Encyclopedia of society and culture in the ancient world ( PDFDrive ) 783

710 migration and population movements: Greece to the attitudes and behaviors of warriors According to Tacitus, Germans held land based on social status, councils met regularly, leaders may have been elected for life, and landless warriors attached themselves to particularly effective chiefs in anticipation of the glory and spoils of battle A pithy quote tells how spiritless it is to toil over a plow when one’s needs could be met by the loss of a little blood In Caesar’s time land was not held privately, and agriculture was deemphasized in favor of pastoralism Animals were often acquired through raiding, and warfare was endemic Roman coinage provides clues to the pressures that warfare placed upon the empire Coins were a widely distributed medium of communication that leave little doubt that the Romans felt a continual need to reinforce the image of victory over German peoples in commemorative issues for individual Roman leaders and, in some cases, for specific conflicts Most images of Germans depicted on coinage were of bound and subjugated Germans, both male and female Often when the images of German people were absent, they were represented by their distinctive weaponry In the account of Caesar’s meeting with the German chief Ariovistus (fl ca 71–58 b.c.e.), who was spending the summer in lands held by the Celtic Sequani near the Seine, Caesar indicates that the Germans had been joined by a number of other groups, all of them eager to take advantage of the seasonal fruits extracted from the harassed Sequani Ariovistus had led his people into the region to reduce stress on the valuable resources of his home territory across the Rhine River He boasted that his undefeated people were superior to Caesar’s own soldiers in courage and pointed out that their skill with weapons had enabled them to avoid living under a roof for 14 years Caesar ultimately interceded with force, defeating Ariovistus and his multitribal army and pushing them back across the Rhine, but the account promotes an understanding of the Germans’ esteem for independence and for the role of mobility in maintaining it The movement of waves of Germans marks the beginning of a period of migration that started around 300 c.e and continued well past the collapse of the Roman Empire Extraordinary disruption, both internal to the imperial Roman provinces and external among various Germanic groups competing for resources, may have favored the most aggressive or persuasive warriors, and tribal or group affi liation appears relatively fluid, depending upon the motivations and objectives of the group members Entry into temporary alliances between otherwise competitive groups was facilitated by common cultural referents that promoted petty warfare as an economic strategy and by the Germanic warrior-class ideology This type of economic base differed dramatically from the Roman system of agrarian estates and town markets that immediately preceded it Breaches of the frontier by migrating peoples cut swaths into imperial territory, further decimating the Roman system of distribution and communication The initial phases of German resettlement, the mechanism by which one group successfully replaced another on the landscape, can be said to follow models proposed for Britain: that is, a complex combination of internal uprisings against a crumbling Roman regime coupled with continual external assaults by groups of people attempting to be incorporated into the various systems, whether for trade, general access to goods, relative stability and security, or access to land There seem to have been many reasons for migrating people to try to get into Roman-held regions Germanic peoples who migrated into Roman-controlled territories included groups such as the Friedenhain-Prestovice from Bohemia, the present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia, who had been on the Roman payroll in defense of towns on the Danube and were settled before the withdrawal of Roman forces from Raetia Moving westward, the Alamanni or Swabians occupied the area of present-day Switzerland, the German state of Baden-Württemberg, and the Bavarian administrative district of Swabia The Bavarii, also identified as Boioarians (again from Bohemia), occupied southeastern Bavaria and Austria, having moved into territory vacated by the Ostrogoths These peoples were associated with the Marcomanni and with the Celtic Boii from Bohemia They appear to have been forced west into Raetia under pressure from Czechs in Bohemia, who were being pressed by Serbs and Slavs All of these groups were moving westward in advance of the Huns, who had reached the Danube in 376 c.e The period of stress and resettlement lasted for several centuries Changes apparent from the archaeological record indicate a pattern of settlement, conquest, and consolidation and the development of tribal coalitions that, in some ways, are differentiated between central and western Europe In the first place, the degree of Romanization in eastern-central Europe appears to have been less tenacious than farther west in Gaul and East Anglia In the second, the demographic structure of the resettled populations is more varied The collapse of the Roman estates happened relatively quickly This can be seen in examples such as that provided by the Gutshof (a private farmstead or estate) at Nördlingen, a site of Alamanni conquest in Schwaben, where the Roman-style estate was gutted and a large German wooden house was constructed in the middle of the complex between the ruined Roman structures In addition to the relative weakness of institutionalized Roman systems in place by the mid-fourth century c.e., the demographic breakdown for Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and France differs from that of Anglo-Saxon Britain if models are accurate that assert that invading forces in Britain were predominantly male Burial evidence for other parts of Europe demonstrates an inclusive population GREECE BY J EFFREY S CARNES What is now mainland Greece was settled during the early Neolithic Era (ca 7000 b.c.e.) by peoples about whom little is known The arrival of Greek speakers came considerably