invaders. During the reign of Taejo (53–146 c.e.), for exam-
ple, the Koreans mounted a number of attacks on the Chinese
garrisons at Lolang, Xiantu, and Liaodong. Th eir eff orts were
successful, and Koguryo became entirely independent. Th e
regime also launched attacks against smaller states to absorb
them. Later, under King Gwanggaeto the Great, who reigned
from 391 to 412 c.e., the kingdom further expanded its ter-
ritories through military conquest, overcoming resistance
from the feudal lords who controlled various regions of the
peninsula. His army conquered at least 64 walled cities and
1,400 villages against a tribe called the Buyeo. He subdued
additional tribes, annexed portions of the peninsula, con-
quered Silla, and waged war against Japan. Th e result of his
eff orts and those of his son was to turn Korea into a unifi ed
country for some 50 years.
EUROPE
BY BRADLEY SKEEN
Th e ancient Mediterranean civilizations of Greece, Macedo-
nia, and Rome approached the rest of Europe with a desire to
control events there for their own advantage. Th e response to
this imperialistic interference was violence: among diff erent
tribes fi ghting each other on behalf of or against the outsid-
ers, in devastating raids on the homelands of the great powers
themselves, and fi nally in the conquest of the Western Ro-
man Empire once political and economic circumstances had
radically changed.
Th e ancient Greeks and Romans built upon older cul-
tures (Etruscan, Minoan, Egyptian, and Assyrian) around
the Mediterranean to establish cities and develop the so-
phisticated economic and political structures that mark
civilization. But their neighbors in Europe—Gauls or Celts
in present-day Spain, France, the British Isles, and northern
Italy; Germans in modern-day Germany and Czech Repub-
lic; and Iranian peoples around the Black Sea—maintained
a more traditional way of life as farmers or nomadic herds-
men. Th e primary units of social organization were the
household and clan, while chiefs exerted loose control over
limited areas. Larger political structures that the Romans
called “tribes” theoretically united larger areas populated
by speakers of a common dialect, but in practice kings and
chiefs had little way to enforce their rule, precisely because
they lacked such tools of more complex societies as taxation
and standing armies.
An extensive commercial trade conditioned relations
between northern and Mediterranean Europe. Th e north-
erners had access to raw materials, including furs, amber,
tin, and gold, which they were eager to exchange for luxury
goods, especially wine, from the southern societies. Because
of the prestige they would gain from possessing the trap-
pings of those societies, northern rulers were keenly inter-
ested in obtaining items such as sets of ornamental gold and
silver dinnerware and dies to strike their own coins. Greeks
and Romans attempted to exert control over leaders in the
north by granting or denying them access to such goods.
Alternatively, Greeks and Romans occasionally launched
military expeditions against groups who were hostile to
their interests.
Resistance to imperial control could take only a military
form. Although leaders in northern Europe had little actual
power through their offi ce, they were sometimes able to at-
tract a large following through a personal charisma that made
them seem destined for victory, a quality called rede in the
Germanic languages. Endorsement by religious authorities—
for example, the pagan priesthood of the Druids—certainly
helped build such a reputation. Favored leaders could attract
large war bands not only from their own tribes but also from
more diverse groups. Sometimes bands of as many as 50,000
warriors raided Greek or Roman territories with devastating
eff ect. About 390 b.c.e. a band of Gauls sacked Rome itself.
In 281 b.c.e. another band of Gauls attacked Greece, getting
as far as the shrine of Delphi (279 b.c.e.). Turned away, they
crossed over into Asia and were defeated in 277 b.c.e. by the
Macedonian king of Syria, Antiochus I, though he could not
prevent them from settling in what is now Turkey and found-
ing the new kingdom of Galatia, named aft er them. Aft er 113
b.c.e. a force composed of two German tribes and many Celts
ravaged Italy and Spain until it was defeated by the Romans
in 101 b.c.e.
As Rome consolidated its political organization and
military power in the Mediterranean, however, the situation
changed. Roman leaders increasingly had to develop a char-
ismatic reputation through military victory and build up a
military apparatus personally loyal to them as civil war be-
came common at the end of the republic. At the beginning
of the empire prestige was still an important concern of the
emperors, as was the assurance of security for the empire by
acquiring defensible borders. Accordingly, Roman generals
undertook the conquest of much of northern Europe around
the turn of the era.
Julius Caesar conquered Gaul (modern-day France and
the Low Countries) between 58 and 51 b.c.e. Although lo-
cal peoples tended to ignore invaders of this kind unless they
were directly threatened, once the scope of Caesar’s ambi-
tions became clear, the Gallic chieft ain Vercingetorix (d. 46
b.c.e.) managed in 52 b.c.e. to attract a large war band of vari-
ous tribal groups to make a concerted defense of the fortifi ed
hill town of Alesia (in present-day France). His eff orts were
ultimately unsuccessful.
Once his position was secure at the beginning of the
empire, the emperor Augustus (r. 27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.) decided
to conquer Germany. In 9 c.e., aft er initial campaigns by his
stepsons, Augustus sent an army of three legions (30,000 men)
to pacify the area. Under the command of Varus, a bureau-
crat rather than a military specialist, this force was opposed
by a large band of Germans led by Arminius (also known as
“Armin” or “Hermann,” 18 b.c.e.–19 c.e.), who had led Ger-
man warriors as auxiliaries fi ghting for the Romans in pervi-
ous campaigns. He caught the Roman force in an ambush in876 resistance and dissent: Europe