Naissus - 268/69 AD

[Chris]

Hi,

Stumbled across a reference to this historical battle. Half an hour on the Internet did not turn up anything  really useful (maps, orders of battle, definitive ancient account), etc.

Any suggestions on where I might find more concrete information than "the Romans won"?

Thanks in advance.

Chris

[Duncan Head]

This falls in an awkward period where we don't have many detailed sources: the Wikipedia article on the battle lists the main ones. Some of the discussion and links in http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=1580.0 on Thermopylae 267 AD may be useful, but I don't think it will point you at a definitive account - I suspect there isn't one.

Zosimus - http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0490-0510,_Zosimus,_Historia_Nova_(Green_and_Chaplin_AD_1814),_EN.pdf - says:

they [the "Scythians"] laid siege to Cassandria and Thessalonica, which they were near taking by means of machines which they raised against the walls. But hearing that the emperor was advancing with an army, they went into the interior, plundering all the neighbourhood of Doberus and Pelagonia. There they sustained a loss of three thousand men, who were met with by the Dalmatian cavalry, and with the rest of their force engaged the army of the emperor. Great numbers were slain in this battle on both sides, but the Romans, by a pretended flight, drew the Barbarians into an ambuscade and killed more than fifty thousand of them.
...
... the Barbarians, who survived the battle of Naissus between Claudius and the Scythians, defending themselves with their carriages which went before them, marched towards Macedon, but were so distressed by the want of necessaries, that many of them and of their beasts perished with hunger. They were met likewise by the Roman cavalry, who having killed many of them, drove the rest towards Mount Haemus; where being surrounded by the Roman army, they lost a vast number of men. But a quarrel ensuing between the Roman horse and foot soldiers, the emperor wishing the foot to engage the Barbarians, the Romans, after a smart engagement, were defeated with considerable loss, but the cavalry, coming up immediately, redeemed in some degree the miscarriage of the infantry. After this battle, the Barbarians proceeded on their march, and were pursued by the Romans.

The mentions of Naissus in the second paragraph identifies the unnamed battle of the first paragraph. So you have Dalmatian cavalry and a feigned flight - you probably won't get much more than that.

[Chris]

Thanks very much!

I saw an old  post on the Armati forum by Stephen P. He mentions an old issue of Strategos which contains the scenario.

I will keep looking as it  strikes me as an interesting project.

Odd that part of my message had a line through it 

Thanks again.

Chris

[Dangun]

If you'd like the 1982 translation of this passage from Zosimos, I can dig it out after I get back to HK.

If memory serves... there is some discussion in the academic journals as to whether or not some sources have confused Naissus with Nessos.

[Dangun]

If you'd like the 1982 translation of this passage from Zosimos, I can dig it out after I get back to HK.

If memory serves... there is some discussion in the academic journals as to whether or not some sources have confused Naissus with Nessos.

But sadly, as Duncan said, there is no definitive account of many of the battles of this period.
The author we'd all like to have for this period is Dexippus, who has only survived in a handful of fragments and as a source for later historians.

As a result of that earlier discussion, I had a lot of fun reading the historians for this period in parallel, and it may, if I am lucky, appear in an upcoming Slingshot. Although it doesn't go up to the date of Naissus.

[Dangun]

Here is the 1982 translation by Ridley:

1.43.1 The barbarians moved slowly on from the straits of Propontis and sailed for Cyzicus, where they were repulsed. Sailing through the Hellespont, they were swept along as far as Mt. Athos, where they repaired their ships. They then besieged Cassandra and Thessalonica, and by bringing machinery up against their walls had almost captured them when news came of the emperor's approach. Thereupon they marched inland and laid waste the whole country around Doberus and Pelagonia.
1.43.2 Here they lost three thousand men when they encountered the Dalmatian cavalry, but with those that were left they engaged the emperor's army. In the battle, although many fell on both sides and the Romans were defeated, they were still able to ambush the barbarians on lonely roads and kill fifty thousand of them. The remainder of the Scythians sailed about Thessaly and Greece, ravaging these districts, and although they were not able to attack the cities, which forestalled them by attending to their walls and other safeguards, they carried off everyone they found in the country outside the cities.
1.44.1 The Scythians were thus dispersed and lost most of their men...
[stuff about Zenobia]
1.45.1 ...The Scythians who had survived the battle at Naissus with Claudius came into Macedonia  driving-their carts before them for protection: lacking provisions and  oppressed by hunger, both they and their animals were perishing. The Roman cavalry also encountered them on the road, killing many and turning the rest to Mt. Haemus,
1.45.2 where they were surrounded by the Roman army and lost many men. When, however there was disagreement between the cavalry and infantry over which should engage the barbarians and the emperor decided that the latter should, the Romans were defeated in a fierce battle; although many were slain, the appearance of the horse to assist them lessened the defeat they suffered.

The translator was of the opinion that Zosimus has misplaced the event an ascribed the victory to Claudius rather than Gallienus.

[Chris]

Thanks to all for input. Curious that the opposing forces are called Scythians. The initial reference and consequently, germ of an idea, stemmed from a brief mention in the notes section of the Early Visigoth or Thervingi list of  Extra Impetvs 2.

Lacking concrete historical source material, I do suppose there's room for scenario development.

[Patrick Waterson]

Curious that Ridley has:

"In the battle, although many fell on both sides and the Romans were defeated, they were still able to ambush the barbarians on lonely roads and kill fifty thousand of them."

while the earlier (Green and Chaplin) translation avers:

"Great numbers were slain in this battle on both sides, but the Romans, by a pretended flight, drew the Barbarians into an ambuscade
and killed more than fifty thousand of them."

Someone is evidently stretching the Greek text. I got this far tracking it down only to find it has a lacuna.

Es a de triskhilious apobalontes eis ten ton Dalmaton hippon empeptokotes, tois leipomenois pros ten ousan hama to basilei dingonizonto dunamin.  Maches de genomenes ex ekateron te merous pesonton [lacuna] etreponto men hoi Romaioi, dia de atripton autois odon aprosdoketois epipesontes pente ton barbaron muriadas diephterian.

In essence, Zosimus and the translators have three thousand barbarians picked off by the Dalmatae, probably as a result of harassment and skirmishing, and the remainder then fight a pitched battle against the (unnamed) emperor.  What there is after the lacuna gives the barbarians a clear loss of 50,000 men but is unclear about how it happened, the key phrase being 'etreponto men hoi Romaioi'.

Etreponto is the 3rd person plural (indicative medio-passive) of trepo, which (in the medio-passive) means to turn oneself or one's steps in a certain direction and overall has the general sense of altering or changing.  I would read this as the lacuna having described a hard struggle but where the text picks up again the Romans turned around the course of the battle and slew 50,000 of their opponents.

Green and Chaplin evidently interpreted 'etreponto' as a feigned flight or calculated retirement, while Ridley (erroneously) considers it a defeat, having evidently plucked that meaning from lower down in the list of possible meanings but without regard to context.

Curious that the opposing forces are called Scythians.

One gets the impression that barbarians west of Pannonia were collectively considered 'Germans' while those east of it were considered 'Scythians'.  I am not sure how much of this division was geographic and how much was cultural.

[Dangun]

One gets the impression that barbarians west of Pannonia were collectively considered 'Germans' while those east of it were considered 'Scythians'.  I am not sure how much of this division was geographic and how much was cultural.

I found it very difficult to determine when the sources of this period were using the words Scythians, barbarians, goths etc. as synonyms and when they were being used precisely as differentiators. Its tough because the different sources are neither consistent nor individually internally consistent.

[Paul Innes]

I think the issue with terminology is compounded by all sorts of cultural, historical and what we would call ethnographic considerations. For example, Anna Comnena often calls the Normans Keltoi simply because in Greek historiography, people from those lands were usually called Kelts, even though the historical reality is a little bit different by her time. Perhaps some of the same tendency is evident in Zosimus et al. In other words, the Heruls, Ostrogoths and so on are lumped into a 'Skythian' category because they come from or through an area that was originally known to the Greeks as Skythia - even though the peoples known as the Skythians are no longer evident. I suppose it's a bit like Greek writers calling the Romans 'Barbarians' - because, technically, they are...

I like that!

Paul

[aligern]

Such terms do have utility for the writers if the time. You can just call peopke Goths because they are Eastern Getmans, but the groups that are acting might well ve a mix of Goths, Heruls, Rugi, Gepids etc. They might call themselves by a sub Gothic name such as Tervingi and they might include non Germans such as Carpi (Dacians) and Alans and Sarmatians ( Iranians) . So calling them Scythians because they come from North of the Danube and the Black Sea  may well be the best catch all  term.
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

Concur: this looks like the way Zosimus' mind worked, at any rate.

One might note in this connection that it took the Romans at least a century to stop calling the Sassanids 'Parthians'!

[Dangun]

Such terms do have utility for the writers if the time. You can just call peopke Goths because they are Eastern Getmans, but the groups that are acting might well ve a mix of Goths, Heruls, Rugi, Gepids etc. They might call themselves by a sub Gothic name such as Tervingi and they might include non Germans such as Carpi (Dacians) and Alans and Sarmatians ( Iranians) . So calling them Scythians because they come from North of the Danube and the Black Sea  may well be the best catch all  term.
Roy

I think the authors - in these cases writing many centuries after the events - really didn't have much of a clue as to who they were talking about. And to be fair, there were no Heruli or Scythians running around in Syncellus day to point at, making it very easy for the authors to misunderstand their own sources.

For example, in the case of the Scythian invasion of 267CE, Syncellus uses the term Heruli, Zosimus uses the term Scythians, and the Historia Augusta uses the term Scythians and Goths. They can't all be right.

They aren't even internally consistent. The Historia Augusta in 6.2 says, "The Scythians, they are a portion of the Goths," but then later in 13.6 and 13.7 switches between Goth and Scythian as though they were synonyms.

[Patrick Waterson]

I think the authors - in these cases writing many centuries after the events - really didn't have much of a clue as to who they were talking about. And to be fair, there were no Heruli or Scythians running around in Syncellus day to point at, making it very easy for the authors to misunderstand their own sources.

'Misunderstand' may be the wrong word.  They would have a cultural continuity with period tradition which we lack, much as a 20th century Brit had a feel for the Elizabethan period even if his grasp of which Hapsburg branch subsequently controlled which territories may have been a bit hazy.  My point is that there was a basis of remembered lore and popular culture these people inherited, and which is largely lost to us.  It would have given them some orientation, although, that said, I do not underrate the capacity of a Christian monastic writer to blur details.

'Heruli' might even have been an honorific, 'the highborn' or 'the earls', which was taken to be an ethnic label.  Egyptians similarly referred to Assyrians as 'Fenkhu' ('the lords' or 'the princes'), and we can find the same category in the northern part of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, listed as 'pankhu'.  These were the nobility of the region and their ethnicity seems to have been wider than simply Assyrian.  'Fenkhu' was the common cultural element perceived by outsiders, and rightly or wrongly was more meaningful to them than identification along the criteria of discrete ethnic groups or city-states.

For example, in the case of the Scythian invasion of 267CE, Syncellus uses the term Heruli, Zosimus uses the term Scythians, and the Historia Augusta uses the term Scythians and Goths. They can't all be right.

If the Heruli were au fond the upper layer of a Gothic culture as opposed to a completely separate tribe and Scythia was then occupied by a mix of Goths and traditional Scyths who more or less got along then one can see the thinking behind the terminology.

They aren't even internally consistent. The Historia Augusta in 6.2 says, "The Scythians, they are a portion of the Goths," but then later in 13.6 and 13.7 switches between Goth and Scythian as though they were synonyms.

As surmised above, the Scythians probably were incorporated with the Goths.  There is of course the additional possibility of synedoche in the synonyms.

While our sources of the period are not of the best, perhaps we need not be quite so harsh on them.

[Dangun]

While our sources of the period are not of the best, perhaps we need not be quite so harsh on them.

I definitely err towards being too hard on our source authors...    I just never want to exaggerate what is knowable.

'Misunderstand' may be the wrong word.  They would have a cultural continuity with period tradition which we lack, much as a 20th century Brit had a feel for the Elizabethan period even if his grasp of which Hapsburg branch subsequently controlled which territories may have been a bit hazy. My point is that there was a basis of remembered lore and popular culture these people inherited, and which is largely lost to us.

The point about cultural memory being different at different points and places in history is well taken, and it is often difficult to determine whether an error is a copyists or the original compiler.

But to pick on poor George Syncellus again... as much as he did well to distinguish himself from 90% of his peers by the simple fact of his literacy, many people on this forum will have read more books over their summer holiday than George did in his lifetime (possibly a small exaggeration). We will be more familiar with Elizabethan England because we are significantly better educated/read than poor George.

Growing up in Palestine, I doubt George would have had ever heard the word Heruli until he copied it out of his source (Dexipppus?).

But on balance, thank an appropriate deity he did, because he is a rare source in a sparsely sourced period.