Drinkwater J.F. The Alamanni and Rome 213-496 (Caracalla to Clovis)
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However, Franks again became the enemy of choice; and the prevail-
ing state of aVairs between border Alamanni and Romans was one of
peace, with the former willing to accept the superiority of the latter. It
was this last, the persistence of what may be called the ‘imperial
habit’, that best explains the lack of Alamannic movement around
410, and the way in which Alamanni, unable to envisage a world
without the Empire, fell behind other western Germani.
This attitude helps explain what may at Wrst sight appear a
contradictory feature of Alamannic development. Though close to
the heart of the western Empire, Alamannic regna and pagi show no
signs of signiWcant spontaneous Romanization. Small and primitive,
they remained incapable of producing sophisticated administrative
structures or even Roman-style building projects.223 In part this was
due to imperial policy. Rome favoured the continuation of the status
quo. Overmighty chieftains threatened her mastery so, as in the case
of Macrianus, she clipped their wings.224 On the other hand, it is
unlikely that, even if expansion in size and infrastructure had
been achievable, Alamannic leaders would have indulged in the
game of upper-class competition (aemulatio) that had driven the
Romanization of the west under the High Empire.225 The promotion
of monumental urbanization was now outmoded. In the Late Empire
in the west, extensive street-grids and grand secular buildings were
only for imperial cities. Impressive building was still possible in the
case of churches, but the Alamanni showed no interest in converting
of their own accord and imperial Christians none in evangelizing
them. And, anyway, what would have been the point of such activity?
In the late Iron Age and early Roman periods the reward for
aemulatio had been consolidation of upper-class power and advance-
ment in the Roman world. Throughout the fourth century, leading
Alamanni received this anyway, through Roman subsidies and
Roman service. There was now no need for aemulatio226 and this
223 Cf. above 105.
224 Also above 124.
225 Drinkwater (1983a: 142, 157).
226 The provenance of the Hariulfus inscription (above 116) is signiWcant here:
such Roman-style self-advertisement was practised only within the conWnes of the
Empire. As in the case of the Alamanni, aemulatio was, apparently, not possible on
barbarian territory: see Schmitz (2003: 406), on the adoption of the ‘epigraphic habit’
by Romanized Germani.
358 The Fifth Century
probably suited those in charge of Alamannic society. Kings and
optimates, like the war-band leaders from whom they were des-
cended, treated Alamannia as a convenient base of operations, a
jumping-oV point, not a homeland. Their aim was not to develop
the region but to optimize their own strategic positions within it.227
Like Tacitus’ Germani, their main concern was probably the control
of men and animals rather than land.228 The stronger they were the
more they could obtain from the Empire; and if this did not run to
settlement they were happy to accept subsidies and service. Like the
Romans, they too favoured the continuation of the status quo.
Alamanni never formed a major successor kingdom. They
were always the dependants of a stronger power, Roman or
Frankish. Unlike the Franks, they have no claim to be called the
‘pioneers of modern Europe’.229 Their chief role in history is that
they oVer a unique insight into the nature of the Romano-barbarian
relationship.
The most important aspect of this relationship was symbiosis.
Such symbiosis was more than the purely economic ties often exam-
ined by modern historians.230 Rather, as in the case of the Early
Empire, we should recognize an important political interdependency
between Empire and barbarians. Alamannic leaders’ dependence on
Rome has been dealt with. The idea of Roman political dependence
on Alamanni has been touched upon above, but now needs to be
stated explicitly.231 In recent years a number of historians, for
example, GoVart, Whittaker and Miller, have attempted to correct
ancient and modern misconceptions of barbarian aggression under
the Late Empire.232 However, they have enjoyed remarkably little
success. Like the ancients, we still seem to need the Germanic bogey-
man.233 Those who have attempted to reassess the Germani have
227 Cf. above 104.
228 A. Kreuz, pers. comm.
229 ‘Wegbereiter’, hence the title of Franken (1997).
230 e.g. Whittaker (1994: 113–21); Witschel (1999: 215); Burns (2003: 40).
231 Cf. above 177. The following is drawn mainly from Drinkwater (1996, 1997,
1999a).
232 Go Vart (1980: esp. ch. 1); Whittaker (1994); Miller (1996). Cf. Steuer (1998:
280–1).
233 Cf. above 179. I have borrowed and adapted ‘bogeyman’ from Nixon and
Rodgers (1994: 137).
The Fifth Century 359
interpreted their relationship w ith the Roman world in various ways.
What I propose here is that, as far as the late Roman west is
concerned, the ‘Germanic threat’ was an imperial artefact—an indis-
pensable means of justifying the imperial presence and imperial
policies, and of maintaining provincial loyalty to the Empire.
Alamanni and Franks became dangerous only when the Empire
was distracted by civil war. Then they were encouraged to raid
by Roman weakness and, sometimes, Roman invitation. In such
circumstances, careless generalship might result in tactical Roman
defeats. Even in nominally quiet times, the diYculties of policing a
grossly asymmetrical power relationship (in particular, the need for
the greater power to deploy massively disproportionate force to
control its partners because these are too elusive to be dealt with
more economically) might, as in the case of Macrianus, lead to
unnecessary and fruitless violence and, in the end, a diplomatic
settlement favourable to the Germanic side. However, none of this
made the western barbarians a strategic threat. Rome retained the
upper hand; and the prevailing condition was peace and cooperation.
Yet Rome itself could be an awkward neighbour and, when it suited
its purpose, a savage aggressor. Most of the time Alamanni and
Franks were victims rather than oppressors, exploited by later
Roman emperors as their predecessors had been exploited by earlier
rulers for the needs of internal politics.
Most instances of such exploitation can again be categorized as
promoting three main objectives (none mutually exclusive): 1) to
acquire or enhance a military reputation; 2) to steady Roman armies
in uncertain political or military situations, often readying them for
service elsewhere within the Empire; and 3) to provide western
emperors with a good excuse to go to, or remain in or on, northern
Gaul and the Rhine frontier when, for political reasons, it suited them
to be there.234 However, more depended on imperial exploitation of
the frontier than even this analysis suggests.
First, the oYce of Roman emperor evolved from the activities of
the late Republican warlord. To survive, an emperor had to have a
reputation as a general. Emperors therefore needed to maintain
234 Above 41–2. For examples of such behaviour, see above 198 (Constantine II),
260 (Julian), 313 (Gratian).
360 The Fifth Century
strong armies and to lead them to victory over foreign enemies. In
the Late Empire, western rulers therefore projected Alamanni and
Franks as numerous and ferocious, and the more so when eastern
colleagues were enjoying success over Persians.235
Next, inXation of the Germanic danger explained the concentra-
tion of forces in Gaul and along the Rhine, and so justiWed the
maintenance of the whole imperial system in the west. The system
comprised the soldiers and oYcers whose careers depended on
the continued existence of a strong western army. We are so used
to the institution of the Roman army that we cannot imagine the
Empire without it. But it was a late feature of Roman history, and was
resented and criticized by some contemporaries who looked forward
to a day when it could be disbanded or, at least, substantially
reduced.236 It also included the civil administration necessary to collect
the taxes that supported the army and itself, and which provided the
civilian well-to-do with prestigious and lucrative imperial oYces.
And it, too, was headed by the western emperor, who drew his
power from his control of both military and civil structures. The
leaders of the civil population, educated to believe in the German
menace along the Rhine, impressed by imperial ‘busy-ness’, and open
to imperial persuasion through their desire for imperial generosity
and imperial oYce, were happy to give this structure their support.
The ‘Germanic threat’ thus allowed western emperors, generals,
administrators and local aristocrats to validate their high position
in society, by allowing them to be diligent: diligently spending the
taxpayers’ money, to their own economic and social advantage.237
Finally, neither Romans nor Germani posed a real threat to each
other. Barbarians were unable to do any signiWcant damage to the
235 Cf. above 182.
236 Drinkwater (1999a: 133).
237 Matthews (1975: 32–3) came very close to this interpretation by hinting that
Symmachus par ticipated in stage-managed Wghting against ‘helpless (and one sus-
pects, harmless) Alamanni’, and that Valentinian successfully exploited this leading
senator’s fact-Wnding tour to convince him—and through him, his peers—‘that the
taxes which he had brought were well spent’. However, Matthews then accepted that
the Rhine frontier was at this time facing a real military threat. Similarly, in a later
work (1989: 280), Matthews virtually characterized the late Empire as a tax-collecting
machine designed to support the military establishment: ‘One might deWne the state,
without exaggeration, as a system for the Wnancing of war.’
The Fifth Century 361
Empire; and western rulers, convinced by their own propaganda
concerning the invincibility of the Germani and content with matters
as they stood, were unwilling to go out of their way to conquer them.
The ‘Guard on the Rhine’, which the imperial establishment sold so
successfully to contemporaries and to later historians, was an
artefact.238 If these ideas of the frontier as ‘stage-show’, and of the
stage-show as both justiWcation and support of the imperial order are
acceptable,239 they raise other issues. For example, it is usually
understood that, from the third century, imperial power was divided
because the Empire, under pressure, needed armies led by emperors
on most of its frontiers. An alternative interpretation is that, even
from the third century, imperial collegiality became the norm
because eVective control of the totality of the frontier armies upon
which imperial political power rested had become a rare skill.
Lieutenant Caesares and Augusti were despatched to the main
political power centres to maintain the loyalty of the troops, where
necessary by leading them to victory against neighbouring peoples.
However, on the Rhine an underworked army was still a dangerous
army, which may explain the relative frequency of usurpations in the
west in the fourth century.240
This returns us to the two questions posed earlier in this chapter:
how did the Franks, in conquering the Alamanni, succeed where
Rome had failed; and how did they reverse the Xow of conquest
from east-to-west to west-to-east? The answer is that Clovis and his
successors, as relative latecomers, not the children of ‘Mischzivilisa-
tion’, were not subject to established imperial preconceptions. Free
from traditional Roman fears of Brennus, the Cimbri and Arminius,
238 Here I come very close to GoVart’s view that the imperial frontier was generally
the cause of imperial insecurity, and that the frontier therefore justiWed the imperial
regime by pointing up or creating something which the inhabitants of the Empire
could be told they needed to be defended against (1980: 30; 1989: 6). On the other
hand, unlike GoVart (1989: 7), I doubt very much whether, in the west at least, there
was ever a threat big enough to justify the size of garrison that was kept on the
frontier.
239 They appear to be gaining some currency: see Pohl (2000: 35): ‘Fu
¨
r die am Rhein
konzentrierten ro
¨
mische Truppen waren die Barbarenkrieger jenseits des Rheins nicht
nur Rekrutierungr eserve, sondern rechtfertigten auch die eigene Bedeutung und Existenz’;
Heather (2001: 51); Burns (2003: 13 n.3).
240 Cf. Drinkwater (1998c) and above 323.
362 The Fifth Century
they were immune to ‘the power of nig htmares, the politics of fear’.
Germani themselves, they could see the continuity of conditions and
society west and east of the Rhine and knew that they had to control
both sides of the river. And Germani themselves, they were not frigh-
tened of fellow Germani: fully aware of their enemies’ (including other
Franks’) weakness in numbers, organization and military strength,
they knew they could defeat them. Finally, as Germanic chiefs, not
Roman emperors, they did not need their opponents as a permanent
threat to justify their political position: not only could they defeat,
they were prepared to do so. So the Franks conquered the Alamanni;
and so ended Alamannic independence, less than a generation after
the fall of the last western Roman emperor.
The Fifth Century 363
APPENDIX
The Lyon Medallion
The much-discussed Lyon ‘medallion’ is, in fact, a trial-strike, c.8 cms in
diameter, in lead of the reverse die of a large denomination gold coin, with
the legend Saeculi Felicitas, ‘The Happiness of Our Time’. Its two registers
show a pair of Roman rulers receiving men, women and children. These are
clearly depicted as crossing into the Empire over the defended bridge at
Mainz-Kastel (Fig. 27). The communis opinio is that it commemorates the
settlement of Germanic war-captives in Gaul by Maximian Augustus and
Constantius I Caesar in the later 290s.1 But there are problems. A coin of this
quality must reXect a major imperial victory that could be presented as
bringing undeniable beneWt to the Empire.2 M. Alfo
¨
ldi identiW es this victory
as that won by Constantius I against Franks on the Scheldt. She places it in
296, in line with A. Alfo
¨
ldi’s location—on stylistic grounds—of the terminus
post quem for the production of the medallion in this year.3 However,
Constantius’ Scheldt campaign took place before his British victories in
296. There is a hint of a second Frankish campaign following Constantius’
defeat of Allectus, but if Wghting occurred it is unlikely to have been serious.4
More telling is the medallion’s location of the events it depicts at Mainz.5
Mainz was the base for Roman operations into Alamannia, not Francia: why
defeat Franks on the Lower Rhine and then move them miles upstream?
Finally, the demeanour of most of the ‘settlers’ on the medallion hardly
matches that of the broken Frankish captives described in a panegyric of 297
which, according to M. Alfo
¨
ldi, provides a snapshot of the events which
inspired the scene on the medallion.6
The two imperial Wgures dominate the upper register. The pair, nimbate
and magniWed, are plainly superior to their supplicants. This part of the
composition conforms to Brilliant’s rules for the depiction of submission: ‘a
1 Alfo
¨
ldi (1953: esp. 66–8). Brilliant (1963: 193); Gallien (1980: 27–8, no.2); Nixon
and Rodgers (1994: 121 n.28); Burns (2003: 303).
2 Alfo
¨
ldi (1953: 67 nn.19–20).
3 Alfo
¨
ldi (1926: 168–70); Alfo
¨
ldi (1953: 68).
4 Above 187.
5 Cf. Alfo
¨
ldi (1953: 66–7 and n.18).
6 Pan. Lat. 4(8).9.1.
triangular form with the head of the great personage at the apex of the
triangle.’7 However, some sense of independence on the part of the inferior is
given by the three Wgures on the extreme right—two adults carrying infants
and a small child (the taller adult is depicted incorrectly on the 1862
drawing, but is visible in photographs), who look away towards their fellows
still crossing the bridge. These, shown in the lower register, are even more
strongly presented. There is no triangle: all the adults are much the same
size, striding conWdently across. Slung around their necks or hung over their
shoulders are large double-packs. The Wrst on the left is armed with a
dagger.8 All look ahead, except for the striking central Wgure of a woman
who, in looking back as if to encourage those behind her, takes on something
of the authority of the rulers shown above. She presents a very powerful
Wgure, with no air of the captive. Early commentators saw her as a Victory
(mistaking her pack for wings).9 Many previous commentators, including
7 Brilliant (1963: 189).
8 Bastien (1989: 7).
9 Alfo
¨
ldi (1953: 65); Bastien (1989: 17).
Fig. 27 The Lyon ‘medallion’. Main drawing from the first publication of
the piece in Revue Numismatique 1862 [after Alfo
¨
ldi (1953: Fig. 2)].
Shaded area re-traced from a photograph [Bastien (1989: pl. 2)].
Appendix: The Lyon Medallion 365
A. Alfo
¨
ldi, put a positive interpretation upon the scene, for example seeing it
as a largitio, a distribution of largesse.10
Two other explanations are possible. The Wrst conXates an earlier inter-
pretation, that the events depicted were the result of Maximian’s expedition
of 287,11 with Unverzagt’s (1919) view, that it records the happy return of
Roman troops from barbarian captivity.12 The two rulers are, therefore,
Maximian and Diocletian, and the barbarian captors were Alamanni. Such
an interpretation has recently been proposed by Turcan (1987) and
conWrmed, at least in part (concerning the identity of the emperors), by
Bastien.13 Bastien dates the trial-strike to 297,14 but this is no hindrance to
relating the events it shows to 287. In the First Tetrarchy, rulers’ reputations
had to be carefully balanced.15 In 297, Maximian needed something to
counter Constantius I’s brilliant success in Britain. Why not recall a major
result of his most daring foreign war on the Rhine? The returning captives
are not prisoners of war, but civilians taken during raids into the Empire.
Bastien objects that no such exploit is mentioned in the panegyric of 289;16
but it was not needed then. However, in 297 Maximian needed an act of
‘restoration’ that matched that of Constantius.
The second is to suppose that the suppliants are immigrant Germani, but
that these are not to be associated with Constantius I’s Frankish victory
(M. Alfo
¨
ldi) or with general Germanic resettlement by Maximian while
holding the Rhine for Constantius during the latter’s British campaign
(Bastien).17 Rather, the medallion picks up another theme of imperial
propaganda by showing Diocletian and Maximian not as conquerors but
as civilizers of barbarians.18 This is a role in which the panegyricist of 297
famously cast Constantius I;19 and, albeit subject to variation (with the
transformation of wild warriors taking place east of the Rhine), it was also
emphasized by Symmachus in respect of Valentinian I.20 It found its greatest
exponent in the east, in Themistius.21 However, the medallion’s reference to
10 Alfo
¨
ldi (1926: 169), ‘keine Unterwerfungsakt’; Alfo
¨
ldi (1953: 65–6). Cf. Bastien
(1989: 18).
11 Cf. Alfo
¨
ldi (1926: 169 and n.1); Alfo
¨
ldi (1953: 65).
12 Cited from Bastien (1989: 8 n.1).
13 Turcan: cited by Bastien (1989: 1); Bastien (1989: 7, 9–12).
14 Bastien (1989: 24–5).
15 Cf. Rees (2002: 25).
16 Bastien (1989: 21).
17 Bastien (1989: 24).
18 I owe this important point to Professor Ralph Mathisen.
19 Pan. Lat. 4(8).9.3–4.
20 Above 299.
21 Guzma
´
n Armario (2002: 276–7).
366 Appendix: The Lyon Medallion
Mainz signiWes that the people involved were not Franks or Germani in
general but Alamanni. And it shows these not as broken and dejected but
conWdent and pleased. It suggests that in the late 280s Maximian settled a
signiWcant number of Alamanni by agreement west of the Rhine. The
Alamannic settlers of the 350s might therefore have been able to cite
precedent in support of their request for residence in the Empire.22
22 Above 218.
Appendix: The Lyon Medallion 367