Marcomanni

They were one of the most important members of the powerful cluster of allied Suebian peoples in this region, which also included the Hermunduri, Varisti, and Quadi along the Danube, and the Semnones and Langobardi to their north.

Before 9 BC the homeland of the Marcomanni is not known, but archaeological evidence suggests that they lived near the central Elbe river and Saale, or possibly to the southwest of this region in Franconia.

The Marcomanni were first reported by Julius Caesar among the Germanic peoples who were attempting to settle in Gaul in 58 BC under the leadership of Ariovistus, but he did not explain where their homeland was.

Eventually defeated, the Marcomanni were weakened, and many were moved into the Roman empire, but the tensions behind this war were never resolved, and their neighbours such as the Quadi continued to come into conflict with Rome.

They "arranged them by tribe (generatim, by gens), at equal distances, the Harudes, Marcomanni, Tribocci, Vangiones, Nemetes, Sedusii, Suebi; and surrounded their whole army with their chariots and wagons, that no hope might be left in flight.

[1] Caesar described the Suebi he encountered as the largest and the most warlike Germanic people (gens), who were divided into 100 districts (pagi) which supplied 1000 men each during war.

The location of the Marcomanni battle is often assumed to be in Franconia but an alternative hypothesis is that it was closer to the Cherusci, in the area of northeastern Hesse and western Thuringia.

[19] According to the accounts of Tacitus, Velleius Paterculus, and Strabo the Marcomanni eventually moved into a part of the large area that had been occupied by the Boii, a region called Baiohaemum, where their allies and fellow Suevi lived, the Quadi.

The archaeological evidence of this period, including both a number of cremation and inhumation burials, hints at a stratified society which gave special importance to its warrior class.

The Langobardi and Semnones, Suebians living near to the Cherusci on the Elbe, defected from this kingdom in the name of freedom, both because Maroboduus did not support the revolt, and because he held royal power.

The subjects of Maroboduus and Catualda, presumably mainly Marcomanni, were moved by the Romans to an area near the Danube, between the Morava and "Cusus" rivers, and placed under the control of the Quadian king Vannius.

However, Slovak archaeological research locates a core area of the Vannius kingdom was probably in the fertile southwestern Slovakian lowlands around Trnava, east of the Little Carpathians.

[36][39] The Marcomanni are not specifically mentioned much in subsequent generations, possibly because they were now politically part of the Vannian regime which was centred around the Quadian powerbases closer to the Danube.

Archaeological and other evidence indicates that the Marcomanni population also more generally moved, or at least became more active, to the southeast near the Morava river, while the Quadi and the Vannian kingdom expanded further east in the direction of what is now Hungary.

Archaeological evidence shows further increase in the Germanic population just north of the Danube after the fall of Vannius, in present day Lower Austria, Moravia and western Slovakia.

[40] In 69 AD, the "Year of the Four Emperors", two kings Sido and Italicus, the latter perhaps the son of Vangio, fought on the side of Vespasian in a Roman civil war.

[42] The relationship between the Romans and the Quadi and their neighbours was far more seriously and permanently disrupted during the long series of conflicts called the Marcomannic or Germanic wars, which were fought mainly during the rule of emperor Marcus Aurelius (reigned 161-180 AD).

In the 150s or 160s AD, 6000 Langobardi (Lombards originally from present-day north Germany) and Obii (whose identity is uncertain[43]) crossed the Lower Danube into Roman territory where they were quickly defeated.

[50] Rome executed a successful and decisive battle against them in 179 AD at Laugaricio (present-day Trenčín in Slovakia) under the command of legate and procurator Marcus Valerius Maximianus.

[51][52] Commodus the son of Marcus Aurelius made peace soon after the death of his father in 180 AD, but he did not go ahead with plans to create a new Roman province.

[53] Around 214/215 AD, Dio Cassius reports that because of raids into Pannonia, the emperor Caracalla invited the Quadi king Gaiobomarus to meet him, and then had him executed.

According to this report Caracalla "claimed that he had overcome the recklessness, greed, and treachery of the Germans by deceit, since these qualities could not be conquered by force", and he was proud of the "enmity with the Vandili and the Marcomani, who had been friends, and in having executed Gaïobomarus".

During the reign of Valerian (253-260 AD) the historian Zosimus reported that the Marcomanni made excursions at the same time as "Scythians" (Goths and allied peoples from Ukraine), making inroads into all the countries adjacent to the empire, laying Thessalonica waste.

[59][60] One of the armed groups responsible for the defeat, led by Alatheus and Saphrax, were settled into the Pannonian part of the Roman empire, near the Marcomanni homeland, and expected to do military service for Rome.

After the death of emperor Theodosius I in 395, Saint Jerome listed the Marcomanni, Quadi, Vandals and Sarmatians, together with several of the new eastern peoples causing devastation in the Roman provinces stretching from Constantinople to the Julian Alps, including Dalmatia, and all the provinces of Pannonia: "Goths and Sarmatians, Quadi and Alans, Huns and Vandals and Marcomanni".

Soon afterward, the Pannonian and Danubian area went into a long period of turmoil, under the influence of peoples from the east including the Huns, Goths and Alans.

However, centuries later Paulus Diaconus listed the subject peoples who Attila could call upon, in addition to the better-known Goths and Gepids, and mentioned "Marcomanni, Suebi, Quadi", alongside the expected "Herules, Thuringi and Rugii".

[65] While it is not clear what happened to the Marcomanni and other Suebi during Attila's time, after he died in 453 a Suebian kingdom appeared which was ruled by a man named Hunimund and existed in or near north-eastern Pannonia.

It is generally believed that their name is Germanic, and that it indicates an origin in the nearby regions to the east, including Roman Pannonia, which were once inhabited by the Boii.

[66] Possibly distinct from the Suebi led by Hunimund, the Ravenna Cosmography, a much later document which used sources which are in many cases now lost, indicates that a Marcannori people (Marcannorum gens) lived in the mountainous southwest of Pannonia near the Sava river.