Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge (13 page)

They defeated five Roman armies in succession, before veering west to plunder southern Gaul and Spain. Meanwhile, Caius Marius seized the respite to assemble and drill veterans who had fought with him in North Africa. At length the Teutons turned back toward Italy. Marius intercepted, defeating them decisively at the battle of
Aquae Sextae
(Aix-en-Provence) in 100
BC
, fought on the plain beneath Cezanne's Mont Sainte Victoire, where the local village is still called Pourrières
19
after the German corpses. The
Cimbri
were destroyed in the following year at Vercellae in Piedmont.

By Caesar's time the main body of German migration had reached the Alps. By that of Augustus the fringe areas of their latest settlements (eastern Gaul, the Alps and Bohemia) were still unstable, with incursions into Gaul remaining common. So, in the first decade of the Christian era, we have a picture of Germany in flux: with western Germany recently Celtic and a hybridized eastern Gaul (today's Belgium, Luxembourg and Alsace) where Celt and German mixed. Here was a Rhine far from the clear divide in which Caesar would have us believe.

To these influences must now be added the Roman. It is probable Caesar entrusted the eastward defence of Gaul to friendly Belgic tribes, paid and even placed for this purpose on the Rhine's western bank. The arrangement seems to have continued into Augustus' reign; the Gallic legions, numbering perhaps eight, remaining in the interior of their provinces. During this time, Roman relations with the German lands were largely confined to traders, as well as to markets on the Rhine bank and limited diplomatic contacts. These provide intriguing glimpses behind the Iron Age curtain.

Before plunging into the German forest it is worth a word on our principal source, for in the
Germania
of Tacitus we have a portrait of the prehistoric German people which is not only the sole survivor of its type but also the fullest account of an Iron Age society we possess. This is why, in recognition of its unique interest, renaissance scholars called it
libellus aureus
(the golden monograph).

Transmission was via a single medieval manuscript, uncovered in 1451 at the monastery of Hersfeld, southern Germany; demonstrating on what slender threads the bequests of ancient learning have sometimes hung. Its printing in Nürnberg, twenty years later, was a stimulus to national pride, leading ultimately to the first history of the German peoples in the 17th century. Enthusiasm must, however, be tempered on several grounds. In the first place it is unlikely that Tacitus visited Germany in person. On the other hand he did have access to sources since lost, including Livy's Book Nine and Pliny's twenty volumes on the German Wars. Perhaps he also drew on the reminiscences of his own father who, from the evidence of an inscription, is thought to have served as a senior official in
Gallia Belgica,
the province abutting the Rhine.

The ethnographic treatise was an established form, traceable to the Syrian-Greek Posidonius (135–51
BC
), whose work on the Celts is known only through later authors. Despite the loss of almost all studies of this kind there are clues enough to know that the
genre
had its full share of truisms and that Tacitus was not always blameless in avoiding them. These included credulity (a tendency to parrot the same information from author to author) and the idea that barbarians were all the same. The latter, comparable to modern clichés about distant races,
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resulted in a readiness to transfer information from one folk to another; so it is not always easy to know when Tacitus might be grafting Celtic characteristics onto Germans. Furthermore we must keep in mind the familiar prejudices of classical historians, where ingrained belief in the inferiority of barbarians is commonly contradicted by admiration for the ‘noble savage'.
21
In obedience to this formula the German is praised for manliness, strength, hardihood, chastity, fidelity and other traits. While probably true, these were also devices by which Tacitus could castigate his fellow-Romans for addiction to soft living and loss of values which were considered to have belonged to the Republican period at its best.

There are yet other distorting features. History was seen as a form of literature, even of oratory; for it was read aloud to select groups, who expected artistry and polish. As with Ovid's, Tacitus' listeners would have yawned at the detail for which we yearn. Names, times, distances, instances, circumstances, all relating to places about which genteel Romans had only the haziest notion, were unpromising material for an author who wished to thrill literary audiences. What is more Tacitus was a supreme – at times extreme – prose stylist, who valued compression above explanation. It is this, among other characteristics, which makes it impossible to translate him adequately. English, though among the most telescopable of modern languages, is brought up by Tacitean Latin as sharply as a cat by a mousehole. Nor is he temperamentally simple. Had Tacitus been possessed of three feet it could be said that one was in history, one in literature and one in philosophy, for he was often more concerned with the moral than the actual. He was pessimistic and cynical, a curiously modern victim of his own conscience. Despite these difficulties, Tacitus is rightly regarded as the greatest of Roman historians and a vein of gold in the silver age of Latin letters. The
Germania,
dated to about
AD
98, was probably his first published work and by no means his most accomplished, though students of late prehistoric Europe are lucky to have it.

Returning to the penetration of Germany by Roman traders, this was in three directions. The most obvious was from Gaul, simply by being rowed or rafted across the Rhine. A second door was opened by the conquest of the Alps and construction of a road through today's Switzerland. This was designed as a strategic short cut from Italy's north-west corner to the Upper Rhine, eliminating the detour via the Rhone. Symbolically, at either end of this route, were the towns named after Augustus:
Augusta Praetoria
(Aosta) and
Augusta Vindelicorum
(Augsburg). Like many roads built for the military, it soon became a commercial link. Thirdly, there was a back door into Germany, from Italy's north-east corner. This was the prehistoric commercial corridor, known today as the Amber Road. The yellow or honey-gold substance, familiar in Greece
22
from the Mycenean period, had been brought southwards on an organized basis since the 6th century
BC
. Amber is the fossilized gum of extinct pines, cast up on northern shores. Its principal source was and still is the Baltic's south-eastern corner, near today's Kaliningrad and the adjacent Gulf of Danzig (Gdansk). Tacitus tells us it was known to the Germans as
glesum,
23
adding: ‘one may guess it is the resin of trees, certain insects and even flies often being found embedded in it.'
24
He also grumbles at ‘the peculiarly feminine extravagance by which hard currency is lost to foreign or unfriendly countries in return for precious stones'.
25
Nero, eager for a caesar's share, sent an expedition (under one Julianus, director of the gladiatorial games) to trace the ‘stone' to its source. Pliny tells us that Julianus reached the Baltic coast and there found
commercia
(agencies) which dealt in the trade.
26
It had long been in Celtic hands, the road passing through a number of their
oppida.
In due course Roman merchants muscled in.
27

The Amber Road is a figure of speech for what was in reality a series of tracks and waterways. These began sedately enough: up the lower Oder and Vistula and across the gently rising plain of southern Poland, via Lowicz, Lodz and Wroclaw. They then climbed the Sudeten Ranges, crossed the Bohemian Basin and rose again over the Bohemian Forest. Passing from German into Celtic territory, the Italian-bound branch made downhill toward the large
oppidum
at Linz. From here it dwindled into mountain paths through the Tauern,
28
across the middle of what is now Austria, before dropping down to Villach. Finally the steep but shorter Carnatic Alps were followed by the winding descent through today's Udine, entering the Italian road system at Aquileia.

This route, with its several variants, has been reconstructed from finds of amber and Roman coins on its course. The coins are commonest near the Baltic Shore and Vistula mouth, where Julianus reported that the wholesalers were established. Regarding the substance itself, we are speaking of more than a few droplets scattered along the way. In trading settlements in the Wroclaw area Polish archaeologists found three tons of raw amber!
29

Looking eastwards across the wide Rhine toward the German interior, one has two impressions. From Basle down to the Ruhr the view is largely of hill and forest, an impression not greatly altered since antiquity. From the Ruhr northwards the vista changes to one of flat fields and tall skies. Once the Rhine has emerged onto the North European Plain there seems no obstacle save the river itself. But this sector is deceptive. Since ancient times nature has been modified almost beyond recognition, not just in agricultural development but in the measures which made agriculture possible. Here the water of half Europe trickles and oozes northwards onto a plain with insufficient tilt to promote its run-off and with a dense layer of glacial clay to prevent its drainage. Modern ploughing has pierced this pan, while centuries of effort in ditch cutting and the embankment of rivers have redeemed huge tracts of peat bog for the farmer. Indeed, nearer the delta these efforts have created an entire country – the Netherlands – pushed into the North Sea where in Roman times there was a hollow, with mud banks, lagoons, reeds, silty streams and rivers shifting uneasily in their beds.

In short, whoever might wish to penetrate prehistoric Germany faced a painful choice: between groping through broken uplands clothed in forest or of floundering in a morass; the one usually beginning where the other left off. Tacitus puts a Roman's feelings toward this comfortless country into a five-word nutshell: ‘While there is some variety of scenery it is typically a land of fearful forest and fetid bog (
silvis horrida aut paludibus foeda
); with the rain heaviest toward the west and the wind worst toward the south.'
30

Though the northern marshes were relieved by sandy heath or deposits of gravel and the southern woodlands broken by clearings, especially in the river valleys, this verdict was substantially true. Foreigners, especially Mediterranean peoples, found the forest deeply depressing. Its extent was awesome. The largest tract, then called the Hercynian Forest, is mentioned by Caesar, who locates its western end between the Alps and the middle Rhine. From here it stretched eastwards in a broad band, from today's Baden-Württemberg, across Bavaria, Czechoslovakia and into western Russia, branching southeastwards to cover much of the Balkans and Carpathians. This was part of Europe's primordial, broad-leaf forest belt, which once marched without interruption from the Atlantic to the Urals, beyond which rainfall becomes too light for dense growth. Gaul and the British Isles also belonged to this zone, though by the late Iron Age there seems to have been far more clearance in the Celtic world than the Germanic.

So Germany fronted the West with the double deterrent of forest and marsh. But there were chinks in each. The waterlogged plain could be penetrated by water. From the North Sea there were three rivers, the Ems, Weser and Elbe, which led into north-west Germany's heart. Rivers were the pass-key to the forest region also. The Rhine's eastern tributaries were corridors up which the traveller could march or row. This was something like entering darkest Amazonia and it probably inspired comparable sentiments. Both were rain forest, both had dangerous occupants and both presented formidable barriers to outsiders, as much psychological as real. Profit had, however, found a way.

Many thousand Roman coins have been discovered in Germany. Their spread was progressive. Of more than 400 hoards only thirty are of 1st-century origin and all were within 125 miles of the Rhine and Danube. However, by the century following, coinage penetrates far into Scandinavia and across eastern Europe to the Ukraine. As trade increased the German gaze became increasingly fixed westwards and southwards. Those closest would be eager visitors to the markets on the two great rivers. It is interesting to note the kind of Latin word then entering the German language:
kaufen
(to buy) from
cauponor
(to trade); Danish
øre
(gold) from
aureus
;
Münze
(coin) from
moneta
(mint);
billig
(cheap) from
vilis,
and so on. Traders exchanged metalware and household goods for skins, livestock and slaves. Though the Germans used coins for trade with the Romans, there is no evidence of their developing a money economy amongst themselves. ‘Those nearest us value gold and silver for trading purposes and recognize and prefer certain types of Roman coin, while those further away continue to barter in the time-honoured way. Our coins which they trust most are old and familiar ones. They try to get silver rather than gold, since silver change is more convenient for everyday transactions.'
31

The author recalls youthful experience in the Aden Protectorates and the preference which tribesmen showed for the big, clinking, Maria Theresean silver dollars,
32
often wondering how an 18th-century coin from Austria-Hungary achieved such distant and enduring popularity. The ancient Germans were also fond of silver tableware. In addition to the Hildesheim Treasure, many of the best classical silver vessels have been found in Germany. Tacitus identified this with the diplomatic slush fund: ‘One may see among them silver vases, given as presents to the chiefs and their henchmen. The strength and power of these kings rests on Roman authority. We occasionally give them armed assistance; but more often money, which does just as well.'
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