Marcomanni
The Marcomanni are classified among those Germanics known as Suebi. In the course of their history, they lived in present-day Germany, Czech Republic, and Austria. Along with other Germanic tribes, they battled the Romans in what is referred to as the Marcomannic or Marcomannian Wars in the second century c.e.
ORIGINS
The Marcomanni are thought to have settled along the Main River, a tributary of the Rhine, in present-day south-central Germany by the first century b.c.e. In 8 to 6 b.c.e., they settled along the upper Elbe and Moldau Rivers in the region of Bohemia in present-day czech Republic. The Quadi, Marcomanni allies, settled to the west in the region of Moravia. The Marcomanni eventually held territory in present-day northern Austria as far south as the Danube.
LANGUAGE
The Marcomanni spoke a Germanic language. Little is known about the different Germanic dialects until about the fourth century c.e., by which time the Marcomanni had largely disappeared as a distinct group.
HISTORY
An early mention of the Marcomanni in Roman texts mentions how, in 8 to 6 b.c.e., Emperor Augustus planned a pincer operation from the Rhine to the Danube in order to entrap the Marcomanni, Quadi, and allied tribes under King Marobodus considered a threat to Rome. The Romans called off the campaign because of unrest elsewhere. Texts also refer to a defeat of the Marcomanni by the Cherusci under Arminius in 17 c.e. It was Arminius's annihila tion of three Roman legions in 9 c.e. and subsequent unsuccessful Roman attempts to regain control of the territory east of the Rhine forced the Romans to roll back the imperial frontier to the Rhine itself, a situation that would determine relations between the Romans and Germanic tribes for centuries.
The Marcomanni were among those peoples whose movement across the Danube into present-day Hungary in the second century c.e. made the Romans aware of the changes happening deep in the Germanic interior, probably caused in part by population pressures and in part by the growing level of conflicts among peoples who had become militarized by their participation in the Roman slave trade and whose societies had been destabilized by increasing socioeconomic differentiation both between and within tribes. Conflict with some of these tribes may have catalyzed the Marcomanni, who by this time had become more peaceful under Roman influence. In particular they were affected by the expansion of power of the Gutonen, the tribe that would later form the kernel of the Goths, from their base along the Vistula River in present-day Poland.
The Marcomannic Wars
In the second century the Marcomanni and allied tribes successfully raided southward, crossing the Danube into the Roman provinces of Pannonia (modern Hungary and surrounding regions) and Dacia (roughly modern Romania). They are thought to have numbered around 6,000. In 167 c.e. the Marcomanni, along with the Quadi and the Iranian Iazyges, began an even more massive movement to the head of the Adriatic Sea, where they raided the cities of Aquileia and Oderzo, close to present-day Venice.
In addition to the Marcomanni and Quadi other Germanic peoples were part of the
MARCOMANNI
location:
Germany; Hungary; Czech Republic time period:
First century to 500 c.e.
derivation of name:
Old German for "men of the march"
ancestry:
Germanic language:
Germanic
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