While the focus of the Third Century Crisis that engulfed the Roman Empire falls upon the frequent military usurpations, large-scale secessions and devastating foreign invasions cross the length of the frontiers, much less attention is paid to imperial waters.
Perhaps the most prominent nautical event given consideration by the sources is in the English Channel, where the raids of Saxons, Franks and probably Frisians raided the British and Gallic coastlines. This was less to do with any real interest in reporting piracy and more to do with the imperial response to these raids providing the backdrop for the usurpation of Carausius in 286, which established the decade-long Imperium Britanniarum.
There are important issues somewhat overlooked in the retelling of these piratical raids – despite the British focus of much of the story of Carausius and his secessionist empire, it is likely northern Gaul that felt the majority of these raids. And furthermore, evidenced by Carausius himself having likely been a river pilot before joining the Roman army, the rivers of north-western Gaul may have seen as much of this Germanic piracy as the English Channel.
However, the most surprising thing overlooked about Germanic piracy in the second half of the third century is that it was not confined to the North Sea, English Channel and riverine waterways of northern Gaul. In perhaps stretching to Nantes (ND, Occ. 37-38), the Gallic side of that great system of forts, the ‘Saxon Shore’, may show that the Bay of Biscay and the Loire valley were not beyond the reach of pirate raids in the fourth century.
This alone is a potentially interesting development, but sources for the third century record these Germanic pirates reaching far beyond even the Atlantic coast of western Gaul. From the latter part of the reign of Gallienus (253-260) through to that of Probus (276-282), it is recorded that Germanic pirates were operating in the Mediterranean and even the Black Sea!
It is worth noting that none of the sources to record these Mediterranean pirate raids are without avenues for criticism, detracting from the extent of this reputed Germanic piracy. The very genre of the Panegyrici Latini – praise speeches –attracts doubt over of the size of the reputed piratical threat overcome by the subject of the speeches or emperors like Probus they might like to be compared with. Care must be taken in cutting through their inherent bias to extract factual information from their inferences, allusions and silences. Historian and politician, Sextus Aurelius Victor, writing nearly a century later, got his meagre information from a hypothesized source, known as the ‘Kaisergeschichte’ – ‘History of the Emperors’, itself compiled in c.337 and riddled with errors (Bird (1984)).
Sharing the ‘Kaisergeschichte’ as a source is the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, a collection of biographies of Roman emperors and usurpers from 117 to 284. Opinions on it range from “a wretched piece of literature” (Laistner (1966), 180) and propaganda masquerading as imperial biography to a parody of late fourth century biographical and historiographical work (Rohrbacher (2016), 170-172).
Further removed again is Orosius; a priest, historian, theologian and student of Augustine of Hippo, who was writing in the first decades of the fifth century. His possible Spanish origin might give him access to knowledge of the German actions in the Iberian Peninsula, but while he is well-thought of as a methodologist, Orosius was still likely at the mercy of poor sources for these pirate raids.
Latest of all, Zosimus was writing at perhaps 250 years after the piratical events he was recording. Also, while praised for being stylistically “concise, clear and pure, and not devoid of charm” (Photius, Bib. 98), he can be uncritical and even inattentive when it comes to his sources (Dexippus and Eunapius for the second half of the third century), recording wildly different ‘opinions’ about the same subject. Similar to the others, he does not go into much depth pre-Diocletian.
The sheer number of sources from a period of over two centuries (c.297-510) might seem to lend credence to the story of these Frankish pirates, but as seen with the ‘Kaisergeschichte’, several of these sources may be getting their information from the same place. What seems like a ubiquitous, all-pervading story may actually have been a single story repeated by several others.
Chronologically, the earliest surviving source to record these raids is the panegyric to Constantius Chlorus in the Panegyrici Latini. He refers to the “incredible audacity and undeserved good fortune of a few Frankish captives in the time of the deified Probus” (Pan. Lat. VIII.18.3).
With captured ships, the anonymous orator has these Franks plundering “their way the Black Sea right to Greece and Asia” (Pan. Lat. VIII.18.3). Zosimus I.71.2 also suggest that the Franks “having collected a great number of ships, disturbed all Greece.” This seems like a rather spectacular campaign for a group of Franks to have accomplished, suggesting that they had not only managed to make it from the shores of the North Sea to the Mediterranean, but also raided to some of the most easternmost regions of the Roman Empire. Pan. Lat. VIII does record these Frankish pirates as being escaped captives of Probus, and enforced service in the Roman army could explain their presence in the eastern Mediterranean.
However, it is much more likely that the anonymous orator of Pan. Lat. VIII is lumping together various instances of Germanic piracy across the Mediterranean and Black Sea under the mistaken name of ‘Franks’ rather than ‘Germans.’ The Black Sea, Aegean and even the eastern Mediterranean is known to have faced Germanic pirate raids in the mid-third century.
Germanic Goths were settled around the northern coast of the Black Sea by the turn of the third century. At the same time as major Gothic land forces were crossing the Danube to ransack the Balkans, from bases like Olbia, the Dneister river and the Crimea, Goths recorded launching seaborne raids against Roman territory, alongside various other peoples such as the Germanic Heruli, Gepids and Vandals (as well as some other tribes like the Peucini and Borani).
In the 250s, they struck at cities the length of the southern Black Sea coast, from Pityus in Abkhazia through the Bosphorus into the Propontis. In the 260s, while the numbers of men and ships involved is greatly exaggerated – SHA Claudius 8.1-2 records 2,000 ships and 320,000 men! – they broke into the Aegean, ranging as far as Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus and sacking major cities like Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Ephesus and more (the sack of Ephesus in 268 saw considerable damage done to the Temple of Artemis, on the Seven Wonders of the World).
These raids continued on into the 270s with the Caucasus and Asia Minor facing considerable hardship, before the intervention of the emperor Tacitus in 276. By the time of Probus’ reign, the Historia Augusta would have it that the piratical culprits were Gepids, Greuthungi Goths and Vandals, who took advantage of Probus’ distraction with other enemies to strike across “the entire world on foot or in ships and did no little damage to the glory of Rome” (SHA Probus 18.2).
But despite this extensive Germanic piracy in the third century eastern Mediterranean, none of it seems to have been carried out by the Franks. So, if the pirates in the eastern Mediterranean were Germanic but not Frankish, did the Franks actually carry out any of the piracy attributed to them by Pan. Lat. VIII?
There are other sources that suggestion that a group of Franks caused considerable trouble for significant sections of the western Mediterranean. The first question about such Frankish piracy is how did they find themselves in the Mediterranean, such a considerable distance from their Lower Rhine home? We could again mention enforced service in the Roman army taking them to all corners of the empire, while the long sea voyage around the Atlantic coast of western Europe is not completely out of the question; however, the answer would appear to stem from the sorry state that the Roman Empire found itself in in the mid-third century.
With Gallienus distracted by Alemanni attacks on the Upper Rhine and Danube and the revolt of Ingenuus, governor of Pannonia, the Lower Rhine had been left under-defended. This in turn allowed a large contingent of Franks to strike across the Rhine into Gaul.
So sluggish was the imperial response that these Franks drove as far south as the Pyrenees and forced their way into the Iberian Peninsula. Orosius VII.22.7 (cf. Aurelius Victor, de Caes. 33.3) suggests that these “remote Germans stripped Spain and took possession of it”, but while there are likely to have been other towns and cities to face Frankish attack, the focus of the sources falls on the provincial capital of Hispania Tarraconensis, the port city of Tarraco (modern Tarragona).
Aurelius Victor, de Caes. 33.3 claims that the city was “almost destroyed,” while Orosius VII.22.7-8 spoke of Tarraco bearing the scars of its Frankish occupation in his time 150 years later. That said, excavations have shown that destruction was limited to the harbour area and outside the walls (Macías in Ribera (2000) 259-271). This could suggest that either once the port was ceased, the city capitulated without much of a fight or the Franks actually failed to take the main part of the city beyond the harbour (Wiseman (1956), 71-72).
A good number of these Franks did not immediately seek to return to their Rhineland homes, establishing themselves somewhere on the Mediterranean coast, possibly at Tarraco, for over a decade. But how were these Franks to support themselves? It could well be that in capturing Tarraco harbour (and perhaps other ports), they ‘conveniently acquired’ (Aurelius Victor, de Caes. 33.3) a fleet of ships. This could therefore have seen the reputed foundation of a Frankish pirate base which lasted from c.260 to 272.
While they may not have been roaming the Aegean and Black Seas, these Frankish pirates, from their Tarraco base, raided widely across the western Mediterranean. Probably their most high profile named success came on Sicily, where they sacked the island’s provincial capital, Syracuse, which was “once renowned for its naval victories” (Pan. Lat. VIII.18.3; cf. Zosimus I.71.2).
It must be imagined that these Franks built up to an attack on such a major settlement, testing or scouting the defences of Sicily before attempting something so audacious an assault. But then these Franks had already proved themselves immensely audacious in their trek across Gaul, the Pyrenees and northern Spain to Tarraco, before they took to the waters of the western Mediterranean.
And Sicily was not their only target mentioned in the sources. It has been suggested that “one group, the Bavares, even raided Mauretania” (Bird (1984), 137 n.5), citing inscriptions featuring Mauretanian commanders, Quintus Gargilius Martialis (possibly a Latin writer on horticultural subjects who died at Auzia – ILS 2767, CIL VIII.9047) and Marcus Cornelius Octavianus (formerly prefect of the classis Misenensis before being appointed equestrian governor (praeses) of Mauretania Caesarensis, and then dux per Africam Numidiam Mauretaniamque by Gallienus – ILS 9006; de Blois (2019) n.341).
However, rather than a Germanic tribe with a name akin to the later Bavarians, these Bavares are instead a Berber tribe which had been giving Roman North Africa considerable trouble throughout the mid-third century; hence the elevation of Octavianus to super-dux of basically all of what would become the Maghreb.
That said, while these ‘Bavares’ might not have had anything to do with the Franks operating in the western Mediterranean, the anonymous orator of Pan. Lat. VIII, Aurelius Victor and Zosimus claim that the Frankish pirates did harass parts of Africa.
Aurelius Victor, de Caes. 33.3 merely states that they “penetrated as far as Africa,” while Pan. Lat. VIII.18.3 has them causing significant damage to the Libyan shore before being driven off. Zosimus I.71.2 gives slightly more depth, suggesting that the Franks looked to build on their captures of Tarraco and Syracuse by striking at the rich lands of Africa Provinces, and possibly even the city of Carthage.
Attacking a city of such size could suggest that the Franks had been able to add to their numbers, attracting or press-ganging locals in Spain and the regions their ships raided. Certainly, any thought of success against Carthage would have required a sizeable force. So large in fact that it may be more likely that it was an opportunistic rather than a planned attack, with raids on Africa Province provoking such a limited Roman response that the Franks thought to take a chance on the provincial capital.
The largest Roman military presence in western North Africa was Legio III Augusta. After being disbanded by Gordian III in 238 for its defeat of the Gordiani revolt, it had been reformed in 252 by Valerian and taken a leading role in the decade-long cowing of the Berber confederation of the Quinquegentiani – ‘Five Peoples’.
Despite this solid recent track record, it is unlikely that III Augusta was involved in defending Carthage from the opportunistic Franks. Zosimus I.71.2 places this supposed Frankish raid during the reign of Probus (276-282), but even up to two decades after the dissolving of the Quinquegentiani coalition, the Berber tribes remained a persistent problem. Because of that, the African legionary base was much further into the interior than the coastal Carthage; 500 km distant in fact at Lambaesis.
This would suggest that the only potential III Augusta presence in or around Carthage would have been a detachment of the main legion. These Carthaginian defenders may instead have been a regular garrison unit or an irregular militia raised in the face of the pirates. Given the maritime basis of these Frankish raids, it would not be beyond the realms of possibility that it was a Roman fleet based at Carthage that intercepted these Franks.
Whomever marched out from Carthage, there were successful as Zosimus I.71.2 records that the Franks being repulsed from Africa “by a body of men from Carthage.” Although, this Roman success was not some monumental victory that broke the back of the Frankish pirates as Zosimus also states that the Franks “returned home without any great loss” (Zosimus I.71.2). Perhaps the mere presence of the Carthaginian garrison in the field and possibly its ships in coastal waters was enough to send the Franks back to their ships.
As Africa, Sicily, major cities like Tarraco, Syracuse and possibly Carthage were within their reach, other provinces and settlements must also have faced the threat of these Franks. It could well be imagined that other major islands like Sardinia and Corsica were attacked, along with the coastal regions of Spain, southern Gaul and Italy. Orosius VII.22.7 certainly suggests that they ranged far and wide, with “various provinces” and “great cities” bearing the scars “of their misfortunes.”
Pan. Lat. VIII.18.3 records that the Franks, “after travelling on an immense journey, entered the Ocean where it broaches the lands, and thus showed by the outcome of their boldness that nothing is closed to a pirate’s desperation where a path lies open to navigation.” Unfortunately, the anonymous author does not give a clear indication of where this is supposed to be – is this another claim that the Franks broke into the Black Sea or a suggestion that they broke through the Pillars of Hercules to harass the Atlantic coast of Africa and Hispania? Or a more general claim that none of the waters around the empire or even the entire world (if there was a difference in his mind…) were safe from their decade-long piratical rampage?
While it is clear that this Frankish presence in the western Mediterranean ended at some point prior to Pan. Lat. VIII’s recording of it in c.297, it is not completely clear from the source material exactly when and how it came to an end. Aurelius Victor’s summing up of Frankish pirate activities is mentioned alongside events of Gallienus’ reign, but then it is such a summing up that any real sense of chronology and timeframe is lost. He also does not name any specific defeat of these pirates. Similarly, Orosius gives little impression of how or when this Frankish raiding came to an end.
Pan. Lat. VIII.18.3 might be speaking about events surrounding Constantius I Chlorus’ success in recovering Britain for the empire and against the Franks in northern Gaul in the 290s, but in recalling previous Frankish trouble it does link this bout of piracy to the reign of Probus. However, it too gives no mention of how/when these pirates were defeated.
The Historia Augusta also speaks of Germanic piracy taking place under and defeated by Probus, hinting that the imperial anti-piracy campaign took time – “He crushed them… at diverse times and by various victories” (SHA Probus 18.3); but then its usefulness here is hindered by its failure to identify the Franks as one of the piratical culprits. Zosimus also places these Frankish raids during the reign of Probus and would seem to go further in stating that it was their repulse by the men of Carthage that caused them to return home.
However, a potential issue for the Historia Augusta and Zosimus is that while both hint at their pirates returning ‘home’ after checks dealt to them be the forces of Probus, neither give clarity on where their ‘home’ was at this point – Tarraco or their German homeland?
SHA Probus 18.3 saying that “only a few returned to their homes, enjoying glory because they had made their escape from the hands of Probus” after several defeats seems like a decisive ousting from their Mediterranean base, so their ‘homes’ appear more likely beyond the Rhine or Danube.
Zosimus’ “yet they returned home without any great loss” after their check by the men of Carthage seems like it could mean either Tarraco or Germania. It also suggests that the Franks had not been on the receiving end of a decisive defeat; almost as if they had chosen to go ‘home’ rather than being forced there. Although it should be asked why would they abandon what had surely been a lucrative position raiding the western Mediterranean if not for a growing imperial opposition.
When it comes to this period of Frankish piracy, there are some issues with their recording – clear identification of the culprits, lumping together several Germanic pirate campaigns, misidentifying similarly named but racially distinct tribes and extracting a clear-cut layout of events and their time period. But even if Mediterranean Frankish piracy was centred on Tarraco and caution is taken over its true extent, limiting the scope of their action to ‘just’ the western Mediterranean does not detract from their achievement. After all, it was 1,000 miles from their Lower Rhine homes to the Spanish coast through hostile Roman territory.
These Frankish adventurers were able to take advantage of the distraction of the Roman central government with the crumbling of the Rhine and Danube frontiers, Persian invasions, the secessionist states of Gaul and Palmyra and frequent usurpations to maraud freely across Gaul into Spain. And then take advantage of the limited Roman military presence to establish and maintain a Mediterranean naval base that allowed for over a decade of maritime raiding, posing a significant threat to islands, maritime regions of major provinces and several significant settlements.
Small wonder that various sources of the next two centuries were keen to record their escapades and that their “glory” was celebrated when they returned home (SHA Probus 18.3).
Quotations
“Indeed, it recalled to mind that incredible audacity and undeserved good fortune of a few Frankish captives in the time of the deified Probus, who, seizing some ships, plundered their way from the Black Sea right to Greece and Asia and, driven not without causing damage from very many parts of the Libyan shore, finally took Syracuse itself, once renowned for its naval victories, and, after travelling on an immense journey, entered the Ocean where it broaches the lands, and thus showed by the outcome of their boldness that nothing is closed to a pirate’s desperation where a path lies open to navigation.”
Pan. Lat. VIII.18.3
“while tribes of Franks pillaged Gaul and occupied Spain, where they ravaged and almost destroyed the town of Tarraconensis, and some, after conveniently acquiring ships, penetrated as far as Africa.”
Aurelius Victor, de Caes. 33.3
“But when he had likewise brought over many from other tribes, that is, Gepedes, Greuthungi and Vandals, they all broke faith, and when Probus was busied with wars against the pretenders they roved over well nigh the entire world on foot or in ships and did no little damage to the glory of Rome. (3) He crushed them, however, at diverse times and by various victories, and only a few returned to their homes, enjoying glory because they had made their escape from the hands of Probus.”
SHA Probus 18.2-3
“The remote Germans stripped Spain and took possession of it… Throughout the various provinces, there exist today poor and insignificant settlements situated in the ruins of great cities which still bear evidences of their names and tokens of their misfortunes. Our own city Tarraco in Spain is one of these, and we can point to it to console ourselves over our recent misery”
Orosius VII.22.7-8
“But the Franks having applied to the emperor, and having a country given to them, a part of them afterwards revolted, and having collected a great number of ships, disturbed all Greece; from whence they proceeded into Sicily, to Syracuse, which they attacked, and killed many people there. At length they arrived in Africa, whence though they were repulsed by a body of men from Carthage, yet they returned home without any great loss. This circumstance likewise happened during the reign of Probus.”
Zosimus I.71.2
Bibliography
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