Our archenemy of today is another brave barbarian from the north intentionally forgotten by the imperial propaganda of his time, for his was the terrible honor of having been the first to defeat and kill a Roman emperor on the field of battle. Little more has come to us about the rest of his life and work, but much about the shady historical context that he led to in his resounding victory.
Twenty-seventh installment of “Archienemies of Rome “. Collaboration of Gabriel Castelló
Virtually nothing is known about the origin of Cniva; his name evidences his gothic origin ( Kniwa , means knife in that language, hence the Anglo-Saxon knife ), and his appearance in history is derived from the first time his people crossed the limes Danubian ready to plunder the Roman province of Moesia . Coming from the Baltic, probably from the south of Sweden, this Germanic people came to occupy a good part of Roman Dacia before daring with such a succulent objective. Historical sources of Greek origin tell us that Cniva led a "Scythian" coalition, an understandable statement in its context since this Gothic king was at the head of a superb multi-ethnic migration in which, surely, there were also Asdingi Vandals, Sarmatians, Bastarns and even some Roman deserters, who would be his guides in unknown lands. The term Scythian is not strictly correct to define all these northeastern barbarians; It is because, for many historians of the time, all those peoples beyond the Carpathians were considered Scythians, alluding to the legendary archer horsemen of the Eurasian steppes.
Traianus Decius
Who we do know much more about is the one who was his adversary. Gaius Mesius Fifth Decius , born in Budalia , Illyria (Martinci, Serbia) in 201, reached the highest imperial dignity in 249 AD. A great admirer of the first Hispanic emperor since his years as governor of Tarraconense, he adopted the name of Decius Trajan as soon as he was invested as emperor by the Senate. Clearly determined to recover the damaged situation of the Empire, he set out to reform the state to get it out of the deep crisis in which he was mired. He persecuted Christians bitterly, being considered by the Church as "a fierce tyrant". With a similar mentality to Trajan, and to the later Aurelian and Julian, he was convinced that Christianity was a cancer for the Empire and of the absolute necessity of returning to the cult of the native gods. But unfortunately, Rome did not only have internal problems. Her predecessor on the throne, the weak Marcus Julius Philippus, Philip the Arab , had resolved the Goth problem by paying huge tributes in exchange for peace. Cniva and his own understood that said treaty expired with his supporter, since he died in Verona in 249 in combat against the new Caesar proclaimed by the legions, Decius , so in the spring of 250 the Goths crossed the Danube at Novae (Svishtov, Bulgaria), taking it by storm and then destroying half of Moesia in its path. This very complicated situation forced the new regent of the Empire to leave his reformist program on hold, put himself at the head of the legions and march towards the Danube willing to tackle the Gothic problem.
Nikopolis ad Istrum
The barbarians had Nicopolis ad Istrum (Nikyup, Bulgaria) surrounded when the imperial ensigns appeared in the distance, surprising the besiegers. Cniva, unwilling to give battle to the emperor on such unfavorable ground, hastily raised the siege and fell back towards Philipolis (Plovdiv, Bulgaria) surrounding Mount Haemus . The trick of Cniva was worthy of a great strategist, since it was Decius who was surprised a few days later in Augusta Traiana (also known as Beroë, is present-day Stara Zagora, Bulgaria) when the Goths stormed his camp, pillaged it, and scattered the legions. It was the first time that a Roman emperor had fled from a barbarian leader, a dangerous precedent that would worsen during that same campaign.
The bewilderment in the Roman ranks was used simultaneously by both the barbarian enemy and the political adversary of Decius. In the early summer of 251, Cniva ordered Philipolis to be stormed. with extreme cruelty. Thousands of citizens were violated and enslaved or killed during the severe looting. Meanwhile, the brother of Philip the Arab, Gaius Julius Priscus , had himself proclaimed emperor in neighboring Thrace. The problem of that inopportune usurper solved itself, since Priscus was assassinated shortly after, but the ugly Goth matter did not seem to have such an easy solution.
Decius, horrified and emboldened by the testimonies of the few survivors who were able to escape the horror of Philippolis, regrouped his troops in front of that city, trying to encircle Cniva. The Gothic leader, aware of the difficulty of maintaining a siege with tired men within a massacred population without food, chose to withdraw with the enormous spoils of war and the noble captives to a place that would allow him to have an open path to the Danube, dividing his army in small groups difficult to capture due to their great mobility. Decius followed them, unknowingly leading himself into a death trap. The place where Cniva decided that the time had come to gather and fight was a boggy spot in the Ludogorie (“the region of the wild forests”, in the Dobruja waitress, present-day northeastern Bulgaria), near the small town of Abrittus , also known as Forum Terebronii (a kilometer from present-day Razgrad) The Gothic king knew the terrain very well, outstripping his adversary in it. This insignificant place next to a thick Moesian swamp was about to go down in history.
Gothic Warriors
There is a disparity of dates according to the sources consulted, from the second week of June to mid-August, although the most referred to is the first of July 251. Whenever it was, the men of Cniva, most likely hungry and desperate, faced with the legions commanded by the emperor Decius in that immense swamp of Abrittus. Cniva divided his army into three parts, hiding the largest of them in the swamp. According to Jordanes , at the start of the battle, Herenio Etrusco , the son of the emperor, was hit by an arrow, with such bad luck that it caused his death. As a gesture of integrity to encourage his men, it was said that his own father exclaimed:
Let no one cry; the death of a soldier is not a great loss for the Republic
Perhaps encouraged by the courage of the emperor, perhaps stubborn in an atypical fight for the iron military discipline of Rome, or perhaps attracted by Cniva's trick of appearing weak when the bulk of his army remained waiting crouched in that quagmire, the imperial army left sinking deeper and deeper into that pool of Abrittus, deluded by his early success, and ended up struggling in the mud until the Goth's trick reversed the balance. The Roman army was totally annihilated. Emperor Decius died alongside his men in that disastrous battle. With these words the historian Sexto Aurelio Víctor reflected :
… Decius, while pursuing the barbarians across the Danube, died for treachery at Abritus after reigning two years… Many say that his son fell in battle while leading an attack too boldly; his father, on the other hand, had stated forcefully that the loss of a soldier seemed too insignificant to worry about. And so he went on with the war, and died in a similar way while fighting vigorously...
And so he described it years later Lucio Celio Lactantius , Christian historian and therefore enemy of the memory and bravery of the pagan emperor:
… He was suddenly surrounded by the barbarians, and they killed him, along with much of his army; he could not be honored with the rites of burial, but, stripped and naked, he lay to be devoured by wild beasts and birds, a fitting end for the enemy of God...
The alleged betrayal mentioned by Aurelio Víctor or Zósimo in his chronicles of this infamous episode of the History of Rome he based himself on malicious rumors that attributed the death of Decius to a secret conspiracy among his legate Gaius Vivius Trebonianus Gallus and the Goths, a felony that could never be proven. His immediate adoption of Gaius Valente Hostiliano , the second son of Decius, barely a year old and tacit heir to the imperial purple, contradicts such wicked plans, as well as the fact that the surviving legionnaires themselves elevated the author of such a catastrophe as the new emperor if he was suspected of having caused so many deaths among his own. In any case, the bubonic plague that devastated Rome a year later took the boy away, and with it the suspicions of a possible usurpation.
As the architect of the Abrittus massacre, Cniva He entered history as the first Gothic king to face the legions within the limes, defeat them and be the executioner of an emperor of Rome. Decius he was the first emperor to die at the head of his troops during a battle, something so deplorable for an Empire that was beginning to run out morally and economically that, perhaps because of this ignominy, or as a result of other calamities that came later, on the decii a damnatio memoriae fell . Treboniano Gallo had no choice but to agree with Cniva an enormous compensatory tribute before having to cede Roman territory to them. Nothing else was heard of him. On his death seven years after the battle of Abrittus, his people divided into two great groups, the Eastern Goths ( Ostrogoths ) and those of the West (Visigoths )
The intrepid King Cniva had opened a path of no return for other barbarian leaders to come:Rome was not invincible, her emperors could also die in combat and the provinces of the Empire could perhaps be their new lands...
All the followers of the blog know that the author of the series Archienemigos and Customs of Rome is the magister Gabriel Castelló that just released, and I highly recommend, Devotio, the enemies of Caesar (You can buy it in the Amazon store in ebook format for €2.84 )
How far can your convictions take you? Would you kill or die for an ideal? DEVOTIO is the epic of two men, separated by time, but united in their extreme loyalty to their beliefs. Going through these two parallel histories, that of Eutiquio de Osca in the times of Diocletian, and that of Lucio Antonio during the Civil War, the reader will get to know the turbulent Roman Hispania in two very different moments, the Republic and the Empire, the creation of the most great of its time and the internal corrosion of a decadent world.