Having led the war of independence against the Huns, the Gepids take the wealth of their former overlords and establish a kingdom on the lands of the original province of Dacia. Their efforts then turn to securing themselves a spot in the new Mediterranean world created by the collapse of half the Roman empire.

Below is a map of what the Balkans looked like in 493 CE. The Gepid kingdom included the lands of the original province of Dacia, plus territory to the west and north which hadn’t been part of the Roman empire.

If we take a wider view of the Mediterranean world at this moment, we see that the Gepids were but one of the various Germanic peoples that had established their rule over formerly Roman lands, from Hispania to Dacia, and from Britannia to Africa. Of course, these migratory peoples didn’t inhabit all the territory which they controlled, but ruled as armed minorities extracting tribute from and collaborating with the native populations they had conquered.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 1, Episode 24: The board reshuffles

Last time, we followed Attila as he marched the peoples under his dominion against the western Roman empire. The Romans managed to halt his forces and even retorted with raids across the Danube. As the two sides prepared for a prolonged war, Attila suddenly died in 453, and his sons immediately turned on each other as they sought to sit on their father’s throne. With the Huns in disarray, the Gepids rallied their fellow subject peoples, formed a coalition, and defeated their overlords in battle.

The power of the Huns consequently collapsed and their subjects gained their independence. As the leading tribe in the coalition, the Gepids decided to take the Hunnic heartland for themselves. The immediate effect of this decision was that the communities which had been paying tribute to the Huns on the Pannonian Plain now had to send it to the Gepids; those who refused migrated to other lands, as did most of the Goths, for instance. Yet the lands north of the Danube weren’t denuded of people; numerous communities concluded that it was better to stay on the lands which they’d cultivated for generations, especially since there was hope that the rule of the Gepids would prove more lenient than that of the Huns.

As the Gepids consolidated their power on the Pannonian Plain in the late 450s, they went after any remaining Hunnic war leaders and captured much of the wealth they had amassed over the past few decades of raiding. The Gepid king, his chieftains, and their families thus bejewelled themselves with luxurious silver and gold pieces. With such newfound riches, these elite Gepid families gained more power, as they were now able to pay for more servants, artisans, goods, and provisions – and also to be more assertive about their cultural identity. Indeed, while under Hunnic rule, prominent Gepids had followed the fashions of their overlords; men were buried with composite bows and women were laid to rest with diadems in imitation of nomadic customs. Yet in the latter half of the 5^th century, a distinct Germanic culture emerged in the area, as chieftains were interred with swords, and their wives were entombed with brooches.

The end of Hunnic domination affected not only the material culture of the Gepids, but also their spiritual expression. When Christianity first burst beyond the empire in the 4^th century, Roman missionaries had preached to anyone who would listen, and numerous Gepid communities had converted to this new faith. The Huns had taken a hostile stance against Christianity and suppressed it in their realm, but the religion continued to be practiced in secret. After the collapse of the Hunnic confederation, Christians north of the Danube were once again able to worship openly, and the faith spread even more. We actually have physical evidence of this change. For example, a Gepid chieftain who died in the late 5^th century was buried with three rings, each bearing a Christian cross. Many similar objects have been found in the graves of ordinary artisans and farmers as well; and so, it appears that, by the end of the 5^th century, most Gepids were openly Christian.

Before we continue, I want to note that our sources for the 5^th and 6^th centuries are scarce and mostly focus on wars; and while such key moments are crucial to understand the region, they’re not enough to give us a detailed account of the communities north of the Danube. And so, we’re forced to extrapolate from what meagre written information we have and to supplement it with insights from archeological finds. This approach is obviously not ideal, but it does allow us to learn a surprising amount.

We know, for instance, that in the late 450s and throughout the 460s, the Gepids expanded their power beyond the old Hunnic heartland; their warriors used the momentum of their victory to march to the banks of the Danube in the West and South, and up to the Carpathian Mountains in the East and North. Accordingly, they came to control the entire territory of the original province of Dacia, and I’ve drawn a map of their realm which you can find in this episode’s description.

In 471, the Gepids even captured the city of Sirmium, which was located just to the south of the Danube about two days’ march west of Dacia’s frontier. We’ve encountered Sirmium previously in our story as one of the four imperial capitals during Diocletian’s reign. The city had been sacked by Attila and, in the chaos following his death, had been taken over by the Goths. Now the Gepids expelled them from the city, and their king moved his family and entourage inside its walls.

Sirmium had suffered greatly when it had initially fallen to the Huns, and so was much smaller than it had been in imperial times. Even so, it was currently the largest settlement within the realm of the Gepids. Archeological evidence indicates that some people did move back into to the old Roman cities of Dacia that had been vacated at the approach of the Huns; but the families who took up residence in their neighbourhoods didn’t operate as an urban community, but rather as farmers making use of the existing buildings and materials left behind. In contrast, Sirmium had a core community of inhabitants, still had walls which could be repaired and patrolled, and – most importantly – it directly bordered the empire.

You see, the Gepid king cared much more about the Romans than about the tribes beyond his realm. The king at this point was Thraustila, the son of king Ardaric who had defeated the Huns, and he looked to the empire as a source of wealth and recognition. Indeed, Thraustila negotiated a deal with the emperor in Constantinople to receive annual subsidies in exchange for peace and for preventing any hostile tribes from reaching the frontier. We’ve seen this type of deal numerous times throughout our story: the Romans developed a layered defense by paying barbarians to repulse their enemies, and, in turn, these allies of the empire received a portion of its vast wealth. At the same time, Thraustila also cemented his rule, since he was the one negotiating with the emperor and supplying his chieftains with Roman coins and goods.

While the Gepid king moved his court to Sirmium, we have archeological evidence that numerous settlements relocated from the hilly regions around the Carpathian Mountains down to the plains of Dacia. Since the Huns no longer dominated the grasslands, farmers were free to choose more suitable lands for their families without fear of retribution. Of course, communities did continue to live near the mountains, but many decided to find more fertile fields on the lowlands. The majority of these farmers weren’t Gepids, since the Gepids were too few in number to occupy the entire territory of the original province of Dacia. No, the Gepids ruled as an armed minority who extracted tribute from the various communities living in the area.

In fact, the ethnic makeup of their realm was rather complex, as it contained various tribes who had lived there under Hunnic domination, as well as a substantial Romanized population. Yet it’s interesting to note that, as we near the end of the 5^th century, we can no longer distinguish the Romanized population from other groups using archeological material. In previous episodes, for instance, we noted how the presence of a glass workshop using Roman techniques suggests that Roman artisans had remained after the abandonment of Dacia and passed on their craft to their children; or how pottery made using the potter’s wheel indicates the presence of Romanized communities in the area, since migratory peoples made pottery by hand, and the technique was only widespread within the empire.

Of course, archeology can’t determine the ethnicity of a group just by looking at the goods they used, but it has been able to give us clues. At this point in our story, however, the archeological material north of the Danube loses its Roman character and becomes, for lack of a better term, “barbarian.” This isn’t because the Romanized population disappeared, but because they began to use different goods. Links between the north and south banks of the Danube had been severely restricted during Hunnic rule, and the economy became much more local; communities had to grow and craft everything they needed on a daily basis, and if they couldn’t make something themselves, they had to trade with nearby villages, since they didn’t have access to faraway markets in the empire. And so, the various peoples north of the Danube came to develop a largely similar material culture.

In light of this change, we have to reevaluate how we refer to the Romanized communities of the region. When the imperial authorities retreated from Dacia in 271, I referred to the provincials who had stayed behind as “Romans,” since they had been born in the empire, spoke Latin, and continued to embody Roman values and customs. When their children were born, I called them “Romanized” individuals, because while they were different from the Romans living inside the empire, their adherence to Roman ways set them apart from the migratory peoples that settled near them; in effect, their Roman character distinguished them from the other peoples north of the Danube.

But at this point in our story, two centuries after the abandonment of Dacia, the lines between these Roman descendants and their migratory neighbours had blurred significantly. The biggest factor in this blurring is that many migratory peoples, like the Gepids, had adopted Christianity, which affected much more than just spirituality: it dictated what people considered moral and lawful, what holidays they celebrated, what food they ate at different times of the year, what stories they told their children, what figures they looked up to – in short, Christianity had impacted all aspects of culture, meaning that Gepids and Roman descendants had a lot in common. I see Romanization as a spectrum; as Roman descendants lost some of their distinct material culture and as the Gepids adopted many Roman spiritual customs, the two groups moved from opposite extremes of the spectrum to somewhere in the middle. As such, the term “Romanized” no longer makes sense to distinguish them.

The key difference between the two groups was their language. While we don’t have concrete evidence of this, many scholars think that Roman descendants north of the Danube continued to speak a dialect of the Latin which their ancestors had spoken. The other possibility is that they adopted the language of their various overlords over time: the Goths, Huns, and Gepids. But as we’ve seen in our story, these migratory peoples didn’t have the resources – or even the desire – to impose their language and culture on their subjects; they mostly wanted to receive a tribute of provisions and warriors, and were happy to let villagers live their lives.

The only time I can remember a migratory tribe meddling in the culture of their subjects is when the Goths tried to staunch the spread of Christianity in the 4^th century. At that time, they used force to punish those who openly practiced the religion; but their efforts failed, since their subjects sheltered Christians, and they themselves didn’t have enough warriors to threaten every community to change its ways. In fact, Gothic rule was characterised by a great deal of autonomy for the villages under their control, and the Huns were even more aloof. And so, it’s conceivable that, without a strong and continuous push from above, the Roman descendants who lived in villages scattered over the territory of Dacia continued to speak their own language amongst themselves, and to pass it on to their children.

Since Roman descendants likely spoke a dialect of Latin and their language differentiated them from their neighbours, I’ll call them “Romance” people from now on, because languages derived from Latin are known as Romance languages.

While the Gepids were forming their kingdom, the empire was dealing with the Goths who had settled in the Balkans. As we’ve seen last episode, a part of the Goths who had served the Huns decided to seek refuge in Thrace once they’d gained their independence. The Romans had given them land in exchange for defending the frontier, and, to ensure they would remain loyal, they also gave them a say in government by granting important posts to leading Goths; the chieftain Strabo, for instance, was made a general in the Roman army, answerable only to the emperor. Relations between the two groups remained friendly in the late 450s and throughout the 460s, but the situation changed when a new emperor ascended to the throne in 474 and stripped Strabo of his command. The Gothic chieftain was obviously unhappy, and he wasn’t the only one. Several officials at court were displeased with the new emperor for various reasons which we don’t have time to get into in this episode; what’s important to know is that a conspiracy formed to overthrow him, and Strabo was quickly inducted into the plot. The conspirators successfully expelled the emperor from Constantinople in 475 and placed their own man on the throne.

Yet this usurper proved even more unpopular than his predecessor and was deposed a year later; the original emperor re-entered Constantinople, expunged his rivals, and declared Strabo an enemy of the state. He then approached another Gothic chieftain, a man named Theodoric, made him a general, and ordered him to kill Strabo. The emperor promised Theodoric a large Roman force to supplement his own Gothic troops, but these reinforcements never arrived. The emperor’s actual plan was to have both Gothic chieftains fight and weaken each other. But Theodoric saw through the ploy, made peace with Strabo, and joined forces with him to oppose the treacherous emperor.

For the next five years, the Goths plundered the Balkan countryside, grabbing grain, stealing livestock, carrying off goods, and killing anyone who resisted, as the imperial army proved unable to stop them. A small relief for the Romans came in 481 when Strabo died of an accident, leaving Theodoric as the sole ruler of the Goths. Seeing an opportunity to stop the bloodshed, the emperor contacted Theodoric and offered concessions for peace: the Gothic leader was named the commander of the Roman forces in the Balkans and was even made consul, which was the first time that a person who wasn’t a Roman citizen had attained the office.

Theodoric did well in his duties as a Roman magistrate for the next two years, putting down several uprisings on behalf of the empire. But he knew that the Romans were just using him and his warriors; the Goths were still unwelcome in the empire, and the Romans would never truly accept them as equal neighbours. And so, in 486, Theodoric marched on Constantinople to pressure the emperor to agree to a fair and permanent settlement of his people. The emperor didn’t want the Goths to live in his provinces, but he also didn’t have the forces to subjugate them; on the other hand, Theodoric couldn’t take Constantinople, and just wanted to find a place where his people could live in peace. Faced with this stalemate, the two men agreed that the best course of action was for Theodoric to march on Italy. As we’ve seen last episode, the peninsula was ruled by Odoacer, who was technically administering it in the name of the emperor; so, the emperor told Theodoric that if he could remove Odoacer from power, then Italy was his.

And so, in the autumn of 488, the Goths began their exodus from the Balkans, yet their journey westwards was intercepted by the Gepids near Sirmium. We don’t know whether the Gepids felt threatened at the approach of the Goths or whether they wanted to enrich themselves by taking their goods, but we do know that they tried to stop Theodoric’s advance in 489. In the ensuing battle, the Gepid king Thraustila was killed and, even worse, the Goths then marched all the way to Sirmium and captured the city. The son of the dead king fled his capital and retreated north beyond the Danube to consolidate his position. Thankfully for him, the Goths didn’t intend to follow him; though they left a garrison in Sirmium, the bulk of their forces continued on to Italy where, after several campaign seasons, Theodoric killed Odoacer and established himself as king of Italy in 493. The Goths could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Their western branch, the one which had crossed into the empire in 376 at the approach of the Huns, had found a homeland in Hispania; whereas their eastern branch, the one which had been subjugated by the Huns and remained under their suzerainty until 454, now found permanent settlement in Italy.

As for the Gepids, our sources barely mention them for the following 40 years, between the 490s and 530s, but we know that, during this period, their kingdom maintained its independence and even prospered. The Gepid army doesn’t seem to have been strong enough to conquer more territory, since it failed to retake Sirmium in 504; yet it was successful in defending the borders, so much so that a smaller Germanic tribe, the Heruli, sought refuge within their kingdom from nearby aggressive tribes. At the same time, the Gepids were careful not to be diplomatically isolated; one of their kings married his daughter Austrigosa to the king of the Lombards, a Germanic people living to the West. Interestingly, Austrigosa’s daughters married into the Frankish royal family and later became queens themselves.

But there were also some setbacks on the diplomatic front. It seems that sometime in the early 6^th century, the treaty between the Gepids and the Romans broke down; the empire no longer sent them subsidies, and we have reports of Gepid raids across the Danube. Yet these hostilities appear to have been interspersed with periods of peace. Indeed, we find numerous Roman-made gold pieces in the graves of Gepid chieftains, which most likely made their way north as gifts. And we also know that the Romans recruited Gepid warriors to garrison their frontier forts. Archeological evidence attests to their presence in Crimea, as well as along the Danube in the frontier town of Viminacium, just opposite their kingdom. These Gepid warriors made deals with Roman commanders, brought their families along with them, settled in the imperial towns they defended, and were buried in their cemeteries, which is how we know about them.

They even appear to have had some cultural influence on the areas which they protected. In Crimea and Thrace, archeologists have found numerous eagle-headed buckles with ornate engravings and precious stones which were worn by prominent Gepid women. This fashion seems to have spread to their Roman neighbours as well, since we find imitation buckles crafted in local imperial workshops in Crimea and Thrace. Based on the design of the original and imitation buckles, scholars have proposed that there were two main centres of production within the Gepid kingdom, though they aren’t sure of their exact locations.

The fact that Gepid artisans produced such intricate pieces that were exported and admired beyond the borders of their homeland reveals several important points. First, prominent Gepid women were wealthy enough to commission luxurious clothing accessories. Second, the realm itself was prosperous enough to extract or trade for the precious metals and stones required to create such pieces. And third, Gepid merchants had established stable commercial relations with their neighbours.

Beyond these inferences, we have no information about what the Gepid elite was doing in the early 6^th century; we don’t know even know the names of the kings at this time. And we have absolutely no visibility on the masses which they ruled. What we can say is that the Gepid kingdom enjoyed a period of peace and increased prosperity at the beginning of the 6^th century, allowing its farmers to tend to their crops, its artisans to sell their goods, and its warriors to seek employment abroad.

The Romans to their south were experiencing their own period of plenty. After the Goths had left the Balkans, the empire was able to regain full control of the area. Unlike the western half of the empire which had been forced to accept barbarian settlement on its lands for decades, the eastern half had kept much of its realm intact; the provinces in the Orient had been shielded by the Bosphorus, meaning that they continued to supply the government with a steady supply of revenue and recruits. As such, the emperor in Constantinople didn’t have to overly rely on foederati troops, and could support a large regular army to maintain pressure on his enemies. The Balkans had been repeatedly raided for over a century, but now that the Goths were gone, the crisis was over.

As the empire navigated the relatively calmer waters of the early 6^th century, it was able to focus on some internal affairs which had long been neglected. One of the most important changes to occur at this time was the reintroduction of currency in the administration. When Diocletian had reforged the empire after its near collapse in the 3^rd century, he had kept the bureaucracy going by officialising the exchange of goods as a means of payment. To be sure, coinage had never disappeared from use, but many transactions continued to be performed through barter up through the 6^th century. Now, however, the state introduced new denominations of coins and decreed that all taxes had to be paid in currency. This switch made accounting easier and reduced corruption, which led to a more efficient administration and higher tax revenue for the state. Consequently, soldiers’ wages increased, which attracted more men to the uniform, and the treasury actually had a substantial surplus by the end of the 520s.

That was the situation when, in 527, this reinvigorated empire crowned a new emperor: Justinian. Born in the Balkans to a Latin-speaking family of farmers, Justinian had quickly ascended the imperial administration under the mentorship of his uncle. Now that he had attained the highest position in the empire, he was ready to undertake a task which he had long dreamt of: regaining the ancient lands of the Roman empire.

Next time, we’ll see Justinian seek to secure the Danube frontier before embarking on his quest to reconquer the West; and we’ll see the Gepids play the situation to their advantage in a bid to reclaim their lost capital at Sirmium.