Size of Barbarian Migrations

[Mrbsct]

I have a question on Barbarian Migrations. Were they really capable of going to 300,000-200,000 or even 100,000? The Cimbri and Teutones was reported to be 400,000. The Helevetii had about 200,000, the Germanic invasion in Aurelian's time time was about 300,000. Were they overexaggerations were the barbarians would be only in the tens of thousands?

How large were the populations? Also was it really possible to mobilize them in a long column of march similar to American settlers? Or would they be spread out more traveling in no order like illegal immigrants? Or they really a compact horde/army as the Romans describe. Can you give me an idea of what the logistics would have looked like or if the land around was sufficent for food?

[john m roberts]

According to Roman sources at least some of the migrations were planned years in advance. For three or four years surplus grain would be stored and when the time came to move out, it was loaded on wagons, the farms were burned so people wouldn't be tempted to turn back, and the nation was on the move. This way they wouldn't have to live entirely off the land.

[Gunthamund Hasding]

well Helvetii is described by Caesar here:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...1A*.html#2

for the rest, is not my interest in late antiquity, but from the little that I read I can deduce that they did move as "horde" sometimes "tribewise" and they did made some halts on the way, like some years/decades

[Michael Kerr]

There is supposed to be a degree of certainty with the number of Vandals that crossed over to Africa from Spain in 429AD which unlike other tribal migrations involved crossing a sea and not a river. There were two sources mentioning a head count of 80,000. Writing in about 484AD Victor Vitensis specified that a head count was taken before embarkation from Spain and fifty years later Procopius mentioned the same figure but they differ over manpower makeup. Victor's figure would have included every man, woman and child while Procopius's assertion was that it contained just able-bodied men.

The head count before embarkation makes sense as Geiseric had to determine how many ships were needed to ferry his people to Africa. Procopius's figures wherever he got them from could be the result of a cunning trick by Geiseric to fool the Romans into thinking that he had greater forces than he really had so he included everyone as he appointed 80 leaders of 1000 or chiliarchs whom Procopius must have assumed were officers commanding 1000 troops rather than officials put in charge of 1000 people. These numbers would have included the remaining and much weakened Alans as well as they joined the Vandals rather than choose another king after Wallia's Visigoths attacked and killed the Alan king Addac some time before 418AD.
Regards
Michael Kerr

[Vindex]

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EDIT: Thank you Robert

[Urselius]

Also migratory peoples tended to change in numbers over time. The Cimbric migration picked up other tribes en-route. In the later migrations, groups such as the Goths recruited disaffected Roman soldiers, citizens, and slaves to their ranks once within the Empire's borders. Sections of hordes could also be suborned by the Roman authorities and given settlement within Roman territory, therby weakening the parent group.

[Michael Kerr]

Urselius wrote:

Sections of hordes could also be suborned by the Roman authorities and given settlement within Roman territory, therby weakening the parent group.

That is true. Without knowing who the dominant tribal group was in the Rhine crossings in 406 AD either the Vandals or the Alans, the Romans managed to entice Goar and his group of Alans to breakaway from the main group of Alans led by Respendial and defect to the Roman cause. Whether they were equal kings or Goar a minor king he must have taken a substantial part of the Alans with him. :-)

Regards
Michael Kerr

[Mrbsct]

What was the estimated population of Germania at the time. Also how much does a Gallic fortress or Germanic settlement usually contain? Can you give me sources please?

Gallic and Germanic roads seem to be in poor quality. Roman roads were about 10 meters wide. What was the road system like from Norei to Arausio?

Can someone brief me on how much marching space an army needs, plus how fast to Ancient pack animals(mules and oxen) travel? How much pack animals are required to support an army that size? An army of 300,000-400,000 would definetley have spread out for more than a hundreds of miles for such a narrow road.

[Bryan]

You should read this book, it will answer all your questions about the migrations:
Sampson, Gareth Crisis in Rome, The Jugurthine and Northern Wars and the Rise of Marius, 2011

[Alanus]

My interest, naturally, is the Alan migration. We get absolutely no figures from any sources. Only after the Alanic confederation began to break up, do we find mention in Roman sources... such as the Goar Alans reported above by Michael.

What we cannot imagine is the huge and lengthy migration as it crossed the steppes, from east of the Araxes to the Caucasus where a huge number of Alans split from the main group and settled in the lower valleys to form ancient Alania... many nobles eventually aiding the Yuan against the Chinese. Then the remaining body continued west, entering Roman space, some joining the Goths, others going up into Pannonia. According to statistics, Gratian accepted 30,000 Alans into the western army. This fighting force, if 1/5 of the Pannonian Alanic population, accounts for a civilian number of 150,000 people... yet this was perhaps only 1/2 (or less) of the original migrating group from the eastern steppes. If so, the Alanic migration was absolutely MASSIVE.

[Michael Kerr]

Alanus wrote:

This fighting force, if 1/5 of the Pannonian Alanic population, accounts for a civilian number of 150,000 people... yet this was perhaps only 1/2 (or less) of the original migrating group from the eastern steppes. If so, the Alanic migration was absolutely MASSIVE.

Although we do not have precise figures on the number of Alans. Peter Heather in his paper 'The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe' writes

Even though some stayed in Gaul, those who made their way to Spain are said by Hydatius to have outnumbered the Vandals and Suevi before they suffered severe losses in the late 4IOs.

So if the figure of 80,000 Vandals crossing over to Africa from Spain many years later is accurate then the Alan group which did not defect with Goar but stayed loyal to Respendial and moved with the other two groups to Spain must have been a large group in the early 400s AD as Hydatius mentions that the Alans outnumbered the other two groups..

Regards
Michael Kerr

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Don't forget that Gaiseric's group that crossed to North Africa included Respendial's Alans.

[Michael Kerr]

Hi Evan, while acknowledging that groups of Alans crossed to Africa with the Vandals they would have been a fraction of the group that entered Spain years before about 409AD & also they were technically Vandals (so to speak) by the crossing as by that time the remainder of the Alans had ceased to exist as a separate group & had acknowledged the Vandal king as their new leader. I think The Alan king Respendial was dead by that stage & possibly replaced by Addac who was killed some time before 418AD in a war of annhilation by the Visigoths under Wallia who were fighting for the Romans. Whether we are talking about the destruction of the Alan leadership or a case of exterminating the Alans as a group I suppose we will never know but reading Hydatius you get the impression that they were hit hard by the Visigoths.
Below is what Hydatius, who seems to be the main source of events in the invasion of Spain in 409AD wrote in his chronicle.

In 418, the Alans who dominated the Vandals & the Suebi,were annihilated in such a way by the Goths, that when their king Addac/Attaces was killed, the few who survived, once the name of their kingdom had been suppressed, put themselves under the protection of Gunderic, king of the Vandals, who lived in Gallaecia & offered him the Alan crown.

No hint as to numbers but I have read that in 406Ad before the Rhine crossings that the Vandals lost about 20,000 men against the Franks & needed the Alans to eventually defeat them so the Alans made up the main component of the Vandal fighting force & their supreme position was shown in that they got the greater part of the Spanish peninsula, when divided up between the 3 groups that entered it, but this position of dominance must have changed for them as they must have done the brunt of the fighting defending their territory when many years later either they, their leadership or their military capacity must have been weakened significantly due to persistent Visigothic attacks throughout the 410s. Wallia was fighting for Constantius at the time as I am sure the Romans were intent on getting Spain back while figting the revolt of Constantine III, so a war of annihilation to weaken the Alan/Vandal/Suebi barbarian confederation's hold on Spain by encouraging another barbarian group to attack them seems very probable. Result a very reduced Alan presence in the group that crossed over to Africa. I think the Suebi/Suevi leadership chose to remain in Spain rather than cross to Africa.
Regards
Michael Kerr

[Robert Vermaat]

This fighting force, if 1/5 of the Pannonian Alanic population, accounts for a civilian number of 150,000 people... yet this was perhaps only 1/2 (or less) of the original migrating group from the eastern steppes. If so, the Alanic migration was absolutely MASSIVE.

But was it a ‘migration’ in the sense of a large group of people trekking from a departure point to a planned goal, taking all their posessions with them? Or is it a different process, in which grazing lands are under pressure, so that new grazing lands are taken over in the other direction? In such a process, which takes decades, tribes also ‘migrate’, but much more gradual and not pre-planned.

Much of the Frankish ‘migration’ is more comparable to that of modern workers moving to another country. They fought for the Romans, and for a long time many went back home (which is shown by the funerary items) although more and more remain within the Empire after retirement. Gradually you sse the original settlements becoming smaller, until the 5th century there is a clear move towards the new Frankish-dominated lands in modern Belgium and France.
The Alans, too, were employed by the Romans in small groups, spread out in time and space.

Add to that the ethnogenese, which makes it very unclear to us which people actually belonged to those ‘migrating tribes’, and you get a different picture from that of the ‘fixed’ groups who force their way into the Empire, ox-carts and all.

I’d say that ‘defining’ the actual number of people in a migration is next to impossible, because even for the groups that we know from the sources the information by no means tells us what we want to know.

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Evan, while acknowledging that groups of Alans crossed to Africa with the Vandals they would have been a fraction of the group that entered Spain years before about 409AD & also they were technically Vandals (so to speak) by the crossing as by that time the remainder of the Alans had ceased to exist as a separate group & had acknowledged the Vandal king as their new leader.

Hi Michael, I beg to differ. The Alans were a very different group, but culturally as well as linguistically, and they certainly did not 'change into Vandals' while in Spain. Geiseric is clearly styled as 'king of the Vandals and Alans' to signify that/ The fact that the (Roman) sources cannot tell the one from the other should not blind us into thinking that the separate groups had somehow merged.

Why, even the 'famous' mosaic from North Africa that shows a proud Vandal lord of a (once Roman) villa really shows an Alan - his horse still sports the typical tamga markings.

[attachment=10310]vandal-alan.jpg[/attachment]