Rome's Gothic Wars_ From the Third Century to Alaric - Michael Kulikowski [7]
We will also look at modern debates about the Goths. Gothic history is a controversial subject among modern scholars, who support their own positions with an intensity that most people reserve for their favourite football team or rock band. Anyone who writes professionally about the Goths, even if only a little bit, has to take a position in the heated debate about who the Goths were, where they came from, and when their history can really be said to begin – I am no exception. But instead of merely outlining the possible options and explaining which one I choose, I have devoted a part of chapter three to explaining exactly why the Gothic past is so controversial – after all, it is not football or music, which, if they are any good, are meant to inspire passionate controversy. By doing this, I hope to give readers a glimpse not just of how historians wrestle with the evidence that past ages have left behind, but how, in doing so, we are deeply affected by many centuries of modern thinking about the past. More so than is the case with many other historical problems, the history of the Goths is still caught up in questions that our ancestors were already asking in the Renaissance. Although such a long heritage of debate might be a cause for frustration, in fact part of the excitement of Gothic history is the way it puts us in touch with the intellectual history of the culture we still live in, as well as the ancient history of barbarians and Romans. All the same, it is those Romans with whom we must begin, because it was the Roman empire that created the Goths as we know them, and Roman writers who tell us most of what we know about them.
Chapter 1 The Goths Before Constantine
The Goths had a momentous impact on Roman history, appearing as if out of nowhere in the early decades of the third century. When we first meet them, it is in the company of other barbarians who, together, made devastating incursions into the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. The mid third century, particularly from the 240s till the early 300s, was an era of constant civil war between Roman armies, civil war that in turn encouraged barbarian invasions. Contact with the Roman empire, and particularly with the Roman army, had helped to militarize barbarian society, and opportunistic raids all along the imperial frontiers exploited Roman divisions and distraction in the civil wars. When the Goths first appear, it is in this world of civil war and invasion. Unfortunately for the modern historian, it is not always easy to distinguish third-century Goths from other barbarians. The problem stems from the way ancient writers talked about barbarians in general and the Goths in particular.
‘Scythians’ and Goths
To the Greek authors who wrote about them, the Goths were ‘Scythians’ and that is the name used almost without exception to describe them. The name ‘Scythian’ is very ancient, drawn from the histories of Herodotus, which were written in the fifth century B.C. and dealt with the Greek world at the time of the Persian Wars. For Herodotus, the Scythians were outlandish barbarians living north of the Black Sea in what are now Moldova and Ukraine. They lived on their horses, they ate their meat raw, they dressed in funny ways, and they were quintessentially alien not just to the world of the Greeks, but even to other barbarians nearer to the Greek world. Greek historical writing, like much of Greek literary culture, was intensely conservative of old forms, and canonized certain authors as perfect models