The
Battle of Naissus (268 or 269 AD) was the defeat of a
GothicThe Goths were a heterogeneous East Germanic tribe. The historian Jordanes claimed that the Goths arrived from semi-legendary Scandza, believed to be somewhere in modern Götaland , and that a Gothic population had crossed the Baltic Sea before the 2nd century, lending their name to the region of...
coalition by the
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
under Emperor
GallienusPublius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus ruled the Roman Empire as co-emperor with his father Valerian from 253 to 260, and then as the sole Roman Emperor from 260 to 268. He took control of the empire at a time when it was undergoing great crisis...
(or
Claudius IIMarcus Aurelius Claudius , often referred to as Claudius Gothicus or Claudius II, was a Roman Emperor. He ruled the Roman Empire for less than two years , but during that brief time he managed to obtain some successes. He was later given divine status.-Origin and rise to power:Claudius' origin...
) near Naissus (
NišNiš is a city in Nišava District, Serbia situated at 43.3° N 21.9° E, on the Nišava River. With more than 253,077 inhabitants it is the largest city in southern Serbia and the third-largest city in the country, after Belgrade and Novi Sad, according to the data from May 2009...
in present-day
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a country located in both Central and Southeastern Europe. Its territory covers the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and central part of the Balkans...
). The events around the invasion and the battle are an important part of the history of the
Crisis of the Third CenturyThe Crisis of the Third Century was a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of invasion, civil war, plague, and economic depression...
.
The result was a great Roman victory which, combined with the effective pursuit of the invaders in the aftermath of the battle and the energetic efforts of the Emperor
AurelianLucius Domitius Aurelianus , known in English as Aurelian, Roman Emperor , was the second of several highly successful "soldier-emperors" who helped the Roman Empire regain its power during the latter part of the third century and the beginning of the fourth.During his reign, the Empire was...
, largely removed the threat from Germanic tribes in the Balkan frontier for the following decades.
Sources
As is often the case in the history of the Roman Empire in the troubled 3rd century, it is very difficult to reconstruct the course of events around the battle of Naissus. Surviving accounts of the period, including
ZosimusZosimus was a Byzantine historian, who lived in Constantinople during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I . According to Photius, he was a comes, and held the office of "advocate" of the imperial treasury....
'
New History,
ZonarasIoannes Zonaras was a Byzantine chronicler and theologian, who lived at Constantinople.Under Emperor Alexios I Komnenos he held the offices of commander of the bodyguard and private secretary to the emperor, but after Alexios' death, he retired to the monastery of St Glykeria, where he spent the...
'
Epitome of the Histories,
George SyncellusGeorge Syncellus was a Byzantine chronicler and ecclesiastic. He had lived many years in Palestine as a monk, before coming to Constantinople, where he was appointed syncellus to Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople...
'
Selection of Chronography, and the
Augustan HistoryThe Augustan History is a late Roman collection of biographies, in Latin, of the Roman Emperors, their junior colleagues and usurpers of the period 117 to 284...
, rely principally on the lost history of the Athenian
DexippusPublius Herennius Dexippus , Greek historian, statesman and general, was an hereditary priest of the Eleusinian family of the Kerykes, and held the offices of archon basileus and eponymus in Athens....
. The text of Dexippus has survived only indirectly, through quotations in the fourth-century
Augustan History and extracts in ninth-century Byzantine compilations. Despite his importance for the period, Dexippus has been declared a "poor" source by the modern historian David S. Potter. To make matters worse, the works making use of Dexippus (and likely another unknown contemporary source) provide an almost radically different interpretation of events. The imperial propaganda in the age of
ConstantineCaesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus , commonly known in English as Constantine I, Constantine the Great, or Saint Constantine , was Roman emperor from 306, and the sole holder of that office from 324 until his death in...
's dynasty added more confusion by attributing all the calamities to the reign of Gallienus to avoid blemishing the memory of Claudius (supposed ancestor of the dynasty).
As a consequence, controversy still exists on the number of invasions and the order of events and on which reign those events must be attributed. Therefore, there is a dispute over who was the Emperor and head of the army at the time of the battle. In 1939, Andreas Alföldi, preferring the single invasion theory, suggested that Gallienus was the only one responsible for defeating the barbarian invasions, including the victory at Naissus. His view had been broadly accepted since then, but modern scholarship usually attributes the final victory to Claudius II. The single invasion theory has been also rejected in favour of the two separate invasions. The narrative below follows the latter view but the reader must be warned that the evidence is too confused for an entirely safe reconstruction.
Background
The battle of Naissus came about as a result of two massive invasions of "Scythian" tribes (as our sources anachronistically call them) into Roman territory between 267 and 269. The first wave came during Gallienus' reign (267) and started when the
HeruliThe Heruli were a nomadic Germanic people, who were subjugated by the Ostrogoths, Huns, and Byzantines in the 3rd to 5th centuries. The name is related to earl and was probably an honorific military title...
, raiding on 500 ships, ravaged the southern Black Sea coast and unsuccessfully attacked
ByzantiumByzantium was an ancient Greek city, which was founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas or Byzantas . The name "Byzantium" is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
and
CyzicusCyzicus was an ancient town of Mysia in Anatolia, situated in Balıkesir Province on the shoreward side of the present peninsula of Kapu-Dagh , which is said to have been originally an island in the Sea of Marmara, and to have been artificially connected with the mainland in historic times.Now,...
. They were defeated by the
Roman navyThe Roman Navy comprised the naval forces of the Roman state. Although the navy was instrumental in the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean Sea basin, it never enjoyed the prestige of the Roman legions...
but managed to escape into
Aegean SeaThe Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...
, where they ravaged the islands of
LemnosLemnos or Limnos is an island in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. It is part of the Greek prefecture of Lesbos and has a considerable area, about 477 km². Lemnos is mostly flat , but the west, and especially the northwest part, is rough and mountainous...
and Scyros and sacked several cities of the southern Greece (
province of AchaeaAchaea was a province of the Roman Empire, consisting of the modern-day Peloponnese in southern Greece and bordered on the north by the provinces of Epirus and Macedonia. The region was annexed to the Roman Republic in 146 BC following the sack of Corinth by the campaign of Roman general Lucius...
) including
AthensAthens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
,
CorinthCorinth, or Korinth Corinth, or Korinth Corinth, or Korinth (Greek Κόρινθος, Kórinthos is a city in Greece. In antiquity it was a city-state, on the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow stretch of land that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece. To the west of the isthmus lies the Gulf of...
,
ArgosArgos is a city in Greece in the Peloponnese near Nafplion, which was its historic harbour .-Name:The region of Argos is known as the Argolis, Argolid, or Argeia...
and
SpartaSparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the River Eurotas in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From c. 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars...
. Then an Athenian militia, led by the historian
DexippusPublius Herennius Dexippus , Greek historian, statesman and general, was an hereditary priest of the Eleusinian family of the Kerykes, and held the offices of archon basileus and eponymus in Athens....
, pushed the invaders to the north where they were intercepted by the Roman army under Gallienus. He won an important victory near the Nessos (
NestosThe Mesta or Nestos , formerly the Mesta Karasu , is a river in Bulgaria and Greece. It rises in the Rila Mountains and flows into the Aegean Sea near the island of Thasos. It plunges down towering canyons toward the Aegean Sea through mostly metamorphic formations...
) river, on the boundary between
MacedoniaThe Roman province of Macedonia was officially established in 146 BC, after the Roman general Quintus Caecilius Metellus defeated Andriscus of Macedon, the last Ancient King of Macedon in 148 BC, and after the four client republics established by Rome in the region were dissolved...
and
ThraceThrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded on the north by the Balkan Mountains, on the south by the Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea and on the east by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara...
, with the aid of the Dalmatian cavalry. Reported barbarian casualties were 3,000 men. Subsequently, the Heruli leader Naulobatus came to terms with the Romans.
In the past, the battle on the Nessos was identified as the Battle of Naissus, but modern scholarship has rejected this view. On the contrary, there is a theory that the victory at Nessos was so decisive that Claudius' efforts against the Goths (including the battle of Naissus) were no more than a mopping-up operation. After his victory, Gallienus left Marcianus in place and hastily left for Italy, intending to suppress the revolt of his cavalry officer
AureolusFor the Frankish ruler of Aragon, see Aureolus of Aragon.Aureolus was a Roman military commander and would-be usurper. He was one of the so-called Thirty Tyrants who populated the reign of the Emperor Gallienus. Of humble Thraco-Roman origins, he was 'made' by the Emperor Gallienus and proved...
. After Gallienus was assassinated outside
MilanMilan in Italy, is the capital of the region of Lombardia and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while the urban area is the fifth largest in the E.U. with an estimated population of 4.3 million...
in the summer of 268 in a plot led by high officers in his army, Claudius was proclaimed emperor and headed to Rome to establish his rule. Claudius' immediate concerns were with the
AlamanniThe Alamanni, Allemanni, or Alemanni were originally an alliance of Germanic tribes located around the upper Main river . One of the earliest references to them is the cognomen Alamannicus assumed by Roman Emperor Caracalla, who ruled the Roman Empire from 211–17 and claimed thereby to be their...
, who had invaded
RaetiaRaetia was a province of the Roman Empire, bounded on the west by the country of the Helvetii, on the east by Noricum, on the north by Vindelicia, and on the south by Cisalpine Gaul...
and Italy. After he defeated them in the
Battle of Lake BenacusThe Battle of Lake Benacus was one of the decisive battles that marked the beginning of the Roman Empire's emergence from the Crisis of the Third Century...
, he was finally able to take care of the invasions in the Balkan provinces.
In the meantime, the second and larger sea-borne invasion had started. An enormous coalition of "Scythians", actually consisting of Goths (
GreuthungiThe Greuthungs, Greuthungi, or Greutungi were a Gothic people of the Black Sea steppes in the third and fourth centuries. They had close contacts with the Thervingi, another Gothic people from west of the river Dnestr. They may be the same people as the later Ostrogoths.-Etymology:"Greuthungi" may...
and Tervingi), Gepids and
PeuciniPeuce in ancient geography was an island located near one of the mouths of the Danube, in the Danube Delta in the Romanian portion of Dobrudja, in the present-day Tulcea County. Its name came from the ancient Greek word peuke, 'pine tree'...
, led again by the
HeruliThe Heruli were a nomadic Germanic people, who were subjugated by the Ostrogoths, Huns, and Byzantines in the 3rd to 5th centuries. The name is related to earl and was probably an honorific military title...
, assembled at the mouth of river Tyras (
DniesterThe Dniester is a river in Eastern Europe.-Geography:The Dniester rises in Ukraine, near the city of Drohobych, close to the border with Poland, and flows toward the Black Sea. Its course marks part of the border of Ukraine and Moldova, after which it flows through Moldova for , separating the...
). The
Augustan History and Zosimus claim a total number of 2,000–6,000 ships and 325,000 men. This is probably a gross exaggeration but remains indicative of the scale of the invasion. After failing to storm some towns on the coasts of the western
Black Seaur a loser!The Black Sea is an inland sea bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and various straits. The Bosporus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects it to...
and the
DanubeThe Danube is the longest river in the European Union and Europe's second longest river after the Volga.The river originates in the Black Forest in Germany as the much smaller Brigach and Breg rivers which join at the German town Donaueschingen, after which it is known as the Danube and flows...
(
TomiConstanţa is the oldest living city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast...
,
MarcianopolisMarcianopolis, or Marcianople was an ancient Roman city in Thracia.The ruins of the ancient city are located some 20 kilometers from Devnya, in modern Bulgaria.-History:...
), the invaders attacked
ByzantiumByzantium was an ancient Greek city, which was founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas or Byzantas . The name "Byzantium" is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
and
ChrysopolisÜsküdar is a large and densely populated municipality of Istanbul on the Anatolian shore of the Bosphorus. It is bordered on the north by Beykoz, on the east by Ümraniye, on the southeast by Ataşehir, on the south by Kadıköy, and on the west by the Bosphorus, with the areas of Beşiktaş, Beyoğlu,...
. Part of their fleet was wrecked, either because of the Gothic inexperience in sailing through the violent currents of the Propontis or because it was defeated by the Roman navy. Then they entered
Aegean SeaThe Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...
and a detachment ravaged the Aegean islands as far as
CreteCrete is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km²...
and
RhodesRhodes is a Greek island approximately southwest of Turkey in eastern Aegean Sea...
. While their main force had constructed siege works and was close to taking the cities of Thessalonica and
CassandreiaCassandra was one of the most important cities in Ancient Macedonia founded by and named after Cassander in 316 BC located near the site of the earlier Ancient Greek city of Potidaea...
, it retreated to the Balkan interior at the news that the emperor was advancing. On their way, they plundered Doberus (
PaioniaPaionia or Paeonia was in ancient geography, the land of the Paeonians , the exact boundaries of which, like the early history of its inhabitants, are very obscure but they were in the region of Thrace...
?) and
PelagoniaPelagonia is a geographical region of Macedonia, with different borders between ancient and modern times....
.
The battle
The Goths were engaged near Naissus by a Roman army advancing from the north. The battle most likely took place in 269, and was fiercely contested. Large numbers on both sides were killed but, at the critical point, the Romans tricked the Goths into an ambuscade by a pretended flight. Some 50,000 Goths were allegedly killed. It seems that Aurelian was in charge of all Roman cavalry during Claudius' reign, making it possible that he participated in the battle.
Aftermath
A large number of Goths managed to escape towards Macedonia, initially defending themselves behind their laager. Soon, many of them and their pack animals, distressed as they were by the harassment of the Roman cavalry and the lack of provisions, died of hunger. The Roman army methodically pursued and surrounded the survivors at
Mount HaemusThe Balkan mountain range is a mountain range in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan range runs 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and eastern Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea. The highest peaks of the Stara...
where an epidemic affected the entrapped Goths. After a bloody but inconclusive battle, they escaped but were pursued again until they surrendered. Prisoners were admitted to the army or given land to cultivate and become
coloniA colonus was a type of Roman peasant farmer, a serf. This designation was carried into the Medieval period for much of Europe.Coloni worked on large Roman estates called "latifundia" and could never leave. Latifundia raised sheep and other types of cattle. The latifundia typically used slave...
. The members of the pirate fleet, after the failed attacks on Crete and Rhodes, retreated and many of them suffered a similar end. However the disease also affected the pursuing Romans and the emperor as well, who died from it in 270.
The psychological impact of this victory was so strong that Claudius became known to posterity as Claudius II
Gothicus ("conqueror of the Goths"). However devastating the defeat, the battle did not entirely break the Gothic tribes' military strength. Besides, the troubles with
ZenobiaZenobia was a 3rd century Syrian queen of the Palmyrene Empire. After her father's death, before becoming the second wife of King Septimius Odaenathus...
in the East and the breakaway
Gallic EmpireThe Gallic Empire is the modern name for a breakaway realm that existed from 260 to 274. It originated during the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century....
in the West were so urgent that the victory at Naissus could only serve as a temporary relief for the troubled Empire. In 271, after Aurelian repelled another Gothic invasion, he abandoned the province of
DaciaIn ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land in East-Central Europe inhabited by the Dacians. Ancient Greeks called the same people "Getae"...
north of Danube forever, in order to rationalize the defense of the Empire.