Bastarnen

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The Bastarnen or Bastarner were an Indo-European tribe in southeastern Europe. The exact assignment is not fully clarified, but mostly they are attributed to the Germanic peoples , especially their East Germanic tribes .

Polybius reports of battles between the Bastarnen and Skiren with the Romans in the 3rd century BC. Around 230 BC. The Bastarnen besieged the city of Olbia on the Black Sea with the Germanic Skiren ; around 180 BC BC they appeared on the Lower Danube and a little later they fought as mercenaries of Philip V and his son Perseus against Rome . Mention is made of a leader by the name of Clondicus , who with 30,000 men for Philip V and in 168 BC. Fought for Perseus with 20,000 men. In 29 BC Chr. Led Marcus Licinius Crassus , the Roman proconsul of Macedonia, a campaign against the Bastarni. He was able to kill the king of the Bastarn with his own hands and take his armor off him. His claim to triumph on July 4th, 27 BC. BC celebrated to consecrate the armor as Spolia opima , but the princeps Augustus rejected it. In his later account of the facts , Augustus boasted that the Bastarnen and Scythians had asked for a friendly relationship with Rome: nostram amicitiam petierunt per legatos Bastarnae Scythaeque .

The residences of the Bastarnen stretched from the east side of the Carpathian Mountains to the mouth of the Danube , they are called the Dacians ' neighbors . According to the majority of researchers, the Getes were not identical with them, but with the Dacians or formed an East Dacian tribal group. It is likely that the ethnogenesis of the Bastarnen, i.e. the formation of the tribal association, only occurred near the Carpathian Mountains . The Bastarnen settlement area is almost certainly identified with the Poieneşti-Lukaševka archaeological culture . Settlements of this culture from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC In the east of today's Romania and in Moldova are attributed to the Bastarnen. The finds there may point to Elbe Germanic roots of the Bastarnen, but there are also influences of the Celtic Latène culture .

Tacitus named them in AD 98 after one of their sub-tribes Peukines and compared them with the Germanic peoples in terms of language, way of life, type of settlement and house construction. He located them in the Carpathian Mountains. In the Marcomann Wars against Germanic, Thracian and Sarmatian tribes, Marcus Aurelius also took action against Bastarnen and Peukiner.

They later appeared together with the Goths at the mouth of the Danube and crossed over to Roman territory in 280/95. Around 280 Emperor Probus assigned land to the Bastarnen in Thrace . They can be found south of the Danube up to 391 ; the last traces disappeared in the 6th century with the Basternai fort (Castell in Moesia inferior inland from Odessos ).

Due to their isolated location, the Bastarns formed an ethnically relatively constant group for five centuries. Only the Sarmatians advancing from the east and the invasion of the Goths brought them into distress. They were resettled on Roman territory and later assimilated.

literature

Web links

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Remarks

  1. Titus Livius 40, 5. 57, 58. Polybios 26, 9. Livius 41, 19. 23. Orosius 4, 20, 34.
  2. Monumentum Ancyranum 31 .
  3. See Strabo 3, 128. 7, 289, 294ff. 305f. Pliny, naturalis historia 4, 80f. 100.
  4. Heinrich Beck , Heiko Steuer , Dieter Timpe (eds.): Die Germanen: Germanen, Germania, Germanische Altertumskunde (=  Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde . Study edition ). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998, ISBN 3-11-016383-7 , p. 25 .