In Edward Gibbon’s seminal work - the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - the famous
scholar of Rome posits that ‘the story of its ruin is simple and obvious’. He believed
that ‘the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of barbarians.” Among the reasons
mentioned by him is the increasingly massive recruitment of ‘barbarian’ soldiers into
the late Roman army. The source of this new manpower reserve is the topic of our video
today - imperial foederati. What is the story behind this term and its usage? How were barbarian
groups integrated into the Roman system? Most importantly did the foederati eventually end
the Western Roman Empire?
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Those among our audience with a cursory knowledge of late Roman history may have an image of
a foederati in their heads. In popular imagination it is a Germanic warrior within a unit of
other Germanic warriors. That unit is led by barbarian officers, but is fighting in
the service of Rome. However, this is far from clear cut. The translation of foederati
from Latin to English is ‘federate’, a broad term which essentially means ‘treaty-bound
ally’ in our context. However, during the republican period, ‘foederati’ was utilised
extensively alongside other designations such as ‘socii’ - or ‘ally’ - and ‘amici’
- meaning ‘friend’. There was some overlap and uncertainty between
these terms in the sources. Historian Louise Matthaei tells us that ‘though all socii
are foederati, only some amici are foederati, while others are nonfoederate.’ This means
that while all of Rome’s official allies were bound to the Republic by a treaty - a
‘foedus’ - often featuring sacral guarantees, not all of Rome’s informal friends were
obliged to do the same. Whatever the debates about these phrases are,
it is clear that Rome saw these early foederati as external entities which were both separate
and independent. Legally, such treaty-bound groups were not considered part of Rome, however
close their practical relationship was. It is possible that the legal definition of foederati
was gradually warped in the Late imperial era to meet new threats. Specifically, the
threat of the tribes near to and within Roman lands. Using foederati to describe Rome’s
‘allies’ may be anachronistic, but we will use it to be in line with the mainstream
historians. As early as Julius Caesar’s conquest of
Gaul, units such as the elite Germanic cavalry accompanied Rome’s legions, drawn from allied
tribes such as the Suebi, Tencteri and Usipetes. Just over half a century later, it was also
a German auxilia commander coming from outside the empire - Arminius - who betrayed the Romans,
along with many ‘allied’ tribesmen, and destroyed Augustus’ legions in the Teutoburg
Forest. These were the predecessors of the later foederati
units. The difference between the two was Rome's power in comparison to the barbarians.
Timo Stickler outlines this brilliantly when he states that “During the principate Romans
in their relations with ‘barbaricum’ enjoyed a position of political, military and cultural
superiority… - That was to change significantly during late antiquity.” The increasing economic
and political instability of the third century coincided with a genesis of larger barbarian
confederations such as the Alemanni, Franks and Goths along the northern frontier. This
shift in the balance of power slowly began to intensify relations between the rising
barbarians and the ‘falling’ Romans, and would eventually give birth to the foederati.
A few examples of what we might call ‘proto-Foederati’, which were employed during the pre-crisis
principate years, illustrate the dominance of Rome in relations with the barbarian people
in the early empire. They also give us an opportunity to examine different strategies
which Roman emperors used to manipulate the tribes.
In 19 AD, during the reign of Tiberius, internal strife within the Suebi lands, possibly instigated
by Rome and attacks by other tribes, led to the collapse of Maroboduus’ realm on the
Rhine river. The emperor’s agents took Maroboduus and his dynastic opponent Catualda, setting
each up in a comfy estate within the empire. The former was granted a luxurious abode in
Italy, while the latter made his new home in Gaul. Instead Tiberius installed a client
king - the Quadi chieftain Vannius - as the new leader, while the two deposed chieftains
were kept under a comfortable house arrest for use if the need arose. The weakness of
the Germanic tribes allowed the Romans to influence them. The two ‘retired’ leaders
were successfully Romanized and died in the empire.
A century and a half later, Marcus Aurelius marched north to fight the bitter Marcomannic
Wars. The empire still held military, political and cultural dominance over the barbarians,
despite the fact that the emperor made a deal which is reminiscent of later foederati. According
to a small segment of Cassius Dio’s history, after gaining superiority in the war, Marcus
Aurelius negotiated a peace with the relatively small tribe of Narisci. 3,000 of them were
permitted to settle one the scarcely populated Roman lands, and it proved to be a good investment,
as they became Romanized taxpayers and served with distinction as a unit of elite cavalry.
This era of dominance came to an end during the third century crisis. Deadly Antonine
and Cyprian plagues ravaged Rome, depleting the empire’s economy, population and soldiery.
Political instability within and emerging threats without increased the numbers of ongoing
conflicts, which spiked demand for soldiers. The emperors and potential usurpers alike
recruited more and more barbarians to make up the numbers. This trend continued even
when the crisis years came to an end with the advent of Diocletian’s Tetrarchy.
Throughout the fourth century the use of barbarian mercenaries continued to increase, possibly
due to their sheer effectiveness. We also begin to see Germanic officers rising to the
highest military positions that the empire had to offer, a process which would eventually
reach its logical conclusion in the fifth century with individuals like Stilicho and
Aetius becoming magister militum. There was probably no real single critical
moment in which the true late Roman foederati were created, but it is possible to designate
a range of about fifty years during which affairs seem to have decisively changed.
In the first year - 332 - Constantine the Great concluded an agreement with the Goths
which is now hotly debated among scholars. Some, who emphasize accounts by ancient chroniclers
like Jordanes and Procopius, believe this agreement was a foedus which revolutionised
and equalised Roman-barbarian relations. Other academics focus on different sources such
as Ammianus Marcellinus, critiquing the ‘revolutionary’ viewpoint by stressing the continuity of this
treaty compared to earlier eras. The end of the range was a consequence of
the far more famous events which took place in 378, when Emperor Valens was crushed at
Adrianople by Fritigern’s Goths. After that battle, Theodosius I spent four years cleaning
up the mess that his predecessor left behind. In 382, the eastern emperor came to an agreement
with the Goths which, although also debated like many other things in late antiquity,
a majority of historians agree was a key step. It was a foedus which settled the Goths on
Roman land as a separate community, exempt from taxation and from being considered a
full subject of the empire. In return for that never-before-seen concession,
the barbarians agreed to rally for war when Rome’s emperor called upon them. Crucially,
although in theory these Gothic Balkan contingents were supposed to serve under a Roman dux,
in reality they followed their own leaders. In hindsight, it is easy to criticise Theodosius’
agreement with the victorious barbarians because of its long term consequences, but it is important
to acknowledge what contemporaries thought of it. In fact, the general conclusion seems
to have been that 382’s settlement was better for both Romans and Goths than the alternative.
The Greek orator Themistius stated: “Was it then better to fill Thrace with corpses
or with farmers? To make it full of tombs or living men?”
However, any chance of successfully asserting true control over this new ‘enclave-kingdom’
of foederati was thrown away quickly following the Gothic War’s conclusion. In the decade
or so following 382, Emperor Theodosius was forced to campaign twice against internal
enemies in the west, once in 388 against Magnus Maximus, and then six years later to put down
the usurper Eugenius. The decisive battle in the civil war of 394
is a keen display of how the emperor was all too aware of the need to control his Gothic
foederati. During his clash at the Frigidus, Theodosius purposefully arrayed his Goths
in the front line in the hopes that they would suffer most of the losses and therefore be
weakened. This ‘lambs to the slaughter’ approach did succeed in severely angering
the battered and bruised foederati contingents - led by the infamous Alaric.
That deliberate betrayal was bad enough, but then in 395 Theodosius, the ‘friend of peace
and of the Goths’, died, leaving the empire divided in the hands of his two sons - Honorius
and Arcadius. Instead of a coordinated effort between east and west to integrate the Goths
into Rome’s civil and military system from a position of strength, the barbarians were
allowed to root themselves firmly into their occupied lands in the central Balkans. By
serving both the eastern and western imperial courts when it benefited him, the now-King
Alaric showed everyone just how far his people had come. He quickly gained the title of magister
militum per Illyricum combining the prestigious office of a Roman official with the status
of a barbarian king. The powerful private army under Alaric’s
control would go on to sack Rome in 410, then rampage through Gaul and Hispania before settling
down and forging a kingdom which would last until the early eighth century. Despite their
often self-serving nature it is worth noting that even in the empire’s dying years, sizable
Gothic contingents did honour their pledge to fight for Rome. When Aetius called the
Visigoths to war against the Huns in 451 for example, they came and assisted ably under
their king Theodoric. As we have seen, individual foederati becoming
too powerful could and did cause massive issues in the Late Empire, but this isn’t the entire
story. In northern Gaul, the barbarian Franks - who also served with Aetius in 451 - went
in the other direction and became some of the greatest and most faithful allies of Rome.
Ever since the late third century, Germanic-born farmers known as the laeti and gentiles, who
were almost definitely Franks, gained the right to settle in homogenous dwellings north
of the Loire River after their defeat in conflict with the legions. In times of war, these barbarian
settlers were obliged to rally for war under an official known as a praefecti laetorum,
a Roman officer who was appointed for the specific task of leading the laeti into battle.
We have little literary evidence of this Frankish population until about 350, but from that
moment we repeatedly see generations of Frankish foederati serving the empire loyally, perhaps
more loyally than any other Germanic group. Many thousands, perhaps many tens of thousands,
of Franks took service in the Roman military and served as faithfully as any ‘true Roman’.
Moreover, many Frankish magnates and noblemen took up a dual function as competent officers
within the imperial army structure. This fidelity to the empire among the highest barbarian
lords was visibly rewarded, particularly in the later fourth century. Prominent men in
Frankish society such as Merobaudes, Bauto and Arbogast attained the very highest command
positions in the Roman Empire, and Bauto even married into the imperial family.
Even during times of particular crisis, such as Alaric’s and Attila’s invasions, the
situation in northern Gaul remained relatively stable. Equipped with weapons and armour provided
by imperial workshops in their territory, Frankish warriors assisted in quelling these
crises by serving the Roman emperor in battle when necessary.
Such loyalty was present even at the very top of barbarian society. Frankish rex-king
Childeric still preferred to cooperate with Roman generals as late as the 460s, probably
due to the rank bestowed on him by the emperor. It is obvious that at least some of the Germanic
peoples north of the frontier, and particularly the aristocrats, not only tolerated Rome,
but respected and held true fondness for its culture, wealth and civilisation. When the
west finally ended symbolically in 476, The Frankish Kingdom inherited its legacy in Gaul.
That returns us to Gibbon’s statement that the Roman world ‘was overwhelmed by a deluge
of barbarians’. The traditional argument is made that during the late empire, an unprecedented
influx of barbarian mercenaries used in the Roman military gradually eroded its quality
and eventually its ability to maintain the empire’s integrity. Was this ‘barbarization’
of the Roman army really so disastrous? This question is among the most controversial in
Roman history for good reason, because within the answer lies responsibility for the fall
of the Western Roman Empire. Nevertheless, with the aid of recent scholarship it is possible
to come to a balanced conclusion. Late Roman writer Vegetius implies that standards
of training had indeed decreased. From that, Patricia Southern states that quantity, rather
than quality seems to have been the order of the day. However, blame is not placed on
the barbarians for this laxity, but on the Roman state itself, whose notorious ‘dotting
the I’s and crossing the T’s’ approach to administration seems to have waned.
In general, the barbarian-infused army of the later dominate was able to protect the
frontiers and provinces from direct attack. Even though it is possible that training standards
might have declined, employment of barbarian soldiers as an emergency recruiting method
most often achieved what the Romans hoped for, rather than weakening imperial defences
immediately. However, in the long run it also cannot be
denied that the rapidly increasing numbers of barbarians had significant impacts on both
them and the empire which they were meant to serve. It would have been impossible for
a half-Vandal general such as Stilicho, for example, to rise to that esteemed position
during Augustus’ principate. Such a phenomenon was unique to late antiquity, when Rome was,
as Cassius Dio called it, ‘an empire of iron and rust.’
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