THE DISPARITY IN IDENTIFYING THE GERMANIC TRIBES

One of the most problematic issues in studying the Germanic tribes is the difficulty in identifying individual tribes in the Roman documentation.  The primary source writers often change the tribes’ names depending on when they wrote or of whom they are writing.  The tribes are sometimes given generic terms such as Goth, Gaul, Germani, or barbarian interchangeably over this period and sometimes they are named by their presumed ethnicity or by their current chief.  Modern identification often shortens these numerous tribal names to “Germanic” or “ barbarians” which are rigid terms which encourage oversimplification (Randers-Pehrson, 1983) . 

Tacitus (writing in the 1^st century AD) cites twenty-seven tribes by name in his Germania and Jordanes’ The Story of the Goths enumerates over a dozen more, while numerous other Germanic tribes are cited by various other primary sources.  The tribes’ general descriptions range from the Fenni, whose diet is mainly grass and wild animals, to the Chauci, who have no greed and no war, neither of which is likely true entirely (Tacitus, Germania, 35, 46) (Tacitus and Rives, 1999) .

There are only a few written records of the Germans before 100 BC, and archaeology in the period is of little help.  Pytheas of Marseilles is the first historian to mention the Germans in the fourth century BC.  One hundred years later, another group of Germanic tribes, the Bastarnae and Skirians, are documented as living by the Black Sea.  The third and last reference of the Germans before 100 BC is to the Cimbri and Teutones, who are attacking portions of Italy and Spain in 113 and 101 BC (Musset, 1975).

The tribes cannot be confidently identified before 100 BC because there are too many contradictions without the foundation either documentary or archaeological sources.  After 100 BC, the Germanic tribes can slowly be understood through reconstruction using both archaeological and primary historical sources.  The writings of Strabo, Tacitus, Procopius, and Jordanes can be verified in the archeological record, but the differentiating the individual tribes is not possible (Todd, 1987) .  However, this only permits three centuries of sparse documentation for historical reconstructions of the many tribes.

There are some difficulties in differentiating between the various German tribes because the primary source writers tend to use generic terms.  Poseidonios, a Greek historian, is the first to use the generic term “Germani” to describe the Germanic tribes in 100 BC (Musset, 1975) .  It is important to note that the Romans, not the Germans, used the term “Germani” to confine the Germans to one collective group when the Germanic tribes considered themselves as part of a clan not part of an ethnic group (Hachmann, 1971) .  In most of the Roman texts, the term “Germani” becomes interchangeable with the term “barbarian” (Musset, 1975) .  This is predominantly the reason why the Germans have been studied as a collective entity, with the exceptions of the Goths and Alamans.  It is a daunting task to attempt to differentiate between the individual tribal units.

Lucien Musset’s study of the Germanic tribes and their subsequent invasion concludes that the Roman use of the term “barbarian” reveals how the Romans disparaged their northern enemies (Musset, 1975) .  He mentions further that there was widespread intermingling among the various Germanic tribes along the limes, but the Germans, themselves, remained predominantly peaceful toward each other.  The enigmatic tribes, hidden by both modern dogma and ancient rhetoric, are usually associated with the largest and most influential Germanic tribes, the Goths and/ or the Alamans.  Bradley (1888) claimed that the Goths were the dominant in the 3^rd century while Musset (1975) claimed the Alamans (Musset, 1975, Bradley, 1888) .  In any case, the term Goth eventually becomes a generic term for the Germans, but this is not until the sixth century AD.

The Goths or the “Guttones” are first cited by Pytheas in 300 BC as inhabiting the region called “Frische Haff” (Eastern Prussia) (Bradley, 1888) .  They traded amber that they gathered along the Baltic shores and probably populated the area from the Baltic to the Jutland Peninsula and Scandzia (the Scandinavian Peninsula) (Jordanes, The Story of the Goths, 9) (Jordanes et al., 1960) .  They are documented in this area until after AD 100.  Pliny the Elder (AD 29) and Tacitus (AD 104) both locate them in the same area, only Tacitus now calls them the “Gotones”, but they are the same people (Bradley, 1888) .

The Goths split in the 200s into two houses: the Alamlins (the Mighty) or the Ostrogoths and the Balthings (the Bold) or the Visigoths.  Both of these Germanic tribes were very influential in the events of northeastern Europe.  The Ostrogoths were generally cooperative with the East Roman Empire that was based in Constantinople, while the Visigoths’ cooperation with the West broke down in the 200s and 300s into a series of confrontations that lead to the destruction of the Western Empire’s prominent cities.

The other tribes are mentioned very infrequently.  The early Roman writers almost assuredly had no idea who the Franks were (Todd, 1987) .  There are many tribes mentioned that are essentially documented outside of a few sentences in the surviving texts such as the Burgundians, Chatti, Cimbri, Suebi, Northmen, Lombards, Asdings, Silings and the Bavarians.  This variety of tribes of Germania makes individual study difficult.  This is exacerbated by the name changes that occur, such as the Chauci becoming the Saxons and the Thuringians becoming the Hermunduri and then the Bavarians (Musset, 1975) .  Even archaeology has some difficulty in establishing the difference between many of the Germanic tribes (Wells, 1999) .  Further, archaeology cannot support a distinct cultural separation on opposite sides of the river Rhine due to a similarity of finds throughout the period (Hachmann, 1971) .