to the attitudes and behaviors of warriors. According to Taci-
tus, Germans held land based on social status, councils met
regularly, leaders may have been elected for life, and landless
warriors attached themselves to particularly eff ective chiefs
in anticipation of the glory and spoils of battle. A pithy quote
tells how spiritless it is to toil over a plow when one’s needs
could be met by the loss of a little blood.
In Caesar’s time land was not held privately, and agricul-
ture was deemphasized in favor of pastoralism. Animals were
oft en acquired through raiding, and warfare was endemic.
Roman coinage provides clues to the pressures that warfare
placed upon the empire. Coins were a widely distributed me-
dium of communication that leave little doubt that the Ro-
mans felt a continual need to reinforce the image of victory
over German peoples in commemorative issues for individual
Roman leaders and, in some cases, for specifi c confl icts. Most
images of Germans depicted on coinage were of bound and
subjugated Germans, both male and female. Oft en when the
images of German people were absent, they were represented
by their distinctive weaponry.
In the account of Caesar’s meeting with the German
chief Ariovistus (fl. ca. 71–58 b.c.e.), who was spending the
summer in lands held by the Celtic Sequani near the Seine,
Caesar indicates that the Germans had been joined by a num-
ber of other groups, all of them eager to take advantage of
the seasonal fruits extracted from the harassed Sequani. Ar-
iovistus had led his people into the region to reduce stress on
the valuable resources of his home territory across the Rhine
River. He boasted that his undefeated people were superior to
Caesar’s own soldiers in courage and pointed out that their
skill with weapons had enabled them to avoid living under
a roof for 14 years. Caesar ultimately interceded with force,
defeating Ariovistus and his multitribal army and pushing
them back across the Rhine, but the account promotes an un-
derstanding of the Germans’ esteem for independence and
for the role of mobility in maintaining it.
Th e movement of waves of Germans marks the begin-
ning of a period of migration that started around 300 c.e.
and continued well past the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Extraordinary disruption, both internal to the imperial Ro-
man provinces and external among various Germanic groups
competing for resources, may have favored the most aggres-
sive or persuasive warriors, and tribal or group affi liation ap-
pears relatively fl uid, depending upon the motivations and
objectives of the group members. Entry into temporary alli-
ances between otherwise competitive groups was facilitated
by common cultural referents that promoted petty warfare as
an economic strategy and by the Germanic warrior-class ide-
ology. Th is type of economic base diff ered dramatically from
the Roman system of agrarian estates and town markets that
immediately preceded it.
Breaches of the frontier by migrating peoples cut swaths
into imperial territory, further decimating the Roman sys-
tem of distribution and communication. Th e initial phases
of German resettlement, the mechanism by which one group
successfully replaced another on the landscape, can be said to
follow models proposed for Britain: that is, a complex com-
bination of internal uprisings against a crumbling Roman
regime coupled with continual external assaults by groups
of people attempting to be incorporated into the various
systems, whether for trade, general access to goods, relative
stability and security, or access to land. Th ere seem to have
been many reasons for migrating people to try to get into Ro-
man-held regions.
Germanic peoples who migrated into Roman-controlled
territories included groups such as the Friedenhain-Prestov-
ice from Bohemia, the present-day Czech Republic and Slova-
kia, who had been on the Roman payroll in defense of towns
on the Danube and were settled before the withdrawal of Ro-
man forces from Raetia. Moving westward, the Alamanni or
Swabians occupied the area of present-day Switzerland, the
German state of Baden-Württemberg, and the Bavarian ad-
ministrative district of Swabia. Th e Bavarii, also identifi ed
as Boioarians (again from Bohemia), occupied southeastern
Bavaria and Austria, having moved into territory vacated by
the Ostrogoths. Th ese peoples were associated with the Mar-
comanni and with the Celtic Boii from Bohemia. Th ey ap-
pear to have been forced west into Raetia under pressure f rom
Czechs in Bohemia, who were being pressed by Serbs and
Slavs. All of these groups were moving westward in advance
of the Huns, who had reached the Danube in 376 c.e.
Th e period of stress and resettlement lasted for several
centuries. Changes apparent from the archaeological record
indicate a pattern of settlement, conquest, and consolidation
and the development of tribal coalitions that, in some ways,
are diff erentiated between central and western Europe. In the
fi rst place, the degree of Romanization in eastern-central Eu-
rope appears to have been less tenacious than farther west in
Gaul and East Anglia. In the second, the demographic struc-
ture of the resettled populations is more varied. Th e collapse
of the Roman estates happened relatively quickly. Th is can
be seen in examples such as that provided by the Gutshof (a
private farmstead or estate) at Nördlingen, a site of Alamanni
conquest in Schwaben, where the Roman-style estate was
gutted and a large German wooden house was constructed in
the middle of the complex between the ruined Roman struc-
tures. In addition to the relative weakness of institutional-
ized Roman systems in place by the mid-fourth century c.e.,
the demographic breakdown for Austria, Germany, Switzer-
land, and France diff ers from that of Anglo-Saxon Britain if
models are accurate that assert that invading forces in Britain
were predominantly male. Burial evidence for other parts of
Europe demonstrates an inclusive population.GREECE
BY JEFFREY S. CARNES
What is now mainland Greece was settled during the early
Neolithic Era (ca. 7000 b.c.e.) by peoples about whom little
is known. Th e arrival of Greek speakers came considerably710 migration and population movements: Greece