[134] Vita Marci 14: gentibus quae pulsae a superioribus barbaris fugerant nisi reciperentur bellum inferentibus. Dio, in Petrus Patricius, fr. 6, says: Λαγγιβάρδων καὶ Ὀβίων (otherwise unknown) ἑξακισχιλίων Ἴστρον περαιωθέντων τῶν περὶ Βίνδικα (perhaps already then praef. praetorio, in which case the guard would be marched out on account of this occurrence), ἱππέων ἐξελασάντων καὶ τῶν ἀμφὶ Κάνδιδον πεζῶν ἐπιφθασάντων εἰς παντελῆ φυγήν οἱ βάρβαροι ἐτράποντο· ἐφ’ οἷς οὗτω πραχθεῖσιν ἐν δέει καταστάντες ἐκ πρώτης ἐπιχειρήσεως οἱ βάρβαροι πρέσβεις παρὰ Αἴλιον Βάσσον τὴν Παιονίαν διέποντα στέλλουσι Βαλλομάριόν τε τὸν βασιλέα Μαρκομάνων καὶ ἑτέρους δέκα, κατ’ ἔθνος ἐπιλεξάμενοι ἕνα· καὶ ὅρκοις τὴν εἰρήνην οἱ πρέσβεις πιστωσάμενοι οἴκαδε χωροῦσιν. That this incident falls before the outbreak of the war, is shown by its position; fr. 7 of Patricius is an excerpt from Dio, lxxi. 11, 2.
[135] The Moesian army gave away soldiers to the Armenian war (Hirschfeld, Arch. epig. Mitth. vi. 41); but here the frontier was not endangered.
[136] The participation of the Germans on the right of the Rhine is attested by Dio, lxxi. 3, and only thereby are the measures explained which Marcus adopted for Raetia and Noricum. The position of Oderzo also speaks for the view that these assailants came over the Brenner.
[137] The alleged first mention of the Goths in the biography of Caracalla, c. 10, rests on a misunderstanding. If really a senator allowed himself the malicious jest of assigning to the murderer of Geta the name Geticus, because he on his march from the Danube to the east had conquered some Getic hordes (tumultuariis proeliis), he meant Dacians, not the Goths, scarcely at that time dwelling there and hardly known to the Roman public, whose identification with the Getae was certainly only a later invention.—We may add that the statement that the emperor Maximinus (235–238) was the son of a Goth settled in the neighbouring Thrace, carries us still further back; yet not much weight is to be attached to it.
[138] Petrus Patricius fr. 8. The administration of the legate of lower Moesia here mentioned, Tullius Menophilus, is fixed by coins certainly to the time of Gordian, and with probability to 238–240 (Borghesi, Opp. ii. 227). As the beginning of the Gothic war and the destruction of Istros are fixed by Dexippus (vita Max. et Balb. 16) at 238, it is natural to bring into connection with these events the undertaking of tribute; at any rate it was then renewed. The vain sieges of Marcianopolis and Philippopolis by the Goths (Dexippus, fr. 18, 19) may have followed on the capture of Istros. Jordanes, Get. 16, 92, puts the former under Philippus, but is in chronological questions not a valid witness.
[139] The reports of these occurrences in Zosimus, i. 21–24, Zonaras, xii. 20, Ammianus, xxxi. 5, 16, 17 (which accounts, down to that concerning Philippopolis, are fixed as belonging to this time by the fact that the latter recurs in Zosimus), although all fragmentary or in disorder, may have flowed from the report of Dexippus, of which fr. 16, 19, are preserved, and may be in some measure combined. The same source lies at the bottom of the imperial biographies and Jordanes; but both have disfigured and falsified it to such a degree that use can be made of their statements only with great caution. Victor, Caes. 29, is independent.
[140] Perhaps the irruption of the Marcomani in Zosimus, i. 29, refers to this.
[141] Ammianus, xxxi. 5, 15; duobus navium milibus perrupto Bosporo et litoribus Propontidis Scythicarum gentium catervae transgressae ediderunt quidem acerbas terra marique strages: sed amissa suorum parte maxima reverterunt; whereupon the catastrophe of the Decii is narrated, and into this is inwoven the further notice: obsessae Pamphyliae civitates (to which must belong the siege of Side in Dexippus himself, fr. 23), insulæ populatæ complures, as also the siege of Cyzicus. If in this retrospect all is not confused—which cannot well be assumed to be the case with Ammianus—this falls before those naval expeditions which begin with the siege of Pityus, and are more a part of the migration of peoples than piratical raids. The number of the ships might indeed be transferred hither by error of memory from the expedition of the year 269. To the same connection belongs the notice in Zosimus, i. 28, as to the Scythian expeditions into Asia and Cappadocia as far as Ephesus and Pessinus. The account as to Ephesus in the biography of Gallienus, c. 6, is the same, but transposed as to time.
[142] In the case of Zosimus himself we should not expect complete understanding of the matter; but his voucher Dexippus, who was a contemporary and took part in the matter, knew well why he termed the Bithynian expedition the δευτέρα ἔφοδος (Zos. i. 35); and even in Zosimus we discern clearly the contrast, intended by Dexippus, between the expedition of the Borani against Pityus and Trapezus and the traditional piratic voyages. In the biography of Gallienus the Scythian expedition to Cappadocia, narrated at c. 11, under the year 264, must be that to Trapezus, just as the Bithynian therewith connected must be that which Zosimus terms the second; here indeed everything is confused.
[143] This is said by Zosimus, i. 42, and follows also from the relation of the Bosporans to the first (i. 32), and that of the first to the second expedition (i. 34).