February 8th, 2024
This book is broken down into eras and it seems there will be little passages of 6 pages or so about each culture. It’s sort of like an encyclopedia. First, I have to talk about the physical book. It looks cool and feels pretty good and uses colored paper for different eras. But not to sound like a wimp, the pages are sharp as hell. You need to be careful with this one. Anyway, after an introduction to the book begins an introduction to the region, which of course the first is Mesopotamia and its surroundings. The first culture we encounter is the great Akkadian empire. Before Sargon the Great conquered his neighbors around 2330 BC, the functioning governments were city-states. The Sumerian cities of Uruk and Ur were already 1000 years old by Sargon’s time. From the lost city of Akkad, Sargon conquered an empire from the Persian Gulf to the Levant. Akkadian replaced Sumerian as the language of prestige. The peak may have been under his grandson Naran-Sin (maybe known as Nimrod). The fun only lasted a couple hundred years, as people hated being ruled by Akkad. Once climate change stressed the irrigation system, the government collapsed and we seem to return to city-states and nomads for a bit. One thing to note about Akkad is that their government was a government of the priests, not the bureaucrats of what we call typical government. Thus the temple was the center of power.The next culture is the Amorites, a nomadic people who moved into Akkadian territory after their power waned. The Akkadians looked down on Amorites as they did on all nomads, or possibly Amorite was just a derogatory term instead of an actual people. As is often the case with nomads, once they got a taste of city life, they were all in. The Amroites adopted Akkadian customs and language and set up their own little spheres of power. Babylon, an old city already, was conquered and became the seat of an Amorite empire. It is curious that the Amorites apparently came from the northwest and ended up as far southeast as they could get, but I guess it took about 200 years before we enter the Babylonian period. From about 1900 to 1600 BC, they held sway over Mesopotamia, but not the far reaching area of the Akkadians. The most famous of the kings if Hammurabi, who expanded into Assyrian territory and wrote his famous law code. Hammurabi essentially popularized rule by law, as opposed to the priestly system of Akkad. By the end of the period, Babylon had trouble with the new Hittites and I think the Elamites and their territory shrank to nothing.
February 10th, 2024
I read about another three cultures. The Canaanites are certainly not forgotten to anyone who has been in proximity of a Bible. They were famous for being slaughtered by Joseph or Jacob or whoever led the Hebrews after Moses. It seems there is not much data for a violent takeover. In reality, the Iron Age people of the region, Hebrews, Phoenicians, maybe others, descended from a more unified Canaanite Bronze Age culture. Canaan was a cross-roads between the big empires of the Hittites, Assyrians, and Egyptians and they often fought for control of the region. The Battle of Qadesh was a huge battle between the Hittites and the Egyptians under Ramses II. The book ends Canaanite culture around 700BC, when the Assyrians tore it apart, but definitely by then the culture had splintered.
The Elamites seem to have been another nomadic tribe, maybe pastoral people from the Zagros mountains, who stumbled upon some cities in modern Iran and decided to stay. Like the Amorites, they adopted Akkadian language (Elamite appears to be a language isolate), but eventually began to write in Elamite. They grew in power, sacking Babylon and stealing the stele of Hammurabi, but never grew far beyond Susa and Anshan. The stele was not found until 1901. Like most civilizations, trouble with neighbors led to their downfall. There were the Iranian Medes nearby, but ultimately the Assyrians did them in as well. Ashurbanipal led an army and slaughtered and destroyed, enslaved and exiled.
The Hittites I think have become fairly well known. They’re interesting because they are truly a forgotten people, only rediscovered in the 19th century after their language was deciphered as an Indo-European language. Their origins are obscure, but they came to relevance around 1700 BC and took the city of Hattusa as their capital. From their they pretty conquered all of Anatolia and as mentioned above, went toe-to-toe with the great empires of their day, including the Mycenaeans at sea and giving Ramses II a run for his money in Canaan. But their success did not last forever, and after 500 years they fell victim to an expanding Assyria.
February 12th, 2024
I forgot to write about the end of the Bronze Age. The two groups discussed are familiar to those with some Egyptian history under their belts. The Middle Kingdom came to an end and Upper and Lower Egypt split. History long said the Hyksos then conquered the Nile delta and ruled. In reality, it seems they were merely one or multiple immigrants to the region and were not exactly unwelcome. There is no evidence of a conquering and the Hyksos, maybe a Semitic people, brought lots of technology from the Middle East. They had chariots, superior axes (weapons), better irrigation. A couple centuries under Hyksos rule was actually a boon. Yet Egypt only loves Egypt and eventually Upper Egypt took back control of Lower Egypt, sending the Hyksos back to obscurity.
Next are the Sea Peoples, who are mired in controversy. First, this is a name given by modern archaeologists; Egyptian writing names the tribes themselves. Long blamed for the Bronze Age collapse, in reality they are more likely a symptom of the collapse, pushed from their unknown homes into the Levant and Egypt. There is evidence of warfare, but they were not pure raiders. They had women and children with them, which is a sign they wanted a place to live. Whatever it was, the civilizations of the Mediterranean fell, except for Egypt. Egypt, with their new tech, fought of the invaders for many years until the raids just ceased. That’s the last we hear of Sea People.
After the collapse, the trade routes disappeared and the region lost all its tin sources. Egypt still had African tin and kept using bronze. The rest eventually switched to smelting iron. An accident of nature turned iron to steel when charcoal fires infused carbon into the iron. Steel was strong and flexible and thus a great weapon. With the ending of many civilizations in the Middle East, there was room for previously tangential peoples to expand. The first section is on the lost tribes of Israel, which can hardly be a forgotten people. Just read the Bible; that’s where all the info comes from. The books of Kings are actually one of the parts worth reading.
The next group are the Arameans, which I never really thought about. If there is an Aramaic language, then of course there should be Aramean people. They were pastoral people on the sidelines who swept into the empty fields and lands. They were not exactly conquerors and seem to go with the flow wherever they ended up. They formed small kingdoms and did the usual fighting with their neighbors. They were a thorn in the side of Assyria because they blocked trade routes to Babylon. Fighting them went nowhere, since the Arameans still had the pastoral culture where they could easily pick up and move. Eventually, the Assyrians gave up and “absorbed” the Arameans, making Aramaic an official language of the empire. This replaced Akkadian and stayed an important language (it had an alphabet), even in the time of Jesus. So it worked out for them and they are still around, with a small population of Aramaic speaking people in the Middle East today.
February 13th, 2024
Continuing the Iron Age peoples is the Philistines. Goliath and some of his ilk are well known over the world thanks to the Old Testament, but the real Philistines are more unknown. There are theories that they were one of the Sea Peoples based on an Egyptian text, some think they are from Crete. Possibly they were Neo-Hittites. Regardless, they made their appearance in the Levant after the collapse and became a thorn in the side of Israel. The had 5 main cities, not always friends, and the word Palestine probably comes from their name. They left extremely little writing, thus little is known outside of archaeology. The Assyrians mention them a bit, and of course they would become a vassal of Assyria. Either they were absorbed or, in Assyrian fashion, scattered and the Philistines are lost to time.
I’ll have to look into this next one more. Greece always confuses me. The Dorians are apparently a Greek branch from the southern Peloponnese and Crete, and their name has word “spear” in it. Long thought to have invaded during the Greek Dark Age, it’s more likely it was not so violent. I don’t know a Dorian from an Ionian, but they’re all Greek and by Alexander’s time they were a fairly unified Greek culture. They have some columns, too.
I’ve heard of the Phrygians, or maybe of Phrygia, but don’t know who they were. Famous for King Midas and the Goridan Knot of Gordium, they were a people in Anatolia who spread into the Hittite void and ultimately formed a kingdom for a bit. Their culture long outlasted their kingdom, as the language was known to have been spoken until the 6th century AD. The Phrygian kingdom eventually fell into smaller warring kingdoms, which made them prey for Lydians. Then a series of conquerors came: Persia, Macedonia, Rome, Turk. As a power, Phrygia ended in 600BC, but as a region and people, they had a good 1500 year run.
I’ve heard of Illyria a thousand times, but I do not know who an Illyrian is. On the west coast of the Balkans, these different tribes (grouped as one by the Greeks and the rest of history) lived since before history began. Probably Indo-European, their language is unknown outside of some names and places. The Greeks hated them and the Illyrians were famous for raiding and pirating. The Liburni were famous for their raiding and had a special boat for it, which the Romans later adopted for upriver warfare. The Dalmatae seemed to be pastoral and low on the cultural ladder. Eventually someone organized these groups into a kingdom, which would occasionally ally with Macedonia to plunder Greece. This mountainous region took until the age of Tiberius for Rome to conquer, and lived on as Illyricum. Many later empowers came from these region, showing how the backwards mountain region became fully Latinized. After the fall of Rome, the Illyrian Justinian was emperor of the East. Just as they were once barbarian, soon after they were invaded by the barbarian Slavs who have been in the region since.
February 14th, 2024
The Lydians have a name that is familiar and yet I don’t know anything about them. I thought they were Greeks, but they are an Anatolian people with a unique language. They’re another one of those groups that filled the void after the fall of the Hittite Empire. They had good flat farmland and were wealthy. Midas’ legendary river of gold flowed into Lydian lands, and the Lydians were the first to make gold coins. Not coins as we know it, but stamped pieces of electrum. As mentioned earlier, they expanded in Asia Minor, taking over the Phrygian kingdoms. I don’t think it was very long after that before the Medes/Persians (who are different people) swept in and took control.
The Sicels, as the name may suggest, are known as inhabitants of Sicily. Legend has it they originally came from Italy and their first king was Italus. It’s possibly they were the Shekelesh, a Sea People noted by Egyptian text. Either way, they moved into occupied Sicily and shoved the natives to slightly worse land. There was a lot of open space, it seems, for there was little violence. There they existed as a pastoral folk on the center of the island until the arrival of the Greeks. The Greeks founded a trading post that became Syracuse, and from this base weaseled their way onto the island. The Sicels benefited from trade with the Greeks. There were some Phoenicians from Carthage on the island, but their relationship is little known. Around 450BC, the Sicels formed a type of kingdom and became more urban. After this development, relations with the Greeks soured. A Sicel leader Ducetius led an uprising to drive the Greeks from Syracuse, but it failed. The Greeks sent him to Corinth with a stipend as exile, but 10 years later he returned. Though he died shortly after, the Greeks were fed up and took over the entire island. The Sicels were absorbed into Greek culture entirely.
February 18th, 2024
I finished the second section of cultures. The next up was the Medes (MEEDS) who are different from Persians but pretty much were Persians. They were an Iron Age people from west of the Tigris who, like many others of this era, came under Assyrian control. Like others, they rebelled regularly and were part of the rebellion that destroyed Nineveh and thus Assyria in 600 something BC. After that the Medes had it good, but we don’t know much because we don’t have any written records. Their close neighbor and cultural cousin, the Persians, gained in strength and importance and there was intermarriage. The king of the Medes had his daughter marry the king of Persia (Cambyses II?), who had a son Cyrus. This Cyrus the Great rebelled against the Medes and installed himself as the dominant king. The Medes and Persians melded together then.
It is still not known how much the Kushites influence the Egyptians, but it is probably more than they are given credit for. This people from the south of Nubia, around modern Sudan, had had kingdoms since 3000BC. It was possibly their strength and aggression that led the two Egypts to unite. They stayed independent of Egypt their entire run and after the New Kingdom, when the Sea Peoples had exhausted Egyptian cash, came to dominate Egypt as a new dynasty (25th maybe). They spread themselves too thin by going into the Levant, and the Persians rolled over them, taking Egypt in the process. The Kushites abandoned their old capital and moved to the 2nd city of Meroe, where they may have overtaxed the environment. Eventually, the Axumites of Ethiopia destroyed the city and dominated the region.
The Chaldeans, as it sounds, come from the Persian Gulf area around the city of Ur. Obviously there are another Iron Age newcomer to very old lands. They also had problems with Assyrians, but once that empire was weakened the Chaldeans became dominate. They conquered the city of Babylon and became absorbed into that ancient culture, hence the name Neo-Babylonian Empire. This is the famous empire that took the Jews to Babylon, had the caste of Magi, and the famed Nebuchadnezzar, though I don’t remember why he’s famous or if I only think he is because of The Matrix. Like the Assyrians, they Chaldeans annoyed their vassals and were in turn crushed by the expanding Persians.
I’ve heard of the Bactrians, but I knew nothing about them before reading this. By the time of Alexander the Great, the city of Bactra was already ancient. To secure the borders of his new empire, Alexander kept on conquering. This brought him to the Bactrians of modern-day Afghanistan. The cultures were not very compatible. The Bactrians worshipped fire and earth and were disgusted by the Greek cremation and burying of dead. Insurrection was inevitable, and Alexander married a local princess Roxanne to cement an uneasy alliance. He, and his “heirs”, forced a number of Greeks to stay in the region as colonists. Eventually the Bactrians separated from the Seleucids and formed their own kingdom. With Greek and Indian influence, it was a unique culture. Buddhism grew in the area, and here is where the famed giant Buddhas were that the Taliban destroyed. I forget how it fell. Maybe to Islam.
March 2nd, 2024
The next section is mostly about the peoples encountered by the rising Romans. The first up are the Thracians, named after Thrax, son of Ares. Thrace was roughly the south-eastern two-thirds of Bulgaria. This region was rich in gold and jewels, but had little interest in urban life. They were horsemen, fighters, and a pain for the Greeks. Homer says they fought in the Trojan War on the side of Troy. They must have had some taste for aesthetics if they were working gold. They lived as independent tribes in Thrace for centuries until the coming of Persia. Then either Phillip II or Alexander the Great brought them under the Greek fold with their war on Persia. It wasn’t long after that that the Romans came and took over, absorbing Thrace into the empire. Even an emperor or two would come from this region. The Slavs would take over in the 6th century and Thracia would be no more.
The Epirots come from Epirus, the mountainous region of northwest Greece and southern Albania by the sea. This land was not good for farming, so the people had to be herdsmen and hardy mountain men. Without any urban development, the southern Greeks viewed them as barbarians. They did have the Oracle of Zeus, so there was a good reason for people to visit. Their pre-Roman claim to fame is that the mother of Alexander the Great, the princess Olympias, was an Epirot. Somewhere, maybe through this link, they became part of Alexander’s and then the Seleucid Empire. Their less enjoyable claim to fame is from their war with Rome. King Pyhrrus had won several victories against the Roman invaders, but at huge costs which may as well as been defeats. This is where Phyrric victories come from. I guess after Greek became Roman, the Epirots ceased to be a separate entity and were absorbed as Romans.
The Sabines are as Roman as Rome. The likely story is that the Sabines were the original inhabitants of the hills and the Latins sent colonists to build the fortified town of Rome. The Sabines must have been their since the beginning, since the 2nd king of Rome after the mythical Romulous was Numa, a Sabine. He is credited with a lot of good stuff. The cognomen Sabinus was also very prominent. Rome is nothing without the Sabines, espeically after “The Rape of the Sabines”, where the first colonists abducted Sabine women to wed under the guise of a festival. This is apparently where carrying the bride across the alter comes from. Sabine and Latin melded into Roman after that.
March 3rd, 2024
Possibly no group is more famous than the Samaritans, all because of one good one Jesus told about. Samaritans come from Samaria, or the northern Jewish kingdom that was conquered by Assyria. According to the Old Testament, the Jews here were exiled elsewhere and are the Lost Tribes. According to Samaritans, that’s false and they were there forever. It’s probably a mix of old Jews and people who filled the void. Samaritans are Jews but do things a little different, which led to a strong dislike of each other throughout history. This dislike makes the Good Samaritan all the better, since he overcame his natural prejudice to help the injured Jew. For example, when the Maccabees rebelled against the Greeks, the Samaritans wrote a letter to explain their own neutrality in the matter. They also did fine under the Romans. The Christian Byzantines were less tolerant and slaughtered them after a Samaritan rebellion. Today, there are still some 700 left and still following their old religion.
There are two African peoples who share a chapter and, to be honest, I don’t remember much about them. The Garamantes were a Saharan people before it got super arid. I think they acted as a link between the sub-Saharan people and the Mediterranean people, trading gold and Ivory and whatnot from the heartland. Climate change did them in and their cities are now deep in the desert. They may have also been involved in the Punic wars, but that might be the next group. The Numidians come from what is essentially now Algeria and were a bunch of Berber tribes. Now these guys definitely traded with Carthage, since that pretty much forced them to unify, or at least make the multiplicity less. Different groups took different sides in the Punic wars, so the ones that joined Rome came out on top and became kings. They did fine for a bit but eventually became a Roman province. A rebellion was crushed and then the province was erased, merging into Maurentania and Africa.
The Sarmations (not to be confused with Samaritans) seem pretty cool. They were a steppe people beyond the Scythians, from around Crimea to who knows how far west. The Greeks said their women fought, which may have led to the legend of the Amazons. The Sarmations were good horsemen and charged with spears, like knights. The Romans were unable to conquer the Sarmations and peace treaty was agreed to, with a dedicated no man’s land between them. The proximity to Rome civilized the Sarmations and they formed a kingdom. Some were employed by Rome as mercenaries, and they were known to be in Britain (and were left there). By the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the waves of Germanic took a toll on the Sarmations. The Huns did them in and the Sarmation people were dispersed, blending into whatever culture they ended up in. Slavs took their former territory.
March 4th, 2024
Up next are the Nabataeans, who I absolutely never heard of. What I have heard of was the city of Petra, which was their desert stronghold. I thought Petra was really old, but the Nabataeans don’t really enter the scene under after 500BC. They were very good at farming and intensely irrigate the little arable land. With population growth, they expanded and controlled the vital oases, and thus the trade routes to the east. This made them a wealthy people, and a target for the Seleucids. Fortunately, the Nabataeans were also fierce fighters and fought on camel-back, repelling the Greeks. They did adopt much of Greek culture, which explains the columns and look of Petra. They also fought of the Romans, but eventually it became too much and the King agreed to let the kingdom become a Roman province after his death. The spread of other Arabs and Islam wiped out their identity around 600AD.
The tribes that Rome encountered always confuse me. There’s so many and none of their names really stick in your head. In the Iberian peninsula, the tribe that one should remember is the Celtiberians. Romans though they were Celts, but no one knows if there was really any connection. The tribes of Iberia fought with short stabbing swords to brutal effect, and the Romans quickly adopted it as a weapon for their own. They lived in the center of Spain between the different mountain ranges. Carthage tried to conquer the peninsula and completely ignored the Celtiberians, finding them too hard to fight. Once Carthage was destroyed, the Romans felt Hispania was theirs automatically. They too struggled against the Celtiberians. The war lasted for a long time, possibly a couple centuries. I believe it was in 144BC that a Roman general was able to hole the tribe in the fort city and besiege them. Those that didn’t starve to death chose suicide, and thus ended the Celtiberians.
March 7th, 2024
The Galatians are known to many from the epistle from Paul in the Bible. A big surprise to many is that Galatians are indeed Gauls, the same culture known from France. The Gauls held sway over continental Europe before Rome, though of course the Gauls were many different tribes that often fought each other. Some Gauls wanted to go raid the Greeks in the 3rd century BC or so, while some tagged along looking for somewhere to settle. The raid failed, but the settlers made it to Macedonia and were driven off further east. An Anatolian king wanted some mercenaries, so he invited them in. They were hired and fired, used and abused, moved here and there. Eventually they settled somewhere in the middle and farmed the mediocre land pretty well. They got tough and did the usual Celtic raiding of neighbors. They took part in all sides in various power struggles of Greek Anatolia. They also fought with and for the Romans in various wars and the civil war. Eventually they would be subjugated and Galatia would become a Roman province. Their language and culture would be lost a century or two later.
Representing the core Gauls are the Arverni. This is one of several tribes from modern France. They and the Aedui were the top two tribes when the Roman Republic came to notice them. Rome wanted the southern coast open so it could get to Spain easily. Various alliances wound up with Rome and Aedui vs Arverni and other Celts. The Arverni were decimated, Rome won and the Aedui were the top dogs. Several generations later, some Celts allied with some Germans for a fight, and then the Germans deceided they didn’t want to back. Then the Romans were invited to drive out the Germans, and then THEY didn’t want to go back. This is the war that Cesar fought. Now the Arverni, under a nobleman Vercingetorix, formed a Celtic coalition to drive the Romans out. It was tough fighting with wins and losses on both sides. Eventually, Rome triumphed, Vercingetorix was a prisoner in Rome for years until his execution. Like the rest of Rome’s conquerees, they melded into the Latin world.
Now we enter Celtic Britain with the Catuvellauni. I never heard of any of these British tribes; they were just “Britons” to me. It looks like these guys were from around East Anglia and became dominant, expanding into Kent. Cesar may have met this tribe on his expedition. They put up a hell of a fight, and the Romans were not interested in fighting so hard for the little that Britain offered them. It was a century or two later, under Claudius I think, that the Romans launched a full invasion. By then, the tribe was led by Caratacus. He led a guerrilla-style war against Rome for years, but eventually defeat caught up to him. He fled to a neighboring tribe, but was handed over to Rome. Before his execution, he gave an impassioned speech to Claudius defending his right to the war and was spared, living out his days in Rome. The last we hear of the Catuvellauni is that they were among the soldiers helping to build Hadrian’s wall, fully Romanized and keeping out the wild Celts.
March 10th, 2024
The Iceni are more famous to me, though I didn’t know their name. They are known for the queen Boudicca, who led a rebellion against the Romans. The Iceni lived in what was later East Anglia (the Catuvellauni were more Middle Saxon region). They were initially warm to the Romans to spite their neighbors and were happy to share a border with the Romans. The Romans, however, wanted complete subjugation. The Iceni fought back and lost, with a puppet king installed. At the death of this king, he left the kingdom to his daughters and Nero. The emperor demanded the everything and Queen Boudicca was flogged and her daughters raped. All this was done while most of the legions were in Wales. Word of this spread quickly and all hell broke loose. The Britons rose up and started slaughtering Romans in their cities. The Roman general had a choice of taking strong ground or saving London. He chose the ground. London was destroyed, but when the Britons came for the legions, they were between two hills and the Britons were slaughtered. The general then went to genocide the Iceni before being recalled. There were possibly only a handful of Iceni left a few decades later.
The name of the Batavi are known to people who have studied the French Revolution. The Dutch were subjugated under the Batavian Republic. The real Batavi were a Germanic tribe living on an island between the Rhine and Waal rivers in the present-day Netherlands. It is thought they took this island sometime in the early 1st century AD, since Cesar made no note of them. They had a reputation as extremely fierce fighters and were excellent as fighting across a river. The Romans wanted them as allies, for sure. There were many Batavian legions, because the Romans did not tax them with money but with soldiers. Batavians were all over the empire, but like the Iceni, the Romans made an error. A leading Batavain, Gaius Julious Civilis, was accused of treason by Nero and brought to Rome. Long story short, it was the year of four emperors and very unstable. The Batavi were not happy with their treatment and rebelled, bringing some Germans and Gauls to their side. Eventually the emperor Vespasian restored order and pardoned the Batavi. With the fall of Rome and arrival of other Germanic tribes, the Batavi are lost to history.
The Dacians are pretty much Thracians beyond the Danube. They also have the Carpathian mountains as extra protection. Romania can trace its history to the Romanization of Dacia. Like Thracians, they weren’t a people to mess with. Also like the Thracians, they were not a unified tribe and fought each other regularly. Once the Romans were in Thracia, the Dacians put up a united defense. There were a few instances of them being under a single leader. They raided far into Roman territory. Eventually the Romans got the upper hand and crossed the river. They forced a peace treaty on the Dacians. Years later the Dacians fought again and Trajan brought the region under the empires control. It lasted about 150 years. As the Germanic tribes started moving in, the empire did not have the resources to defend it. The Dacians blended in with whatever Goth or Vandal tribe came to stay.
March 13th, 2024
We’re in the last section, the fall of Rome. I think I like the Germanic later barbarians to the Celtic earlier ones, but that may be just due to ignorance. They have better names, at least. I’m not sure if I’ve ever really heard of the Alans. Their name is possibly a corruption of Aryan, and they were a steppe people. They were better horsemen than the Sarmations and took some of their land on the Black Sea. Like most nomads, the men hated farming and only cared for war. That was well and good until the Huns became the supreme steppe people. The Alans broke loose and went in all different directions. Some went to the Caucus, others took a long journey west into Spain. There they allied with Vandals and merged into that group. Some were found in Brittany for some time, and may be the the etymological root for Alain, thus Alan also. The ones in Russia and the Caucus had a kingdom that lasted into medieval times. The Alans still have a bit of identifying the independence seeking Ossetians. We are team Ossetian here.
Now we’ve all definitely heard of the Vandals. I even learned the etymology of vandal in elementary school. But other than a name, I guess they really are forgotten. The only place I heard of them in-depth was in Gibbon’s (abridged) Fall and Decline of Rome. They may have been Swedish in origin, but emerged out of Poland around 200AD. They charged into Dacia and whatnot but came to terms with the Romans. The real problem came when the Huns were on the move. The Vandals were desperate to move west, but were stopped at the Rhine by the Franks. After a slaughter, the Vandals came back with friends (Goths). This time they made it through, and were harried into Spain. Here Vandals and Alans formed an alliance, but were again harried by Romans and Visigoths. They fought back and took some Spanish port and its navy. Now in the later decades of Rome, the Vandals sailed to Africa to take the land there, eventually becoming kings of Carthage. Rome lost its breadbasket and tried to marry a princess to the king of the Vandals. The emperor died and the successor reneged, so the Vandals sacked Rome. The pope asked them to play nice, and being Arians, they did. Eventually the Romans took Carthage back and the Vandals lost their kingdom, though the Muslims would sound conquer it all.
What is there to say about the Visigoths? I can’t consider a Gothic tribe to be forgotten, though they are good to read about. The Goths were also possibly Scandinavian and had pushed their way into Dacia also. They fought with Romans until a settlement was agreed to, but the Huns pushed them across the Danube as refugees. The Goths were allowed to settle in return for service, but the Romans did not deliver the promised food and seed. These abuses led to a revolt and the Goths crushed the Roman army and killed emperor Valens at Adrianople in 376. Then they got the land and seed that was agreed to, but now Rome really needed men. The settled Goths became known as Visigoths (western Goths). The Visigoths became the army and for 20 years or so things were good. Then a new emperor killed a half-Goth general Stilicho and purged some Goths. The Goths rebelled and under their king Alaric sacked Rome, the first sacking in 800 years. The Visigoths went off to Spain to form a kingdom, which was lost to the Muslims around 800.
March 16th, 2024
The Ostrogoths are a pretty likable tribe. Instead of crossing the Danube into the Empire like the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths stayed in the east and surrendered to the Huns. This was a better deal than mistreatment by the Romans, as the Huns mostly left them alone (assuming tribute was paid) and continued west. Once Attila died, the Ostrogoths and other tribes banded together to throw off the yoke. This tribe came to shine (really the only time they shined) under Theodoric. He grew up as a hostage in the court at Constantinople and learned much about the ways of the Empire. Once king of the Ostrogoths, he was recruited by emperor Zeno to march on Rome, which was held by the barbarian Odoacer. Theodoric played a deceitful move by inviting Odoacer to a banquet at Ravenna and then killing him. Theodoric essentially became king of the West, a subject to Zeno, and this relationship worked. Theodoric was able to outmaneuver the other barbarian tribes, forged marriage alliances, and essentially reassembled the western empire. This didn’t survive the deaths of Theodoric and Zeno. Theodoric’s successors were not so able and Zeno’s successor tried to invade Rome for his direct control. This lasted many years and the Ostrogoths were weakened while Rome’s population dwindled. The Lombards took northern Italy and Ravenna, while the Byzantines kept southern Italy. There was nothing left for the Ostrogoths. But we do enjoy their name in Gothic architecture, though there is really no correlation.
The Alamanni or Alemanni are a Germanic tribe that stem from the Suebi, but the name “all men” they were a conglomeration of Germanic tribes. They were very Romanized and peaceful subjects of the Empire. The emperor Carcalla, however, decided to stage a massacre of them in the early 3rd century. After that, they were a peaceful tribe no more. They fought the Romans every chance they could and were a fierce enemy. The Alamanni even joined the Huns during their attack on Rome. At the end of the 5th century, towards the end of Roman rule, the Alamanni were not so formidable. They became a subject of the Franks. To this day, the French call Germany “Allemagne” after the tribe, and their dialect still lingers in parts of Germany such as Swabia. Not such a bad ending.
March 17th, 2024
The book finishes with two more peoples. I’ve read so much English history that I find it hard to consider the Jutes forgotten. I remember learning the name at least in elementary school. Maybe the Frisians would have been a better forgotten tribe. The Jutes, from Jutland, were one of the main Germanic tribes to come to the British Island. They ended up establishing the kingdom of Kent, the legendary Hengist was founder. Aethelbehrt, a few generations later, was the first Christian king. The Jutes were probably the most Romanized and literate. Dynastic struggles allowed the Saxons to become supreme and make Kent a vassal. Of course, any differences in the Germanic tribes that may have existed vanished as a single English people rose up.
The Hephthalites, or White Huns, are completely new to me. They have mysterious origins and may not be Huns at all. More likely it seems they were Bactrians, but who knows. What is known is, like Huns, they could fight. They were organized and not very nomadic. They gave the Sasanian Persians a run for their money, which gave the Byzantines a reprieve from fighting their border enemy. The Persians then learned to use the Hun for their own ends and had them fight in dynastic struggles and against the Gupta Indians. However, the Persian king then made it a goal to massacre the Huns while they were in India. This was a mistake, and he lost 3 separate times before being killed. The Huns controlled what they took and had a large swath of Central Asia and India. They were not pleasant overlords and were repelled as soon as the Turks came into the picture. Their empire shrank quickly and it did not last more than a century. Good riddance, it seems.
An epilogue ends the book, reminding us how all cultures have a time and place before disappearing, including our own.