Marcomannic Wars (166-180): Marcus Aurelius on the Danube

The Marcomannic Wars were a series of wars fought between about AD 166 and 180 along the middle Danube, the northern frontier of the Roman Empire. Germanic peoples such as the Marcomanni and Quadi, together with the Sarmatian Iazyges, crossed into Roman territory and even reached northern Italy. Emperor Marcus Aurelius spent most of his last decade on campaign against them, and the wars marked the end of the long peace that Rome had enjoyed in the second century.

Background

In the mid-second century the Danube frontier ran through the provinces of Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia and Moesia, roughly modern southern Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria. Beyond the river lived peoples whom the Romans called Marcomanni and Quadi, in today’s Czech Republic and Slovakia, and the Iazyges on the Hungarian plain. They traded with the empire and were bound to it by treaties.

Two problems weakened Rome just as pressure on this border grew. Legions had been moved east for the war against Parthia of 161–166, led nominally by Marcus Aurelius’s co-emperor Lucius Verus. The returning troops then brought with them the Antonine Plague, a pandemic that killed large numbers in the army and in cities. At the same time, migrations of peoples further north and east, including groups linked to the later Goths and Vandals, pushed neighbours toward the Roman frontier.

The first war (c. 166–175)

The first warning came in about 166 or 167, when some 6,000 Langobardi and Obii crossed the Danube into Pannonia. They were driven back, and the chiefs of eleven peoples sent the Marcomannic king Ballomar to negotiate peace with the Roman governor. Marcus raised two new legions, II Italica and III Italica, and in 168 both emperors travelled north to Aquileia. Lucius Verus died early in 169 on the way back to Rome, probably of a stroke, leaving Marcus as sole emperor.

The crisis came around 170. A Roman offensive across the river seems to have failed, and Marcomanni and Quadi broke through into Italy, besieging Aquileia and destroying the town of Opitergium. In the same years the Costoboci, a people from beyond the lower Danube, raided as far as Eleusis near Athens. The dating of these events is debated, and some historians place the invasion of Italy as early as 167.

Marcus responded with great determination. To pay for the war without raising taxes, he auctioned imperial treasures in the Forum of Trajan, according to later sources. He enrolled slaves, gladiators and bandits as soldiers and hired Germanic warriors. Under generals such as his son-in-law Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus and the future emperor Pertinax, the invaders were cleared from Italy and the provinces.

From his headquarters at Carnuntum, near modern Vienna, Marcus then carried the war north of the river. The Marcomanni were defeated by 172, when he took the victory title Germanicus. The Quadi and then the Iazyges followed. In 175 the revolt of Avidius Cassius in the east forced Marcus to make a hurried peace with the Iazyges, who returned many thousands of Roman captives and supplied 8,000 cavalry, some of whom were sent to Britain.

The second war (177–180)

The settlement did not last. Fighting broke out again with the Quadi and Marcomanni, and in August 178 Marcus left Rome with Commodus for what the sources call the second German expedition. Roman forces wintered deep in enemy territory. An inscription carved on the castle rock at Trenčín in Slovakia, ancient Laugaricio, records 855 soldiers of the Second Legion Adiutrix stationed there in about 179–180, the most northerly known Roman inscription in central Europe.

According to the unreliable Historia Augusta, Marcus intended to create two new provinces called Marcomannia and Sarmatia. Modern historians are divided on whether this plan was real. Marcus died on 17 March 180, probably at Vindobona, and Commodus soon made peace. The Marcomanni and Quadi had to give hostages, supply grain and recruits, and keep away from a strip of land along the river.

Consequences

The wars cost Rome dearly in men and money at a time when the plague was also reducing the population. They forced the empire to rely more heavily on recruits from the frontier provinces and on hired warriors from beyond the border. Marcus also settled thousands of defeated or displaced people on Roman land in Pannonia, Dacia, Germany and even Italy, an early example of a policy that later emperors used on a much larger scale.

The frontier itself was strengthened rather than moved. New forts and watchtowers were built along the Danube, and the two Italian legions raised for the war were stationed permanently in Noricum and Raetia, at Lauriacum and Castra Regina (Regensburg).

The Column of Marcus Aurelius

The best visual record of the wars is the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Piazza Colonna in Rome. Modelled on Trajan’s Column, it carries a spiral relief that winds around the shaft about twenty times. The shaft is 100 Roman feet tall, about 29.6 metres, and the whole monument with its base stands roughly 40 metres high. An inscription shows the column was complete by 193.

The reliefs show river crossings, battles, burning villages and the capture of women and children, with a harshness that contrasts with the calmer scenes on Trajan’s Column. Two famous scenes show the “lightning miracle”, in which a Roman siege engine is struck by lightning, and the “rain miracle”, in which a winged rain god drenches Roman troops and washes away their enemies. In 1589 Pope Sixtus V placed a bronze statue of Saint Paul on the top, where the emperor’s statue had once stood.

Key people

• Marcus Aurelius (121–180): emperor from 161, Stoic philosopher and commander in the Danube campaigns. Parts of his private notes, the Meditations, were written in camp; Book 1 ends “among the Quadi on the Granua” (the river Hron).
• Lucius Verus (130–169): co-emperor, who accompanied Marcus north before his sudden death.
• Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus: a Syrian-born general who married Marcus’s daughter Lucilla and was one of the leading commanders.
• Ballomar: king of the Marcomanni, who led the early peace negotiations.
• Commodus (161–192): Marcus’s son and successor, who ended the war in 180.

Myths and facts

Christian authors such as Tertullian claimed that the rain miracle was answered prayer by Christian soldiers of the Twelfth Legion “Fulminata” and that Marcus had acknowledged this in a letter. The letter is a later forgery. The pagan historian Cassius Dio credited an Egyptian magician named Arnuphis, while the column shows a Roman rain god.

The film Gladiator (2000) opens with a battle in the Marcomannic Wars and shows Marcus murdered by Commodus. In reality Marcus is usually thought to have died of illness, possibly the plague, although Cassius Dio reports a rumour that his doctors hastened his death to please Commodus.

Timeline

• AD 161: Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus become joint emperors.
• c. 166–167: Langobardi and Obii cross the Danube and are driven back.
• 169, early: Lucius Verus dies.
• c. 170: Marcomanni and Quadi besiege Aquileia and destroy Opitergium.
• 171–173: Marcus campaigns from Carnuntum against the Marcomanni and Quadi.
• 175: Peace with the Iazyges after the revolt of Avidius Cassius.
• 178, August: Marcus and Commodus leave Rome for the second expedition.
• 180, 17 March: Marcus dies on the Danube; Commodus makes peace.
• c. 193: Column of Marcus Aurelius completed in Rome.

Why it matters

The Marcomannic Wars showed that Rome’s northern frontier could be broken and that Italy itself was vulnerable. They set the pattern for the following century: long, expensive wars against peoples on the Rhine and Danube, emperors living with their armies near the frontier, and growing numbers of “barbarians” settled inside the empire. These pressures returned with greater force during the Crisis of the Third Century.