Javier Arce If there was one author who transmitted his own personal perceptions about the problems of the frontiers of the Roman Empire (i.e._fines, limi- tes imperit) in the fourth century A.D., it was the anonymous author of the small pamphlet known as De rebus bellicis.' This short treatise does not belong to the official historiography of the period—a fact of great interest for our purpose. It expresses or, better, reflects the author's per- sonal vision of the problems, without the interference of official rhetoric. He recommends to the Emperor (surely Constantius Il and his col- league, the Caesar Julian) a series of measures that should be taken for the welfare of the Empire. Most of them are military, defensive measures, but they are not only that, for there are also fiscal strategies. Both are inextricably united or mixed. In fact, two centuries before, the historian Tacitus formulated a strict correlation between the mili- tary and the fiscal, showing their inexorable connection: the greater the number of armies needed, the greater the expenses in stipendia; the greater the stipendia, the more taxes that will, inevitably, fall upon the provincials: neque quies gentium sine armis; neque arma sine stipendia, neque stipendia. sine tributis.» Thus Tacitus. ' ‘There are, of course, other writers in the fourth century who were conscious of the problem of frontiers and expressed their opinion about them—Ammianus and ‘Themistius are two examples (I would like to thank Peter Heather for drawing my attention to Themistius Oratio 8, p. 170, 113 ff, which expresses almost jon as the Anonymus, De rebus hellicis: even so, the context of a speech delivered to the Emperor, with all its rhetorical conventions, is of less value, in my opinion, than the spontaneous and imaginative booklet of the Anonymous). On Ammianus about frontiers see J. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianes (London, 1989), with full references and jography. For the Anonymous’ De rebus bellicis 1 have used the edition of Andrea Giardina, Le cose della guerra (Milan, 1989), but R. Ireland, De rebus bellicis, Part Il, The Text, BAR Inter. Series, LXII (1979) and EA. Thompson, A Roman Reformer and Inventor, Being @ New Test of the Treatise De Rebus Bellcis (Oxford, 1952) should also. be mentioned. * The d ission about the date and addressee of the anonymous has been a long one: Giardina offers a good summary of it on pp. xxxvii—lii, and I follow him in his proposal—i.e, Constantius If and the Caesar Julian, * Tacitus, Hist. IV, 74.6 JAVIER ARCE Turing to our “Roman reformer and inventor’—as Thompson labelled the Anonymous: he might better be called an arbitrista, following the Spanish scholar Alvaro d’Ors, who used an appropiate word, coined in seventeenth-century Spain to designate independent writers who pro- posed, by means of the literary genre known as arbitristas, the most extravagant and ingenious of solutions, to achieve good government for the Empire of the Nations:' for, in just the same way, and with just the same purpose and style, the Anonymous proposes military and fiscal solutions for the Roman Empire.® ‘The solutions proposed are wide in scope and scale: the Imperial mint should be transferred to an island— isolated and far away—in order to avoid falsification of the coinage:* the Emperor should promote the mechanization of the army, and for- get, definitively, the traditional legion—so praised by Polybius or, to take a contemporary author, by Vegetius.’ In the treatise we find pro- posals for infernal machines—that the author himself illustrated in full colour in his codex'—that were, most probably, the inspiration for another great ‘inventor’, Leonardo da Vinci. In this pamphlet the problems of the frontiers could not be avoided, not least because they were urgent and constant. And the author had a clear perception of the frontier threat. In fact—and this is one of the most important deductions to be drawn from reading the Anonymous there was no frontier-defence system, which was either adequate or structured, against the barbarians. This conclusion is not only valid for the Pars Orientis, but also for the Pars Occidentis. Following court rhetoric and every-day experience, the author proclaims that the Empire is sur- rounded by dolasa barbaries, which hangs around like a pack of dogs: oir cumlatrantes nationes ubique, and this was to be found everywhere: omne latus limitem. Thirty years later, the historian Ammianus still insisted on the same rhetorical idea: “At this time (he refers to the year 365, when Valentinian and Valens were emperors), as if trampets were sounding "A. d’Ors, “Un arbitrista del s. IV y la decadencia del Imperio Romano”, Cuader- nos de la ‘Fendaciin Pastor 7 (1963), pp. 41-69; P'Ors, who is not mentioned by dina, dated the treatise, without hesitation, to the period 355-360. 5 On the arbitristas see the useful remarks of J. Elliott, El Gonde Duque de Olivares (Barcelona, 1986), pp. 108 ff. ® Anonymus, De rebus bellicis 3, 2-3: opificis monetac redacti emdique in unam insulam con- gregntur (with Giardina’s comm. ad loc., pp. 58-60). Anonymus, De rebus bellicis 6, * Anonymus, De rebus bellicis 6: imaginern tonmentortan nihil a vero distantem cotoribus adum- bratam orationi subieci ut sit facilis imitandé confectioFRONTIERS OF THE LATE ROMAN EMPIRE 7 war throughout the whole Roman world? the most savage peoples roused themselves and poured across the nearest frontiers.” Ammianus, an army official himself, was an eyewitness and adduced examples: “the Alamanni were devastating Gaul and Raetia, the Sarmatae and Qu: Pannonia, while the Picts, Saxons, Scots and Attacoti were harrassing the Britons with constant disasters. The Austuriani and other Moorish tribes raided Africa... and predatory bands of Goths were plundering Thrace and Pannonia. The King of Persians was laying hand on Arme- r 2°" Thus the ubique was totally justified, But Ammianus did not give any solution: he limited himself to enumerate the facts. The author of de rebus bellicis did, however, make the attempt. Ultimately, says the Anonymous, it was necessary and a matter of urgency, to create frontiers in a rational way, with an eye to a double strategy—military and fiscal—hecause up to his own time such fron- tiers had not existed or, at least, they did not work adequately. Still more: they were not properly defensive frontiers. In the year 310, the panegyrist of Constantine, also anonymous, made an equivalent statement, and he could say, without embarrassment in the context of praise of the Emperor, that “the forts established at fixed intervals adom rather than protect the limes” (magis ornant... quam prote- gunt), The conclusion of the panegyrist was, obviously, that the divine presence of the imperial person alone is the best defence. The Anonymous, however, perceived the problem cleark it was nec- essary for the res publica to solve the problem of the frontiers that sur- rounded the Empire everywhere. And there was only one solution: “To create a continuous line of castella, situated every one thousand Roman feet, linked by a solid wall and with strong watchtowers.”"? This text allows us to think, or to deduce, that the preexisting system—up till the middle of the fourth century—was not a continuous line of defence, strate- gically organized, but that what we call the limes was, rather, a frontier district, with various functions, and not specifically defensive in itself. It was necessary, the Anonymous recommended, to create a ‘real’ frontier. » bellum canentibus bucinis: this formula was still used in the seventh century by Theophylact Simocata in his Histo: ct. 1, 9, 8. is Marcellinus 26, 4, 5, trans, J.C, Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass., 1963). 4, 5-6 (comm, in Matthews, The Roman Empire of * Note the rhetorical, and poe Ammianus). 2 Panegyrici Latini 2 (12), 22! ® Anonymus, De rebus Belficis 20.8 JAVIER ARCE There were, obviously, castella, burgi, practenturae, clausurae, in the dif- ferent parts of the Empire; and it was Augustus himself who first cre- ated a network of stationes militares around his Empire. But this was not a frontier. The vallum Hadrianum was an outpost whose nature or struc- ture seems to correspond to the propositions of the Anonymous, but its ultimate rationale has been much discussed, and interpreted in oppo- site ways.'* Up to the time of the Anonymous, Roman expansion had extended to certain limits which gave rise to a series of frontier zones, deeply per- meable, and intended or destined to be lands for connivance, commercial interchange or political control.'* Those zones did not have concrete de- limitation and were not a fortified barrier established for military purposes against extemal regions. Such a concept of Himes, it has been recently emphasized, does not find any base in ancient literary or documentary evidence. Edward Gibbon, for example, never describes it as such.'® ‘As is well known, in ancient terminology limes does not necessarily mean a military defensive frontier, although it could do so. The Anony- mous, a theoretician on maiters of war, in fact proposed a system of this type, corresponding to the concept of limes which is advanced by some modern historians and archaeologists. However, the proposal as formulated by him was never implemented. Reviewing the most recent research on the problem, that is the work of Benjamin Isaac, it is important to remember that, following a rig- orous diacronic analysis of the term Jimes in its different contexts, it possible to establish: i) that in the first century A.D., corresponding to the moment of expansion and territorial conquest, Jimes is a term used to designate a military road; ii) from the first to the third century, a period in which the term appears very seldom, limes is used to indicate a demarcated land-border of the Empire, without any reference to the military structures of frontier organization; and iii) from the fourth cen- tury onwards limes is—according to Isaac—a frontier district which related to an administrative concept rather than a military one. Isaac ™ Discussion and references: B. Isaac, “The Meaning of the terms Himes and lini- tanci”, Journal of Roman Studies 78 (1988), p. 129; cf. C.R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman ampive. A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore and London 1994); french: Les Frontitres de Venpire romain (Paris, 1989); A.D. Lee, Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreigt Relations in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1993); J.G. Crow, “The function of Hadrian's Wall and the comparative evidence of Late Roman long Walls”, Studion zu den Militdrgrenzen Roms 3 (Stuttgart, 1986), pp. 724-9. °S First Millenium, ed. K. Randsborg (Stockholm, 1990); Whittaker, Les Frontires. % Isaac, “The Meaning”; and id,, The Limits of Empires The Roman Army in the East (Oxford, 1990).FRONTIERS OF THE LATE ROMAN EMPIRE a himself, concluding his book on the Roman army in the East, stated without hesitation that “in no single case is a limes described as some- thing made or constructed: and in the course of time it can be used as a geographic concept to indicate the eastern desert.” These frontier zones are distinguished by tures or practenturae whose function is never clearly defined, except in so far as they are not a frontier barrier against the barbarians. The defence of roads, the trans- port of goods, police activity against /atrones (one should remember the pracpositus arcendis latrocintis), storage buildings, all were probably linked to the functioning of the system, but they do not correspond to a con- cept of limes understood as a fortified line of defence. Even more: part of this system is occasionally to be found established in sola barbarico, with a clear function of political control of territory. Nobody followed the advice of the anonymous author of De rebus bel- licis, because he was an exception. In fact, Roman ideology could not accept his recommendations. Theoretically there were no limits for Roman expansion. From the Republican period official and aristocratic elites elaborated a sort of imperial ideology, that could not accept any frontier in mat- ters of expansion in the world. Jmperium sine fine dedi—proclaims the poet Virgil emphatically. Fines, therefore, is the correct word, and not limi- tes, The idea of imperium sine fine was enriched as time passed. A few years after Virgil, another poet, Ovid, defined the problem unambigu- ously: “To other people”, he says, “land may be given with a fixed limit. But for the City of Rome, its space is the same as that of the World.’ The Empire, the extension of the dominion of Rome, does not finish except where the Universe finishes: spatium urbis est idem spatium orbis, It may be noted that the text of Ovid implies the acknowledg- ment of the existence of the limites of other gentes; but, at the same time, opens the door to the extension of Roman expansion formulated in such a way that it appears wholly justified: there was no limit to the spatinm of the urbs.'° Orbis romanus, then, can be all the world subjected to Rome, or the world that can or could be subjected by Rome. Con- sequently it includes all existing lands. By contrast, orbis terrarum is a more geographical term, and can be identified as the world dominated by the Romans.”* 7 Isaac, “The Meaning”, pp. 126 ft ® Ovid, Fast, UL, 684. On this see C. Nicolet, L’ineentaire du monde (Paris, 1987). ® Nicolet, Linceaaire de monde, passim.10 JAVIER ARCE These ideas were still present in the fourth century A.D. We find them in another anonymous author of about 360, in a book, the Expo- sitio Totius Mundi et Gentium, devoted to explain (to the author’s son) his- torias plurimas e ammirabiles, among them, the description of the known world. He distinguishe among the nationes that are located from the East to the West, the different races of barbarian peoples (quanta sint gencia barbarorun), arriving, finally, at the land of the Romans (deinde omnem terram romanam). So, the orbis terrarum includes all the known world: Axum, India, Persia, the land of the Saracens. Orbis romanus is restricted to the (Roman) land, whose description follows Persia: post hos (Persae) nostra tena est, In the geographical consciousness of the author Persia is the limit of Roman land. But for the author as propagandist, the orbis romanas extended beyond this limit?! Official propaganda followed the same pattern: in the fourth century the emperor appears increasingly as Dominus Totins Oybis or Propagator Romani Nominis#? titles that were used until the time of King Theoderic on coinage and inscriptions. ‘The nostalgia of Justinian was much more limited: he ordered conquest usque aad illos fines provincias africanas extendere ubi ante res publica romana fines habuerat: up to the limits of the African provinces that were previously estab- shed by the respublica romana There was, therefore, a distinct and different perception of the real- ity of the limits of the Empire betwen official propagandists and non- official or practical, learned intellectuals. As one who represented historical realities the anonymous author of De rebus bellicis could not be followed, because his proposals fell on a deaf and incapable milieu that could not accept the ‘reality In addition to his proposal for a defence system, the Anonymous sug- gested to the Emperor something much more important—and indeed essential for the Empire. It is an adventurous and striking proposal: the defence system should be paid for, and should be financed by the landowners. Simply: the State should not pay for it: Quas quidem mani- tiones possessoram distributa sollicituda sine publico sumpte constituat.* The solu- tion for the frontier system of the Empire was not to charge it to the State, in other words to avoid the enormous expenses of maintaining ° Expositi, (Rougé); cf. also J. Arce, “Orbis Romanus et Finis Terrae”, Los finisteres atlinticos en la Antiguedad, eds, C.. Fernandez-Ochoa and M. Femandez-Miranda (Gijén, 1996), pp. 68-71. ® See J. Arce, Estudios sobre el Emperador FLCl Juliano, Fuentes literarias, epigrafia, mamis- mitica (Madtid, 19% ® Cj, VIL 1. * Anonymous, De rebus bellicis 20,FRONTIERS OF THE LATE ROMAN EMPIRE ll the army. This was an old problem that Tacitus, as we have ceived as one of the great obstacles to the effi seen, per- ient defence of the mpire. In dealing with this problem the Anonymous argues that the maintenance of the system should be charged, not upon the provinciales, that is, the aflicta panpertas, but upon the possessores. Those who have more should pay more. We know that the Emperor Julian, perhaps one indirect addressee of the pamphlet, carried out this advice, for example, in the adminis tration of the cursus publicus® Trying to avoid the enormous provincial charges for its maintenance he made it a cursus fisealis (remota a provin- ctalibus cura). In this case, the measure is in line with the suggestion of the Anonymous: charge to the State what the provinciales cannot support. The Anonymous is very aware of the problem of taxes when he says in chapter 5 that he is going to deal in the next paragraph with the “enormous expenses caused by the army” (ad enormia militum alimenta), because they are the cause of all the difficulties of the tax- system: quorum causa totius tributariae finctionis laborat illatio. As a conse- quence, the Anonymous recommends that the Emperor should send soldiers into retirement afier five payments of annonarum emolumenta, thus reducing the number of troops to be paid. Nevertheless this army in retirement should continue to be productive: the ex-soldiers should be transformed into peasants and inhabitants of the frontier zones (habita- bunt limites), and, eventually, be defenders of their possessions, contribut- ing, at the same time, as tax-payers. ‘The last proposal of the Anonymous is that surveillance of the roads and of the whole defence system should be carried out by civilians (vigi- liis sane in his et agrariis: exercendis\2° What the author was saying is that the defence system was inefficient and disastrous for the aerarium, because it was in hands of the regular troops. In fact we know that in some regions of the Empire the defence system was in the hands of provin- cial civilians. As an example we can remember that one of the most obvious mistakes of Gerontius—the general of the usurper Constantine IE at the beginning of the fifth century—was to give the defence of the Pyrenean passes to regular troops, in opposition to local and ancient ® J. Arce, Estudios sobre el Emperador FLCL Juliane. % "The term agariae (i.e. outpost) refers to surveillance of the frontiers, that is, com- mercial interchange, as confirmed by Vegetins, who says that soldiers—pedites equitesque contribute to the safety of the viae for cormmercial transport (tuum iter commeant bus pracstant); Vegetius, Epitona rei miliaris, Hl, 22. Cf more comments and references: R, MacMullen, Soldier and Civilian in the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)12 JAVIER ARCE custom, which, according to Orosius, had assigned this function to local peasant troops: remota rusticanorum fideli et utili custodia.? The Roman State did not defend the provinciales, and never took th responsibility because such a notion of defence was alien to the men- tality of Rome.” The only issue was the public expenses or the cost of maintaining the army.” Finally, we can now move forward chronologically, to see what the situation was a hundred years afier the recommendations of de rebius bel- licis, in a particularly exposed region of the Empire, Noricum. At this point, it is important to remember that Noricum was, because of its geographical situation, the natural hinterland that defended Italy. The Vita Sancti Severini, written in 511 in Italy, in the monastery of Castellum Lucullanum, by Eugippius, contains, as is well known, a plethora of fundamental references and vivid descriptions of daily life in that frontier zone from the middle and second half of the fifth century. I will refer here only to a single episode.” In chapter 20.1 Eugippius says that “during this time, while the Roman Empire still existed, the soldiers in charge of the defence of the frontiers in a great number of cities were paid by public funds; when that custom came to an end, the units disappeared at the same time as the frontiers.” What had happened, then, since the period of the De rebus bellicis? First: nobody had followed the advice of the reformer and inventor: soldiers were still paid by public funds (publicis stipendtis); sec- ondly: the soldiers of the frontiers were established in the cities (there ”” rosius, Historiarum adversem Pageos libri VIL, 40, 8. ® Similar attitudes can be found in more recent times: I am thinking, for example, of British military and defensive policy in Sudan in the years 1883-1885 (the famous episode of General Gordon at Khartoum). All is punctiliously narrated by the Earl of Gromer in Modem Egypt | (London, 1908), pp. 540 ff. and vol. 2, pp. 18 £1, in which it is clear that the exclusive concern of Her Majesty’s Government was to rescue Gen, Gordon and Col. Stewart. ® "This was also the point at issue shown by the reports and memor ment: vid. Modern Egypt, pp. 540 fi. ® T have used the recent edition by P. Régerat, for Sources Chrétiemes, 374 (P: 1991). Bibliography on the Vita Sancti Severini is substantial. I would like to thank Hel- mut Reimitz. (Vienna) for his help in this point. Especially valuable are E.A. Thomp- son, “The End of Noricum’ d., Romans and Barbarians (Madison, 1982), pp. 113 ff: H. Wolfram Grenzen und Rétume. Geschichte Osterreichs vor seiner Entstehung, Osterreichische Geschichte 1 (Vierma, 1995), pp. 45-56; S. Krantschick, “Zwei Aspekte des Jahres 476”, Historia 35 (1986), pp. 344-371. Cf. also Eugippius und Severin. Der Autor, der Text und der Heilige, ed, W, Pohl and M, Diesenberger, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittclalters 2 (Wien, forthcoming). sending British troops to the Sudan, as is clearly la sent between Cromer and the British GovernFRONTIERS OF THE LATE ROMAN EMPIRE 13 was no frontier line); thirdly: when the State could not support the bur- den of paying the treops anymore, frontiers and troops simultancously ceased to exist. I find this an excellent explanation—not to be found in the official historiography—of the causes of the end of the defence system of the Roman Empire. Eugippius gives us yet more relevant and significant details. The sol- diers—few, no more than 40—that still were stationed at Batavis (one of the cities of the region), dispatched a small group of their colleagues to Italy on a mission to collect the last salary for all the unit (ad Ital- iam extremum stipendium commilitonibus allaturi). As it happened, they were killed by some barbarians during the trip. It was St. Severinus’s virtue to have learnt this miraculously while he was reading a codex in his cellula in the monastery That the soldiers should go to Italy (to Ravenna? to Mediolanum? to Aquileia?) to collect their stipendium is a relevant fact: it means that all the organisation and structure of the State supply-system for the reg- ular army had completely disappeared and, as a consequence, the whole defensive system, if it ever existed. The common element in both texts commented on here—the Anony- mous and the Vita S. Severini—is that neither represents the official his- toriography of the period, and that both perceive the problem of frontiers in one exclusive way: that is, the problem of the defence of the Zmperium Romanum, whatever it was, was a fiscal problem: simply an economic problem. It is more than obvious that nobody followed the recommendations of the Anonymous in order to relieve the State of the burden of main- taining the system. The State still continued to support the army in the middle of the fifth century, with its own resources, and this was the cause of the collapse of the defensive system, which perhaps had never existed, at least not as the structured frontier that many historians have supposed.THE LATE ROMAN ART OF CLIENT MANAGEMENT: IMPERIAL DEFENCE IN THE FOURTH CENTURY WEST: Peter Heather ‘This paper will attempt to use the detailed information available in the narrative history of Ammianus Marcellinus to explore the ways in which the Roman Empire defended especially its Rhine frontier in the mid- fourth century A.D, Ammianus served on the Rhine under the then Caesar Julian in the 350s, and clearly also had access to detailed infor- mation on events there in the reign of Valentinian I in the 360s and 370s. As a result, it is possible to follow evolving patterns of defence and shifting imperial policies almost continuously over a twenty five year period. The information concentrates for the most part upon the sector of the river bordering the Alamanni: the central and upper reaches of the Rhine, together with the upper Danube. ‘The picture of imper- ial defence in this area is supplemented and amplified, however, by fur- ther material relating to the Franks and Saxons of the lower Rhine and its hinterland, together with the various groups opposite the Middle and Lower Danube. For these latter groups, Ammianus’ information is less continuously detailed. It is sufficient, however, especially when taken together with material from other late Roman sources, to show that similar techniques were in fact employed by the Empire right across its european frontiers, all the way from the mouth of the Rhine to the Black Sea. There is, of course, another, very well-established line of enquiry into late Roman defence: Limesforschungen. As the many and important vol- umes in the Limes Gongress series indicate, the physical study of Roman imperial defences and their evolution over time has a long and pro- ductive history. The attempt to interpret these remains has likewise stim- ulated productive and vigorous debate, an important landmark being the influential monograph of Edward Luttwak, applying the viewpoint of a modern strategic analyst to the available information concerning forts and, if to a lesser extent, battles.' But the process of re-animating ) BLN. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century A.D. to the Third (Baltimore, 1976). The many Volumes of the Limes Cmgress docurnent this approach16 PETER HEATHER the hollow remains of fortifications unearthed by archaeological inves- tigation is not a simple one. In particular, Luttwak’s assumptions about the extent to which Roman Emperors were able to think systematically about frontier defence, both because of a lack of military intelligence, and because of internal political pressures, have come in for particular questioning in a range of responses to Luttwak’s work.? The detailed evidence of Ammianus can contribute to this wider debate too. Describ- ing Roman frontier policy over a continuous period of about a gener- ation or so, it concerns not just forts and garrisons, although these do appear, but also emperors and troops, together with the Roman tax- payers and outside forces —barbarians'—who between them constrained any emperor’s freedom of manoevre. What follows will attempt to pull together the material from Ammianus and the other available sources into a systematic account of the art of Roman frontier defence in late antiquity, and then set these findings in the wider historiographical con- text of the Grand Strategy debate. A. Defending the Empire The distinct groupings of the late Roman army, from the humble lim- itanei to the better equipped and more mobile troops of the regional and central field armies, together with the fortifications they inhabited, were, obviously enough, a prime element in the defence of the Empire. And, as Luttwak and many others have explored, and as contempo- raries were themselves well aware, the third and fourth centuries saw important changes in, respectively, the distribution and construction of these elements of defence. Large numbers of troops were withdrawn from forward positions as the military crisis of the mid-third century increased in intensity, to create mobile field armies at both the central and regional level as the fourth century progressed.* The nature of for- ® ‘Two important recent monographs in english, which cover much else besides: C.R. taker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore, 1994) and B. Isaac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East, 2nd rev. ed. (Oxford, 1993), esp. c. ix. ‘Power, Force and the Frontiers of the Empire Jounal of Roman Studies 69 (1979), pp. 175-183. The questions are also touched upon in F. Millar, “Emperors, Frontiers and Foreign Relations, 31 B.C. to A.D. 378”, Britan- nia 13 (1982), pp. 1-23; and id., “Government and Diplomacy in the Roman Empire during the First Three Centuries”, The Intemational History Review 10 (1988), pp. 345-77. SAH. Jones, The Later Roman Empire: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), esp, pp. G71; of H. Elon, Warfare sx Ramen Expe A.D, 350 425 (Oxford, 1996), c. 8.THE LATE ROMAN ART OF CLIENT MANAGEMENT 17 tification changed too, a series of transformations in architectural form signalling that these installations were now meant for serious fighting. Walls thickened in width and grew taller. Circuit areas became shorter as the traditional, spacious rectangle was abandoned in favour of squares, ovals, and circles, which minimised the length of wall to be guarded. Towers ceased to be for show, placed neatly on top of exist- ing wall-lines, but projected forward and increased in height, so that surrounding areas of wall could be raked with fire from them, not least from the fixed artillery which became a standard component of their firepower. No longer aesthetically neat symbols of unchallenged Roman dominion, forts became fighting bases designed to endure real attacks. At the same time, many cities sprouted equally practical walls which increasingly followed the dictates of terrain—sometimes even to the extent of shifiing a town’s whole locale—in order to occupy tactically dominant positions.’ For Luttwak, these military transformations marked a switch in the late imperial period to a policy of defence in depth. Forts were turned into real redoubts because they now had to be able to survive on their own until more mobile forces were marshalled and rushed to their defence. And, in practice, such a sequence of event can sometimes be observed on the ground. In the aftermath of the civil war between Constantius II and the westem usurper Magnentius, for instance, the Alamanni occupied and even cultivated the territories of a number of Roman cities on the Rhine Plain, but avoided the cities themselves as death-traps. The Roman communities in these centres survived to be rescued by the actions of the newly appointed Caesar Julian in 356.° Desperate defence in depth, however, is only one strand among many different types of frontier action reported by Ammianus. Comparing his narratives to the account of Luttwak, there emerges at least one major gap in the latter’s analyses: the lack of space devoted to client management. Deployments of troops and forts clearly could be about defending territories, communities, or routes. But, as Ammi- anus’ narratives and other evidence make clear, they also had another, * The literature on this subject is immense, Development can be studied on the basis of individual sites: e.g. A.G. Poulter, Nicopolis ad Istrum: A Roman, Late Roman, and Early Byzantine Gi) (London, 1995), esp. pp. 21-51; or fortifications in general: J. Lander, Roman Stone Fortifications fiom the First Century A.D. to the Fourth, BAR, is 206 (Oxford, 1984); or regions: e.g. the essays in A.G. Poulter (ed.), Ancient Bulgaria, vol. 2 (Nottingham, 1983); S. Soproni, Der spatrimische Limes zwischen Esztergom und Szetendre (Budapest, 1978); G. Scorpan, Limes Scythiac, BAR, is 88 (Oxford, 1980). ° Survivals: Strasburg, Brumath, Saverne, Seltz, Speyer, Worms, Mayence: Amm anus, 16. 2. 12; of. Julian, &p. ad Ath. 278d-279b, the latter noting that many other forts and walled settlements had been dismantled,18 PETER HEATHER crucial role in aggressive, or at least pro-active policies designed to con- trol affairs in the client kingdoms which dispersed in the territory beyond the defendend Roman frontier. i) Power boond the frontier Roman emperors did not cease to exercise power at the geographical points where more or less continuous lines of fortifications give out on modem maps. The ways in which power was exercised certainly differed within and beyond these lines, so too the extent to which an emperor’s word might be expressed in practical action, but imperial power did not come to a sudden halt. As Isaac has recently stressed, the concept of the limes as a defended line marking the end of Roman territory—the sense in which the word has been commonly used by modern scholars since the nineteenth century—has no known Roman equivalent.’ Nor, given the nature of imperial ideology, could there have been one. Since the time of Augustus, Roman emperors had claimed a divinely author- ised dominion over the whole world, symbolising this in their regalia by the use of the orb. This claim retained its force into late antiquity, even if the divinity concerned was now the Christian God. The notional alliance system of late Roman diplomatic discourse expressed it succinctly. According to Roman commentators, barbarians might make agreements with the Roman state, but only after first surrendering without condi- tions (oedus afer dediti), so that any subsequent political restitution could be presented as a free gift of the Empire.’ Correspondingly, the chief virtue required of an emperor was victory, military success marking the transfer of the divine seal of approval to any individual reign. Fourth-century narratives of events on the ground confirm that, for groups of outsiders within the fairly immediate vicinity of the frontier at least, this was no idle boast. Diplomatic discourse rested on a kernel of hard fact. Late Roman emperors regularly exerted themselves to move large armies across the Rhine and Danube rivers in practical demon- ® B, Isaac, “The Meaning of the terms ‘Limes’ and ‘Limitanei’ in Ancient Sources”, Jounal of Roman Studies 78 (1988), pp. 125-47. » PJ. Heather, “Foedera and Foederati of the Fourth Century”; G. Wirth, “Rome and its Germanic Partners in the Fourth Century”, Kingdoms of the Empire: The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity, ed. W. Pohl (Leiden, 1997), pp. 57-74, 13-55 respectively. * M, McCormick, Etemal Victor: Trimphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1986),THE LATE ROMAN ART OF CLIENT MANAGEMENT 19 strations of the resources at their disposal, and organised matters accord- ingly. Hence, one characteristic late Roman fort-type on the Danube has proved to be the fortified landing-point to allow the easy and secure transfer of troops across the river.’ The Tetrachs consistently campaigned beyond the river lines in the quarter century after 285. In the after- math of his victory over Maxentius, Constantine built a bridge over the Rhine to allow his troops to harry the Franks and Alamanni. He did the same, subsequently, to the various groups of the Lower and Middle Danubian regions in the first half of the 330s.'" His son Con- stantius II followed suit in the middle Danube in 357, at the same time as the latter’s Caesar and cousin, Julian, was again attacking Franks and Alamanni in their own territories. Or again, Valentinian I demonstrated Roman power in Alamannic territory in the 360s, his brother and co- ruler Valens doing likewise among the Goths of the lower Danube between 367 and 369, and his son and heir, Gratian, north of the upper Danube in 378.!! Of some of these late imperial campaigns, no detailed accounts survive. There is no reason to doubt, however, the basic real- ity of reported victories. Ammianus preserves detailed narratives of Con- stantius’, Julian’s and Valentinian’s campaigns which make clear the underlying military superiority of Roman forces in set-piece confronta- tions. Imperial troops did still dispose of superior equipment, particu- larly in the field of defensive armour, and were better trained. The result tended to be wholesale massacres of Franks or Alamanni, fol- lowed by the looting and burning of the villages of the groups con- cerned.” Even the cases recorded by Ammianus where Roman aims were frustrated are illuminating. Flight to some unreachable forest or mountain top was the chief mechanism of escape, not successful mili- tary counter-action.' Before Hadrianople, therefore, overwhelming Roman * See e.g. A. Mocsy, Pamunia and Upper Moesia (London, 1974), pp. 269-71 with fig. 42: 7 such foris discovered along the c. 200 kms of the so-called ripa Sarmatica °® Constantine and the Rhine: Pan. Lat. 9 [12]. 22 ff, 10 [4]. 18; cf. E. Demougeot, La Formation de UEurope et tes invasions barbares ti: De Vavenement de Diacletion (284) @ Vacca pation germanique de UEmpise romain d°Occident (debut du V* siecle) (Paris, 1978), pp. 59 ft Gonstantine and Danube: Anon. Val. 6. 31-2 (cf. Ammianus 17. 12-13). On Constan- tine’s bridges: D. Tudor, Les Ponts romains du bas Danube (Bucharest, 1974); cf. Pan. Lat. 7 [6]. 13. 1-5 on the fear that such bridges generated among: barbarians, "Gonstantius If: Armmianus 17. 12 julian: 17. 1, 17. 10, 18. 2, 20. 10; Valen- tinian: 29. 4, 30. 3; Valens: 27. 5: Grat 1. 10. We will retur to these episodes below. ® Eg. Ammianus 16. 2; 16. 12 (battle of Strasbourg); 17. 1; 17. 2 17. 6 17. 8 17 . 2; 19. 11; 20. 10; 29. 6. 15-16; 31. 10; cf. im general, Elton, War- fer, passim, esp. pp. 265-8, 8 Bg, the Goths & Valens; Ammianus 27. 5, 3-5, In 378, the Alamannic Let ses20 PETER HEATHER military superiority in set-piece encounters can be amply demonstrated." ‘These military operations had much more than the merely immedi- ate effect of killing large numbers of ‘barbarians’. They were, of course, imidatory, and were deliberately designed to be so. A regular deploy- ment of Roman power beyond the frontier reminded the inhabitants of these regions of Roman striking power, and of the necessity, there- fore, to obey Roman instructions. Ammianus’ narrative is full of refer- ences to groups who make peace after secing their neighbours destroyed, or even upon spotting legionary standards being deployed in their vi- cinity, particularly in the context of the campaigns of Constantius and Julian in the Middle Danube and Upper Rhine in 358. The general idea surfaces, indeed, that to prevent barbarians from becoming sav- age, it was important to assault them ‘regularly’.'® As the general process timidation might imply, these military campaigns had far wider of aims than the mere winning of a series of tactical military victories with beneficial consequences only in the short term. Demonstrations of Roman military superiority, whether in the form of actual victory or intimidation, were the starting point of thorough-going political settlements designed to dictate the pattern of life well beyond the defended frontier line. }) Client Management An important starting point when constructing such settlements, was clearly to consider whether there was too great a press of population in the immediate hinterland of the defended frontier line, and, if so, to do something about it. Otherwise, conflict between different groups of outsiders had a marked tendency to spill over into adjacent Roman provinces, and a more dense population was anyway likely to generate a greater number of acts hostile to Roman interests. Thus in the tetra- chic period, for instance, a whole series of campaigns were fought in the Lower Danube region, as a result of which large numbers of mil- similarly took to high ground, hoping to make a counter-campaign too difficult, but Gratian was persistent: 31, 10. 12-17 “ Hadrianople itself’ was clearly a one-off military fieak, where two thirds of the eastern army togel lens himself were wiped out in a single encounter. The same Goths fought a number of subsequent engagements with Roman forces, all of which were much less dramatic draws of one kind or another. For further discussions and ref, see PJ. Heather, Goths and Romans 332-489 (Oxford, 1991), pj S Ammianus 17, 10, 6-7; 18. 2. 15-16, 17-19; 17, 12. 165 17. 13, 11 (on the Goths) ea tempestate intactam, ideogue sacvissimam,THE LATE ROMAN ART OF CLIENT MANAGEMENT 21 itarily subdued Carpi from the hinterland of the Carpathians were reset- tled on Roman terms within Roman territories. This eased the poten- tially explosive consequences of competition between the indigenous Carpi and the immigrant Goths and other Germanic groups who had been pressing into the region over the preceding half century.'° Con- stantine saw the need to achieve the same effect in the Middle Danube in the 330s, resettling, after major campaigns, large numbers of Sar- matians (reportedly 300,000) in Roman territory, the groups being spread across areas of Thrace, Scythia, Macedonia, and Italy.'’ In 358, deal- ing with the after-effects of the same situation, Constantius II at first chose a different option. Rather than resettling Sarmatian Limigantes on Roman territory, he initially set them new geographical limits to force them to occupy lands well away from the Roman frontier. For whatever reason, these arrangements did not last (Ammianus refuses to report the Sarmatians’ explanation, considering it a mendacious excuse), and Constantius prepared in the next year to receive some of them onto Roman territory. Trust, however, broke down, and, at the moment of entry, the would-be immigrants were slaughtered to a man by the Roman force assembled to oversee their transportation and redistribu- tion.'® The resettlement of outsiders in late antiquity was a device reg- ularly deployed by the Roman state thrroughout the centuries of its existence. Before the end of the fourth century, however, resettlements always involved military subjugation of the group concerned and its dis- persal over a very wide geographical area in order to minimise the potential danger of any future revolt"? Population transfer, however, was only a preliminary move. It was always accompanied by an attempt to generate a more general politi- cal settlement in the area where the campaign had been launched. The aim of such settlements was to achieve longer term peace and stability © Cons. Const. s.a. 295 reports that ‘all the Carpi? were resettled south of the Danube at that point, but Galerius fought four more campaigns against them between 301 and : TD. Bames, “Imperial Campaigns 285-311", Phoix 30 (1976), p. 191. Carpi resettled as far apart as Scythia and Pannonia: Ammianus 27. 5. 5; 28. 1. 5. Competition between Goths and Carpi: Pet. Pat. fr. 8 (FHG 4, pp. 18 17 Anon. Vat. 6. 32. % Ammianus 17, 13. 22-3 (858); 19. 11 (359). Ammianus blames the Limigantes for their own slaughter, reporting that they attacked the emperor. All the evidence for such resettlements is assembled in G. de Saint Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London, 1981), App. IIL. On ‘norma? Roman arrange ments, see Heather, Goths end Romans, pp. 123-4, 128-30 (change from 382: pp. 173-3). W. Goffart, “Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians”, American Historical Review 56 (1981), pp, 280 ff, similarly idenuifies the change, but argues that it was voluntary,22 PETER HEATHER by first identifying, and then advancing the interests of, a series of bar- barian allies who seemed willing to cooperate with the overarching Roman objective of generating peace and stability in the given frontier region. The means employed could be far-reaching. In 358 on the Mid- dle Danube, for instance, Constantius II actually detached one group of Sarmatians, led by Usafer, from the subordinate political relation- ship it had formed with the Germanic leader Araharius, ruler of a mixed confederation of Quadi and so-called Transiugritani. A second group of Sarmatians were allowed to retum to the frontier zone from much further away, where they had been forced to accept the over- lordship of some Victohali. They were also given their own king, in the person of a certain Zizais, to guarantee their independence and freedom.” At most, therefore, the Romans used their military domi- nance to break up confederations that they considered undesirable (amongst other things, presumably, any that were too large), returning autonomy to selected groups, and to pick out particular individuals as leaders of the groups so formed. In formulating these strategies, of course, the Romans did not have absolute freedom of choice. In 358, we see Constantius picking out pre-existing and distinct sub-units, and promoting an individual (in Ammianus’ words) “who was even then a royal prince”. Nonetheless, the capacity to settle the relative political status of frontier groups and to choose between potential candidates for leadership gave the Roman authorities plenty of leverage in the enter- prise of trying to turn a moment of military domination into a more stable political settlement. In the case of the Middle Danube, two successive settlements are documented, and these clearly carried forward the process of interfer- ence in an evolutionary manner. The first came in the early 330s and was prompted in part by a Gothic migration from the Lower Danube into the region of Sarmatian dominance, but also by a revolt of the Sarmatian Limigantes against the Sarmatian Argaragantes who, up to that point, had been the dominant partners in their confederation. The resulting settlement forced the Goths back to the Lower Danube and licensed the newly established dominance of the Limigantes, part of which process was, as we have seen, the resettlement of Argaragantes on Roman soil. In the second settlement of 358, however, amongst other things, some of the Argaragantes who had not been resettled on Roman soil had their freedom restored and were allowed to return to ® Ammianus 17, 12. 12-15; 17-20 (cf. 17. 12. 9 on Zizais’ pre-existing status)THE LATE ROMAN ART OF CLIENT MANAGEMENT 23 the frontier area (the Sarmatians of Usafer and Zizais), while the Lim- igantes were forced to retreat further away." The Romans thus alter- nated their favour and its benefits between two contending groups of Sarmatians. Possibly the Limigantes had done something between the ind 358 to merit their demotion.” or maybe Roman policy, where ple, was precisely to alternate political patronage between com- peting groups, in order to create, in each generation, both a sense of gratitude among the group currently in favour, and the realisation that positive action was required to retain this position. Military power, then, was deployed periodically to create political set- tlements which stood some chance of supporting a broader peace. The best evidence is provided by Constantius II on the Middle Danube, but there is no reason to think this process of licensing client kings beyond the defended frontier at all unusual. In the course of his mepping up campaigns after his victory over the Alamanni at Strasbourg, for in- stance, the Caesar Julian encountered one Alamannic king, Vadomarius, who came equipped with letters of special favour from Constantius I. Alamannic kingship was certainly being interfered with by the 350s, therefore, and presumably had been since Constantine. Further north, the Tetrarchie emperor ximian had earlier done the same in Frank- ish territories.” In some contexts, Roman emperors probably had less freedom of manoeuvre than Constantius enjoyed in 358. It is notice- able, for instance, that Julian did not substantially disturb the political order among the Alamanni after Strasbourg, apart from removing Chnodomarius and his nephew Serapio, the two kings responsible for coordinating Alamannic attacks.** Nonetheless, Roman interference was continuous, periodic military intervention followed by political settle- ment provided only the punctuation marks in an on-going story of less dramatic political manipulation. For, having gone to the trouble of erecting a political settlement, the Roman state did not simply abandon it to its fate, but sought rather ® Compare Anon. Val. 6. 32 and Ammianus 17, 12. 17-19, ® Ammianus 17. 12. | & 13. 2 imply that the Limigantes were responsible for the raiding which had brought Constantius to the Middle Danube in 358 in the first place. ® Alamam nus 18. 2. 16; cf. 14, 10 (354), but note that Mederichus, the brother of the most powerful king among the Alamanni in the 350s, had at some point been a hostage in Gaul ‘for a long time’ (i): Ammianus 16, 12. 25. Cif. below, it was customary to take the sons of kings as hostages, which suggests that Mederichus® captivity was the result of a settlement concocted no later that the 330s, and possibly somewhat earlier. Franks: Pan. Lat. 2 [10]. 10. 2-5 (Maximian and Gennobauces: see further below). he relevant chapters are Ammianus 17, 10 & 18, 2.24 PETER HEATHER to maximise its effective lifespan. A number of methods of achieving this end appear in the sources. Most immediately, the Romans used forms of ceremonial familiar to their opposition when it came to solem- ising treaties. Ammianus refers at several points to oaths being taken ‘according to the barbarians’ own customs’. It was presumably felt that they would be more constrained by culturally familiar forms of sub- mission and agreement. It was also standard practice to reinforce com- pliance by taking hostages, particularly from among the elite of the group concerned, and best of all a royal prince.2° By the fourth cen- tury, royal hostage-taking had enjoyed a long history as a central facet of Roman diplomatic practice. Its first aim, of course, was to deter any breaking of the pacts that the hostage was handed over to guarantee. There clearly was a general expectation that the Romans would exe- cute hostages should pacts be broken,” and the prospect of lasing chil- dren and potential rulers was presumably a very real disincentive to possible hostile acts. More generally, hostage taking offered the prospect of influencing, from an early age, some potential leaders of the next generation from the area concerned. Such hostages tended to be treated well, therefore, being educated in a Roman manner and mixing in court circles. The possible side eflects of such an education can be seen in the case of the Alamannic king Mederichus. Introduced to Greek mys- teries while spending a lengthy period as hostage in Roman Gaul, he eventually named his son Serapio. ‘The father of the Gothic king Atha- naric, likewise, who may well have been the royal hostage handed over by the Goths in 332, had a statue erected to him at the back of the Senate house in Constantinople.” Such hostages were introduced to the glories of classical civilisation, but also to the full extent of Roman impe- rial resources; the idea was once again to impress upon them the futil- ity of confronting Roman military power.” In certain fourth-century contexts, moreover, a similar culturally coer- cive diplomacy seems to have been pursued through the Christian reli- gion. In around 340 A.D., some years after Constantine’s crushing defeat % Ammianus 14. 10. 16; 17. 1. 13; 17. 12. 21 (¢f. 17. 10, 7 30. 3. 5). ‘These high status hostages are to be distinguished from forced drafis of manpower: see note 00. © Note the laments of the Alamannic elders at Ammianus 28. 2. 8-9. ® Ammianus 16. 12. 25 (Mederichus). Athanaric: Themistius Or. 15. 19a, p. 276, 7 ff with the cross-reference to Anon, Val. 6. 31; cf. H. Wolfram, History of the Goths (Berke- ley, 1988), pp. 62 ff ® See, more generally, D.C, Braund, Rome and the Friendly King: The Character of Clieat Kingship (London, 1984).THE LATE ROMAN ART OF CLIENT MANAGEMENT 25 of the Gothic Tervingi on the Lower Danube, the famous Ulfila was ordained bishop by Eusebius of Nicomedia, one of Constantius’ lead- ing Churchmen, and sent back north of the Danube. He was descended from Roman prisoners taken by the Goths from Asia Minor in the third century, and his work may have primarily directed at this group within the Gothic world, rather than necessarily at the dominant Goths proper. The Gothic leadership clearly perceived Ulfila’s Christianity as an exten- sion of Roman imperialism, however, perhaps because Ufila did not confine his work to the prisoners’ descendents, and, when able, resisted it manfully. Ulfila himself was expelled in c. 348, when the Romans’ were tied up in a war with Persia, and an even more active persecu- tion was launched in 369 when Athanaric had managed to rid himself of some of the more overt trappings of Roman domination. It was also very much in line with this sequence of developments that the Tervingi seem to have agreed to convert to Christianity when asking Valens to admit them to the Empire in 376.° Constantius is also known to have made a point of Christianity in other diplomatic contexts, but what he hoped to achieve is less clear. Perhaps the idea was already current, as it was to be later, that Christianity would help to curb barbarian si agery, but, more likely, the point may have been to impose a religious system, which, as we have seen, emphasised the divine origin of impe- rial power.*! Whatever the case, this particular cultural initiative seems to have been confined to the east. There is no record of any similar attempt to foster Christianity on the Rhine, although other, more gen- eral, cultural influence is likely enough. All effective management policies involve carrots as well as sticks, of course, rewards as well as punishments and the imposition of domina- tion, That of the Romans was no exception. Ammianus refers period- ically to “annual gifis” being handed over by the Roman state to barbarian % ‘The dating of Ulfia’s life and the Gothic conversion remain controversial, On the former, sce PJ. Heather and J.F, Matthews, The Goths in the Fourth Century, Tr ‘Texts for Historians (Liverpool, 1991), pp. 141-143; and on the latter, PJ. Heather Grossing of the Danube and the Gothic Conversion”, Greek, Ronan and Byzantine Stud- ies 27 (1986), pp. 289-318 with refs. (despite N. Lenski, “The Gothic Civil War and the Date of the Gothic Conversion”, Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 36 [1995], pp. 51-87, I remain convinced that it is methodologically correct to rework Socrates’ account of Gotho-Roman relations ¢. 367-376 on the basis of Ammianus, rather than vice versa: the fundamental point at issue in the varying datings) * Other missions: A. Dihle, “Die Sendung des Inders Theophilos”, Palingenesia 4 (1969), pp. 330-336, Curbing savage: ‘Thompson, “Christianity and the North- em Barbarians”, The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed A. Momigliano (Oxford, 1963), pp. 56-78.26 PETER HEATHER rulers. The implication is that this form of exchange was in very gen- eral use. Such gifts have sometimes been interpreted as a symbol of the increasing weakness of the later Empire, a sign that it was having to ‘buy peace’ from neighbouring kings. ‘This was certainly true in the fifth century, particularly of the substantial annual payments in gold made to Autla in his pomp. In the fourth century, however, gifts were even used in the aftermath of military victory, as they had long been? and clearly had other purposes. Even after Julian’s triumphant marches through the territories of the Alamanni following the battle of Stras- bourg, for instance, when, Ammianus records, he treated their kings as ‘tributaries’ and ‘slaves’, the subsequent peace deals reinstituted annual gifts. One Alamannic king, Hortarius, was refused any gifts, for instance, until he had implemented the full terms of his peace agreement by handing over Roman prisoners. The kings of the Alamanni in general, likewise, were still receiving gifts in the first year of Valentinian I’s reign, and no one other than Julian can have been responsible for their insti- tution at this date.** In the fifth and sixth centuries, the gifts in part took the form of beautifully made and richly decorated jewellery, not least jibulae brooches, which spawned a mass of imitati This may also have been true of the fourth century. The only gloss upon them in a literary source refers to gold coins, silver, and fabric, but the gifts probably came in a vari- ety of forms, no doubt differing to some extent from year to year. The overall point of such gifts was to provide a flow of prestigeous items to the individual concerned. This stressed that the given leader was held in high regard by the Roman state, and, as such, helped to bolster his position. This was important, because political life among most of the Empire’s neighbours along the Rhine and Danube came in anything other than stable forms. Given that gifts usually accompa- nied a peace deal following some demonstration of Roman superiority, there was the inherent danger that any king who made peace might have lost face in the very act of acknowledging that superiority, and & Gf, for instance, J. Klose, Roms Klientel-Randstaaten ain Rhein und an der Donau: Beitriige au iter Geschichte und reckdlichen Stellang im I. und 2. Jdt. n. Chr. (Breslau, 1934), p. 138 such gifts had been generally used in the heyday of imperial power. % Hortarius: Ammianus 17. 10. 8; cf 26, 5. 7 (winter 364/5). There had been no major action on this front since 357/8 to change the nature of Julian’s post-Strasbourg settlements. % Fibulae and imitations; B, Arhennius, Merovingian Gamet Jeweller: Emergence and Impli- cations (Stockholm, 1985), 4th-c, gloss: Themistius Or, 10, 135a~b, p. 205.THE LATE ROMAN ART OF CLIENT MANAGEMENT 27 hence might well not survive. The king could then use the fact of the gifis in a variety of ways. It was a symbol of peace, a token that pro- vided his people kept the peace they would not face the prospect of damaging assaults by Roman troops.» He could also redistribute them, using them as a social currency which placed both himself and his nego- tiated position vis 4 vis the Roman state at the heart of a network of social relationships, where these gifts had become important for secur- ing land, marriages, and other crucial elements of life.° He could even use them to imply, of course, his own equality or, perhaps less plaus bly. superiority to the Roman emperor. The history of diplomacy (not least that of the EU, for instance) is marked by exchanges which are interpreted—in public at least—in mutually contradictory ways by the parties involved. Whatever the line taken, the Romans were able, by the use of such gifts, to set up a chain of rulers whose positions in part depended upon a flow of Roman wealth, which was itself dependent on the preservation of the current peace. Such rulers had obviously been given a strong interest in supressing any activity on the part of their own compatriots which might endanger the status quo. Institut- ing a supply of gifts should be seen, therefore, as a cost-eflective means of maximising the amount of peace and stability generated by any par- ticular set of military campaigns. So long as they were not too expen- sive, gifts were likely to be much less expensive to the Roman taxpayer than the logistic effort required to put campaigning armies in the field. Far from a sign of Roman weakness, they were an attempt to get the best possible peace per solidus ratio out of a given military effort, In Lutiwak’s terms, I would argue, therefore, that late imperial policies were carefully designed to maximise the amount of power in the fron- tier region that could be established from any moment where precious force (measured in terms of military manpower and the economic costs to the Empire in generating it) had had to be expended.” Beyond such regular instruments of policy, the Romans also employed much more ad hoc measures, short of launching another set of campaigns, * ‘This was a very real threat; note Julian's concerns about marching his booty- hungry troops through the territory of an Alamannic king who had already made peace: Ammianus 18. 3. 7. % The so-called ‘prestige goods model’ of social development. A good theoretical exploration and case study is S. Frankenstein and M. Rowlands, “The Internal Strue- ture and Regional Context of early Iron Age Society in southwestern Germany”, Uni- rersity of London, Institute of Archaeology Bulletin 15 (1978), pp. 73-112. "Ch Grand Strategy, app., pp. 195-200 on the need to conserve expensive force in c term by using it to create a maximum sense of power28 PETER HEATHER to keep existing peace arrangements in being. On the Alamannic front, a major threat to continued stability came in the form of leaders build- ing up too great a powerbase. Faced with this phenomenon, Roman emperors were quite happy to authorise, or even lead, kidnap and/or assassination attempts to remove the leader and the threat to stability he posed. In 372, Valentinian I organised a raid on the headquarters of the Alamannic king Macrianus, whose power was waxing too strong, and kidnap or assassination was clearly a regularly employed device. Julian issued secret orders which led to the detention at a banquet of another Alamannic king, Vadomarius, whom he suspected of acting on behalf of Constantius II, against whom Julian was now in revolt. Vado- marius subsequently went into exile in Spain and then the eastern Mediterranean, during which time his son Vithicabius was also assassi- nated by a bribed attendant. The unauthorised killing of Gabinius, king of the Quadi, at another banquet sparked off a major revolt in the Middle Danube region in 373, and a further set of banquet murders— maybe authorised by Valens, or maybe not—played a part in the revolt of the Tervingi which led up to the battle of Hadrianople in 378.” The willingness to use such methods emphasises an important point. Peace deals on the Rhine and Danube were concocted by the Roman state in the fourth century from a position of strength. This was usu- ally established by a passage of major military campaigning, after which emperors were ready to use all means at their disposal—both fair (gifts) and foul (hostages and assassination)—to get the maximum value in terms of frontier peace and stability for the effort expended. Roman power by no means halted at the line of defensive fortifications, there- fore, but extended well beyond it, seeking to control a chain of depend- ent client kingdoms, who were given a stake in preserving existing peace settlements. Sometimes, such a combination of policies worked effectively. After making peace with Constantius, for instance, two Alamannic kings, Gundomadus and Vadomarius, stood aloof from the general revolt against Roman power led by Chnodomarius. Gundomadus maintained this stance even to the point that groups hostile to the Romans within his territory murdered him; at this point, Vadomarius perfectly reasonably—joined the revolt.° How long the average life- ® Macrianus: 8. 2); Vithicabiu Heather, Goths and Romans, pp. © Ammianus 16. 12. 17; ef. 14.