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Costoboci

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Map of the Roman empire in 125 AD, 20 years after the Roman conquest of Dacia. The Costoboci resided roughly where the rubric "Carpi" is shown

The Costoboci (Latin variants: Costobocci, Costobocae, Coisstoboci or Castabocae; Ancient Greek: Κοστοβῶκοι or Kostobokai) were an ancient tribe which resided, from not later than AD 130 until at least AD 170, in the areas known today as northern Moldavia and south-western Ukraine.[1] Previously, in the 1st century AD, they had apparently resided much further East, around the mouth of the river Don.

Although Romanian historians have classified the Costoboci as ethnic-Dacians, the evidence of ancient writers suggests that they may have been a Sarmatian tribe, at least originally.

The Costoboci were either annihilated or subjugated by a branch of the Germanic Vandal people, who invaded their territory in AD 170, and disappeared from extant history.

Ethno-linguistic affiliation

Traditional Romanian historiography classifies the Costoboci as ethnic-Dacian, with a common language and culture as the Dacians left in the Roman province of Dacia and as the Carpi, their neighbours in Moldavia. But neither of these identifications are secure.[2]

The Greek geographer Ptolemy indicates that in ca. AD 140 the Costoboci inhabited both northern Dacia (i.e. the northern Carpathians) and western Sarmatia, in the region of the upper Tyras (Dniester) river i.e. northern Moldavia/Bessarabia.[3][4](According to Ptolemy, Moldavia and Bessarabia were outside Dacia, whose eastern border he defines as the Hierasus (Siret) river).[5]

The presence of the Costoboci among the tribes listed by Ptolemy as resident inside Dacia cannot be regarded as conclusive proof of Dacian ethnicity, as the other two tribes located by Ptolemy in the northernmost part of Dacia, the Anartes and Taurisci, were Celtic, not Dacian.[6] Furthermore, the Costoboci are classified as an ethnic- Sarmatian tribe by Pliny the Elder, who locates them as residing around the river Tanais (southern river Don) in ca. AD 60, in the Sarmatian heartland of the southern Russia region, far to the East of Moldavia.[7] Ammianus Marcellinus, writing in ca. 390, also lists the gentes Costobocae ("Costobocan tribes") among the "Alans and innumerable other Scythian tribes" in the region of Sarmatia lying between the Tyras and Tanais rivers.[8] Thus, the Costoboci might have been a Sarmatian people, some of whom may have migrated westwards during the period 60-140, while the main group of tribes remained in central Sarmatia.[9] but in the same time they can be equaly a Dacian tribe moved eastwards, since they are first mentioned exactly in the period of Burebista kingdom expansion in east.

CIL VI.1801, a Roman imperial-era funerary inscription found in Rome, dedicated to "Zia, daughter of Tiatus, Dacian wife of Pieporus, king of the Costoboci" has been taken as evidence of the Costoboci's possible Dacian ethnicity.[10]. Scholars consider that Pieporus is a name of Dacian origin, as are those of Pieporus' named grandchildren, Natoporus and Drilgisa. There is as well the possibility of "name-drift", the phenomenon by which ethnic groups adopt names from neighbouring or influential cultures (e.g. the adoption of Hebrew names by Greek converts to Christianity in the later Roman empire).

Thus, there is no definitive proof of a clear ethnic or linguistic affiliation of the Costoboci, nor if these were always the same or had a linear evolution. Ethnic/cultural miscegenation might have resulted in a new identity, which was itself "original". The affiliations to Dacian or Sarmatian stems are neither definitive nor clear-cut. Both terms are broad and do not reflect concepts similar to modern nations. The persistence of the people's name does not prove that they at all times and continuously spoke a particular language.[citation needed]

Bichir, who accepts the traditional classification of the Costoboci and of their neighbours, the Carpi, as Dacian, suggests that these two tribes were in close alliance due to their common ethnicity and that the Carpi provided a "safe haven" for Costoboci refugees when these were displaced by the Hasding Vandals in AD 170.[11] But Batty argues that it is uncertain whether the Costoboci shared the same language and culture as their Carpi neighbours. There is no evidence that the Carpi joined the Costoboci's attacks on Roman Dacia in 167-70, or that the Carpi assisted the Costoboci when they were attacked by the Vandals.[12].

Material culture

The Costoboci have been linked by some scholars with the Lipiţa culture of the northern Romania and western Ukraine. Although this culture offers a reasonable match with the Moldavian Costoboci in both geographical location and historical era, the identification must be regarded as speculative. It is very difficult to identify conclusively material remains with particular ethnic groups. The culture may have belonged to just a sub-group of an ethnic group, or to more than one ethnic groups.

Lipiţa culture settlements have been discovered in several sites and is considered as a Dacian one with some foreign influences (as Roman and even Sarmatian ones). It was a cremation culture, with inhumation of the deceased's ashes with personal belongings in plain or tumular tombs. The culture disappeared in the 3rd century AD.

Conflict with Rome

The Costoboci took advantage of the Marcomannic Wars (166-80), Rome's vast and protracted conflict with the tribes beyond the middle Danube (the Iazyges, Quadi and Marcomanni), to invade Roman territory at least twice (167, 170).[13] During the invasion of 170, the raiders reached as far as Attica in Greece, ravaging the provinces of Moesia, Scythia Minor and Macedonia.

With his army stretched to the limit by its struggle on the middle Danube, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (ruled 161-80) was obliged to rely on barbarian allies to deal with the Costoboci threat. In 170, at the instigation of the Roman governor of Dacia, the Hasding Vandals invaded and crushed the Costoboci, either eliminating them or reducing them to serfdom.[14]

Dio Cassius records that 12,000 "neighbouring" Daci , who had been driven out of their own territory, were admitted by the emperor Commodus (r. 180-92) to the Roman province of Dacia in 180, to prevent them joining the enemies of Rome.[15] It has been speculated that these were Costoboci refugees from the Vandal invasion of their homeland. But they may have been Free Dacians unconnected to the Costoboci.

Citations

  1. ^ Barrington Atlas Map 22
  2. ^ Batty (2008) 378
  3. ^ Ptolemy III.8.3 and III.5.9
  4. ^ Barrington Map 22
  5. ^ Ptolemy III.8.1
  6. ^ Batty (2008) 374
  7. ^ Pliny VI.7
  8. ^ Ammianus XXII.8.42
  9. ^ Batty (2008) 374
  10. ^ CIL VI.1801
  11. ^ Bichir (1976)
  12. ^ Batty (2008) 378
  13. ^ Historia Augusta M. Aurelius 22
  14. ^ Dio LXXII.12.2
  15. ^ Dio LXXIII.3

References

Ancient

Modern

  • Barrington (2000): Atlas of the Greek & Roman World
  • Batty, Roger (2008): Rome and the Nomads: the Pontic-Danubian region in Antiquity
  • Bichir, Gh. (1976): History and Archaeology of the Carpi from the 2nd to the 4th centuries AD
  • Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL)
  • Georgiev, Vladimir (1960): Raporturile dintre limbile dacă, tracă şi frigiană, in "Studii Clasice" (periodical) II (39-58)
  • Justi, Ferdinand (1897): Iranisches Namenbuch

See also

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