Heruli
The Heruli (also Eluri, Eruli, Herules, Herulians) were one of the smaller Germanic peoples of Late Antiquity, known from records in the third to sixth centuries AD.
After the conquest of this Heruli kingdom by the Lombards in 508, splinter groups moved to Sweden, Ostrogothic Italy, and present-day Serbia, which was under Eastern Roman control.
The Danubian Heruli are generally equated to the "Elouri" who lived near the Sea of Azov during the late 3rd or early 4th century, and are believed to have migrated westwards.
[3] In late antiquity, the Gepids, Vandals, Rugii, Sciri, the non-Germanic Alans, and not only the Goths themselves, were all classified by Roman ethnographers as "Gothic" (or "Getic") peoples, and modern historians generally consider the Heruli to be one of these.
[27] Although contemporary records locate the Heruli first near the Sea of Azov, and later on the Middle Danube, their ultimate origins are traditionally sought in Scandinavia.
He believed that the Goths and Gepids both came from Scandinavia many centuries before his time, which he described as "like a workshop or even better the womb of nations" (quasi officina gentium aut certe velut vagina nationum).
[33] The evidence for this second possibility is that Procopius, a contemporary of Jordanes, recounted a migration by sixth-century Heruli noblemen to Scandinavia ("Thule") from the Middle Danube, where their kingdom had been destroyed by the Lombards.
[37] Apparently aligning with the story of Jordanes, when other expatriates from the Danubian kingdom established themselves to the south, in the Balkans and needed a king, they sent embassy to the Scandinavian Heruli and returned with one.
[38] Ellegård, one of the scholars who argued that the expulsion involved immigrants whose real homeland was on the Danube, wrote that "the only thing we can say with reasonable certainty is that a small group of Eruli lived there [in Scandinavia] for some 38-40 years in the first half of the 6th century AD".
More controversially, Ellegård proposed that the evidence makes it most likely that the Heruli were "a loose group of Germanic warriors which came into being in the late 3rd century in the region north of the Danube limes that extends roughly from Passau to Vienna".
In 267/268 and 269/270 Graeco-Roman writers described two major campaigns by the "Eluri" into the Balkans and Aegean, which were among the last and biggest such seaborne raids from the northern Black Sea coast starting in the 250s.
Emerging to raid Cyzicus, they subsequently entered the Aegean Sea, where they troubled Lemnos, Skyros and Imbros, before landing in the Peloponnese.
[48] Later Roman writers reported that thousands of ships left from the mouth of the Dnieper, manned by a large force of various different "Scythian" peoples, including Peuci, Greutungi, Austrogothi, Tervingi, Vesi, Gepids, "Celts", and Heruli.
The second group sailed south and raided Rhodes, Crete, and Cyprus and many Goths and Heruli managed to return safely to harbor in the Crimea.
[49][50] The Heruli are believed to have formed part of the Chernyakhov culture,[51] which, although dominated by the Goths and other Germanic peoples,[8] also included Bastarnae, Dacians and Carpi.
[51][53] Jordanes reports that these Heruli of the Azov area in the late 4th century AD were conquered by Ermanaric, king of the Greuthungi Goths.
If there was ever a regiment called Heruli iuniores, then it is possible it was based in the Eastern Roman empire and it may have been one of the units which ceased to exist after the Battle of Adrianople in 378.
Proponents of a distinct Western Herulian kingdom near the Rhine note that the letter was also sent to the kings of the Thuringians and Warini—quite far to the north of the Danube, and more directly threatened by the Franks who are discussed in the letter; opponents emphasize that Theoderic was clearly concerned with a large part of central Europe, and that the Franks did in reality quickly make inroads towards the Middle Danubian region whence Italy could be threatened.
They were also internally divided with a rebel emperor in Gaul, Constantine III, and open conflict between the Western and Eastern empires in the Balkans.
[76] By 450 AD, the Heruli and the other peoples still in the Middle Danube area, including Gepids, Rugi, Sciri and many Goths, Alans and Sarmatians, were firmly part of the Hunnic empire of Attila.
[77] Although they were not specifically listed by Sidonius or Jordanes, Heruli are believed to have been among the peoples who fought at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains between the Romans and Attila, possibly on both sides.
[78][67] As indirect evidence, centuries later Pauls Diaconus listed the subject peoples who Attila could call upon in addition to the better known Goths and Gepids: "Marcomanni, Suebi, Quadi, and alongside them the Herules, Thuringi and Rugii".
[85] Theoderic's efforts to build a system of alliances in Western Europe were made difficult both by counter diplomacy, for example between Merovingian Franks and the Byzantine empire, and also the arrival of a new Germanic people into the Danubian region, the Lombards who were initially under Herule hegemony.
[87][37] Peter Heather considers this account to be "entirely plausible" although he notes that others have labelled it a "fairy story", and given that it only appears in one source it is possible to deny its validity.
[88] What happened to the main part of the Danubian Heruli has been difficult to reconstruct from Procopius, but according to Steinacher they first moved downstream on the Danube to an area where the Rugii had sought refuge in 488.
[100] In any case after one generation in the Belgrade area, the Herulian federate polity in the Balkans disappears from the surviving historical records, apparently replaced by the incoming Avars.
[101]Sarantis however shows that the Belgrade-region Heruli continued to be recruited, and to play a role in local conflicts involving the Gepids and Lombards, into the 550s.
[104][105] Paul the Deacon writes that many Heruli joined the Lombard king Alboin in their eventual conquest of Italy from the empire in the late 6th century AD.
[94] Procopius writes that the Heruli practiced a form of senicide, having a non-relative kill the sick and elderly and burning the remains on a wooden pyre.
[112][110] Furthermore, Procopius claims that the Heruli practiced homosexuality[113] or bestiality, depending on the interpretation: They are still, however, faithless toward them [the Romans], and since they are given to avarice, they are eager to do violence to their neighbours, feeling no shame at such conduct.
