Gothic Online

Gothic Wanderings, 376-401

In the year 376, the Goths sent a request to cross the Danube into Roman territory. The clearest source for events of the Gothic crossing into Roman territory is Ammianus Marcellinus. According to his account, in 376 the Tervingi under Fritigern and Alaviv were allowed to cross the Danube into Roman territory and settle in Thrace. They may have been ordered to disarm as a condition of entry, but if so, the Roman officials in charge seemed to ignore this. They were not allowed to settle as a separate group with their own territory, and they had no autonomous status within the empire. The mass move strained Roman resources in terms of manpower and equipment to ferry the Goths across the Danube; it likewise caused shortages of food.

Lupinicus, a Roman commander in Thrace, was dispatched with some troops to provide an escort to the Goths, weakening Roman forces along the Danube. As a result, other tribes subsequently forced their way across the Danube: Greuthungi under Alatheus and Safrax; Greuthungi under Farnobius; Taifali from the region of Walachia. The Taifali and Greuthungi under Farnobius coalesced into one group; those under Alatheus and Safrax joined with Fritigern. Lupicinus invited the mutually antagonistic Fritigern and Alaviv to a feast, but a quarrel ensued in which Roman soldiers killed the Gothic escorts of Fritigern and Alaviv. Fritigern escaped, but Alaviv's name is no longer mentioned by Ammianus; likewise the name Tervingi is no longer mentioned, only Goths.

The Goths began to ravage the land. Lupicinus went to put down the revolt, but he was killed and his forces were wiped out. Other Goths in Roman employ joined in the revolt, leading to an unsuccessful Gothic siege of Adrianople, led by Fritigern. Emperor Valens in the Eastern Empire sent troops led by Traianus and Profuturus to meet the Goths in Thrace; coemperor Gratian of the Western Empire sent troops under Frigeridus and together they tried to starve the Tervingi under Fritigern. Meanwhile Frigeridus suffered an attack of gout and command fell to Richomeres. Both Gothic and imperial forces could finally wait no longer and attacked one another, but the outcome was inconclusive.

Fritigern subsequently convinced Alatheus and Safrax to join him, adding Greuthungi, Alanic, and Hunnic cavalry to his troops. Frigeridus returned to Thrace in 377 and killed Farnobius in a battle against Greuthungi and Taifali troops. Fritigern called a general retreat; later in 378 he sent a priest to Valens demanding all of Thrace, but simultaneously sent a secret letter offering himself as a Roman ally. Valens, sensing Fritigern's weakness, attacked the Goths, leading his troops along with the commander Sebastianus, who had replaced Traianus. The Roman troops left from Adrianople. Fritigern's cavalry quickly routed the Roman cavalry, and shortly afterward the infantry, with the result that the battle ended in a Gothic victory. Valens was seriously wounded in the fight and subsequently died.

Bolstered by their victory, the Goths continued to pillage the surrounding areas. But ironically the newfound success led to a concomitant sense of self-satisfaction among the Goths, with the result that Fritigern lost some of his troop's cohesion. To drive off the Gothic plunderers, the emperor Theodosius enlisted the help of the Goth Modares-Modaharius and later Athanaric to fight Fritigern's forces. With their aid they overcame the latter and struck a treaty with Fritigern's former subjects in 382.

As part of the treaty, the Goths were settled in Dacia and Thrace. They received land for their own use and were considered autonomous, but did not own property according to imperial law. They were obliged to enter Roman military service, but could only receive subordinate commands. They were exempt from taxation.

Soon the empire was again in turmoil. Out of the destabilization caused by the would-be usurper Maximus, a Goth from Moesia by the name of Alaric headed an uprising in 391. His forces were eventually defeated, but Alaric was released on the orders of Theodosius, a scenario which was to happen four more times between 392 and 402. Eventually Alaric returned to serve Theodosius in putting down another attempted usurpation by Eugenius in 394. After Theodosius died in 395, the Gothic troops were discharged, but lack of supplies led to plundering on their trip home.

In 394-395 the Huns finally pushed across the Danube and drove the major part of the Gothic forces to seek a safe haven. This majority, under Alaric, pushed to Constantinople and reached an agreement with the top imperial advior Rufinus in which Alaric was allowed a high military post and his Gothic followers granted entrance into eastern Illyricum. They eventually forced their way south as far as Larissa, then fought and plundered until they reached the Peloponnesus. The Romans were eventually pressured into a treaty in 397, granting the Goths land in central Macedonia between the Haliacmon and Axius rivers, and granting Alaric a high military post with Illyrian troops under his command, integrating him into the Roman military hierarchy once again.

In this position Alaric consolidated his power: he became the ward of Gothic ethnic identity, and had the authority to punish acts of desertion by opportunistic Gothic chiefs. It is not clear if Alaric was elevated to a true king, a þiudans, but his status as reiks reached a new height, with monarchic overtones.

In 399 the Goth Tribigild led an uprising in Phrygia, his forces consisting in large part of Greuthungi who had formerly been loyal to Odotheus. They ravaged Asia Minor until they met with defeat in Pisidia. Tribigild escaped with 300 men. Gainas was eventually sent with Roman forces to stamp out the rebellion, but sometime around 400 he changed sides and helped the Goths cross the Bosporus. Tribigild was killed shortly thereafter, but Gainas soon occupied Constantinople itself. The imperial palace was burned, and the populace rallied against the numerically inferior Goths. Seven hundred sought refuge in an Orthodox church, but were killed by order of the emperor Arcadius.

Gainas escaped and tried to cross back into Asia Minor, but a fellow tribesman, Fravitta, led a Roman fleet to destroy their makeshift rafts. Gainas evidently turned north seeking to lead his remaining Goths back to their homeland across the Danube. They met with the Huns and suffered defeat; the Hunnic commander Uldin sent the head of Gainas to Constantinople. The emperor received it on January 3, 401.

Reading and Textual Analysis

The following passage is Mark 16.1-12. The first section, Mark 16:1-8, recounts how two of the women in Jesus' entourage were preparing to enter the borrowed tomb in which the Savior was buried, remove the death shroud, and anoint his body with the customary burial spices; but they found the tomb empty. Verses 9-20, of which 9-12a are included here, seem to constitute an addition to Mark's gospel; this ending, written in another style, was supplied by a much later writer, as it exists in none of the best Greek manuscripts. It is nevertheless already present in the 4th century manuscript used to produce the Gothic Bible.

In the first verse we find an example of a genitive absolute: inwisandins sabbate dagis 'when the day of the sabbath was past' (Mark 16.1). These genitive constructions are relatively rare in Gothic, this being an imitation of the Greek diagenoménou tou sabbátou. Unfortunately such slavish adherence to the morphologically more robust Greek original creates awkard sense in the Gothic, since the Greek aorist participle denotes a completed action, while the Gothic present participle ostensibly has the sense of an on-going action.

In Mark 16.5 we find the term taíhswái 'right (side)'. This derives from the adjective *taíhswa 'right'. The phrase taíhswō handus 'right hand (side)' has been shortened simply to the weak feminine adjective alone: taíhswō, as encountered in Matthew 6.3 in Lesson 5; or less frequently to a strong feminine adjective as here. The same process has left the Greek cognate adjective hē deksía 'the right (hand)' with the same denotation. Latin similarly uses the feminine adjective to denote the right side: dextra (manus) 'right (hand)', so ad dextram 'to the right', and hence Modern Spanish derecha 'to the right' -- but derecho 'straight'. The suffix -w- is the same as that found in Greek, i.e. *deksiwos > deksios (compare Mycenaean de-ki-si-wo). The suffix is absent in the Latin cognate, though present in laevus 'left'.

Mark 16.6 provides an interesting grammatical gem: sai þana staþ 'behold the place'. The particle sai generally functions as a weak exclamatory, equivalent to 'lo!'. Such a function commends one scholarly theory as to the origin of the interjection, namely that it derives from a compound of the Gothic demonstrative sa with the PIE deictic particle i, as found in, e.g., Greek houtos-í 'this one here' or vuv-í 'just now'. Another theory suggests that the form is in fact the locative of the sa- pronoun. The above phrase, however, contains sai followed by an accusative, which is difficult to construe according to the above theories. A third possibility exists, namely that sai is an apocopated form of the 2nd person singular imperative of saíƕan, thus saíƕ 'look (at)!', with loss of the final consonant -ƕ. Although not without its problems, this interpretation makes good sense of the accusative -- now the direct object of a verb -- in this phrase.

Another interesting construction is found in Mark 16.8: dizuh-þan-sat ijos reiro jah usfilmei, literally 'and then a trembling beset them, and amazement'. Note here the interpolation of -uh and þan between the prefix and root of the verb dis-sitan 'settle upon'. In intervocalic position, the -s of the prefix voices to -z-. Such insertion of conjunctions between verb and preverb is not uncommon in Gothic, and may even include nominal elements such as ƕa 'anything'. See also the discussion of the ga-prefix in Lesson 8, Section 40.1.