Quadi

This article is about Germanic tribe. For the Muslim judge, see Qadi. For other uses, see Kadi.

The Roman empire under Hadrian (ruled 117–38), showing the location of the Quadi in the northern Carpathian mountains (now Slovakia)

The Quadi were an important Germanic people during the Roman era, who lived in a kingdom north of the Roman border on the Upper Danube river, approximately in the area of present-day southwestern Slovakia and southern Moravia. They were the easternmost of a series of powerful Suebian kingdoms along the river frontier, that the Romans sought to control and manipulate over several centuries. Most notably, the powerful Marcomanni kingdom neighboured the Quadi to the west, in the present-day Czech Republic. To the north, in the western Carpathian mountains were more Germanic peoples who the Romans considered to be more barbarous. To the south of the Quadi, the Danube, and therefore the Roman border, turns southwards between present-day Bratislava and Budapest. So while the Roman province of Pannonia faced the Quadi to the south, to the southeast of the Quadi lay the Great Hungarian Plain which Roman geographers considered to be outside of Germania. This was inhabited by the Sarmatian Iazyges.

During the Marcomannic wars in the second century AD the Quadi and their neighbours went through several rounds of violent conflict with the Roman empire during the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his co-emperors. By 480 when he died there were new peace agreements between Rome and the Quadi, but it did not resolve the longer term problems which the region faced from populations periodically wishing to move towards the Roman empire.

Around 400 AD the Marcomanni and Quadi names disappear from contemporary records, and it came under the domination of peoples who had migrated from the East, most notably the Huns and Goths. In 409 Saint Jerome listed the Quadi and many other Middle Danubian peoples in a list of peoples who had recently occupied parts of Gaul.

Although there were many Suebian tribes living in different parts of Europe, the Quadi and their Upper Danubian neighbours may nevertheless have contributed to the "Danube Suevi" who established a kingdom during the 5th century in the Danube region, apparently near Lake Balaton. Given their presence in Gaul in 409 they may also have been connected to the Suevi who founded the Kingdom of the Suebi in Gallaecia in northwestern Iberia. The Danubian Suebian kingdom was defeated by Ostrogoths at the Battle of Bolia in 469, and under their king Hunimund many of them apparently moved to present-day southern Germany. The Iberian Suevi were defeated by the Visigoths and integrated into their kingdom in 585.

Name

According to the Germanische Altertumskunde Online, the etymologies proposed for the ethnonym are all fraught with difficulties:

• Since Jacob Grimm (d. 1863), it has often been assumed that this ethnonym is related to the Dutch adjective kwaad, meaning "bad, evil, ugly, corrupt", and which is also found in medieval German. However, this is surprising because it has such a negative meaning. It could perhaps have started as a name given by their enemies. It might have continued as a name intended to evoke fear.
• It has also often been associated with Germanic words such as English "quote", meaning "to say". However, the precise, specific meaning of the ethnonym would remain unclear.
• Wolfgang Krause proposed that the ethnonym might originally belong to Germanic hwatjan, meaning "to incite." However, the form of the ethnonym as it appears in ancient sources would then not show show the expected Germanic First Sound Shift.

First century AD

Strabo, writing about 23 AD, appears to have written the earliest surviving mention of the Quadi, although aspects of the text are somewhat doubtful. In the Hercynian forest, which Strabo described as a mountain range running north of the Danube, like a smaller Alps, he mentioned tribes of Suebi "such as the tribes of the "Coldui" (κολδούων), in whose territory lies "Buiaimon" [Βουίαιμον, the original "Bohemia"], the royal seat of Maroboduus". King Maroboduus had led several peoples including his own people the Marcomanni into this forested region. Not only is this spelling of Quadi with an "L" unexpected when compared to later references, but also the implication that Maroboduus lived within Quadi territory. Errors are therefore suspected in the surviving text.

The Quadi appear only in contemporary works after the time when the Marcomanni, their long-term neighbours to the west, had already settled in Bohemia. The records indicate that the Quadi lived in southern Moravia, northern Lower Austria, and southwestern Slovakia, at some points soon after their defeat during the Germania campaign of Drusus in 9 BC. Whether the Quadi had also moved from elsewhere, and if so when and from where, is unknown. Despite the lack of clear literary evidence it is generally assumed that those Suebi who later became known as the Quadi also took up residence in Moravia around the same time. The Marcomanni moved to Bohemia . Their leader at this time was apparently Tudrus, who is mentioned only by Tacitus, in the first clear mentions of the Quadi in ancient records:

The Marcomanni stand first in strength and renown, and their very territory, from which the Boii were driven in a former age, was won by valour.	praecipua Marcomanorum gloria viresque, atque ipsa etiam sedes pulsis olim Boiis virtute parta.
Nor are the Narisci and Quadi inferior to them. This I may call the frontier of Germania, so far as it is completed by the Danube.	nec Naristi Quadive degenerant. eaque Germaniae velut frons est, quatenus Danubio praecingitur.
The Marcomanni and Quadi have, up to our time, been ruled by kings of their own nation, descended from the noble stock of Maroboduus and Tudrus. They now submit even to foreigners; but the strength and power of the monarch depend on Roman influence. He is occasionally supported by our arms, more frequently by our money, and his authority is none the less.	Marcomanis Quadisque usque ad nostram memoriam reges manserunt ex gente ipsorum, nobile Marobodui et Tudri genus (iam et externos patiuntur), sed vis et potentia regibus ex auctoritate Romana. raro armis nostris, saepius pecunia iuvantur, nec minus valent.

The 2nd-century Greek geographer Ptolemy similarly places them on the edge of Germania. He names some neighbouring tribes starting from the mountains and forests to the north, and going south.

...under [south of] the Asciburgius mountains are the Korkontoi and the Lugian Buri ["Bupi"] up to the head of the Vistula river; below these first are the Sidones, then the Cotini ["Cogni"], then the Visburgii above the Hercynian valley.	...Λοῦγοι οἱ Βοῦποι μέχρι τῆς κεφαλῆς τοῦ Οὐιστούλα ποταμοῦ· ὑπὸ δὲ τούτους πρῶτοι Σίδωνες, εἶτα Κῶγνοι, εἶτα Οὐισβούργιοι ὑπὲρ τὸν Ὀπκύνιον Δρυμόν.
below the Hercynian Forest are the Quadi, below whom are the iron mines and the Luna Forest, under which is the large nation of the Baemi up to the Danube, and next to them along the river are the Rakatri and the Rakatai on the plains.	ὑπὸ δὲ τὸν Ὀρχύνιον Δρυμὸν Κούαδοι, ὑφ’ οὓς τὰ σιδηρωρυχεῖα καὶ Λοῦνα Ὓλη, ὑφ’ ἦν μέγα ἔθνος οἱ Βαῖμοι μέχρι τοῦ Δανουβίου, καὶ συνεχεῖς αὐτοῖς παρὰ τὸν ποταμὸν οἵ τε Ῥακατρίαι καὶ οἱ πρὸς ταῖς καμπαῖς Ῥακάται.

According to Hofenender, many scholars interpret a remark of Velleius Paterculus, which says Maroboduus subjugated all his neighbours, to mean that the Quadi were also under his overlordship. Although there is no consensus about this, it is in any case clear that the two peoples were always closely connected over many centuries.

A sesterce of Antoninus Pius, 143 AD which says REX QUADIS DATUS (King given to Quadi)

In The Annals, Tacitus recounts that Maroboduus was deposed by the exile Catualda around 18 AD. Catualda was in turn defeated by the Hermunduri king, Vibilius. Vannius's soldiers are described here as infantry, but he also called for cavalry from his Sarmatian allies, the Iazyges. The subjects of Marobduus and Catualda were moved near the Danube, between the Morava and Cusus rivers, and placed by the Romans under the control of the Quadian king Vannius. Vannius became very wealthy and was himself eventually also deposed in 50/51 AD by the neighbouring Lugii and Hermunduri, in coordination with his nephews Vangio and Sido, who then divided his realm between themselves as Roman client kings, and remained notably loyal. Vannius was defeated and fled with his followers across the Danube, where they were assigned land in Pannonia. This settlement is convincingly associated with Germanic finds from the 1st century AD in Burgenland, west of Lake Neusiedl.

The area where Vannius ruled over the Marcomanni exiles is generally considered to have been a distinct state to the Quadi kingdom itself. Unfortunately the Cusus river has not been identified with certainty. However, Slovak archaeological research locates the core area of the Vannius kingdom in the southwestern Slovakian lowlands around Trnava, east of the Little Carpathians. This new settlement is believed to have been intended by the Romans to create a buffer between the Roman Danube frontier and the Quadi on the one hand, and their neighbours the Iazyges on the other. Geographically, Pliny the Elder saw this area as the edge of Germania, with the Iazyges sitting outside of it, and the kingdom of Vannius within it. In line with this, Ptolemy (2.11.11) mentions a "great nation" of Baimoi (Βαῖμοι) between the Quadi and the Danube, and these are likely to be the subjects of Vannius who originated from Bohemia.

To the north of the Marcomanni and Quadi Tacitus names four peoples, the Marsigni, Cotini, Osi, and Buri, dwelling in a range of mountains running from west to east which separated them from the a large group of peoples named the Lugii. The Osi and Cotini did not speak Germanic languages and worked the mines, paying the Quadi tribute.

The Quadi had a long stable relationship with the Romans as a client state but this was interrupted for the first time under emperor Domitian during the years 89-97. The relationship then stabilized again in the time of emperor Nerva.

Second century

See also: Marcomannic Wars

The relationship between the Romans and the Quadi and their neighbours was far more seriously and permanently disrupted during the long series of conflicts called the Marcomannic wars, which were fought mainly during the rule of emperor Marcus Aurelius (reigned 161-180).

In the 150s or 160s, 6000 Langobardi (Lombards originally from present-day north Germany) and Obii (whose identity is uncertain) crossed the Lower Danube into Roman territory where they were quickly defeated. Dio Cassius reports that these events worried several of the barbarian nations. A group of them selected Ballomarius, king of the Marcomanni, and ten other representatives of the other nations, in a peace mission to the governor of Roman Pannonia. Oaths were sworn and the envoys returned home. Some scholars think the Quadi may have been involved in this raid, or at least allowed it to happen. However the Quadi and their neighbours were facing their own problems with raiders from further north, and had been trying for some time to get more support from the empire. On their side, the Romans were apparently planning for a Germania campaign, and knew that Italy itself was threatened by these pressures, but were deliberately diplomatic while they were occupied with the Parthian campaign in the Middle East, and badly affected by the Antonine plague. However, the Historia Augusta especially blames the Marcomanni and Victohali for throwing everything into confusion while other tribes had been driven on by the more distant barbarians.

A monument found in Trenčín. "To the victory of emperor dedicated by 855 soldiers of II. Legion of an army stationed in Laugaricio. Made to order of Marcus Valerius Maximianus, a legate of the Second Auxiliary legion."

Although a Roman offensive could not start in 167, two new legions were raised and in 168 the two emperors, Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius, set out to cross the alps. Either in 167, before the Romans setting, or in 169, after the Romans came to a stop when Verus died, the Marcomanni and Quadi led a crossing of the Danube, and an attack into Italy itself. They destroyed Opitergium (present-day Oderzo) and put the important town of Aquileia under siege. Whatever the exact sequence of events, the Historia Augusta says that with the Romans in action several kings of the barbarians retreated, and some of the barbarians put anti-Roman leaders to death. In particular, the Quadi, having lost their king, announced they would not confirm an elected successor without approval from the emperors.

Marcus Aurelius returned to Rome but headed north again in the autumn of 169. He established a Danubian headquarters in Carnuntum between present-day Vienna and Bratislava. From here he could receive embassies from the different peoples north of the Danube. Some were given the possibility to settle in the empire, others were recruited to fight on the Roman side. The Quadi were pacified, and in 171 they agreed to leave their coalition, and returned deserters and 13,000 prisoners of war. They supplied horses and cattle as war contributions, and promised not to allow Marcomanni or Jazyges passage through their territory. By 173 the Quadi had rebelled again, and they expelled their Roman-approved king Furtius, replaced by Ariogaisos. In a major battle between 172 and 174, a Roman force was almost defeated, until a sudden rainstorm allowed them to defeat the Quadi. The incident is well-known because of the account given by Dio Cassius, and on the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. By 175 the cavalry from the Marcomanni, Naristae, and Quadi were forced to travel to the Middle East, and in 176 Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus held a triumph as victors over Germania and Sarmatia.

The situation remained disturbed in subsequent years. The Romans declared a new war in 177 and set off in 178, against the Marcomanni, Hermunduri, Sarmatians, and Quadi as specific enemies. Rome executed a successful and decisive battle against them in 179 at Laugaricio (present-day Trenčín in Slovakia) under the command of legate and procurator Marcus Valerius Maximianus. By 180 AD the Quadi and Marcomanni were in a state of occupation, with Roman garrisons of 20,000 men each permanently stationed in both countries. The Romans even blocked the mountain passes so that they could not migrate north to live with the Semnones. Marcus Aurelius was considering the creation of a new imperial province called Marcomannia when he died in 180.

Third century

Around 214/215 AD, Dio Cassius reports that because of raids into Pannonia, the emperor Caracalla invited the Quadi king Gaiobomarus to meet him, and then had him executed. According to this report Caracalla "claimed that he had overcome the recklessness, greed, and treachery of the Germans by deceit, since these qualities could not be conquered by force", and he was proud of the "enmity with the Vandili and the Marcomani, who had been friends, and in having executed Gaïobomarus".

In the middle of the third century the Quadi seem to have rejected their client relationship with Rome, and they began a series of attacks which they organized together with their eastern neighbours the Sarmatians. Together they repeatedly attacked Illyricum. There was a Roman campaign against the Quadi in 283-284 AD, and as a result emperor Carinus (coemperor 283-285) and Numerian (coemperor 284-285) celebrated this as two personal triumphs in 283 and 284. Nevertheless the Quadi were again mentioned among attacking Germanic tribes in 285 AD. This situation seems to have been pacified in the time of Diocletian (reigned 284-305).

Fourth century

In the first part of the 4th century there is evidence that the Quadi had developed a better relationship with the Romans. Their region of influence spread down the Danube towards present-day Budapest and it seems that their economy support a wealthy Romanised nobility.

The so-called Heidentor in Carnuntum.

In 357 a new phase of confrontation during the reign of Constantius II (reigned 337-361) which gives insight into the way in which the culture of the Quadi had changed. The Quadi and Sarmatians were making raids across the Danube into Roman Pannonia and Moesia. The account given by Ammianus Marcellinus show that in this period the Quadi had become more accustomed to actions on horseback. He reported that the involved Quadi and Sarmatians "were neighbours and had like customs and armour", "better fitted for brigandage than for open warfare, have very long spears and cuirasses made from smooth and polished pieces of horn, fastened like scales to linen shirts". They had "swift and obedient horses" and they generally had more than one, "to the end that an exchange may keep up the strength of their mounts and that their freshness may be renewed by alternate periods of rest".

In 358 the emperor crossed the Danube and resistance quickly fell apart. The leaders who came to negotiate with the emperor represented different parts of the populations who had parcipated. An important one was prince Araharius, who ruled "a part of the Transiugitani and the Quadi". An inferior of his was Usafer, a prominent noble, who led "some of the Sarmatians". In the negotiations the emperor declared that the Sarmatians were Roman dependents and demanded hostages. He then learned that there had been social upheaval among the Sarmatians, and some of the nobility had even fled to other countries. He gave them a new king, Zizais, a young prince who was the first leader to surrender. He then met with Vitrodorus the son of Viduarius the King of the Quadi. They also gave hostages and they drew their swords "which they venerate as gods" in order to swear loyalty. As a next step he moved to the mouth of the Tisza and slaughtered or enslaved many of the Sarmatians who lived on the other side and had felt themselves protected by the river from the Romans. King Viduarius was probably king of the western Quadi. Constantius erected a triumphal arch in Carnuntium, today known as the Heidentor, but raids did not stop.

Some years after the death of Constantius, the new emperor Valentinian I (reigned 364-375) reinforced the borders. He fortified the northern and eastern banks of the Danube, and by 373 AD he ordered construction of a garrisoned fort within Quadi territory itself. In 374, when complaints from the Quadi delayed construction the Roman general charged with getting it done invited their king Gabinius to dinner and then murdered him. As Ammianus wrote "the Quadi, who had long been quiet, were suddenly aroused to an outbreak". Neighbouring tribes including the Sarmatians sprung into action and began raids across the Danube, repulsing the Roman military's first poorly coordinated attempts to confront them.

Valentinian moved to the Danube border and went first to Carnuntum, which was damaged and deserted, and then Aquincum (now part of Budapest). He sent one force north into the Quadi heartlands, and took another force across the Danube near present-day Budapest, where the enemies had settlements, and they slaughtered everyone they could find, and then made his winter quarters on the Roman side of the Danube in Bregetio (present-day Komárom). Here Quadi envoys and came to plead for peace, but when they maintained that the building of a barrier was begun "unjustly and without due occasion", thus rousing rude spirits to anger, Valentinian was enraged, became sick, and died. This ended the conflict.

In 380 the Romans suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Adrianople, which was connected to a sudden movement of peoples such as the Goths and Alans coming from the present day Ukraine, triggered by the arrival of the Huns in Eastern europe. According to Ammianus, the region of the Marcomanni and Quadi were the among the areas first affected by the "a savage horde of unknown peoples, driven from their abodes by sudden violence". As a result of the defeat, the Romans tried a new approach, and one of the armed groups responsible for the defeat, led by Alatheus and Saphrax, were settled into the Pannonian part of the Roman empire, near the Quadi homeland, and expected to do military service for Rome.

After the death of emperor Theodosius I in 395, Saint Jerome listed the Marcomanni and Quadi together with several of the eastern peoples causing devastation in the Roman provinces stretching from Constantinople to the Julian Alps, including Dalmatia, and all the provinces of Pannonia: "Goths and Sarmatians, Quadi and Alans, Huns and Vandals and Marcomanni".

After the fourth century

After about 400, the old cremation burials typical of Suebians like the Quadi disappear from the archaeological record, and the names of the distinct tribes disappeared from the written record. They and other Suebian groups apparently reformed into several new groups. During the same period the Pannonian region was affected by the Gothic armies of Radagaisus and possibly also that of Alaric.

According to historians such as Herwig Wolfram:

The Marcomanni and the Quadi gave up their special names after crossing the Danube, in fact both the emigrants and the groups remaining in Pannonia became Suebi again. The Pannonian Suebi became subjects of the Huns. After the battle at the Nadao they set up their kingdom, and when it fell, they came, successively under Herulian and Longobard rule, south of the Danube under Gothic rule, and eventually again under Longobard rule.

One group identified as Suebi crossed the Rhine in 406, together with Hasdingi and Silingi Vandals, and Alans, all neighbours of the Quadi, and therefore it is thought by Wolfram that these Suebi included a significant Quadi component. Jerome lists the Quadi and Suebi separately, but his list is sometimes seen as being deliberately classical and literary, not necessarily accurate. On the other hand the Quadi appear at the start of the list along with the other Pannonian groups, and he goes out of his way to say that even Pannonian citizens, from within the empire, were among the moving people.

In the Merovingian period, a new Suebian entity formed close to the Quadi homelands, the Bavarians, whose name references some type of ancestral connection to Bohemia. The "Upper German" dialects of German are today found along the old Danubian frontier of the Roman empire, although eventually replaced by a Slavic language in Moravia and Slovakia, and probably descend from the languages of the southern Suebi such as the Quadi. The western area, inhabited by the Alemanni in late classical times, is home to Alemannic dialects. Dialects of Bavaria and Austria are in the related linguistically Bavarian group, which is geographically closer to the Quadi homeland.

Sources

• Castritius, Helmut (2005), "Sweben", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 30 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-018385-6
• Dobesch, Gerhard (2002), "Obii (Obioi)", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 21 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017272-0
• Halsall, Guy (2007). Barbarian Migration and the Roman West, 376-568. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 142. ISBN 978-0-521-43491-1.
• Hofeneder, Andreas (2003), "Quaden § 2. Historisches", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 23 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017535-6
• Kehne, Peter (2001), "Markomannenkrieg § 1. Historisches", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 19 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017163-1
• Kolník, Titus (2003), "Quaden § 3. Historische Angaben und archäologischer Hintergrund", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 23 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017535-6
• Kulikowski, Michael (2019). Imperial Tragedy: From Constantine's Empire to the Destruction of Roman Italy AD 363-568 (The Profile History of the Ancient World Series). New York: Profile Books. ISBN 978-0-000-07873-5.
• Neumann, Günter (2003), "Quaden § 1. Der Name", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 23 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017535-6
• Tejral, Jaroslav (2001), "Markomannenkrieg § 2. Archäologisches", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 19 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017163-1
• Wolfram, Herwig (1997), The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples (translation of 1990 German ed.), University of California Press

External links

• J. B. Rives, Commentary on Tacitus' Germania.
• Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, English and Latin versions in the Perseus Digital Library
• Strabo, Geography, English and Greek versions in the Perseus Digital Library
• Tacitus, Germania, English and Latin versions in the Perseus Digital Library
• Tacitus, Annals, English and Latin versions in the Perseus Digital Library