Quadi

The Quadi were the easternmost of a series of four related Suebian kingdoms that established themselves near the river frontier after 9 BC, during a period of major Roman invasions into both western Germania to the northwest of it, and Pannonia to the south of it.

The Marcomannic wars, during the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his co-emperors, involved several rounds of particularly destructive conflict against the Quadi and their neighbours, who at one point even invaded Italy itself.

However, while the original Marcomanni settlements in the northern Bohemian forest subsequently shrunk and became less important, the Quadi thrived near the Danube, and became more culturally integrated with both their Roman and Sarmatian neighbours.

In 395 AD however, Saint Jerome listed the Quadi and their neighbours the Sarmatians, Marcomanni, and Vandals, as peoples who had recently been ransacking the nearby Roman provinces together with these newcomers.

In 409 he placed the Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Heruli, and even inhabitants of Roman Pannonia, in another list of peoples who had recently moved west and occupied parts of Gaul.

According to the Germanische Altertumskunde Online, the etymologies proposed for the ethnonym are all fraught with difficulties:[1] The Quadi start to appear in contemporary works only after their neighbours the Marcomanni settled in central Bohemia.

He proceeded to lead his own people and their Suebian allies into more isolated regions in the present day Czech Republic, which was surrounded by forests and mountains.

[Marcomanis Quadisque usque ad nostram memoriam reges manserunt ex gente ipsorum, nobile Marobodui et Tudri genus (iam et externos patiuntur), sed vis et potentia regibus ex auctoritate Romana.

[18] The 2nd-century Greek geographer Ptolemy similarly placed the Quadi on the edge of Germania, defining the "Sarmatian mountains" (Σαρματικὰ ὄρη) as the border, which he understood to run in a north-easterly direction from the sharp bend in the Danube to the "head of the Vistula" (κεφαλῆς τοῦ Οὐιστούλα), though present day Slovakia.

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

[31] 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 wars, which were fought mainly during the rule of emperor Marcus Aurelius (reigned 161-180).

In the 150s or 160s, 6000 Langobardi (Lombards originally from present-day north Germany) and Obii (whose identity is uncertain[32]) crossed the Lower Danube into Roman territory where they were quickly defeated.

[37] By 175 the cavalry from the Marcomanni, Naristae, and Quadi were forced to travel to the Middle East, and in 176 Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus held a triumph as victors over Germania and Sarmatia.

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

[40][41] 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".

By the middle of the third century the Quadi seem to have rejected their client relationship with Rome, and they began a series of attacks which they organized together with their eastern neighbours the Sarmatians.

[44] He reported that the involved Quadi and Sarmatians "were neighbours and had like customs and armour", "better fitted for brigandage than for open warfare, have very long spears and cuirasses made from smooth and polished pieces of horn, fastened like scales to linen shirts".

Neighbouring tribes including the Sarmatians sprung into action and began raids across the Danube, repulsing the Roman military's first poorly coordinated attempts to confront them.

However, when they maintained that the building of a barrier was begun "unjustly and without due occasion", which had roused rude spirits to anger, Valentinian was enraged, became sick, and died.

[49] In 380 the Romans suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Adrianople, which was caused by a sudden movement of peoples including Goths, Alans and Huns coming from present-day Ukraine.

According to Ammianus, the region of the Marcomanni and Quadi were among the areas first affected by the "a savage horde of unknown peoples, driven from their abodes by sudden violence".

[51][52] 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 Quadi homeland, and expected to do military service for Rome.

He lists them first among the peoples who were occupying Gaul at that time: "Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepids, Herules, Saxons, Burgundians, Allemanni and—alas!

[56] Scholars note that apart from the Saxons, Burgundians and Alemanni, who were already well-known near the Rhine, and the Alans who were newcomers from Ukraine who had already played an important role in the Roman military, the others appear to have been long-term neighbours from the Middle Danube area.

[60] The chain of events which led to large numbers of Middle Danubian people to suddenly move west along the Danube, towards Gaul, are not well understood but several are frequently discussed.

After the Battle of Nedao in 454, when the sons of Attila and their Ostrogothic allies were defeated, the victors were able to consolidate independent kingdoms north of the Middle Danube.

A little later, in 469, at the Battle of Bolia, Hunimund and Alaric, apparently both kings of the Suevi, called upon the Sarmatians, and the remnants of the Sciri, led by Edica and Hunwulf, and also the Gepids and Rugians.

The Suavi were now together in a confederation with the Alemanni, in an Alpine region with streams that flowed loudly into the Danube, Baiuvarii (early Bavarians) on the east, Franks on the west, Burgundians on the south, and Thuringians on the north.

[75] The alliance of Hunimund with the Allemanni has been interpreted as evidence of a new Alemannic-Suebi ethnogenesis in the second half of the 5th century, which could explain the documented use of the Suevi name to refer to the Alemanni after about 500.