As we explore the khaganate in more depth, we take a look at the subject peoples who lived under Avar dominion, their ways of life, and the relationships they negotiated with their overlords to advance their own interests.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 2, Episode 3: A tapestry of subjects

Last time, we explored Avar society and how they ran their khaganate. Today, we’ll look beyond the ruling class at the subject peoples who actually made up most of the population of that khaganate.

There were several such groups, and while they were all below the Avars, they weren’t all equal. At the top of the hierarchy were the Bulgars, a nomadic people native to the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Avars had subjugated the Bulgars as they passed through the area during their westward migration; a couple of generations later, our sources mention Bulgars living not just north of the Black Sea, but in multiple locations across the khaganate.

It’s possible that some Bulgar clans migrated alongside the Avars and dispersed to several regions. However, the name “Bulgar” was used by Roman writers to designate any nomads inside the khaganate who weren’t Avars; and whenever an Avar defected from the khaganate, the sources label them a “Bulgar”. And so, we can’t be sure whether the sources are referring to the Bulgars themselves who had dispersed over multiple regions, or to different groups of nomadic horse riders which were all lumped together under the same name.

Whatever the answer may be, what we know for certain is that the Bulgars living inside the khaganate were steppe riders who held a less prestigious position than the Avars. They lived as autonomous clans who fought alongside the khagan but who didn’t owe him absolute allegiance and could undertake their own initiatives. In effect, they were above all other subject peoples due to their nomadic lifestyle and military prowess.

One of those other subject peoples were the Gepids. They too had been subjugated by the Avars, but in contrast to the Bulgars, they weren’t integrated into the khaganate’s military structure. When their kingdom collapsed in the later 6^th century, the surviving Gepid elite, like the king’s nephew and his bishop, fled to the Romans for refuge, while the warriors who had survived the war joined the Lombards on their way to Italy.

But most commoners – the farmers, shepherds, and artisans that made up most of the Gepid population – remained on the lands which they’d been on for generations. This suited the khagan just fine, because he relied on tribute from agrarian subjects to feed his warriors and provide them with weapons and armour. In return for these goods and services, Gepid communities were allowed to live in their own villages, manage their own affairs, and celebrate their religious festivals. The khagan did however expulse most of them from the plains along the Tisza to make room for his warriors, since those lands were excellent for grazing. Accordingly, a substantial number of Gepid communities retreated into the mountainous region of the eastern Carpathian Basin; though less fertile, this area allowed them to live with less interference from the Avars.

By far the most numerous and important subjects of the khagan were the Slavs, which we introduced in Season 1, Episode 25. The Slavs originated somewhere near the Dnieper River and migrated southwestwards in the early 6^th century. By the early 7^th century, Slavic communities had travelled and fought their way as far as the Alps in the West, the Aegean Sea in the South, and the Black Sea in the East. However, we shouldn’t imagine that the Slavs killed or displaced the native inhabitants of these lands and supplanted them; rather, Slavic communities existed in pockets of varying size and density across Eastern Europe, living alongside the older inhabitants of those regions.

We also shouldn’t think that these Slavic communities were a homogenous group. It’s true, they had their similarities: they were farmers, fought in decentralized bands on foot, and shared a pantheon of nature divinities. Plus, they spoke mutually intelligible languages. For instance, the Slavs called their Germanic neighbours Nemcy, meaning “the mute” or “those who do not know the words,” suggesting that the Slavs saw themselves as a linguistic community of “those who know the words.”

However, there were also some key local differences that affected their identity. The Slavs living in the foothills of the Alps near the Franks probably thought of themselves as distinct from those living on the coast of the Black Sea near the Romans. One way to think about these differences is to consider the example of the Isaurians and Paphlagonians in the Roman empire; both of these groups spoke Greek and called themselves “Roman,” and so were part of the same “communication community;” but they nevertheless saw each other as different. In effect, they had one overarching identity built on a shared language, and two local identities rooted in traditions, habits, and history. If we apply the same analysis to the Slavs, the name may have served as a blanket term for various different groups who spoke related and mutually intelligible languages, but who otherwise thought of themselves as different in their daily lives.

Indeed, the Slavs weren’t one united people, but rather operated in decentralized communities. A few villages would band together under a chieftain when migrating or facing a threat, but this chieftain couldn’t take decisions without the consultation and consent of the village elders. And after the danger had passed or the villages had migrated, this military leader lost his influence, and governance returned to the elders of each village.

These brief unions of villages didn’t translate into any cohesive state. Not a single name of a Slavic tribe has survived from the late 6^th and early 7^th centuries, indicating that these coalitions didn’t evolve a shared identity; as soon as their common goal was achieved, they returned to their own affairs. As such, the Slavs appear to have recognized similarities with those who could understand them, but to have rooted their primary identity in their local community. Like people today, the Slavs were able to hold multiple identities simultaneously.

A good portion of the Slavic communities in Eastern Europe lived within the boundaries of the khaganate. These communities had to pay the khagan a tribute of grain, livestock, and artisanal products; billet his riders in their homes over the winter; and act as auxiliary troops when needed. In fact, the Slavs formed the largest part of the Avar army, as men were drafted from every village.

The Avars threatened those living next to them to provide warriors, and used gifts to persuade those farther away, since they couldn’t apply their force as easily on the periphery of the khaganate. The Slavs living between the Carpathian Mountains and the Danube River were a special case; these communities voluntarily joined Avar invasions of the empire because they wanted to migrate on imperial land to eventually escape the khagan’s yoke. Indeed, during the invasions of the late 6^th century, the decentralized Slavic attacks and the more coordinated Avar campaigns reinforced one another; the two sides used the other’s momentum to further their own aims.

The Slavs living between the Carpathians and the Danube nominally recognized the khagan’s authority, but in reality, the khagan couldn’t control them. As long as they provided tribute, they were allowed to undertake initiatives of their own. The only prohibition was to not do anything against the khagan.

This loose collaboration between the Slavs and the Avars benefitted both groups. For the Avars, the borders of their khaganate expanded without them having to do much of anything, like when their Slavic subjects migrated westwards towards the Alps. For their part, the Slavs had the protection of the khagan, who would come to their aid as their overlord. For example, in 596, some Germanic tribes attacked the Slavs who were settling near the Alps, and, in response, the khagan sent forces to punish their incursion. It was his duty to protect those who professed their submission to him.

Here I want to note that not everyone who was called a Slav by the Romans may have actually been a Slav. To understand this nuance, let’s turn to the Strategikon, an early 7^th century Roman military manual. The Strategikon deals with “Persians, Scythians, light-haired peoples such as Franks, Lombards, and the other peoples with the same lifestyle, and Slavs.” As you can see, the Roman view of foreigners was rather foggy. The “Scythians” were actually a nomadic people who had lived a thousand years ago, but the Romans continued to apply the name to all nomadic horse riders because, well, to them, they all kind of looked alike and behaved alike. We also see that the Franks and Lombards are put into one vague category because both had similar fighting styles and light hair.

To be fair to the Romans, it was difficult for a citizen to head into these peoples’ lands and learn about them in a meaningful way, like Priscus had done when he’d travelled to the Hunnic court. Instead, the Roman view of foreigners mainly came from fighting them. And based on the Roman experience, barbarians in Europe fell into one of three buckets: nomadic Scythians, light-haired Franks, and hardy Slavs. So, for example, if an imperial commander saw a band of warriors who fought on foot, well, they certainly couldn’t be Scythians. And if they had dark hair, then they weren’t Franks. The only option left was that they must be Slavs, especially if they spoke something that sounded Slavic.

But as you can imagine, this method of deduction wasn’t infallible. You obviously can’t tell someone’s ethnicity by the weapons they bear or the colour of their hair. And many people in frontier zones were bilingual, because they had to be to interact with their neighbours. The lands beyond the borders were much more nuanced than these three Roman buckets, and individuals could easily be misidentified. Indeed, the region north of the Danube hosted a great diversity of peoples in the early 7^th century.

One of these groups were in fact Roman descendants who had remained north of the Danube when the empire had abandoned its provinces there. I’ll call these descendants “Romanic” because they spoke a Romance language, meaning one derived from Vulgar Latin. Their language actually tells us quite a bit about them, so let’s take a few minutes to explore its intricacies.

As we saw in season one, the Romans conquered the Getae and Dacians living along the Danube in the 1^st and 2^nd centuries, then created the provinces of Moesia and Dacia, and actively colonized the region. Legionary veterans mixed with provincials from across the empire, as well as with native Getae and Dacians, who became Romanized in the process. Over generations, the communities between the Carpathian arc and the Balkan Mountains came to predominantly speak Latin; in contrast, those communities south of the Balkan Mountains mainly spoke Greek because they hadn’t been colonized, but had instead been absorbed from the Hellenic world into the empire.

As Getae and Dacian individuals learned Latin, they inadvertently carried over some elements from their own languages, which linguists refer to as “substrate elements.” This local influence led the Latin spoken in the Balkans to gradually become its own dialect. Such local differences were in fact the norm in the Roman world; the empire was absolutely immense, and the Latin dialect spoken in Dacia was slightly different from the Syrian or Britannic dialects. Unlike written Latin, spoken Latin was never a uniform language.

It’s difficult to research the influence of substrate elements on Balkan Latin simply because the Getic and Dacian languages haven’t survived. All that remains are the names of some individuals, tribes, deities, settlements, plants, rivers, and mountains, as well as some undeciphered inscriptions. Linguists have proposed that the Dacian language influenced Balkan Latin in its lexicon, meaning its vocabulary; its morphosyntax, meaning how words are formed and structured in a sentence; and its phonetics, meaning speech sounds. While there’s some evidence for all of these, the only one for which we have undeniable proof is Dacian influence on the local vocabulary.

Linguists have identified words of Dacian origin by comparing two modern languages: Romanian and Albanian. You see, Romanian is a descendant of the Latin spoken in the Balkans, whereas Albanian is the descendant of Thracian, of which Dacian was a branch. By comparing these two languages, linguists can evaluate similarities and differences, and work backwards to propose an origin for shared words. This method produced a list of eighty to a hundred words likely of Dacian origin in modern Romanian, which accounts for about one percent of its lexicon. Examples include abur, meaning “steam,” brad, meaning “fir tree,” mal, meaning “bank,” șopârlă meaning “lizard,” and țarc meaning “sheep pen.”

These native additions gave the Latin spoken in the Balkans a unique character, and when the empire retreated from the province of Dacia in the 3^rd century, the citizens who stayed behind continued to speak this dialect. When Germanic peoples established kingdoms on the lands of the western Roman empire, these Balkan communities became isolated from the rest of the Latin-speaking world, especially since the eastern half of the empire which survived was predominantly Greek-speaking.

However, there were enough speakers of Balkan Latin for the dialect to survive. You see, the lands of Moesia, which were still inside the empire south of the Danube, had been just as colonized as the lands of Dacia, which were now outside of the imperial fold. Communities in these two regions – both south and north of the Danube – maintained close links with each other during the 4^th century. Linguistically, they had more in common with each other than with the barbarians north of the river or the Greek-speaking citizens south of it. And so, through constant contact with one another, these communities were able to perpetuate their language.

Of course, their language didn’t remain static. As the political situation changed over generations, Balkan Latin was influenced by neighbouring tongues. However, the language remained decidedly Latin in character, as we can see from the two thousand words of Latin origin in Romanian; five hundred of those words are present in all Romance languages, from Romanian to Portuguese. Examples include pronouns, verbs, adjectives, numbers, as well as words referring to the body, food, clothing, housing, nature, and time. In effect, in all Romance languages, Latin words continued to be used for everything you’d say on a daily basis.

While Balkan Latin had strong similarities with its kin in the West, its isolation also led it to develop some distinct features in the 5^th and 6^th centuries. For instance, some Latin words which are present in all other Romance languages were lost in the Balkans, like ancora, meaning “anchor,” and portus, meaning “harbour,” mainly because professions related to those words were no longer practiced in the region. At the same time, there are some Latin words that were lost in all other Romance languages and were only inherited by Romanian, like oaie meaning “sheep,” fluture meaning “butterfly,” mire meaning “groom,” and cântec meaning “song.”

Over time, all these minor subtractions, additions, and modifications made quite a major difference. By the end of the 6^th century, the Vulgar Latin spoken in the Balkans had become its own, distinct Romance branch.

Communities of Roman descendants who spoke this Eastern Romance language existed all over the khaganate. One notable Romanic community lived on the western edge of Lake Balaton, which is a huge body of water in the western half of the Carpathian Basin. A Roman castellum was once located on the site as part of the province of Pannonia, and when the empire abandoned the fortification, the civilian population living in the nearby settlement stayed put. Over the next two centuries, groups from surrounding regions migrated into the settlement and adopted the culture of the Romanized population which welcomed them. The settlement’s large basilica located within the fort was still in use by its Christian population at the beginning of the 7^th century, and the community’s elite was buried in the basilica’s cemetery. Their graves have glass tumblers, ceramic mugs, stylus needles, and pyramid earrings, all in Roman style, attesting to the continuation of some Mediterranean cultural traditions.

The community at Lake Balaton was unusually prosperous due to its close trading connections with the rest of the Christian world. The settlement lay on a long-distance road between the Baltic and Adriatic Seas, and served as a trading post. Archeologists have found goods from the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms in the settlement’s elite graves, and even disc fibulas with Christian motifs which were common pilgrim mementos from Palestine.

This prosperous community couldn’t have survived without the tacit approval of the khagan. As we saw last episode, it was customary for nomadic peoples to collaborate with agrarian ones, and scholars assume that the khagan granted the Romanic elite of this settlement a degree of political autonomy. These elites were allowed to maintain the social hierarchy they’d established before the arrival of the Avars, and in return, they gave the khagan access to goods from faraway kingdoms which he would otherwise never see.

Indeed, at the turn of the 7^th century, the second generation of Avars born in the Carpathian Basin were coming of age, and their tastes were changing. This younger generation began to abandon the simpler, more functional style of their grandfathers and to adopt more Roman-style jewellery and accessories. For instance, belts made of bone, bronze, and iron were replaced by ones decorated with golden buckles. This change in fashion came about partly due to their battlefield success which brought with it plenty of plunder. But another reason was that Roman styles had been markers of wealth for centuries, and the Avars weren’t immune to their attractions.

And so, the khagan needed the Romanic community at Lake Balaton to have access to luxury goods which he couldn’t get through plunder or subsidies, like sophisticated glass vessels from Roman workshops or silver-inlaid folding chairs from Lombard Italy. Accordingly, he allowed the elite of this community to maintain their power structure, to trade, prosper, and even to arm itself. Indeed, some of these Romanic individuals at Lake Balaton may have fought alongside the khagan; a few elite graves have weapons, and one in particular has a golden belt buckle with the inscription “Antikos,” which possibly means that its owner had fought in an Avar campaign against the Slavic Antes.

The settlement at Lake Balaton is an exceptional case, but there existed numerous other Romanic communities scattered throughout the Carpathian Basin. They’re less visible to historians because they were less prosperous, but we do have a record of them. In one of his works, the Lombard monk Paulus Diaconus lists the peoples which followed the Lombards to Italy when the Avars conquered the Carpathian Basin; besides the Germanic Suebi and Gepids, he notes that there were some Noricans and Pannonians as well. These names refer to the Roman provinces of Noricum and Pannonia, and so, in his work, Paulus is alluding to the Romanic people descended from Norican and Pannonian provincials. And just like some Gepids communities remained behind after the Avar conquest, a part of these Romanic communities must’ve also stayed put.

These historical sources referring to Romanic individuals are confirmed by archeological finds. Graves have been found near late Roman settlements and forts containing goods associated with Mediterranean practices and fashions. Such sites suggest that Romanic communities not only continued to live on lands occupied during the Roman age, but that they also maintained some of their key Roman traditions.

It’s important to note that these Romanic communities weren’t a homogenous group and that they didn’t develop a shared identity under the khaganate. Some were natives of the region who lived in settlements connected to trade routes, like the one at Lake Balaton; others were natives who lived in villages in more remote regions, like in the mountainous valleys of the former province of Dacia; and others were prisoners of war who were brought from the empire.

Indeed, the Avars regularly relocated Roman captives into the khaganate at a safe distance from the frontier. Both the contemporaneous Miracula Sancti Demeterii and historian Theophylactos Simokattis recount how men, women, and children were carried off from their villages into the khaganate.

These prisoners weren’t distributed as spoils of war between Avar warriors, but were instead allowed to live in their own communities so they could work the land and pay tribute like other subject peoples. The amounts demanded could be quite harsh; a source relates how, during one campaign season, an Avar commander told a group of farmers: “Go out, sow and reap, and we will only take half as a gift from you.”

Besides tribute, the Avars could also draw on Roman captives for specialists, like military engineers to build siege engines, blacksmiths to forge weapons, and silver- and goldsmiths to craft luxury accessories.

Many of theses prisoners of war came from the region of Moesia, which was one of the only remaining pockets of Latin speakers in the empire. As such, the Avars regularly brought Romance speakers into their khaganate and inadvertently reinforced the vitality and cohesion of Romanic communities north of the Danube.

These Romanic communities were overwhelmingly organized as farming villages. That was also the case for Slavic and Gepid communities, meaning that most of the people living in the khaganate worked the land as farmers. Next time, I want to delve into these farming communities to understand what they looked like on a practical level, day to day and season to season.

So join me in two weeks as we finish setting up season two by walking through a typical farming village at the beginning of the 7^th century to see what daily life was like for its inhabitants.