The 3rd c crisis & its impact on the Germanic frontier

[D B Campbell]

Hi Duncan

Sorry, Robert -- completely overlooked your reply. :oops:

Gifts for a chieftain are very different from a client kingdom - the latter is in fact in a relation of servitude to you, the Romans would not have to 'buy' the loyalty of a client king.

Hmmm ... I think the similarity is closer than you imply. As I see it, it was a back-scratching relationship. Each party stood to gain something from the other. The Romans basically made an arrangment with a neighbouring king/queen/chieftain in order to avoid the hassle of direct rule. But as soon as things became troublesome, they weren't shy about sending the legions in.

Maybe there were simply no barbarian tribal structures to 'form into' a client kingdom. In the East, we see a different picture, with Armenia and Palmyra being the most notable client kingdoms.

In my opinion, Armenia is atypical, being a puppet tossed back and forth between Rome and Parthia; both empires were playing Armenia against one another. Each successive Armenian king was simply a pawn in the ongoing power games. And Palmyra was a city entirely within the Roman province of Syria. (Maybe you were thinking of Edessa?) So neither one is (strictly speaking) a client kingdom.

Around the periphery of the empire, we see the same system of bribes and gifts in order to bolster a particular regime as a "friend of Rome". The same applies whether it's the king of the Iceni in Britain, the king of the Dacians in Transylvania, or the king of the Jews in Judaea. The Romans don't seem to have had a problem dealing with "barbarian tribal structures", because the arrangement was purely with the "head man" (or, occasionally, woman).

I hope I haven't derailed the original topic too much! :oops: