When reading about Roman and Germanic history it is very common, nearly always, to hear how German tribes were pushed out of Germania. This has left me with the question of who remained in Germania and what happened to them? Similarly, if they were so fierce as to push out Germanic tribes that were substantially fierce themselves, why did they not form an empire and take Rome like the other tribes eventually did?
Who remained in Germania?
Jonathan Peterson
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Easton Miller
Suebi
Hudson Reyes
people immigrate for a reason, they then tend to find a neet combination of tech on a trading xroads which they then take back to place of origins to scorched earth it. this goes on/balance continues to this task/mission to this day, sometimes the inter-grudges last thousands of years. i think.
Lucas Thomas
>Suebi
They were pushed out by the Goths
Bentley Collins
What?
Jayden Gutierrez
>it is very common, nearly always, to hear how German tribes were pushed out of Germania
It's mostly a discredited meme from mid-20th century historians attempting to explain the fall of the West without looking at the internal weakness of the empire itself. Most of the people that crossed into the empire did so to take advantage of the economic benefits of doing so, with steady employment in the imperial army being virtually guaranteed. It's pretty much the same as today. The Huns didn't genocide millions of tribals, they just took them as vassals.
People that crossed into the empire included the Franks, Suebi, Vandals, Goths etc. The main ones that remained included many Saxones, Frisians, Alemanni, Rugi, and Thuringians.
>why did they not form an empire and take Rome like the other tribes eventually did?
Those other tribes had become heavily Romanised, trained in the Roman army, had access to Roman state factories and weaponsmiths, had access to rich agricultural land and had basically become independent by this point. They didn't "take Rome", they more had just managed to outlast the effective Roman government until it became too weak to tell them what to do anymore. The barbarians that stayed outside of the frontiers were eventually conquered by the groups that had moved into the empire, with the Franks obviously going back and famously crushing the Alemanni and Saxons over the centuries.
Alexander Reed
Honestly, that is a great explanation. Why are the Germanics talked up to be some sort of gigantic boogey man then? They almost present them as Orcs.
Does that mean the real fall of the Roman Empire was an inability to produce enough people to government of the domains the stretched themselves to?
Dylan Johnson
to govern all the domains they stretched to?****
Dylan Turner
>Does that mean the real fall of the Roman Empire was an inability to produce enough people to to govern all the domains they stretched to?
No. The reforms of emperors like Diocletian meant that there was no issue on that sort of front. The provinces were now far smaller, there were many more officials and military officers who were in theory able to govern a smaller area more effectively. The real problem is that (in my view) the imperial government failed to deal with the Goths properly after they broke into the empire in the 370s AD and instead of breaking them into smaller groups and settling them all over the empire and integrating them as they had done with shit loads of other barbarian groups before, they allowed them to exist as a single distinct group with their own customs, kings etc. The Goths were used as muscle in the fuck ton of civil wars that soon ensued and resentment built up as they were used as disposable shock troops in the battle of the Frigidus River between Theodosius and Eugenius. The Goths then seized the opportunity of the terrible reign of Honorius and Arcadius, both useless children, to try and seize state support for themselves and launched revolts, moved into Italy with support from the Eastern Empire in Constantinople and sacked Rome after negotiations broke down. At this same time the Rhine frontier completely broke down as various tribes crossed with the Roman army in full civil war mode with various emperors being proclaimed all over the place, Britain and northern Gaul were lost, various tribes were left to run about. The Goths were yet again paid off to be used as muscle against the Vandals and Alans, given the finest farmland in Gaul etc. At this point the game was up, Roman prestige was destroyed, any two-bit barbarian king sought to wring what he could out of the Empire and the army destroyed itself with civil wars, leaving nobody willing or able to dislodge the barbarian groups squatting in the west.
Joseph Baker
so germans wuz romanz n shiet?
Levi White
Everyone wuz Romans n shiet. Everybody wanted to share in the Roman dream. Even the guy that sacked Rome was merely having a temper tantrum about him not being given an officer rank and access to state granaries. Nobody could seriously believe that Rome could ever fall, let alone that their actions would be key components in making that happen. Most of the officers in the Roman army were of German ancestry. Stilicho, one of the finest generals of the time and the 5th century equivalent to Julius Caesar, was half Vandal.
Blake Brown
vandals where Poles
Xavier Rivera
Frisians, Alemmans, Thuringians, Saxons
Nicholas Cox
In part. Poles are culturally Slav though.
James Clark
Yes, stop giving credit to Germanics for what Slavs did
Josiah Parker
From my admittedly not scholarly conjecture, Diocletian's system led to really weakly ruled border regions because with a smaller domain size and less oversight it became much easier for a petty official to carve out his own little demesne.
Jordan Murphy
wait i thought the vandals were east germanic
Dominic Rogers
upload.wikimedia.org
I wish it were so, it would explain a lot of things. From what i've read though the administrative system tended to work relatively well.
>weakly ruled
Nope. They were more intensively controlled. Instead of one part-time governor and his amateur household of slaves running hundreds of square miles and controlling the army in the same area, you would have a governor and his official bureaucratic staff of hundreds in an area half the size.
>smaller domain size and less oversight
They actually had more oversight. None of the frontier rebellions were started by the civilian governors, and they tended to be started not by the smaller military governors but by an area's magister militum or praetorian prefect. The same sort of people who had been the equivalent of early imperial provincial governors.
This guy whose story is outlined at the start of Ammianus Marcellinus is basically a case study for late Roman governance.
en.wikipedia.org
>it became much easier for a petty official to carve out his own little demesne.
Nah it wasn't the officials. It was the senatorial aristocracy who began fortifying their villas, hiring their own private armies of bucellarii, outright blocking the state from conscripting their workers and other obstructive shit that were far more of a threat. Diocletian's systems were relatively decent all things considered. The real problem was that many of his reforms engendered lots of resentment and anger, particularly the greatly increased taxes (on the poor, senators did not pay a single solidus in tax as per their ancient privileges) and requirements for people to stay in their birthplace and in their fathers' profession.
There were lots of causes for the fall of the western empire but I don't think Diocletian's administrative reforms were one of them. Arguably they actually helped prop it up a century longer.
Ryder King
Suebi-Alamani, Bavari-Boii, Thunringi, Batavi, Chatti, Jutes, Saxones, Angli, Frisi, Ripuari(Franks)
Adam Russell
what tribes left Germania?
Ryan Howard
and is it possible to say a whole tribe left ? or did some leave some remain?
Carson Morris
Vandals were an east germanic tribe living poland. before the slavs settled there.
Aaron Lopez
The ones that staid behind. I don't think that a single tribe migrated completely to anywhere, even today there's still Angeln and Saxony in Germany and Gotland in Sweden.
David Perez
Not all left, the Suebi are an example, some went to Portugal but the main tribe remained (Alsatians, Swabians, Swiss Germans are Suebi-Alamani BTW) or the Goths some left Sweden and went into Poland but most of them remained, another example is the Saxons some went to Britain but the main tribes remained in Germany to be slaughtered later on by Charlemagne.
Robert Ward
The Angles came to Britain in such numbers that eventually their kings left too and their homelands were left desolate.
Juan Carter
There was literally a Suebi kingdom in Spain
Cooper Rogers
That's partly because many of the coastal communities were quite literally falling into the sea due to rising sea levels.