Short-Term Empires in World History: Robert Rollinger Julian Degen Michael Gehler Editors

Universal- und kulturhistorische Studien.
Studies in Universal and Cultural History
Robert Rollinger · Julian Degen

Michael Gehler Editors
Short-term
Empires in
World History
Universal- und kulturhistorische Studien.
Studies in Universal and Cultural History
Series Editors
Alberto Bernabé Pajares, Madrid, Spain
Sebastian Fink, Innsbruck, Austria
Ann C. Gunter, Evanston, USA
Dan T. Potts, New York, USA
Robert Rollinger, Innsbruck, Austria
Kai Ruffing, Kassel, Germany
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15609

Robert Rollinger · Julian Degen · Michael Gehler
Editors
Short-term Empires in World

History
Editors
Robert Rollinger Julian Degen
University of Innsbruck University of Innsbruck
Innsbruck, Austria Innsbruck, Austria
Michael Gehler
Universität Hildesheim
Hildesheim, Germany
ISSN 2524-3780 ISSN 2524-3799 (electronic)

Universal- und kulturhistorische Studien. Studies in Universal and Cultural History
ISBN 978-3-658-29434-2 ISBN 978-3-658-29435-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9
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Preface
This volume assembles the papers presented at the international conference

“short-term Empires in World History: Decapitated or Defective?” convened at
Blankenheim/Eifel, Germany, June 21–23, 2017. The meeting had the character of a
symposium that intended to focus on a very specific form of empire and its character-
istics. It is part of a larger project on the history of empire that tries to approach the
phenomenon of empire through the lens of ‘universal history’. Thereby, it intends to
overcome the simplistic and Eurocentric arrangement of world history into ‘pre-modern’
and ‘modern spheres’1. This multiperspective approach was and will be achieved on five
different levels2:
• In a chronologically broad and general way: the longue durée of Empires;

• Remembering forgotten Empires;
• Short-term Empires;
• Declining, eroding and imploding Empires;
• Restructuring and transforming Empires.
Apart from the conference at Blankenheim four international conferences have been
organized so far the results of which are either already published or are about to be
published soon3.
The meeting at Blanhenheim focused on a comparative level on a specific group of
states that can be characterized as “short-term empires” by adhering to a global and uni-
versal dimension in empire studies. Geographically it attempted to take into account the
entire globe, chronologically all epochs from antiquity through the very present time. This
1For a detailed discussion of the problems involved by such an artificial division see Gehler/
Rollinger (forthcoming 2020). See also Gehler/Rollinger 2014.
2For details see the next fn.
3Gehler/Rollinger (eds.) 2014; Gehler/Rollinger (eds.) (forthcoming 2020); Gehler/Rollinger/
Strobl (eds.) (forthcoming 2021). Nickel/Rollinger (eds.) (forthcoming 2021).
v
vi Preface
approach voices an explicit dissociation of any Eurocentric focus and includes a confes-
sion to place empire studies within a world history perspective. Within this perspective
the volume gathers 13 contributions. The papers express a broad chronological and geo-
graphical range that starts with examples of the ancient Near East and ends with two strik-
ing examples of 20th and 21st centuries European history. They cover various regions and
epochs from the western Mediterranean across the Black Sea through Iran and Central
Asia. The studies are supplemented by an introduction of the editors, which intends to
provide some general conclusions and observations that resulted from the conference.
As always, this conference would not have been possible without generous support
from different organizations and persons. Max Otte not only hosted the conference in
Blankenheim and provided an enjoyable and pleasant framework but also contributed
considerably to the general funding. This also applies to the University of Innsbruck
with a generous allowance by the Vice Rector of Research Ulrike Tanzer. Without this
assistance the conference would not have been possible and we are very grateful for this.
Finally, we hope that the contributions of this volume will meet many interesting readers
inside and outside the flourishing field of comparative empire studies.
Robert Rollinger*
Julian Degen
Michael Gehler
*Editing of this volume as well as writing of the two contributions
have been finalized during my stay at the Getty Villa as Getty Guest
Scholar for which I would like to express my gratitude.
References
Gehler, Michael, and Rollinger, Robert. 2014. Imperien und Reiche in der Weltgeschichte.
Epochenübergreifende und globalhistorische Vergleiche. In Imperien und Großreiche in der
Weltgeschichte, eds. M. Gehler, and R. Rollinger, 1–29. Vol. 1, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Gehler, Michael, and Robert Rollinger (Eds.) 2014. Imperien in der Weltgeschichte.
Epochenübergreifende und globalhistorische Vergleiche, 2 Vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Gehler, Michael, and Robert Rollinger (Eds.). Forthcoming 2019. Empires to be Remembered.
Heidelberg: Springer.
Gehler, Michael, and Robert Rollinger. Forthcoming 2020., Imperial Turn. Challenges, Problems
and Questions of Empire History. In Empires to be Remembered, eds. M. Gehler, and R.
Rollinger, Heidelberg: Springer.
Gehler, Michael, Rollinger, Robert, and Strobl, Philipp (Eds.). Forthcoming 2021. Decline,
Erosion and Implosion of Empires. Heidelberg: Springer.
Nickel, Lukas, and Rollinger, Robert (Eds.). Forthcoming 2021. Chinese Walls around the World.
Heidelberg: Springer.
Contents
Approaching Short-Term Empires in World History, a First Attempt. . . . . . . . . 1

Robert Rollinger, Julian Degen and Michael Gehler
The European Union: A Short-Term Empire?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Michael Gehler
The Hunnic Empire of Attila. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Peter Heather
The Timurid Empire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Beatrice F. Manz
The Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204–1261): Rise and Fall of a
Short-Term State in the Romania. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Ekaterini Mitsiou
Mithradates VI and the Pontic Empire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Sabine Müller
The Ghaznavids of Eastern Iran, a Postcolonial Muslim Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Lucian Reinfandt
Because Empire Means Forever: Babylon and Imperial Disposition . . . . . . . . . . 167
Seth Richardson
The Medes of the 7th and 6th c. BCE: A Short-Term Empire or Rather
a Short-Term Confederacy?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Robert Rollinger
In a League of Its Own? Nāder Šāh and His Empire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Giorgio Rota
The Barcids and Hannibal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Kai Ruffing
vii
viii Contents
Theoderic and the Ostrogoths—a Short-Term Empire? Decapitated

or Defective? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Christoph Schäfer
The Rise of Hitler’s Empire and Its Apex (1933–1942). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Arnold Suppan
From Warlord to Emperor: The Careers of Shamshi-Adad
and Hammurabi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Marc Van De Mieroop
The ‘Empire’ of the Hephthalites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Josef Wiesehöfer und Robert Rollinger
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Approaching Short-Term Empires
in World History, a First Attempt
Robert Rollinger, Julian Degen and Michael Gehler
1 The Outset
Empire studies and the imperial turn are flourishing in the last decades.1 This develop-
ment started with Paul Kennedy at the end of the 1980s followed by Alexander Demandt,
Niall Ferguson, Herfried Münkler, Ian Morris, Walter Scheidel among others.2 Empires
have been evaluated from different perspectives and scrutinized by using different meth-
ods and approaches. However, there are still major shortcomings and lacunae in previous
studies that have to be addressed. The classifications and definitions so far proposed are
still debatable and the selection of what is regarded to represent an “empire” is rather
unsystematic. Comprehensive structural connections that transcend epochs and historical
periods are only partially taken into consideration. This is often due to a lack of con-
crete questions and concepts and an only recently arising awareness of different types
1Foran overview see Gehler/Rollinger 2014. Gehler/Rollinger 2020.

2Kennedy 1987; Demandt 1997, 2007; Ferguson 2003; Ferguson 2004; Münkler 2005; Morris/
Scheidel 2009; Scheidel 2009.
R. Rollinger (*) · J. Degen

University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
e-mail: Robert.Rollinger@uibk.ac.at
J. Degen
e-mail: Julian.Degen@uibk.ac.at
M. Gehler
Universität Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany
e-mail: gehler@uni-hildesheim.de
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 1

R. Rollinger et al. (eds.), Short-term Empires in World History, Universal-
und kulturhistorische Studien. Studies in Universal and Cultural History,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_1
2 R. Rollinger et al.
of empires through all periods. And last but not at least, recent empire studies still tend
to be mainly focused on the modern and contemporary era. As a consequence they
are not only chronologically concentrated on the last centuries but are also prone to a
Eurocentric perspective.
The papers of this volume intended to focus on a specific group of states that are com-
monly labelled as “empires” and that we encounter through all historical periods. At the
zenith of their power, these “empires” had an enormous geographical reach multiplying
their economic and military power as well as their political influence within an inter-
and trans-continental scope in a very short time (few years or decades). A weak ‘inter-
national’ framework constituted a power vacuum with disrupted entities and fragmented
structures, an important precondition for the emergence of short term empires rising fast
and collapsing swiftly. Their historical beginnings very much resemble with what we
know from successful and well established empires. They are commonly based upon a
vigorous and ruthless conqueror, who leads his armies to distant regions. Undeniably,
they share a belligerent attitude and war is a characteristic element of their political
self-conception. However, although they are very successful at the very beginning, like
most empires are, this success is very ephemeral and transient. The era of conquest is
never followed by a period of consolidation. Collapse and/or reduction to much smaller
dimensions run as fast as the process of wide-ranging conquest and expansion. In gen-
eral, these states do only exist to a maximum of three generations, i.e. no longer than
about 90 years, some of them collapse even considerably earlier.
Observing these scenarios all over the world through the centuries, the contributors
of this volume were asked to address some fundamental questions in their papers. They
refer to two different and opposite angles on a wide-ranging scale of possible answers.
The first one focusses on a deficit of structure, the second one on historical circum-
stances and agents.
Is the ephemerality and early collapse/reduction of these states due to structure, i.e.
are they, seen through the lens of comparative empire history, wrongly conceived and
defective from the very beginning? And if so, does their short life-span as well as their
focus on war, conquest and predation reflect a specific type of “would-be” empire that
had to fail because of its internal organisation? This perspective includes an entire set
of additional questions: Do exceptionally charismatic and successful leaders lack strong
and dynamic successors? Does the failure to establish succession and continuity beyond
a second and third generation generate a diadochi-phenomenon when rivals challenge
the recently established empire? In any case, the successful establishment of a dynasty
appears to be the major problem of short term empires thus lacking continuity and
sustainability.
The second possible answer draws the attention to what may be characterized as his-
torical circumstances and a recovering ‘international framework’. This points at another
explanation highlighting specific developments and the agents of these states. What we
face in this case does not represent a specific type of “would-be” empire but much more
Approaching Short-Term Empires in World History, a First Attempt 3
an “embryonic” empire with the capacity for further development. Early collapse and
reduction are not due to misconstruction but rather to external factors like omnipotent
rivals or simply contingency. As a consequence, what we observe are just the charac-
teristic beginnings of any known empire. However, targeted development was cut from
outside (or even from inside) and the prospective empire was just decapitated. Thereby,
the question of acceptance, justification and legitimation of these types of empires has to
be raised. Lack of conviction and missing missions are further reasons for the emergence
of unsatisfied and resisting opponents.
Finally, the question of reception has to be addressed. Short-term empires can be ‘suc-
cessful’ in a way as they, or at least some of them, produced long term effects in terms
of regional and global history. They might have existed for only a short time but never-
theless generated a tremendous and vigorous afterlife. Thus, short term empires became
the objects of imperial historiography and historical reflection. Whether this reception is
rather negative than positive is an interesting question.
2 Results
Nearly all of the case studies under scrutiny in this volume share some general charac-
teristics of empire as they have been defined by recent research.3 This is true, of course,
with the exception of a prolonged duration. Conquest plays a major role. They hold sway
over large areas of land, or at least claim to do so. Their subjects exhibit a multi-ethnic
and multicultural background with multi-layered traditions. The paraphernalia of rule
clearly demonstrate imperial claims that are outreaching and charged by prestige and his-
tory. They do not build upon a unique founding act. More or less clearly defined borders
do not exist. The opposite is true with the claim of “Plus Ultra“.4 What is more, although
these empires are literally short-term, their history of reception is chronologically far-
reaching indeed. As it is true for all empires in world history, they continue to exist even
after they have collapsed. This ongoing ‘existence’ is, of course, a different one. They
become part of historical and political discourse, are referred to as exempla and show-
cases and are used in social and political argumentation and remembering. One even gets
the impression that due to their meteor like shape they have received a special and excep-
tionally long-lasting place in historical memory. However, there are also peculiar specif-
ics that these short-term empires share. They are abundant and have to be highlighted.
The peculiarities already start with the already addressed issue of historical memory as
we will see immediately. What follows is the attempt to gather and discuss some key
3Cf. Gehler/Rollinger 2014. Gehler/Rollinger 2020.

4Kohler 1999.
issues of the outstanding characteristics these empires share often separated by centuries
and localised in very different parts of the Euro-Asiatic continent.5
Sources and Historical memory

It is true that many of these empires loom large in historical memory. This memory, how-
ever, does not mainly originate from ‘inside’. It is productive primarily from ‘outside’.
Relevant historical information does not particularly emerge from the main agents of the
empire but is driven by an outside perspective that not uncommonly has become part
of the commemorative culture of the victors over the short-term empires. This means
that, from a modern perspective, one has to distinguish strictly between what tradition
believes to know about these empire and how much we moderns give historical credit
to that very knowledge. Or to put it another way: reconstruction of the histories of these
empires is sometimes very tedious and much more complicated than generally believed
to be due to the fact that any modern historian seriously dealing with these empires often
faces a considerable source problem. There are illustrative examples of these difficulties,
as the short-term rule of the Medes, the histories of Hannibal, Mithradates VI, Attila,
and Mahmud of Ghazna demonstrate.6 With slight exceptions this also applies for the
Hephthalites and the Latin Empire of Constantinople.7 Only careful and critical approach
is able to reveal what we know and what we do not know, what we hypothesize and
speculate about, and what is more about story-telling than historical analysis. It is also to
decide which types of sources can provide us with convincing answers about the end of
short term empires not to speak about the problem how to weigh the factors and reasons
of their erosion and implosion.
Duration
As already mentioned, the empires under discussion here share a comparatively short
duration of a few (2–10) decades with one to three generations at maximum that makes
all of them short-term empires. The most extreme example of this, is probably the
so-called “Tausendjähriges Reich” which survived only for 12 years.8 One could take
this as a perfect illustration for the complex effects of dynamization and acceleration
experienced in more contemporary history. However, there are also other examples that
stand and fall with one single conqueror. Hammurabi of Babylon and Shamshi-Adad of
Assur are very early examples for this phenomenon, Hannibal, Mithradates VI of Pontos,
Attila, Mahmud of Ghazna, Nader Shah and Napoleon as well as Mussolini and Hitler
5Whereas some contributors render personal names by their scientific transliterations, this essay
makes use of the more common and established forms, thus Mahmud of Ghazna for Maḥmūd of
Ghazna, Nader Shah for Nāder Šāh, Genghis Khan for Chingiz Khan/Chinggis Khan, etc.
6Cf. the contributions of Rollinger, Ruffing, Müller, Heather, and Reinfandt in this volume.
7Cf. the contributions of Mitsiou, and Wiesehöfer/Rollinger in this volume.
8Cf. the contribution of Suppan in this volume.

represent more recent ones.9 This also reveals the fact that most of these empires are
tremendously related to historical figures that somehow personalize ascent, climax,
and collapse. This is even true when decline took place with slight delay, as, e.g., with
Timur who, with Shah Rukh, had a successor of respectable format. Ostrogothic rule
did not collapse immediately after Theoderic’s death but it obviously ended to be an
empire by his death.10 There are, however, also examples where an ‘outstanding’ found-
ing figure appears to be absent at all. This might be due to the difficult source situa-
tion and our serious lack of information. Yet, although in these cases the Latin Empire
of Constantinople did not exist longer than 60 years, the empire of the Hephthalites not
more than 90 years, which appears to be the absolute maximum of the examples col-
lected in this volume.11 For the Medes we have an outstanding founding hero with
Cyaxares, but we have only meagre information about his immediate successors. For the
European Union only the future will tell whether its treatment in this volume was justi-
fied or not.12
The times of heroes seem to have come to an end especially with regard to the EU.
Only three politicians were appreciated as “European Citizens of Honour” by a unani-
mous decision of all heads of states and governments of the European Communities
and the European Union: Jean Monnet (1976), Helmut Kohl (1998) and Jacques Delors
(2015).13 The latter acted as a President of the European Commission (1985–1995). This
was more than two decades ago which is further proof for “the end of the heroic age”.
What the European Communities achieved from the 1950s to the 1990s is their lack of
today. There are also three important points to add:
(1) The generations of World War I and II experienced politicians ended in the 1980s
and 1990s at the latest. (2) None of the just mentioned three key figures had a charis-
matic profile, but they used their influence and power in order to create new institutions
and political structures. (3) Two of them (Kohl and Delors) enjoyed substantial backing
and support from the domestic political sphere (stable coalition government and a strong
state president like Mitterrand). Monnet was a special case. He hardly appeared in pub-
lic, but served as an initiator and think tank providing successful mid-term concepts and
long lasting durable strategies. Are think tanks and behind-the-scene agents seminal for
longer lasting empires?
9Cf. the contributions of Van de Mieroop, Richardson, Ruffing, Müller, Heather, Reinfandt, Rota,
and Suppan in this volume. Unfortunately, the paper of Johannes Willms on Napoleon (‘Napoleon
oder das ufer- und planlose Reich’) could not be included into this volume.
10Cf. the contributions of Manz, and Schäfer in this volume.
11Cf. the contributions of Mitsiou, and Wiesehöfer/Rollinger in his volume.
12Cf. the contributions of Rollinger, and Gehler in this volume.
13Gehler 2018, 185, 199, 202, 363.

Charisma
Nearly all founders of the empires dealt with in this volume can be defined as charismatic.
This is at least true from a contemporary perspective, but by far not only so. Many of them
were treated as heroic figures by tradition, although in these cases an up and down of their
evaluation can be observed. In any case, the charismatic aspect not only explains the power
of mobilization and conviction that these persons generated but also applies to the already
mentioned fact how much ‘person’ mattered in the rise of these states. All of them are men
which is telling as such although there might exist counter-examples, yet not treated in
this volume.14 Suppan highlights Hitler’s charisma which he rapidly lost after Stalingrad.
But he nevertheless profited from the ongoing ‘Hitler Myth’. This was demonstrated by
the British historian Ian Kershaw on a very broad basis of sources.15 Until the very end in
April and May 1945 the majority of Germans still believed in the ‘Führer’ and were con-
vinced that other Nazi leaders were responsible for the defeats and losses.16
Van de Mieroop refers to the ‘personal achievements’ of Hammurabi and
Shamshi-Adad.17 Hannibal, Mahmud of Ghazna, and Timur appear to be paradigmatic
hero figures,18 and the same, depending on perspective of course, can also be said of
Napoleon. All of them are also examples of warhorses. This is definitely true for Timur,
Nadir Shah and Napoleon.19 Bonaparte also profited from a kind of leader myth when
starting his “Government of the 100 Days”. Thereby, he became ruler of a ‘meteoric
empire’ within a short term empire. Cyaxares became a conqueror figure at least in tradi-
tion.20 The connection between military engagement and charisma is revealing, as it is
for an alarming attitude towards gambling and an appalling willingness to put all one’s
eggs into one basket. It also relates to an ostentatious lack of legitimization that these
persons shared from the very beginning of their careers.
Lack of legitimization
This appears to be an outstanding characteristic and a decisive impulse for mili-
tary over-engagement. There are, however, different facets of this aspect. One is the
lack of appropriate (mostly royal) descent. This results in ad hoc solutions but also in
genealogical manipulations. Shamshi-Adad becomes part of the lineage of Assyrian
14One might think about legendary figures like the Assyrian queen Semiramis and, of course,
Jeanne d’ Arc. However, it is questionable whether they were related to short-term empires. A bet-
ter example might have been Zenobia of Palmyra. The editors of this volume tried hard but unfor-
tunately were not successful in receiving a contribution on this interesting topic.
15Kershaw 1987.
16Kershaw 2011.
17Cf. the contributions of Suppan, and Van de Mieroop in this volume.
18Cf. the contributions of Ruffing, Reinfandt, and Manz in this volume.
19Cf. the contributions of Manz, and Rota in this volume.
20Cf. the contribution of Rollinger in this volume.

rulers, Mithradates VI a relative of Alexander the Great and Darius I, Timur’s tribe of
Barlas is attached to the line of Genghis Khan and Nadir Shah has to be ‘persuaded’
to become Khan by a public assembly, convened as a quriltāy derived from Mongolian
tradition.21 Marriage alliances with established houses play an additional role (Timur,
Nader Shah) as puppet rulers from these very houses are installed for a certain while
(Timur, Nader Shah).22 This manipulative aspects are accompanied by extraordinary
activities on some other fields. Gigantic building programs are initialized (Timur) and
the court is transferred into a center of culture and education. This becomes especially
manifest with Timur and his successors, but it is also true for Mahmud of Ghazna. The
latter also consciously played with legitimation strategies that made use of religion as
a tool for the justification of his rule. Thus, he became a prototype of a ghazi.23 This
was a perfect camouflage for justifying raiding and looting and therefore for multiply-
ing income and resources. Persecution of Shiis and staging as an orthodox Sunni was
also part of the program. All this could only gain effect, of course, if the new discourse
was shared and accepted by the relevant elites and followers. This was not only the per-
sonal entourage for there was the necessity to reach the ruling classes in general. If this
failed major problems arose. This becomes especially evident with the Latin Empire of
Constantinople where from the very beginning local Greek elites were excluded from the
newly established state. It represents an extreme, but very illustrative example of a super-
imposed rule from outside that, from the onset, was charged with a congenital effect.24
Napoleon as well as Mussolini and Hitler failed with successors. Napoléon II. ended
as Duke of Reichsstadt and “King of Rome”. These were powerless positions with mean-
ingless titles. The ‘Duce’ and the ‘Führer’ had no sons (according to our knowledge), in
any case not known to contemporary public and historical research.
Military over-engagement and its consequences

It has already been mentioned that a considerable number of the founding figures
addressed in this volume were outstanding conquerors, or at least stylized themselves as
such. The extraordinary importance of conquest had many reasons. Lack of legitimiza-
tion was one motive indeed, but there was additionally a boundless greed for land and
booty and an unruly tendency towards megalomania. Partly, this was due to the ‘impe-
rial’ desire to rule the world, or at least of what was thought to represent the world.25
21Cf. the contributions of Van de Mieroop, Müller, Manz, and Rota in this volume.
22Cf. the contributions of Manz, and Rota in this volume.
23Cf. the contributions of Reinfandt, and Manz in this volume.
24Cf. the contribution of Mitsiou in this volume.
25Cf. the contributions of Suppan, and Van de Mieroop in this volume. For Timur the world was
clearly defined as the ‘islamic world’ (Manz, this volume); for Hannibal and Mithradates much
depends on the weight given to their alliances with Philipp V of Macedon and Sertorius (Ruffing
and Müller, this volume).
This primacy of conquest and military engagement had considerable consequences.

Conquest tended to be o ver-ambitious, too fast and too much outreaching which resulted
in military over-stretch. This appears to be obvious with Hitler, Napoleon and Mahmud
of Ghazna.26 However, this challenge was astonishingly well-mastered by Timur. This
might have been due to the fact that he renounced to directly control all those areas
where he had been campaigning.27 In any case, a crucial issue was the establishment of
local loyalties towards the new rule, a task where many of these conquerors dramati-
cally failed or had only limited success for a very short time (Hitler, Napoleon, Mahmud
of Ghazna, Hannibal, Mithradates VI, Latin Emperors of Constantinople).28 This failure
was due to the new rulers’ ideology or simply to their boisterous greed for resources.
Exploitation and over-taxation created resistance. Opposition was additionally trig-
gered by an extremely brutal warfare with massacres, mass executions, and genocides
(Mithradates VI, Mahmud of Ghazna, Timur, Hitler).29
Giorgio Rota also highlights the importance of psychological aspects. Waging war
all the time may have resulted in dramatic repercussions on the psychological stability
of these conquerors and post-traumatic stress order might have played a certain role as
well.30 Therefore, the former heroes became more and more isolated and feared, deci-
sion making became irrational and opaque and any kind of balance was successively
lost. Whether these ‘heroes’ were, at least at the beginning, military geniuses, is another
point, although it appears to have been the case for at least some of them.31 In any case,
it is plausible that transformation of mental condition resulted in an overestimation of
one’s own capabilities and at the same time in an underestimation of the opponents.32
That some of the figures under scrutiny committed suicide may complete the picture
(Hannibal, Mithradates VI, Hitler). Astonishingly, they rarely became victims of a mur-
derer (Nader Shah, Mussolini).
Lack of loyalty in a mid-term perspective

It has already been stressed that lack of loyalty was a major issue. This, however, did
not always become evident immediately. The ruler’s charisma and short-term success as
well as fear of severe punishment may have been responsible for this delayed impact.
But it mattered and became obvious immediately when the ‘heroe’ holding together eve-
rything in person had left the scene. One issue was the lack of a timely installation of a
competent successor. Attila, Timur, and Nader Shah appear to be perfect examples for
26Cf. the contributions of Suppan, and Reinfandt in this volume.

27Cf. the contribution of Manz in this volume.
28Cf. the contributions of Suppan, Reinfandt, Ruffing, Müller, and Mitsiou in this volume.
29Cf. the contributions of Müller, Reinfandt, Manz, and Suppan in this volume.
30Cf. the contribution of Rota in this volume.
31Cf. the contributions of Ruffing, Reinfandt, Manz, Rota, and Suppan in this volume.
32Cf. the contributions of Ruffing, Müller, Mitsiou on the Bulgars, and Suppan in this volume.
this failure.33 The point, however, is what ‘competent’ means in this case. For this is not
only an issue of what is supposed to be ‘reality’ but also of discourse and staging. If the
fathers presented themselves as super-heroes and were generally accepted to meet this
kind of qualification it was nearly impossible for the successors to follow in their foot-
steps. Seen through this lens, the inherent problem is also one of acceptance that became
even more dominant if the successor was still a child when the father had passed away.
Also in this case, the new ruler’s shortcomings were less based on his missing capabili-
ties, but on the fact that it became difficult to achieve the acceptance of a considerable
majority of the relevant elites. Balancing the elites is a major challenge for any empire
due to the fact that an empire’s elites do not represent a homogeneous group concern-
ing wealth, status and influence. Sustaining competition within this group is important
for any ruler to optimize and expand authority and rule, but this only works if the sys-
tem is kept in balance without creating open strife and resistance. With a new succes-
sor with a much lower ‘profile’ the possibilities to achieve more influence and power
increase considerably for major representatives of the elite. This is, at least, true on a
theoretical level since the reactions of the peers towards such ambitions play a decisive
role. Thus, the question whether these ambitions become relevant or not, whether they
are able to unfold in unbridled ways or whether they can be harnessed and integrated in
existing frameworks bears important information about the stability of a given system.
The consequence of instability and missing consolidation is a coup d’état and civil war
with ongoing lack of legitimization. This is evidently the case with Attila and Timur.34
Wars of this kind imply an incredible loss of authority, credibility, and resources.
Exploitation and plundering, conquest and destruction in one’s own land dramatically
minimize acceptance. Such a development not only endangers the former power center
but also threatens the existence of the elites as a constitutive group of a given empire.
Apparently, the successful establishment of a successor is a multi-layered process that
tests an empire’s stability in various ways and along various steps. Some of the rulers
under discussion even did not come into the position of electing a successor, others did,
but didn’t do it in a resounding way,35 yet others like Timur even neglected to do so.
The lack of a tradition accepting primogeniture as with the Mongols might have played a
certain role, but again, it is acceptance that matters.36 The lack of acceptance may reveal
insufficient consolidation but also the failure to gain the hearts of the subjects. Nazi
Germany is an extreme example for total failure in this respect, but it appears to be also
true for many others, from Attila to the Latin emperors of Constantinople, from Mahmud
of Ghazna to Nader Shah.37 Additionally, permanent warfare resulted in brutalization and
33Cf. the contributions of Heather, Manz, and Rota.

34See the contributions of Heather, and Manz in this volume.
35Nader Shah disposes his alreay installed son and has him blinded (Rota, this volume).
37Cf. the contributions of Suppan, Heather, Mitsiou, Reinfandt, and Rota.

even a ‘fear of peace’.38 It is a truism that permanent campaigning is simply not enough
for the successful establishment of an empire.39 Thus, it was a rocky road towards
the sustained installation of a dynasty, and whether this was successful or not did not
become evident with the second but only with the third and fourth generation.40
Structure
It has been demonstrated that the failure to install a successor as well as lacking accept-
ance of such a regulation, before and especially after the former ruler’s death, is not only
a failure to take an appropriate decision at the right moment but is also related to insuf-
ficient structure. This, however, is a broader phenomenon with deeper cause that only
becomes apparent at the very moment of a change of leadership. Exploitation of the sub-
jects instead of a balanced rule is a major issue in this context. Extensive deportations,
confiscation of land, heavy taxing, and extraordinary service obligations become syno-
nyms for unjust regimes an increasing majority wants to see an end of.41 The situation
accelerates if an atmosphere of fear and suspicion takes place combined with a total loss
of confidence. Again, it is mainly the imperial and local elites that matter in such a devel-
opment.42 The execution of “theatrical violence” may result in short-term success, but is
does not solve the underlying problems.43
If there is a possibility for change it is the elites who are prepared to change sides.
Mahmud of Ghazna and Timur are obvious examples for this failure, but they also
invested considerably in infrastructure, architecture, and culture. The Latin emperors of
Constantinople did none of this. They plundered a city of about 225,000 inhabitants that
shrunk within 50 years to a ‘necropolis’ of only about 3000 people.44 With Venice as a
state within the state there was a very specific situation anyhow. Corruption compared
with over-taxation became epidemic, but this is also true for the states ruled by Mahmud
of Ghazna, Timur and Nader Shah.45 However, the existence of bureaucratic structures
was also a prerequisite for imperial success and the absence or nearly absence of such
structures was a problem as well.46 So again, keeping the balance was a central issue to
38Rota, this volume.

39See the contributions of Heather, and Manz in this volume.
40See Rollinger 2020. There are, however, always exemptions to this ‘rule’. Thus, the Roman
empire was successful for a very long time without establishing a permanent dynasty. Also in this
case, it was acceptance that mattered. Yet, at least the official names of the emperors, not the indi-
vidual ones transmitted by the historiographers, created the impression of continuity and similarity
in a pseudo-dynastic framework.
41Cf. the contributions of Suppan, and Van de Mieroop in this volume.
42Cf. the contribution of Reinfandt in this volume.
45Cf. the contributions of Reinfandt, Manz, and Rota in this volume.
46Cf. the contributions of Rollinger, and Heather in this volume.

guarantee sustainability. Short term empires often suffered from a lack of balance between
the challenge of consolidation in times of peace and the permanent pressure to go to war.
They were forced to ever win battles and wars in very short periods of time, which led
to exhaustion and overstretch in the end. This can also be true for an openness towards
necessary reforms, since too much of change and transformation was threatening as well.
Nader Shah’s intended religious reforms in order to unify Sunnis and Shiis were ambi-
tious and open-minded and had a touch of ingenuity, but they created unrest and insecurity
and finally failed.47 It is the circumstances, stupid. This understanding leaves the historian
somehow helpless. One may wonder about the role ‘contingency’ plays in this context.48
These reservations concerning the effects of reform and change also apply to any other
measures of integration towards the ruled. At least the local elites should share the impe-
rial agenda if it is supposed to be successful. There have to be attractive and profitable
offers and they have to be communicated in appropriate ways. Integration by force does
not guarantee success.49 Right now, all these issues gain momentum in very recent debates
about the future of the European Union, which is still an open-ended process.50
Resources
Resources matter, this is a truism. But they matter especially in over-ambitious and
far-reaching imperial agendas. The Nazi empire had a serious problem in resources from
the very beginning that not only drove its incredible expansionism but also prompted
its rapid collapse.51 Mahmud of Ghazna’s empire faced an increasing tendency towards
allocation of land towards followers which guaranteed short-term mobilisation but meant
loss of resources on the long run.52 The Latin empire of Constantinople suffered from
the very beginning from military and economic shortcomings and a lack of human men
power. Serious financial problems were omnipresent. But this was a very special case,
an imperial city state without hinterland.53 Giorgio Rota hypothesizes on the compara-
ble economic weakness of the Iranian highland, in the long run insufficient to sustain
47Cf. the contribution of Rota in this volume. While Mussolini started a policy of reconciliation
with the Holy Sea, which led to the Lateran Treaties in 1929 (Pollard 2005; Kertzer 2014), Hitler
(Besier 2001) and Stalin (Döpmann 1981) began a cultural fight against Christianity. The Red Tsar
destroyed the Russian Orthodox Churches while Hitler allowed to persecute and execute priests of
the Roman Catholic Church. Both actions endangered the dictators’ public acceptance. The threat
of weakening their power basis forced them to reconsider a stop of these policies, not at least to
legitimize their wars against each other.
48Cf. the considerations of Van de Mieroop, Ruffing, Mainz, and Rota in this volume.
49Cf. the contribution of Heather in this volume.
50Cf. the contribution of Gehler in this volume.
51Cf. the contribution of Suppan in this volume with a special reference to a lack of oil.
52Cf. the contribution of Reinfandt in this volume, also referring to the source problems related to
the introduction of the iqṭā’ system which has to be seen as a continuous process.
an empire. Similar considerations have also been put forward recently.54 Extensive cam-
paigning and plundering may offer a short-term relief, but in the long turn it does not
help to solve the rising problems.55 The biggest problem of the European Union is the
lack of mobilizing its own resources. A sort of ‘European Tax’ is still missing. The right
to raise taxes is due to the EU member states. This is the major reason for the Union’s
limited capacities.
Superior opponents, contingency, and a historian’s aporia

Facing superior opponents sounds to be a plausible explanation for any empire’s failure.
But it is also a somehow superficial one, for it immediately addresses the question why
a given empire might be superior to another one. Nevertheless, it is an explanation that
has some value, for there existed empires that were never challenged by any competitors.
The Nazi empire faced a whole range of opponents.56 In the end the Wehrmacht fought
against the whole world when its allies (Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Finland, Romania)
had surrendered, changed sides and the neutrals (Ireland, Spain, Turkey, Switzerland)
had defected to the Anti-Hitler-coalition in the last years, months and days of WWII.
Hannibal failed at Rome’s power of resistance,57 the Ghaznavids lost position against
the Seljuks,58 its the Timurids and Napoleon saw attacks from neighbours and coalitions
on all sides,59 the Bulgars mattered for the collapse of Attila’s empire,60 Nader Shah had
to struggle with Russia and the Ottomans,61 and the Median confederation had nothing
to gain against the new power emerging from Anshan.62 For Mithradates VI Rome was
an almost unassailable competitor, as it was Justinian for the Ostrogoths,63 and the Turk
Khaghanate for the Hephthalites.64 In this illustrious group the European Union appears
to be the exception for its strongest opponents appear to attack from the inside.65 But
also in recent times outside criticism, opposition and hostilities towards the EU are grow-
ing: The EU customs union partner Turkey with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan66 disregarded
54Cf.the contribution by Rota in this volume, and see Payne 2016.

55Cf.the contribution by Heather in this volume.
56Suppan, this volume.
57Ruffing, this volume.
58Reinfandt, this volume.
59Manz, this volume.
60Heather, this volume.
61Rota, this volume.
62Rollinger, this volume.
63Schäfer, this volume.
64Wiesehöfer/Rollinger, this volume.
65Gehler, this volume.
66Akyol 2016.
common European law and values, the Russian Federation’s President Vladimir Putin67
supported financially EU sceptical and hostile political parties while US President
Donald Trump called the EU “an enemy” acting on the brink of a trade war against the
Europeans. However, it is also constellation and alliances that play a considerable role.
Nazi Germany is once more an extreme example for lack of any diplomatic skills and
bad planning.68 Parthian inaction may have missed the chance to ally with Mithradates
VI (or vice versa) and to push back Roman advances in Asia at a very early stage.69
Obviously, constellation and negotiating skills are important parameters that matter. At
least, Hammurabi and Theoderic appear to have been true masters in this respect.70 But
was this the clincher to determine success or failure of a given empire? Presenting defi-
nite answers to these questions is indescribable difficult and not satisfying at all. This
aporia towards explanation was already felt by the ancients. Timur’s claim to be the ‘lord
of the fortunate conjunction’ (ṣāḥib qirān) reveals an emic perspective that appears to
concede that success or failure have only little to do with measurable performance.71 It
was fortuna that ruled, or ‘the force of circumstance’ like Orosius put it (Or. hist. 2,1,3–
6).72 Modern historians would prefer to speak about contingency.73 This is an important
observation because it has grounds for modesty in any modern historian’s capability to
entirely explain why things happened and why they didn’t. So what is the conclusion of
this final sort of aporia?
Moving beyond aporia towards multi-faceted empirical explanations

To confess a certain amount of uncertainty in our explanations of historical events must
not be confounded with an inability to address empirical and plausible explanations.
Source oriented, data-based empirical research in a comparative framework is just what
historical analysis is about. This has, hopefully, been demonstrated by the contribu-
tions of this volume. Since every empire, like everything in history, is specific but takes
place in comparable frameworks with agents sharing comparable motives, answers can
neither be simple-minded nor straightforward. Each historical example has to be thor-
oughly checked (as has been done by the contributions in this volume) and to be com-
pared to each other in a diligent way (what has been attempted by this essay). What
becomes apparent is a combination of coefficients that matter and are shared by many
examples but not by all of them. However, the categorization and determination of these
67Skawa 2008.
68Suppan this volume.
69Cf. the contribution of Müller in this volume.
70Cf. the contributions of Van de Mieroop and Schäfer in this volume.
72Cf. the contribution of Ruffing, this volume.
73Cf. also the contribution of Rota in this volume who compares Frederick the Great with Nader
Shah concluding that the first one appears to have been just more fortunate.
coefficients is an important part of the explanation and the points addressed by this essay
endeavoured to grasp some of the essential ones. We conclude, once more, with a refer-
ence to an ancient source. When Velleius Paterculus described Mithradates’ VI (short-
term) success he did not single out one specific aspect but addressed an entire bundle of
them (Vell. 2.18.1).74 He was characterized as ‘most energetic at war’ (bello acerrimus),
‘of exceptional bravery’ (virtute eximius), ‘the greatest, sometimes in fortune, but always
in spirit’ (aliquando fortuna, semper animo maximus), ‘a general in strategies’ (consil-
iis dux), and ‘an active soldier’ (miles manu). This description would fit for most of the
‘heroic figures’ addressed in this volume.
However, despite this combination of outstanding qualities, Velleius and his readers
were well aware of the fact that Mithradates VI failed. Obviously, impressive as they
were, these outstanding qualities were nevertheless regarded to be insufficient to guaran-
tee permanent success. For Velleius the reason for this was more plausible than it might
be for us: it was the superiority of the Roman empire that made Mithradates’ ambitions
fruitless. But this is just one interpretation, of course. Giorgio Rota concluded his contri-
bution with a very general consideration about any success and failure of empire build-
ing. According to him failure was much more likely and therefore much more common
than success. Seen through this lens, the empires introduced in this volume might rep-
resent the rule and not the exception in world history. Whether this might have satisfied
Mithradates VI is another question.
We close this introduction with two afterthoughts, one on very recent, one on more
ancient history, both somehow summarizing the specifics and problems involved when
historians talk about short-term empires in world history.
When in 1997 the 40 years anniversary of the signing of the Rome Treaties (25 March
1957) was celebrated the EU Commission’s President Jacques Santer (1995–1999)
argued “that the EU once a time could become a victim of her own success”. What did
he intent to express? The Communities successfully set landmarks with the establish-
ment of the Costum’s Union (1968), the Single Market (1993), the common currency
‘Euro’ (1999, 2002) and the Eastern Enlargement (2004/2007). After these major
achievements one may have believed that everything had already been accomplished and
there was then nothing to be done anymore. Seen through this lens, becoming the victim
of one’s own successes may also be the fate of short term empires. However, the EU
has not yet collapsed: The Bank- and Capital Union, the Digital Union, Energy Union
and a Transport Union as well as a Social Union could be promising future projects that
bear the potential to hold the EU together and to boost its further development, but the
“Brexit” in 2020 signiefies a severe break.
74Cf. also the contribution by Müller in this volume.

What about Alexander III (the Great) and his “empire”?

Considering the characteristics for short-term empires as just outlined above, one may
wonder why this volume does not include a paper on Alexander III (the Great). At first
glance, Alexander’s realm appears to be a first-class example for a short-term empire.
The main-narratives of modern historiography present his realm as an empire with an
ultra-short duration emerging from military conquest, which was achieved by one of the
most charismatic rulers ever, who subdued nearly the whole inhabited world as a homo
triumphans.75 Moreover, the conquest itself and thus the crucial phase of formation of
this empire is characterized as an over-engaged enterprise of Alexander, rushing his
already demoralized troops to the allegedly unknown borders of the world. Even after
he had seized the largest empire of his time, the Macedon’s desire for conquest was still
not satisfied. While having defeated all his opponents in combat, only mutiny rendered
his unlimited ambitions impossible wherefore he was unable to capture the remaining
parts of the inhabited world.76 Within the conquered lands the young ruler’s author-
ity was troubled by disloyal indigenous elites and Macedonians, which caused struc-
tural changes in both exercise of power and structuring the army. The entire process of
conquest caused a mutation of Alexander’s personality from a charismatic leader to a
hubristic despot. When Alexander died only two years after he had officially proclaimed
the end of the conquest, he was up to his next campaigns which would have led him to
Arabia and far into the Mediterranean West. However, his sudden death at the age of 33
rendered his plans impossible. After he terminated his final breath, the whole empire fell
to pieces and self-proclaimed successors fought endless and futile wars.
This master narrative of the history of Alexander’s empire created by modern schol-
ars, literally screams out for attesting it a role as the prototype of a short-term empire in
world history. However, this narrative is the product of a specific perspective based on
Greek and Roman sources and thus shows a bias towards Eurocentrism. This becomes
apparent when the preconditions for the rise of Alexander’s empire, namely the impe-
rial structures of the Achaemenid-Persian empire, are ignored or are reduced to play the
role of a voiceless object of the Macedonian conquest.77 Thus, giving this ancient Near
Eastern empire a voice of its own does not only challenge the modern narrative but also
question the character of Alexander’s empire as a short-term empire.78
What we face is a major problem of sources. Not a single account written during or
shortly after Alexander’s reign survived to our times.79 The main difficulty of modern
reconstructions is the critical examination of the doubled distorted image of the historical
75The most influential biographies—or at least biographical treatments—on Alexander in the last
years are: Müller 2019; Wiemer 2015; Worthington 2014; Nawotka 2010; Cartledge 2004.
76On the alleged mutiny at the river Hyphasis see Howe/Müller 2012.
77For critics among modern scholarship see Bowden 2014.
78Cf. Degen 2019; Briant 2010; Briant 2002.
79Collections of fragments in translation are Gilhaus 2017 and Pearson 1960.

Alexander created by our sources.80 Both the lost accounts of the so-called “primary
authors” and the works of the so-called “secondary authors” which survived to our times
did not aim to give a neutral account on Alexander. All these authors lived in times of spe-
cific political situations and pursued certain aims, which rendered a neutral “report” of the
Macedon impossible.81 We do not have access to one single comprehensive account about
Alexander originating from his own time; exceptions are only some epigraphical sources
and coins which provide important but limited insights into the structure of Alexander’s
empire.82 The ancient Near Eastern perspective still remains silent, due to a nearly total
absence of sources mentioning Alexander.83 Hence, as a consequence, “story-telling” and
critical reconstruction go hand in hand in scholarship. Nevertheless, new approaches shed
different light on so-called “scholarly myths” and view Alexander’s reign from new per-
spectives.84 These recent studies on Alexander underline the continuity of local structures
and ideas of empire by viewing Alexander’s realm in the larger context of ancient Near
Eastern empires of the first millennium BCE. It is therefore much more appropriate to
characterize Alexander’s realm as an empire in transformation than to feign entirely new
structures of very limited duration. This leads us finally to the important aspect of time as
the essential point of definition for a short-term empire.
Ascribing an empire the attribute “short-term” defines its duration measured in rela-
tive time as key. The fact, that Alexander’s reign only lasted twelve years, appears to be
a proper qualification to define his rule as a short-term empire. However, a closer look
immediately reveals certain problems. They start with determining the exact date when
Alexander is supposed to have decisively defeated the Persian empire and started to
transform military supremacy into the establishment of a new power structure (331, 330,
327 or 325 BCE).85 Anyhow, the short period of time from the official end of his cam-
paign in 325 to his unexpected death in 323 matches the idea of a consolidated empire.
Do these two years suffice to speak of an empire of its own?
In the last two years of his reign Alexander may have consolidated his power, but due
to his young age the question of succession remained unsolved. Although, after his death
the Argead dynasty continued to rule de iure over the “Macedonian” empire for a short
period of time, de facto Alexander’s former generals and friends exercised power which
finally caused the empire to fall to pieces. However, it may be appropriate to extend the
empire’s duration from Alexander’s death to the year 306 or even to the battle of Ipsus in
301, when each of the so-called successors claimed legitimate rule over the former empire
80Nawotka/Rollinger/Wiesehöfer/Wojciechowska 2018; Müller 2014.

81Howe/Müller 2012; Wiemer 2011; Spencer 2002; Roisman 1984; Rosen 1979.
82Epigrahical sources: Rhodes/Osborne 2003 esp. 76; 83; 84; 85; 86; 101; Hatzopoulos 1997;
Heisserer 1980; Numismatics: LeRider 2003.

83Van der Spek 2003; Nawotka/Wojciechowska 2016.
84Müller 2019, 221–236; Anson 2013; see now also Degen 2020; Rollinger/Degen 2020.
85Nawotka 2012; Fox 2010; Muccioli 2004.

from Macedon to the Punjab in its entirety.86 Nobody would deny that distinctive parts of
Alexander’s former realm became political entities with imperial ambitions of their own
at the end of the 4th century BCE, but the idea of a cohesive empire survived, at least, for
twenty years after the death of its founder.87 This observation characterizes Alexander’s
empire rather as an “imaginative empire” than a “short-term empire” per definitionem.88
Alexander’s empire remained and imaginative point of reference for the Hellenistic Age
and far beyond. A similar example of such an imaginative empire is the Sacrum Imperium
Romanum of Early Modern Age (16th–19th century), whose rulers claimed to be succes-
sors of the Roman emperors although their empire neither included the ancient capital
Rome itself nor the vast eastern parts of the ancient empire. Also in this case, the idea sur-
vived and the claim of power was exercised by a “successor-empire” localized in a border
region of the former “mother-empire”. Neither the empires of Alexander’s successors, nor
the Sacrum Imperium Romanum were as successful as their imaginative role models.
Our sources portray Alexander as a charismatic ruler and a true military genius, who
crashes the enemy’s rows ahead of his troops and never suffers defeat in any of his bat-
tles. In some cases, Alexander even successfully persuaded his exhausted troops to con-
tinue the campaign. The literary portrayal of his person underwent a mythologization
due to his own as well as his successors’ propaganda.89 Modern research highlighted
a couple of literary role models such as Xenophon’s fictitious Persian king Cyrus the
Great, on which ancient authors heavily relied to portray the young king as a success-
ful ruler. However, modern scholars analysed the different steps of the conquest which
provoked a new interpretation of Alexander’s role as conqueror.90 The success of the
Macedonian campaign was merely the merit of Macedonian generals and magnates.91
From the very beginning of Alexander’s reign there was considerable opposition against
the young ruler among his entourage. Scholarship happens to qualify the executions of
Philotas, Parmenio and Cleitus the Black as great “catastrophes” of Alexander’s reign.
Nevertheless, the transformation of the traditional Macedonian court through the par-
tial adaptation of Achaemenid court structures marked the beginning of a new system
of power, which propelled the opposition of formerly influential Macedonian aristocracy
against Alexander.92 Seen through this lens, it is plausible to state that Alexander’s con-
quest was rather the success of an experienced military network than the work of a single
military genius. The extraordinary charisma of Alexander is, therefore, in all probability
86Hauben/Meeus 2014.
87Strootman 2014; Meuus 2014.
88Bichler 2014.
89Müller 2014; Stewart 1993.
90Bosworth 1988.
91Müller 2019; Heckel 2012; Müller 2003.
92Müller 2014, 187–246; Müller 2003.

an invention of both his propaganda and later authors and glosses over the importance of
his father’s entourage.93
Be that as it may, opposition against Alexander provokes a reconsideration of the
extent to which his rule was accepted within his empire and the extent to which a lack
of legitimacy can be ascertained. One of the reasons why Alexander was so success-
ful in conquering the Achaemenid empire was the multicultural character of the latter.
According to Pierre Briant this is the reason why Persian rule could have been eas-
ily substituted by Macedonian rule.94 At least, one Greek revolt and two Persian aris-
tocrats as would-be kings are attested for Alexander’s reign. Already from the reign of
Artaxerxes III (359–338) onwards, local elites gained more and more power within the
Achaemenid empire. It appears that Alexander overcame the former lack of legitimiza-
tion by combining indigenous conceptions of power with Macedonian kingship and by
coming to arrangements with local elites.
Dealing with the character of Alexander’s empire, one could easily state that a criti-
cal analysis of the structure of the Macedonian conquest results in the conclusion that
his empire was no short-term empire by definition. Nonetheless, two objections should
be raised. First, although his realm emerged from a conqueror-state to an empire of
ultra-short duration, it survived as an imaginative empire after it had fallen to pieces. On
this basis, it is rather appropriate to attest the two decades after Alexander’s death the
character of a “saddle time” than to define Alexander’s empire as being short-term.
Second, one could rather see the late-Achaemenid time from the reign of Artaxerxes
III to Alexander and his successors as a coherent period, in which the transformation
from Achaemenid to Hellenistic rule did emerge.95
In the end, both the duration of an empire seen as process and its impact on the entan-
gled history of empires are key for the characterization of a short-term empire. In this
case it is convenient to refer to Fernand Braudel’s description of historical processes.
The French historian defined historical processes by determining their different quali-
ties of impact on later times as courte durée (e.g. politics of the day), moyenne durée
and longue durée.96 Adapting these concepts for the description of imperial structures,
we clearly need to distinguish Alexander’s empire from the short-term empires in this
volume. While the political impact of a short-term empire comes to an end with its exist-
ence, the empire of Alexander still existed for about 20 years as an imaginative reference
point. But that does not mean, that Alexander’s empire was totally different from the
empires discussed in this volume. Its collapse caused the emergence of a couple of short-
term empires. However, it is both a matter of perspective and sources when we decide to
qualify a state as short-term empire. Neither the conquest of Alexander nor the wars of
93Zahrnt 2016a; Zahrnt 2016b; Anson 2013, 83–120.

94Briant 2002, 817–871; Briant 2006.
95Briant 2009.
96Braudel 1990.
the successors had a dramatic effect on the Mesopotamian idea of ongoing kingship. For
this reason, we should also consider the cultural peculiarities and individual cultures of
memories when we talk about short-term empires.
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The European Union: A Short-Term
Empire?
Michael Gehler
Preliminary Remarks
Does the European Union consist of a new world power with imperial ambitions? That is
what is asked by Hans-Jürgen Bieling before more than a decade of crisis 2008–2020.1
Was it and is it still an empire at all? With a view toward historical empires, what would
this mean for its endangered and weakened relations with the United States especially
since the establishment of the Trump administration in 2017?
These are questions that had been posed with increased frequency. Over the past
twenty five years, the historical research has been occupied with hegemonic powers and
empires, thus experiencing both a noticeable boom2 and, through the debate about the
“liberal empire” (Niall Ferguson), positive evaluations and critical reactions.3
With systematic access, the Hanover historian Hans-Heinrich Nolte proposes com-
prehending empires as “universals”, that is, as phenomena that transcend eras but are
historical and tied to time, starting out from around 3000 BC and defined by first, a
monarchical head; second, collaboration between throne and altar (state religion), third,
an extensive bureaucracy; fourth, the use of a written form; fifth, centrally collected
1Bieling2005: 247 ff.; Gehler 2014a: 1255 ff.; Gehler 2018.

2Kennedy 1987: 471 ff. (The EEC—Potential and Problems); 488 ff. (The Soviet Union and Its
“Contradictions”), 514 ff. (The United States: The Problem of Number One in Relative Decline);
Münkler 2005: 11 ff., 213 ff.
3Leonhard, and Von Hirschhausen 2006: 121 ff.; Von Hirschhausen 2009: 228 ff.
M. Gehler (*)
University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany
e-mail: gehler@uni-hildesheim.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_2
24 M. Gehler
tributes or taxes; sixth, variety in the provinces; and seventh, slight participation of the
“citizens”.4
Additional stimulating accesses originated from the Brunswick political scientist
Ulrich Menzel who, as a result of a series of central criteria, differentiates hegemonic
powers from empires.5
Starting out from the access to the occupation with empires consisting of a real his-
tory and reception history dimension that was conceived with Robert Rollinger,6 I will
attempt a point-by-point analysis of the EU and its history, whereupon this will be briefly
recapitulated and then investigated through the use of real and reception history and, in
so doing, the attempt will be made to illuminate its character by means of comparison
with the USA, the Roman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire.
The European states that had joined together under the Treaties of Rome in 1957
(entered into force 1958)7 and created the European Communities (EC) through the
Merger Treaty of 1965 (entered into force 1967) formed the European Union after the
end of the Cold War in Europe starting from the Maastricht Treaty of 1991 (entered into
force 1993).8
Under Commission President Jacques Delors (in office 1985–1995),9 the European
Communities (EC) set themselves the ambitious goals of the broad-reaching Single
Market (entered into force 1993) and the envisioning of the monetary union, which it
also achieved in 2002. The European Court of Justice (ECJ),10 which emerged from
the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), has developed since the 1970s into
a guardian of and engine for a greater convergence of standardized EU law (the “acquis
communautaire”).
Beginning with the so-called “Copenhagen Criteria” (1993), the EU could and can
order deep economic, social, and political reforms for countries that wish to join, and
thus small states such as Slovakia, but also large states such as Turkey. If the latter does
not pursue a policy compatible with EU law and values entry negotiations are frozen.
In spite of the (greatest) successes that have been achieved over the past two dec-
ades in the history of European integration with the realization of the “Four Freedoms”
within the Single Market (the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people)
(1993),11 the single currency of the euro as a non-cash currency (1999) and as a real,
concrete means of payment (2002), the unification of the continent through the most
4Nolte 2008: 14 ff.; Nolte 2017: 13 ff.

5Menzel 2005: 64 ff.; Menzel 2015: 29 ff.
6Gehler, and Rollinger 2014: 1–32.
7Gehler 2009b.
8Hrbek 1993; Weidenfeld 1994.
9Ludlow 2015: 173 ff.
10Rasmussen 2008: 77 ff.; Rasmussen: 2010: 69 ff.
11Grin 2003.
The European Union: A Short-Term Empire? 25
comprehensive enlargement in its history from fifteen to twenty-five (2004), twenty-

seven (with Bulgaria and Romania 2007) and then with Croatia twenty-eight EU states
(2013) and the “Constitutional Treaty” that was approved by twenty-five states (2004),
the condition and the further development of the European Union appeared to be con-
flicting. And the ambivalence finds expression in the relevant literature: are we dealing
with a “second founding” of the European Union in the twenty-first century (Ludger
Kühnhardt)12 or with the “last days of Europe” (Walter Laqueur)?13
The historical results starting out from the different claims and expectations seem to
be mixed: strengths and weaknesses can be recognized. The EU continues to be a world
trade and world economic power. It is a partial monetary union without being an eco-
nomic union, and its foreign policy and security policy are subject to the principle of
unanimity. In the end, the EU has shown itself to be the product of nation-states that have
become weakened and unimportant but which can continue to force their will upon it.
The German Federal Constitutional Court continues to view the EU as an association of
states (“Staatenverbund”).
To what extent the later European Communities fundamentally also consist of asso-
ciations with a cartel quality is not only assessed by the Hildesheim political scientist
Holm A. Leonhardt as correct, but also represented as determined. With a neutral use of
the concepts, he speaks of a state cartel on the path toward a federal state.14
When considered in historical terms, the American role as a sponsor for both Western
Europe and all of Europe is not to be overlooked. The USA twice proved itself to be
an integration assistant for the unification of the European states: first of all with the
Marshall Plan (1948–1952/1953) for the strengthening of the reconstruction of Western
European economies, and subsequently with the NATO Eastern Enlargement through the
central and eastern parts of the continent since the second half of the 1990s—therefore
Washington’s support was important for flanking the “EU Eastern Enlargement” in terms
of alliance and security policy and thus for safeguarding the economic unification of the
continent in the capitalist-private enterprise-Western sense.
In the following, the double-approach of material and reception history is described.
12Kühnhardt 2008b.
13Laqueur 1970; Laqueur 1992; Laqueur 2006.
14Leonhardt 2009: 687 ff.
26 M. Gehler
1 Material History
1.1 Coming into Existence
The European Union came into existence out of the European Coal and Steel
Community (1952). There was in fact a founding myth (the “Schuman Plan”15 for the
merging of the coal demand and iron and steel production as a goal for peace in Europe
with “German-French reconciliation”.16 However, starting out from that, no lasting and
effective European idea was formed. Wolfgang Schmale already asked decades ago
whether Europe would founder on its deficit of myths.17
In comparison to the ancient Roman founding legend of Romulus and Remus (753
BC), the EU does not have any revolutionary act of birth or creation. The merger of coal
and steel had too narrow of an impact and was first and foremost concentrated upon
France and Germany as well as Italy and the Benelux countries, and therefore limited
to the Carolingian core Europe of Western Europe. With the Schuman Plan, Bulgaria
and Romania, for example, would not have built up any strong identity that establishes
legitimation.
Patriotism for a constitution (“Verfassungspatriotismus”), as was proposed for the
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) by Dolf Sternberger,18 but could not be implemented
there, has also not been realized in the EU thus far. As a result of the rejection of the
“Constitutional Treaty” (2005),19 attempts at constitutionalization have no chances of real-
ization for the foreseeable future. On the contrary, the dissociation from the other and con-
sequently from relations with third parties were absolutely essential for the founding of the
first supranational community form in the history of international relations in the 20th cen-
tury: the ECSC cannot be explained either without the occupation and control of Central
and Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union (1944–1945 through 1948–1949) or without the
potentials for confrontation in the first phase of the War (1947–1948 through 1953).
1.2 Structure
From the very beginning onward, the institutional structure of the European
Communities consisted of interstate (“intergovernmental”) bodies (the Council of
Ministers, the EC/EU Council, the Permanent Representatives) and supranational bod-
ies (the Common Assembly, later on the European Parliament, the Commission, and the
15Schwabe 1988.
16Lappenküper 2001.
17Schmale 1997.
18Sternberger 1990.
19Kühnhardt 2004; Liebert 2006; Knauer 2007: 11 ff.

Court of Justice). The leadership of the EU was distributed in several directions, carried
by a combination of institutions and a manageable bureaucracy. There was and is neither
a one-sided concentration of power nor a single strong center, but rather a division of
rule, a division of power, and different locations for seats (e.g. the Ministers’ Council,
the European Council and the Commission in Brussels, the European Parliament in
Strasbourg, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Central Bank in
Frankfurt, Europol in The Hague or FRONTEX in Warsaw). The principle of efficiency
is also to maintain the upper hand over the principle of democracy.
The British-German journalist and writer Alan Posener does not see any European
demos and thus also does not consider any democracy to be possible at the European
level—and therefore an empire without a people? Before the Treaty of Lisbon entered
into force, he emphasized, “In actuality, the EU is not only a supranational construct,
but also a post-democratic one: its activity is not legitimized by the EU Parliament, but
rather by the success.”20
1.3 Expansion
The EC and the EU expanded their memberships as well as their territories in various
stages, through a northern enlargement (Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Ireland in
1973), a southern enlargement (Greece in 1981, and Spain and Portugal in 1986), the
neutrals and EFTA-countries (Austria, Sweden, and Finland in 1995), and toward the
North-East, the Mediterranean, and the Southeast (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Malta, and Cyprus in 2004, Bulgaria
and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013),21 with which it achieved a “considerable area
of rule” (Herfried Münkler22), and the crossing of the “Augustan threshold” (Michael
Doyle23) seems to have occurred.
The expansion had been achieved both by means of growth from the inside toward the
outside (though the attractiveness and adoption of EU law) and from the outside toward
the inside (through growing dependency in the areas of trade policy and economy, and
with applications for and negotiations over accession).
20Posener 2010.
21Preston 1997; Kaiser and Elvert 2004; Lippert 2000; Lippert 2004; Nugent 2004; Brimmer and
Fröhlich 2005.
22Münkler 2005; Leonhard, and Von Hirschhausen 2006: 121 ff.
23Doyle 1986: 80; Gehler, and Rollinger 2014: 17.

28 M. Gehler
1.4 Perceptions and Reactions
The crucial perceptions and correspondingly relevant reactions by third parties were pre-
sent first of all from the Soviet Union,24 then by the United States,25 and finally also in
Asia (China26 and Japan27): a role was played in the order mentioned within the context
of world power history by thinking in opposition that was intensified and then reduced,
in competition that was growing and in the end increased, and in the model character that
was admired, sought after, and ready to be adopted (the idea of a Japan in cooperation
with China like France with Germany).
1.5 Decline and Disintegration
The EU is still a young construct. Erosion and implosion, which so many empires experi-
enced, seemed not to be present until the so called “Eastern Enlargement”, but clear signs
of having exceeded its global claims and having overstretched its actual scope of validity
are recognizable, which is expressed in forms of avant-garde thinking (Germany-France),
the formation of a hard core (the Single Market and the euro zone), “plus or minus
xy%”-memberships, an increasing number of candidates for accession, and new con-
cepts in the type of neighborhood arrangements within the framework of the “European
Neighbourhood Policy” (ENP), which does not envision any more accessions.28
The Brexit did not come as a surprise in 2020 after the UK had held a referendum on
EU withdrawal in 2016. It is a clear sign of the EU as a voluntary community of states
and a post-modern empire that it allows to renounce membership.
2 Reception History
This methodological approach draws attention to the following aspects:
2.1 Successes and Failures
The development of the European Communities was shaped by successes such as the
introduction of antitrust laws since 1958, the realization of the customs union in 1968,
the establishment of the currency system in 1978/1979, the holding of direct elections
24Zubok 1996: 85 ff.; Mueller 2009: 617 ff.

25Larres 2009: 599 ff.; Schwabe 2006.
26Reiterer 2018: 1055 ff.
27Reiterer 2018b: 1121 ff.
28Lippert 2011: 163 ff.; Naumescu, and Dungaciu 2015.

for the European Parliament since 1979,29 the creation of the Single Market in 1993, the
common currency as a non-cash currency in 1999 and as a real currency in 2002, and the
enlargement of the Union to the central, eastern, north- and southeastern parts of the con-
tinent in 2004/2007 and 2013.
But this history is also characterized by crises and setbacks, such as the rejection of the
treaty on the European Defense Community (EDC) by the French National Assembly in
1954,30 the “empty chair” policy by General Charles de Gaulle31 in 1965/1966 and the con-
sequent associated adherence to the rule of unanimity in decisive and broad-reaching inte-
gration policies and vital national areas since 1966, and the failure of the “Constitutional
Treaty” in 2005 through referenda in France and the Netherlands not to speak about the
Brexit-plebiscite in the UK in 2016, which led the British to leave the EU in 2020.32
2.2 Imagined Receptions
Imagined receptions (blending out, real fictions, stylizations, over-interpretations, dis-

regard, and disproportionalities in the ascribing of significances) are repeatedly found
in the history of the EU. The integration goals that have been set and the realizations
of projects in any case did not always comply with “truth in labeling”: the “Common
Market” that was announced in 1957–1958 and proclaimed in that way did not even exist
at all before 1993; there is still not an “Economic and Monetary Union” even today, nor
did the “Constitutional Treaty” mean any real constitution for Europe. The initial, actual,
and still continuous goal of European integration was the integration of parts of Germany
for the prevention of a new German empire or of a renewed German position of hegem-
ony in Europe. In the meantime, the Germany that since the 1950s became economically
dominant and once again gain strength then went on to hold a dominant political position
on the continent (along with France the now leaving United Kingdom) after Germany's
reunification and in the wake of the “Eastern Enlargement”.33
2.3 References, Forerunners and Historical Consciousness
References to historical empires, forerunners, the generation of historical consciousness,

and the creation of tradition and fictitious imperial continuities mark a clear deficit. The
EU does not have any comparable historical predecessors, if its brief prior history with
29Mittag 2006; Mittag 2011: 13 ff.; Mittag 2017: 227 ff.; Mittag, and Hülsken 2009: 105 ff.
30Kaiser 2001: 79 ff.; Loth 2014: 41 ff.
31Bajon 2012.
32Schünemann 2017.
33Gehler, and Graf 2017.

30 M. Gehler
the ECSC and the EEC is disregarded. From the official side, no explicit references is
also made to a model, nor are any attempts undertaken for the creation of continuities to
preceding constructs of rule or predecessor empires, such as the Holy Roman Empire.
Since the Union Treaty of Maastricht, and then even more so as a result of the “EU
Eastern Enlargement”, there have been references in the philosophical-policy debate
to the growing imperial character of the EU. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk
spoke of a “non-imperial empire”.34 Commission President José Manuel Barroso (2004–
2014), not free of superlatives and thus of excess and self-glorification, saw imperial
traits with the EU:
“It has the dimensions of an empire, but no centralist structure, no leadership with a
claim to omnipotence. Membership is on a voluntary basis, and the Union did not come
into existence through battles or war. The members do not give up their sovereignty, but
rather they share it. The EU is therefore the greatest construction that there has ever been
in history.”35
The former Commissioner for Enlargement Oli Rehn (2004–2014) also viewed
the EU in similarly positive terms, speaking of a “benevolent” or “benign empire”.36
“Benevolent” or “benign” means as much as enlightened, but also harmless, kind, gra-
cious, friendly, affectionate, mild, and safe, yet with tumors, “benign” implies simply
“not malignant”.
“The EU is by far the most popular and most successful empire in all of history because it
does not rule, it disciplines. The incentives of Europeanization—subsidies from Brussels,
unrestricted freedom of movement, and accession to the European monetary union—are
much too tempting to simply be turned down. Today, Brussels is Washington’s equal in
every way as far as the armies of lobbyists are concerned, and these also include dozens of
PR agencies that are actively engaged by the Balkans and other post-Soviet states for the
acceptance of those countries into the EU.”37 The geo-politician and policy advisor Parag
Khanna strengthens this argument even further.
With reference to the Briton and Solana advisor Robert Cooper, Khanna also touches on
the issue of racism, therefore also indirectly addressing the battle against racism propa-
gated by the EU and thus antiracism, since in his opinion, a successful empire cannot
be racist, just as the youth of Europe are post-national. Europe supposedly understands
itself to be a peace project. In the future, the “Pax Europea” will encompass around
thirty-five countries with approximately 600 million inhabitants.38
34Sloterdijk 2007.
35Ibid.
36Posener 2007: 9.
37Khanna 2008: 43.
38Ibid.: 44 f.
With the emphasis of Europe as a force for peace, reference was made to the foreign
policy and neighborhood policy, and it was then quickly overlooked what the important
internal dimension was that the pacification effect of the communities had: the drawing
of borders and lines of division, such as the border of the Rhine, the Brenner Pass, or the
Oder-Neisse, which had been perceived for decades or even centuries as painful, have
been overcome and become obsolete, and these are achievements which are in fact to be
designated as historic, if not to say sensational.
On the other hand, the Swiss critic of globalization, Jean Ziegler, chastised the EU
as a result of its external borders as an “empire of disgrace”. Among other things, he
criticized the EU policy of agricultural dumping (which makes the poor countries of
Africa even poorer) as well as the EU policy of cutting itself off, the drawing of external
borders, and therefore the intentional apprehension and deportation of hunger refugees
through the, as he calls it, “secret military organization” FRONTEX.39
Within both serious and bestseller journalism, references are found to the imperial
character of the EU. The best-selling author Jeremy Rifkin compared the USA with the
“European dream”,40 while Alan Posener spoke of an “empire of the future”41 while also
arguing in terms of cultural and mentality history:
“Because even though Europe invented the nation-state, it remains a fact that the
Europeans have lived through the majority of their history in other political contexts—as
citizens of transnational or supranational constructs—or, to call them by their rightful
name, empires.”42
The empire theme is also picked up by the research in political science and social
science. From a geo-economic and geopolitical perspective that is critical of globaliza-
tion, the German political scientists Elmar Altvater und Birgit Mahnkopf, members of
the ATTAC Scientific Advisory Board, viewed the definition of the purpose of the EU
as competition with the United States of America,43 for which several arguments defi-
nitely speak and which leads us to the comparison with the USA: the enlargement of the
EU to the central and eastern parts of the continent also meant the opening up of new
markets and thus a reduction in the export dependence on the US. With the realization
of the Single Market (1993) and the entering into force of the European Economic Area
(EEA, 1994), Europe became the strongest trade and economic area in the world, upon
which the USA were compelled to follow suit with the North American Free Trade Zone
(NAFTA).44
39Ziegler 2005.
40Rifkin 2004: 197 ff.
41Posener 2007.
42Posener 2010.
43Altvater, and Mahnkopf 2007.
44Gehler 2018b: 331 f.

32 M. Gehler
In retrospect the “Eastern Enlargement” was the greatest common foreign and secu-
rity policy success the EU ever achieved. But one cannot forget the NATO-“Eastern
Enlargement” also, which preceded this process.45
With the introduction of the euro (1999 and 2002), the worldwide leading position
of the US was in fact not disputed, but its supremacy was called into question, and with
the European currency of the euro, a world currency was established at the same level.
In the pacifying and stabilization of conflict zones, there is simultaneously worldwide
involvement and yet differences in the demands and goals of the EU and the USA, if one
thinks of the Middle East but also of the crises regions in Asia. Realists view the EU as
having the responsibility for the stabilization and new order in Southeastern Europe (the
“Balkan area”), but not in Afghanistan, Africa or Iraq. Both the EU and the USA before
Trump understood themselves to be the protector and guardian of democracy, freedom,
free trade, human rights, and thus Western civilization, while the US could provide a
greater cultural offering (Hollywood films and television, clothing, pop music, etc.)
Within the worldwide framework in the sense of mass culture, Americanization ranked
significantly ahead of Europeanization. The USA still behaved far more as a political
force for order and the world’s policeman, while the EU attempts to emulate it.
Altvater and Mahnkopf called it a “gentle imperialism” when they think of the EU:
the acquis communautaire is “often decreed with excessive arrogance.” According
to them, the EU is an emergent new empire. As a result of permanent expansion, the
opening of new markets, and the control of political developments, including in other
regions of the world—and lately also by military means—the EU, which was originally
obligated to human rights, tolerance, and variety, is headed down a dead-end street and
has become reversed—comparable to the policy of the USA. With this, Altvater and
Mahnkopf argued that colonialism and imperialism are of European origin and that the
policy of the EU within the context of globalization is the most modern variation of it.
The term “empire” is always to be understood here in its traditionally negative connota-
tion and is used as a fighting word.46
The Polish political scientist Jan Zielonka was of another opinion. He viewed this
within the nature of the enlarged EU as a multi-centered “empire” with a multidimen-
sional, non-territorial system of government of different, overlapping jurisdictions, cul-
tural and economic heterogeneity, shared sovereignty, and different institutions. Different
contrasting models of the “Westphalian super-state” were compared with a “neo-medi-
eval paradigm”.47 Zielonka recognized in the EU an empire without fixed borders, with
variable forms and scopes and political control, organized horizontally according to func-
tions and not according to a centralized concentration of power, but rather oriented in a
45Sloan 2005: 89 ff., 145 ff., 181 ff.; Staack 2018: 15 ff., 22 ff.
46Altvaterand Mahnkopf 2007: 3; Altvater and Mahnkopf 2010.
47Zielonka 2006.
multi-centric and plurilateral manner, similar to the pre-modern European state relations
of the Westphalian order. Zielonka designated the EU as a neo-medieval system, “a pluri-
centric polity penetrating rather than controlling its environment.”48
I may add that the EU is also a multi-institutional and multi-presidential empire with many
presidents, though with a president of the European Central Bank (ECB) (Mario Draghi, now
Christine Lagarde), the Commission (Jean Claude Juncker, now Ursula von der Leyen), the
Council (Donald Tusk, now Charles Michel), the European Investment Bank (EIB) (Werner
Hoyer), the European Parliament (EP) (Antonio Tajani, now David Sassoli) and the rotating
EU presidency of one acting EU-member with one predecessor and one successor state.
2.4 The Holy Roman Empire as Predecessor?—Historiographies
At first sight, the comparison with the Holy Roman Empire, which is not addressed by
Zielonka in the sense of equating, has an appealing and comprehensible effect, but it has
significant differences: the Sacrum Imperium Romanum49 was neither a world economic
power nor a world currency power. The EU is the world’s largest exporter of goods and
services. In its interior, the Holy Roman Empire was more heterogeneous, and even
splintered, than the EU both in terms of structure and territorial state it was character-
ized by different forms of rule, and marked by different systems of weights, coinage,
and customs duties. The project of a Christian association in the sense of the univer-
sal monarchy of Charles V50 failed, among other reasons, because of the differences in
belief, confessions and religion, while the EU represents an a-religious, postmodern and
secular construct. The two constructs of rule are comparable through relatively weakly
developed armed forces which were oriented toward defense and not toward attacks and
interventions except for the member states France and the UK which are atomic powers.
Military expansions do not play any role with either. But the EU is also still in develop-
ment and above all else in the process of change: the EU states in the meantime have not
only provided peacekeeping troops in conflict regions in the world, but have also formed
intervention forces with the setting up of “battle groups” that are available for “peace
enforcement” (that is, compulsion to peace, or warfare). The Holy Roman Empire had
neither offensive nor strong military capabilities, but a common defense could be tempo-
rarly activated in case of external threats and emergencies like the Ottomans.51
On the whole, though, neo-medieval forms of government appear to be rather a
hapless reference to earlier combinations that are basically not comparable and not
reproducible.
48Ibid.:
1 (quote), 179.
49Prietzel2004.
50Kohler 2000: 224 ff.
51Schulze 1973; Ruffing 2014: 401 ff.

34 M. Gehler
Until recently, historians have hesitated to position themselves in the regard of the EU
as an empire, and therefore have not made any considerable contribution to the thematic
area. They attempted to view European integration in a differentiated manner and do in
fact acknowledge the successes, but they also did not ignore the lacks of success and
the failures. They analyzed them, both as a result of crises and compromises (Wilfried
Loth52), whereby it stands out that such historians, who are also at home with political
science or else view themselves and work more as historically reflecting political scien-
tists (Ludger Kühnhardt or Romain Kirt), acquaint themselves with the thematic area of
empires.53
2.5 Roman Empire, State of the Art and Historical Comparisons
With a view toward the modern state of research and the comparing across eras (analo-
gies, parallels, differences), a comparison of the EU with the Roman Empire54 is helpful
and illuminating, particularly since the imperial dimensions of the EU may be under-
stood rather as counter-images to the British, Russian, or US-American empire. The
Roman Empire came into existence step by step, in any case over the course of centuries,
and it ranged to a large extent to the geographical dimensions of the EC and the EU,
while the latter does not have any history of a comparable length. The extent of Rome
went outward from a strong center. The relationship of the capital to the provinces and
of the center to the periphery was much more strongly pronounced in the Roman Empire
than is the case in the EU. Brussels alone does in fact have not such a strong central
position, but with Luxembourg (the ECJ), Strasbourg (the EP), and Frankfurt (the ECB),
it is not alone. Classical, contemporary and modern Empires, on the other hand, have
one strong political (metropolitan) center with which to carry out annexations over vari-
ous participants and institutions and to exert control, such as over border territories. The
granting of Roman civil rights and the dissemination of Roman law were the mark of the
cultural appeal and the ability of integration with the Imperium Romanum.55
The Coal and Steel Community treaty with its own coal and steel constitution, the
Treaties of Rome with community law and its own market constitution, the acquis com-
munautaire and thus the common corpus of legislation with its European law constitu-
tion is obligatory for all those seeking accession and which the members also have to
accept. The European Union with its character as a constitutional community or com-
munity of constitutions has a comparable and possibly and even more binding and
52Loth 2014.
53Loth 2001; Kirt 2001; Kühnhardt 2009; Kühnhardt 2008a, b: 29 ff.
54Woolf 2015; Mommsen 2001 (original 1854–1856 und 1885); Rostovtzeff 1926, second edition,
revised by Fraser 1941; Fraser 1941, second edition 1953.

55Engels 2012: 253 ff., 265 ff.; Engels 2014: 414 ff., 433 ff.
compulsory potential for cohesion and convergence than the ECSC, the EEC and the EC
which leads to more adaptation, homogeneity, and standardization as other entities of the
world.56
With the Union citizenship57 that was launched by the Treaty of Maastricht, equiv-
alence to Roman citizenship was created (without making reference to it!), a common
umbrella for people of different origin and descent exists since 1993. In contrast to
Rome, the EU has thus far done without the setting up of strong armed forces and the
stationing of divisions in border areas or at its peripheral zones, just as it has not carried
out any military expansion.
The EU is lacking above all else a specific architecture such as a cult that is com-
parable to the Roman cult of emperor and state and thus also the adoption and absorp-
tion of a religious idea such as that of Christianity, which was chosen in late Rome as
the state religion. In the preamble of the Treaty of Lisbon, there is merely a reference
to the “cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe”. There is no reference to
Christianity: “Drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance
of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalien-
able rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law.”58
And finally, one more analogy: The “Pax Romana” might be a possible point of a com-
parison with the peace-making mission of the “Pax Europea”, which is—remarkable
enough—not officially used by the EU as a notion.
For the time being, it may be cautiously indicated that the European Union is a
hegemonic construct of rule with imperial traits of its own kind and, above all else, of
a new kind. It appears to be, and acts—like so many empires in world history, e.g. the
Roman Empire—, as a “decentralized, territorially differentiated transnational system of
negotiation that is dominated by elites” (Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande)59 which has a
system of laws and institutions that are based upon a division of labor. The EU is not its
own state, but rather a cosmopolitanly arranged undertaking that has developed norma-
tive powers and continues to establish standards. This European “empire by integration”,
which is to be understood differently than the USA, acts as a new, attractive and bet-
ter “empire by invitation” (according to Geir Lundestad, still speaking about the United
States)60 for other states.
The EU is not comparable to the Soviet Union and the USA as an empire of the clas-
sic character. It does exist without excessive military might, it does not have any strong
political center, and has only a modest budget. It continues to be predominantly the sum
56Gehler 2014a, b: 219 ff.

57Elvert,and Nielsen-Sikora 2009; Nielsen-Sikora 2009.
58Vertrag von Lissabon 2007: C 306/10; Konsolidierte Fassungen des Vertrags über die
Europäische Union und des Vertrags über die Arbeitsweise der Europäischen Union 2010.
59Beck 2005: 397 ff.; Beck, and Grande 2007: 81 ff.
60Lundestad 1998; Lundestad 2003.

36 M. Gehler
of the decision making of her members, the nation-states that comprehend themselves as
“lords of the treaties”. For that reason, the EU is not a military and intervention power
that can react quickly and make efficient decisions, but rather a sustainably multilateral,
working trade, economic, and monetary power whose common corpus of legislation
has a worldwide model character and whose culture has a strong power of radiance and
attraction.
If the categories of Ulrich Menzel are taken as a basis for the assessment of the EU,61
then not all of the criteria do in fact speak for a “hegemony”, but predominantly most
of them (acceptance, globality, openness, soft power, resource autonomy) clearly do.
When considered overall, the EU consists of a hegemonic power with neo-imperial traits.
Menzel, on the other hand, pleads for Europe as a multilateral alternative power.62
EU Europe indeed has achieved a degree of increased global attractiveness and effect,
such that it appears from the outside to be far more a world power with imperial traits
than when considered from the inside. The institutional reforms through the Union
Treaty of Lisbon do not appear to be sweeping and sufficient enough to be able to it
to speak as an actor on the world stage with one voice and to be able to act in a corre-
spondingly united manner. Europe does not need to deduce weakness from its military
inferiority rather it can see an opportunity in it: it is not military expansion, but rather
economic attractiveness and culturally offerings and life style that still continue to create
stable political combinations and structures of longer duration not only within, but also
at the peripheries.
If one follows the Berlin political scientist Herfried Münkler, then an empire is not to
be immediately equated with a nation-state. With the European Union, a similar situa-
tion holds true. The phenomena of empire and imperialism are likewise not interchange-
able. It is also only with difficulty that one can ascribe an intent for or a tendency toward
imperialism to the EU. If there is allegedly the desire and the need for there to be an
empire, then there ought to be none other, an aspect that does not necessarily need an
explanation. The Parthian and Sasanian Empire63 also existed next to the Imperium
Romanum. With the USA, we also have a military hegemon, if not a military empire
which is not merely in addition to, but with NATO even in (the states of) the EU.
Are there some parallels to younger empires than the Roman Empire within the
European space for example the Frankish or another medieval empire? Historical com-
parisons are appealing, but they are clumsy, particularly since the differences may not be
neglected. It is interesting that the EU is already being comprehended as a new empire
which, however, does not explicitly refer to an historical model. There is also no histori-
cal forerunner, because the EU is something unique. Historical analogies can be recog-
nized in a certain way: as we stated the EU has in common civil rights with the Roman
61Menzel 2015: 1015 ff.; Hacke 2017: 1291 ff.

62Menzel 2003: 1453 ff.; Menzel 2015: 1015 ff.
63Wiesehöfer 2014: 449 ff.
Empire, the core area of France with Charlemagne, and the particularistic-pluralistic
constitutional structure and the more or less weakness in foreign and security policy with
the Holy Roman Empire. But the EU is a global secular, supranational trade, economic,
and monetary empire—borne by core Europe.
The EU is not yet a separate state, although it has specific association powers and,
with Lisbon, also its own legal personality—since 2009, it is a legal person under inter-
national law. It appears to be more a cosmopolitan arranged undertaking that has devel-
oped normative powers and continues to establish collectively binding standards.
3 First Assessments and Possible Developments
3.1 The “Lisbon Strategy” and the Lisbon Treaty—Not Enough

for a New Empire Coping with Global Challenges
The EU is a global actor—in terms of economic policy but not security policy64—but to
be a ruling world power—if that is its goal—a lot is still lacking: the goal of becoming
a “superpower” was in fact steered for with the “Lisbon strategy” of 2000; namely, “to
become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world”,65
which was supposed to be reached within ten years but which quickly bumped up against
its limits and became apparent as a failure as early as 2004–2005. The Barroso agenda
“EU 2020” appeared to be a slightly improved new edition of the old Lisbon Strategy.66
When considered as a whole, the European Union is not an empire in the classic, tra-
ditional sense. The EEC in the 1960s and the EC in the 1970s and 1980s consisted of a
regional power with hegemonic traits in Western Europe, and with its further develop-
ment and intensification into the EU since the 1990s, a hegemonic power in the whole of
Europe with postmodern and neo-imperial traits.67
With the precarious pacification and stabilization of Southeastern Europe, the EU
currently has beyond all doubt reached the limits of its possibilities in terms of for-
eign policy and security policy. The limitations of the EU’s receptiveness have clearly
come to light.68 The European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) created at the beginning of
the 21st century has closed the gate on new aspirants to membership. Except the coun-
tries of the “Western Balkans” (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern-Macedonia,
Montenegro, Serbia), there will in fact only be more association agreements and
64Bretherton,and Vogler 2006: 62 ff.; 189 ff., 215 ff.

65Conclusions of the European Council from Lisbon 2000.
66Harryvan, and Van der Harst 2015: 249 ff.
67Gehler 2018b: 614 ff., 632.
68Gareis, Hauser, and Kernic 2013; Fröhlich 2014.

38 M. Gehler
neighborhood arrangements for the foreseeable future.69 Within this context, that case of
Turkey is characteristic: negotiations stagnate for years. A breakthrough is not in sight.
In Turkey itself, accession is no longer a topic.
The institutional reforms of the Union Treaty of Lisbon cannot be designated as
sweeping and sufficient enough to be able to speak as a political actor on the world stage
with one voice and to be able to act in a correspondingly united manner.
3.2 The Open Question of the Finalité Politique
With regard to the question in which direction the EU could develop in the future, the
historian remains dependent upon conjectures and speculations: with the euro as a
strengthened international transaction and reserve currency, the EU could be a balance
factor between the USA70 and China,71 a currency policy mediator that will not have to
distinguish itself through military interventions, but rather by its presence as an exporter
of law and culture. Europe does not deduce weakness from its military inferiority, but
rather sees opportunities in it: it is not expansion by force, but rather currency adherence,
economic attractiveness, trade relations and cultural offerings that create stable political
combinations and structures of longer duration not only within, but also at the peripher-
ies of Europe after 1945.72
As a new model of rule and order, the EU, in contrast to historical hegemonic
empires, has found neither annexations by force and military bases on foreign territories
nor an excessively strong power center to be necessary. Those were the conditions of
existence for old and pre-modern as well as new and modern empires. In contrast, the
EU is in many respects a postmodern construct.
The European Union that has been characterized in this therefore appears to be
ambivalent and arbitrary: where is it going, in its current form as a Single Market, euro
zone, trade and currency world power as well as a community of different constitutions,
fundamental rights and common values? What is its most important actual goal and what
is its finalité politique? The answer to these questions according to present day policy
(boarder protection union? defense union? digital union? energy union? health union or
social union?) and finality and thus according to its mission remains open. For that rea-
son, the EU—like so many other empires—continues to lack of a definition, a priority
of further goals and an end purpose. The question of legitimation, which it is respon-
sible for itself, is posed all the more so and represents more than just a crises in com-
munication and a problem in conveying. The outcome of the development remains open.
69Koopmann, and Lequesne 2006; Lippert 2010: 125 ff.

70Schröder 2014: 1209 ff.; Schröder 2018: 405 ff.
71Gu 2014: 1381 ff.; Gu 2018: 435 ff.
72Nolte 2005.
Ignoring global challenges and the problem situations of nation-states, the continued
existence of the European Union is in no way ensured, above all else in view of partial
institutional structural defects and fundamental systemic deficiencies.73
3.3 Nation-States Acting as EU-Members in a Globalized Context
Will the Europe of the future be essentially nation-state dominated or tightly integrated?74 The
European nation-states are still a rather young and recent historical phenomenon. In their efforts
at expanding power, they have become more mobile and capable of reacting with respect to
global and national crisis. Empires in world history were substantially much more long lasting
or also, and from time to time, of a far longer life.75 They were, however, under greater pressure
for integration and obligation for legitimation than constructs of rule that covered less territory
and were more manageable, such as nations and their states. Their need for explanation was
greater and grew even further with increasing expansion—the European Union with its defi-
cits in integration and legitimation after the so-called “Eastern Enlargement” of 2004–2007 is
a good example of this. For an empire, the nation-state argument of a firmly outlined territory
in any case also does not apply with regard to integration and legitimation. The means that are
elementary for a nation with a united front of calling upon the “holiness of the borders” as well
as the emphasis on the indivisibility of the state as a whole also do not apply.
As a result of the (long-term) strategy that at first was not present, with an empire
neither a revolutionary founding act (a birth certificate) nor a creation event (myth) that
is wrapped in legend seem to be compulsorily necessary as the fabric for integration
and legitimation, as can be found all too frequently with nation-building and the found-
ing of states. The European nation-states are still relatively young and yet already long
in the tooth and have been challenged and weakened by radicalizing globalization and
worldwide system competition as well as their partially unsuccessful budgetary policy.
It therefore does not appear to at all be so absurd that they continue to make them of a
higher unit and, in the wake of banking, capital market, and economic crises, feel safer
and better under the roof of the larger European Union than in their own house, which in
the meantime seems to have grown smaller.
3.4 NATO-, EU-Eastern Enlargement and the Relationship

to Russia
What can we say about the EU relationship to Russia in the light of the historical Eastern
Enlargements? Michael Gorbachev’s policy of reforms (1985–1989), the revolutions
73Mishra 2013: 297 ff.

74Weber, and Ottmann 2018: 384 ff., 435 f.
75Burbank, and Cooper 2012.

40 M. Gehler
in Central and Eastern Europe (1989), and the breakdown of the Soviet Union (1991)
opened the door and paved the way for the Eastern enlargement of the EU as well as the
NATO. Both of these were the result of geo-economic and geo-strategic decision-making
from 1999 to 2007. These enlargements did not occur simultaneously, but rather with
a time lag due to the fact that the EU enlargement, which came later, was more com-
plex, costly, and time-consuming with regard to negotiations than was NATO’s Eastern
enlargement. The Baltic States as well as the countries of Central, Eastern, and
Southeastern Europe desired the Eastern enlargement of both the EU and NATO. Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech Republic were the first to be integrated (NATO 1999, EU 2004).
The Eastern enlargement of the EU was more or less accepted by Russia, while
opposed the NATO was observed skeptically at first. It was not by accident that on the
part of the USA and the Federal Republic of Germany, nothing legally binding was
offered toward Russia, but as early as 1990, oral assurances and statements of confidence
were made to it with regard to not expanding NATO any further to the East. The Eastern
enlargement of the EU constituted an historic opportunity for Brussels to expand the
“acquis communautaire” as well as its trade and the Single Market all the way to the
Baltics in the north and to the Black Sea in the south. This was also closely connected
with a medium-term and long-term perspective integration of the “Western Balkans” (see
above). But a decision-making in favor of the EU and NATO by all of those states and
regions was seen by Russia as a concept of the Western conqueror as well as a geopoliti-
cal and geostrategic disadvantage concerning its own position. In light of the demonstra-
tion of military strength and the renaissance of classic hard power policy made by Russia
when beginning measures of destabilization in the eastern areas of Ukraine and then
occupying and annexing Crimea, the Eastern enlargement of NATO appeared to be justi-
fied and necessary by the new members of the transatlantic alliance. In spite of Western
security policy, Russian countermeasures could be taken for granted, causing the con-
tinuous potential for conflicts and threats of war in these areas of Europe. Therefore, the
question may be raised as to whether there had been missed opportunities before avoid-
ing these aggressions by binding Russia closer to the EU earlier on.76 This remains to be
a future strategic task when thinking about Trump celebrating the Brexit-decision and his
opposition towards the European Union in case of foreign trade policy.
4 End and Decline of a Short-Term Empire? Conversely,

What Holds EU-Europe Together!
What is the source of serenity, optimism, and confidence at times when, in the sense
of Euroscepticism and populism, there are a large number, if not a majority, who “per-
ceive” the end of the EU, its disintegration and collapse? Historical, institutional,
76Gehler 2017b: 83 ff.

methodological and procedural motifs, a future-dependent reason as well as two future

perspectives speak for cohesion (see the following aspects).
4.1 The Inevitable Integration Imperative Germany
Germany is still indispensable for European integration. As much as its integration and
control were a primary objective from the perspective of the other partners in the 1950s,
1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, since its unification 1990, the necessity of its leadership func-
tion and its participation in the maintenance of the integration dynamics has also been
considered with a view to further integration and integration control of its growing eco-
nomic potential and increased political significance are more necessary than ever. A
functioning EU without or against the will of Germany is hard to imagine. A Germany
outside the EU or even against the EU is equally unimaginable. It would go against
all economic logic and political reason. The EU’s embedding and control function for
Germany has been, and will remain, the iron law of European integration, an inevitable
and mutually inclusive integration imperative.
Due to its growing economic and political importance Germany can also act as
‘honest broker’. A good example was the Grand Coalition under Angela Merkel and
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, within the framework of the presidency of the Council of the
European Union led by Germany in the first half of 2007, which managed the ratification
crisis of the EU Constitutional Treaty, thus making a valuable contribution to the prepa-
ration of the modified Union Treaty of Lisbon. In contrast to the German presidency of
the Council of the European Union in 1999, Germany’s increased influence and struc-
turing capabilities within the EU had become visible for the whole world to see, even
though one had already comprehended the Federal Republic of Germany as the central
power of Europe for the stabilisation of the continent.77
The fact that Germany became after unification the real and practical leading power in
the EU remains one of the challenges and also tasks of a functioning Union. The prob-
lem was managed since Germany’s unity by different ways like in former times: firstly,
by distributing of various management positions (Commission, Council, Parliament);
secondly, by weighing the votes in case of decision making in the Council (not to speak
about vetoing a German position by a blocking minority of larger, medium-sized mem-
bers and one small state) as well as by mixed competences and shared rules. Therefore,
the EU is a guarantor for Germany remaining dependant from the approval of the others.
It needs also their acceptance when political resolutions have to be made. Though there
will be a mutual dependency in a double sense: (1) Due to economic and trade reasons
Germany needs the other members’ markets for her exports. (2) More than ever the EU
provides a necessary framework in order to control Germany by integration or speaking
77Schwarz 1999: 1 ff.

42 M. Gehler
more softly to integrate Germany by the EU. Therefore, the EU could also be seen as a
European empire by preventing a German empire. These afore mentioned necessities and
interdependences will exist further. They have to be balanced and managed by a mediat-
ing and moderating German Chancellery as well as by EU-partners willing to accept, to
co-operate and to support it.78
The experiences of the last decades made clear: In spite of all the crises, irritations,
minor shifts and radical changes, Germany will continue to be a reliable member of the
EU, which ought to continue to serve as guarantor in preventing distancing and aliena-
tion or even a relapse into the nationalism of the 19th and first half of the 20th century.79
Equally indispensable remains a functioning Franco-German partnership, but not an
“axis” (although the weight of the connection between Paris and Bonn to that of Berlin
and Paris of today has clearly shifted). Still, it must also be borne in mind that France
has (negatively) impacted the unification project three times, which in 1954 contributed
to the dismantling of the European Army project on the agenda of the French National
Assembly and thus to the destruction of the Community’s organized European defense.
In 1965, it was again France, by blocking the Council of Ministers and its policy of the
“empty chair,” that hindered the introduction of majority decisions in the EC Council
of Ministers, thus advancing the prevention of supranational decisions for two decades.
In 2005, it was the rejection of the EU “Constitutional Treaty” that could have given an
impetus for a constitutionalisation process. In the sense of Brussels and the integration of
Europe, the absence of further blows can only appear desirable.
4.2 The Integrated Legal Community
European integration experienced decades-long growth and consolidation of legisla-

tive procedures from the 1960s through the twenty-first century, from the EEC to the
EU, away from public view, with the Commission as the guardian of the treaties and
the European Court of Justice as the guarantor of compliance with the law and the place
where violations of the law could be appealed. The common legal framework (“aquis
communautaire”) through primary and secondary law consists of a multitude of recom-
mendations, directives, regulations, and rules that affect the lives of Europeans compre-
hensively to their advantage, and above all determine far more and are more sweeping
than national laws. Rapid departure and quick withdrawal from this legal community can
only consume a great deal of energy, personnel, and time, as well as be disadvantageous
for trade, investment, competition, and economic policy. The dimensions of the density
and fullness of this EU legal and treaty community were only consciously perceived
and became publicly effective when the British population forced the government into
78Beck 2013: 5 ff.; Schäfer 2013: 107 ff.; Hinsch and Langthaler 2016.
79Münkler 2015: 137 ff.
a withdrawal procedure by means of a popular vote about the “Brexit” (the referendum
of 23 June 2016), a process that should take years until the definitive EU exit by the UK
in 2020. This could then serve as a negative example, a warning for possible or potential
imitators, instructive material, a sound doctrine, and an integration-pedagogical tutorial.
4.3 The Common and Single Market
For decades, the EEC and EC struggled to achieve the “Common Market” project
(“Marché commun”), as it had already been described in the Treaty of Rome. The White
Paper on the Internal Market of the Delors’ Commission (1985) and the Single European
Act (1987) paved the way for its entry into force in 1993. Through the realization of the
“Four Freedoms” (services, goods, capital, and, not least, people)—despite the continu-
ing non-tariff barriers to trade—a multitude of relief and advantages have arisen for the
sectors mentioned above, so that from their advocacy groups point of view, relinquishing
these advantages seems scarcely conceivable, let alone desirable. From the logic of the
common market, the realization of another project, which goes back to the beginnings of
the 1970s, was also achieved.
4.4 The Euro as Anchor
An internal market with the four freedoms appeared to have little meaning, or vice
versa, without uniform money: With a single currency eliminating transaction costs and
exchange periods, the internal market would have far more effect. But the background
was also the topic already mentioned as the first reason for cohesion: Once again, it was
about Germany, and this time about its even more powerful currency, the Deutsch Mark,
which France’s President had once internally referred to as the “German atomic bomb”80
and who wanted to neutralize it (make it “harmless”) according to former President of
the German Central Bank (1993–1999), Hans Tietmeyer.81
Despite all the mistakes in the introduction of the euro by omitting to create an eco-
nomic union, the lack of compliance with the criteria for inclusion and convergence, and
the infringements of the Stability Pact Agreements, Germany by its rejection of a deficit
procedure by the Commission under the Schröder government, a “no-bail-out” clause in
the case of the “rescue packages” for Greece by the EU, and the highly political action
of the ECB, which was thought to be politically “independent” under President Mario
Draghi when purchasing government bonds, the euro also created an integration politi-
cal anchor during the banking, financial market, account deficit and sovereign debt crises
80Marsh 2009: 173 ff.; Bandulet 2011: 52.

81Tietmeyer 2004: 114 ff., 121 ff.
44 M. Gehler
from 2008 to the present, which was a global economic crisis. An EU-Europe in this
decade of crises without the euro would have been confronted with an overwhelming
Deutsch Mark and depreciation of the other national currencies. The political will to
keep the Euro system together, in the truest sense of “cost what it will”, demonstrated the
willingness and ability to achieve monetary-political cohesion within the EU, especially
the euro zone, although this scenario also carries a risk of explosive forces that hit lim-
its as far as domestic political acceptability is concerned.82 The euro was, however, the
strongest political force for integration in the last decade of integration from 2008–2009
to 2018-2019, and there is still much to be said for it.
4.5 The Majority of Community Institutions
Looking at the EU institutions and organizations, there is a formal and practical

over-proportionality of the supranational before the intergovernmental. The ECJ, the

Commission, the Parliament, and the ECB are responsible for the Community’s tasks
during the European Council and the Council of the EU. Even with all the impor-
tance and weight of the member states, we can speak, from a purely formal and func-
tional point of view, about a 4:2-ratio in favor of supra-nationality. If one considers that
the decisions made by the European Council, the regular meetings of the Heads of State
and Government, have also led to Community policy such as the introduction of major-
ity decisions in the Council or the “Economic and Monetary Union,” this speaks more
for integrative cohesion than for loss of integration and thus against disintegration and
collapse.83
4.6 Non-contractual Regulations
If there is no common supranational progress, the non-contractual regulation on the basis

of international treaties has proven to be a pragmatic answer to the question of stagna-
tion. An example from the older history is the Schengen System, which was initially sup-
plemented by the Benelux countries in the trilateral framework and then followed by the
Federal Republic and France. This system proved to be so beneficial in the 1990s that
it was incorporated into the Treaty of Amsterdam as a common legal right. Similarly,
non-contractual arrangements were found for the 19 euro zone countries with regard
to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the Fiscal Act, and the Banking Union.
It is imperative for the new members to extend these euro zone agreements to the new
82Gehler 2018b: 692 f., 832, 886.

83Wessels 1980; Werts 2008.
members. Even if they are still not Union rights for all, it is a practical and rational meas-
ure for the cohesion of the tighter euro-Union.
4.7 External Crises as Stimulators
Last but not least, European integration in the sense of progress has been driven more by
reaction to external rather than internal crises.84 The threats and challenges from the out-
side have not diminished in 2017 in comparison with the decades before 2007 or start-
ing with 1997. On the contrary, Russia’s Vladimir Putin tried to drive the EU apart and
to weaken it decisively via financing and promoting Euro-sceptical or anti-EU parties—
probably also as a “revenge” for a not substantial link to the EU in the previous dec-
ades. The United States’ Trump is at least distracted, disinterested, and disputed with the
EU, and does not want a closer Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
He welcomed the Brexit-Votum 2016 by the British population. The US-administration
did not accept the EU ambassador to Washington as representative of a legal personal-
ity according to international law in December 2018. He got no invitation to the official
funeral of George H. W. Bush.85
Turkey, as a friendly partner country, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
is moving more and more away from the values of the EU. That means an accelerat-
ing de-europeanization and fundamental islamization, which, through Turkey’s own
tighter country population, is also being spread to foreigners living in the EU and the
Turkish Germans. Turkey since the military coup d’etat of 15th/16th July 2016 and the
proclaimed state of emergency by Erdoğan has no real perspective for EU-membership
and will remain an impossible candidate until domestic issues will not change. Neither
Putin, Trump nor Erdoğan stand for Europe or European policy; they are rather euro-
sceptics if not to say anti-europeans. This is expected to increase the cohesion of EU
members in the medium term, rather than weaken it, since the Brexit procedure has been
implemented.
4.8 The “Refugee” Crisis as a Forced Solution
A future-oriented argument concerns the worldwide migration crisis, which by far surpasses
the “refugee crisis” of 2015.86 Angela Merkel’s words that this year should not be repeated
again should be taken seriously. This promise or commitment of the EU would mean that the
Union will not be able to avoid the need for a common asylum policy (uniform admission
84Gehler 2009b: 109 ff.; Gehler 2012: 45 ff.

85Kolb 2018.
86Gehler 2018b: 742 ff., Kühnhardt 2018: 101 ff.
46 M. Gehler
procedures, common examination standards; proportionate, equitable, and fair distribution

of housing, food, and job placement) in the medium term. This is probably the greatest com-
mon challenge for the near and distant future of the EU and will require more than “flexible
solidarity,” making convergence, if not cohesion absolutley necessary.87
The debate about how to deal with the immigration question remains to be one of
the most important challenges for the EU and its task in the 21st century. For decades
the Southern European member states were left alone in order to cope with that prob-
lem especially Italy, Spain, and Greece. The name of the Italian Mediterranean isle of
Lampedusa became the symbol for these uncontrolled developments. Without a common
European policy on a supranational level concerning asylum, border protection, and inte-
gration in the home labour markets no convincing, long-lasting and sustainable solution
can be found. This won’t be possible on a bilateral (Italy—Austria) or trilateral (Italy—
Austria—Germany) basis.
The historical fate and the end of the empires were often decided on the peripher-
ies. Therefore, the EU and her member states have to be fully aware about this fact. The
Commission made several proposals helping to overcome the “refugee crisis” but these
were not implemented by the member states. As long as more or less national answers
are given by them, they will remain the main obstacle and the real problem coming to
terms with immigration and finding comprehensive solutions.
4.9 The Necessity of the Social Dimension
A further future-oriented argument for further prospects for continued cohesion, as a

result of coping with the migration crisis and the integration of immigrants, also pro-
vides an insight into the need to stress and strengthen the “social dimension” of the EU
in the third decade after the turn of the century, alone with a view towards existing EU
citizens. Commission’s President Juncker was aware of the urgency of the concept of a
“social union”. Already, one of his predecessors Delors wanted to anchor this concern in
the Maastricht Union Treaty, which among other things. This also failed because of the
veto of the British, whereby these were excluded from the modest remaining social capi-
tal through “opting outs”. Although a “social union” still seems to be a long way away,
a massive increase in the European Social Fund (ESF) would be a step in this direction.
At the latest after the exit of the United Kingdom and the European Parliament elections
in 2019 with the newly elected President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen, this
issue will again be on the EU agenda.
87Kasparek 2013: 39 ff.; Thränhardt 2013: 17 ff.; Luft 2013: 13 ff.

5 Pressing Tasks for the Future and Preconditions

for Further Functioning
In 2007–2009, Lisbon was just one leg.88 For the managing of the challenges that were
mounting then, the treaty was insufficient. It did not provide any provisions, for exam-
ple, for the expansion of coastal and border protection or the instituting of asylum mis-
sions in the “hot spots” accompanied by a Europeanization of the right to asylum and a
European immigration law for the regulating of acceptance, restriction, accommodation,
and access to the labor market as well as “immigration partnerships” with third coun-
tries. Additional requirements are the establishment of a European unemployment insur-
ance system for the support of cross-border mobility, the creation of more convergence
with the defense capacities, and the strengthening of crisis management in the peripher-
ies of the EU for the backing of the recently sponsored “Permanent European Security
Cooperation Organization” (PESCO), an initiative which, following “Common, Foreign
and Security Policy” (CFSP) and “Common European Security and Defense Policy”
(CESDP), should not remain just an ineffective acronym. And that’s not all: the imple-
mentation of a digital single market is pressing. After the failure of the Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the USA, still existing or further initia-
tives in that regard with Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Mercosur, and New Zealand
are goals. The “energy union” that has already been agreed upon with a multilateral
clearing system with multilaterally exchangeable resources, on the other hand, remains a
task of the century.
5.1 Credibility Through Adherence to Treaty and Strengthening

of Legitimation
More credibility can only be achieved through adherence to the treaties and the greatest
possible avoidance of opting out. A further democratization of EU institutions is possible
through a new European electoral law with genuine European parties—instead of just
factions in parliament and greater transparency with integration policy decisions. In addi-
tion, more drastic means of exerting pressure up to the threat of expulsion are necessary
for the defense against the threat to democracy and the rule of law in member states.
5.2 Self-responsibility and Solidarity
The EU can only function with self-responsibility and solidarity. Decisions that have
been made jointly are to be adhered to. In the long run, their sluggishness can neither be
88Gehler 2017: 411 ff.

48 M. Gehler
financed nor conveyed. In the face of still rampant populism and national reservations,
a new union treaty still seems far off.89 For lack of anything better, pioneer groups with
regulation outside of treaties are currently one option. And: As long as the Brexit issue
was unresolved, it was necessary to have patience. A breakthrough will come at the earli-
est in 2020 when the Covid19 pandemia will be overcome.
5.3 A New Elysée Treaty—More of an Integration Policy Impetus

Than a Breakthrough!
Macron’s proposals to restructure the euro zone for the nineteen euro countries could not be
anchored in a bilateral pact without this facing severe criticism of the high-paying euro part-
ners. A “euro zone parliament” with the possibility of comprehensible majority decisions by
finance and currency experts who were elected by the national parliaments would increase
transparency. A transfer union does not appear to be so immediately feasible. Furthermore,
neither a German-French finance minister nor a European one guarantees budget discipline.
What is more obvious is a transformation of the “European Stability Mechanism” (ESM)
into a “European Monetary Fund” (EMF) that is independent of the IMF with a European
financing regime, a credible no bail-out clause, and a well-ordered insolvency regulation for
euro countries that are continuously in deficit with payment balances.
Would a joint German-French immigration law that first of all was independent of
other colonial heritage and different post-colonial experience be a pioneer act? Would a
bilateral security and defense union for the fight against terrorism and as a supplement to
NATO be the prelude to a European one? In view of the different use of atomic power by
the two countries, is a common energy policy between the two countries conceivable? A
climate policy would be more likely. Both parliaments had already articulated the desire
to conclude a new agreement. But that goes far beyond bilateral cooperation, it namely
concerns European cohesion. Therefore, the newly elected European Parliament and
the new leadership of the Commission could continue with the Aachen Treaty, signed
by Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron on 22 January 2019, as the impetus for the
debate on a new EU treaty after Brexit, but they have to prevent an excessive bilateralism
and to include the Central and Eastern European member states.
6 Conclusion
A House of European History already exists since 2017 in Brussels for possible
European narratives. For the protagonist bodies of the EU and its member states, the
cohesion of the Union is first of all to be viewed less within the context of a pressing task
89Moreau, and Wassenberg 2016; Moreau, and Wassenberg 2017.

of “refounding” based upon historical and cultural-ethical considerations (which are to

be returned to if possible at a later date as valuable resources) than as a question of the
ethics of responsibility for the internal peace of Europe as well as for the external poli-
cies of peace. Therefore European political leadership and stability with a view toward
uncertain and precarious neighborhoods in the sense of a contribution by the EU to
world peace are necessary. Aside from this noble goal, one finding remains valid: as long
as the advantages of belonging to the EU outweigh the disadvantages, which is what the
member states and their special interest groups in industry and business are very pre-
cisely keeping their eyes on, the further cohesion of the EU is not at all threatened—the
opposite is true: Not only for this reason but because of all the other aspects and results
mentioned in this analysis the European Union still of today can be seen as an empire
facing and mastering further severe threats. Therefore with a high grade of probability
we can say that it is not a short-term empire.
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Further Reading
Gehler, Michael. 2005. From a Treaty to a Constitutional Community? The Long Path toward
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Constitution. A Historical and Political Comparison with the United States, ed. M. Gehler, G.
Bischof, L. Kühnhardt, and R. Steininger, 415–441. Wien–Köln–Weimar: Böhlau.
Gehler, Michael. 2009a. Challenges and Opportunities: Surmounting Integration Crises in
Historical Context. In Crises in European Integration. Challenges and Responses, 1945–2005
(New German Historical Perspectives Vol. 2), ed. L. Kühnhardt, 109–129. New York–Oxford:
Berghahn.
Gehler, Michael. 2016. „Europe“, Europeanizations and their Meaning for European Integration
Historiography. Journal of European Integration History 22 (1): 141–174.
Gehler, Michael. 2017a. The Origin, Cohesion, and Future of the European Union. In The Future
of Europe. The Reform of the Eurozone and the Deepening of the Political Union, ed. F. De
Quadros and D. Sidjanski, 411–417. Lisbao: AAFDL Alameda da Universidade.
Sloan, Stanley R. 2005. NATO, the European Union, and the Atlantic Community. The
Transatlantic Bargain Challenged, Lanham–Boulder–New York–Toronto–Oxford: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Van der Harst, Jan, and Voerman, Gerrit (Eds.). 2015. An Impossible Job? The Presidents of the
European Commission 1958–2014. London: John Harper Publisher.
The Hunnic Empire of Attila
Peter Heather
The Huns’ European tour was brief, but explosive. First appearing north-east of the
Black Sea in the 370s, they are last recorded as independent actors in the Balkans in the
late 460s. The century in between saw the rise and fall of the most powerful political unit
documented to that date in non-Mediterranean Europe. Centred on the Great Hungarian
Plain, the Hunnic Empire reached its apogee under Attila in the 440s, mounting military
campaigns from Constantinople to Paris. After a decade of mayhem, Attila died in 453
from the after effects of one too many wedding nights. This fired the starting gun on a
frenzied race for power among his sons, which quickly degenerated into civil war. By the
later 460s, his two surviving sons—Dengizich and Hernac—were seeking new homes
inside the eastern Roman Empire. Hernac obtained land for himself and his followers in
Scythia Minor, but Dengizich was defeated and killed. His head was put on display in
Constantinople in 469. By 470, the Huns as such had ceased to exist as an independent
force in the trans-Danubian world.1 The fundamental historical question posed by this
dramatic sequence of events is straightforward. How should we account for the sudden
rise and still more startling eclipse of the Huns’ European Empire?
The available written sources share two characteristics. First, they were all written
by Romans. Neither the Huns themselves, nor any of the other non-Roman population
groups caught up in the rise and fall of Attila’s Empire generated any written records
1Two basic narrative accounts are Maenchen-Helfen (1973) and Thompson (1996).
P. Heather (*)
King’s College London, London, UK
e-mail: peter.heather@kcl.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_3
58 P. Heather
that come down to us.2 A considerable margin for error has to be allowed when using
the surviving written sources, therefore, since Roman writers could hardly be disinter-
ested observers of a sequence of historical events which posed so many challenges to the
security of their own empire. Additional distortion has also been added into the mix by
Greco-Roman ethnographic and cultural tradition which viewed ‘nomads’, as the Huns
immediately were designated in the 370s, as belonging to a still more primitive cate-
gory of human organisation even than other non-imperial ‘barbarian’ sedentary farming
populations.3
Second, even within these limitations, coverage is extremely patchy. The only
well-documented sub-period is the decade of the 440s, when Attila’s empire was

at its height. It attracted a great deal of attention, because of its massive armed intru-
sions onto Roman soil, above all in the history of Priscus of Panium, whose surviving
fragments include a lengthy account, famously, of a diplomatic mission to the Hunnic
court. Priscus’ account is not free of traditional cultural baggage, of course, and poses
the additional problem of having been preserved for the most part in the Excerpta
de Legationibus volumes of the tenth-century Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII
Porphyryogenitus. This means, straightforwardly, as the name of the volume implies,
that what survives focuses almost exclusively on diplomatic activity (as in Priscus’ own
embassy) with other dimensions of Roman-Hunnic relations, not least military confron-
tation, substantially excluded.4
The subsequent two decades of Hunnic imperial collapse receive moderate coverage.
A few for the most part brief fragments of Priscus continue the story, but these have to be
slotted into an overview—the only one available—provided by the Getica of Jordanes.
Despite the name and its author’s partially Gothic origins, this is in essence another
‘Roman’ source, produced in Constantinople in the mid-sixth century by an individual
with strong East Roman loyalties. At the same time, however, Jordanes was clearly fol-
lowing—in substance at least—the overall account of these years he found in the now
lost Gothic history of the Italian senator Cassiodorus. Cassiodorus wrote at and for
the Gothic court of Theoderic the Amal at Ravenna in the 520s, and a distinct Gothic
focus—not to mention Gothic bias—is still discernible in the relevant sections of the
Getica.5
2Some of the Huns’ Gothic and other Germanic subjects were literate, but all the surviving writ-
ten materials (Bible texts, commentaries, other liturgical materials) were generated to service their
non-Nicene Christianity. For an introduction, see Heather and Matthews (1991), cc. 5–7.
3A good introduction to Greco-Roman ethnic categorisation is provided by Dauge (1981).
4For an introduction to Constantine’s excerpta project, see Lemerle (1971), 280–8.
5For more detailed introduction to the sources for Hunnic collapse, see Heather (1991), 227–39.
Chapter 2 provides a more general discussion of the relationship between Jordanes and Cassidorus
with systematic refutation of the attempt of Goffart (1988) to argue that the two were essentially
unrelated.
The Hunnic Empire of Attila 59
The least satisfactory portion of the written source base is that dealing with the
emergence of the Huns’ as an imperial power in eastern and central Europe in the
fifty years or so after c.375. Their initial contacts with the Roman world and its hin-
terland, in mid-370s, provide the only exception. Ammianus’ account of the backdrop
to the great Roman defeat at Hadrianople offers a brief, but illuminating glimpse into
the trans-Danubian sequence of events east of the Carpathian mountain chain, which
brought Gothic refugees to the Danube in 376. From that point on, however, what sur-
vives is profoundly lacunose. A political generation or so later, we suddenly find Huns
in large numbers (in a brief surviving summary of the history of Olympiodorus) west
of the Carpathians, but Roman sources provide no account of how they got there. This
pattern is maintained down to c.440, with only a handful of isolated mentions of Huns
in Chronicles and other texts, rather than any sustained, connected account of Hunnic
activities and the emergence of Attila’s empire.6
To supplement this Roman historical record, such as it is, there is now a considerable
body of relevant archaeological evidence, but, despite much new excavation and many
advances in interpretation, it continues to pose its own intellectual puzzles. Over seventy
years of work since 1945 has brought to light a substantial body of central European
material dating to the mid-fifth century, largely from cemetery excavations on the Great
Hungarian Plain, though there are some treasure hoards too. In this material, ‘proper’
Huns seem elusive. In total, and this includes the Volga Steppe, archaeologists have iden-
tified no more than 200 burials as plausibly Hunnic. These are distinguished by some
combination of reflex bows, non-standard European mode of dress, cranial deformation
(some Huns bound the heads of babies to give them a distinctive elongated shape), and
the presence of a particular type of cauldron. This really is a tiny number, from which
follows one puzzle. Either the Huns generally disposed of their dead in ways that did not
leave archaeological traces, or some other explanation is required for the profound scar-
city of Hunnic remains.
What the fifth-century Middle Danubian cemeteries have produced in abundance are
the remains—or what look like the remains—of the various, largely G ermanic-speaking
populations, who (as historical records abundantly confirm) also formed part of the
Hunnic empire in large numbers by the time of Attila. They belong to a sequence of
dated, mid-fifth century chronological horizons, which, between them, mark the emer-
gence of a so-called ‘Danubian style’. The reasons for labelling it ‘Germanic’ are
straightforward. Its basic burial pattern was inhumation rather than cremation, with
a large number of characteristic objects deposited in a relatively restricted number of
rich burials. Many other individuals were buried with few or no gravegoods. The range
of objects included items of personal adornment: particularly large brooches with
semi-circular heads, plate buckles, earrings with polyhedric pendants and gold neck-
laces. Weaponry and military equipment are also frequently found: saddles with metal
6Ammianus 31. 3. 1-4.5; Olympiodorus fr. 19.

60 P. Heather
appliqués, long straight swords suitable for cavalry use, and arrows. The remains have
also produced some odd ritual quirks; it became fairly common, for instance, to bury
broken metallic mirrors with the dead. The kinds of items found in the graves, the ways
in which people were buried, and, perhaps above all, the way in which particularly
women wore their clothes (gathered with safety pins—fibulae—on each shoulder and
another closing their outer garment in front) all represent the continued development of
material cultural patterns visible in the largely Germanic-dominated central and eastern
Europe of the third and fourth centuries, before the Huns entered the region.7 But if the
overview is straightforward, the Danubian style poses one further issue of basic interpre-
tation. Within it, pre-existing material cultural traits from different pre-Hunnic Middle
and Lower Danubian traditions are pooled together and developed further. As a result,
not only are Huns themselves invisible, but it is not possible, either, to tell the Hunnic
empire’s different Germanic subjects apart from one another on the basis of what rapidly
evolved into a monolithic material culture.
For all its problems, however, this combined historical-archaeological source base
nonethless directs our attention towards the two lines of enquiry which must be central
to any explanation the rise and fall of Hunnic power. The first, straightforwardly, con-
cerns the Huns themselves. How are we to understand the Huns’ relative archaeological
invisibility and Attila’s astonishing prominence against the fact that, just a decade and a
half later, his sons were looking to move onto Roman soil? Second, and equally impor-
tant given the prominence of pre-existing ‘Germanic’ material cultural traditions in the
archaeological complexes of the Danubian style: what was the nature of Huns’ relations
with the many subject groups whose histories came to be so closely intertwined with
those of Attila’s Empire?
1 Empire and the Huns
There is considerable debate about the extent to which the Huns themselves were
transformed by processes of empire-building which unfolded in eastern and central
Europe from the last quarter of the fourth century. One prominent strand in the schol-
arly literature has always argued—explicitly or implicitly—that they brought with them
ready-made imperial structures, directly or indirectly inherited from the Hsiung-Nu who
played such an important role in Chinese history in the early centuries AD. First aired
in the nineteenth century, it has recently been restated in more sophisticated form in the
monograph of H.J. Kim. In Kim’s view, the European Huns displayed such characteris-
tic features of developed imperial polities of the steppes as a fundamental binary divide
into western (‘right’) and eastern (‘left’) ‘wings’ each with their own rulers (where the
7For introductions to this material, see e.g. Bierbrauer (1980), (1989); Kazanski (1991); Tejral
(1999).
ruler of the left always had seniority), and the existence both of six ‘horns’ (a group of
top-ranking nobles whose membership was exclusively limited to members of the royal
family) and twenty-four governors of left and right, who formed the next rank in the
administrative hierarchy. In Kim’s view, Ammianus’ famous account of Hunnic politi-
cal disorganisation in the 370s has to be dismissed as nothing more than the traditional
cultural prejudice with which members of the Greco-Roman educated elite had always
approached nomadic cultures. In his opinion, Hunnic political organisation underwent
significant transformation only in the 440s, when Attila killed his brother Bleda to over-
turn the traditional binary ordering of the Empire. This overcentralised the political
structures of the Hunnic world on Attila alone, a level of overambition, which, in Kim’s
view, directly caused the unprecentedly fierce succession dispute between his sons which
eventually led the entire Empire to fall apart.8
If the Hsiung-Nu hypothesis stands at one end of a spectrum of argument, the work of
Rudi Lindner marks out the other extreme. In his view, not only did the Huns not import
into Europe a ready-made set of imperial institutions, but the act of moving west onto
the Great Hungarian Plain (where they were certainly located from c.410) generated fun-
damental socio-economic transformation. According to Lindner’s calculations, Europe
west of the Carpathians did not provide sufficient grazing capacity to support a properly
nomadic archer’s need for a string of preferably ten but at least five ponies to preserve
full mobility. By the time of Attila in the 440s, in his view, the Huns had in fact given
up fighting on horseback. For Lindner, the available military narratives for Attila’s cam-
paigns confirm that he was no longer leading properly nomadic armies.9 Between them,
Lindner and Kim bring the issue of potential Hunnic transformation in the construction
of Attila’s empire to the fore.
Kim is absolutely correct that Ammianus’ description of the Huns is fundamentally
shaped by traditional Greco-Roman topoi. The surviving portions of his history contain
three nomad digressions: on the Saracens, the Alans, and the Huns. All three have the
same basic structure and even re-employ much of the same vocabulary: a nomad 101
description from the Greco-Roman cultural playbook, which regarded viewed nomads as
belonging—as Kim suggests—to the most primitive rung of the ladder of human social
evolution. The description has also sometimes been accepted too much at face value,
most notably, perhaps, in an early work of E. A. Thompson.10 But in each of his nomad
digressions, Ammianus added a few more-specific observations to his general model,
unique to the particular group being discussed. In the case of the Huns, the unique
8Kim (2013), esp. c. 4. A convenient survey and discussion of the earlier literature is Maechen-
Helfen (1944–1945).
9Lindner (1981).
10Kim (2013), c. 4; cf. Thompson (1996), c. 3: but note that this is an unrevised reissue of
Thompson (1948). Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 9–15 is similarly critical of Thompson here. The
three digressions are Ammianus 14. 4 (Saracens); 31. 2. 1-11 (Huns); 31. 2. 17–25 (Alans).
62 P. Heather
information includes not only the observation that they put cuts of meat under their sad-
dles to cure (wider evidence for which is assembled by Maenchen-Helfen11), but also his
account of Hunnic political organisation.
And when deliberation is called for about weighty matters, they all consult as a common
body in that fashion [i.e. on horseback]. They are subject to no royal restraint, but they are
content with the disorderly government of their important men.12
The phrasing is slightly opaque, but, however interpreted, clearly implies that, at the time
of their first entrance into the fringes of the Roman world in the 370s, the Huns were
operating without established, centralised leadership structures.
By itself, the likely historical value of this remark is hard to determine. Ammianus
clearly inserted it into the Hunnic version of his otherwise standard nomad digression
deliberately, but it is reasonable to wonder whether the historian knew what he was talk-
ing about.13 It is not, however, only Ammianus’ Hunnic digression which suggests that
the first generation of Huns encountered by the Romans (in the period c.375–400 AD)
were not part of a strongly-organised, centrally-directed nomadic imperial power. This
first generation of contact is not so well-documented in our Roman historical materi-
als (page 000): largely because Roman observers were much more concerned with
the knock-on effects on Roman soil of the Huns’ activities beyond the frontier, such
as the arrival of Goths on the Danube in 376 and the subsequent defeat and death of
the Emperor Valens. What there is, however, strongly suggests that the Huns of this
period generally operated in relatively small-scale, independent warbands, not large,
centrally-directed armies.
What Ammianus clearly describes as the backdrop to the arrival of Gothic Tervingi
and Greuthungi on the banks of the Danube in 376, for instance, is a lengthy destabilisa-
tion of the existing political order north of the Black Sea by extensive raiding, employ-
ing the initial tactical advantage given them by an improved version of the traditional
reflex bow, rather than a more intensive, but simple and straightforward Hunnic conquest
of the region. Huns were at the heart of the process, but different groups of them acted
in different ways. First of all, it was Huns who undermined the security of Alanic con-
trol east of the Don, which meant that Alans began to press west into the territory of
the Gothic Greuthungi. But other Huns were ready to sell their services to Ermenaric’s
11Ammianus 31. 2. 3; cf. Maechen-Helfen, (1973), 14–15.

12Ammianus 31. 2. 7: aguntur autem nulla severitate regali, sed tumultuario pirmatum ductu
contenti….
13Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 12–13 rejects Ammianus’ account here point blank on the grounds
that Jordanes records the Huns being led in the 370s by a king called Balamber (Getica 23. 116–
24. 130; 48. 246–52). Kim (2013), 105–27 accepts my argument that this has no force because
Jordanes is here misunderstanding and misplacing chronologically stories about the Amal Gothic
king Valamer, which belong in the 450s: Heather (1989).
successor Vithimer as king of the Greuthungi to help fight off the Alanic menace.14
More Huns then raided the lands of the Gothic Tervingi as they tried—after Vithimer’s
death—to stop the now retreating Greuthungi from entering their territories west of
the river Dniester. According to Ammianus, this all took some time. Ermenaric fought
‘many battles’ against the Huns, and Vithimer resisted his enemies ‘for some time’. As
described by both Ammianus and—if still more briefly—by Ambrose, the process was
not a set of simple conquests, but of raiding which undermined security and generated
sequential decisions among the affected groups to shift location. It is entirely in keep-
ing with this picture that another Hunnic group (this time with Alans attached) should
have been willing to hire itself out to the Goths in 377 for their on-going war with the
Roman state south of the Danube, and that still more Huns and Alans (or possibly the
same ones) were employed by the Roman state against the Alamanni in the early 380s. It
is also important to note, and entirely consistent with this picture, that the main focus of
Roman foreign policy in the Carpathian region remained Goths rather than Huns into the
mid-380s.15
The pattern is sustained into the first decade of the fifth century, with the Huns leav-
ing only an extremely limited footprint to that date in Roman historical sources for the
Danube frontier region. Kim, for instance, repeats an old mistake in suggesting, on the
basis of the poet Claudian, that the Huns launched a massive attack on the east Roman
Empire in 395, simultaneously assaulting its territories both over the Danube in the
west, and through the Caucasus in the east. The Huns were responsible for the attack
through the Caucasus (confirming incidentally that their main powerbase at this stage
was still well to the east of the Carpathians), but if you read on in Claudian the simulta-
neous threat to the Danube he mentions at the opening of the poem was actually posed
by Alaric’s Gothic rebels, not Huns at all. The only Hunnic king we find in and around
the Carpathian basin in the first generation of contact is a certain Uldin, who was clearly
only a relatively small-scale leader. Despite some grandiose boasting, Uldin had the mili-
tary capacity to seize only one Roman frontier fortress, and his powerbase was quickly
and utterly dismantled by Roman diplomacy alone when he suddenly turned from ally
to enemy in 408/9.16 The narrative record thus broadly confirms Ammianus’ general
14Ammianus 31. 3. 1-3. Kim (2013), 60 dismisses Ammianus’ report that Vithimer bought Hunnic
support against Alan attackers on the utterly circular grounds that it can’t be correct because the
Huns were running a centrally-coordinated campaign.
15Ammianus 31. 3. 3-8; 8. 4; cf. Ambrose Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 10. 10: The Huns
attacked the Alans who threw themselves on the Goths. For more detailed analysis, see Heather
(1991), 135–42.
16395: Claudian In Ruf. II; misunderstood by Kim (2013). 67–8. Uldin: Sozomen 9.4. Heather
(1995) examines these matters in more detail, but Uldin’s relative powerlessness was already well
established by Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 59–73, although I would suspect that the Huns who
invaded Thrace a little before this in 404/5 (Sozomen 8. 25) were not Uldin’s but an advance guard
of the main body which was about to move decisively west of the Carpathians.
64 P. Heather
characterisation of the devolved nature of political authority among at least the scattered
Huns encountered by the Roman state in the Danube frontier region up to and including
the first decade of the fifth century. This doesn’t necessarily deny the existence of a more
imperially-organised Hunnic polity located further east after c.375, in the region, say, of
the Volga steppe north of the Caspian and Aral seas. Again, however, the detailed evi-
dence available in Roman sources repays close examination.
The Roman state is first recorded encountering Huns in obviously large num-
bers close to its European frontiers in c.411/12, when the historian and diplomat
Olympiodorus was sent to them on an embassy. The direction of his travel (by sea, up
the Adriatic) indicates that the Huns in question were established west of the Carpathians
on the Great Hungarian Plain, where their arrival was apparently a new development.
What Olympiodorus found, however, was not one imperial ruler, but two or more
kings, arranged in some kind of ranking order, since Olympiodorus referred to one of
them as the ‘first’.17 Kim argues that what Olympiodorus encountered on his embassy
(and possibly organised the assassination of) was the leader of western, junior half of
the binary Hunnic imperial polity, and that this remained its basic mode of organisa-
tion until the latter part of Attila’s reign.18 The evidence for such a form of organisa-
tion among the European Huns, however, is exceedingly slight. There were originally
two rulers in the era of Attila, of course, who reigned initially with his brother Bleda.
In the previous generation (the 430s) there had also been, it seems, two rulers at one
point: Ruga and his brother Octar (both uncles of Attila and Bleda). That power
was shared at certain moments is thus beyond doubt, but there is no explicit evidence
whatsoever that the Huns’ European polity was ever organised on the basis of two
geographically-conceptualised wings of empire.
At the start of the 440s, the Romans always encountered Attila and Bleda together,
not commanding geographically separate portions of their empire, and, after the latter’s
death, his wife continued to control villages in a region that was central to Attila’s own
area of operations. There is nothing here to indicate that the Empire was divided in their
time into two distinct wings. In the previous generation, likewise, evidence to that effect
is again completely lacking. Octar does seem to have operated in the west at one point
(at least he reportedly died there), and Ruga is chiefly famous for an invasion of the east-
ern Empire. But Octar died in the early 430s, and Attila and Bleda didn’t come to power
until c.440. There is no indication that any Hunnic king other than Ruga had reigned in
the meantime. There were two other brothers—Mundzuk (Attila and Bleda’s father) and
Oebarsius—but the sources are explicit that neither of them ruled, so the Hunnic world
seems to have functioned with only one ruler for the best part of a decade.19
17Olympiodorus fr. 19 with Heather (1995) for the Huns’ placement at this point.
18Kim (2013), 55–57.
19For full references, see PLRE 2. The best account of what can be established about these differ-
ent rulers is to be found in the relevant sections of Maenchen-Helfen (1973).

Rather than any formal binary division, the evidence actually suggests that, between
c.430 and c.450, the Hunnic Empire sometimes operated with joint rulers, and some-
times with just the one. Periodic royal power-sharing—it is worth stressing—is found
in many early medieval polities (sixth-century Franks, seventh and eighth-century
Anglo-Saxons to mention just two), so that the existence of more than one ruler at a
couple of different moments is no argument in favour of the underlying existence of two
‘wings’. It should also be emphasised that there is no explicit documentation, either,
among the European Huns, of six senior aristocratic ‘horns’, or of twenty-four govern-
ers of east and west. Priscus, as Kim notes, met a series of important subordinates of
various origins at Attila’s court—the so-called ‘picked men’ (logades), to whom we will
return—but no pre-modern monarch anywhere on the planet ever operated without the
assistance of trusted, high status subordinates. Again, the existence of logades adds no
weight whatsoever to arguments that the European Huns ran an Empire closely modelled
on forms inherited from the Hsiung-Nu.
What Kim’s argument is based upon, in sum, is not solid indications deriving from
what is quite a wide range of surviving contemporary source material, but the imposi-
tion of a blueprint of steppe imperial organisation, documented among the Hsiung-Nu
and some other nomad polities, upon the surviving evidence for the European Huns. The
fit, however, is not remotely a good one. None of the detailed, contemporary Roman his-
torical evidence suggests the existence of any of the relevant institutions in the slight-
est. Apart from this basic incompatibility, there are two additional reasons why what is
essentially—in the absence of any specific supporting evidence—an a priori presupposi-
tion should not be allowed to override the more detailed contemporary historical mate-
rial, despite its undoubted limitations, preserved in Roman sources.
First, the Hsiung-Nu imperial model is not the only form of organisation documented
among pre-modern steppe polities. In the time of Attila, the Huns extended their control
further east onto the steppe, taking in the nomadic Akatziri. As described in the surviv-
ing fragments of Priscus of Panium, the east Romans and the Huns courted the Akatziri
simultaneously, but the Roman envoy made a fatal mistake. The Akatziri were ruled by
a series of ranked kings (how many is not stated, but certainly more than two) and the
ambassador failed to hand over his diplomatic presents in the correct order: to the senior
king first. This caused so much offence that it gave Attila an opening to advance Hunnic
interests instead. We will return to this incident again, but, for present purposes, it clearly
demonstrates that steppe polities could operate with much looser, more decentralised
models of political organisation than that reported for the Hsiung-Nu. Indeed, empire is
not a very normal political form among steppe nomads, whose wide demographic dis-
persal often dictates more political devolved structures.20 Not only are the Akatziri much
closer in time and space to the European Huns than the Hsiung-Nu, but what is reported
20Priscus fr. 11. 2, where the Akatziri explicitly have ‘many’ rulers, not two; cf. e.g. Cribb (1991),
cc. 1–2 on the generally devolved political structures of nomad groupings.

66 P. Heather
of them also fits much better with both Ammianus’ account of Hunnic political structures
in the 370s and, most importantly, with the reports both of Olympiodorus and what can
be reconstructed of the Hunnic polity in action, as it were, between c.375 and 410. All of
this suggests that Hunnic political organisation in the late fourth and early fifth century,
prior to Attila’s imperial moment, is likely to have operated much more along the lines of
the contemporary Akatziri than the imperial Hsiung-Nu.
This conclusion is greatly strengthened by further consideration of the overall ‘shape’
of European Hunnic history. Apart from the one-off raid through the Caucasus in 395,
the Huns are not recorded mounting any major assault on either the eastern or west-
ern halves of the Roman Empire until Ruga’s attack of the 430s. Even that was still
an isolated event. It increased the tribute being paid to the Huns, but only marginally
compared to what followed in the time of Attila.21 It was only in the 440s, in fact, that
direct Hunnic military action substantially interfered with the operations of the Roman
imperial system. Up to that point, and—Ruga apart—even into the late 430s, the Huns
are much more often found in Roman service. As late as 436–9, Hunnic mercenaries
played a major role in containing the worst effects of large-scale Visigothic revolt in
Aquitaine.22 This manifestly subordinate role would be extremely odd if the Huns, as
Kim supposes, had arrived en masse to create an imperial edifice which already stretched
from the Rhine to the Volga as early as c.380. If that were really the case, the lack of
direct Hunnic challenge to the Roman system for the next sixty years seems inexplica-
ble. Rather than imposing a blueprint derived from the Hsiung-Nu on the European Huns
a priori, it is much more plausible to suppose, as the detailed evidence indicates, that
Hunnic imperial power and internal political centralisation built up together only slowly
in the decades after 375.
Removing the Hsiung-Nu hypothesis from the equation brings properly into
focus one important explanatory element in the rise and fall of Hunnic power. Part of
this story is a revolutionary centralisation of power among the Huns themselves. In
411/12, Olympiodorus encountered a number of ranked Hunnic kings. By the time of
Priscus’ embassy in the 440s, Attila was sole ruler of the Huns, and the ranked kings
had all been eliminated, some echoes of which survive in the sources, such as Attila’s
requirement that the Romans return for execution two Hunnic princes who had fled to
Constantinople.23 This strongly suggests that the early decades of the fifth century saw a
substantial reconstruction in the nature of Hunnic politics, as a single dynastic line came
to exercise monopolistic control.
21Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 89–94 (on the basis largely of Priscus fr. 2) establishes that Ruga man-
aged to extract payments of 350 lbs of gold p.a. in the later 430s. This is relatively little compared
to the 2100 lbs that Attila extracted in his pomp.
22Heather (1995).
23Mamas and Atakam: PLRE 2, 704 & 175.

Even more, this centralisation is likely to have been causally connected to the growing
intensity of the Huns’ relations with the Roman imperial state. Both in the earlier phase of
paid mercenary service, and in the later one of outright assault, the Huns’ main aim seems
to have been the acquisition of Roman wealth. Before 440, the Huns acquired only a lim-
ited amount of former Roman provincial territory west and south of the Middle Danube,
and even under Attila remained much more interested in extracting gold than territorial
expansion.24 Both mercenary service for the Roman state and violent campaigning against
it generated a substantial flow of brand new wealth into Hunnic society, with the poten-
tial to remake political relationships. Leaders (such as Ruga), who were more successful in
extracting Roman gold incidentally gave themselves the ability then to outbid their poten-
tial rivals, and hence gradually consolidate power upon themselves. A key element in all
analogous processes of centralisation (such as those which affected Goths and Franks in
the same era) is that the new leader necessarily has to be able to refocus existing loyalties
upon himself, and this usually requires him to have access to new wealth which he can pass
around.25 To my mind, therefore, increasing but unequal access to Roman gold is much the
likeliest explanation for the disappearance of multiple ruling lines among the Huns.
Whether revolution extended as far as Lindner argues, with the Huns ceasing to func-
tion militarily as mounted archers, seems to me less certain. His basic point about the
relatively limited grazing available west of the Carpathians is irrefutable. The Great
Hungarian Plain simply does not contain enough pasture to support all the horses that
nomad army of several tens of thousand archers would require. But, as Lindner notes,
when push came to shove, nomad archers in better-documented contexts are recorded
making do with five rather than ten or more remounts, and, on his calculations, this does
mean that the puszta could have supported ponies for ten thousand or more mounted
Hunnic archers, which prompts one extremely important observation. What Lindner’s
paper doesn’t sufficiently recognise is that much of Attila’s military manpower, probably
the bulk of it in fact, was provided not by nomadic archers, but by the many other sed-
entary population groups (Goths, Gepids, Sciri, Rugi etc.: many of them former Roman
frontier clients) who by that date were bound up in the structures of Hunnic empire.
About ten thousand nomadic archers as the core around which these other military con-
tingents were drafted into make up the obviously larger forces which Attila was deploy-
ing in the 440s seems to me about right. In other words, once you recognise Attila’s
dependence on non-nomad military capacities, Lindner’s argument loses much of its ini-
tial force. Nor does find substantial support in the broader evidence base.
24Some riverine territory south of the Middle Danube seems to have been swapped between Roman
and the Huns in the 420s and 430s, but this was not large. And even at the height of his power Attila
was only interested in establishing a cordon sanitaire between his lands and other roman holdings
in the lower Danubian region (effectively asking for the evacuation of Lower Moesia in the 440s:
Priscus fr. 11. 1), not in large-scale annexation.
25Explored in more detail for the Goths in Heather, (1995b).
68 P. Heather
Horse burials are much less a feature of Hunnic-era archaeology than they were of
the later Avar nomads who moved onto the Great Hungarian Plain after c.570.26 Nor do
fifth-century Roman sources provide the same kind of explicit evidence (as their later
counterparts again do for the Avars) that a mounted, nomadic component played a major
role in Attila’s wars of the 440s.27 But burial ritual is fundamentally about culture and
belief, and does not reflect everyday life in any simple, functional way. What we have
from Priscus, moreover, is preserved via a tenth-century work ‘On Embassies’ which
explicitly excludes detailed descriptions of Attila’s armies in action. At the very least,
bows and horses feature at important symbolic moments in the era of Attila. When beaten
at the Catalaunian fields, the Hun’s first thought was to throw himself onto a pyre made
of saddles, golden bows were a mark of authority, and the Emperor Marcian reportedly
dreamt of a broken bow the night Attila died.28 More generally, the later evidence for
the Avars cuts both ways. Even when it had relocated west of the Carpathians, the Avar
khaganate maintained a distinct, nomad element within its armies, despite the more lim-
ited grazing, as well as, again, drawing military contingents from a host of sedentary sub-
ject groupings. In this case we have East Roman sources not preserved by Constantine
Porphyryogenitus which make the point explicit. Even if there is no sign of mass equine
burials in the archaeological horizons associated with Attila’s Empire, the Avars demon-
strate that, despite limited grazing, a nomadic military capacity could be maintained on
the Great Hungarian even if assembling really large armies also required the participation
of sedentary supplements. What Lindner’s arguments really do, therefore, is not so much
prove that large-scale social and economic transformation unfolded among the fifth-
century Huns, as direct our attention to the nature of their relations with the many other
groupings whose fates were also bound up within Attila’s imperial edifice.
2 Huns and Others
As far back as the 370s, when Huns first appeared on the fringes of Roman Europe,
Iranian-speaking Alan nomads, as we have seen, were already sometimes fighting along-
side them. And when we encounter Huns subsequently, they are usually accompanied
by others. Uldin counted numerous Germanic-speaking Sciri among his followers,29
and when East Roman forces drove Huns out of Pannonia in 427, they resettled a large
26A good introduction to Avar-era material cultural patterns is Daim (2003).

27The account of Avar cavalry in the Strategicon of Maurice is confirmed by the narratives of Avar
warfare in Theophylact Simocatta; cf. Whitby (1988) pt. 3.
28Attila’s pyre: Jordanes Getica 40. 213. Marcian dream: Getica 49. 254–55. Harmatta (1951)
brings out the symbolic significance of golden bows.

29Sozomen h.e. 9. 5; C.Th. 5. 6. 3.
number of Goths, former Hunnic subjects, in Thrace.30 At its height, the empire of Attila
contained at least three more clusters of Goths, together with equally Germanic-speaking
Gepids, Rugi, Suevi, Sciri, and Heruli. Attila seems also to have exercised a looser
hegemony at times over Lombards and Thuringians, and over at least some sub-groups
of the Alamanni and Franks.31 Some Iranian-speaking Alans and Sarmatians also formed
part of the Empire, and still more non-Huns came to be incorporated: Priscus recording
the addition of the Akatziri in the 440s.32 Not only is the rise of Hunnic power closely
associated with the absorption into the empire of a host of non-Huns, but its collapse
makes the same point in reverse. According to Jordanes, first the Gepids, but then Goths
and many others besides reacquired independence as Attila’s empire fell apart. This close
correlation between Hunnic imperial power and the incorporation into the polity of so
many others, makes the relationships governing these associations central to any proper
understanding of Attila’s Empire.33
Thanks to Priscus, much of the relevant information comes from the 440s, with Attila
in his pomp, and this, I think, underlies an important strand in recent scholarship. This
tends to view group boundaries within the empire as operating with considerable fluidity,
with the implication that no strong distinctions existed between any Hunnic core and the
other bodies of manpower. In his eye-witness account of an embassy to the Huns, Priscus
tells how, in Attila’s camp, he was suddenly hailed in Greek by someone who looked
like a prosperous Hun ‘with good clothing and his hair clipped all around’. On further
enquiry, the man told Priscus his life story.
He was a Greek trader [from] Viminacium, a city … on the river Danube… When the
city was captured by the barbarians, he was deprived of his prosperity and…assigned to
Onegesius [one of Attila’s leading henchmen], for after Attila the leading men…chose their
captives from the well-to-do. Having proven his valour in later battles against the Romans
and the Akatziri and having, according to [Hunnic] law, given his booty to his master, he
had won his freedom. He had married a barbarian wife and had children, and, as a sharer of
the table of Onegesius, he now enjoyed a better life than he had before.34
This merchant-turned Hun provides a text-book illustration of one major trend in current
thinking about group identities within Attila’s Empire: they were highly malleable. There
30Theophanes AM 5931; cf. Procopius Wars 3. 2. 39–40 with Croke (1977). The date could be
either 421 or 427.

31Gepids, Rugi, Suevi, Sciri, and Heruli are all named in the post-Attilan narrative of events on
the Great Hungarian Plain, while Attila intervened in the internal politics of the Franks (Priscus fr.
20. 3), which makes it very likely that he exercised some kind of hegemony over Lombards and
Thuringians, and possibly Alamanni too, all of whom lived closer to the Hunnic heartland.
32Alans and Sarmatians again appear in the narratives of Hunnic collapse. Akatziri: Priscus fr. 11.
2.
33In more detail, see below page 000.
34Priscus fr. 11.2 lines 422–35.

70 P. Heather
is one other important individual biography suggesting much the same. Odovacar’s
father Edeco (if, as seems probable, the same man) is first met as another of Attila’s
henchmen, alongside Onegesius. He later became king of the Sciri after Attila’s death,
even though he himself does not seem to have been born into that group. He probably
owed his claim to having married a high-born Scirian lady, since his children, Odovacar
and Onoulphus, are said to have had a Scirian mother. Edeco himself is variously
described as a Hun or a Thuringian.35
These two case histories suggest that Attila’s empire was a melting pot where
pre-existing group identities could be subsumed into that of the Huns, and the argu-
ment can be bolstered with some more general evidence. Many of Attila’s leading
henchmen had Germanic not Hunnic names: Onegesius and Edeco certainly, and two
others, Berichus and Scottas, probably. The recorded names for Attila and his brother,
Bleda, are also probably Germanic (though this is not beyond dispute), and we know
that Germanic, in various dialects, operated as the lingua franca across Attila’s entire
Empire.36 A matching material cultural fluidity is also visible in the archaeological
remains, where, as we have seen, elements from various pre-existing central and east
European traditions mingled to create a new elite material cultural uniformity within
Attila’s empire. This may even have been shared by the Huns’ themselves. One possible
explanation for their substantial invisibility in the material record (page 000) is that they
too had adopted the Danubian style by the mid-fifth century.
Such a view of the Hunnic empire is also firmly in line with the general rejection in
recent years of the now outdated hypernationalist assumptions which used to be such a
distinct strand within the scholarly literature on the so-called migration period. Up to
World War II, it was simply assumed that the kinds of groups named in Roman and other
sources of this era were ‘peoples’: closed, self-reproducing population groups, each
with their own distinct material and non-material cultures who erected strong bounda-
ries between themselves and the rest of humanity. The realisation that this is incorrect
has led, instead, to the enthusiastic adoption from the social sciences of ‘instrumentalist’
approaches to group identity. As formulated most famously by the Norwegian anthro-
pologist Fredrik Barth, this line of approach argues that an individual’s identity is not a
fixed, inherited given, but an ‘evanescent situational construct’: something to be adopted
or rejected as one goes through life according to immediate material advantage. In such
a view, non-Huns caught up in Attila’s empire could choose, when it was advantageous,
35PLRE 2, 385–6.
36See esp. Maenchen-Helfen (1973), chapter 8 and 9. Kim (2013), Chapter 5 attempts to show that
the vast majority of the actors found at the head of Attila’s Empire and playing a leading role in
its break up were actually Huns, much of which is based on alternative n on-Germanic etymolo-
gies. But these are far from conclusive (we will return to some below), he doesn’t mention the fact
that the lingua franca of Attila’s Empire was Germanic, and, as Maenchen-Helfen suggests, Attila,
Bleda and its other leaders might well have had properly Hunnic names as well as the Germanic
ones that made into our Roman sources.
to be Huns, but when that moment passed, revert to being Goths, Gepids or whatever
else now looked like the better option. This kind of perspective on group identity is now
well-entrenched in the secondary literature on late antiquity, and also underlies a particu-
lar view of how Attila’s Empire came into being. In Wolfram’s influential phrase, it was
the ‘Hunnic alternative’, preferred by many former Germanic clients of the Roman fron-
tier region to the—certainly dangerous—alternative of relocating their operations onto
Roman soil.37
But if Attila’s empire was clearly a cultural melting pot, within which individuals,
probably in large numbers, were busy renegotiating their identities, this is not remotely
the same thing as saying either that group identities within this multi-cultural Empire
were infinitely malleable, or that they were the product of free individual choice. The
Greek merchant’s successful acquisition of Hunnic identity came from serving his new
master effectively in battle. You have to wonder how many Roman prisoners are likely
to have done so well. Unless Onegesius possessed a truly enormous table, there can-
not have been room at it for many favoured ex-prisoners, and, in any case, how many
martially-inexperienced Roman prisoners are likely to have been skilful or lucky enough
to thrive in battle?38 Much less often quoted is another of Priscus’ anecdotes. This con-
cerns two more Roman prisoners, likewise drafted into military service under the Huns,
who took the opportunity of the chaos of battle to settle old scores by killing their mas-
ter. They were gibbeted. I should have thought that this kind of less harmonious state of
affairs is likely to have been more characteristic of master-prisoner relationships than the
happy outcome enjoyed by Priscus’ former merchant.39
Both of these anecdotes, moreover, concern Romans taken as individual prison-
ers. Most of Attila’s non-Hunnic subjects were incorporated into the Empire in larger
blocks. For them, the prevailing pattern of relations was unlikely to have been conducive
to easy changes of identity. To start with, the Hunnic empire was not something that peo-
ple joined voluntarily. The relevant evidence is plentiful and consistent. Non-Huns were
absorbed into it via a potent mixture of conquest and intimidation. The incorporation of
the Akatziri in the time of Attila involved some diplomatic maneuvering, but the bottom
line was straightforward. ‘Attila without delay sent a large force, destroyed some, and
forced the rest to submit’.40 Whatever his other confusions on the early history of the
37The quotation is from Barth (1969), 9. For the application of such views to the Huns, see most
recently Halsall (2007), 474–5. A similar view of the 6th- and 7th-century Avar Empire can be
found in Pohl (1988); cf. Pohl (2003). For applications of instrumentalist perspectives to the
Migration Period more generally, see e.g. Geary (1983); Amory (1997): Gillett (2002). For the
‘Hunnic alternative’, see Wolfram (2005), c. 3.
38If he were a slave trader, it occurs to me, rather than some more innocent type of salesman, then
this might help explain his success. Viminacium, where he was captured, was right on the frontier
and a vigorous slave trade operated across it throughout the Roman period.
39Priscus fr. 14.
40Priscus fr. 11. 2, p. 259.

72 P. Heather
Amal-led Goths, likewise, Jordanes’ is entirely clear that they had been incorporated into
the Hunnic empire by violent conquest.41 It was precisely to avoid a similar fate that the
Tervingi and Greuthungi came to the Danube in the summer of 376, and a strong argu-
ment can be made that that the second great wave of population displacements which
affected the Roman Empire about a generation later (405–410) represents the alterna-
tive choices a whole raft of other potential Hunnic subjects who wished to avoid being
conquered, at the point when the Huns were shifting their centre of operations west of
the Carpathians.42 Ideas of a positive Hunnic alternative seem misplaced. The ranks of
Attila’s subjects were filled not with volunteers, but with those who had failed to get out
of the way in time. Starting from this base point, you would not predict that relations
between the Huns and the mass of their subjects are likely to have been harmonious. This
is amply confirmed by a broad run of additional evidence.
The underlying instability of the Hunnic imperial edifice tends to receive little atten-
tion because the vast majority of our descriptive source material deals with Attila at the
height of his power. If you cast your net even a little wider than the mid 440s, how-
ever, evidence adds up quickly. Because the Huns’ subjects were not willing participants
in the structures of their Empire, the Romans consistently aimed to reduce its military
power, and undermine its political coherence, by detaching subject peoples from its con-
trol, many of whom were clearly ready to take any opportunity to escape. In the 420s,
as already mentioned, the East Romans stripped away one large body of Goths from
Hunnic control, whom they transferred to Thrace.43 On other occasions, the subjects
themselves took the initiative:
When Rua was king of the Huns, the Amilzuri, Itimari, Tounsoures, Boisci and other tribes
who were living near to the Danube were fleeing to fight on the side of the Romans.
These events date to the later 430s, after Rua, Attila’s uncle, had already achieved con-
siderable success through his famous raid on east Roman territory, but even that was
41Getica 48: 246–52 with detailed discussion in Heather (1989).

42Goths of 376: esp. Ammianus 31. 3–4 but the point is confirmed by a whole range of contem-
porary source material. The case for viewing the second round of major frontier crossings which
occurred about a generation later (Radagaisus into Italy in 405, Vandals, Alans, and Sueves into
Gaul in 406, Uldin into the Balkans in 408/9) as the knock on effect from the second-stage of
Hunnic movement, now west of the Carpathian mountains onto the Great Hungarian Plain, is made
in detail in Heather (1995). For alternative views, see Goffart (2006), c. 5; Halsall (2007), 206 ff.
But both accept that it was obviously a huge crisis affecting the Great Hungarian, while failing to
offer an alternative explanation for it; Heather (2009), c. 4. Kim (2013), esp. 66–7 suggests, on
the contrary, that they were all escapees from established Hunnic domination, for which there is
no evidence, reflecting his consistent overestimation of Hunnic power in the decades after c. 375:
above page 000.
43Refs. as above note 30.
insufficient to guarantee his subjects’ quiescence.44 The start of any new reign, not sur-
prisingly, was a moment of particular stress:
When [at the start of their reign in c.440] they had made peace with the Romans, Attila,
Bleda and their forces marched through Scythia subduing the tribes there and also made war
on the Sorogsi.
Reasserting your overlordship over subject groups, once you had established yourself as
number one Hun, was probably a basic necessity for any new ruler. So much so, in fact,
that, when they could, Hunnic leaders tried to ensure that Romans wouldn’t stir up trou-
ble for them. In that initial treaty with Constantinople, Attila and Bleda had insisted
That the Romans should make no alliance with a barbarian people against the Huns when
the latter were preparing for war against them.
The picture of internal peace and quiet we might derive from Priscus’ embassy to Attila
is deeply misleading. The Hunnic Empire was created by conquest, and maintained by
intimidation.45
Much of the reason for this enduring hostility between rulers and ruled emerges from
a fragment of Priscus’ history dealing with Dengizich’s last attack on the East Roman
Empire in 467/8. It records how the unity of a mixed force of Goths and Huns was pulled
apart by a Roman agent provocateur. He did so by reminding the Gothic contingent of
exactly how the Huns generally behaved towards them:
These men have no concern for agriculture, but, like wolves, attack and steal the Goths’
food supplies, with the result that the latter remain in the position of slaves and themselves
suffer food shortages.46
Taking food supplies was, of course, only part of the story. The subject peoples were also
used to fight the Huns’ wars. Priscus’ merchant-turned-Hun prospered in battle, but his is
likely to have been a minority story. Few civilian Roman prisoners are likely to have had
much experience of fighting, and their casualties, when used on Hunnic campaigns, are
likely to have been frightful. For most people, the reality of becoming part of the Hunnic
Empire was a nasty succession of military conquest and economic exploitation, spiced
up from time to time by being marched out to fight Attila’s wars.
At the same time, the Hunnic Empire lacked the governmental capacity to run the
affairs of its subject peoples directly. The Hunnic bureaucracy consisted of one Roman
secretary supplied by Aetius, de facto ruler of the western Empire, and another Roman
44Priscus fr. 2 p. 225.

45The two quotations are from Priscus fr. 2, p. 227.
46Priscus fr. 49.
74 P. Heather
prisoner who could write letters in Latin and Greek.47 In practice, this meant that, once
conquered, subjects had still to be left largely to run their own day to day affairs them-
selves. Which is not to say that everything carried on absolutely as before. After con-
quering the Akatziri, Attila appointed one of his sons to oversee their surviving chiefs.
Likewise, while the Goths who provided part of Dengizich’s invasion force in 467 still
had chiefs—they are referred to elsewhere in the fragment quoted above—though they
possessed no overall ruler. Given that all the independent Gothic groups we know about
in the fourth and fifth centuries had a preeminent ruler, even where power was shared
between, for instance, brothers, this strongly suggests that Hunnic supervision sub-
sequent to any conquest, as was only sensible, would have largely focused on prevent-
ing the emergence of overall rulers among the larger concentrations of their defeated
subjects.48
The point of such an approach would have been exactly the same for the Huns as
it had earlier been for the Romans, when they operated it against the Alamanni outside
the Empire, or in the 382 treaty against Goths within it. If you suppress established
overall leadership structures, you stimulate political competition within a group’s elite,
and lessen the possibility of it mounting effective resistance, as a unified block, to your
continued dominance. The point can be illustrated in more detail through the Amal-
led Goths, who emerged from Hunnic control after Attila’s death and prospered suffi-
ciently under the rule of two generations of the same dynasty’s leadership (particularly
that of Theoderic the Ostrogoth and his uncle Valamer) to create what would become the
dominant successor state to the western Roman Empire. Stories preserved by Jordanes
suggest that Valamer did not inherit a preeminent position among these Goths, but had
to create it by defeating a series of rival warband leaders, and attaching, where possi-
ble, their followings to his own. The stories are undated, but it seems much more likely
that these events occurred after Attila’s death than before it, since, as we shall see in a
moment, it created precisely the problem that Hunnic client management strategies had
been designed to avoid: a Gothic group powerful enough to assert its independence.49
Looking past Attila in his pomp, the underlying instability of the Hunnic empire
comes into focus. Unlike its Roman counterpart, which spent centuries turning con-
quered subjects—at least the elites—into fully-fledged Roman citizens, dissipat-
ing the original tensions of conquest, the Huns lacked the bureaucratic capacity to run
their subjects directly. Instead, they had to rely on at least an intermediate indigenous
47Rusticius: Priscus fr. 14, 289. The bureaucracy, such as it was, could keep lists of renegade
princes who had fled to the Romans, and was perhaps also used to keep track of the supplies
required from subject groups.
48Priscus frr. 11. 2; 49.
49On the Amal-led Goths, see Getica 48: 246–52 with Heather (1991), 240–51 for further discus-
sion of the link between group consolidation and the assertion of independence from the Huns. On
Rome and the Alamanni, see Heather (2001).
leadership among conquered groups to administer day-to-day affairs. I suspect that in

practice the extent of Hunnic dominion and interference varied substantially. The Gepids
seem to have had an overall leader already in place at the time of Attila’s death, which
might explain why they were the first to assert their independence. Other groups, like
the Amal-led Goths, had to throw up an overall leader before they could even begin to
challenge Hunnic hegemony, and some, like those Goths still dominated by Dengizich in
468, never managed to do so.50 The two key variables, I suspect but cannot prove, were,
first, the extent to which the subjects’ political structure had been left intact, and, second,
the distance separating them from the physical heartland of the Empire where Attila had
his camps, and where he was visited by Priscus’ Roman embassy. Some groups, settled
in close proximity to the camps, were kept under tight rein, with any propensity to uni-
fied leadership more strongly suppressed. Others, settled at greater distance, preserved
more of their political structures, and were much less closely controlled. By the time of
Attila, Franks and Akatziri defined the geographical extremes, but, in between, various
groups of Thuringians, Goths, Gepids, Suevi, Sciri, Herules, Sarmatians, and Alans were
all, if to differing degrees, dancing to Attila’s tune.
These observations have strong implications for the operation of group identi-
ties within the Hunnic Empire. They were not unchanging. The Huns probably inter-
fered consistently at the top end of their subjects’ political structures. Attila also seems
to have recruited his immediate subordinates from a variety of backgrounds, which,
again, makes perfect sense. If he was running an empire largely composed of more or
less autonomous subjects, he needed trusted subordinates to run their affairs or super-
vise those doing the running. The same point is perhaps also suggested by the numer-
ous gold-rich burials across Attila’s domains. Gold is rarely found in the remains of the
Germanic world prior to the Hunnic period, so the degree of new wealth that obviously
became available in the era of Attila is extremely striking. Not only that, but its wide
geographical distribution in Danubian style burials suggests that, in tandem with military
domination, some of the booty and annual subsidies extracted from the Roman world,
was handed on subject leaders to give them a further reason to consent to Hunnic rule.51
At the same time, the Hunnic empire also erected some important structural barriers
against really fundamental changes in larger-scale group identities. The whole point for
the Huns in conquering Goths, Gepids, Heruli, and others was to turn them into subjects,
whose military and economic potential could then be exploited. If they were all allowed
50Jordanes Getica 50: 260–2 indicates that the Gepids had an overall leader in place very quickly
after Attila’s death, in contrast to Priscus fr. 49 (part of which is quoted above) which demonstrates
that non-Amal-led Goths were still under Hunnic control in the later 460s.
51There are limited gold finds associated with 4th-c. frontier clients such as the Černjachov culture,
but richer personal ornamentation is generally silver and there is nothing like the quantity of gold
found in rich Danubian burials (refs. as above note 7). In the decade after c.435, Attila managed to
increase the annual subsidy in gold from 350 lbs p.a. to 2100 lbs, and extracted one extraordinary
backpayment of 6000 lbs.
76 P. Heather
to become fully-fledged, free Huns like the former Roman merchant Priscus encoun-
tered, then, as they acquired higher status, their treatment, like his, would have had to
change, undercutting the overall benefit to the Huns from their initial acts of conquest.
The Hunnic Empire was multicultural, but, as in fact is often the case with multicul-
tural empires, this did not mean that group identities within it were equal or infinitely
malleable.
The argument presented here stands in such contrast to the strand of late antique
scholarship influenced by more instrumentalist understandings of group identity, that it
is probably worth pausing a moment to reflect on the broader social scientific literature
on group identity within which the instrumentalist approach must be placed. The vast
majority of recent literature on the subject, not just (as is sometimes claimed) the instru-
mentalist tradition, has been generated in reaction to old nationalist assumptions that an
individual’s group identity would ‘normally’ be both singular and unchanging. A combi-
nation of fieldwork and theoretical reflection has demonstrated beyond doubt that there
is nothing so essential about individual group affiliations, and, likewise, that old assump-
tions that identity can easily be measured through external observation are seriously mis-
placed. Identity is fundamentally located in shared perception: a claim located inside the
individual’s head, and the recognition of that claim by the group concerned (a double-act
beautifully illustrated in the story of Priscus’ merchant-turned-Hun). According to actual
experience and prevailing circumstances, multiple different claims to group affiliation
might be made and recognised in the course of any individual’s lifetime. Or they might
not.
The instrumentalist tradition, voiced so influentially by Barth, played a key role in
dismantling the old nationalist paradigm in the scholarly generation immediately after
World War II. In that era, the key point which needed to be stressed was precisely that
identity was not always ‘normally’ singular and unchanging. But Barth was writing in
1969, and much relevant work has been done in the social sciences since. The most seri-
ous caveat which much of the subsequent literature adds to Barth’s highly instrumen-
talist characterisation of group identities was already there, in fact, in the logic of his
own formulation. As Barth put it, group identity is always a situational construct, but
the broader point, that has sometimes not been properly recognised, is that not all situa-
tions are the same. Some groups erect stronger boundaries around themselves than oth-
ers, usually when there has been conflict, or where there is a position of material or legal
advantage its members wish to protect (as the current disinclination of many European
populations to grant full rights to refugees from the Middle East and beyond has brought
firmly into focus). It is fully in line with the broader run of social scientific literature
to recognise, therefore, while in no sense advocating a return to a vision of unchang-
ing proto-nationalist ‘peoples’, that in the right circumstances, group boundaries, while
never completely impermeable (some refugees are still being granted new European
identities), will have had real force. This perspective, I would argue, firmly applies to the
Hunnic Empire, as all our evidence combines to demonstrate.52
Becoming a Hun meant acquiring higher status and accompanying material advan-
tages: as the story of the Greek merchant makes crystal clear. For that very reason, the
Empire’s multicultural character necessarily erected powerful barriers around Hunnic
identity. From the subjects’ perspective, likewise, this situation left them with both
capacity and reason to preserve original identities. The Huns’ lack of bureaucratic capac-
ity left subjects with at least their intermediate leaderships intact to provide a structure
around and through which their existing senses of group identity might persist. At the
same time, the general Hunnic exploitation they endured gave them real reason to main-
tain a sense of themselves, since it was the one vehicle through which they might poten-
tially, at some point, be able to overthrow Hunnic domination, either by escaping onto
Roman soil or regaining their political independence by force. There is every reason
why—as the evidence is generally telling us—the old identities should not and could not
have slipped quietly away under Hunnic rule.
3 The End of Empire
The process of Hunnic imperial collapse confirms the point. The downward spiral
began with a struggle for power between Attila’s sons, but events quickly took another
direction. As Jordanes tells the story, and it does find broad confirmation in the other
surviving sources, the civil war was quickly exploited by the Huns’ resentful subjects
as an opportunity to throw off imperial control. The lead was taken by a king of the
Gepids called Arderic, the result a huge battle in 454 on the unidentified River Nedao in
Pannonia.
There an encounter took place between the various nations Attila had held under his sway.
Kingdoms with their peoples were divided, and out of one body were made many mem-
bers not responding to a common impulse. Being deprived of their head, they madly strove
against each other…And so the bravest nations tore themselves to pieces… One might see
the Goths fighting with pikes, the Gepids raging with the sword, the Rugi breaking off the
spears in their own wounds, the Suevi fighting on foot, the Huns with bows, the Alans draw-
ing up a battle-line of heavy-armed and the Herules of light-armed warriors.
It’s impossible to produce a complete account of subsequent events, but, as the 450s and
early 460s progressed, increasing numbers of the Huns’ former subjects were able to
throw off their control. In the case of the Amal-led Goths, this process had at least three
stages. First, Valamer defeated a number of rival warband leaders to create a much larger
52This argument is developed in more detail, with full reference to the social scientific literature in
Heather (2008).
78 P. Heather
following (very much as Clovis would do a generation later among the Salian Franks).
With this enlarged powerbase, he was then able to throw off Hunnic domination in an
initial confrontation. But this assertion of independence had to be sustained in further
round of conflict as Attila’s sons gathered forces to reassert their old dominion.53
None of the other subject groups finds the same level of coverage in surviving
sources, but the Amal-led Goths probably give us a generalisable model of the kinds of
events that were unfolding right across the Great Hungarian Plain after 453. At least, by
the 460s, a series of substantial powerblocks of the Huns’ former subjects—dominated
amongst others by Gepids, Rugi, Heruli, Sciri, and Suevi—had all emerged on the terri-
tory of Attila’s old Empire. These powers were fighting not only to preserve their inde-
pendence from Hunnic control, but also for regional dominance against one another. As
for the sons of Attila, each successful assertion of independence on the part of a former
subject brought material losses of demographic and economic resource, which quickly
spiralled into a vicious circle of terminal proportions. As more and more subject groups
escaped its grasp, the military potential of the rump Hunnic empire declined drastically.
It may also have been the case that new intrusive Bulgars were beginning to make their
power felt as a nomadic power at the western end of the European steppe. The two pro-
cesses could easily have been connected in that the Huns’ progressive loss of power may
have encouraged Bulgar groups to challenge their control of the western steppe. Either
way, by the second half of the 460s the two surviving sons of Attila had clearly come to
the conclusion that it was no longer possible to maintain any kind of powerful, independ-
ent dominion north of the Danube. Hence Dengizich and Hernac took their fateful deci-
sion to relocate onto Roman soil, and, in so doing, brought the European Hunnic polity
to its end.54 On the face of it, the evidence is substantial and explicit that his sons’ inabil-
ity to maintain control of the former subjects led directly to the dismantling of Attila’s
empire.
In his recent monograph, Kim has challenged some elements of this generally
accepted picture. In particular, he suggests that that all the emergent dynasts who
appear at the head of the breakaway units were either Attila’s former loyal lieutenants,
or actual Huns. He argues this case in different ways for three main protagonists in
the story: Arderic (the ‘king’ of the Gepids, who, according to Jordanes, led the initial
revolt against Hunnic overlordship), Valamer (founding dynast of the group who would
eventually evolve into the Ostrogoths), and Orestes (responsible for putting the last
western emperor, his nephew Romulus Augustulus on his throne). In addition to these
men, we have already come across Attila’s lieutenant Edeco who became king of the
53The quotation is from Jordanes Getica 50: 261–2. Amal-led Goths: Getica 52. 268–9 (throw off
Hunnic control after Valamer’s initial unification of the group: refs. above note 49) & Getica 53.
272–3 (resist attempted resubordination).
54The key sources on Dengizich’s last attack are Priscus frr. 46, 48, 49. For Hernac’s reception see
note 58. Harmatta (1952) remains excellent.

Sciri sometime in the late 450s, and whose son Odovacar would escape to Italy from
the Gothic destruction of Edeco’s kingdom and eventually oust the regime of Orestes
and Augustulus. The arguments in each case are constructed from a mix of historical
evidence and etymological derivation, Kim’s overall point being that the new entities
which emerged after Attila’s death are better understood not as breakaway subjects of the
Hunnic Empire, but as pre-existing units within its auspices, carrying on under leaders
whose power and position was directly derived from its structures. For that reason, in his
view, it is necessary—again (this follows on from his earlier arguments about the impor-
tance of a Hsiung-Nu inheritance)—to revise substantially upwards prevailing under-
standings of the power of the Hunnic Empire. This was not an empire which rose and fell
in the space of a couple of generations.55
I see two main problems with the argument. On points of detail, first of all, the sup-
porting evidence for a very close association between some of the key figures in the era
of collapse with Attila and the Huns is thin. Neither Valamer nor Arderic, for instance,
feature strongly only in reliable sources that postdate Attila’s death. Their prominence
in the mid-450s cannot have come from nowhere, of course but nothing indicates that
they were close to Attila himself. Valamer’s supposed Hunnic ethnicity is also based
purely on etymological arguments, which are never very convincing when on the level
of individual names, which is why the secondary literature offers so many entirely plau-
sible, competing alternatives.56 Kim also doesn’t give any serious attention to the sur-
viving evidence that a whole series of smaller population fragments entered the Roman
world after Attila’s death. Aside from the large, named population blocks which eventu-
ally emerged as Hunnic successor states in the later 450s and early 460s, many smaller
groupings also figured fleetingly in the action. Sorogsi, Amilzuri, Itimari, Tounsoures,
and Boisci are all mentioned in different fragments of Priscus’ history. Other Roman
sources also mention two other sets of refugees—those led by Bigelis and Hormidac—
which found their way onto Roman soil in the mid-460s as the Hunnic Empire collapsed
into chaos.57 A sense of a substantially chaotic sequence of events, with many small
groups ending up on Roman soil is also suggested by Jordanes’ account of their subse-
quent dispersal:
The Sarmatians and the Cemandri and certain of the Huns dwelt in Castra Martis… The
Sciri together with the Sadagarii and certain of the Alani… received Scythia Minor and
55Kim (2013), c. 5.
56Arderic: Kim (2013), 92–6: there was a marriage alliance between a daughter of Arderic and a
son of Attila, but no indication that this pre- rather than post-dated the Nedao, and there’s noth-
ing to suggest that Arderic himself was Hunnic. Valamer: Kim (2013), 105–127, but see Heather
(1991), 240–2 on the problematic nature of the two references which suggest that he had been
close to Attila, and it is important to stress that perfectly good Germanic etymologies exist for this
name.
57Bigelis: Jordanes Romana 336. Hormidac: Sidonius Apollinaris Pan. Anth. 239 ff.
80 P. Heather
Lower Moesia… The Rugi, however, and some other races asked they might inhabit Bizye
and Arcadiopolis. Hernac, the younger son of Attila, with his followers, chose a home in the
farthest reaches of Scythia Minor. Emnetzur and Ultzindur, kinsmen of his, won Oescus,
Utus, and Almus in Dacia.58
Between them, these materials strongly suggest that the break up of Attila’s empire was
a thoroughly messy political process, involving a great deal of violent reorganisation not
the continuation of pre-existing structures by another name as Kim’s argument chooses
to present it.
More fundamentally, even if Kim’s detailed arguments on the origins of the leaders
of some of the post-imperial polities are accepted, I don’t see how this really changes
the overall picture. Quite explicitly, the major entities (all that we know about anyway)
did not present themselves to the outside world as Huns, but as something else entirely.
The best documented of these groups is that originally led by Valamer and his two
brothers, Thiudimer and Vidimer, before power passed to Thiudimer’s son Theoderic
and the group itself moved on via the East Roman Balkans, and much further recruit-
ing, to take control of Italy from Odovacar between 489 and 493. By the time it got
to Italy this group was dominated by a Germanic-speaking elite, who defined itself as
Gothic, and this, in fact, had probably been true from the beginning of the group’s his-
tory. Thiudimer, Vidimer, and Theoderic are all unambiguously Germanic names, as is
the name of Theoderic’s brother Theodimund, which vastly increases the likelihood that
the traditional Germanic etymology for Valamer (rather than Kim’s Hunnic alternative)
is the correct one. Contemporary east Roman sources covering the group’s sixteen-year
occupation of territories in the Balkans before it left for Italy also consistently label the
group (and its major source of further recruits) as ‘Gothic’. Its named individual mem-
bers (of whom there are many) for most part sported Germanic names, and their charac-
teristic non-Nicene form of Christianity used Ulfila’s Gothic Bible translation and other
Gothic liturgical materials. And when Theoderic’s success in Italy led him to stake a
claim to quasi-imperial status, the imperial model he employed was explicitly Roman
in all its many dimensions, with not the slightest hint of any debt to Attila, the Huns, or
the Hsiung-Nu. Even if the group’s ruling dynasty did start life as Hunnic loyalists (and
the evidence for any close association between Attila and Valamer is extremely slight),
it then adopted a completely different and alternative Gothic ideology, quite probably
because this was much more in tune with the self-understanding of the broader milita-
rised elite who comprised the bulk of its military manpower.59
58Jordanes Getica 50. 265–6. Jordanes came from this Balkans military milieu himself and there
is every reason to suppose this catalogue correct. When exactly these settlements occurred is not
clear, although that of Hernac—supposing him, as most scholars do, to be Attila’s son of the same
name—would belong to the later 460s.
59The possible bibliography here is endless, but my own views on the subject can be found
in Heather (1996), c. 8 supplemented by Heather (2003), which answers the attempt of Amory
(1997) to downgrade the Gothicness of Theoderic’s followers. Amory, it should be noted, did not
These groups were not ancient ‘peoples’, as old nationalist-era historiographies had
it, re-emerging in a straightforward way from an intervening period of Hunnic domina-
tion. The Ostrogoths were the product of a thirty-year process of political reorganisation
and subsequent recruitment, as various rival Gothic leaders were defeated by the dynasty
of Valamer and Theoderic, in the course of which even the dynasty itself was substan-
tially pruned: on Valamer’s death and Theoderic’s return from a period as hostage in
Constantinople, his father Thiudimer forced his third brother Vidimer to leave the group,
and it is noticeable that the young Theoderic never shared power with his brother, as had
happened in the previous generation.60 Edeco, too, had to reinvent himself substantially
to become king of the Sciri, there being not the slightest indication that this was a posi-
tion he held under Attila himself, and there is no reason to suppose that the same kind of
messy political processes did not underlie the emergence of the other named Hunnic suc-
cessor entities, such as the Rugi, Heruli, and Suevi, which was probably not just limited
to dynastic elimination and adjustment at the level of overall leaderships.
At the same time as some smaller population fragments were moving onto Roman
soil, others may also have been subsumed into the new successor kingdoms. Among the
descendants of Theoderic the Amal’s following in Italy in the late 540s were Bittigure
Huns, previously used by the sons of Attila in the 460s to fight Theoderic’s uncle.
They must have renegotiated their political allegiance at some point in the meantime.
The same, on a larger scale, was true of the Rugi. They formed one of the initial suc-
cessor kingdoms to the Hunnic Empire, but then threw in their lot with Theoderic after
Odovacar destroyed their independence in 487.61 The adjustments in political identity
involved in creating the successor kingdoms to the Hunnic Empire, therefore, were many
and complicated.
Neither were these successor kingdoms ‘peoples’ in a second, important sense of the
term as it has traditionally been used. Three hundred years of growing economic com-
plexity had created, or greatly reinforced, social inequalities in the Germanic world. For
the Amal-led Goths, we have explicit evidence that this meant that their populations con-
tained warriors of two quite unequal statuses: probably to be equated with freemen and
freedmen mentioned in legal texts. When it comes to understanding group identity, this
has an important extra point. Only higher status warriors benefited fully from the exist-
ence of the group to which they belonged, via the rights and privileges it conferred upon
men of their status, and only they can be supposed to have been completely committed to
that group’s identity. The consequences of this do show up in the historical narratives. At
think that the group’s history showed the slightest sign of ‘Hunnic-ness’ and does not dispute that
Theoderic’s imperial models are all Roman: so too most recently Arnold (2014).
60On this dynastic reconstruction, see further Heather (1991), 249–51.
61Bittigur Huns: Agathias 2. 13. 1 ff. (cf. Jordanes Getica: 53. 272). Rugi: John of Antioch fr. 214.
6; Procopius Wars 7. 2. 1 ff.

82 P. Heather
one point, in the course of the East Roman conquest of Ostrogothic Italy, all the higher
status warriors in a Gothic force in Dalmatia were killed. The remaining, lower status,
warriors immediately surrendered. And throughout Procopius’ narrative of that war,
losses among the higher status group were a particular cause of alarm and despondency
among the Goths.62
Neither culturally nor hierarchically homogenous, the larger entities to emerge from
the process of Hunnic imperial collapse were a complex of political alliances and sta-
tuses, that, apart from the two strands of militarized manpower, probably incorporated
unarmed slaves as well. But even if it was not a question of simple ‘peoples’ first being
swallowed up by the Hunnic empire and then fighting their way out of it, unchanged
by either sequence of events, the evidence is consistent. Being conquered was the main
mechanism by which non-Huns were originally brought under Hunnic control, the desire
of subjects to escape was a fact of life which the Romans sought consistently to exploit,
and the groups who did eventually manage to escape after Attila’s death did so through
conflict, and explicitly presented themselves as non-Huns afterwards. Resistance to
Hunnic rule, likewise, was a consistent theme amongst the empire’s subjects, not some-
thing which suddenly appeared after Attila’s death, and is straightforwardly explicable
in terms of the fundamentally exploitative nature of the kinds of documented relation-
ships that the Huns established with their subjects. It is perhaps also worth emphasising,
finally, that breaking away from Hunnic control was a policy pursued despite the fact that
it greatly reduced the capacity of groups in the Roman periphery effectively to extract
large amounts of cash from the imperial system. Whereas Attila in his pomp could extract
two thousand pounds of gold per annum in tribute payments, the most that Valamer could
manage was three hundred. This voluntary abandonment of collective strategic power fur-
ther emphasises that the Hunnic Empire was not something that its subjects participated
in at all willingly. All of this, in my view, undermines Kim’s recent attempts to extend the
life of Attila’s empire by arguing that its fundamental structures and leaderships contin-
ued to function, if in fragmentary form, after its formal dissolution.
The most convincing explanation for the dramatic rise and fall of the Hunnic empire,
to my mind, are to be found in two major weaknesses within its own internal struc-
tures and how these interacted with its overall strategic position as an imperial power of
less-developed, non-Mediterranean Europe existing on the fringes of the Roman world.
In recent decades, it has sometimes been argued that the Hunnic imperial process dem-
onstrates the extreme malleability of non-Roman group identities. But the individual
biography of one Roman-merchant-turn Hun is not remotely enough to sustain such
a hypothesis in the face of a vast raft of other contemporary evidence to the contrary,
and in any case, properly considered, actually supports the alternative vision that this
other material collectively promotes. Becoming part of Attila’s Empire did not mean that
one necessarily became a Hun. The empire was an unequal, involuntary confederation.
62Heather (1996), esp. Appendix 1.

All the participating non-Huns we know about were forced to join by being conquered
or intimidated into submission, were systematically exploited under its auspices, and
eventually had to fight their way free of its domination. Against this backdrop, it is not
remotely surprising that larger group identities do not seem to have broken down. Some
potentially dangerous overall leadership structures among the subject peoples were
suppressed, and some important individuals negotiated personal pathways into Attila’s
entourage, but different groups of Sciri, Goths, Rugi and others all remained identifiable,
with at least intermediate leadership structures intact. The Huns themselves had every
interest in maintaining these identities, since becoming a Hun was to occupy a position
of privilege, as the biography of the ex-Roman merchant confirms, and, in any case, they
lacked the bureaucratic capacity to remake their subjects’ socio-political structures in
their entirety and govern them directly. From the subjects’ perspective too, holding on
to their original larger-group identities offered the likeliest route to a better future, when
opportunity appeared, of throwing off Hunnic domination, as many groups of subjects
sought to do, with greater or lesser success (and sometimes Roman assistance) periodi-
cally throughout the fifth century.
At the same time, the Huns themselves experience intense transformation as the pro-
cess of empire-creation unfolded. The case that they actually gave up the horses which,
along with a modified version of the reflex bow, had given them an initial military advan-
tage over the various semi-subdued clients of the Roman frontier world who provided
most of their subjects, has not been proven. The Great Hungarian Plain did offer only
restricted grazing compared to the rest of the steppe, but the sixth-century Avars main-
tained an important nomad cavalry component within their armies when they moved
west of the Carpathians, and there is no obvious reason why the Huns should not also
have done so. It would have been possible to maintain sufficient ponies for at least
10,000 mounted archers, enough for a dominant Hunnic core within Attila’s armies,
whose manpower was otherwise massively supplemented by the conquered subjects. On
the political front, by contrast, the evidence for profound transformation is much more
convincing. In the first generation of contact (c.370–410), the Roman world for the most
part encountered no more than the small-scale leaders of raiding parties and minor kings,
such as Uldin whose powerbase was clearly very limited. Even when the Huns first
shifted the centre of their operations west of the Carpathians, the East Roman ambassa-
dor Olympiodorus encountered a series of ranked kings, perhaps analogous to the pattern
documented among the contemporary Akatziri. Only in the time of Ruga and Attila do
we find evidence of more-centralised political structures, with the ranked kings no longer
in evidence, and, even then, there is no sign that the new empire of the European Huns
was organised after Hsiung-Nu patterns. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that
Attila’s Empire was constructed on the basis of brand new wealth flows extracted from
the Roman world through raiding, mercenary service, and diplomatic subsidies/tribute,
which in overall terms financed the political revolution which seems to have occurred
between c.410 and c.440. In my view a clear pattern reinforced itself. As more and more
subjects were incorporated under their rule, Hunnic leaders were able to extract greater
84 P. Heather
quantities of wealth from both halves of the Roman Empire, which in turn prompted and
helped smooth over the political competition between them, which eventually saw the
dynasty of Ruga and Attila oust and demote a series of rivals.
Both of these processes—the incorporation of unwilling subjects and the rise of a
preeminent dynasty—generated a marked tendency towards instability within Attila’s
empire, despite its apparent strength. Displaced dynastic rivals continued to pose some
kind of threat (as Attila’s demands for the return of high-ranking refugees, such as
Mamas and Atakam makes clear) while many involuntary subject groups were ready to
exploit any opportunity to throw off Hunnic imperial domination. Both sources of insta-
bility were problematic, but the narrative of Hunnic collapse suggests that the underly-
ing hostility of conquered subject peoples was the greater threat. Internal dissent within
the dynasty was certainly a necessary ingredient, since it was Hunnic civil war which
provided the subjects with an initial opportunity to revolt—perhaps by dividing core,
properly Hunnic military manpower—but it was the subjects’ collective and progressive
assertions of independence which destroyed the overall capacity of Attila’s sons to con-
tinue to dominate central and eastern Europe.
Identifying and exploring these two structural weaknesses at the heart of the
European Hunnic polity also brings out the significance of a third major source of
instability. The political revolution which unfolded among the central leadership group
of the Huns between c.410 and 440 depended on a flow of new wealth extracted from
the Roman Empire, much of it by aggressive warfare. This success of this warfare, in
turn, was fundamentally dependent on the conquest of all the subject peoples who pro-
vided so much of Attila’s military manpower. In the broadest of terms, the Huns built
a war machine in central and eastern Europe capable of extracting enormous wealth
from the neighbouring Roman system. But the smooth functioning of this war machine
was itself dependent on the successful pursuit of warfare in that it was the prestige and
actual wealth derived from military success (as was also the case with the later Avars)
that helped keep the conquered subjects quiescent. But military success, in fact, is rarely
a constant. Enemies eventually adapt to negate initial military advantages, as the East
Roman military eventually did, and increasing distances often mean that campaigning
became more difficult, as it clearly did for Attila when he extended his campaigning
from the East Roman Balkans to Gaul and then Italy.63An empire so profoundly depend-
ent on successful large-scale campaigning, in other words, could never achieve long-term
stability.
63On the military adaptions of the east Roman army, see most recently Janniard (2015). On dis-
tance and difficulty in the campaigning of Attila, see Heather (2005), c. 7.

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The Timurid Empire
Beatrice F. Manz
I have been asked to write on the Timurid state as a short-term empire, and this charac-
terization does fit the state which was founded by Temür or Tamerlane, at Samarqand
in 1370 and which ended in 1507 when the last of its territories were taken over by the
Uzbeks and the Safavids. It is with this empire that I shall be concerned here. However,
the date of 1507 not mark the end of the Timurid ruling house. Temür’s descendant
Babur Mirza, unable to retain hold on Samarqand, first retreated to Kabul and then in
1526 conquered Delhi. There he founded the Mughal dynasty, whose last emperor
was deposed by the British in 1858. On his mother’s side Babur was descended from
Chinggis Khan, and this fact has given his dynasty one of its names: Mughal. However,
the dynasty was also known as the Later Timurid Dynasty and celebrated its ties to
Tamerlane, and to the original Timurid state. It is interesting that a new dynasty, wealthy
and powerful, should seek to derive legitimacy from a state recently and ingloriously
conquered. I shall attempt to show in this essay why the Timurid empire, despite its short
duration, achieved a reputation which made it for centuries both a model to be imitated
and a source of legitimation to later dynasties.
A second related paradox of the Timurid empire is that almost from its inception it
existed at two levels: one symbolic and one actual. Tamerlane led his armies on cam-
paigns of extraordinary scope, from Eastern Turkestan to the Crimea and western
Anatolia, and from Moscow to Delhi. In the course of these conquests he defeated
almost all the rulers who might have challenged him. However the goal of many of his
campaigns was the assertion of symbolic power, not the acquisition of permanent new
territory. Even at the height of his military success, Tamerlane made no attempt to create
B. F. Manz (*)
Tufts University, Medford, USA
e-mail: beatrice.manz@tufts.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_4
88 B. F. Manz
an administration beyond the central Islamic lands and the western regions of Central
Asia. Nonetheless his campaigns were central to his reputation and to his desire to place
himself as the foremost ruler of the regions within which he operated.
Given Tamerlane’s success in establishing both an outsize reputation and a workable
state, one must ask why the state he founded lasted such a short time. I will suggest that
both external and internal factors contributed to the collapse of the polity. Throughout
its existence, the Timurid realm was surrounded by expansive powers, many based on
armies of nomads. Maintaining its territory required constant wars of defense which
expended funds and equipment but brought little into the state coffers. The internal fac-
tors were not failures in the development of administration or infrastructure, but rather
weaknesses common to most pre-modern states of the central Islamic lands. Neither of
the two traditions to which Temür belonged—the Mongol and the Islamic—practiced
primogeniture. Succession to the throne often led to destructive contests for power,
which over time impoverished the state. Furthermore, despite the existence of two impe-
rial traditions local political centers remained strong, often challenging central rule. Thus
although Temür created a coherent state, it proved both difficult to defend and impossible
to hold together for long.
1 Temür’s Rise to Power
Temür rose to power in Transoxiana, a region which had belonged to both the Mongol
Empire and the Islamic Caliphate. To understand the logic of the state he built, we have
to examine the two imperial traditions within which he operated. When the Mongol
armies attacked the Islamic lands in 1219 the Mongols were already an ascendant impe-
rial power, with both a practice and an ideology developed out of the tradition of ear-
lier steppe empires, notably the Turkic Khaghanate (552–745). Steppe traditions were
brought into the newly conquered lands and combined with local administrative practice.
The memory of the empire’s founding was dominated by the towering figure of Chinggis
Khan, remembered equally for his brilliant conquests and for the ferocity with which
he punished those who resisted him. The Chinggisid realm continued to expand after
Chinggis’s death, developing into regional states ruled by the families of his four sons:
Jochi, whose descendants held the northern steppe, Chaghadai, whose territory included
Eastern Turkistan and Transoxiana, Ögedei in the Altai, and the youngest son Tolui in
the Mongolian homeland, extending increasingly into China. Ögedei was chosen as the
Khaghan, ruling over the entire realm.
In 1258, about a century before Temür’s rise, the Mongol armies had taken Baghdad
and ended the Islamic caliphate; one year later, in 1259, came the death of Möngke, the
son of Tolui and the last of the great Mongol Khaghans. The Mongol Empire divided
into several separate khanates, often at war with each other. Within the Islamic lands
Möngke’s brother Hülegü founded a new state in Iraq and Iran known as the Ilkhanate,
which remained allied with the related Yūan dynasty of Mongolia and China, also ruled
The Timurid Empire 89
by descendants of Tolui. The Jochid and Chaghadayid territories became separate khan-
ates. Despite the new divisions, Islamic and Mongolian imperial traditions remained in
force; no ruler could afford to ignore them. The Islamic and Mongol worlds were by this
time closely intertwined. The western Mongol states, stretching from Eastern Turkistan
to the Crimea, were formally Muslim, and the eastern and northern regions of the for-
mer Islamic caliphate had been deeply marked by Mongol rule, and shaped by Mongol
institutions.
Transoxiana was the western section of the Chaghadayid Khanate. In the fourteenth
century this region separated from the eastern Chaghadayid regions, forming a confed-
eration of nomadic tribes known as the Ulus Chaghatay which exerted loose control over
a rich territory of mixed settled and agricultural land with several major cities, of which
Samarqand and Bukhara were the most important. The Ulus Chaghatay also included
much of Khorasan between the Oxus River and the region of Herat. This was a region
which had retained its allegiance to Mongol tradition, according to which only the
descendants of Chinggis Khan could hold sovereign power. Because the ruler of the Ulus
Chaghatay was not a member of the Chinggisid house, he ruled through a Chinggisid
puppet khan. It was within this structure that Temür rose to power, through constant
manoeuver and changing political alliances with powers both inside and outside the
Ulus. Temür belonged to the tribal elite of the Ulus but like others members of the tribal
aristocracy he was well acquainted with Perso-Islamic culture. By this time the descend-
ants of the Mongol armies in Iran and Transoxiana spoke Turkic rather than Mongolian
and were solidly Muslim. While Temür could neither read nor write, he was fluent in
Persian and knowledgeable in both religion and history (Manz 1989: 16–17, 21–3).
Temür first appears in the written sources in 1360, at the head of a small band of
personal followers attracted from several different tribes and groups. By 1370 he had
acquired sufficient power to unseat the ruler of the Ulus Chaghatay, Amir Husayn
Qara’unas. After arranging for Amir Husayn’s execution, he took over some of Husayn’s
most prestigious wives, including one descended from Chinggis Khan, which gave
Temür the right to use the title güregen—royal son-in-law. He also took over the puppet
khan, whom he had enthroned and recognized at an elaborate ceremony in Samarqand.
All titles that implied sovereignty in Islamic, Iranian, or Mongol tradition—Khan,
Sulṭān, Pādshāh—were reserved for the puppet khan while Temür claimed only the title
of Amīr, or commander (Manz 1989: 47–58).
While he was now in charge of the Ulus Chaghatay, Temür’s position remained
contingent on the cooperation of the tribal leaders, and they could not be counted on.
Over the next decade, Temür presided over two related processes—the subjugation of
nearby Mongol states and the neutralization of tribal power. Temür’s early campaigns
were aimed at the powers to the east and north: the Eastern Chaghadayid khanate and the
region of Khorezm controlled by an independent Turkic dynasty. As he called on sub-
ordinate leaders to participate in these campaigns, a number refused or went over to the
enemy. Such behavior might be forgiven once or twice but as Temür gained strength,
he began to replace rebellious tribal leaders, putting a member of his own following at
90 B. F. Manz
the head of the tribe. As he acquired territory, manpower, and riches, these were used
to strengthen his own followers. By 1382, when he began his major conquests, he had
transformed the largely tribal powers of the Ulus Chaghatay into a decimally organized
army, in which all major commanders answered to him directly. While tribes continued
to exist, they no longer served as a base for independent power (Manz 1989: 57–65).
Temür’s army resembled that of Chinggis Khan and, like Chinggis, Temür included out-
side soldiers in his army, some recruited from settled populations.
During this period, in 1376, Temür was offered a new opportunity when Tokhtamısh,
a candidate for the throne of a Chinggisid khanate, the Blue Horde, took refuge with
him. Unlike Temür, Tokhtamısh was a true descendant of Chinggis Khan. With his
arrival Temür became the protector of two Chinggisids, each from a different house; his
own puppet khan was a descendant of Chinggis’s third son and successor, Ögedei, while
Tokhtamısh was the descendant of Chinggis’s eldest son Jochi, whose descendants ruled
the Golden Horde of the western steppe. With Temür’s help, Tokhtamısh ascended to
the throne of the Blue Horde in 1379. Shortly after this Temür began to evoke Chinggis
Khan in his actions. On his next campaign against Khorezm he punished the ruler for
recent raids with a spectacular massacre and destruction of the capital city, modeled on
the practice of Chinggis Khan. From this time on Temür continued to imitate Chinggis’s
use of selective and theatrical violence against cities that rebelled (Manz 2001: 137–8).
By 1379 Temür had transformed the manpower of the Ulus Chaghatay into an army
of conquest and, with two Chinggisid khans as his protégés, he had begun a symbolic
recreation of the Mongol Empire. In 1380–1381 he turned his attention to Iran, the ter-
ritory of the former Ilkhanid state which had collapsed in 1335. He appointed his son
Miranshah as governor of the eastern Iranian province of Khorasan, then when some
local rulers failed to show proper submission, he undertook a series of campaigns
first to extract submission, and then to punish rulers who failed to remain obedient. In
1386 Temür extended his campaigns into the western regions of the Ilkhanate, invok-
ing Mongol legitimation and annexing the Caspian region up to the city of Sultaniyya,
important both for its pastureland and as the necropolis of the Ilkhans. In the course of
this campaign, Temür acquired yet another Chinggisid subordinate; this was Lughman,
a descendant of one of Chinggis Khan’s brothers, whose father had been enthroned by
local powers after the fall of the Ilkhans. Temür restored Lughman to the position of his
father and allowed him to bear the traditional Ilkhanid title of Pādshāh. However Temür
was not the only person interested in recreating Mongol glory, and while he campaigned
in Iran, his former protégé Tokhtamısh was taking control over the fragmented Golden
Horde. Tokhtamısh renewed the earlier alliance of Golden Horde with the Mamluks,
along with their claims on the Caucasus and Azarbaijan, which he invaded in the winter
of 1385–1386 (Manz 2001: 138–40).
Over the next 10 years Temür expanded and consolidated his power in Iran, but his
greatest effort was concentrated on his duel with Tokhtamısh, who as a descendant of
Chinggis could legally claim the title of Khan. Like Temür, Tokhtamısh aimed to recre-
ate earlier Mongol glory, ruling over a unified Golden Horde. The vast number of coins
he issued in mints distributed throughout the Golden Horde testify to his ambition and
his lasting reputation in the steppe region shows his success in building a persona, larger
than life (Favereau 2014: 149). This was not a rival whom Temür could tolerate. In 1395,
Temür inflicted a decisive defeat on Tokhtamısh, ravaged the winter pastures and trad-
ing cities of the western steppe, and enthroned his own pretender over the Golden Horde
(Safargaliev 1960: 172). With this campaign Temür achieved primacy within the western
Mongol world.
Temür’s actions at this juncture reveal his strategy for the governance of his realm.
Despite his success against Tokhtamısh, he did not attempt to incorporate the west-
ern steppe into his realm. Although he installed another Chinggisid from his follow-
ers as Khan, he then left the region with no attempt to ensure the continuance of his
protégé’s power or to leave a permanent military and administrative presence. In Iran
and Central Asia, on the other hand, he had already begun to appoint his sons as gov-
ernors in the major provinces. On his conquest of Andijan and Kashghar in 1376–1378
he had appointed his son ′Umar Shaykh as governor and even before his conquest of
Khorasan his son Miranshah was made its governor. These two sons were later moved to
different regions; Miranshah to western Iran in 1396, and ′Umar Shaykh to the southern
Iranian province of Fars. Kabul became a governorship in 1391–1392, and in 1396–1397
Shahrukh took Miranshah’s place as governor of Khorasan. For each princely governor
Temür created an army made up of Chaghatay troops, commanded by members of his
personal following or their relatives. Families of followers were systematically distrib-
uted among the princely armies, while one or two senior commanders were appointed to
keep an eye on the young governor. Provincial chancelleries (dīwāns) were set up in each
province. The independence of princes and their provinces was curtailed by periodic
investigations from the central dīwān and by the demand that provincial governors par-
ticipate in most of Temür’s campaigns, sending their army without them in cases when
they themselves might remain in their provinces. Thus by 1396–1397 the central prov-
inces of Temür’s realm were clearly delineated and under an efficient system of control.
The creation of a bounded realm did not mark an end to Temür’s campaigns, which
continued up to his death. By this time Temür had developed a new ambition: primacy
in the Islamic world and the neutralization of leaders within it who might challenge his
claim to supreme power. In 1392 therefore he embarked on a campaign to the western
Islamic regions in which he attacked two large tribal confederations in eastern Anatolia
and Azarbaijan, the Aqqoyunlu and the Qaraqoyunlu, and seized Baghdad from the
Turco-Mongolian Jalayirid dynasty which had become the preeminent successor state to
the Ilkhans. In 1398 he set out to the south against the Delhi Sultanate of India, in imita-
tion of the famous conqueror Mahmud of Ghazna whose former dominion was now part
of Temür’s realm (Bernardini 2008: 90–112). Here again he was content to sack the city
and made no attempt to secure permanent control.
It is clear that Temür had retained and indeed increased his determination to recre-
ate the Mongol Empire symbolically, with himself at its center. At the time of his Indian
campaign, Temür was already planning to attack China, where in 1368 the Ming dynasty
92 B. F. Manz
had expelled the Mongol Yüan dynasty to Mongolia. In 1398 he gave a warm welcome
to a pretender from the northern Yüan dynasty of Mongolia, thus adding a descendant
of Chinggis Khan’s youngest son Tolui to his stable of Chinggisid protégés. He prob-
ably intended to install this pretender on the throne of the Northern Yüan on his way
to chastise the Ming (Manz 1998: 25). On his next expedition against the western
Islamic powers Temür justified his campaigns in Mongol as well as Islamic terms.
While he purportedly attacked Sultan Ahmad Jalayir in order to restore the luster of the
Toluid Ilkhanid dynasty, at other times he explained his actions as a promotion of the
Chaghadayid and Ögedeyid lines (Woods 1990: 106–8; Manz 1988: 113).
Within the Islamic world Temür faced two major rivals for prestige: the Mamluk Sultan
Barquq (r. 1382–1399) and the Ottoman Yıldırım (Thunderbolt) Bayezid (r. 1389–1402).
Both were closely involved with the powers of eastern Anatolia. On returning to Samarqand
from India, Temür remained in the city only a few months before heading again to the west
to reassert control over the resurgent Jalayir and Qaraqoyunlu and to face off against his
rivals. In the winter of 1400–1401 he attacked Mamluk Syria, taking several cities includ-
ing Aleppo and Hims, and also Damascus which he subjected to pillage and massacre. The
young Sultan Faraj was forced to become a tribute-paying vassal. Temür’s campaign in
Syria was brief—a prelude to his attack on the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid in the spring of
1402. Like Temür, Bayazid was ambitious to expand his realm, and he had now turned his
energies towards eastern Anatolia, an area also of interest to Temür. Furthermore, Bayazid
had campaigned successfully against Christian armies, both east and west, and burnished his
prestige through the title ghāzī, fighter for the faith.
The two adversaries both led formidable armies and had spent years in spectacularly
successful campaigns of conquest. When their armies met near Ankara in July 1402,
Temür was the victor. Bayazid’s centralizing policies and his use of Christian troops had
alienated many of his eastern subjects, and a number of Mongol and Turkmen troops
deserted to join Temür. Bayazid’s army suffered decisive defeat, with Bayazid himself
taken captive (Alexandrescu-Dersca 1977: 68–79). Temür made no attempt to create his
own administration in Anatolia and simply divided the Ottoman realm, now officially a
vassal state, among three of Bayazid’s sons.
While Temür could defeat the great Bayazid, the nomad tribal confederations of
Anatolia and Azarbaijan remained outside effective control. Despite considerable
effort, Temür never succeeded in gaining a firm hold over Azarbaijan, nor did he suc-
ceed in weakening the Qaraqoyunlu or Aqqoyunlu for long. The struggle with these
two powers over Azarbaijan lasted past Temür’s reign through that of his son and suc-
cessor Shahrukh. Unlike the Ottoman and Timurid states, both the Aqqoyunlu and the
Qaraqoyunlu remained tribal confederations, in which the leaders of individual tribes
were powerful and led their own troops into battle. This structure could be a disadvan-
tage in war, and when the Timurid army joined battle with these confederations it usually
carried the day. However, defeat in battle was less destructive to a confederation than
to a state, and the fluid politics of eastern Anatolia allowed these and other confedera-
tions to regroup. Thus ironically, the most powerful states surrounding the Timurids—the
Ottomans, Mamluks, and Delhi sultanate—once defeated posed little challenge over the
next generation, while the less organized Aqqoyunlu and Qaraqoyunlu remained a con-
stant problem on the western border.
After leaving Anatolia, Temür returned to Samarqand and began to prepare for his
most ambitious campaign, to retake China from the Ming dynasty and to place his own
protégé on the throne of the Northern Yüan. Before leaving he reorganized his realm,
dividing it into four parts, each to go to a different son or his descendants. One descend-
ant, a Chinggisid on his mother’s side, was appointed to the throne of the realm as a
whole. This arrangement was a clear reference to the division of Chinggis Khan’s realm
into four parts for the families of his four sons. Before embarking on the campaign
against China, Temür called a convocation or khuriltay held in a magnificent tent city.
By this time Temür was probably in his eighties and far from well. Several times he had
to postpone his departure due to illness, but finally he and his army departed, braving
the cold of the winter steppe. They reached Otrar, a bit beyond the Jaxartes, where, in
February 1405, Temür died (Manz 2007: 16).
2 The Succession to Temür
One important achievement of Temür’s reign was the creation of a sovereign realm
which combined Turco-Mongolian with Perso-Islamic norms and could be effectively
ruled with the resources Temür commanded. The areas in which he set up systematic
administration were those which had primarily settled population and had been under
the Ilkhans or the Chaghadayids; these were the regions which could easily be controlled
and which yielded tax income from agriculture. In the north, the borders were pushed out
into the steppe, up to the region of the Issyk Kul, but control over the area was fragile
(Manz 1998: 28–9).
Despite the violence of his campaigns, Temür had not radically transformed the ter-
ritories he conquered. Except for one or two powerful dynasties Temür overthrew few
regional powers; most remained in place under him, serving in his armies. This was typi-
cal of medieval governance in the area. Cities were looted and heavily taxed at the time
of conquest and some of those which resisted suffered exemplary punishments. However
on departing Temür often left behind a part of the army to restore buildings and agri-
culture (Manz: 1989: 116). He had at his disposal a sophisticated bureaucracy adept in
accounting and in Perso-Islamic culture, who staffed both the provincial and central
dīwāns. These bureaucrats appear to have been less powerful than usual during Temür’s
reign, and his Chaghatay commanders played an important part in the formal administra-
tion. It is not clear how systematic the overall organization was. The reach of an office
depended in large part on the power of the person holding it, and one major preoccupa-
tion was to prevent the development of independent power centers in either the civil or
the military spheres.
94 B. F. Manz
Although Temür had created a logical realm and a useful ideology, he had not pro-
vided for a smooth succession, and his death led to a destructive struggle. Temür had
four sons who lived to adulthood and produced sons. These were Jahangir, born of a
Chinggisid wife, who died in 1376–1377, ′Umar Shaykh, dead in 1394, and two sons
who survived Temür: Miranshah and Shahrukh. For succession to the throne, Temür
favored the children of Jahangir, due to their Chinggisid birth. However the elder son,
already recognized as heir, died before Temür. Just before his own death, Temür appar-
ently appointed the younger son as successor but this prince, governor of the distant and
relatively unimportant province of Kabul, was unable to prevail in the grab for power
that broke out on Temür’s death. The contest was fought on several levels as Timurid
princes challenged each other for control within each region, while also struggling for
supreme power. Temür’s former followers now showed that their primary allegiance
had been to the sovereign rather than the prince they served directly, and were quick to
switch sides for their own advantage. At the top, the lines of the four princes competed
for central control. This was a destructive contest, particularly in the border regions:
Azarbaijan and Transoxiana, where princely governors had not established a firm basis
and outside powers stood ready to take advantage. In Azarbaijan, contestants some-
times resorted to pillaging their own regions to raise money for campaigns. Despite
their efforts, in 1408 the Qaraqoyunlu defeated and killed Amiranshah and took over the
region. In Transoxiana the central treasury was quickly emptied in the attempt to keep
the loyalty of the army (Manz 1989: 131–7, 141–4).
The eventual winner was Temür’s youngest son Shahrukh (r. 1409–1447), governor
of the rich province of Khorasan. Although his rule is dated from the year 1409, when he
gained control of Temür’s capital Samarqand, it was not until 1414 that he took central
and southern Iran from the children of ′Umar Shaykh. Under Shahrukh Herat became
the capital, while Samarqand turned into a provincial center. Two regions remained
outside Shahrukh’s grasp: Azarbaijan and the northeastern regions stretching to Issyk
Kul. Both of these were inhabited primarily by nomadic tribes and had not been solidly
under Timurid rule. The year 1428–1429 saw the rise of the Uzbek confederation under
the leadership of the Jochid Abu’l Khayr Khan, and by 1435 the Uzbeks had annexed
Khorezm. Kashghar was lost to the Eastern Chaghadayids at about the same time.
The neighboring powers which Temür had conquered but not incorporated—the Delhi
Sultanate, the Mamluks and the Ottomans—were in a state of confusion and posed no
challenge.
Shahrukh did not attempt to enlarge his realm, but did take up arms when he thought
it necessary to protect threatened borders, notably in Azarbaijan, where he led major cam-
paigns in 1420–1421, 1429–1430, and 1434–1436. In each campaign Shahrukh defeated
the Qaraqoyunlu but had to content himself with appointing a more compliant member
of the dynasty as provincial “governor.” In the east, most of the defense was left to the
Shahrukh’s son Ulugh Beg, governor of Transoxiana. Unfortunately Ulugh Beg proved
neither an enthusiastic nor a gifted commander, and both the Uzbeks and the Eastern
Chaghadayids became increasingly powerful threats throughout Shahrukh’s reign.
In the central regions, Shahrukh’s administration was more successful and his reign
was a period of consolidation and prosperity. Most Timurid provinces were now gov-
erned by Shahrukh’s sons, who enjoyed more independence than the princes under
Temür, especially in cultural patronage. However they remained clearly subordinate to
the ruler and were expected to participate in his campaigns. In dealing with subordinate
local rulers within the realm, Shahrukh seems to have achieved somewhat greater cen-
tralization than Temür, and we find that several regions came under more direct rule in
the course of his reign.
Throughout Shahrukh’s reign and those of his successors, Temür’s original follow-
ers—the Chaghatay nomads—remained the backbone of the army and an important
element in civil administration as well. Timurid administration was based on the dual
system used by the Mongols and the Seljukids. In addition to the Persian dīwān, Temür
and his successors maintained a Turkic chancellery, whose records were in Turkic in the
Uighur script, a language associated with Mongol administration. It seems likely how-
ever that this was by now a primarily symbolic institution. In the Persian chancellery,
both officials and activities are well attested and seem to have held greater prestige than
under Temür (Manz 1989: 168–9; Manz 2007: 79–110). As under earlier nomad dynas-
ties, the distinction between the Turkic military and Arab or Persian civil spheres was
less clear-cut in practice than in theory. Turco-Mongolian emirs were active in almost all
spheres of administration, including the Persian dīwān. The administration of Shahrukh
may be counted among the more centralized and systematic of medieval and early
modern Iran.
3 Further Developments in Timurid Legitimation
Temür lived at a time when sovereignty in the Turco-Mongolian world was reserved for
the descendants of Chinggis Khan. He had used several strategies to make up for his
modest official position. Above all, he established himself through his unrivalled record
as conqueror over a region stretching from Delhi in the south to the Moscow region in
the north, and from eastern Turkestan in the east to Izmir in the west. As we have seen,
he fostered a heroic image of himself as a second Chinggis Khan, favored by destiny and
endowed with exceptional powers. He had also presented himself as a good Muslim, in
his patronage of Islamic learning and of Sufi shaykhs and shrines. He had further tapped
into millennial currents, calling himself the Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction (ṣāḥib
qirān) (Bernardini 2008: 56–7). Towards the end of his career he began to elaborate his
genealogical connection to the Mongol empire, exalting his tribal Barlas lineage and glo-
rifying the status of his ancestor Qarachar Noyan, who had served both Chinggis Khan
and Chaghadai (Manz 2001: 139–41; Woods 1990: 99–100).
By the time that Shahrukh came to power, the Chinggisid family had lost its hold in
most regions and the fiction of a puppet khan was no longer necessary. The fifteenth cen-
tury moreover was a period when Islamic ideology regained importance and a number
96 B. F. Manz
of religious movements arose to challenge existing rulers. In response, Turkic leaders

sought to claim personal religious charisma and to connect their imperial heritage to the
Islamic world. Shahrukh emphasized his own piety and at the same time retained and
elaborated much of Temür’s legitimation, reworked to underline Islamic legality and
to make Temür a dynastic founder in his own right. The Chinggisid puppet khans were
abandoned and Temür was posthumously awarded the sovereign titles he had given to
them. In addition, the title ṣāḥib Qirān became a standard epithet for him. Temür was
presented as an outsize figure, with almost superhuman traits, and the historian Sharaf
al-Din ′Ali Yazdi, writing during Shahrukh’s period, presented him as a man directly
inspired by God, serving as his implement (Binbaş 2012: 414). At the same time, the
Timurids retained Temür’s Turco-Mongolian legitimation, embellishing the genealogy of
the Barlas which connected the Timurids to Chinggis Khan through a common ancestor
(Manz 2007: 41–2). They thus retained their Mongol legitimacy while also glorifying a
more immediate dynastic founder who had the advantage of being a Muslim.
A further source of legitimacy in the Islamic and Mongol worlds was court patron-
age. From the beginning of his reign Temür sought to stand out in this as in other aspects
of ruling. His capital Samarqand was the site of magnificent building projects and his
imposing shrine to the Sufi saint Ahmad Yasawi still stands in Turkistan, just above the
Jaxartes River. Temür brought back from his conquests historians, craftsmen, and promi-
nent scholars, including two of the most eminent theologians of his day. History was a
major preoccupation for him, and he commissioned several histories of his life. Although
only one of these survived, his patronage inaugurated a vigorous historiographical tradi-
tion which continued under his successors. As his grandsons were born he brought one
or two from each of his sons to raise at his court, where he arranged their education in
the Turco-Mongolian arts of war and other princely attainments including those in litera-
ture, religion, history and the arts. Thus the princes who governed cities under Shahrukh
and later rulers were often enthusiastic and knowledgeable cultural patrons. The Timurid
period has remained famous for its outstanding cultural achievements.
4 Succession Struggle and Breakdown
Shahrukh’s last years showed a marked decline in the effectiveness of his government
as his most experienced commanders and servitors began to die, leaving their posts to
younger people. Corruption grew in both the central and the provincial dīwāns: some
regions were ruthlessly overtaxed while others withheld all taxes. Members of the
dynasty, along with local leaders, set out to position themselves for the coming strug-
gle. In central Iran Shahrukh’s grandson Sultan Muhammad b. Baysunghur, made gov-
ernor of the central Iranian cities Qum, Qazwin, Rayy and Sultaniyya in 1442, rapidly
expanded his territories, winning over both Chaghatay commanders and regional Iranian
notables outside the region granted to him. Thus he came to pose a threat to central con-
trol. Shahrukh set out against him but died of illness in March, 1447 while on campaign.
In part due to disagreement with his powerful chief wife, he had failed to appoint a suc-
cessor. The struggle after his death divided the dynasty and brought on the loss of the
western section of the realm.
Shahrukh’s death precipitated instant chaos, with the plunder of his camp and the
imprisonment of his senior wife by the grandson sent to bring order into the army.
Shahrukh had one surviving son, Ulugh Beg, governor of Transoxiana, and a number
of grandsons already active as commanders and governors. The struggle was carried on
among these, with the active and sometimes decisive participation of senior Chaghatay
commanders and local rulers and notables. It rapidly became even more vicious and
destructive than the struggle after Temür’s death, in part perhaps because the contestants
were more evenly matched. A number of cities suffered successive conquests by differ-
ent contestants; the most striking example is the capital Herat, which from November
1448 to November 1449 first managed to defend itself against a siege and then changed
hands four times. Almost every change of ruler was accompanied by punishments and
new fiscal demands on the population.
The struggle over Shahrukh’s realm developed into a contest among three major con-
testants: Sultan Muhammad in central Iran, his brother ′Abdu’l Qasim Babur based in
Mazandaran, and Ulugh Beg in Transoxiana, all aiming to gain Khorasan. Even cities
that were not attacked suffered from ruinous taxation to pay for the struggle; most con-
testants, when outside their own territories, were ruthless in their treatment of the popu-
lation. One factor that damaged the dynasty, and particularly the line of Shahrukh, was
the murder of defeated rivals. In the earlier struggle members of the dynasty had fought
each other; now they also murdered each other. The first murder was that of Ulugh
Beg by his estranged son, ′Abd al-Latif, in 1449. After only a few months of rule ′Abd
al-Latif was murdered in his turn by his commanders. In 1452, when ′Abdu’l Qasim
Babur defeated Sultan Muhammad, he had him killed. These executions are strongly crit-
icized by the Timurid historians, and did much to discredit Shahrukh’s line.
The struggle was complicated by the political dynamics of the Iranian lands. While
the defense of the city citadel was the task of government troops under an appointed
governor, the city walls were defended by the urban population under the leadership of
local city officials (Paul 2004: 163–93). Thus in times of strife cities had some agency
in choosing among contestants. When attacked by an outside army, the city notables had
to decide whether or not to give in, and to do this they had to consider the welfare of the
population as well as loyalty to the current ruler. The most important question before
them was which army was likely to win. Thus as the fortunes of war shifted, so did the
allegiance of the cities.
In western Iran the Qaraqoyunlu confederation, which held Azarbaijan, was quick
to profit from the succession struggle. Already in October 1447, they took advantage of
Sultan Muhammad’s expedition against southern Iran to annex much of western Iran.
By 1452, they held western and central Iran, both north and south, up to Isfahan, Yazd
and Kerman. Several cities actually invited them in—these included Isfahan, Shiraz and
Yazd, previously solidly under Timurid rule. All had become disaffected after years of
98 B. F. Manz
overtaxation and depredation (Manz 2007: 245–75). The division of eastern and western
Iran was not a new phenomenon; approximately the same line had divided numerous ear-
lier dynasties, and it represented a longstanding difference in political culture between
two centers of power. Much of Khorasan and Transoxiana had been under essentially
independent dynasties paying lip service to the Abbasids from 850 onwards. By the same
token, at the end of the Mongol Ilkhanate, the western regions formed one battleground,
in which Mongol legality had eroded sufficiently for non-Chinggisids to claim the title
of khan for themselves. The eastern regions—Khorasan, Mazandaran and Transoxiana—
remained more faithful to the Chinggisid tradition, and became a separate region until
the two areas were reunited by Temür.
In 1451 Abu Sa’id, a descendant of Temür’s son Amiranshah, succeeded in tak-
ing over Samarqand with the help of the Uzbek leader Abu’l Khayr Khan and became
ruler of Transoxiana. In 1457 he profited from Abu’l Qasim Babur’s’s death to take
over Khorasan, making Herat his capital. His rule over Mazandaran was contested by a
descendant of ′Umar Shaykh b. Temür, Husayn Bayqara, who had taken refuge with the
Uzbeks, and now received their aid. In 1468, after the death of the Qaraqoyunlu leader
Jahanshah, Abu Sa’id led an army west in hopes of regaining the former Timurid ter-
ritories. However in 1469 he was defeated and killed by the ascendant Aqqoyunlu, who
rapidly took over the Qaraqoyunlu territories in Iran.
5 The Last Years of the Timurid State
The Timurid state was now much smaller. Abu Sa’id was the last Timurid ruler to
attempt to resurrect the Timurid empire. Shortly after Abu Sa’id’s death Husayn Bayqara
seized Herat, from which he ruled over most of Khorasan and Astarabad. In Transoxiana,
rule was divided among the sons of Abu Sa’id. Later succession struggles there brought
interference from both the Uzbeks and the eastern Chaghadayids, sometimes at the invi-
tation of the contestants, while in Khorasan, the ambitions of Sultan Husayn Bayqara’s
sons led to the creation of separate regions. None of the later Timurid sultans attempted
major military expeditions outside their territory.
Despite precipitous political and military decline, the last years of the Timurid state
added significantly to its reputation and prestige. This was due largely to the brilliant
cultural achievements at Husayn Bayqara’s court in Herat. Finding Khorasan devastated
by years of war, Sultan Husayn set out to restore it through intensive agriculture; the
widespread creation of pious endowments (waqf) by the dynasty and the elite also served
to foster agricultural development (Subtelny 2007: 103–234). Both the dynasty and its
servitors spent a significant portion of their wealth on the patronage of literature and the
arts; Sultan Husayn’s court and Herat as a city became bywords for cultural brilliance.
Literature flourished, both in Persian and in Turkic, along with historical writing. Finally
the “arts of the book”, calligraphy and miniature painting, reached a new height. What
helped to cement the Timurid reputation for culture was that the dynasty fell while still at
the height of its cultural patronage. Sultan Husayn died in 1506; in 1507, Shibani Khan
Uzbek, having conquered Transoxiana, entered Khorasan and took Herat. On the fall of
the city many of its cultural figures looked for employment elsewhere, with the Uzbeks
in Central Asia, the rising Safavid dynasty in Iran, or a bit later with the Mughals in
India. Thus the artists, poets, and scholars of the Timurid court became arbiters of cul-
ture in the royal courts of rising empires.
After its demise, the Timurid dynasty remained a potent symbol of the power and
achievement of Turco-Mongolian rule in the Islamic world. As a second Chinggis Khan,
Temür commanded awe; he was also a Muslim and thus a suitable founder for an Islamic
dynasty. His son Shahrukh was renowned for his piety and presided over a long period
of prosperity in Iran. Finally, Sultan Husayn brought the new artistic and literary cur-
rents to a peak over a reign long remembered as a golden age for literature and the arts
of the book. For centuries dynasties within the Islamic world referred back to Temür and
the Timurids for legitimacy. The Mughal dynasty of India founded by Babur preserved
and elaborated the history of Temür and his descendants, and in the seventeenth cen-
tury promoted a mirror for princes purported to be the memoirs and advice of Temür
himself. In Iran, the Safavid dynasty incorporated Temür into accounts of the history of
the Sufi order from which they originated, claiming that he had visited the head of the
order on his campaign to Anatolia and had shown him honor (Quinn 2000: 85–9). The
eighteenth-century warlord Nadir Shah made particularly intense use of Temür’s mem-
ory, perhaps because he aimed to conquer much of the same territory. Temür’s treasure
was supposedly discovered and taken over by Nadir, who named his grandson Shahrukh
after Temür’s son and echoed Temür’s style of conquest in his own campaigns (Tucker:
2006: 37, 68–70). Finally, in the early nineteenth century, the new Ming dynasty of the
Ferghana Valley claimed descent from a descendant of Babur, discovered in a golden cra-
dle and brought up by the Ming tribe (Manz 2002: 13–15).
6 Conclusion
The Timurid dynasty arose at a time and place which made it difficult to retain rule over
a large territory, but which fostered the creation of a lasting and charismatic dynastic
image. Iran and Transoxiana lay at the intersection of two imperial and cultural tradi-
tions: Islamic and Turco-Mongolian. Neither provided Temür and his family with for-
mal legitimation: as a Turk, he could not claim the Qur’aysh descent demanded for the
caliphate or descent from Chinggis Khan as required in the Mongol world. Nonetheless,
both traditions had to be included in any successful legitimation.
Temür came to power at a propitious time for conquest, and in the course of his spec-
tacular career, he defeated two other conquerors of outsize reputation: the Ottoman
Sultan Yıldırım Bayazid, and the Chinggisid Tokhtamısh Khan. Although he certainly
spent most of his career in military activity, Temür was not without administrative skill.
He took care to build a functioning government in the sections of his conquests that he
100 B. F. Manz
could reasonably expect to govern effectively: largely settled regions which had been
part of either the Ilkhanate or the Chaghadayid realm. These were territories in which
the population spoke either Turkic or Persian, and except for the border provinces in the
west and east, most of the population was settled, thus relatively easy to control and pro-
viding a rich tax base.
One might be tempted to resort to the famous formulation of Ibn Khaldun, accord-
ing to which the second generation of a nomad dynasty began to succumb to the pleas-
ures of luxury and lose its fellow feeling and martial spirit, until in the fourth generation
other nomads from outside came into conquer their realm. However the Timurid dynasty
arose within the world it conquered, and much of the Persianate cultural patronage prac-
ticed by Temür’s successors was begun by him. It makes more sense I believe to look for
the concrete causes for the Timurid empire’s short life. If there were causes in Temür’s
actions, they were his jealousy of power, which led him to prevent any one of his sons
from building up a stable base of power, and his choice of an heir designate who did
not have the strength to push through his claim. The underlying problem here was the
absence of primogeniture. Succession struggles were common among the dynasties of
the central Islamic lands, and many successors had to reconquer the lands they inherited
before they could actually rule them; we see this for instance in the early history of the
Ottomans and Safavids.
Despite the period of disorder following Temür’s death Shahrukh was able to recon-
solidate Temür’s empire, and his reign of almost forty years was a period of consoli-
dation and prosperity within boundaries not much narrower than those Temür had
bequeathed. Although local rule persisted on a lower level, both civil and military admin-
istration appear to have been well developed within the standards of the time. However
the empire was not able to survive intact the vicious succession struggle that followed
Shahrukh’s death, and subsequent successions weakened it even more.
It was the Timurid’s misfortune to be surrounded by unstable confederations eager
to enlarge their holdings, able both to harass the Timurid borders and to take advantage
of disorder and disaffection. The constant rivalry and varying fortunes of the Turkmen
Aqqoyunlu and Qaraqoyunlu confederations in eastern Anatolia and Azarbaijan made
western Iran an obvious target for expansion, since Azarbaijan had long been a fulcrum
between Anatolia and the Iranian plateau. On the northeast frontier, the Uzbek con-
federation represented a new Chinggisid power, for which the oases of Khorezm and
Transoxiana were tempting targets. The Eastern Chaghadayids coveted the oases of
Ferghana and Kashghar. All these powers might be repulsed in a period of strong central
rule, but their loose tribal structure made it impossible to destroy them.
What made the Qaraqoyunlu and then the Aqqoyunlu conquests easier was the culture
of the cities, used to judging the outcome of contests in order to side with the winner.
After a decade of paying taxes to support the armies that ravaged them, many were ready
to welcome new faces. Furthermore, while Persian culture was recognized as a coherent
whole, worthy of loyalty, Iran as a region was often divided politically into eastern and
western regions, each with a separate political culture. Thus the return to a divided Iran
under Timurids and Qaraqoyunlu was nothing unusual.
It should not surprise us therefore to see the Timurid realm divided after Shahrukh’s
reign. What is less expected is the longevity of its reputation and the usefulness of the
legitimation that its rulers had crafted. Both Temür as conqueror and Sultan Husayn
as cultural patron were remembered and referenced for centuries after the fall of the
dynasty.
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The Latin Empire of Constantinople
(1204–1261): Rise and Fall of a
Short-Term State in the Romania
Ekaterini Mitsiou
1 Introduction
What is an Empire? A simple question which usually leads to complex answers.

Theories on statesmanship and power are taken into consideration which very often
results in opposite definitions and approaches. Charles S. Maier argued that an “Empire
is a territorially extensive structure of rule that usually subordinates diverse ethnolin-
guistic groups or would-be nations and reserves preponderant power for an executive
authority and the elites with whom this power is shared. Thus an empire is character-
ized by size, by ethnic hierarchization, and by a regime that centralizes power but
enlists diverse social and/or ethnic elites in its management.”1 This definition stays
very close to the one by Jürgen Osterhammel, who understands the term “Imperium”
as a “großräumiges, hierarchisch aufgebautes, zuweilen mit monarchischer Spitze aus-
gestattetes Herrschaftsbilde polyethnischer und multireligiöser Art, dessen Verbund
durch Administration, Gewaltpotenziale, Zusammenarbeit mit den Einheimischen
sowie Eliten-Symbolik und einem Anspruch des Universalismus gewährleistet wird”.2
Important elements in relation to the phases of formation and structuring of empires are a
1Maier 2006: 31.

2Osterhammel 2004: 172–173; Gehler and Rollinger 2014: 3.
E. Mitsiou (*)
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: Ekaterini.Mitsiou@assoc.oeaw.ac.at

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_5
104 E. Mitsiou
territorial expansion, “control by conquest or coercion”, and the “control of the political
loyalty of the territories it subjugates”.3
Some theorists include the empires under the notion of states, and more accurately to
the more permanent type of state formation4; other draw a clear line between state and
empire emphasising that “Empires are more than large states; they move in a world of
their own”.5 Empires bear specific hallmarks of strong ideological character. They are
the creators of order and defenders of chaos; they intervene in internal affairs of other
states in order to fulfil the imperial mission”.6
Empires are strongly connected with expansion, consolidation of power and lon-
gevity.7 Rome is the most prominent among them influencing modern scholarship on
its understanding of European imperial formations. There are, however, some empires
which collapse only a few years despite a promising start; they are the short-term
empires. Many explanations about their “failure” have been offered: structural deficien-
cies, problems in their internal organisation, a focus on war, conquest and predation, an
inability to “effectively coerce or persuade support and resources”8 and finally external
factors.
Generally speaking, short-term empires fail in reaching the so-called “Augustan
threshold”,9 the phase of consolidation after the phase of expansion. In the early stages
of their existence, they do not achieve the necessary military and economic superiority
which blocks them from moving to the next phase. Yet, military and economic power
are of paramount importance in the formative years of empires; only in the consolidation
phase, they play political and ideological power a more important role.10
The 13th century offers a unique example of a short-term empire formed through
conquest,11 which lasted less than 60 years. Interestingly, this imperial entity coexisted
with a maritime state which based its power on the economic penetration in the Eastern
Mediterranean. The first one was the Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204–1261), the
second was Venice. The first resulted from a military confrontation at the beginning of
3Maier 2006: 24–25.

4Goldstone and Haldon 2009: 3–29.
5Münkler 2007: viii and 4–6.
6Münkler 2007: viii.
7Gehler and Rollinger 2014: 17.
8Goldstone and Haldon 2009: 7: “Some historical states have been represented by claims to legiti-
macy based on consensus, having little or no power of coercion, and have survived generally for
only a relatively short time. Those state elites that have military coercion at their disposal, at least
in the early stages of their development, may remain relatively isolated from the social structures
they live off, surviving only as long as they are able effectively to coerce or persuade support and
resources.”
9Doyle 1984: 93–97.
10Mann 1986: 22–28; Münkler 2007: 47.
11Münkler 2007: 48.

The Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204–1261): Rise and Fall … 105
the 13th century, the second had started taking “the command of the sea” since the 11th
century.12 Yet, after 1204 Venice transformed slowly into an Empire through the conquest
of Crete, the occupation of important strongholds in Peloponnesus and of holding prop-
erty in Euboea.13 The formation and later decline of a land Empire and its coexistence
in the same space with a maritime power should be also taken into consideration in any
discussion of short longevity.14
2 Current Research and Sources
The Latin Empire of Constantinople is normally not included in the scholarly debate on
world Empires, probably because a thorough analysis of its entire history is still miss-
ing. Whenever studies on the neighbouring states refer to it, it is in connection to mili-
tary confrontations, diplomatic relations, as well as ideological influences. Until recently
only a few books offered a full or partial narration of its history.15 R.L. Wolff never
published his thesis but he presented his research in miscellaneous articles such as the
chapter in the “History of the Crusades”.16 Benjamin Hendrickx worked extensively
on its institutional history,17 while David Jacoby focused on the economy and its rela-
tions to the Frankish states.18 Only some conferences were dedicated exclusively to the
Latin Empire,19 whereas few studies have addressed the prosopography and the marriage
alliances.20 Otherwise, books on the history of the Crusades and the Frankish states in
Greece21 incorporated the Latin Empire in their chapters. In the last years, the schol-
arly interest grows. After 2010, various dissertations and monographs were written and
published shading light on ideological and institutional aspects, as well as on its foreign
policy.22
The Latin Empire of Constantinople lacks its own contemporary account. On recon-
structing its history, formation and organisation we rely on sources of diverse origin,
12Lane 1973: 67–73; Papadia-Lala 2008: 195–210; Brandes 2008.

13Jacoby 2015: 186.
14Jacoby 2006: 19–80.
15du Cange 1826; Gerland 1905; Longnon 1949; Verlinden 1945; Carile 1978.
16Wolff 1962: 187–233; Wolff 1976.
17Hendrickx 1974a; Hendrickx, 1974b; Hendrickx 1974c; Hendrickx 1977; Hendrickx 1999.
18Jacoby, 1993; Jacoby 1999.
19Van Aalst and Ciggaar 1990.
20Longnon 1978; Angold 2011.
21Miller 1908; Lock 1995: 35–67; Balard 2006: 216–220; Dourou-Iliopoulou 2012: 77–80;
Chrissis 2012; Tsougarakis and Lock 2015.

22Papayianni 2000; van Tricht 2011; Burkhardt 2014. Cf. also van Tricht 2001: 219–38 and 409–
438; Kindlimann 1969; Sinogowitz 1944.

106 E. Mitsiou
languages and aims. The corpus of written sources encompasses the chronicles of the
Fourth Crusade, foremost the ones by Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Robert of Clari.
Villehardouin covers the years up to 1207, while Robert de Clari narrates the events up
to 1216. The chronicle of Henry of Valenciennes, the sequel of Villehardouin, deals with
the period 1208–1209. These authors present the capture of Constantinople and the exist-
ence of the Latin Empire as legitimate acts23. The letters written by crusaders and sent
to friendly Western princes and authorities during and shortly after 1204 reflect a similar
attitude.24 The Chronica by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines (written between 1227 and 1251)
is helpful for the period 1204–1241.25 Credible and valuable insight offer also Philippe
Mouskes and Matthew of Paris. The first covers the period until circa 1243, whereas the
second until 1259.26 Although of various credibility, one should also include the Venetian
chronicles which present the Serenissima’s point of view.27
The Gesta Innocentii28 endorse the papal perspective which does not always coincide
with the historiography. On the other hand, the papal registers include valuable material
on the political and ecclesiastical organisation for the period 1204–1261.29 Critical to the
events of 1204 and to the Latin Empire is the Devastatio Constantinopolitana30 Other
sources like the Hystoria Constantinopolitana emphasise the participation of monks and
priests in the Crusade. Their involvement was strongly connected to the acquisition of
relics in Constantinople and their transfer to the West.31
Only a few documents of the Latin Emperors are known, related mostly to exter-
nal affairs.32 Equally fragmentary is the material on the internal administration of the
empire, the Latin Patriarchate of Constantinople,33 the monastic orders and their founda-
tions.34 The Venetian diplomatic material provides some data on the economic history of
23Faral1938–1939; Sollbach, 1998; Shaw 1963; Lauer 1924a; Dufournet 2004; Longnon 1948.
24Martène and Durand 1717; Waitz 1880: 203–208; Bouquet 1879: 517–519; Tafel and Thomas
1856–1857: vol. 1, 304–311; Pokorny 1985: 203–209; Andrea 2000: 177–201.
25Scheffer-Boichorst 1874; Andrea 2000: 291–309.
26De Reiffenberg 1938; Luard 1872–1883.
27Simonsfeld 1883; Pastorello 1938–1958; Limentani 1972; Papadopoulou 2000.
28Gress-Wright 2000; Powell 2004.
29Hageneder et al., 1964; Pressutti 1888, 1895. Some complete texts of letters, in Horov 1878–
1880; Wolff 1954: 225–303; Auvray 1899–1910; Berger 1884–1910; Bourel de la Ronciire
1902–1931.
30Andrea 1993: 131–149.
31Orth 1994; Andrea 1997; Assmann 1956.
32Prevenier 1964–1971; Hendrickx 1988; Prevenier 1990. See also Longnon 1943. On the letters
of the Latin emperors see Tafel and Thomas 1856–1857; Lauer 1924b; Teulet 1866; du Bouchet
1661; Dölger 1931.
33Wolff 1948; Wolff, 1954; van Dieten 1990; Santifaller 1938.
34Golubovich 1906–1927; Golubovich, 1919; Wadding 1931–1934; Tsougarakis 2012.

the period. Yet, it depicts mostly the interests of the Serenissima not simply in the newly
established Latin Empire but also in the entire Eastern Mediterranean.35
Extremely valuable are the Greek sources such as Niketas Choniates, George
Akropolites and Nikolaos Mesarites.36 However, they are biased against the Latin state
focusing on the Nicaean revival. The only pro-Latin source in Greek is the Chronicle
of Morea written probably by a French with anti-Greek feelings.37 Sources from the
Kingdom of Cilician Armenia38, the Seljuk Sultanate39, the Latin States in Syria and
Palestine, and the neighbouring Islamic principalities offer additional data.40
Finally, seals and coins enlighten issues of imperial ideology and monetary policies,41
whereas archaeological findings and manuscripts enrich aspects of the monastic life and
literary production during that period.42
3 The Latin Empire and the “Roots of Evil” Conquest,

Division and Expansion
The reasons for the short longevity of this Empire can be traced on its weak points. At
first one should focus on the phase of its formation.
The Latin Empire is an immediate result of the Fourth Crusade.43 The collapse of
the Byzantine Empire sealed the end of destabilising processes and a period of upris-
ings that had shaken the state creating a high degree of instability.44 Τhe internal prob-
lems of Byzantium gave the opportunity to foreign powers to interfere. The invitation of
prince Alexios to the Crusaders to help his father Emperor Isaakios II to gain back the
Byzantine throne served as the excuse for the deviation from the original plan. It is not
the place here to discuss the diversion of the Fourth Crusade;45 however, what followed
the capture of Zara set the base of the events in 1204. The Crusaders started in 1202 for
the Holy Land but ended up in the Byzantine capital; for almost a year they had military
35Morozzo della Rocca and Lombardo 1940; Tafel and Thomas 1856–1857; Theiner 1863–1875;
Theiner 1859–1860.
36Van Dieten 1975; Heisenberg and Wirth 1978; Angold 2017; Heisenberg and Wirth 1978.
37Kalonaros 1940; Lurier 1964; Egea 1996; Shawcross 2009; Shawcross 2012b.
38Langlois1863; Wallis Budge 1932; Dédéyan 1980.
39Duda 1959.
40On the Western chronicles from the Holy Land and from the neighbouring Islamic principalities,
see van Tricht 12–13.

41On the coins and seals see below. On Byzantine coinage s. Hendy 1969 and Hendy 1985.
42Jolivet-Lévy 2012.
43On the Fourth Crusade see Angold 2003; Laiou 2005. Lilie 2004: 157–180; Queller and Madden
1997; Madden 2008.

44Cheynet 1990; Preiser-Kapeller 2012.
45On the diversion of the Fourth Crusade see Angold 2003.

108 E. Mitsiou
and diplomatic confrontations in front of the city’s walls. On April 13, 1204, the soldiers
of the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople after a final attack from land and sea
and the Latin Empire of Constantinople was established.
Perhaps not initially planned but in the end a fact, this Empire differs from the other
Crusader States in the Near East (the county of Edessa, the principality of Antioch, the
county of Tripolis, and the kingdom of Jerusalem).46 Constantinople was the capital of a
long-lived Christian Empire47 and its new lords aimed at continuing its imperial tradition.48
Similar ideological aspirations bore also the three Greek successor states (Nicaea, Epirus
and Trebizond), which have formed in the periphery of the former Byzantine Empire.
The most successful concurrent was the Empire of Nicaea whose troops reconquered in
1261 Constantinople.49 Byzantium demonstrated once more ability of readjustment and
resilience.50
Although empires are rarely a consequence of deliberate planning, the Latin Empire
is an example of the opposite. It is as well an “Empire of conquest”. At least one month
prior to the capture of the city (13 April 1204), the leaders of the crusader army and the
Venetians (Boniface of Montferrat, Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, Louis of Blois and
Hugh of Saint-Pol, and the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo) decided to capture the city.
Actually, the so-called pact of March 1204 (Partitio Romanie), followed by later agree-
ments up to October 1205, set the constitutional framework of the Latin Empire, which
had to replace the Byzantine one. From the view of political theories, Partitio Romaniae
was the planning of a “state death” which had to be later executed.51 Starting from the
centre (Constantinople) they aimed at conquering regions in Europe and Asia Minor.
One-quarter of the territories, including the imperial palaces, belonged to the emperor.
The other three-quarters were to be divided between the Venetians and the peregrini. It
has been proven that the crusaders based their knowledge on fiscal documents and on an
inspection of the Byzantine territories.52
Baldwin I, who was elected emperor on May the 9th 1204 and was crowned on the
16th of May53, had to receive part of Constantinople and of Thrace, Asia Minor and
some islands in the Aegean. However, he gave some of these lands as fiefs to high-rank-
ing crusaders: the duchy of Nicaea to Louis de Blois, the duchy of Philippoupolis (today
46Amouroux-Mourad 1988; MacEvitt 2008; Asbridge 2000; Prawer 1972; Riley-Smith 1997; Lilie
1993; Balard 2001: 69–130; Schlumberger 1882; Schlumberger 1879; Metcalf 1989; Metcalf
1995; Metcalf and Porteous 1989.
47On Byzantium in the discussion about Empires see Haldon 2009.
48Jacoby 1989.
49On the Empire of Nicaea see Angold 1975; Mitsiou 2006.
50On the patterns of resilience see Zolli and Healy 2012: 9–23.
51Fazal 2007.
52Carile, 1965; Carile 1978; Oikonomidès 1980; Oikonomides 1992; Balard 2006: 177–179.
53Ciggaar 1990; Wolff 1952.

Plovdiv) to Renier de Trit, the duchy of Philadelpheia (today Alaşehir) to Etienne de

Perche, Nicomedia (today İzmit) to Thierry de Loos, and Adramyttion (today Edremit)
to Henry de Hainaut.54 Reason for this decision may have been that all these territories
had still to be conquered. Even during the period of expansion and stabilisation (1204–
1228), only a limited number of them belonged effectively to the Latin Empire and its
feudal lords, such as the region around Nicomedia and the coastal cities in Bithynia.
Other Asiatic districts and cities like Adramyttion, Achyraus, and Lopadion were parts of
the Empire only for short periods of time. After 1221, the Nicaean Empire succeeded in
bringing under its control most of the Latin fiefdoms in Europe and Asia Minor.55
The majority of the crusaders received lands in Thrace, Macedonia and Thessaly.
Yet, the conquest of the Balkan Peninsula proved also highly problematic. Boniface of
Montferrat was promised initially Crete but he could not conquer the island. During a
campaign to conquer Thessaloniki and being in need of money, he exchanged Crete with
the Venetians for 1000 marcs of silver. The capture of Thessaloniki provoked a danger-
ous conflict with the Emperor, which was set aside only after the intervention of the
calmest.56 Boniface conquered a great part of Southern Greece distributing part of the
conquered lands among Frankish nobles. The region of Athens was given to Othon de
la Roche, Negroponte to Jacques d’Avesnes, Bodonitsa to Guy Pallavicini and Salona to
Thomas d’ Autremencourt.57 On the other hand, Geoffrey de Champlitte and Geoffrey de
Villehardouin conquered Peloponnesus and founded the Principality of Achaia, a vassal
of the Emperor, with twelve baronies.58
The distribution and possession of the fiefs followed the rules and obligations of feu-
dalism.59 According to the Partitio, Venetian and non- Venetian crusaders were given
fiefs for life; they were also hereditary through the male and the female line; the recipi-
ents had given a fidelity oath and were obliged to offer military service to their lord.60 In
order to just give an impression of their size, we should mention that their annual income
of each of these fiefs could have a value between ca. 1300 and 1600 hyperpyra (gold
coins)61 in some cases.
54Hendrickx 2015.
55Angold 1975; Stolte 1990.
56Longnon 1943: 58–61; Balard 2006: 217.
57Longnon 1943: 69–76; Lock 1995: 57–58 and 68–74.
58On the conquest of Peloponess see Bon 1969; Haberstumpf 2003.
59On feudalism see Reynolds 2001.
60van Tricht 2011: 43; Carile 1965; Topping 1949 and in Topping 1977.
61Carile 1978: 203; van Tricht 2011: 110–111.

110 E. Mitsiou
4 The Emperor and the Elites
Some roots of the later difficulties of the Latin Empire can be traced already in the pact
of March 1204 and its superficial character of the description of the relationship between
the emperor and the vassal states. Van Tricht has argued that “…the emperorship itself
was still to be assigned, which certainly must have contributed to the fact that not all the
parties involved had yet developed a definitive perspective as to the position of the impe-
rial powers within the empire as a whole. In this respect, the basic pact of March 1204
already foreshadowed the contrast between centripetal and centrifugal forces that were to
characterize the Latin Empire.”62 If we put it on the broader discussion about Empires,
we have here an example of an empire which “can be built on a congeries of client states
(or “friendly kings”) and need not rest on total subjugation and direct rule. Even when
imperial authorities remain formally sovereign over the lands they count as possessions,
they often accept varying degrees of local autonomy”.63
In spite of the original planning, enough ground was left for negotiating a better deal
with the counterparts-especially the Emperor. Agents or imperial garrisons represented
the Emperor on a local level. In many instances, the Emperor intervened whenever con-
flicts arose. These internal elite disputes proved critical for the fate of the Empire. Two
major events related to the kingdom of Thessaloniki: the confrontation of Baldwin I and
Boniface of Montferrat in relation to the rule upon the city and the second was the revolt
of the barons of Thessaloniki after the death of Baldwin I. They were demonstrations of
internal dislikes and separate aims which caused the loss of energy, money and soldiers.
In reality, the vassal states followed their own policies. Some of them were extremely
successful and long lived (Principality of Achaia),64 while others (the Kingdom of
Thessaloniki until 122465) became pray of the other players in the region, Bulgarians66
and Greeks. The loss of these territories signified also the geographical, political and
economic weakening of the Empire which after the death of Henry of Hainaut in 1216
but especially after 1228 (death of Robert of Courtenay, 1221–1228) was reduced into a
city state around Constantinople.
“Empires are about elites, that means inequality and stratification.”67 The Latin
Empire was a political construction that can be characterized as fundamentally Western,
both as regards its institutional organisation and its political elite. Regarding the insti-
tutional organisation, this was organised on western models mixed with Byzantine ele-
ments. On the top were the emperor, his private council and the Council of the Empire
62Van Tricht 2011.

63Maier 2006: 35; Braund 1984.
64Bon 1969; Dourou-Iliopoulou 2012.
65Wellas 1987; Bredenkamp 1996.
66Gjuzelev 1975.
67Maier 2006: 34.

consisting of the Frank barons, the Venetian doge (later the podestà), and six Venetians.68
The most important military offices were the ones senescalus, constabularius and mares-
calus.69 The buticularius, panetarius and the major cocus were responsible for the provi-
sion of the palace.70 Finally, the imperial chancery was administered by the chancellor
(cancellarius) who had at his service the notaries and scribes (notarii, scriptores, capel-
lani and clerici).71 However, Byzantine administrative mechanisms have been retained
on a central level. Also, titles and offices of Byzantine origin such as protovestiarus
(defence of the city and the palace) are attested.72 Finally, in the justice system, a system
of special jurisdiction was at work in mixed Byzantine-Latin cases.73
In the decision-making procedures was involved the political elite concentrating
power in the hands of a small number of persons. This was the private council of the
emperor and the Council of the Empire. However, up to 1217, they did not represent
the aristocracy of the entire empire. Only the territories and principalities surrounding
Constantinople were represented in the imperial politics. After the death of Emperor
Henry I started a period of tension within this group. The reason was the arrival of
Western newcomers in the capital. The newcomers wished to assure themselves of a
place at the imperial court and in policymaking, and to some extent, therefore, needed to
enter into competition with the established elite. Because of their Western background,
it was in a way natural that in doing so they contested an existing model of cooperation
between Westerners and Greeks.74
Another crucial factor was the relations of the Emperor to the local Greek elites.75
We must not forget that “empires are a particular form of state organization in which
the elites of differing ethnic or national units defer to and acquiesce in the politi-
cal leadership of the dominant power”.76 Moreover, “all empires rest on transnational
elites…empire came to mean rule over others”.77 But certainly “the elites who accept
an empire by conquest is different from the style of rule accepted by those who believe
they are joining a federation designed to hold off a greater evil”.78 Many members of the
Byzantine elite abandoned the conquered areas and fled to the Greek successor states in
the periphery of the former Byzantium; however, other aristocratic families remained and
68Hendrickx 1999: 91–103.

69Hendrickx 1999: 110–113; Hendrickx 1977: 196–203.
70Hendrickx 1999: 113–115; Hendrickx 1997: 203–206.
71Dourou-Iliopoulou 2012: 79–80; Longnon 1949: 63–64.
72Hendrickx 1999: 109; Hendrickx 1977: 206–211; Carile 1978: 217.
73Hendrickx 1999: 139–116.
74van Tricht 2011: 280–304.
75Gilles 2010.
76Maier 2006: 33; cf. Drews 2018.
77Maier 2006: 36.
78Maier 2006: 35.

112 E. Mitsiou
cooperated with the Latin rulers. The citizens of Constantinople were given the choice
of staying or leaving; some stayed and worked for the new administration.79 Among
them was Constantine Tornikes, whose son, Demetrios Tornikes, served in the Empire of
Nicaea. The most prominent example, however, is Theodore Branas who governed three
cities in Thrace and even married his daughter to a Westerner.80 The names of various
other Greeks serving at the Latin administration are known; nevertheless, key-positions
were occupied by Latins.
5 “The Lords of the Quarter and Half of the Empire”
Venice played a prominent role in the Fourth Crusade using the crusader armies for the
consolidation and expansion of its power in the Eastern Mediterranean in the disad-
vantage of its enemies. Its penetration in the area started already in the 9th century81
but the privileged position of Serenissima in Byzantium was strengthened and sealed
through a series of chrysobulls (gold bull documents) by the Byzantine emperors espe-
cially after 1082.82 However, the “anti-Latin” measures and the attacks in 1171 against
the Venetians emphasised the necessity for a Western control of the Straits, in order to
secure the Venetian mercantile activities.83 A maritime Empire in the making profited
from the presence of a land empire in Constantinople, in which it had an exclusive and
privileged position keeping possessions and rights attained prior to 1204. Through these
possessions, the Serenissima gained control over the maritime routes from the Adriatic
Sea to Constantinople. Venice received one fourth of the capital and the empire as well
as half of the other three quarters. The doge was called “lord of the quarter and half of
the Empire of Romania”84 since he received “quarte partis et dimidie totius Imperii
Romanie”. A further proof for the prominent position of the Venetians is that they had
not given an oath of subordination to the emperor; on the contrary, they hold their veto
right against the selection of an unfriendly towards the Serenissima person. Moreover,
everyone coming from cities and states at war with Venice could not enter the empire.
They had their own podesta—Marino Zeno— and after a treaty in 1205, the Venetians
had an autonomy inside the state. The Venetian fief holders gave an oath of fidelity to
doge and they had military and fiscal obligations only towards the Commune.85
79See van Tricht 2011: 34–36 on the Byzantine imperial elite families which remained in territories
under the Latin rule.
80Shawcross 2012a: 212–213.
81McCormick 2001.
82Lilie 1984; Gerolymatou 2008; On gold bulls s. Grierson 1966.
83Kindlimann 1969.
84Balard 2006: 177 and 178.
85Jacoby 2002: 153–170.

On the other hand, while being part of the Council of the Empire, the Venetians
retained their own administrative apparatus next to the one of the emperor (judges, treas-
urers etc.).86 Imperial authority was often questioned by the Serenissima; on their turn,
the emperors had acted in many instances without consulting the Venetians.87 Finally, in
matters of foreign policy, Venice followed her own interests; she concluded trade treaties
with enemies of the Latin Empire, whereas the emperors avoided any relations to powers
unfriendly to Venice, such as Genoa.88
6 The Unconnected Empire
Despite their initial successes in conquering areas in Asia Minor and in central Greece,
the new lords of Constantinople miscalculated the importance of some neighbor-
ing states and failed paramount in creating strong alliances. The first significant exter-
nal opponents were the Bulgarians. At first, they sought for an alliance with Baldwin I
against the Greek state of Nicaea. Their proposal was rejected. Kalojan, the Bulgarian
ruler, called then the Greeks of Didymoteichon to revolt against them. In the battle of
Adrianople in May 1205, the Bulgarians captured the Latin emperor Baldwin I who died
the next year in captivity whereas prominent crusaders like Louis de Blois died on the
battlefield.89 Henry I, brother of Baldwin I, was crowned emperor in August 1206. He
proved to be an excellent diplomat and military leader. Under his rule started a consoli-
dation phase of the Empire which ended with his death. Henry I followed a policy of
either signing treaties with or military defeating the enemies. Around 1208, he signed a
treaty with the Greeks of Nicaea while he defeated the Greeks of opponent Epirus under
Michael I (1205–1215) as well as the Bulgarians. In 1214 and after a successful expedi-
tion in Asia Minor, a treaty defined the boarders with the Nicaean emperor Theodore I
Laskaris.90
Henry’s successors failed to continue his work. Under Robert of Courtenay91, Asia
Minor fell to the Nicaean troops, while Thessaly, Macedonia and Thessaloniki to the
Epirus state. The decline continued under John of Brienne92 and especially under
Baldwin II. However, after 1230 (battle of Klokotnitsa), the Bulgarians and the Nicaeans
made an alliance against the Latin Empire and sieged Constantinople (1235). The rise of
the Empire of Nicaea to the greatest power in Asia Minor and the Balkans under John III
86van Tricht 2011; Hendrickx 1999.

87van Tricht 2011: 215–219 (imperial authority and Venice).
88van Tricht 2011: 192–193 (foreign policy of Venice and latin Empire).
89Longnon 1949: 66–80; Morrisson 2011: 5.
90Balard 2006: 216–217.
91van Tricht 2013.
92Perry 2013: 149–188.

114 E. Mitsiou
Vatatzes (1221–1254) continued in the following decades until the recapture of 1261.93
In its final days, the Empire was reduced into a city-state reminding the situation in 1453
when the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans was inevitable.
Apart from failing in creating the necessary military alliances, the Latin emperors
failed as well in creating “a common dynastic framework” as Michael Angold has named
it. Although Henry I has used marriage alliances in order to strengthen the position of
the Empire among its neighbors, his successors were reluctant in engaging in intermar-
riages with the Greek and Bulgarian neighbors, even at the moment when their weakness
became obvious.94 Such entanglements would have established a supportive network in
the Romania without relying strongly on the help of France, Venice or the Papacy. The
lack of dynastic connections on a local level allowed the other powers of the region to
cooperate against the lords of Constantinople. Moreover, it transformed quickly the Latin
Empire from the most important player in 1216 into the weakest link in the power arena
of the Eastern Mediterranean.
7 Ideological Conformity and Continuation
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Latin Empire of Constantinople relates to
its ideological framework.95 The imperial ideology of the new emperors was based on
the Byzantine one mixed however with western elements. Their aim was to legitimise
their presence on the former Byzantine territories and to give a sense of continuity to the
Greek inhabitants. The Byzantine influence is attested in ceremonies and rituals, as well
as in documents, coins, seals and in the imperial title.
Byzantine influence demonstrated already the first imperial actions of the new inhab-
itants of Bukoleon palace in Constantinople. Robert de Clari described in detail the
coronation ceremony of Baldwin I on May 16 1204. He focused on the sequence of
events but also on gestures, robes and insignia.96 Modern scholars cannot identify the
exact Byzantine model since we lack a book like the De Cerimoniis for the 12th cen-
tury. But as Theresa Shawross correctly argued, the Crusaders had a specific model in
mind, perhaps the coronation of Alexios IV Angelos, which they personally had seen and
experienced.97
In the ideological framework of the Latin Empire were incorporated not only the
ritual aspects of Byzantine ideology. Also, the objects of communication with foreign
93Longnon 1949; Lock 1995: 51–66; Balard 2006: 220; Balard 2001: 242–243; Morrisson 2011a:
4–11; Papayianni 2000.

94Wolff 1962: 200 ff; Angold 2011: 47–67.
95Shawcross 2012a: 181–220; Lock 1994; van Tricht 2011: 65–90.
96Shawcross 2012a: 184–193.
97Shawcross 2012a: 190.

powers and their citizens (documents, seals and coins) offered the necessary legitima-
tion of the new emperors. In relation to the chancery, the strategy followed was to imitate
Byzantine practices for imperial charters foremost the usage of menologema for dating
the documents.98 The emperors signed by their own hand the charters with the excep-
tion of Baldwin I who was illiterate. However, the charters do not lose their Flemish ele-
ments, especially those addressed to western powers. Perhaps two separate departments
may have existed in the imperial chancery (a Byzantine and a Western one) with a work
division based on the type, aim and recipient of the documents.99
The documents are important testimonies of the imperial ideology of the new state
on the Bosporus. The imperium Constantinopolitanum, as the Latin Empire was called
in its earliest testimonies, was perceived as the continuation of Byzantium staying in no
opposition to the Holy Roman Empire.100 Baldwin I bore the title “Balduinus Dei gra-
tia fidelissimus in Christo imperator a Deo coronatu, Romanorum moderator et semper
augustus, Flandrie et Hayn[onie] Comes”.101 Baldwin’s seals follow partially French
models. On the obverse, the legend reads in Greek: ΒΑΛΔΟVΙΝΟΣ ΔΕΣΠΟΤΗΣ
(despot Balduin) and on the reverse in Latin: „Balduinus die gratiae imperator
Romanorum Flandrie Hainonie“. The ruler is represented according to western models.
In the following years, the title remained in its core elements unchanged.
Also Henry I followed a bilingual system with a mixture of Greek and Latin.
Three types of seals have been identified. The first two have in the obverse ΕΡΡΙΚΟΣ
ΔΕΣΠΟΤΗΣ (Henry despot) and on reverse: Henricus Die gratia imperator Romaniae
or Romanorum. The third type had a Latin obverse (Henricus die gratia Imperatoris
Constantinopolitani) and a Greek reverse which declares Henry autokrator and despot of
Constantinople.102
The seals of both Baldwin I and Henry I are interesting also for the use of Romani(a)
e and Romanorum in relation to “imperator” since the first combination adheres to the
ideological aspirations upon the land whereas the second combination complies with the
Byzantine traditional claims.
The last emperor, Baldwin II, was born in Constantinople in 1217 in the Porphyra
chamber, the room where traditionally the children of the Byzantine emperor were born;
he was, therefore, Porphyrogennetos (= born in the purple). He added this to his seals.
The known examples represent Baldwin on the obverse on horseback and on the reverse
seated and wearing a crown, divitision and loros, holding a scepter and globus cruciger.
The legend on the obverse is in Greek: “Βαλδουΐνος δεσπότης Πορϕυρογέννητος ο
98Shawcross 2012a: 200 with further details and bibliography.

99van Tricht, 2011: 126–131. Hendrickx 1999: 127–132 and others have, however, emphasised
more on the Flemish character of the documents.
100van Tricht 2011: 61; Jacoby 1989.
101van Tricht 2011: 62; Morrisson and Blet-Lemarquand 2008: 151–167.
102van Tricht 2011: 69.

116 E. Mitsiou
Φλάνδρας” (Balduin of Flandres, the despot, Porphyrogennetos) while on the reverse is

in Latin: “Balduinus dei gratia Imperator Romanorum semper augustus”.103
Similarly important to the seals are the coins. The coinage in use continued to circu-
late until the struck of the new coins. The Latin emperors minted billon aspron trachy or
histamenon, copper tetarteron and half tetarteron, and perhaps also a gold coin (hyper-
pyron): the latter remains however uncertain.104 Like all other powers in the region, they
imitated the Byzantine coins of the Comnenoi and Angeloi but also the ones of their
neighbors (foremost the ones of Nicaea).105 The last point was addressed in the treaty
between Nicaea and Venice of 1219 where one of the clauses was not to imitate the coin-
age of the other party.106
It becomes clear that the rituals and objects of representation imitated the Byzantine
predecessors in order to demonstrate ideological continuation not only to the elites but
also to the lower strata. Continuation characterised as well the position of the peas-
antry under the new regime. The capture of Constantinople did not signalise at first any
radical change in their lives. They even mocked the Constantinopolitan aristocrats and
state officials, when after 1204 they traveled as penniless refugees through Thrace and
Macedonia. In various instances we hear of Greek citizens who praised Latin rulers like
Henry I. Yet, the Byzantine population was not always in favour of the new masters.
Those living in frontier regions such as Thrace suffered greatly from the constant mili-
tary operations and revolted against fief holders and central authority. In this they were
supported occasionally by foreign powers. On a political level, neighbouring states very
often tried to undermine the Latin authority by addressing the religious feelings of the
orthodox population.
8 The Catholic Church in a Byzantine Space
Next to the new political power in Constantinople, also a new ecclesiastic order
was established. If Pope Innocent III finally accepted the plunder of a Christian city
was due to his hope of the submission of the Orthodox Church to the papal author-
ity. Shortly after the election of Baldwin I, also a Latin Patriarch was chosen. The first
Latin Patriarch in the Queen of Cities was a Venetian, Thomas Morosini, following the
arrangements of the Partitio Romaniae. The establishment of a Latin Patriarchate in
Constantinople did not, however, solved the problems with the Orthodox nor with Rome.
103Morrisson 2003–2005; van Tricht 2013.

104Pegolotti mentioned perperi Latini which may have been imitation of Nicaean coins under John
III Vatatzes, s. Hendy 1999: 477; Papadopoulou 2007: 276–277.
105Shawcross 2012a: 203–204; Morrisson and Papadopoulou 2003–2005: 135–143; Morrisson
2011b: 133–164; Malloy and Berman 1994: 316–324.

106Pieralli 2006: 138; Heyd 1879: vol. I, 336–337.
Innocent III was for months unaware of this fact and when he finally heard about dis-
liked the decision. Finally, he accepted the situation and even tried to legitimise the exist-
ence of a Latin Patriarch in Constantinople with the hope once more of a Union of the
Churches.
To this cause, the Latin Church was reinforced through the presence of various monas-
tic orders. In Latin Constantinople as in other former byzantine areas, the Cistercians
and the Benedictines were present early on. Later also Franciscans and Dominicans
were added and received churches and monasteries in Constantinople. They were early
on involved in the discussions between Latin and Orthodox Church and participated in
missions to the Empire of Nicaea. Very early were established in the Romania the mili-
tary orders -the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights- which
possessed properties also in the Kingdom of Thessaloniki and in Central Greece. They
played though a less significant role than it would be expected.107
Yet, all the efforts for a Union of the Churches failed due to the feelings of the
Greeks, but also due to the persons involved. Moreover, the existence of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate in the Greek State of Nicaea gave negotiation power to the Orthodox. The
Latin dogma did not reach the lower strata of society despite the new organisation of
the metropolitan sees and the tolerance of the Papacy towards the orthodox bishops who
stayed on their seats but refused obedience to the Latin Patriarch. There were internal
fights since the Popes wanted to reduce the power of the Venetians as factors of the
Patriarchate. On the other hand, the emperors of Constantinople considered the Pope and
not the Latin Patriarch as discussion partner on religious matters.
Equally important were quarrels related to the church finances. The one fifteenth of
the land properties outside Constantinople had to be given to the Latin Church for its
support. The laity except for the Greeks had to pay tithes. However, later agreements
were needed to solve the problem of the Church property since the Venetians were origi-
nally exempted.108
“We are in need of money,…, and without money, nothing can be done that ought to be
done” (Demosthenes, Olynthiakos I)
A significant systemic weakness is related to the economic power of the Empire; it was
soon proved to be one of the major defective elements of this hybrid state. The first
financial resource was the booty of the pillage of Constantinople.109 Its value was about
400,000 silver marks. A part of it (50,000) was used to pay the debt to the Venetians
while the rest was distributed among the crusaders (35,000) and the Venetians (17,000
107Tsougarakis 2012; Koumanoude 2012; Violante 1999; Lock 1995: 222–239; Mitsiou 2015.
108Wolff 1954; Wolff 1948; Richard 1989: 45–62; Van Tricht 2011: 307–339; Coureas 2015:
145–184.
109Perry 2015.
118 E. Mitsiou
silver marks). However, in the following months, the city was deprived of statues, works
of art and architectural parts which were transferred to the West or were used for minting
coins. Apart from this booty, knights and Venetians, monks and priests participated in an
enormous trade of relics which continued throughout the following years.110
The later economic history of the Latin Empire is difficult to reconstruct due to the
lack of sources. The major source of income were the imperial domains and the fiscal
revenues from these areas. Yet, the extensive military expenditure on wars on various
fronts meant important revenue losses. An image of need and deprivation appears in the
sources especially after the territorial losses in Asia Minor and Thrace. An income of
about 500,000 hyperpyra was reduced to the half or even more than the half,111 whereas
the provisioning of the capital became more difficult. The deprivation is vividly pre-
sented by the case of the thorn-wreath. In 1238, it was pawned to the Venetians for circa
13,000 hyperpyra. King Louis IX the Saint recovered the precious relic and brought it
together with other ones to Paris.
This is being represented also on the urban space of Constantinople where areas
under the imperial authority gave a desolate impression.112 The picture is different for
the Venetians in Constantinople. They had their own district as before 1204, where the
economic activity of the town actually was concentrated. They financed the restoration of
the sea walls and kept their district in the highest level of urban structural competence.113
Trade was the main interest for the Venetians. Merchants and bankers such as
Zaccaria Stagnario, Giovanni Martinaccio, Giberto Querini spent long periods of time in
Constantinople engaging in international trade.114 Constantinople remained a transit zone
for most of the trade between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Yet, the Venetian
penetration to the Black Sea was strengthened especially after 1240 and the Mongol
conquest of the region.115 Despite the positive effects of the Venetian trade and credit
activities, it became evident that Constantinople was marginalised inside the world trade
systems.
Moreover, merchants and producers focused less on the supply of the state’s center
and more on their own profit by selling the surpluses to the West, where the demand
was becoming higher.116 Through this and due to the territorial losses in Asia Minor,
Thrace, and Macedonia the “urban metabolism” failed for the capital. After the first suc-
cessful years, Constantinople was cut by land from the vassal states of the South such
as the Principality of Achaia depending strongly on the sea routes dominated by the
110Rakova 2008; Barber 2005; Kolia-Dermitzake 2008.

111Van Tricht 2011: 133 ff.
112Talbot 2001: 329–343; Kidonopoulos 1994: 232–242; Kidonopoulos 2007: 101–105.
113Jacoby 2001; Balard 2006: 218–219.
114Jacoby 1998: 181–204; Mitsiou and Preiser-Kapeller 2018.
115Jacoby 2005: 195–214.
116Jacoby 2005; Jacoby 2015.

Venetians. On the other hand, the emperors were unable to fulfill what has been called
imperial ecology” (= the management of particular flows of resources and population by
the imperial center).117 According to D. Jacoby: “After 1204 it was merely the capital
of a reduced territorial entity. There was no flow of cash and goods to Constantinople,
whether in the form of fiscal revenue or self-supply of elite households from their pro-
vincial estates. The Latin emperors of Constantinople were chronically impoverished”.118
9 Human Resources
After 1204 many Westerners from different regions and their retinue (foremost France
and Italy) arrived in continental Greece and in the Aegean islands in search of landed
fiefs or trade activities. On the other hand, settlers who had abandoned the city prior to
its capture returned to Constantinople. However, already in its first years, the Empire
faced a shortage of human resources (settlers and soldiers). Already in 1205, 7000
knights left the Latin Empire; one year later also 50 more. As an answer to this prob-
lem, the quick movement of the knights from one region to another one which needed
urgently help was chosen as a typical pattern of military response.119 Henry I addressed
the reasons for the shortage of military man power in a letter to the West: many soldiers
were killed in battles, others returned to their homelands and the remaining ones fought
on various fronts.120 Another reason was the engagement of Latin mercenaries in the
armies of Nicaea and Epirus. Very often the emperors asked for reinforcements in order
to keep the conquered regions;121 rarely did they reach Constantinople. The Latin Empire
became actually an unattractive workplace for mercenaries and other settlers. Since fiefs
went lost, not enough land was available for distribution to them; and the trade was in
the hands of the Venetians, who were the only Westerners still interested in the salvation
of the state. The lack of actual support from the West had many reasons. The Western
powers and the Papacy were preoccupied with political problems in Europe but also with
the situation in the Holy Land. It should not be forgotten that the diversion of the Fourth
Crusade to Constantinople and the foundation of the Latin Empire derived the Crusader
States of knights and means. In the second decade of the 13th century, a new Crusade
was organised but the Latin Empire was unable to contribute substantially to the expedi-
tion despite its promises.122
117White 2011; Preiser-Kapeller 2019.

118Jacoby 2015: 189.
119Papayianni 2000: 68.
120Lauer 1924b: 201.
121Prinzing 1973: 417–418.
122van Tricht 2011: 460–465.

120 E. Mitsiou
Finally, a population drain marked the entire period. At first were the Greeks or their
children who abandoned the city and found a new home in the Greek successor states.
From circa 225,000 inhabitants in 1204, Latin Constantinople had in 1261 only 3000,
mostly Venetians.123 The Empire was slowly decapitated.
10 Conclusions
The Latin Empire of Constantinople was the result of conquest and military effort of
Western elites on a culturally different area. According to Wolff “…its eventual collapse
was probably inevitable; founded on alien soil, amid hostile Greeks who soon had lead-
ers around whom they might rally, dependent on a flow of money and men from the west
which might be cut off at any time, the Latin empire could have survived, if at all, only
through statesmanship so far sighted and astute that one would be unrealistic in demand-
ing it of flesh-and-blood crusaders and Venetians”.124
Yet, the sustainability of a system depends on coherence. The Partitio’s plan to
divide and distribute the conquered lands among the emperor and the barons proved the
Achilles’ heel of the Latin Empire. It created a chain of clusters in this new network
of power. The later developments proved that the subgroups of the network could sup-
port the center only if they remained entangled in a direct way. However, the loss of the
Kingdom of Thessaloniki broke the land connections of the Constantinople cluster to the
ones in Central Greece and Peloponessus destabilising the robustness of the system.
Moreover, the existence of parallel centres in decision making procedures and the dif-
ferent policies followed by the various parts (Emperor, Venetians, barons, fief holders)
strengthened centrifugal tendencies. On the other hand, the significant territorial losses
after the two first decades of its existence did not allow for a social and political stabili-
sation. The consequent reduce of the state income contributed further to the crisis since
no investments could be made for the army, the civil administration or the infrastructure.
The Latin emperors notoriously failed to develop any mechanisms of stabilisation by
attracting new settlers and by developing a network of support in the Romania. Finally,
although they were successful in their ideological claims and the imitation of ritual prac-
tices of their Byzantine predecessors, they were unable to consolidate the power they
gained through military means. It would be therefore not incorrect to say that the Latin
Empire of Constantinople was short-lived and died on what Davies called “the political
counterpart of infant mortality”.125
123vanTricht 2011: 133–138.

124Wollf1962: 199–200.
125Davies 2011: 737.
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Mithradates VI and the Pontic Empire
Sabine Müller
vir neque silendus neque dicendus sine cura, bello acerrimus, virtute eximius, aliquando
fortuna, semper animo maximus, consiliis dux, miles manu, odio in Romanos Hannibal…
He was a man about whom one cannot speak except with concern nor yet pass by in
silence; he was ever eager for war, of exceptional bravery, always great in spirit and some-
times in achievement, in strategy a general, in bodily prowess a soldier, in hatred to the
Romans a Hannibal.1
In this way, Mithradates VI of Pontos who fought against Rome in a series of wars
between the 80s and 60s BC was characterized by the Roman historiographer Velleius
Paterculus writing under Tiberius. This ambiguous and even reluctantly respectful por-
trait of Rome’s adversary from the past reflects the Pontic king’s status in Rome’s col-
lective memory, and originated with contemporary Roman discourses on his potential to
threaten Roman rule. Thus, Pompey who was responsible for Mithradates’ final defeat,
glorified his own achievements by praising his Eastern enemy. Pompey is said to have
admired Mithradates’ great deeds and considered him the best of the kings in his time.2
In Roman literature, Mithradates was styled as Rome’s most dangerous and determined
foreign enemy since Hannibal and even depicted as a kind of Eastern Pyrrhos or Eastern
1Vell. 2.18.1. Trans. F.W. Shipley.

2App. Mithr. 113. However, the time of the mighty kings in the East was already gone.
S. Müller (*)
Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany
e-mail: sabine.mueller@staff.uni-marburg.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_6
130 S. Müller
Hannibal.3 The parallelization of Mithradates and Hannibal hints at three decisive ele-
ments of their images in the Western collective memory: their dangerousness to Rome,
their alleged hatred towards Romans, and the ruthless cruelty by which they pursued
their aims.4 Thus, Mithradates was said to have ordered the massacre of all Italics in his
empire, allegedly resulting into the murder of about 80,000 victims.5
Due to the ambiguity of his ancient portraits as an erudite, smart patron of arts and
sciences,6 charismatic warrior king, and simultaneously ruthless, cruel imperialist, in
his afterlife, Mithradates was as famous as he was notorious. Racine and Pushkin wrote
about him, and Scarlatti and Mozart composed operas about him.7 A major feature of
his reception is his reputation of being a pioneer of toxicology based on ancient reports
that he fortified himself against being poisoned by antidotes and daily small portions of
poison.8 Also in scholarship, the rise and fall of the Pontic Empire under Mithradates VI
seen as the last serious opponent to Roman republican rule in Asia Minor and Greece
who propagated the provision of a political alternative to Rome, is often regarded as a
watershed or marker in the history of Rome and the former Hellenistic East.9 In the 19th
and early 20th century, Mithradates was predominantly viewed as the stock type of the
3Just. 38.4.5–6; Plut. Sert. 23.2 (he was likened to Pyrrhos). On the association of Mithradates
with Hannibal see also McGing 2009a: 204–205 (“retrospective myth-making”); McGing 2009b;
Sonnabend 1998.
4Cf. Liv. 23.5.11–13.
5App. Mithr. 22–23; Vell. 2.18.1–2; Memnon BNJ 434 F 1.22.9; Plut. Sulla 24.4 (even more
exaggerated: 150.000 victims); Liv. per. 78; Dio fr. 101.1; Oros. 6.2.2–3; Val. Max. 9.2.3. On the
dimension of the exaggeration see Michels 2009: 215. See also Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 103–107.
Uncritically accepted as a historical fact by Mayor 2008: 13–26, 174 (who even characterized it
as a gesture of solidarity with the rebels of the Social War); McGing 2009a: 210; Erciya 2006:
176; Geyer 1932: 2170. It is also difficult to accept the suggestion of Glew 1977a: 255–256 that
the remission of debts for all the murderers of Italics obeying the order of the alleged Ephesian
Vespers was meant to be an act of euergetism (cf. Just. 38.3.9).
6Plin. NH 7.88; 25.6 and Gell. 17.17 report that he knew 22 languages. Cf. Summerer 2009: 16.
7Cf. Summerer 2009. Racine wrote Mithridate (1963) focusing on the death of his protagonist
inflicted on him by his “bad” son Pharnakes. Mithridate re di Ponto was composed by the young
Mozart.
8Just. 37.2.6; Dio 37.13. Cf. Summerer 2009: 16–19. Mithridatizing became a term for this, e.g.
used by Alexandre Dumas and Agatha Christie. According to the punchline of the ancient tradition,
when being an old man faced with defeat, Mithradates failed in killing himself by poison (App.
Mithr. 111). However, as pointed out by Højte 2009b: 121, the circumstances surrounding his
death are obscured. The antidotum mithridaticum was regarded as a universal antidote. Its alleged
ingredients were mentioned by Plin. NH 29.25 and Gell. 17.16 (a mix of blood of poisonous Pontic
goose). The plant Agrimonia eupatoria (White Snakeroot) got its name in honour of him. Still
today, in toxicology, Mithradates is regarded as “the father of empirical toxicology” and “a pioneer
of allergen-specific immunotherapy, cf. Valle et al. 2012: 139.
9Cf. Mayor 2008, 1 (hagiographical): “A complex leader of superb intelligence and fierce ambi-
tion, Mithradates boldly challenged the late Roman Republic.”

Mithradates VI and the Pontic Empire 131
despotic and cruel “oriental” sultan whose lust for power and conquest made him attack
the “civilized West” but failed because he did not understand the Greek need of civiliza-
tion and liberty.10 In the late 20th century up to the current debate, while the reproaches
of despotism and clichés of “oriental” regal style mostly vanished, Mithradates’ policy is
still a matter of controversy and polarization.11 As for his wars against Rome, opinions
differ about who was the aggressor: On the one hand, Mithradates is seen as the savior
king who just attempted to free the Greeks from the Roman yoke.12 On the other hand,
he is regarded as an ambitious imperialist who voluntarily challenged Rome from the
beginning.13 Alternatively, he is characterized as a skillful tactician who tried to expand
as far as he could without provoking Rome but strove consequently for war when he
realized that it was inevitable in order to enlarge his kingdom.14 As a variant, he is also
seen as a compliant king who only tried to legitimize himself by conquests according
to the Hellenistic traditional ideal. In this sense, it is argued that he just did the usual
duty of Hellenistic kings while avoiding any war against Rome before he was unwill-
ingly dragged into it by Rome and his involvement with Bithynia.15 In any case, despite
Mithradates’ failure, his attempt to counteract the Roman expansion in the East has left
remarkable traces in the collective memory providing him with an aura that protects him
from being regarded as one of the great losers of ancient times: “Although he failed to be
10Cf. Summerer 2009: 24–26. F.e. Geyer 1932: 2175, 2199–2203: “Der orientalische Sultan
erwachte in ihm und machte allen hellenenfreundlichen Stimmungen ein Ende. Konnte sich M.
bisher als Befreier der Griechen vom Joch der Römer als hellenistischer Fürst fühlen, so lenkte
er jetzt in die Bahnen des blutgierigen Despoten ein, für den selbständige Meinung gleichbedeu-
tend mit Verrat war (…) Was ihm vor allem abging, war eine große Idee, die man als Leitstern
seines Lebens bezeichnen könnte. Seine Regierungsmethoden waren letzten Endes doch die
eines asiatischen Despoten, für die Griechen, die er gewinnen musste, wenn sein Reich Bestand
haben sollte, unerträglich, weil wesensfremd (…) Er ist unterlegen, weil er es nicht verstand,
die Griechen innerlich für sich zu begeistern. Sein Auftreten in Kleinasien musste in ihnen (…)
bald die Überzeugung wecken, dass seine Herrschaft nicht ihre Freiheit bedeuten, sondern sie der
Willkür eines orientalischen Sultans ausliefern würde (…) Pontos war eine absolute Monarchie,
besser eine orientalische Despotie (…) Allerdings wird eine asiatische Despotie stets über reichere
Mittel verfügen als ein geordneter europäischer Staat, da dem Herrscher jederzeit das Hab und Gut
seiner Untertanen zur Verfügung steht und der Besitz der zahlreichen Opfer seines Misstrauens die
Kassen füllt.”
11Cf. Summerer 2009: 27–28.
12Cf. Mayor 2008; Antonelli 1992: 7.
13Cf. Erciya 2006: 175. See also Olbrycht 2009: 176 (however, he wanted to have a good cause
for war); McGing 2009b; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 33–35, 81–89; McGing 1986: 72–88; Sherwin-
White 1984: 108–131; Glew 1977a: 397–398.
14Cf. Majbom Madsen 2009: 200. Thus, Mithradates and Rome are regarded as equally aggressive.
15Cf. Strobel 1996a; Strobel 1996b: Bithynia was the main aggressor. Accepted by Michels 2009:
203. See also Gabrielsen 2005: 35–38. On the Hellenistic coloring of the Pontic kingdom see
Michels 2014: 138–140; McGing 2009b; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 307–331.
132 S. Müller
stronger than Rome, his failure was a grand one, and he was long remembered as a sym-
bol of uncompromising defiance.”16
This paper aims at exploring the background of the rise and fall of Mithradates’ short-
lived Pontic Empire at the Black Sea, in accordance with the key question of the confer-
ence, whether the categories “decapitated” or “defective” can be applied to this political
creation or not.
A fundamental problem of the research on Mithradates VI is the lack of any Pontic
literary sources and thus direct Pontic voices. In the absence of the knowledge of the
Pontic view on the events as would have been provided by a Pontic historiography, con-
sequently, regarding literary material, the burden of proof rests with non-Pontic, mostly
additionally non-contemporary Greek and Roman authors such as Sallust, Pompey
Trogus, Strabo, Velleius Paterculus, Florus, Appian, and Plutarch. They have a different
cultural perspective, use cultural stereotypes regarding Mithradates and his allies coined
for other Eastern peoples and adopt the view of the enemies and victors who fought
against them. Hence, Mithradates is treated primarily as an opponent to Rome.17 Apart
from his actions connected with Roman interests, there is scant information on his reign,
the structure of his empire, court, and administration. Therefore, their reports are covered
by a layer of bias. Exemplarily, according to Plutarch, allegedly a Roman, C. Marius,
the old overambitious general, was responsible for the outbreak of the first war between
Rome and Pontos: Being eager for a new prestigious military command in order to win
back his former fame and popularity, he went to Anatolia unscrupulously stirring up
Mithradates by telling him to obey the Roman commands or to be stronger.18 Apart from
the negative view on Marius who drags the Roman people into a war for the selfish sake
of his own personal glory—a traditional characteristic of a tyrant,19 suspiciously, this
image of Mithradates as Rome’s perfect enemy sounds like retrospective artifice and the
tradition that the Pontic king needed Roman help to produce a war plan seems to echo
clichés of a “barbarian” lack of efficiently combining erga and logoi.20
Another problem is the debated question whether there exist authentic reflections
of Mithradates’ propaganda or any Pontic document preserved by the G reco-Roman
sources. One example is the Letter of Mithradates preserved in Sallust’s fragmentary
16Cf. McGing 2009a.

17Cf. McGing 2009b.
18Plut. Mar. 31.3. Cf. Cic. Brut. 1.5.3.
19On the predominantly negative traditions on Marius see Werner 1995.
20However, the possibility that Plutarch used a pro-Marian source and even the historicity of the
anecdote is debated. Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1999: 507 suggesting that perhaps this may be another
“episode of imitatio Alexandri by the Pontic king”, compared with Ps.-Kall. 1.30.1; 2.1.11. F.e.,
Plutarch’s episode is taken as a fact by Mayor 2008: 132; McGing 2009a: 208; b (“a stern warn-
ing”); Olbrycht 2009: 173; Kallet-Marx 1995: 245–247; McGing 1986: 86. See also Ballesteros
Pastor 1996: 66–71. However, Majbom Madsen 2009: 199 doubts that Mithradates was regarded
as Rome’s perfect enemy that early.
Histories.21 In this letter, the Arsacid king Phraates III, simultaneously courted by
Lucullus to join the Roman side,22 is asked for support against Rome in the context of
Mithradates’ difficult situation in the winter 69/8 BC due to his misfortunes in the Third
Mithradatic War when he was expelled from Pontos.23 Thereby, the last wills in favor
of the Romans by Attalos III of Pergamon who died in 133 BC and Nikomedes IV of
Bithynia who died in 74 BC are characterized as forgeries by Roman circles:24 The main
argument is that both kings left their own heirs.25 On the one hand, the letter is seen
as the reflection of a genuine personal writing by Mithradates stemming from his pri-
vate archive that was brought to Rome by the victorious Pompey and thus one of the
most important documents for Mithradates’ propagandistic strategies against Rome.26 On
the other hand, Sallust is credited with the invention of the letter as it encompasses sev-
eral general rhetorical traits.27 Suspiciously, the criticism concerning the moral defects
of leading Romans was a traditional subject of Roman historiography. Particularly, this
applies to Sallust and his perception of Roman history of the late republic as a history
of decadence.28 In general, very often in Roman historiography criticism is put in the
mouths of Roman adversaries.29 In addition, all the “news” in the Letter of Mithradates
will have been known to Phraates III in advance without being in need of Mithradates
as an informant. Hence, the letter looks like a Rome-centered piece of rhetoric designed
21On the debate see Ballesteros Pastor 2013b: 73–75.

22App. Mithr. 87; Dio 36.3.
23Sall. Hist. 4.4–19, 58–69; Plut. Luc. 24–29; App. Mithr. 87. Cf. Ahlheid 1988: 68–69.
24The same discussion is on regarding the Last Will of Ptolemy VIII. cf. Criscuolo 2011, 123–150.
25Sall. Hist. 4.69.5; 4.69.8–9: The heirs mentioned are Aristonikos (erroneously called the son of
Attalos III) and an anonymous son of Nikomedes IV and his wife Nysa. According to Gabelko
2009, it was Lykomedes, the son of Nysa, a failing pretender to the Bithynian throne who in vain
appealed to Rome claiming his rights after the death of Nikomedes. On Nikomedes: Liv. per. 93;
Vell. Pat. 2.39.2; App. Mithr. 7; 71; C.C. 1.111. During his reign (94–74 BC), he was driven out
of his kingdom twice by Mithradates VI but re-installed with Roman support (App. Mithr. 10; 57;
Just. 38.3.4; cf. McGing 2009a: 209). The Pontic kingdom had ties to his kingdom: Nikomedes’
father had been married to Laodike, the sister of Mithradates VI. Cf. Gabelko 2009: 49. Probably,
comparable to Ptolemy VIII, Nikomedes made his testament for the moment as a means of secur-
ing his position when he was on the defensive. By informing decisive persons in Bithynia and
Rome as well as in Pontos maybe, he threatened his enemies that Rome might come and take
revenge when Mithradates dared to attack him again, cf. Braund 1983: 29. However, it had no
effect on Mithradates. He tried to occupy Bithynia as soon as Nikomedes had died.
26Cf. Olbrycht 2009: 178, 186, n. 144; McGing 2009b; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 391–396; McGing
1986, 154, 178. Cf. Plut. Pomp. 37.1–2.

27Cf. Girardet 2008: 88, n. 26; Ahlheid 1988: 67 (“an elaborate specimen of deliberative oratory”),
91–92 (however, it is suggested that parts of the letter could be based on pro-Mithradatic sources:
1988: 74); Bikerman 1947.
28Sall. Jug. 4; Sall. Cat. 5; 7; 11–13. Ahlheid 1988: 73 compares the reproach of the Roman cupido
imperii et divitiarum in the letter with the arguments of Jugurtha in Sall. Jug. 81.1.
29Cf. Adler 2006: 403. In general see Adler 2011.
134 S. Müller
for a Roman audience reflecting just the contents that a Roman reader would have
expected from the Pontic king writing to the Parthian king.30 In consequence, the doubts
that the letter was an authentic document or at least featured genuine traits seem jus-
tified. Similarly, the Pontic origins of a collection of prophecies ascribed to Hystaspes
from the first century BC preserved by Lactantius in his Divinae Institutiones (early 4th
century AD) are debated. Lactantius refers to Hystaspes, a very old king of the Medes,
who had a dream interpreted by a seer according to which the Roman Empire and its
name will be removed from Earth.31 It is suggested that Hydaspes is to be identified with
Dareios I’s father.32 As Mithradates is said to have claimed his Achaemenid descent from
Dareios I,33 it is argued that this prophecy was originally written in Greek as a piece of
Mithradates’ propaganda during his wars against Rome.34 The epigraphic and archaeo-
logical evidence is rather poor.35 Some important source material is provided by contem-
porary Pontic coins.36 However, thneir chronology is debated.37 Nevertheless, at least,
the iconography provides some information on the way Mithradates wanted to be per-
ceived by the different recipients to whom his political-self-fashioning was addressed.
Mithradates VI was the heir of a kingdom established by Mithradates I termed
Ktistes in the time of the wars about Alexander’s legacy.38 The family claimed descent
from the famous seven Persian families and later on from the Achaemenids.39 Bosworth
and Wheatley regard this claim as authentic: According to their reconstruction of the
Mithradatic genealogy, the house was related to the family of the former Persian satraps
of Hellespontine Phrygia, thus having Artabazos, a high ranking commander under
30See also McGing 1986: 154–160.

31Cf. Collins 1998: 32. On the debate see Sundermann 2004.
32Cf. Bidez and Cumont 1938, I: 215, n. 3.
33Just. 38.7.1.
34Cf. Buelens 2014; Momigliano 1987: 140 (written by either friends of Mithradates or the
Parthians).
35Cf. Kreuz 2009: 131; Højte 2009a: 100; Michels 2009: 18. On epigraphic sources: Michels 2009:
106–114; McGing 1986: 89–92. On archaeological sources (portraits; architecture): Michels 2009:
116–117; Højte 2009c; Erciyas 2006: 148–159; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 388–390.
36Olshausen 2009 provides a catalogue of ca. 7500 bronze coins from the time of Mithradates
VI, listing 14 types. 4589 coins come from Amisos, 514 from Sinope and 341 from Amastris.
Important types seem to be no. VI showing Ares/sword (2050 Ex.), type VII Aegis/Nike (3510 Ex.)
and type VIII Athena/Perseus (215 Ex.). Probably, these bronze coins were minted in a military
context as local emissions, so-called “pseudo-autonomous coins,” thus minted for Mithradates VI
but not in his name (Olshausen 2009: 16). Cf. Højte 2009a: 98; Michels 2009: 203–204 (payment
for local soldiers); Erciyas 2006: 116–118; de Callataÿ 2005: 115–136.
37Cf. de Callataÿ 1997.
38Diod. 20.111.4.
39Descent from the Seven Persians: Polyb. 5.43.2; Diod. 19.43.2; De vir illustr. 76.1. Descent from
the Achaemenids: Just. 38.8.1.

Xerxes, as their founder, whose father has been identified with the uncle of Dareios I,
hence an Achaemenid, while Artabazos’ mother may have come from one of the seven
Persian families.40 Given this, Mithradates’ family were Iranian nobles who lived at
the satrapal court of Antigonos Monophthalmos and were forced to flee further east
to Paphlagonia in about 314 BC during the Third Diadoch War.41 Mithradates I. (ca.
302–266) established a base and realm in Kimiata.42 It is uncertain when he proclaimed
himself king.43 Mithradates II (ca. 250–220) established ties to the Seleucids marrying
into their house, thus receiving parts of Greater Phrygia as his wife’s dowry, and giving
his daughter Laodike in marriage to Antiochos III.44 In the reign of Mithradates III (ca.
220–190), for the first time, Pontic coins showed a portrait of the king.45 Pharnakes I
(ca. 196/85–170/54) made Sinope a royal residence.46 Mithradates IV (ca. 170/54–152/1)
was a Roman ally.47 Mithradates V (ca. 150–123/120) supported Rome in the Third
Punic War, against Aristonikos in Pergamon and was rewarded with Greater Phrygia
when the Romans installed the province of Asia.48 In the 120s, he invaded Kappadokia
and made Ariarathes VI marry his daughter Laodike. About 122, during the minority of
Mithradates VI, Greater Phrygia was annexed back by Rome.49 When his father died
40Cf. Bosworth and Wheatley 1998: 159, deducing this from Sall. Hist. 2.85 and Flor. 1.40.1 nam-
ing a certain Artabazes as the founder of the Pontic line. Artabazos was one of Xerxes’s command-
ers and in high favor with him (Hdt. 7.66.2; 9.41.1). His father Pharnakes is regarded as the uncle
of Dareios I. Bosworth’s and Wheatley’s construction is widely accepted, e.g. by Michels 2014:
136; Ballesteros Pastor 2013a: 183–198; McGing 2009a: 205; b; Olbrycht 2009: 164; Erciyas
2006: 176; McGing 2003: 84-85; McGing 2004.
41Plut. Demetr. 4; Plut. Mor. 183A; App. Mithr. 9.27–28. See Ballesteros Pastor 2013a; Ballesteros
Pastor 1996: 24. Cf. Bosworth and Wheatley 1998: 162–164 arguing against the date of 302 BC
for the flight (as proposed by f.e. McGing 2009b). They think that after the battle of Ipsos, he was
rewarded with Mysia by the winning side as he had joined it.
42Strab. 12.3.41; Diod. 20.111.4. Cf. McGing 2009b; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 24–26.
43Cf. McGing 2004. Perhaps in the early 290s, or in 281, after a victory over Seleucid troops. Cf.
Michels 2014: 136; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 26.

44Polyb. 5.43.1–4; 5.74.5; Just. 38.5.3. Cf. Michels 2009: 32; McGing 2004; Ballesteros Pastor
1996: 26–27.
45See f.e. BMC Pontos 42, no. 1. Cf. Michels 2009: 89; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 27. de Callataÿ
2009: 63–94 stresses that the Pontic kings from Mithradates III to Mithradates V did not pro-
duce large sums of coins but always in accordance with the current need, particularly in military
contexts.
46Polyb. 23.9.2; Strab. 2.3.11; Liv. 40.2.6. Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 28. Rhodian embassies
complained in Rome: Polyb. 24.8–9. Cf. McGing 2004.

47Polyb. 33.12.1. Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 30.
48Just. 37.1.2; 38.5.3; Strab. 14.1.38. Cf. Erciyas 2006: 176; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 30–32.
49Just. 38.5.3. Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 34. On the date see Ramsey 1999.
136 S. Müller
in 120 BC,50 Mithradates was 13 or more probably, 11 years old.51 His mother took up
the regency and he was acclaimed together with his brother Mithradates Chrestos with
whom he was associated in inscriptions on Delos.52 However, he got rid of both of them
in about 119 BC when he began his sole regency, and simultaneously the rise of the
Pontic kingdom and creation of an empire with wide-spanned networks.53 In the follow-
ing 25 years of his reign, he expanded the kingdom substantially, leading it to its greatest
geographical and political extent during which it covered nearly the whole of Asia Minor
and Greece including Thrace and Macedonia.
At the beginning of Mithradates’ rule, his realm stretched from the Halys to the
Armenian regions above Trapezous on the eastern side of the river. On the western side
of the Halys, parts of Paphlagonia and the coast up to Amastris belonged to him.54 In
the north, its frontier was formed by the Black Sea while in the south, it was bordered
by the mountains of Kappadokia. In about 100 BC, he expanded to the northern side of
the Black Sea taking advantage of a request by the city of Chersonesos to become its
protector.55 A campaign against the Scythians resulted into the conquest of the Krimea
and occupation of the Bosporan kingdom.56 He tried to control Kappadokia through the
regency of his sister Laodike, widow of the king, occupied Paphlagonia together with
Nikomedes III of Bithynia and perhaps parts of Galatia and brought under his control the
Greek cities of the western coast of the Black Sea.57 He conquered Lesser Armenia and
Kolchis and made the king of Armenia marry his daughter Kleopatra in ca. 95 BC.58 The
struggle for the control over Kappadokia resulting into conflicts with Bithynia, triggered
the intervention of Rome.59 The Romans wanted to establish their own candidate on the
50Strab. 10.4.10; Just. 37.1.6. Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 34.

51Just. 37.2.1–2; Strab. 10.4.10; Eutr. 6.12.3; Oros. 6.5.7; Memnon BNJ 434 F 22.2. Cf. Ramsey
1999: 233. On his assassination: Strab. 10.4.10.
52OGIS 369 (= IDélos 1560); OGIS 368 (dedication to Zeus Ourios). Cf. Michels 2009: 106;
McGing 1986: 89–90. See also Memnon BNJ 434 F 1.22.2; Strab. 10.4.10; Just. 37.1.6. Cf.
Verdejo Manchado and Antela-Bernárdez 2015: 121–126; Ballesteros Pastor 2006b: 209–211,
215–216.
53App. Mithr. 112. Cf. McGing 2009b; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 40.
54Strab. 12.3.1; 12.3.9; 12.3.18. Cf. Erciyas 2006: 176; McGing 2004; Weimert 1984: 18. On the
history of the city of Amastris cf. Cohen 1995: 383.

55Syll.³ 709; Strab. 7.4.3.
56Strab. 7.4.4; Just. 37.3.2; 38.7.3–4. Cf. Erciyas 2006: 163; Olbrycht 2004: 337–338; Ballesteros
Pastor 1996: 43–55.

57Just. 37.3.3–38.1.1. Cf. McGing 2009a: 208; Olbrycht 2009: 164; McGing 2009b; Majbom
Madsen 2009: 195.

58Just. 38.3.2. Cf. McGing 2009a: 208.
59Plut. Sull. 5; Liv. per. 74; Front. Strat. 1.5.18; App. Mithr. 32; 42; 57; Memnon FGrH 434 F
1.22.5; Just. 38.1.2–8.1. Cf. McGing 2009b; McGing 2003: 86; Dmitriev 2006: 285–296;
Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 71–86; McGing 1986: 86–88.
Kappadokian throne and fought Mithradates in a series of wars. In the First Mithradatic
War 89–85 BC, Mithradates VI conquered Bithynia, Kappadokia, the Roman province
of Asia, great parts of southern Greece, Macedonia and Thrace.60 At the height of his
empire, Mithradates was “master of a network of subjects, allies, and friends incorporat-
ing almost the entire circuit of the Black Sea.”61 However, when Sulla arrived in Greece
in 87, Mithradates soon lost the conquests there and in the Balkan area. Bithynia, Asia
and Kappadokia were also gone. But he was allowed to keep the possessions he had
owned before the war.62 The second so-called Mithradatic War 83–82 BC, was a series
of raids into Pontic territory by Licinius Murena, the Roman governor of Asia whom
Sulla had left in charge, “a war of plunder, used as an opportunity to collect booty and
enhance prestige” on Murena’s side.63 He was repulsed by Mithradates after some hes-
itation.64 The atmosphere between Rome and Pontos was tense and despite the diplo-
matic attempts by Mithradates to come to terms with the Romans,65 mutual grievances
dominated. In the Third Mithradatic War 73–63 BC, the Romans took Bithynia left to
them by the last will of the deceased king Nikomedes IV in 73 and Mithradates invaded
Bithynia.66 Probably, he realized that the peace had been but a short pause and wanted to
strike before the Roman side recovered from civil war. After having been defeated and
expelled from Pontos by Lucullus in 71,67 he fled to his son-in-law, Tigranes of Armenia,
who refused to help him regain his kingdom. Tigranes was forced by the massive Roman
demand to surrender to unsuccessfully try to stop a Roman invasion of his own realm
near Tigranocerta in 70 BC.68 In the winter 69/8 BC, Mithradates took command over
a new army levied by Tigranes, and managed to win back his kingdom in 67 after the
victory at Zela.69 In 66, he was defeated by Pompey and had to flee again.70 The Arsacid
king Phraates III chose a policy of non-intervention in order to play it safe.71 In 63 BC,
60Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 96–145; Sherwin-White 1984: 121–148.

61Cf. McGing 2009b.
62App. Mithr. 30–45; Strab. 13.1.27; Plut. Sulla 22; 24; Plut. Sert. 23; Liv. per. 83; Vell. 2.23.6. Cf.
McGing 1986: 89–131; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 107–108, 147–189.

63Majbom Madsen 2009: 198. Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 192–196.
64App. Mithr. 64–66; Cic. Fam. 15.4.6; Cic. Manil. 9.
65App. Mithr. 67.
66App. Mithr. 72.
67Plut. Luc. 15–17; Cic. Manil. 22; Liv. per. 97; Sall. Hist. 4.4–19; Memnon BNJ 434 F 1.30.1. Cf.
Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 233–235.

68Plut. Luc. 27–28; Sall. Hist. 4.56–57; Oros. 6.3.6; Front. Strat. 2.1.14.
69Plut. Luc. 35; Dio 36.9.1; Cic. Manil. 5.
70Plut. Pomp. 32; Eutrop. 6.12.2; Oros. 6.4.6. Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 265–276.
71Dio 36.3. Cf. Olbrycht 2009: 178–179; McGing 1986: 145–153; Ziegler 1964: 24–25 adding that
furthermore, the Arsacid relationship with Tigranes of Armenia had suffered from Tigranes’ occu-
pation of parts of Parthia after the death of Mithradates II. On Tigranes, Armenia and the Arsacids
see Olbrycht 2009: 168–169, 178.
138 S. Müller
he lost his kingdom, took refuge in Armenia and was later forced to commit suicide by
his own son.72 Pontos came under Roman control and was divided into eleven adminis-
trative units forming a new province together with Bithynia.73 Pharnakes II (63-47 BC)
appealed to Pompey sending him the corpse of his father.74 Pompey granted him author-
ity over the Bosporan kingdom and Pharnakes became Rome’s ally.75 But when he tried
to expand his realm by invading Kolchis, Armenia, and Pontos, and marching to Bithynia
and Asia, Julius Caesar stopped him at Zela in 47.76 Pharnakes drew back and died a lit-
tle later.77
There are manifold reasons for the rise of Mithradates’ empire. First of all, he had
a solid financial base. The annual tribute from the Krimea and adjoining territories is
said to have been 180.000 measures of corn and 200 talents of silver.78 In addition, the
economy of his kingdom provided him with an advantage.79 Pontos was mostly self-suf-
ficient producing a great variety of goods such as wheat, barley, apples, peas, cherries,
olives, nuts, wine, honey, herbs, timber, mules, oxen, sheep, horses, tuna, ducks, copper,
iron, salt, and jewelry.80 Thus, while not being dependent on import, Mithradates profited
from export and taxes at the seaports.81 The most important export goods were timber,
tuna fish and ceramics as the archaeological evidence shows.82 Pontos’ main trade part-
ners were probably the cities on the northern coast of the Black Sea, the Aegean and
the eastern Mediterranean.83 Its economic power made Pontos under Mithradates fit for
the collision with Rome. Pontos also had some metal resources.84 The second source for
Pontos’ rise was its manpower provided by the Black Sea areas that flourished during the
time of his reign.85 Mithradates built up a great fleet reportedly consisting of 300 ships in
72App. Mithr. 108–112; Just. 37.1.9.

73Cf. Michels 2009: 308 suggesting that the reason was the absence of urban administrative
centers.
74Plut. Pomp. 42.2; App. Mithr. 113.
75App. Mithr. 113–114.
76Plut. Caes. 50; Liv. per. 113; Flor. 2.13.61–62. Cf. Højte 2009b: 121; Olbrycht 2004: 341–342.
77App. Mithr. 120; Strab. 42.45–48.
78Strab. 7.4.6. Cf. Olbrycht 2004: 338.
79Cf. Weimert 1984: 143–144.
80Cf. McGing 2004; Mehl 1987: 124; Weimert 1984: 143.
81Cf. Geyer 1932: 2202.
82Cf. Mehl 1987: 123.
83Cf. Castelli 2014; Mehl 1987: 180; In general see Rizzo 2014: 555–557.
84Cf. de Callataÿ 1997: 242–244.
85Cf. Olbrycht 2009: 176; Majbom Madsen 2009: 191; McGing 2009b; Erciyas 2006: 164;
Olbrycht 2004: 337–338.

88 BC, when he was at the height of his career. He had a large army and never ceased to
care for the logistics and to improve his army and fleet.86
Third, he had formed a network of eastern alliances with the Arsacid Empire,
Armenia and Bithynia, including his connections with Greece and Athens in particular.87
Thus, the inscriptions of the monument at Delos dedicated to Mithradates in 102/1 BC
by the Athenian Helianax that name also Ariarathes VII of Kappadokia, Mithradates’
nephew, Antiochos VII Grypos of Syria and two officials of the Arsakid king, appar-
ently envoys of Mithradates II, may mirror a kind of “Momentaufnahme der interna-
tionalen Kontakte des Königs Mithradates aus der Sicht des Helianax.”88 He used the
interests of his neighbours to make them his allies. So he was able to create a strong
eastern alliance by making the Arsacids, Armenia and Bithynia his allies. They were
united by their objection to any more Roman influence in their zones of interest. As long
as he could rely on these alliances forming an eastern front against Rome, he was able
to take chances. As Marek Jan Olbrycht pointed out: “Any active policy towards Rome
by Eupator would have been impossible if he had not his eastern frontier bordering the
Parthian sphere of influence, including Armenia, firmly secured.”89 He also suggests that
the increase of the emissions of Pontic gold and silver coins in the 90s and 80s BC could
partly be explained by Parthian support.90
Mithradates was successful using the widespread resentments of the population of Asia
Minor and Greece against the Roman government for his purpose, offering himself and
his policy as an alternative to Roman oppression and promising to free the respective pop-
ulations from Rome.91 Obviously, his self-fashioning responded to contemporary needs
and desires and used the right propagandistic slogans at exactly the right time. In case that
Habichts proposal is correct and Mithradates was eponymous archon in Athens in 88/87
BC—however, there is no further evidence on this and it is possible but uncertain—,92 it
86App. Mithr. 17. Cf. Plut. Luc. 7 for 73 BC. The numbers mentioned by the ancient authors have
to be treated with caution, though: According to Just. 38.1.8: 80,000 foot-soldiers, 10,000 riders;
App. Mithr. 49: 260,000 foot-soldiers, 50,000 riders; Plut. Sulla 15: 100,000 foot-soldiers, Plut.
Luc. 7: 10,000 riders/ 120,000 foot-soldiers, 16,000 riders.
87Memnon, BNJ 434 F 1.22.3–4; On the Pontic-Arsacid relations see Olbrycht 2011: 275–281.
88Michels 2009: 110. He thinks that the inscription is in accordance with Mithradates’ own wishes.
Cf. Olbrycht 2009: 167–168; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 431; McGing 1986: 90–91. See IDélos
1563.
89Olbrycht 2009: 164.
90Cf. Olbrycht 2009: 172.
91Cf. Michels 2009: 121, 215; McGing 2009b; Kallet-Marx 1995: 138–148; Bohm 1989: 183.
92Cf. Kotsidu 2000: KNr. 301, 423–424.

140 S. Müller
may attest to his popularity in Athens during the First Mithradatic War, thus at the time of
the climax of his career.93
Additionally, he seemed to have addressed the various cultures in his empire in dif-
ferent ways of self-fashioning, choosing separate ways to suit each respective culture to
appeal to them. Mithradates presented himself as the saviour king of Asia, promoting
his course in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor and Greece.94 He also showed himself as
a new Alexander, freeing Asia Minor from the Romans, being predestined to win, and
as a new Dionysos promising wealth and prosperity and military success in the East to
his allies.95 Michels shows that regarding his claim to bring freedom to the respective
populations, Mithradates relied on a successful propagandistic strategy he had chosen
before when he styled himself as the savior of the inhabitants of the Greek coastal cit-
ies at the Black Sea, Chersones Taurika and the Krimea, freeing them from the threat
posed by the Scythians.96 Of course, the theme of liberating people from foreign
oppressing foes is one of the most frequently used propagandistic weapons in ancient
warfare.97 Exemplarily, it was used by Brasidas during the Peloponnesian War attempt-
ing at making Chalkidian members of the Athenian Delian Confederacy revolt from it
or by Dionysios I of Syracuse in the context of his expansionist policy, or by Agesilaos
II during his campaign in Asia Minor, or by Alexander III when the Macedonian con-
quered Ionia. Often, this propaganda theme was a successful ideological tool, also in the
case of the First Mithradatic War.98 Inevitably, too, the high expectations raised by such
promises could be disappointed and thus turned against the ones who made unfulfilled
promises.
The main features of Mithradates’ political self-fashioning regarding his conflicts
against Rome are reflected by the iconography of the Pontic coins under his reign.99
93Cf. Habicht 1976: 127–142 on IG II² 1713; Syll.³ 733. On Athens’ favorable attitude in 88 BC
see also App. Mithr. 28–29. Cf. Verdejo Manchado and Antela-Bernárdez 2015: 123–124; Michels
2009: 115, 215; McGing 2009b; Habicht 1997: 303–321; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 119–138. On 88
BC as the climax of Mithradates’ successes cf. Majbom Madsen 2009: 191 (“on top of the world”,
“his finest hour”).
94Just. 38.7.8; App. Mithr. 21. Cf. Bugh 2014; Munk Højte 2009c: 149; McGing 2009a: 206;
Michels 2009: 215; Majbom Madsen 2009: 191; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 300; Glew 1977a: 254–
256. See also McGing 1986: 88–108.
95Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 2009: 217; Michels 2009: 117, n. 576, 208–209, 215; Munk Højte 2009c:
149; Erciyas 2006: 165; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 403; Bohm 1989: 153–155, 172–178. On statues
of Dionysos in the Black Sea area during his reign see Panait Bîrzescu 2014.
96Cf. Michels 2009: 104–105.
97Thus, Michels 2009: 105 is right arguing against the suggestion of Bohm 1989: 159 that this
propaganda of Mithradates proves for a kind of “Hellenic turn” of his policy and self-fashioning.
98Cf. Majbom Madsen 2009: 191.
99Cf. Verdejo Manchado and Antela-Bernárdez 2015: 124; Michels 2009: 151, 202–219, 250;
Bohm 1989: 155–157; Salomone Gaggero 1997: 102; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 382.
Thus, Dionysos or his attributes appeared on series of his bronze coins.100 As for the
motifs of the reverse of his tetradrachms, silver drachms, and gold staters, first, a Pegasos
appears connected with Perseus, the reputed ancestor of the Persian kings according
to Herodotos and Xenophon and also associated with Alexander as one of his ances-
tors.101 However, it was also stressed that this motif had a dynastic tradition and special
significance for Mithradates’ family as Perseus appears already before his reign on the
reverse of Pontic coins.102 On the reverse of Mithradates’ later tetradrachms, drachms
and gold staters, a grazing stag appears variously interpreted as a symbol of Artemis of
Ephesos, Telephos, Milesian Apollo, Ionia, or as an element of the Pontic tradition hint-
ing at Men.103 Probably, again, the motif was deliberately open to different interpreta-
tions but perhaps with an emphasis on the allusion to the Ephesian sanctuary of Artemis
regarding which Mithradates also posed as a benefactor.104 The eight-pointed star and
moon sickle that appears on the reverse of all of his gold and silver coins is similarly
disputed. Mostly, it is regarded as the emblem either of Pontos or the Pontic house.105
While on the one hand, it is seen as a symbol of the god Men and his cult,106 alterna-
tively of Artemis Phosphoros,107 on the other hand, it is regarded as a polyvalent symbol
of the Pontic king’s divine right to rule including associations with Men and any local
deity.108 Mithradates’ gold and silver coins show two types of portrait, the earlier one
showing him already idealized but more in accordance with his real age wearing a dia-
dem and often sideburns and the later one showing a rejuvenated youthful king with a
100Cf. Munk Højte 2009c: 149; Michels 2009: 208–209; Summerer 1995: 310; McGing 1986: 85.
101Hdt. 7.150.2; Xen. Kyr. 1.2.1. On Alexander and Perseus: Arr. An. 3.3.1; Strab. 17.1.43. Cf.
Munk Højte 2009c: 148: Perseus serves to point to Mithradates’ dual heritage. See also Michels
2009: 190 (association with Persian kings); Erciyas 2006: 118, 148, 164.
102Cf. de Callataÿ 2009: 75; Michels 2009: 186, 190; Erciyas 2006: 118; Ballesteros Pastor 1996:
383.
103For an overview see Michels 2009: 212–213. Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 384–385.
104Strab. 14.1.23. Cf. Michels 2009: 213; Erciyas 2006: 148; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 385. The
stag is partly associated with Telephos as according to a variant of his legend, he was abducted
and raised by a hind (Hyg. Fab. 99–100). Cf. Müller 2009: 73. As he was the mythical king of
Pergamon and Mithradates resided in Pergamon 88-85 BC (cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 144–145),
it was suggested that the reverse motif refers to Telephos, cf. Andreae 1997. However, Munk Højte
2009c: 145–146 argues against this showing that the hind already appeared on coins minted before
Mithradates took residence in Pergamon.
105Cf. Munk Højte 2009c: 149; Erciyas 2006: 118–119. See Summerer 1995: 305–306 for an
overview. It is either seen as an Iranian symbol or a combination of Iranian symbolism and the
Macedonian star.
106Cf. Summerer 1995: 307–312. On the importance of this cult in Pontos cf. Michels 2014: 137.
Cf. Strab. 12.3.31.

107Cf. Schönert-Geiss 1972: 35–36.
108Cf. Michels 2009: 188–189. See also Erciyas 2006: 120.

142 S. Müller
diadem, long wavy hair, and an anastole imitating posthumous portraits of Alexander
III.109 The voluntary association becomes even clearer when during the First Mithradatic
war, mints in Messembria and Odessos struck imitations of Alexander’s tetradrachms.110
In Byzantion, it was also referred to Lysimachos when imitations of the Successor’s
tetradrachms were struck during the First Mithradatic War. Probably, the message was
implied that Mithradates wanted to return to the glory of these past times before the
Romans entered the East. In addition, pragmatically, the imitation of famous coins that
had circulated for a long time in this area and were regarded as precious and worthy, trig-
gered associations of financial security and welfare suggesting that Mithradates’ coins
were worthy and thus cooperation with him was rewarding. Thus, he will have addressed
mercenaries in his army and the population of the Greek cities.111 He underlined this
propaganda by acts of strategic euergetism and acts of clemency.112
While the authenticity and also historicity of Mithradates’ claim to his Iranian descent
from the Teispid and Achaemenid kings as a means to appeal to the Iranian parts of his
realm’s population is generally accepted,113 its nature and forms of expression are a mat-
ter of debate. In addition, it is debated whether the Pontic kingdom could have been the
transmitter of knowledge about the Iranian past to the Arsacids or just the other way
round. A key argument is the occurrence of the title “king of kings,” šar šarrāni, MLKYN
MLK’, Greek βασιλεύς βασιλεῶν, Old Persian xšāyaϑiya xšāyaϑiyānām,114 with its
long standing eastern tradition as part of the royal titulature.115 It occurred in the reign
of the Arsacid king Mithradates II appearing on his coins and is attested by epigraphic
sources for Mithradates VI.116 Rahim Shayegan attributes a major role in the develop-
ment of the transmission of knowledge of the Teispids and Achaemenids to Mithradates
109Cf. Munk Højte 2009c: 149; McGing 2009a: 205; Michels 2009: 205–206, 208–209; Erciyas
2006: 148; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 388–390; Bohm 1989: 173.
110Cf. Munk Højte 2009c: 149.
111Munk Højte 2009c: 149.
112Cf. Verdejo Manchado and Antela-Bernárdez 2015: 124; Michels 2009: 104, 114–118 (exem-
plarily, Mithradates gave money to the inhabitants of Apameia suffering from the misfortune of an
earthquake (Strab. 12.8.18), the Athenians and to Tralleis (Cic. Flacc. 59), dedicated armory to the
Delphi and Nemea, showed clemency to the defeated enemy during the First Mithradatic War and
cared for the extension of the sacred precinct of the Ephesian Artemision: Strab. 14.1.23); McGing
2009a: 210; McGing 1986: 107; Glew 1977a.
113Cf. Shayegan 2016: 14–15; Olbrycht 2009: 164; Michels 2009: 215; McGing 2009a: 205; b;
2004.
114Cf. DB § 1; DE § 2; DKa § 1; DNa § 2; XFa § 1; XIa § 1; XPa § 2; XPh § 2; XPi § 1; XPr § 1;
XSc § 1; XVa § 2; A1Pa § 2; A²Ha § 1; A²Hc § 2; A²Sa § 1; A²Sb § 1.

115Cf. Olbrycht 2009: 165. On its long standing eastern tradition see Engels 2014; Seux 1967.
116IDélos 1581–1582. Cf. IDélos 1560: erected by Dionysios of Athens for Mithradates and his
brother Mithradates Chrestos. Cf. Olbrycht 2013: 70.

VI of Pontus and his war propaganda against Rome.117 In consequence, according to

Shayegan, an Arsacid Achaemenid political revival also developed partly because of the
long-term Roman threat to the Arsacid sphere of influence in Asia Minor. By propagat-
ing their Persian and Seleucid ancestors, the Arsacids emphasized their historically legiti-
mate claims to supremacy in Asia.118 However, it has been objected that Pontos might
have learned from the Arsacids.119 According to Trogus-Justin, in a speech Mithradates
delivered in 89 BC on the eve of the First Mithradatic War addressing the population of
his empire, he recalled his paternal descent from Kyros and Dareios and his maternal
descent from Alexander and Seleukos.120 Predominantly, a historical kernel is suggested:
Mithradates VI relied on the Persian kings and Alexander, either as a political device to
legitimize his planned expansion or to gain the acceptance of his rule within the eastern
population.121 Alternatively, the claim accepted as genuine but only as a proof of a spo-
radic instrumentalization of the Iranian past and selected historical information from time
to time, not as a marker of a constantly employed systematical imitation. Thus, David
Engels thinks that the Pontic kings had a polyvalent representation with a particular focus
on Seleucid traditions.122 Onomastic evidence is regarded as further proof of Mithradates’
representation as an heir of the Persian and Macedonian conquerors: He called his sons
Dareios, Xerxes, Artaphrenes, Oxathres, Mithradatis, and his daughters Nysa, Kleopatra
and Eupatra.123 At his court, Hellenistic culture was cultivated and he owned a great
library that Pompey took to Rome after he defeated him.124 In sum, as recent studies
117Perhaps, also the royal tombs of Amaseia could be seen as being in the tradition of the tombs at
Naqš-i Rustam.
118Cf. Shayegan 2011: 244–245, 330; 2016: 14–15.
119Cf. Olbrycht 2012: 720; 2013: 70.
120Just. 38.7.1–2.
121Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 2013a: 183; Shayegan 2011: 244–245; Ballesteros Pastor 2009: 217;
McGing 2009a: 205.

122Cf. Engels 2014.
123App. Mithr. 116. Cf. McGing 2009a: 205; b.
124Plut. Pomp. 37.1–2; See also Ballesteros Pastor 2006a. On the court being a point of attraction for
Greek intellectuals: App. Mithr. 112; Oros. 6.4.6. Perhaps, in the context of his political imitation of
Alexander, Mithradates claimed to be in possession of Alexander’s chlamys taken from the treas-
ures of the Ptolemies or Seleucids (App. Mithr. 117). Reportedly, Pompey Magnus wore this very
chlamys of Alexander after the defeat of Mithradates when posing as the victor in his triumph (Plin.
NH 7.95). However, the historical substance of these stories about Pompey’s imitatio Alexandri have
been criticized and thus are to be treated with caution. One should be reminded of the ambiguity
of the reception of the figure of Alexander in Rome. The Macedonian conqueror was by no means
regarded consistently as a positive role-model. McGing 2009a: 210 will be right suspecting retro-
spective myth-making in these anecdotes. Similarly, the anecdote that Mithradates once lodged at
the same inn as Alexander (App. Mithr. 20) sounds like a Roman tale in order to depict him and his
alleged role model as drunkards. On Mithradates’ patronage see Michels 2009: 35–36.
144 S. Müller
emphasized,125 Mithradates ought not to be classified as either a Hellenized or Iranized

ruler, but as part of Pontos’ and his dynasty’s tradition embedding Hellenistic and Iranian
elements and used them for his propaganda in order to appeal to the different cultures he
addressed. He combined or stressed them depending on his recipients.
Trogus-Justin preserves legends about Mithradates’ birth and childhood that may
reflect genuine Pontic traditions. These stories stress miraculous signs foreshadow-
ing his deeds.126 According to one of the stories, after he had lost his father very early,
Mithradates’ life was threatened by his guards who several times tried, unsuccessfully,
to kill him. As a consequence, he fled from the court and lived in the woods for seven
years—a highly symbolic number, in the eastern tradition often connected with strate-
gies of legitimization.127 Mithradates lived and fought with wild animals thus proving
his skills as a hunter and warrior. Distant from courtly culture, associated with luxury
and corruption, he grew up as a strong and incorruptible warrior to come back and claim
his inherited kingdom.128 The legend is modelled on the leitmotif of the hero who was
exposed as a child frequently forming part of foundation myths and fictitious biog-
raphies of founder figures.129 A famous example which according to Herodotos origi-
nates with Persian oral tradition is the variant of the childhood legend of Kyros II.130 As
Mithradates wanted to address the Iranian parts of the population of his kingdom and
claimed also an Iranian descent from the Persian kings, this legend about Kyros II may
have been a possible model. However, the Pontic version was not a simple adaption but
a variant compatible with the circumstances of Mithradates’ accession: While Kyros was
said to have been exposed as a baby,131 Mithradates was not exposed and already in his
early teens when his father died. Hence, the missing exposition was substituted by his
self-inflicted exile into the wild on his flight from his murderous guards. While accord-
ing to his legend, Kyros II grew up in the wild mountains being raised by a shepherd
called Mithradates and his wife, Mithradates lived only for 7 years in the outback (Kyros
for 11 years) and hunted and fought with wild animals. Usually, animals appear to save
the exposed hero being sent by the supportive gods. In the case of Mithradates, these ani-
mals become his trainers and teachers. This also symbolizes the divine protection fore-
shadowing his expansive successes as a warrior king.
125Cf. Michels 2009: 343–350; Erciyas 2006: 176.

126Just. 37.2. Cf. McGing 1986: 43–46 (Iranian and Hellenistic elements). See also Ramsey
1999: 230–233. He thinks that Trogus relied on an eye-witness report of his uncle who served in
Pompey’s army during the Mithradatic War (Just. 43.5.12).
127Just. 37.2.4–7. Cf. Lerouge-Cohen 2013.
128Just. 37.2.8–3.1.
129On this pattern in general see Rank 1909. On the variant of the legend of Mithradates cf. Mayor
2008: 371–373; Müller 2009: 72.

130Hdt. 1.107–122.
131Hdt. 1.107–113.
Mithradates took advantage of the inner conflicts and other military engagements of
Rome in the time of his expansion. This prevented the Romans from focusing on the
wars against him. He also attempted to find a Roman ally against the Romans. The
Roman rebel to Sulla and his regime, Quintus Sertorius whose operation base was in
Spain, is said to have concluded a treaty with Mithradates VI.132 Mostly, the sources
attest to the promise by Mithradates to send 3000 talents and 40 ships while Sertorius
promised in accordance with the senate in exile to grant him Bithynia and Kappadokia.
Only Appian claims that he promised to give him the province of Asia which is far from
credible.133 While this alliance is mostly regarded as a historical fact,134 there is no single
proof or sign that there was ever any consequence from this alleged alliance.135 In conse-
quence, blown up by hostile Roman discourses, this alliance may in fact have been noth-
ing more than diplomatic contacts and negotiations between Sertorius and Mithradates
that led to nothing.136
It is difficult to guess how much the political structure of his empire, its organi-
zation and administration contributed to its rise as the source material does not pro-
vide us with sufficient information about how the Pontic Empire was administered.137
132Plut. Sert. 23–24; Plut. Luc. 8; Liv. per. 93; Sall. Hist. 2.91 M; Cic. 2 Verr. 1.87; Oros. 6.2.12;
App. Mithr. 68; 70; 112. According to Plutarch (Sert. 21.6), the report that Sertorius planned to
invade Rome with Pontic support was a rumour in the city of Rome. However, Appian (Iber. 101;
Civ. 1.108) claims that it was a fact. Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 203–210. Uncritically, Mayor
2008: 259, 261 calls Sertorius the “Roman counterpart to Mithradates” and his soulmate. On
Sertorius’ war in general see König 2000; García Morà 1991a.
133App. Mithr. 68.
134Cf. Korolenkov 2013: 163–167 (who even believes in the transmission of Asia); Majbom
Madsen 2009: 198; Mayor 2008: 258–261; Konrad 1994, 191–200; 2006: 184–185; Ballesteros
Pastor 1996: 203–210; von Haehling 1993: 150 (including Asia); Garciá Morá 1991b: 287–298;
Spann 1976, 103–105; 1987: 99–104.
135No ships and arrivals of the talents are reported. Thus, one has to be very cautious to accept
the stories. Partly, it is assumed that the rise of the production of Pontic coins in this time would
have been a proof that Mithradates sent the money to Sertorius (Korolenkov 2013: 166; Majbom
Madsen 2009: 198; de Callataÿ 1997: 341; Konrad 1994: 199). Nothing is ever heard of the ships.
However, it is partly believed that they were sent to Spain: Ballesteros-Pastor 1996: 208; Konrad
1994: 199–200; Spann 1987: 129 (who thinks that they arrived when Sertorius had already been
murdered). Sonnabend 1998 doubts the historicity of these reports reasonably arguing that they
were biased by Roman propaganda of the victors of Sertorius who demonized him claiming that he
joined the course of a second Hannibal, thus being the worst traitor.
136Cf. Müller 2014: 99–100, with n. 48–49; Sonnabend 1998: 202–206; McGushin 1992: 215. The
literary sources rely on rumours spread in Rome by Sertorius’ enemies that he planned to invade
the city as a joint mission together with Mithradates (Plut. Sert. 23.2; App. Civ. 1.112; Iber. 101).
137Cf. Højte 2009a: 95; Michels 2009: 307–308. On the problem of identifying the members of
the local indigenous elites cf. Michels 2009: 18. For an overview see Ballesteros Pastor 1996:
332–371.
146 S. Müller
The Mithradatic dynasty might have taken over the pre-existing Achaemenid admin-
istrative system.138 In any case, Mithradates was an autocratic monarch supreme in
all political, military, judicial and religious matters.139 As there were several pal-
aces (Sinope, Kabeira, Amaseia), it is assumed that Mithradates had several royal
residences and was accustomed to moving around.140 Mithradates V, the father
of Mithradates VI, is known to have had Greeks in important positions at his court
proven by inscriptions.141 The owner of the highest posts in the administration were
the king’s philoi like in Hellenistic empires.142 The king’s sons also took part in the
administration of the empire as satraps and generals.143 The administration seems
to have been controlled by the friends and relatives of the king and responsible for
administrative as well as military functions.144 It was a central administration and the
cities in his multi-ethnic realm will not have been autonomous as there are no hints
at any self-government, assemblies, councils, or known city magistrates.145 Especially
the inland region is regarded as very heterogenous assembling Greeks, Macedonians,
Persians and Anatolians.146 The coastal towns were controlled by Mithradatic com-
manders. The fortresses in Pontos assuring the king’s authority were assumedly the
core of the administrative system having administrative and military functions.147 As
for the titles of strategos and phrourarchos, a strategos could be a general or a pre-
fect while a phrourarchos had also military or administrative function.148 Assumedly,
there were administrative units called strategiai reflected by the issuing places such
as Amisos as its respective center.149 All the places striking coins seem to have a for-
tified citadel. Therefore, presumably, these were also the seats of the strategoi who
issued the coins, mainly for military purpose, simultaneously perhaps identical with
the administrative centers and also the fortresses.150 This identification might explain
138Weimert 1984: 143. The Roman decision to divide Pontos after the death of Mithradates VI into
eleven administrative units is partly seen as a proof of the absence of urban administrative centers
before (Michels 2009: 308–309). Cf. McGing 2009a: 207–208: there might be a touch of improvi-
sation, but after 116/5 not any longer.
139Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 302–307.
140Cf. Højte 2009b: 123.
141Cf. Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 31.
142Cf. Højte 2009a: 100; Ballesteros Pastor 1996: 31.
143Cf. Højte 2009a: 100.
144Strab. 12.2.9. Cf. Højte 2009a: 103.
145Cf. Højte 2009a: 98, 103.
146Cf. McGing 2004.
147Cf. Højte 2009a: 103.
148Cf. Højte 2009a: 102; Michels 2009: 308.
149Cf. Højte 2009a: 9–100, 105.
150Cf. Højte 2009a: 99–100.

why the bronze coins show a great dimension of unity on a local level.151 The cir-
cumstance that Mithradates VI significantly increased the emission of Pontic coins
to such an extent that according to de Callataÿ, the average production of royal tet-
radrachms in the time from Mithradates III to Mithradates IV was 1/14th of his,152 is
to be seen in connection with his wars.153 The numismatic evidence, thus, seems to
confirm McGing’s opinion that already in the early years of Mithradates’ reign, there
was careful preparation and not a touch of improvisation anymore.154 Price pointed
out the relationship between the particularly high production of Pontic coins before
the First and the Third Mithradatic War and Mithradates’ military preparations.155
The attempt to categorize Mithradates as either an aggressor or defender of his herit-
age, a compliant king or imperialist, may be too schematic, thus failing to reflect the
complexity of the political situation. It seems to be influenced by the biased Roman per-
spective and Roman authors’s moral undertones, thinking in black and white and dis-
cussions about who started the war and whether it was a bellum iustum.156 Obviously,
Mithradates aimed at an expansion and territorial gains in Asia Minor from early on
in his reign and cared for being militarily well prepared and equipped while this pol-
icy must have gained wide acceptance among the leading circles of his kingdom. Of
course, expanding the inherited realm formed part of the Hellenistic ideology and may
have been seen as a kind of political automatism every time a new king came on the
throne.157 However, expansion in the context of traditional forms of legitimization in the
former Hellenistic East also usually resulted in conflicts and resistance to expansion-
ist aims. Thus, neither the image of the aggressor nor of the compliant king may char-
acterize pointedly the policy of Mithradates and his leading circles who pursued their
course in accordance with the respective situation. Jesper Majbom Madsen may be right
arguing that Mithradates saw Asia Minor as a natural part of his realm after Rome’s fall
from power there and did not see the Romans preoccupied with their inner conflicts as a
severe threat.158 But the Romans demonstrated that despite all inner struggles, they were
151Cf. Michels 2009: 204; Erciyas 2006: 118.

152Cf. de Callataÿ 2009: 88. See also Michels 2009: 202.
153Cf. de Callataÿ 1997; 1999. Accepted by Michels 2009: 202–203; Olbrycht 2009: 172, 176;
Munk Højte 2009c: 149; Erciyas 2006: 116; McGing 1986: 86; See also Mastrocinque 1999;
Golenko 1969. However, McGing 2009a: 212 has his doubts: “no cast-iron connection between
military activity and minting”.
154Cf. McGing 2009a: 205–208: after 116/5 BC not any longer. Cf. McGing 2009b: “It would
be difficult, however, to deny that he had some sort of imperial ambitions in Asia Minor.” Cf.
McGing 1986: 88: “The king of Pontus had been preparing economically, militarily and diplo-
matically for a number of years: he was ready.” See also Olbrycht 2009: 172.
155Cf. Price 1968: 4–5. See also de Callataÿ 1997: 273–274 on the increase of Pontic coinage
before the First Mithradatic War.

156Also criticized by Majbom Madsen 2009: 192–193.
157See also Gabrielsen 2005: 35–38.
158Majbom Madsen 2009: 191.

148 S. Müller
not willing to accept his increase of power and in the end, both sides did not refrain from
their policy, thus causing tensions and conflicts. However, labeling either Mithradates or
Rome or both sides as aggressive may fall short with regard to the socio-political struc-
tures. These were at the base of the Mithradatic Wars. Their development in contempo-
rary Asia Minor was not only influenced by the Pontic king or the Romans. Additionally,
this approach tends to focus primarily on Pontos on the one side and Rome on the other
while ignoring the perspectives of the other regions involved.
Mithradates’ Pontic Empire began to decline after the loss of the third Mithradatic
War and his flight. The reasons for the decline are manifold: Most importantly, the
Romans got their hands partly free to fight him vigorously and his eastern alliance broke
down. After the death of Mithradates II, his Arsacid successors Sinatrukes and Phraates
III showed no zeal to become involved in a war with Rome. They did not abandon the
carefully kept neutrality that ensured the greatest safety for the Arsacid Empire.159 Thus,
Mithradates received no Parthian support. Furthermore, Tigranes of Armenia failed
to support him, and his former power base Bithynia was lost. The cities in Greece and
Asia Minor did not stand up for him but deserted his cause favoring Rome. Additionally,
there was an inner-dynastic strife that worsened the situation by disuniting his house.
Mithradates’ son ceased to support his father’s course and betrayed him causing his death
taking advantage of the disaffection with the ongoing wars in great parts of the Pontic
population. In sum, Mithradates’ empire collapsed when his son started a revolt against
him and his former Parthian and Armenian allies were not ready to support him anymore.
To sum up, the expansion of Mithradates’ Pontic Empire was due to the combination
of several decisive economic, political and logistic factors: a solid financial base, provided
by economic and demographic advantages and the conquest of the Krimea and adjoin-
ing territories, resources of military manpower, probably a centralized and strictly organ-
ized military administration, inner support by the leading circles, the initially successful
preparation of a network of eastern allies, the use of disaffection with Roman rule in Asia
Minor, and Roman preoccupation with other conflicts. The fall of the empire was caused
by several factors, too: the inner-dynastic strife in combination with the ceasing inner sup-
port by the Pontic leading circles, the failure of Mithradates’ former eastern allies to con-
tinue their support for him and the Roman focus on the war against Pontos. In particular
the end of the special relations to the Arsacids will have been an important factor.160
Mithradates’ defeat might be regarded as a symptom of change of the times and situ-
ation: Rome did not accept any autonomous strong empire as a rival in the sphere of
Asia Minor anymore and Mithradates and his faction failed in keeping the consent to
their agenda, the idea of an alternative to the Roman influence, when Rome increased
159Cf. Olbrycht 2009: 178–179. Olbrycht 2004: 339–341 also points to the failure of the Skythian
people to come to his and his son’s aid.

160Cf. Olbrycht 2009: 178–180.
the pressure. Another factor will have been the disappointed expectations of former sup-
porters who then ceased to back them up as they regarded their promises as unfulfilled.
Obviously, regarding the conquered regions, they did not convince the recipients there to
whom they appealed as a real and better alternative to Rome, that they were so in fact.161
Because of the ongoing war, he failed to fulfill the promise regarding wealth and pros-
perity as symbolized by Mithradates’ association with Dionysos and Dionysian themes.
Finally, as for the question whether this empire could be labeled either decapitated or
defective, it seems difficult to apply one of these categories to the complex development
that was caused by several factors. Rather, in various ways, before its end, Mithradates
and his supporters did not enjoy the former advantages of the political and military situa-
tion anymore.
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The Ghaznavids of Eastern Iran,
a Postcolonial Muslim Empire
Lucian Reinfandt
The Ghaznavids (975–1187 CE) made their appearance exactly in the midterm of what
was one of the most important transitional periods in Islamic history (9th–11th century
CE). This transitional period followed the disintegration and regionalization of what used
to be the former Abbasid empire but preceded the era of the so-called second expansion,
or ‘Middle periods’, of Islamic civilization.1 Eminent socio-economic changes happened
in this time, among others, the coming of the Turks and the development of specific
forms of a distribution of power that had, sometimes misleadingly, been qualified as sim-
ilar to the European feudal system.2 The coming of the Turks was connected with what
has been identified as the establishment of a ‘military regime’,3 which had, from the 11th
century on, led to a change from agriculture to a nomadic pastoralist form of land man-
agement in the eastern parts of Iran. As regards to the political organisation, eastern Iran
had in this time undergone a gradual transformation away from a centrally administrated
type of empire towards what has been called a ‘politics of land’.4
1Hodgson 1974: 3; Paul 2015: 2.

2Paul 1998: 217.
3Cahen 1953.
4Paul 2015: 6.
L. Reinfandt (*)
Austrian National Library, Department of Papyri, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: lucian.reinfandt@aon.at

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_7
156 L. Reinfandt
The following addresses the question of what a system of personal bonds as principal
vector of ruling a large empire meant to the administration.5 For a better understand-
ing what the ‘substance’ of the Ghaznavid empire was and why it emerged so success-
fully and vanished so quickly, the following investigation is structured along two basic
hypotheses. The first one holds that the successful early conquests of the Ghaznavids
produced a territorial overstretch with which the network of loyalties from local elites
could not keep up. The second hypothesis is that the later Ghaznavids were no longer “of
the centrally administrated type which is typical for earlier stages in the history of Iran
and in particular the early ʿAbbāsid empire and its first successor states, but that on the
other hand the transition to a ‘politics of land’ occurred only in part.”6 That is, the socio-
economic basis of the Ghaznavids was of a mixed type that combined the less valuable
aspects of both forms and may have had an inherent birth defect. It remains to be exam-
ined whether the ability of levying taxes was still given7 and whether the booty from the
India jihād formed an inordinate mainstay of state revenues. This is the key test for an
understanding of the character of Ghaznavid rule.
1 Space: Conquests and a ‘Power State’
The Ghaznavids were not the first of the regional dynasties establishing themselves
under the suzerainty of the Abbasid caliphs in the east. There had been predecessors in
the Ṭāhirids (821–873 CE) and the Sāmānids (819–1005), but the Ghaznavid political
structure was temporarily more brilliant than even the Sāmānids had been. It was built
in the far eastern mountains of the Iranian highlands of what is nowadays Afghanistan,
in an area that in the 10th century CE had been only gradually Islamized. The centre of
gravity of the Ghaznavid expansion was the far eastern rim Iranian highlands, which had
been a march, or border area, of the Sāmānid power in Khurāsān.8
It started with a Turkic slave garrison that governed there at Ghazna at the end of
the 10th century and had, under Sebüktegin (r. 976–997), become independent with
the decline of Sāmānid strength. Sebüktegin was now in effective control of Khurāsān,
on the west, which he nominally ruled as a Sāmānid governor. To the east, he could
enlarge his territory by conquests of the borderlands to India. Their main rivals in the
5Cf. Gehler and Rollinger 2014.

6Paul 2015: 6.
7In this way Paul 2015: 4–5. It would be of utmost benefit to compare the Ghaznavid policy of tax-
ation to the situation in pre-Islamic Iran during the fourth through early seventh centuries CE; cf.
2016: 12–13 on the basis of the extant Bactrian documentation of the subject matter. I am grateful
to Robert Rollinger for making me aware of this aspect, the elaboration of which cannot be done
here but will be the subject of another study.
8Spuler 1960; Fragner 2001.
The Ghaznavids of Eastern Iran, a Postcolonial Muslim Empire 157
west were the Būyids (930–1062), controlling the heartlands of Islam; against them, the
Ghaznavids tried to win over the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad with some of the Indian
booty.9 Also, Sebüktegin’s son and successor, Maḥmūd of Ghazna (r. 998–1030), suc-
cessfully expanded his empire into western Iran (Rayy), thus driving back the Būyids.
After the final downfall of the Sāmānids (999), the Ghaznavids entered a coalition with
the other large political successor structure, which were the Qarākhānids; while the
Ghaznavids held Khurāsān, the Qarākhānids held Transoxania.
In a whole series of military expeditions (almost two dozen in number) Maḥmūd of
Ghazna took control of northern India and managed to establish a permanent rule in the
Panjāb. This was a much needed compensation for the once highly lucrative slave trade
that brought in substantial cash reserves to the Samanids but had vanished before the
Ghaznavids came to power. The India expeditions were in fact plundering raids and cre-
ated a considerable booty that was an important means to maintain the fabric of the state
and to cover imperial expenses, especially the costly military. When, from the mid-11th
century onwards, the India booty run dry, this in turn became a source of weakness for
the Ghaznavid power state.10 Another important source of income was the caravan trade
that linked Khurāsān and Afghanistan with Transoxania and the steppes on the one hand,
and Khurāsān and Afghanistan with Baghdad and Iraq on the other. One may assume
however that demands for taxation and a multitude of local tolls and dues (mukūs, Sg.
maks) pressed hard on them.11
During the earlier decades the imperial centre managed to keep control over provin-
cial governors and officials, who might be tempted, through distance from the capital,
to withhold taxation and rebel. This control was exercised through a network of couri-
ers and spies (barīd; ishrāf), thus contributing to an atmosphere of fear and suspicion
in the empire.12 But already under Maḥmūd’s rule the nomad Seljūq Turks established
themselves as a serious competitor for power in Khurāsān, but it was to Maḥmūd’s son
Masʿūd (r. 1030–1041) to finally lose all control over them. Of a certain help in this pro-
cess of a Seljūqid raise to power were the local elites: the notables of the Khurāsān cit-
ies had been alienated by severe Ghaznavid taxation but now saw that, with the coming
of the Seljūq pastoralists, their farm lands were more and more ruined. They withdrew
their allegiance from the Ghaznavid ruler and made arrangements with the leaders of the
Seljūq detachments.13 After a long and disastrous battle near Dandānqān (1040) Masʿūd
abandoned Khurāsān decisively and withdrew to his Indian territories, in effect acknowl-
edging the destruction of his father Maḥmūd’s empire.
9Hodgson 1974: 41; Bosworth 1995.

10Bosworth 1963: 235. For the concept of the ‘power state’ cf. Erwin I.J. Rosenthal, Political
Thought in Medieval Islam: An Introduction, Cambridge 1958.
11Bosworth 1963: 79–91; 141.
12Bosworth 1963: 70–73; 93–97.
13Hodgson 1974: 41.

158 L. Reinfandt
Masʿūd’s successors abandoned all provinces west of the Afghan mountains,

but under the very long rain of Ibrahim (r. 1059–1099) a certain kind of stability was
regained. By the mid-12th century the Ghaznavids finally lost their Afghan mountains
including the old capital of Ghazna (1173) to new groups and successors, which were the
Ghurids and some Ghuzz Turks. They resettled in Indian Lahore, but also this was finally
swallowed by the Ghurids in 1187.
The Ghaznavids had, on their heyday in the first half of the 10th century, controlled
a vast territory reaching from western Iran to India but already in the third generation
of rulers had passed their peak and became inferior to the subsequent Seljūqs (1040–
1194). Political events are known about from written sources, such as chronicles and
mirrors of princes as well as geographical handbooks, all of which were products of an
elite court culture.14 There is also epigraphic material and coins preserved as well as
plenty of material evidence for the Ghaznavid presence, such as lavish palaces, gardens
and mosques.15 But these were, again, products of a social elite and give a picture of
how this elite wanted to be seen rather than imaging actual conditions in the society.
A very important fact to be mentioned in this context is the total lack of any archival
material preserved neither from chanceries and offices nor from any private household.
Whereas other empires of that time, such as the Fatimids in the west, had built a new
state incidentally to an attempt to restore the old unity of the Islamic ecumene (Arab. dār
al-islām), the Ghaznavids built theirs on the basis of an expansion of the existing Muslim
domain. Later, when the greater part of India came under Muslim rule, this particular
pattern could not be repeated. Financial reliance on a booty economy together with an
imperial overstretch thus made itself felt as a first birth defect of this particular empire.
2 Ideology: Maḥmūd of Ghazna, the Paradigmatic Ghāzī

of (Sunni) Islam
Under the Ghaznavids the rule of indigenous Iranian dynasties in the eastern Iranian
lands had come to an end, and the region became open to a steady flow of Turkish immi-
gration from the Inner Asian steppes. As former Turkish slaves, the Ghaznavids devel-
oped into monarchs within the Irano-Islamic tradition and presided as authoritarian
rulers over a multi-ethnic realm comprising Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Indians and others.
14Abu l-Faḍl Bayhaqī’s (d. 470/1077) important chronicle Tārīkh-i Masʿūdī has been translated by
Bosworth 2009. Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Ḥayy ibn al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Maḥmūd Gardīzī’s (d. ca. 453/1061)
similarly important Zayn al-akhbār has been edited and translated by Bosworth 2011. For another
work from the Ghaznavid period, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-ʿUtbī’s (d. ca.
431/1040) chronicle al-Taʾrīkh al-yamīnī, cf. Peacock 2007; there is no translation from the origi-
nal Arabic version available so far but only the translation from a later Persian version by Reynolds
1858.
15Flury 1925.
They were successful conquerers in the beginning and promotors of a strong Sunni iden-
tity as a glue for social inclusion.
The empire was vast in territory but still insecure. The second sultan Maḥmūd sought
a remedy by gaining ideological prestige, first of all in his role as conquerer of (heathen
Hindu) India. This was a veritable jihād and understood as such by the contemporaries
and made Maḥmūd a Muslim legend as a ghāzī against the infidel. Maḥmūd’s India raids
were plundering expeditions on which he destroyed works of art (as idolatrous) and looted
all accessible goods across the whole of northwestern India. But also in the western part
of his empire, Maḥmūd persecuted Shīʿis in Rayy, after eliminating the Būyids there.16
Even more beneficient for his reputation, arguably, was his engagement as a patron of
science and culture at home in Iran. Scholars and poets were brought, partly by force, to
the court in Ghazna and transformed this city, that had been a centre of wealth and power
anyway, into a centre of culture. Ghazna became under Maḥmūd the centre of the revival
of Iranian traditions, and of the memory of ancient Sasanian glories. It was to Maḥmūd’s
court that Firdawsi brought the Shahnameh, the epic ‘book of kings’ recounting the glo-
ries of pre-Islamic Iran. The Persian language eclipsed the Arabic in all fields except
Islamic law and dogma (even though the Ghaznavid rulers themselves used Turkish).17
Maḥmūd was conscious of being rather an upstart (and the son of a slave) and was
especially eager to receive an honorific title from the Abbasid caliph, whom he hoped
to win over with some of the Indian booty. The Ghaznavid rulers thus were the first
who were given the title of sulṭān (the Sāmānids, and also the Būyids, had been amīrs
only; the title of sulṭān was in fact a creation of the late 10th century).18 Their succes-
sors, the Seljūqs, were given the title of sultan by the caliph as well. Significantly there
is no self-given name for the Ghaznavids in the sources, but Maḥmūd of Ghazna had
the knack of orchestrating himself as the paradigmatic ghāzī and the patron of (Sunni)
Islam. Maḥmūd, on the other hand, had no problem in using unconverted Hindu troops
recruited in India, and even a Hindu general, against Muslims who resisted him.19
Parallel to that he used the Shahname as a specific ‘History of the Persians’ against
Tabari’s ‘History of the Muslims’20 but disliked the epos because it was too Iranian
and not sufficiently Islamic.21 This shows very well the tactical motives behind his reli-
gious policy. From early Ghaznavid coins can be seen that Sebüktegin, the first of the
Ghaznavid rulers, presented himself clearly as preservers and successors of Sāmānid rule
rather than creators of a new political entity.22
16Hodgson 1974: 39.

17ScottMeisami 1999.
18Spuler 1952: 83; Bosworth 1962a.
19Hodgson 1974: 41.
20Spuler 1968: 105.
21Spuler 1952: 84.
22Cf. Bosworth 1965: 16–21.

160 L. Reinfandt
3 Substance: A Mixed Imperial Administration

and a ‘Politics of Land’
The Ghaznavids came into a political vacuum that was favorable to seize power. They
inherited, on the other hand, a social basis that may have, in the long run, been detri-
mental to their rule. It was about a reduced ability of the state to tax agricultural pro-
duction and, in exchange, leave the control over territories to holders of land from the
military. Still in the 9th century, the central administration of the Abbasids had a well
attested capacity to directly raise taxes from agricultural production.23 The Sāmānid and
Ghaznavid successor states of the Abbasid empire in Khurāsān during the 10th and early
11th centuries both seem to have been able to continue this policy of direct taxation, and
it was not before the coming of the Seljūqs in the 1030s that there was a transition from a
tax-based empire to an empire based on the politics of an allocation of land (the pieces of
land, or rather the revenues for the land holders, were called iqṭāʿ in Arabic).24
The iqṭāʿ had been in use already before the advent to power of the Būyids, but it was
under the Būyids (945–1055) that it became the rule.25 It seems to have been applied in
more central parts of the caliphate and only gradually, and with a time lag of at least a
century, entered the more peripheral provinces of eastern Iran. It is also questionable as
to how much the iqṭāʿ under the Būyids had caused a change in the conceptual relation-
ship between the state and the army.26 An inherent problem in the iqṭāʿ system was that
it served a quick remedy but caused even stronger problems in the long run: It seems
that iqṭāʿ holders were still politically dependent on the central power and not tempted
to build up local power bases, which demotivated landholders to take over civil tasks of
administration on their lands and to build up a new form of societal organization. This
led to a mere disintegration of the former centralist regime without the positive effects of
European feudalism.27
There is no evidence in the sources that the Ghaznavids encouraged the system of
iqṭāʿ under their rule, nor that their state budget was affected from changes towards a
politics of land. It was rather the opposite: the later Sāmānid governors of the city of
Ghazna had established on the surrounding agricultural lands a series of iqṭāʿs for their
military; when Sebüktegin, the first of the Ghaznavid rulers, seized power over the city
of Ghazna, he reintroduced a centralized state control (by the dīwān) over these lands.28
From the sources is also evident that the Ghaznavids still in the 11th century were able to
23Paul 2015: 3.
24Paul 2015: 4–5.
25Paul 1998: 239; 243.
26Paul 1998: 242.
27Cf. Sato 1997: 152–161; Hodgson 1974: 49.
28Bosworth 1963: 41–42; 124–125.

pay their Turkish standing army in cash (rather than land).29 This was very much to the
contrary of their successors, the Seljūqs, and shows that the old system was still at work.
Maḥmūd of Ghazna, in the heyday of Ghaznavid rule, exercised a harsh administra-
tion with pressing exactions to a ruinous point. His rule continued, on the other hand,
with modifications the older Sāmānid tradition as much as possible. A zealous religious
communalism was more important than a just administration, and those whom the ortho-
dox Sunni scholars regarded as heretics, especially the Shīʿis but also others, were blood-
ily persecuted.
The earlier Ghaznavids had taken over the Sāmānid forces in Khurāsān and their suc-
cesses as war leaders ensured a steady stream of volunteers to supplement his core of
Turkish slave soldiers. Above all, the fiscal resources of the province of Khurāsān with
its rich agricultural oases and its urban centres for commerce and industry, provided a
steady income from taxation for the maintenance of the highly expensive Ghaznavid
standing army. It therefore makes sense to ask to what extent the Ghaznavid state could
rely on income that was directly raised as taxes, and whether, and under what circum-
stances, they had to lease out land to military officers in order to pay the powerful
standing army (and to keep control over the territory). Financial demands were the over-
riding consideration, and the sources list the costs of the army and the lavish spending
on public buildings. With imperial expansion came bureaucracy, and with bureaucracy
increased the wages bill.30
The transition, however, from a centralized dīwān administration to a politics of land
assignments and a more global assessment of taxes occurred in eastern Iran not before
the 11th century CE and probably not before the coming of the Seljūqs.31 Sources talk
about the harshness of provincial tax-collectors in Kerman, Tabaristan and other parts of
Iran,32 but the suffering of the subject population from financial exactions became even
worse when soldiers of the army, in later years, were allotted assignments of revenue
from iqṭāʿs. It is important to state the fact that the change towards a politics of land was
not willingly accepted by the Ghaznavid bureaucracy but kept within a limit. As late as
the 11th century, a monetary economy was still in use, but it became less common and
was over time displaced by barter economy.33 At the same time there was a beginning
tendency towards land assignments parallel to the territorial decline of the Ghaznavids
in the 11th century, but this could differ from place to place and lead at most to a kind
of ‘mixed economy’ and surely did not yet gain the upper hand over the centralized
bureaucracy.34
29Paul 2015: 5.
30Bosworth 1963: 65–67.
31Paul 2015: 18.
32Bosworth 1962b: 74–75.
33Paul 1996: 66–67.
34Paul 2015: 2.
162 L. Reinfandt
More significant for an understanding of the effects on land utilization and agricul-
tural economy is a view to the underlying societal transformation of political elites.35
Ghaznavid rule was highly patrimonial in character, the sultans having taken a largely
personal interest in creating vast power. The establishment of the Ghaznavid empire rep-
resents the culmination of a process which had begun already under the Sāmānids. It saw
a transformation of the military bases of the state from an initial reliance on indigenous,
Iranian landed elites (the dihqāns) to a substantial dependence on Turkish slave troops.
The former aristocratic landed gentry, on the other hand, was losing power and had a
resentment against the new Turkish military elites, whereas the population suffered from
taxation in general. When the Seljūqs entered the scene, a general disenchantment with
the Ghaznavids expressed itself in an abandoning and a welcoming of the new lords.
The military was an unstable factor as well. When sultan Masʿūd lacked success in
his India campaigns and failed to stay attuned to the needs and aspirations of the troops,
an astonishing lack of loyalty became visible when his troops abandoned him. The total
implosion came in the same way after he lost the battle of Dandānqān in 431/1040. The
problem of a notoriously disloyal army was aggravated by another tendency, which was
the urban elites changing sides and opening their cities for the Seljūq enemies when dis-
satisfaction over fiscal exactions got the upper hand, or when trade routes were disrupted
by Ghuzz invaders and agreements with the new Seljūq overlords seemed the only solu-
tion.36 The Ghaznavids were now paying the price for the fact that charismatic military
leaders could unite to large armies the Turkish bands or nomadic groups but were left out
in the cold when success failed. This happened in the middle of the 11th century, already
under the third of the Ghaznavid sultans, when the empire withdrew to India and even
abandoned the heartland around the city of Ghazna.37
From a societal point of view, the allocation of iqṭāʿ land to the military in preference
to the payment in money was detrimental to the social cohesion in the Ghaznavid ter-
ritories. The iqṭāʿ should not be confused with the medieval European fiefdom because
the land grants were not hereditary and beneficiaries were still dependent on the state
bureaucracy as allocating authority.38 Most important was perhaps the fact that hold-
ers of iqṭāʿ land were living in cities and not on the lands they were benefitting from.39
The effect was a structural change among the elites from a landed aristocracy towards a
gentry of military household officials interested in the productive revenue but not in the
investment in the agricultural lands. The disappearance of a group of local aristocratic
landlords was a trend in an opposite direction of that in European feudalism.
35There are important studies available for the preceding Būyid and Sāmānid dynasties
(Mottahedeh 1980, Paul 1994, Marlow 2015) as well as for the subsequent Seljūqid dynasty (Paul
2015). For the Ghanznavid case no similar research has been done so far.
36Bosworth 1963: 79–91.
37Bosworth 1963: 51.
38Hodgson 1974: 49.
39Paul 1998: 243.

4 Conclusion: The Ghaznavids, a Postcolonial Empire
The Ghaznavid political structure at its peak under Maḥmūd was an accidental phe-
nomenon as it was based on a favorable historical coincidence of some positive factors.
These comprised a personal military genius (Maḥmūd of Ghazna); a political situation in
Iran that was fluid enough for energetic initiatives; and the inheritance of a functioning
socio-economic basis.40 All this contributed to the Ghaznavids’ early success—but why
did their empire fail so shortly thereafter?
To find an answer, the larger frame of the cultural situation in post-Abbassid Iran
is to be taken into consideration. The Ghaznavid appearance coincided with what has
been characterised as the ‘tenth-century crisis’, while others have spoken of an ‘Iranian
intermezzo’ and still others of a ‘renaissance of Islam’.41 It was a period when Muslims
and non-Muslims were living under secular kings, usually of non-Arab origin and when,
at an elite level, natives had been largely assimilated even though they had not yet all
converted to Islam. It also coincided with a decolonization movement which was given
the name of shuʿūbiyya and which had begun in the 9th century and was complete by
the 10th century. The caliphal empire had broken up without putting an end to the close
relationship between the former rulers and subjects. There had been a transfer of power
from the conquerers (Arabs) to the conquered peoples (Iranians, and later Turks). It had
not been the aim of the upstart rulers to destroy the caliphate; they rather followed the
Abbasid tradition and modeled their courts on that of Baghdad and patronized Arabic
learning and scholarship in the East.42
The Ghaznavids, as heirs of the Sāmānid state, continued the specific Persian version
of Islamic civilization that was to represent the image of Islam during the next centu-
ries. In this they were the last in a series of what Patricia Crone had aptly been given
the name of ‘postcolonial’ dynasties. The Ghaznavids drew on structures already ben-
eficial to their Ṭāhirid (821–873) and Sāmānid predecessors, but they failed to create a
network of personal bonds with military and landholding elites that was strong enough
to keep in balance with their temporarily large territorial extension and to withstand mili-
tary defeats during the 11th century. When in 1040 the eastern frontier broke, Turkish
tribes poured into Iran, Iraq and Syria, and only subsequent Seljūq rule was to change
much of what had been there before of economic and social structures. From a political
point of view the Ghaznavid empire failed early on, but from a social point of view the
Sunni-Iranian-Islamic civilization lived on in yet another Turkish dynasty.
40Hodgson 1974: 41.

41Rahman 1958: 63 and Crone 2006: 18; Hodgson 1974; Mez 1922: 264 and title, but cf.
Reckendorf’s qualificatory remarks in his preface ibid. iii.嵀.
42Crone 2006: 12; 20–24.
164 L. Reinfandt
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Because Empire Means Forever: Babylon
and Imperial Disposition
Seth Richardson
1 Prospect1
Having to use the term “empire” to describe Mesopotamian states prior to the first mil-
lennium2 can cause Assyriologists to shift uncomfortably in their seats. The heroic word
fits poorly on the skinny frames of Uruk, Ur, and maybe even Akkad: these states are
either not large enough, long-lived enough (hence this volume’s attention to “short-term
empires”), or interally coordinated enough to seem to fully qualify. And yet we try.
Perhaps we feel we do some disservice to these early states if we do not at least consider
the degree to which their trajectories pointed in the direction of empire, since the rheto-
ric of palatial states meant to sound as if they either were or meant to become large and
durable. So, even if they were not empires in fact, some states may have had intentions in
the direction of power and eternity (even if “empire” as a conceptual category did not yet
1Abbreviations used in this article include ETCSL = J. A. Black, et al. J.A., The Electronic Text
Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998–2006; RIMB 2 = Grant
Frame, Rulers of Babylonia: From the Second Dynasty of Isin to the End of Assyrian Domination
(1157–612 BC), Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Babylonian Periods 2 (Toronto: University
of Toronto, 1995); and RIME 4 = D. Frayne, Old Babylonian Period (2004–1595 B.C.), Royal
Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Early Periods vol. 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).
All abbreviations following citations of Paulus 2014a indicate the names of kings.
2And specifically prior to the undeniably imperial expansionist Assyrian state before 910 bc.
S. Richardson (*)
University of Chicago, University of Chicago, USA
e-mail: seth1@uchicago.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_8
168 S. Richardson
exist); and their propaganda was later taken as fact (to whatever degree of accuracy) by
future states, becoming imaginative models to emulate—providing a concept of empire.
While this “idea of empire” has sometimes occasioned profitable exercises3 (if some-
times almost obsessive thematization) in exploring ancient historiography, it does not
move the ball down the field much in strictly historical terms. (To what extent) did these
early states themselves really have imperial dispositions? By what criteria could such an
outlook be assessed? How did an intention to create an empire affect the long-term poli-
cies and short-term reactions of ancient states? It is often assumed that imperial expan-
sion was a (perhaps the) central fixture of all Mesopotamian state ideologies; and that a
good deal of their imagination was focused on an ideal of conquest. These issues have
been well examined for Akkad;4 less consistently for Ur III5 or Babylon of the Middle
and Late Bronze Ages, with the notable exceptions of H. Neumann (2014),6 D. Charpin
(2008),7 and S. Paulus (2014b),8 who all posed the question directly.
It is probably more accurate to say that, if one took all the idealizing Mesopotamian
stories about earlier great conquest states and set them in balance with the fund of cau-
tionary tales about imperial hubris (about Naram-Sin, Šu-Sin, Samsuiluna, etc.), one
would see something more like a debate about the wisdom of empire-building in ancient
Mesopotamia, as much as any firm valorization of the idea. Thus a negative tradition
about empire as such (quite apart from critical traditions about kings and kingship9)
existed alongside a positive one. This critical discourse about the purpose of kingship
and the state was at no point a thoroughly settled matter. If our hope is to put such ideas
3See most recently Gehler and Rollinger eds. 2014a.

4E.g., Liverani, ed. 1993; Westenholz 1979; Weiss, ed. 2012; Foster 2016.
5The issue is addressed most directly and comprehensively by Neumann 2014, but also by
Garfinkle 2013 (pp. 162–64), Espak 2014, and Michalowski 2004 (a. o.), but rarely receives as
much attention as is given to the Akkadian state; in fact, one might say that Ur III has not much
been called an “empire” in any serious way since Langdon 1923.
6See Neumann 2014, though notably setting the word “Imperien” in scare quotes in his title.
7Cf. Ziegler 2000, 14, that Šamši-Adad’s state was an imperial “experiment.”
8Paulus 2014b is particularly relevant because it takes up the important question of the Kassite
state’s self-perception vis-à-vis empire (p. 65), emphasizing its attention to conflict prevention,
equilibrium, and a sense of continuity for the dynasty (p. 91). Paulus adduces seven characteristics
she sees in combination as reflecting Kassite Imperiumsgedanke (pp. 91–93): claims to be “kings
of the world”; the use of Babylonian as a lingua franca; a coherent internal provincial system;
top-notch military technology; adherence to a stablizing international diplomatic system (p. 88);
consistent border maintenance/conflict with Assyria; and a permanent state of war with Assyria
and Elam (neither of which it succeeded in bringing under imperial control). These are all accurate
descriptions of the Kassite state, but I do not think them particularly imperial in comparison to
more typical criteria, especially expansionism (or an ideology thereof), rule over a periphery in an
unequal relationship of power, a change in self-conception (as in an “Augustan transformation”),
or, as analyzed here, a conception of futurity and durability.
9See e.g. Fink 2017 and Richardson 2010 and 2018: esp. 263–64, 271–75.
Because Empire Means Forever: Babylon and Imperial Disposition 169
in a world-history perspective and look at some of the “connections that transcend

epochs,” then it becomes methodologically important to account as much for the times
and places when the concept of empire was not at the imaginative forefront as when it
was. It has often been our own fascination with empires that has privileged them as the
salient topic for analysis, with the potential to distract us from investigating other possi-
ble historical discourses about state structure. The analysis that follows assesses the evi-
dence for Babylonian (and, to a lesser extent, Assyrian) imperialist ideation across the
second millennium bc, and contrasts it to concepts of stewardship over land—as illumi-
nated by a change in the use of some concepts antithetical to “short-term”: the Sumerian
and Akkadian words that mean “forever.”
2 From Category to Criterion: Why Study “Forever”?
Unfortunately, a history of Mesopotamian ideas about “empire” as such cannot directly

engage with the concept at the terminological level. This is not only because of the
usual modern difficulties to define what empires are10 but also because Sumerian and
Akkadian did not even substantially terminologically rarefy “states” to begin with, let
alone “empires”. The designation of “states” as meaningful geopolitical entities did so
mostly by naming cities indexically. So if what we casually think of as Hammurabi’s
“Kingdom of Babylon” had no such name—not by title, description, epithet, or juris-
diction—there was only ever a King of the City of Babylon, and lord over two dozen
other cities, each individually, but styled as patron and protector, and not as king of those
cities.11
As has been pointed out many times before, Sumerian/Akkadian affords words for
“king” (lugal/šarrum), “kingship” (nam.lugal/šarrūtu), and even “dynasty” (bal/palû12)
but not “state” or “kingdom.” The word for “palace” (é.gal/ekallu) gained currency to
denote a wider meaning of legal/administrative authorities (as the “Crown”) over speci-
fied people, properties, and transactions, but this concept still fell far short an idea of
statewide or “national” authority. The word “land” (kur/mātu) was used to describe
particular hinterlands over which cities held sway, as their “country(sides),” but not as
a categorical noun governing the geographic name of any polity distinct from another
(i.e., within a system of homologous states), e.g., “the land of Babylon.” Only by the
Late Bronze Age, centuries after Hammurabi’s time, did mātu take on this broader
10Doyle 1986, esp. 19–48 on measures of “effective sovereignty” as empires.

11Richardson 2017, 22.
12Palû is a loanword from Sumerian bal, semantically associated with concepts of turning and
rotation.
170 S. Richardson
geopolitical sense, and then only in the vague and slightly fabulous sense of “the land of
X”; and this was still far from a sense of national territory.13
It is fair to pause and ask whether or not the absence of a term really indicates the
absence of a concept in Whorfian terms. Could one really look at Hammurabi’s Babylon
and doubt that he had built a unified political entity, whether he or we call it a “kingdom”
or otherwise? Could one deny that this existed as a concept even if not in law, title, or
anywhere else? We can, and in this case I think we ought to: not (only) because of the
terminological boundary, but for the substantial reason that the structure of pre-modern
states as royal domains, without post-Westphalian structures of national boundaries, citi-
zens, and universal law, is precisely the historical condition we must recognize if we are
to make sense of this very different political world.
At the least: it is within this context of the impoverished terminology for “states” that
it becomes hardly necessary to point out that there was no Akkadian word for “empire,”
either. And in the absence of that term, Mesopotamian historical traditions about (what
we think of as) imperial conquest were not organized around the fame of states as an
enduring political whole, but the fame of individual historical kings. There may therefore
have been the “conquests of Sargon,” but there never was anything called an “empire of
Akkad”; and so forth. The implication of these observations for Middle and Late Bronze
Babylon and Aššur is simply that the later reception of historical traditions about those
states was limited to the fame of their better-known rulers, and not of the dynasty or
state.
Despite the undoubted historical importance of Hammurabi and Šamši-Adad (I)
in objective terms, even their personal fame as conquerors (nor even as lawgivers and
state-makers) simply never later attained a status on par with that of Sargon of Akkad
(24th c. bc). This does not mean, of course, that no historical memories were preserved.
Quite the opposite, as has been pointed out by Marc Van De Mieroop: Hammurabi’s
name was invoked in later times for royal genealogical purposes; as a temple-builder
and law-giver; and a king who presided over a scribal culture that produced great schol-
arly knowledge.14 But Hammurabi’s name was not, in fact, invoked as a conqueror,
and the Babylon of his day was not a point of reference for later conquest states to
emulate.15
Later ideas about Šamši-Adad were also limited. What we could briefly say is that
what historical memories there were centered on three aspects. First, there was his
remembered role as founder of an important Assyrian dynasty (and one might say even
13The same holds true for Assyria, where the term (lugal) māt Aššur was not used in Old Assyrian
times, only appearing by the 13th century bc in the inscriptions of Adad-narari I.

14Van De Mieroop 2005, Ch. 10.
15In fact, as I have argued elsewhere (Richardson 2016), there was rather more of an overall
embarrassed silence about Middle Bronze Babylon and its demise. Cf. Rutz and Michalowski
2016: esp. 30–31.
of a true dynastic tradition), as reflected by the Assyrian King List and the genealogies
cited by many later royal inscriptions. Second, his legacy must have had sufficient imagi-
native power to inspire four later kings to adopt his name, rivalled only by the name
Šalmaneser (of which kings there were also five). Third and most importantly—and what
is substantially different from the Babylonian case—Šamši-Adad’s conquests were argu-
ably the source or touchstone of Assyria’s later imperial dreams: the territorial expansion
under his rule was likely the grounding for later ideas about a divine mandate or manifest
destiny for an Assyrian empire. But even this was an imperfect remembering, and no
source specifically identifies this king as the “founder of the empire” or the like, in either
factual or imaginative terms.
In the case of both kings, specific memories did long survive them. We can show that
there was enough later information floating around that formal traditions could have
been built around these kings if anyone had wanted to build them. But epics or stories
were simply never written about these kings or states, as had been done for Sargon
and Naram-Sin. There were just bits and scraps of omens, chronicle entries, and cop-
ied inscriptions. These early kings and states were not forgotten; but overt and specific
historical traditions did not form around them, least of all about empire-building. How,
then, may we speak meaningfully about the later reception of the states of Hammurabi
and Šamši-Adad as imperial projects, failed or not, if there were neither the words for
empires nor specific traditions about these kings?
It seems to me that if we want to have access to ancient thinking about imperial leg-
acies; to try to see what imaginative power they exercised in later times, whether cel-
ebratory or cautionary; and what those ideas might have to do with actual historical
circumstances; then we have to take one or both of two approaches. First, we could adopt
an essentially etic approach and define as “empires” entities which never bore the name
as such, and study them on our terms. Second, we could use an emic approach: to take
seriously the terms through which ancient states constructed their authority, describing
their subjective experience and ideation; and then ask how those terms relate to our own
constituent criteria for empire (chiefly: expansionism and durability), to let us redefine
the questions we ask.
I do not think these two approaches are mutually exclusive, and in fact that both are
necessary. But I will work towards the first question by beginning with the second: I
will pull the thread about “subjective experience” from the fabric of the problem, and
look at the terms by which states presented themselves. These tell us much about the
historically-particular and -contingent principles of state ideologies and their effect on
new state structures. In this, I borrow from Michael Doyle’s criteria for the “cluster” of
dimensions in which empires achieve coherence as such (1986: 34–35):
An imperial cluster—amounting to foreign control over effective sovereignty—can be spec-

ified by contrasting its use of influence and power with that of the conventional categories of
domestic and international politics. The five dimensions of contrast are domain, the popula-
tion affected; scope, the types of behavior influenced; range, of rewards and punishments;
weight, or effectiveness; and duration.
172 S. Richardson
It is this last dimension of “duration” to which I turn. What I will compare are the inten-
tions of Babylon’s rulers across the second millennium bc to create ideas of state dura-
bility. This seems more diagnostic of imperial intent than the record of warfare/conquest,
since virtually every ancient state engaged in some degree of conflict, and so looks at
least a little bit expansionist. But the imagining of empire as a future outcome is directly
consequential to identifying imperial ideology, in the conscious adoption of not only
largeness but also permanence as necessary and desirable features of the hegemonic
state. Thus what Gehlen and Rollinger discuss as “den Universalanspruch” of empires
must be understood to entail claims of control over both space and time.16 The idea of
state immortality is written into the DNA of imperial ideology, the animating spirit that
justifies it and drives it forward. As one scholar of 19th-century (ad) European imperial-
ism has characterized it,
Through the exploits of its heroes and martyrs, the nation itself could aspire to immortality,
beyond its existence as a body politic. According to [its proponents], the highest goal of pat-
riotism was “to assure the race of immortal prestige in the eyes of the world.” A people could
achieve this only by dealing blows in the struggle for life, by “having spoken as master over
a considerable portion of the universe”: the “desire for domination,” or “coloniser pour colo-
niser,” was the highest form of imperialism. If a colonizing race could hope for immortality
through its res gestae, it could do so even more by embracing the “civilizing mission.”17
Durability (and intentions towards it) also directly informed the reception of future states
as they retrospectively decided what was possible based on what they thought to have
been possible in the past. Especially since we trace here the beginning not only of his-
torical empires, but the origins of the imperial idea itself, the transmittable ideological
investment in the aspect of durability as intention or imagination is every bit as criterial
as that of it as an achieved fact.
So: when Babylon, as a conquest state, embarked on territorial expansionism, what
did think it was doing? How permanent a project was it imagined it to be? What mes-
sages did its creators mean to project to future kings and states about these achieve-
ments? In focusing on Babylon in particular (rather than Aššur), I argue that there was
not only a rejection of a tradition about heroic royal conquest, but a refocus of the high-
est priorities of kingship and the state away from expansionism, and towards a steward-
ship over a bounded, finite land. I will try to open up the issue by going directly to the
theme of state durability and posing this question: in what terms and about what objects
did royal texts talk about ideas of “forever”?
16See Gehler and Rollinger 2014b: 3–8 on analytic criteria for studying imperialism, touching on
temporality notably in discussion of Hans-Heinrich Nolte’s criterion for empires as “historically
epoch- or period-crossing” entities (“epochen- beziehungsweise periodenüberschreitende, his-
torische,” ibid. p. 7; see also p. 5–6, on Herfried Münkler’s consideration of temporality and the
sense of durability implicit in the pax Romana, pax Britannica, etc.).
17Viaene 2008: 782.
3 The Historical Basis of Later Memories
I will begin with four historical observations about the basis on which later traditions
could have been crafted—the available ingredients, as it were, from which following
ages could brew up historical memories—as they connect to some of the wider themes
of this volume. First, we should put some boundaries around the idea of Hammurabi’s
state, expansionist as it was, as a “conquest” state, partly by noting the particularity of
what Hammurabi did in different places. When he was in the north, Hammurabi mostly
acted as a raider seizing and destroying (notably at Mari and Ešnunna) but not holding
territory. But in the south, Hammurabi made serious attempts to consolidate and rule,
notably at Larsa, but also at Ur, Girsu, and Uruk. His state reorganized land and offi-
cial cadres; it collected taxes systematically, patronized the temples, and administered
justice. In short, Hammurabi and his successors presented themselves within Babylonia
not as imperialists, but as traditional local kings. This condition may be at the root of
the fact that what later traditions preserved about Hammurabi were not themes of con-
quest, but of piety, protection, and scholarship. Insofar as a negative comment about
Babylonian hegemony ever developed, it was about the later rebellions against the
25+ -year Babylonian administration under Samsuiluna that came after the conquest
phase—not against Hammurabi’s conquests themselves.18 So although it is fair to guess
that most of “Babylonia” did not like Babylon or Hammurabi, and would not have been
much inclined to create a celebratory tradition about him, whatever negative attention
developed was not a comment on his conquests as such, but on its governance in the
post-conquest phase. We may also note that hegemonic conquerors like Hammurabi and
Šamši-Adad were just two among many of their era—Rim-Sin of Larsa, Ibal-pi-El of
Ešnunna, Zimri-Lim of Mari, the rulers of Elam, etc. If there was a historical legacy or
sensibility that grew out of this era of warring states, it was less likely to be one about
the greatness of any one conquering king, and more about a time when all states had
been in conflict and the landscape was fundamentally unsafe. These were not, in short,
conditions conducive to creating a heroic tradition about empire in the first place.
Second, the First Dynasty kingdom that we might want to call an “empire” was in
reality no bigger than (and, for much of its existence, actually smaller than) most of
the Babylonian kingdoms that followed in the next thousand years up until the time of
Nebuchadnezzar II. Thus, though it was possible for later Babylonians to remember
Hammurabi as a conqueror, they would have had no reason to think that his kingdom
had been particularly large. In Assyria, by contrast, the memorial basis was remarkably
different: the later territory of the kingdom was drastically reduced for centuries after
Šamši-Adad I’s time, but it was also subject to periodic attempts—many attempts—to
expand, with a good deal of imagination invested in promoting the political myth of
18See Richardson 2016: 116 and 133 nn. 78–79 with a brief profile and literature comparing later
traditions about Hammurabi and Samsuiluna.

174 S. Richardson
Šamši-Adad I’s kingdom as a conquest empire, a prototype for future emulation. The
two cases thus diverge sharply: later Babylonian kingdoms retained an essentially simi-
lar size, but (as we will see) never embraced an historical conquest tradition; whereas
Assyria, tiny and besieged, created and then clung to an expansionist ethos, even if
it took it almost a thousand years to get it done on an imperial scale. Thus these two
Middle Bronze states responded very differently to their changed circumstances and the
traditions of what came before.
Third: neither Hammurabi’s nor Šamši-Adad’s state was “decapitated.” After
Hammurabi’s death, the First Dynasty of Babylon took another 150 years to collapse,
with most of that time spent as a small state with few military adventures. That a Hittite
raid ended the dynasty ca. 1595 bc is not in dispute, but the Hittites came more as under-
takers by that point.19 In Assyria, the end was somewhat quicker, but nevertheless no
spectacular collapse. The Šamši-Adad dynasty’s control over Aššur took between one
and four decades after that king’s death to crumble away,20 but the Assyrian King List
proposed to remember an unbroken line of political (but not dynastic) control, and the
latest evidence shows that Assyria’s trade network at least partially survived down to
about 1680 bc, a century after the famous king died.21 In neither case would there have
been any reason for later histories to privilege the memory of some spectacular single-
event termination of these kingships or dynasties over the reality of a longer process of
military and political devolution.
Fourth and finally, to the extent that we have primarily looked for single-event
“decapitations” as the termination points of ancient empires, we have oversimplified
more complex histories See Morgan and Richardson (forthcoming). In the case of First
Dynasty Babylon, scholarship has focused on one particular storyline about how the
dynasty was killed off by the Hittites. But other traditions and stories remembered as
many as twelve other tribes and states which attacked Babylon in the post-Hammurabi
era from the outside; and major cities which rebelled from the inside. In Assyria, the
Assyrian King List explicitly enshrines a narrative for the generation or two after Išme-
Dagan about multiple illegitimate kings ruling, either in quick succession, at the same
19The reasons were complex, involving much more than a “decapitation” by the Hittites in 1595
bc; see Richardson 2002: I: 1–57 and 323–47, and Richardson 2019.
20Charpin 2004, 326 n. 1704: “Il semble cependant que les 40 ans de règne d’Išme-Dagan ne
doivent pas etre calculés à partir de la mort de Samsi-Addu, mais à partir du moment où il fut placé
sur l’trone d’Ekallatum.” Cf. Van De Mieroop (this volume), describing a rather more rapid disin-
tegration of that kingdom, noting Išme-Dagan’s flight to Babylon 12 years after his father’s death.
The later Adasi line of kings who implied descent from Šamši-Adad I by adopting that family’s
names as throne names is not clearly related to them, even by the account of the Assyrian King
Lists themselves.
21See Morgan and Richardson (forthcoming). Assyrian traders can be shown to have been active
there well into the 17th c. BC.

time, or both. My opinion is that these are not confused legacies that obscure a clear
political history—a truth about unique and sequential kings to be winkled out through
endless contortions—they are legacies of confusion, and that that historical legacy of
confusion is itself one of which we need to make account.
To take a brief stab at it here, we could say of Assyria that the legacy of confusion
was ultimately focused outwards, with a kind of xenophobic claustrophobia that fueled
its imperial impulses. But in Babylonia, the later historical sense was that the earlier
danger and disorder had been located within, inside the mātu, “the land,” in contrast to
the cities, which were islands of safety. This theme about a dangerous countryside in a
variety of retrospective accounts is something I’ve discussed elsewhere.22 Here, I need
only exemplify the idea with an excerpt from an omen about the demise of First Dynasty
Babylon under its last king that was written almost a thousand years after the fact, with
the aspects of the passage that touch on spatiality set in boldface:
… According to the techniques of divination,

the soldiers which the gods Šamaš and Marduk rule over,
the force that goes out of this city …
[here is a description of the various troops of soldiers] …
who leave this city daily,
and in the environs of this city,
who move about for one league, a half,
or two-thirds …
At the command of any enemy, all that there are —
who are in the land …
… a blocking force, an ambush, …
by day or night …
they will not approach the soldiers
who come out of this city, will they,
will not kill or cause the deaths of
the soldiers that come out of this city,
will not throw their corpses
into the river or onto dry land…23
The themes are almost agoraphobic in presenting the hinterands immediately outside of
cities—sometimes less than a league away from the walls and gates—as hostile to the
state order. In later Babylonia, the relevant scraps of historical tradition about the down-
fall did not foreground themes about evil Hittites or scheming Kassites, but a dialogue
about the danger of a disordered land. That is what concerned them.
22Richardson 2016, with literature; see now also Richardson 2019.

23Lambert 2007, 29–31.
176 S. Richardson
4 Differences in Middle vs. Late Bronze Age Concepts

of Territoriality
Here we come to an important point, about how later perceptions of past problems in
land and territoriality resulted in a very real changes in Babylonian political thought. To
establish just how profound a change that was, I will draw a quick series of structural
differences between the First Dynasty and Kassite Babylonian states relating to land and
concepts of territoriality.
A first obvious difference was that the First Dynasty state was primarily adminis-
tered through its individual cities over discrete hinterlands. Each of these exercised some
degree of political and administrative autonomy, while governorships (šāpiru) are mostly
attested for districts exterior to the cities.24 These cities had defined arable lands (erṣetu
and ugāru) radiating outward towards the steppe, but our best sense is that their outer
boundaries came nowhere near to meeting the lands of neighboring cities. In Kassite
times, by contrast, there was a formal (if perhaps ideal) division of the state into prov-
inces (pīḫatū), each with a governor and its own jurisdiction. It would be easy to under-
state and overstate, respectively, the comprehensiveness of the two systems. But, at the
least, a different schematic template had developed in this later period, under which all
the land of māt Karduniaš was notionally assigned to a province.25 For the earlier period,
one might think of the administrative shape of the state as nodes with unconnected path-
ways, like stars in a night sky; for the later period, something closer to puzzle pieces of
territory filling out the whole map of the kingdom.
A few points follow consequently on the first. For one, whereas the Babylonian politi-
cal landscape in Old Babylonian/Middle Bronze times was a multipolar one, with differ-
ent competing cities, there was only one unquestioned political hegemon in the Kassite/
Late Bronze alluvium: the city of Babylon. The region was no longer a patchwork of cel-
lular city-states, but (again, at least notionally) a single unified land ruled from one capi-
tal city. We also see a more defined sense of national borders, as the Kassite state gives
24There are, e.g., numerous mentions of šāpirū for Suḫu, the “lower” district, “the land” (mātim),
the “river” (nārim). Governors of cities are more sparsely attested for Kiš (YOS XIII 41, TJA G36
and G51, AbB XIII 156), and Dilbat (YOS XIII 60, VS 18 19). At Sippar, the position seems to
have been historically specific: four šāpirū are attested in the decade between Samsuiluna 17 and
27 (Harris, 1976, 77); a fifth is known from the Late OB (Ilšu-ibni, in BBVOT 1 104 [Aṣ 5] and
AbB XII 5 [n.d.]).
25See Paulus 2014a, 185–98, though concluding: “Allerdings bleiben bei der Untersuchung ‘weiße
Flecken’ auf der Landkarte Babyloniens zurück.”

us the first explicit evidence for international boundaries (Akkadian miṣru,26 pāṭu;27 cf.
Middle Assyrian taḫūmu28), especially in treaty terms vis-à-vis Assyria, and where some
Kassite kings adopted the epithet mušaklil bàd kisurri, “builder of the border wall.”29
The entirety of the land was now externally bounded, at least on a conceptual level,
partly as a consequence of the international system of the Late Bonze Age.
The external delimitation of national territory also began to be mirrored by an internal
structuring. This was perhaps an outcome of a radical shift in urban/rural demography
between the two periods, from a primarily urban state in the Middle Bronze to a rural
one in the Late Bronze, by which point much of the population seems to have fanned out
into large numbers of smaller towns and villages. This may then be reflected in the new
Kassite subgenre of royal inscriptions, the so-called kudurru’s or narû’s, monuments
which primarily documented grants of land, usually tax-free, with an increased concern
for boundaries (kisurrû,30 pulukku) between estates. For the first time, there was a sus-
tained state practice to alienate land away from itself, and the new literary form of these
monuments effected the authority of those conveyances. These concessions of land might
have had the effect of weakening the state’s resource base, but it also had the overall
effect of territorializing the state as a whole, as an autonomous entity with “thingness.”
The monuments’ definition of the state’s authority over land in legal and religious terms
was nothing new, but they established a presumption of the state’s eminent domain over
not just this land or that land, but over all land, over territory.31 Royal authority existed
not just over the land which was owned by the king, but as the authority through which
territory of all kinds would be defined. This transformation in territoriality brought royal
authority from estate to state.
We might further think of some epiphenomenal results of this transformation, espe-
cially the new prominence of “the land” in other royal epithets, such as “king of all the
land” (nothing subtle there!); and the beginning of an etiology about the organization of
the land. This was the origin point of an imagined history that would substantially flour-
ish in the first millennium, about a perfect and foundational territorial order which the
Babylonian kings could perpetually restore and maintain. But the Kassite concern for
26The only OB uses of miṣru have to do with borders between individual fields; all uses with
meanings for political boundaries are post-OB.

27The term pāṭu was also used in OB times, but typically with the areal meaning of a “border”
area/district rather than a linear “boundary” between states (for the latter meaning, CAD gives only
three OB instances [one extispical] and more than a dozen Late Bronze exempla).
28Taḫūmu was mostly an Assyrian term, though showing up frequently in the Babylonian
Chronicles to refer to Assyro-Babylonian borders; in any event, all uses its uses were post-OB.
29Paulus 2014a, 309: Ku I 2 I9; it may be that kisurri refers to the borders of land donations in
some instances (ibid., 312); but bàd militates against this sense, even if referring only to a notional
rather than a physical wall.
30Ibid., 38–39.
31See Elden 2009 on “territory” as a historically-conditioned term.

178 S. Richardson
borders of all kinds was extensive enough that Susanne Paulus, the kudurrus’ most recent
editor, speaks of a whole “Grenzterminologie,” stretching from the practical and every-
day borders of fields all the way to the uṣurtu, the fundamental “design” of the land, and
the bulug (“borders”) of Sumer and Akkad, all of which were established by the gods.32
There was now a primordial myth of territory, an autochthony (αὐτόχθων), as the under-
lying raison d’être for kingship itself: that the state existed to restore the land’s design
from antiquity; manage it in the present; and protect it in the future, in accordance with
some divinely-ordained design that came out of the deepest past. Nothing like this idea
can be found anywhere in Hammurabi’s ideology, in which order was a force that ema-
nated from cities, and only faded the farther it radiated out into the disordered landscape.
5 Imperial Durability
Thus we have strong indications of fundamental changes in the administration and con-
ception of territory by the First Dynasty and Kassite states at Babylon. It is at this point
that we can re-connect with the question of “short-term empires” and relate it to this
changing sense of territorialism, because it is in the shift from Old Babylonian to Kassite
ideas about land that the protean basis of state durability can be illuminated. What would
“short-” and “long-term” states have meant to these two state cultures? What did they
think of as durable? What was it, exactly, that was supposed to last? How did that sense
affect the conscious intentions and unconscious dispositions about what states were sup-
posed to do, about what their great transhistorical meanings might be? What was it that
ancient kingdoms and their leaders thought they were doing when they were building the
“foreverness” of their states? From an emic perspective, attention to ideas of temporality
thus gives us access to answers that the concept of “empire” cannot.
A very stark difference emerges between Middle Bronze royal rhetoric and what
came later, namely in the objects to which words identifying concepts of “forever” (also
“eternal,” “until the distant future,” etc.) were attached. I began with a general impres-
sion that Old Babylonian royal inscriptions were full of claims that the king’s name and
deeds were meant to be remembered “forever.” I had a much more vague impression
that, following this time, the practice of lauding the king and his achievements (but of
course this is really the king lauding himself) in terms of eternity and everlasting mem-
ory was not emphasized as much.
Quantifying and substantiating these impressions required a survey of all available
royal inscriptions from about 2000 bc down to about 700 bc—hundreds of inscriptions
and tens of thousands of lines of Sumerian and Akkadian text—to catch out all the words
and phrases that invoked concepts of “forever,” and consider their contexts. This is a
32Paulus
2014a, 38–43; for “the borders (bulug) of Sumer and Akkad”; see ibid., 296 (KH I 1 I2),
422 (MŠ 6 II′ 8′) for the giš.hur drawn by the gods; 652–53 (NAI 3 Vs. II29–III4); etc.
˘
highly perspectival look at a large and stylistically varied corpus that chiefly had other
concerns. I was only looking for a few root words and their derivates: darû, “to last for-
ever”; ṣâtu, “distant (time)”; arku, “the future”; and a few other idiomatic expressions.33
Two other terms were also relevant, but less so for the reason that they focus only on the
longeivity of an individual: ūm balṭu, “(all) the days of (his) life”; labāru, “to last, to
endure.”
My initial impressions were, fortunately, validated. 33 Old Babylonian royal
inscriptions proclaim the eternality of the king, his deeds, his reign, and more
(many other inscriptions by extension heavily imply it as well, but I will restrict
my account to explicit instances). Old Babylonian kings repeatedly tell us that
their works were everlasting things,34 and that the purpose of their inscrip-
tions was to establish their names for the distant future.35 Their names were to be
repeated in ritual utterances and public songs of praise which the gods and future
kings would never cease to hear, so that “the numerous people sing my praises for-
ever.”36 Old Babylonian kings said that their dynasties,37 their own reigns,38 and
33See n. 34, below, for nì-ul-e ki-bé, “an everlasting thing.”

34RIME 4 1.4.6 (vii 10′ [u4-da-rí-šè] and 13′ [u4-sù-rá-šè], in broken context, but probably referring
to the king); 1.4.15 (6′, a copper cauldron given “to the distant future,” u4-ul-lí-a-šè); 2.6.1 (ii 13′, a
statue as an “an eternal thing,” n ì-da-rí); 2.8.4 (39–40, the Agrun as an “everlasting thing,” nì-ul-e
ki-bé); 2.9.3 (12–15, rites established “to the distant future,” u4-ul-lí-a-aš); 2.9.9 (14–17, as 2.9.3);
2.9.15 (71–74, a throne established “for the future,” u4-ul-lí-a-aš); 2.13.15 (Frgm. 4:3′–4′, offer-
ings, u4-sù-rá-šè); and 11.1.1 (16–17, “May [Malgium’s] kingship [šarrūtum], the dynasty [bala-
um] last a long time [lirīk]; may it never cease [lā naparkû]).
35RIME 4 2.8.7 (71, “In order to establish my name forever,” u -da-rí-šè mu-mu gá-gá-dè); 2.9.2
4
(69–70, “I set up my name for the distant future, u4-ul-du-rí-šè); 2.13.13 (86, RN’s “eternal name,”
mu-da-rí); 2.13.22 (25–26, “I put there forever my royal name,” du-rí-šè; also 27, egir-u4-da-aš,
“for the future”); 2.14.13 (32, “I put there, for the future, my foundation inscription, proclaiming
my royal name,” diri-u4-bi-ta-šè); 2.14.18 (39–40, “I wrote my name there … for the future,” u4-
sù-rá-šè); 3.6.2 (78, Hammurabi’s name “forever,” du-rí-šè [Akk. l. 78, ša ana dār]); 3.9.2 (35′–
37′, “I made my August name famous forever,” u4-ul4-lí-a-šè); 6.8.1 (53–54, “I established my
name until distant days,” ana ūm ṣiatim); and 11.2.1 (19–21, “the eternal name of my kingship,”
šumam darâm ša šarrūtiya).
36RIME 4 2.9.9 (53–54, RN making offerings “forever,” u -da-rí-šè); 2.14.15 (60 [quoted above],
4
u4-ul4-lí-a-šè); 3.6.11 (42, that Meslamtiea would listen “forever” [da-ri-šè] to RN’s prayers); and
11.1.1 (16–17, re: offerings, see n. 26, above). Sîn-iddinam also twice celebrated the eternality
(u4-ul-lí-a-aš) of his en-ship (2.9.3:12–15 and 2.9.9:14–17).
37RIME 4 2.11.1 (iii 13–21, “the eternal fame [probably: of my dynasty],” mu-da-rí); and 11.1.1
(see n. 26, above: “may my dynasty last until distant days”).

38RIME 4 2.9.12 (16–18, bala sù-rá u -ul-lí-a-aš); 2.9.14 (36–38, bala … u -da-rí-šè); 2.13.3 (37–
4 4
38, “a great life-span and an eternal reign,” nam-ti u 4-maḫ-bi bala-da-rí); 2.14.2 (26, “the exercise
of kingship forever,” nam-lugal du-rí-šè); 3.6.2 (9–10, “everlasting kingship and a reign until dis-
tant days,” nam-lugal-da-rí bala u4-sù-rá); 3.7.3 (98, 121, “his rule forever,” du-rí-šè). Cf. merely
“long,” “good,” and “peaceful” reigns, e.g., 2.13.5 (bala-sù-rá), .6 (bala-du10), and .12 (bala gù-téš-
sì-ke), respectively.
180 S. Richardson
even their very lives39 were eternal, as well as the fame of their individual kingly attrib-
utes—their valor,40 greatness,41 and reputation;42 even the happiness and contentment
they brought to their people was supposed to last “forever.”43 All this was distilled and
concentrated into one particularly salient Old Babylonian idiom of eternity, the so-called
“seed of kingship.”44 This was a naturalizing metaphor that linked individual kingships
to an unbroken chain of fame stretching off into the deepest past and the farthest future.
The theme of the king’s eternal durability is even more insistent in Old Babylonian
royal hymns, where “forever” motifs occur at least 55 times as they relate to the verbs
du-rí,45 sud,46 and ul,47 variously translatable as “forever,” “eternal(ly),” “long-last-
ing,” “everlasting,” “for all time,” “unchanging,” “unalterable,” and “distant” (i.e., in
the phrase “until distant/future days”).48 With the royal inscriptions, these 88 examples
39RIME 4 2.14.16 (22–24, “to establish the life of RN forever,” u4-da-rí-šè; also 28, an inscrip-
tion “for the future,” u4-sù-rá-šè); 2.14.17 (22–24, same as 2.14.16:22–24); 3.7.7 (130–34, that the
gods, “his brothers … grant Samsuiluna well-being and life like Sîn and Šamaš,” ša kīma DN1 ù
DN2 darîm); 6.8.2 (116, “long-life forever,” ana ūm darûtim).
40RIME 4 2.9.2 (19–22, “to make my ways, praise, and valor last for the future,” a-rá zà-mí nam-
ur-sag-gá-mu u4-da egir-bi-šè).

41RIME 4 2.13.21 (60, “making my greatness and supremacy last forever,” u -da-rí-šè).
4
42RIME 4 2.13.26 (29–30, “my exalted reputation forever,” du-rí-šè).
43RIME 4 3.7.3 (110–11, “lives of everlasting happiness,” balaṭam ṭūb libbim darâm); 3.7.5 (26,
silim-ma durí-šè [Akk. 23: in šulmim ana dār]).

44RIME 4 3.6.11 (23, “eternal seed of kingship,” numun-da-ri-nam-lugal); 3.7.7 (12′′, “eternal seed
of the gods,” numun d a-rí-dingir-e-ne-ke4); 3.8.1 (5′–6′, “eternal seed of kingship,” as 3.6.11:23).
4517 cases: ETCSL 2.5.4.11:45, 2.5.4.23:18, 2.5.4.24:11, 2.5.4.29:B4, 2.5.4.b:12, 2.5.6.1:42,
2.5.6.3:53, 2.6.6.1:24, 2.6.9.2:52, 2.6.9.5:27, 2.6.9.5:69, 2.6.9.a:8, 2.8.2.2:10, 2.8.3.3:36, 2.8.5.b:5,

2.8.5.b:29, and 2.8.5.b:5.
4626 cases: ETCSL 2.5.2.1:37, 2.5.4.01:393, 2.5.4.01:63, 2.5.4.01:75, 2.5.4.04:17, 2.5.4.17:16,
2.5.4.17:12, 2.5.4.24:10, 2.5.5.1:101, 2.5.6.1:82, 2.5.6.4:36, 2.6.6.1:14, 2.6.6.1:17, 2.6.6.1:14,

2.6.6.1:17, 2.6.9.2:40, 2.6.9.3:27, 2.6.9.3:14, 2.6.9.4:43, 2.6.9.8:8, 2.7.1.1:31, 2.8.3.2:26,
2.8.3.2:27, 2.8.5.b:16, 2.8.5.b:21, and c.2.9.9.b:3.
4712 cases: ETCSL 2.5.1.3:27, 2.5.2.1:66, 2.5.4.01:211, 2.5.4.09:93, 2.5.4.17:20, 24, 2.5.4.24:10,
2.5.4.27:13, 2.5.5.1:101, 2.5.6.1:42, 2.5.6.1:55, 2.5.6.5:13, and 2.6.6.1:25.

48I have not included every instance of the relevant terms in ETCSL; I exclude four types of eter-
nity motifs. These include first the many instances in which one refers to a god rather than to the
king (or his works, or his throne, etc.), such as “you keep all its people forever [sud] contented,”
referring to the god Ḫaia rather than Rim-Sîn (ETCSL 2.6.9.2:51). Second, I exclude translations
which interpolate a concept of eternity not implied by the verb e.g., ETCSL 2.5.7.2:6, “life long-
lasting,” a translation which elsewhere in ETCSL implies eternity, but in this case the verb is just
taḫ, “to add (days).” A third excluded type is where a translation seems to overextend the meaning
of a reduplicated verb, e.g. ETCSL 2.5.4.29:4, “they have established eternally that he should give
counsel,” or 2.5.5.2:59, “the tablets will forever speak your praise”; but in these cases, the transla-
tion overextends the reiterative meaning of the reduplicated verbs, gi4-gi4 and dug4-dug4, respec-
tively. Fourth and finally, I exclude cases where gilsa [gi16-sa], “treasure,” has unnecessarily been
given the meaning of “eternal”: ETCSL 2.5.5.3:43, as “eternal ornament of kingship”; and 2.8.3.5,
as “eternal fame”; note also RIME 4 2.13.15 (Frgm. 11 7′–10′), “my fame forever,” gilsa-aš.
altogether appear fairly evenly over the four-hundred year Old Babylonian period, about
once every five years. These “forever” motifs were hardly original— Ur III analogues are
well-stocked with similar phrases and sentiments49—but it is fair to say they achieved a
new intensity of use.
Above and beyond mere and sheer numbers, one can be impressed by the literary pro-
ductivity of “forever.” The theme gets expressed in so many different ways, not just in
the frozen stock phrases mechanically reproduced over and over again: it was a lively
and creative topos. To take just a few manifestations for the purposes of illustration:
I established my fame forever there as a treasure in the mouths of the people.

I wrote my praise there on a foundation inscription which proclaims my royal name in order
that the numerous people sing my praises forever.
He made resplendent to remote places and to the distant future his reign of kingship.
I put my good name in the mouths of the people in order that they proclaim it daily like that
of a god and that it not be forgotten, forever.
Abi-ešuḫ is the eternal seed of kingship.
I asked of the god Nanna about making the people know the way of my kingship, or making
my greatness and supremacy exist forever… I implored Nanna humbly.
The humility, of course, is pretty underwhelming; the point here is that the singing,
knowing, treasuring, and flowering of the eternal fame of these kings was articulated in
multifarious ways.
But after the Old Babylonian period, tropes of “forever” in royal speech related to the
king virtually vanish. In the entire 400 years of the Kassite Dynasty—the same length of
time as the Old Babylonian period—there are only two instances of the topos, the first
from Kadašman-Enlil (probably II, around 1250 bc), and the second from a statue of a
king named Kurigalzu:
Kadasman-Enlil (II?): As long as heaven and earth exist, may his reign last.50
Kurigalzu: I keep the (regulations of the) old days standing into the distant future.51
49E.g., ETCSL readings in Šulgi A (2.2.01:36, ud ul-lé-a-aš); Šulgi B (2.4.2.02:2 and 190, ud
sù-rá); Šulgi E (2.4.2.05:205, ud sù-ra); Šulgi O (2.4.2.15: 44–45, u4-ul-lé-aš and ud sù-rá); Šulgi
R (2.4.2.18:70, nam-tar ul-lé-a-šè); Šu-Sin D (2.4.4.4:58 and 61, ul-šè); unnumbered hymn for
Šu-Sin (2.4.4.a, ud sù-ra); and Ibbi-Sin A (2.4.5.1:18, ul-šè).
50Stein 2000: 174, inscription Kb 5 (“Kadašman-Enlil II(?)”): Rs. 9: adi an-ú u ki-tum bašû palûšu
lū dari, “Solange Himmel und Erde bestehen, möge seine Regierung dauern.” No tropes of “for-
ever” are associated with the person, reign, dynasty, works, or other aspects of the king in any of
the Kassite Dynasty’s inscriptions treated in Paulus 2014a or Velhuis 2014 (see following).
51IM 50009: vii 50′–53′: u ul-lí-a-aš u libir-ra mi-ni-gub; see Veldhuis 2008 for edition and dis-
4 4
cussion; and Veldhuis 2014 (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/ckst/pager#ckst:P223740_project-
en.29) for a transliteration of CDLI P223740. This inscription is duplicated by IM 50010 (see esp.
iv 21′–22′, vi 35′) and 50011 (see esp. v 14′).
182 S. Richardson
Further, over the next 400 years, there were only three more kings who used the word
“forever” with reference to themselves: Nebuchadnezzar I [12th c.], Marduk-šapik-zeri
[11th c.], and Marduk-zakir-šumi [9th c.]:
Nebuchadnezzar I: [In an address to Enlil]: Give life and eternal (darûti) days to him,
make his name exceed those of the kings who came before him.52
Nebuchadnezzar I: (May Šamaš grant him) an eternal throne (kussî dūr ud.meš) (and) a
reign of long duration.53
Marduk-šapik-zeri: May his name, his seed, (and) his egg (nunuz) endure in the memory
of the black-headed people for all time (dūr ūmê).54
Marduk-zakir-šumi: The mouths of the people shall be filled with prayer for the king; his
name shall not be forgotten, forever (ana dūr dāru).55
Though “forever” tropes were not forgotten, they did not return as a regular feature of
royal ideological texts until the restorationist reign of Merodach-baladan II. Thus, from
the 15th century down to the late 8th century, a period of almost 800 years, the topos
of “forever” went from being used to refer to the king once every five years to once
every 160 years or so. Accidents of distribution, discovery, and proportion aside56—in
acknowledgement that a comparison-by-accounting is more illustrative than statistical—
this is still a stark difference in use that asks for further examination.
It is perhaps a little facile to point out that not only did Kassite or Middle Babylonian
kings not imitate the pretensions of preceding dynasties in styling their reigns as eternal,
but that neither did they perpetuate many associated practices, especially in not celebrat-
ing the names of their Old Babylonian predecessors, as they were theoretically supposed
to (although we would also have to admit that few Mesopotamian dynasties were par-
ticularly consistent or interested in doing this, either). The odd earlier royal inscription
52Paulus 2014a: 493 II6–7.

53RIMB 2 2.4.10:13.
54Paulus 2014a: 584 V12, giving “Spross” (“sprout”) for nunuz.
55Ibid.: 669 Rs. o. 1.
56The Babylonian inscriptions we are considering for these eight centuries number a little over
300: Paulus 2014a edits 125 royal inscriptions (many of them dozens and even hundreds of lines
long); Stein 2000 edits 55; Veldhuis 2014 edits 82; and about 40 relevant inscriptions appear in
RIMB 2. Bartelmus’s (2016) book touches on only a few royal inscriptions (C.6.4.2.2 [p. 157] is
a royal hymn, but it is to Hammurabi; C.6.4.3.2 [p. 162] is a fragment mentioning only precious
stone) and is not terribly relevant here. Neither does Brinkman 1976 make any notes useful to this
“accounting.” In sum, although the corpus may be less dense than the Old Babylonian material, it
is hardly insubstantial.
may have copied here and there in Kassite times,57 but there was no concerted effort
to organize historical memory around particular Babylonian kings as past heroes, let
alone any of their mighty empires, real or imagined, as those earlier royal inscriptions
instructed them to. If the intention of the Middle Bronze Age royal inscription tradition
had been to assert a model of fame and remembrance even for individual kings, no one
really ever took them up on it in the Late Bronze. The practices for the celebration of
the king’s eternality had dwindled to virtually nothing; that whole part of the ideological
apparatus had just died.
This difference is clear as day, but not particularly significant except in the context of
how concepts of “forever” were deployed in post-OB royal inscriptions. Here we find not
an abandonment of these terms and tropes full-stop, but a change in the topical emphasis
about durability, about what was seen as worth making eternal. It is not the case that
Kassite and Middle Babylonian inscriptions simply didn’t use words like darû, ṣâtu, and
arku anymore—they had not forgotten how to write these words, let alone imagine ideas
about “forever” and “eternity,” in either a cultural or cognitive sense. In fact, these terms
appear many times in the post-OB corpus in contexts other than that of royal fame,58
including that temples, monuments, blessings, and curses would all last “forever.”
But most of all, the land: in monument after monument, Late Bronze and Iron Age
kings of Babylonia celebrated geographic space—areas, locii, borders, and the endow-
ment of usufruct and ownership of land—as the things which the custodial state would
make permanent and eternal. Let us take for example the case of the kudurru-texts. Of
the 117 monuments edited in Paulus 2014a dating from Kadašman-Ḫarbe I up to the
moment when Marduk-apla-iddina II acceded to the throne, only 39 use some form of
darû, ṣâtu, arku, labīru, or balṭu in 65 different phrases; there is a sharp reduction in
the incidence of “forever” tropes. Of those, three phrases refer to the king in some way
(as mentioned above); two phrases are blessings;59 five are found in curses;60 and eight
either refer to the monument itself or appear in its name (e.g., “The name of this monu-
ment is ‘the kudurru confirmed forever’; one might note the absence of the royal name
from the monument itself).61
57E.g. Bartelmus 2016 C.6.4.2.2 (a Kassite copy of a hymn to Hammurabi), and
B.5.3.3.2/C.6.4.3.3, excerpts from the Code of Hammurabi.

58To be clear, including such contexts as OB inscriptions had also traditionally used, e.g. curses
and blessings.
59Paulus 2014a: both appear in ENAp 1: Rs. 11 and 19 (p. 522).
60Ibid.: MŠ 1:vii 39 (p. 378); MAI I 1:vi 18 (p. 435); MNA 1:iv 25 (p. 536); MNA 3:Rd. i–iv.ii 6
(p. 547); and MAI II 1:v 46 (p. 699).

61Ibid.: MŠ 1:iii 53 (p. 373); MŠ 1:v 39 (p. 375); MŠ 7:v 9’ (p. 427); MAI I 3:v 12′ (p. 451); ENAp
2:iv 13 (p. 527); MNA 2:o. 3 (p. 538); MNA 2:ii 40 (p. 541); and MŠZ 2:v 14 (p. 584).
184 S. Richardson
And then, 47 times, one finds the “forever” terms as descriptors of the endowments
that the monuments specify; and, of those, 42 are endowments of land.62 In many cases,
what is specified as protected incomes or tax-free harvests is technically the crop to be
grown on that land; but every single one of those texts identifies the borders of the rel-
evant territory and/or summarizes the true subject of the protections as “the land” in its
clauses protecting against future claims.63 In contrast, five other “forever” endowments
identify persons with exemptions (of grain tax, ilku-duty, or for other products) by name
rather than land.64 It is true that since kudurrus primarily take land and its productive
yields as their subject matter, it should be unsurprising to find a high incidence of asso-
ciation between endowments of land and “forever.” Yet it would be equally valid to point
out that the kudurrus were also all royal texts, and that what is just as important here is
that “forever” was generally not being assimilated to the person of the king: crudely put,
it is 42 cases against 6.
6 Conclusion
Babylonian ideology moved away from: projecting historical fame into the future by
focusing on specific kings to be emulated as eternal models; and into: a uniquely tem-
poralized idea of structured, stabilized, and durable domestic territory. It was not only
that an earlier historical sensibility had withered away about the name and fame of kings
as eternal; nor only that a new idea about the eternal land had arisen; but that those two
changes were related to each other. Reading one against another at the discourse level,
we see the tacit exchange of an unbounded heroic conquest ideal for one about the custo-
dianship of a regulated, Babylonian homeland.
62Ibid.: KH I 1:iii 3 (p. 298); Ku I 2:ii 10 (p. 311); MŠ 2:ii 12 (p. 385); MŠ 3:8 ii 16 (p. 394);
MŠ 4:v 26 (p. 407); MŠ 4:v 27 (p. 407); MAI I 1:iii 25–26 (p. 432); MAI I 1:iii 25–26 (p. 432);
NKU I 1:iii 12 (p. 494); NKU I 1:iii 17 (p. 494); NKU I 3:Vs. 16 (p. 512); NKU I 4:ii 25 (p. 517);
ENAp 2:ii 1 (p. 526); ENAp 3:Vs. 13′ (p. 530); MNA 1:i 17 (p. 534); MNA 1:ii 1 (p. 534); MNA
2:i 31 (p. 539); MNA 3:iii 1 (p. 545); MNA 3:iii 8 (p. 545); MNA 3:iii 15 (p. 545); MNA 3:Rd
i-iv.ii 1 (p. 547); MNA 4:ii 5 (p. 555); MNA 4:ii 23 (p. 555); MNA 8:ii 3′ (p. 571); MŠZ 1:i 14
(p. 576); MŠZ 1:i 28 (p. 576); MŠZ 2:iii 9 (p. 583); MŠZ 3:ii 12 (p. 588); MŠZ 3:iii 1 (p. 589);
AAI 3:ii 9 (p. 599); AAI 4:Rs. 8 (p. 603); MAE 1:ii 1 (p. 607); MZI 1:i 12′ (p. 611); NŠL-RU
1:Rs. 3 (p. 615); SŠ 1:Rs. 9′ (p. 619); NMA 1:ii 29 (p. 625); NMA 1:v 24 (p. 628); NAI 2:Rs. ii 6
(p. 648); NAI 3:Rs. vi 16 (p. 656); MZŠ I 1:Vs. ii 19 (p. 667); MZŠ I 2:Rs. 20 (p. 675); and MAI
II 1:iv 55 (p. 698).
63Ibid.: see e.g. MNA 2: i 9f. and 17 for borders and “Das Land…” clause. Virtually every kudurru
edited here for which the “Gegenstand” is cited as an amount of grain defines and summarizes its
own protected object elsewhere in the text in terms of land.
64Ibid.: MNA 6:ii 7 (p. 565), for grain; MNA 7:Rs. 4 (p. 568), an exemption from ilku-duty; NMA
3:Vs. ii 21 (p. 640), for various products; NŠI 1:Vs. ii 15 (p. 685), for prebendiary positions.
Exactly what is being endowed in NKU I 2:ii 9 (p. 506) is unclear.
Was this imaginative shift a reflection of deliberate policies? That Kassite and later
kings made a conscious decision to emphasize different ideological symbols? Or was it
the other way around—that strands of historical and popular discourses about the past,
critical of conquest-kingship, themselves resulted in a re-shaping of how kingship was
practiced and represented? This is an old kind of top-down/bottom-up question, and can-
not be answered. But I would incline towards the latter sort of explanation, that we see
here a shift in root concepts about the purpose of the state. We see this particular com-
bination: later traditions about chaos and disorganization of the land in Old Babylonian
times;65 the apparent disinterest of later kings to emulate or celebrate conquest histories;
the laying-aside of a topos of royal fame valorized as eternal; and a shift to a celebration
of land as the durable material of the state. Altogether, this seems a remembering and a
reaction to historical memory; part of a critical discourse about the purpose of the state.
This shift in attention is already heralded by the very first lines of our very first royal
text of Kassite times, the inscription of Kadašman-ḫarbe I, which begins with the retro-
spective lines “When the borders of Sumer and Akkad were forgotten…”; a text which
nowhere mentions the great conquests of Hammurabi or Babylon’s past. That is a silence
about empire, quite a deliberate one, which would last for the next eight hundred years.
Insofar as we can discern an emic perspective about “empire,” what we see in the ear-
lier phase is a deliberacy in asserting the fame of kings, their deeds, and their dynasties
as permanent. Yet nowhere, and in no wise, was the permanence of conquered territory
even hinted at. Notwithstanding, the act of conquest itself was among the deeds meant
to be emulated and repeated by later kings. We can say that something like an impe-
rial disposition was intentionally articulated, insofar as victorious warfare was a kingly
deed; but not that the building-and-holding of conquered lands was desirable as an insti-
tuted feature of kingdoms. And then in the later phase, even the idea of Babylonian king-
ship as the culture’s durable object is almost nowhere to be found, despite the fact that
it remained an accessible concept. Rather, it was a notion of the land as the thing that
lasted forever that became prominent in political imagination, and its measurement,
management, and protection were the royal acts worthy of eternal commemoration—not
expansion and colonization over foreign lands.
If we were to scry the meaning of the change between one set of concerns to the
other, it is possible to understand that there was a later critical reception of the earlier
conquest imperative; where the older conquest disposition (~ imperial/-ist/-ism) was
viewed negatively. In etic terms, the fact that “empire” was never recognized or valor-
ized as such indicates that the concept was likely not ideologically urgent; and that what
we still need are more and better analyses of the ideological workings of kingships and
kingdoms, and the importance of conquest to them as a practice rather than as a will to
power.
65Richardson 2016.
186 S. Richardson
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départemental.
The Medes of the 7th and 6th c. BCE:
A Short-Term Empire or Rather a Short-
Term Confederacy?
Robert Rollinger
“The traditional view of the Median Empire, dependent primarily upon Herodotus’
account of the dynasty founded by Deioces (1.96–107), is a rear projection of Greek con-
ceptions, often stereotypical, of the Achaemenid Persian Empire at its height. In other
words, for Greeks writing in the fifth and fourth centuries, it was a reconstruction of the
past based on a (mis)understanding of the contemporary”.1
With these words Matthew Waters describes the deconstruction of the still prevalent
idea of a “Median Empire” in modern scholarship and I might be supposed to imme-
diately stop here with my contribution, since if there is no “empire” then a “short term
empire” appears also to be out of scope. However, things are not so easy, and this is also
acknowledged by Waters:
“The deconstruction of the Median ‘Empire’ has to reconciled not only with the
Medes’ prominent role in Assyria’s downfall but also with their function as a significant
power on Babylonia’s eastern frontier well into the sixth century—considered as such in
both Babylonian and Greek sources—as well as the Medes’ distinctive positions in the
military and administration of the Persian Empire subsequently”.2
1Waters 2011, 243.

2Waters 2011, 246. See already Waters 2005, 533.
I would like to dedicate this contribution to the memory of my dear father Adolf Friedrich
Rollinger (1938–2019) who always had a special interest in the worlds of ancient Iran.
R. Rollinger (*)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_9
190 R. Rollinger
Hence, there is an issue about the role the Medes played for a certain and distinctive
period of time in the ancient Near East. What I am intending to do in the following is
firstly to give a short introduction on how modern scholarship views and conceptualizes
the role of the Medes from the end of the 7th to about the middle of the 6th c. BCE, sec-
ondly, to present a short overview on the available sources on the history of the Medes
from the very beginning through the crucial time period in question, and, finally, to out-
line an evaluation of the sources under the auspices of what “empire” and “short-term
empire” are supposed to be.3
1 Modern Scholarship and the Medes
As recently as the late 20th century, it was accepted historical knowledge that the fall of
the Assyrian Empire was followed by the rise of a Median ‘empire’ which ruled over vast
areas of the Ancient Near East for half a century, until Astyages, the last Median ruler,
was overthrown by one of his own vassals, namely Cyrus the Great. It was only rela-
tively late that the important works of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg pointed out the many
difficulties and inadequacies of this view.4 Sancisi-Weerdenburg was particularly critical
of the alleged ‘imperial’ structure and character of Median rule and identified a num-
ber of striking dissimilarities with other imperial entities of the Ancient Near East. She
also emphasised the almost complete dependency of modern historiography on Classical
(i.e., Greek) sources, to the nearly complete disregard of Ancient Near Eastern sources.
Unfortunately, Sancisi-Weerdenburg’s work only found very little acceptance. Moreover,
her hypotheses and conclusions were ignored, and the problematic nature of previous
scholarship was marginalised.
An international symposium held in Padova in 2001 attempted to rigorously review
all available sources and to present a secure (as far as possible) narrative of Median his-
tory.5 While the participants were largely successful in their first aim, no consensus on
an accepted narrative could be reached instead due to the frustratingly incomplete and
fragmentary nature of the sources. Thus, “the ever-nagging elusiveness of the Medes his-
torically” and “the persistent paucity of first-hand evidence on how they identified and
represented themselves”6 is still a fundamental problem modern scholarship is facing.
3I have already dealt with many of the topics under different perspectives. For a very similar over-
view on the problem see Rollinger 2018; a short sketch of the relevant data: Rollinger 2004, for
the role of “Media” in the time of Darius I: Rollinger 2005; for Media and Urartu: Rollinger 2005,
Rollinger/Kellner 2019; for the Babylonian sources and Herodotus: Rollinger 2003a, 2010; for
Ctesias as a source for the Medes: Rollinger 2011; Waters 2017.
4Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1988, 1995; see also Kienast 1999.
5Lanfranchi/Roaf/Rollinger 2003. See also Waters 2005.
6See also Root 2002.

The Medes of the 7th and 6th C. BCE: A Short-Term Empire … 191
There was, however, a general consensus that the existence of a Median ‘empire’ can-
not be conclusively proven and should not be treated differently from other hypothe-
ses. Opinions were divided on any further detailed characterisation of historical events:
While many of those present rigorously refused it or attempted to follow through on the
theses of Sancisi-Weerdenburg by questioning the geographic extent of Median influ-
ence,7 others still chose to accept the notion of a Median ‘empire’.8 The discussion has
continued up to the present,9 By taking a closer look at the diverting opinions expressed
on Median rule between ca. 610 and 550 BCE it becomes evident that one of the most
fundamental objectives against the notion of a Median “empire” is its obvious differ-
ence as compared to its predecessor and successor empires. This is a fact and cannot be
denied. For this reason, I argued for a Median “confederation”10 and Christopher Tuplin
for a Median “domination”,11 and Matthew Waters for a “Median king holding author-
ity over other regions without the structure of an organized empire”,12 whereas Lloyd
Llewellyn-Jones even went one step further and thought it is “probably more realistic
to think of the Medes as a tribal, semi-nomadic society that had the potential to pull
together under strong leadership [...] an effective fighting force; yet an empire vision
does not seem to have been part of their traditional culture”.13 If at all, the larger-scale
and transregional Median rule in the Near East is limited to a little bit more than half a
century. This chronological framework between 610 and 550 BCE14 is one of the few
facts we know for certain. Thus, we may consider to rate their presence as a “short-term
empire”, and subsequently to distinguish it from the Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid
empires. What follows is an attempt to tackle this “Median dilemma”15 and to throw a
more general light on the Medes and their “history”, the available sources, the problems,
and what we can state with some certainty.
7Liverani 2003; Rollinger 2003a, b; Henkelman 2003; Jursa 2003.

8Roaf 2003.
9Tuplin 2005; Rollinger 2004, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011; Rossi 2010, 2017; Waters 2011; Radner
2013; Zournatzi 2013; Lanfranchi 2020. Unfortunately, Parker 2019 cannot be taken as a serious
contribution to the topic since he is ignorant of the most seminal publications as well as of the rel-
evant discussions and argumentations on the problem.
10See especially Rollinger 2003a, 2010.
11Tuplin 2005, 242 f.; Waters 2011.
12Waters 2011, 250.
13Llewellyn-Jones 2016, 1401.
14Waters 2011, 243 has it appropriately as “the history of the critical, yet poorly understood, period
c. 650–550 BCE—from the denouement of the Assyrian Empire to the rise of the Persian Empire
under Cyrus, i.e. the apparent zenith of Median power”.
15It is interesting to note that some recent and very prominent handbooks on Iranian history
even appear reluctant to deal with the problem at all and do not include a chapter on the Medes:
Daryaee 2012; Potts 2013.
192 R. Rollinger
2 Sources and Pre-history
During the reign of the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (858–834 BCE), the
Medes (Madāya) are mentioned for the first time. In the following centuries, they
repeatedly appear in Neo-Assyrian sources, both in royal inscriptions and in archi-
val records, mainly as opponents encountered when the Assyrian armies campaign in
the central Zagros area—where they are primarily localized—but also as vassals of the
Neo-Assyrian super power.16 Although the Assyrians’ perception of how far the Median
population stretched eastwards remains unclear, there is evidence that it was as far as the
region of the modern cities of Teheran and Rey,17 or even further to the east.18
Not only for the Neo-Assyrian era (9th through 7th centuries BCE), but also for the
following Neo-Babylonian and early Persian times (6th c. BCE) our sources exclusively
exhibit an external view of the Medes19. For there is not a single indigenous source
representing a ‘Median’ perspective on their matters, their history, or on their agenda.
Neither do we know whether there was a shared Median identity and whether the Medes
of our sources called themselves Medes.20 Sometimes the Neo-Assyrian sources refer
to “mighty Medes” and “distant Medes”. At least these qualifications look very much
like projections from outside in order to organize the expanding knowledge of an area
becoming increasingly well known by the Assyrians. Some of these “Medes” were local-
ized inside the Empire and some of them outside. From an Assyrian perspective, this
makes them a border population. The Medes within Assyrian reach were regarded as vas-
sals and had to swear the loyalty oath to the Assyrian heir apparent Esarhaddon (672
BCE).
The origin of the term Madāya is unknown. Its specific trans-regional usage evidently
derives from Assyrian practice. Like in antiquity the ethnic term “German”, picked up
from a very local and indigenous usage and artificially spread over the entire population
east of the rhine River by Caesar,21 the Assyrians might have taken up a local designation
somewhere in the central Zagros area and transferred it to a far larger population cover-
ing the whole of the central Zagros and farther to the east.
Although the designation Madāya/Medes was the most popular one, it was not the
only one used for the population of the central Zagros area. In the second half of the 8th
c. BCE, the designation “Arabs of the east” appears.22 We do not know exactly what this
16Radner 2003, 2013.

17Rollinger 2007.
18Waters 2011; Alibaigi/Rezaei 2018.
19Liverani 2003.
20Lanfranchi 2003, 84.
21Pohl 2004a, b; Steinacher, forthcoming.
22Radner 2003, 55.

actually means23 but it seems to reveal some kind of uncertainty about how to label the
peoples of the central Zagros regions. The term “Arab” that also appears in the inscrip-
tions of Shalmaneser III for the first time in world history may as well not represent an
ethnically or linguistically determined designation. Rather, it may refer to a specific mode
of living, where transhumance or trade with camels might have played a major role.24
In Neo-Babylonian and (retrospective) Persian sources the term Ummān-manda
appears for the Medes.25 This clearly is a designation deriving from outside and has a
pejorative connotation. Moreover, it is evident that the term Madāya and the Neo-
Assyrian concept attached to it—i.e., a rather homogeneous and substantial population of
the central Zagros area—became part of a tradition. It was adapted by contemporary and
later, adjacent and more distant languages and cultures, like the Urartians, Babylonians,
Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans.
As we do not know whether these Madāya had a supra-regional Median identity, we
are also ignorant about whether they represent a homogenous linguistic group.26 Thanks
to the flourishing cuneiform and later especially Greek sources many “Median” proper
names are documented. They suggest a dominant Iranian background these people might
have had. One should, however, be cautious about claiming that this evidence definitely
proves a homogenous and well-defined Iranian language which could generally and sim-
plistically be labelled as “Median”.
Such a hypothesis, although very common and likewise broadly accepted as a fact,
does not rest on firm ground.27 It is highly probable that a much larger and more com-
plex diversity of local Iranian dialects/languages lurks behind these proper names.
Certainly, we have to reckon with a larger ethnic diversity in general in these areas where
Urartian, Elamite, Assyrian, Babylonian and other languages played a certain role.28
This is not only true for the Central Zagros area but also for the North-west around Lake
Urmia where a strong Hurrian presence becomes evident in Neo-Assyrian times and
beyond.29
Over the two hundred years of rather extensive Neo-Assyrian documentation there is
not a single piece of evidence for a unified political entity in the central Zagros region,
let alone for a Median ‘empire’. Instead, these sources depict a highly fragmented politi-
cal landscape in the Zagros mountain region, with no discernible tendencies towards
greater centralisation. The Assyrians encounter a plurality of small political units, whose
23One may take it as a reference to a specialization in desert trade in the interior of Iran (Radner
2013) or as an indication of a rather mobile lifestyle.
24Lanfranchi 2003.
25Adalı 2011.
26Rossi 2017.
27Schmitt 2003; Rossi 2010.
28Fuchs 2011.
29Radner 2012.
194 R. Rollinger
rulers they do not call “king” but “city lord” (bēl āli).30 Many of them, yet but by far
not all of them, are designated as being “Median”.31 It seems as if there is a dynastic
component connected to this title which indirectly implies interpersonal relationships
and coalescences between these “city lords”.32 Remarkably, their cities are heavily forti-
fied with sometimes more than two rings of walls33 At least after the middle of the first
millennium BCE, transhumance appears to have gained importance in these regions.34
Horse breeding and trade/robbery also played an important role since the Khorasan
road crossed the central Zagros area. It was the predecessor of the later Silk Roads
and linked the Iranian highland with Mesopotamia. Within and beyond Assyrian con-
trol, the (Median) city lords profited considerably from the transregional overland trade
and the taxes and tolls extracted, as the Assyrian provinces in this region were estab-
lished exactly along this seminal trading route. The Assyrian practice of renaming of
local ‘cities’ as “Trading quay of (a certain Assyrian god or king)” unfolds the impor-
tance of trading stations in this eastern border regions and the empire’s efforts for con-
trol and taxation.35 Thus, the Assyrian sources never describe the Medes as nomads but
always as a sedentary population. Intensive contact with the Assyrian super-power and
its gigantic economic space was highly influential in these regions, especially when the
Assyrians began with the reign of king Sargon II (721–705 BCE) to establish provinces.
These contacts certainly transformed local societies and may also have triggered devel-
opments towards political unification that can roughly be described as “secondary state
formation”.36 This process, however never became a supra-regional phenomenon. This
conclusion is confirmed by archaeological sources that, likewise, do not indicate the
existence of a unified Median state. Important sites like Nush-e Jan, Godin Tepe, Baba
Jan Tepe, Ozbaki Tepe, Gūnespān-e Pātappeh (and now maybe also Haj Khan Tappeh
(Tappeh Hajjiabad near Razqan) do not represent ‘imperial centres’ but rather seats of
30Lanfranchi 2003. Some of these “city lords” do not bear Iranian names (Waters 2011, 245).
31Radner 2003, 2013.
32Waters 2011, 245.
33Radner 2013, 444–447. See also Gunter 1982.
34Potts 2014, 47–156. This is at least true as far as ‘pure’ nomadic pastoralism is concerned. For
transhumance, agro-pastoralism and ‘tribal societies’ there is, however, emerging evidence in
Achaemenid sources: Henkelman 2011.
35Radner 2013, 449–451.
36Brown 1986. Term and concept are not without problems as, e.g., has clearly been outlined by Di
Cosmo 2002, 171–173, and Payne 2016, 10 f., 19. I take it roughly as a designation of those fun-
damental socio-political changes at imperial border zone societies that were considerably triggered
and stimulated by the empire’s presence and actions. See, however, also the important observations
by Honeychurch 2015, 47–78, concerning the contact between empire and ‘nomads’, highlighting
autonomous dynamics in the border-zones. He also emphasizes the important aspect that “pastoral
nomads commonly spend significant time engaged in non-pastoral activities” (Honeychurch 2015,
54). For state concepts in antiquity see in general Scheidel 2013.
“city lords” with no more than a local reach.37 Previously identified seats of power of
an alleged Median ‘empire’ in western Iran, like Hamadan, or outside the proper cen-
tral Zagros area, like Kerkenes Dağı in Asia Minor, do not hold up to critical scrutiny
and have been revealed as optimistic academic mirages, constructed to fit preconceived
notions of imperial Media.38
By about the middle of the 7th c. BCE, Assyrian sources on the Medes become
scanty. They reappear on the political stage during the last third of the 7th c. BCE
when the Assyrian Empire fights a final struggle for existence.39 Our main source for
these events is a Babylonian Chronicle, the so-called “Fall of Nineveh Chronicle”.40
Although the Chronicle demonstrates a Babylonian perspective on the events, it does,
however, not deny that it was not only the Babylonian forces under their usurper king
Nabopolassar (626–605 BCE) that brought the Assyrian super power to an end but a coa-
lition of Medes and Babylonians. They even concluded a formal treaty of alliance.41 The
Medes are described as Ummān-manda and led by a certain Umakištar (>Cyaxares in
Greek).42 Obviously they “descend” to Assyria but the origin and reach of Umakištar’s
reign remain obscure. They destroy the city of Assur in 614 BCE and Nineveh in 612
together with the Babylonians. With this event Umakištar disappears from the historical
scene, although some Medes may have participated in the Neo-Babylonian campaign to
the last Neo-Assyrian residence Harran in order to finally stab the failing Assyrians in
their back.43
The Medes prominently reappear in the inscriptions of the last Neo-Babylonian king
Nabonidus (556–539 BCE).44 Three events shed light on the Medes through a Babylonian
perception. The first one is once more related to the city of Harran in Syria (Appendix,
Text 1). Nabonidus claims during the final struggles of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 609
37Liverani 2003; Stronach 2003; Gopnik 2011; Naseri/Malekzadeh/Naseri 2016. Cf. also
Alibaigi/Aminikhah/Fatahi 2016. For Haj Khan Tappeh, c. 60 km NE of Hamadan, exca-
vated by Esmail Hemmati Azandaryani in 2017 see the preliminary report at: http://richt.ir/
Portal/Home/ShowPage.aspx?Object=NEWS&CategoryID=df4937bb-4571-44e7-a403-
6e9d036bd478&WebPartID=133f41b7-9923-4ef6-bddc-6ea15fbdd6e8&ID=c29ac46d-6bf6-
40c2-bab9-3a841658cf55 (2019). There it is stated, inter alia: “The salvaging project on Tappeh
Hajiabad (Hajiabad Hill) in Hamedan led to the discovery of a huge adobe structure dating back
to the Iron Age 3 (probably the Medians) with thick walls, fire platform and seating platforms with
dimensions bigger that the Noushijan Temple.” I owe this reference to Michael Roaf to whom I am
very grateful for this.
38Boucharlat 1998; Sarraf 2003; Rollinger 2003b; see now also Summers 2018.
39Fuchs 2014.
40Grayson 1975, 90–96.
41Rollinger 2003a, 2010.
42Tavernier 2007, 217 (4.2.873).
43Rollinger 2003a.
44Rollinger 2003, 2010. For the relevant texts see the appendix at the end of this contribution.
196 R. Rollinger
the Medes destroyed the temple Ehulhul dedicated to the moon god Sîn. The Babylonians
would have been unable to rebuild the temple for more than 50 years, since the Medes
were supposedly still “roaming around”. This is clearly an ideologically biased view
where an allegedly permanent Median presence in Syria during the first half of the 6th
c. BCE is made accountable for Babylonian inactivity to rebuild the temple. In the same
way, the Medes are presented as archetypical temple destroyers, an uncoordinated and
destructive mass of people, and thus as true barbarians. A similar perspective also applies
for the second event when Nabonidus looks back on the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
and describes the Medes as a destructive flood that not only ruined Assyria but also
Mesopotamian cultic rites and cult centers (Appendix, text 2). The third event is contem-
poraneous to Nabonidus when he focuses on the end of Median dominance in the central
Zagros area (Appendix, texts 3–4). In this context another Median leader is introduced
60 years after Umakištar. His name is Ištumegu (>Astyages in Greek).45 The event in
question is also addressed by the so-called Nabonidus Chronicle originating in Persian
times although inscription and chronicle are not in accordance concerning the dating of
the event (553 vs. 550 BCE). Ištumegu seems to have ruled a political entity of medium
size around its center, Hagmatana (>Agbatana or Ekbatana in Greek; >Hamadan in mod-
ern times), which controlled a territory not larger than the central Zagros region. He is not
presented as a relative of the former Umakištar, and his political and especially military
instruments appear to have been much less developed than those of his former predeces-
sor. He is in control neither of north-western nor of south-western Iran. He is not charac-
terized as suzerain and superior of the king of Anshan, i.e., later Cyrus the Great. Rather,
it was the latter who took the initiative and campaigned against his northern neighbour
and rival whom he quickly overthrew and plundered Hagmatana.46
With this event the Medes do not disappear from cuneiform sources. Media has a
coda in Darius’ Bisitun inscription.47 It figures as a kind of s upra-regional entity reach-
ing from eastern Anatolia to central western Iran and farther to the east, and as far as
the southern Caspian Sea. At first glance, one may take this as evidence for the exten-
sion of a former Median ‘empire’. But a closer look reveals that this is still a politically
fragmentary and heterogeneous area, in which several individual uprisings with differ-
ent usurpers took place, only one claiming to be a descendant of the already legendary
Umakištar. This evidence is thus best explained as a reflection of the reach of a very
short-term confederacy that owes its brief existence mainly to the special historical cir-
cumstances around the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
The persistence of local traditions in a politically still fragmented landscape in these
areas during early Persian times is also demonstrated by a much-disputed passage of the
45Tavernier 2007, 291 (4.2.1443).

46Rollinger 1999, 2010.
47Rollinger 2005.
so-called Nabonidus Chronicle (ii 16).48 The passage deals with a campaign of Cyrus
the Great in 547 BCE (the 9th year of king Nabonidus) towards a land which cannot be
defined with absolute certainty because the text survives only partly. Only traces of the
first character of the country’s name are preserved rather badly, and it has been argued
for about a hundred years how to read this character.49 Such readings/interpretations have
nearly always been presented as a “fact”, the tablet’s bad state of preservation and the
many different readings put forward notwithstanding. From the very beginning there
was a mainstream opinion that the first character of the country’s name has to be read
as Lu-[xxx] and the country thus to be interpreted as Luddu, i.e., Lydia. This is the main
reason for dating Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia in 547 BCE. Divergent opinions concerning
the reading of the character have always been pushed aside, and this is also true in cur-
rent discussions.50 Astonishingly, it has been totally ignored that this discussion should
not solely be based on the reading of the character in question. Obviously, the many dif-
fering opinions expressed on this vexed problem in the last hundred years undoubtedly
demonstrate that the tablet’s state of preservation is simply not sufficient to claim that
the problem can be solved by presenting the one and only definite reading.51 Rather,
one has to contextualize the problem and look at the whole passage in question. There,
it is stated that “King Cyrus (II) of Parsu mustered his army and crossed the Tigris
downstream from Arbēla (Erbil) and, in the month of Iyyar, [march]ed to X [???]. /He
defeated its king (or: put its king to death), seized its possessions, [and] set up his own
garrison [there]. After that, the king and his garrison resided there” (Nabonidus
Chronicle ii 15–18).52
The document’s geographical perspective reveals an important dimension of argu-
mentation, although this crucial point is generally nearly totally ignored, for the
alleged statement that Cyrus crossed the Tigris and marched towards Lydia is very dif-
ficult to explain. According to Google maps, the distance between Erbil and Sardis is
1739 km, calculating the shortest route through upper Mesopotamia crossing the
Euphrates at Birecik and continuing via Gaziantep to the west. But, Cyrus could not have
taken this short route, for most of the area was, at least at that time, controlled by the
Babylonians.53 If the reading Lu-[???] is supposed to be correct, he must have taken a
route via eastern Anatolia that was about 2000 km in length. This is slightly less than the
distance between Cologne and Moscow (about 2300 km). From this perspective, such
an interpretation becomes hardly tenable. It is as if a 19th c. central European source on
Napoleon’s campaign against the Tsar had described the event as follows: “The French
48Rollinger 2009.
49Rollinger 1993, 188–197.
50Rollinger/Kellner 2019.
51Cf. van der Spek 2014, 256 n. 184; more cautiously: Payne/Wintjes 2016, 14 with n. 6.
52Grayson 2000, 107.
53Jursa 2003; Rollinger 2003a.

198 R. Rollinger
emperor crossed the river Rhine below Cologne and marched against Moscow”.54 Lydia
is therefore not really an option, whereas the reading Ú-[???] is still a very attractive one.
But even if this reading cannot be proven definitively,55 it is clear that Cyrus marched
against a still independent country in the immediate reach of a route along the Tigris,
and a region in eastern Anatolia is a very good candidate. Thus the chronicle becomes
an important testimony also for Median history, for it proves that Cyrus’ conquest of
Ekbatana did not imply that he was also in control of eastern Anatolia. Apparently, there
still existed an important political entity in this area that was only conquered by Cyrus in
547 BCE. There is further indirect evidence for this.
We know that Darius I and Xerxes set up inscriptions not only in their favourite
residences such as Persepolis and Susa, but also in residences of those former political
entities that were conquered by Cyrus and in which the early Achaemenids presented
themselves as true and legitimate successors of their Teispid predecessors.56 This is true
for Hamadan and Babylon, e.g., but also for Van. The inscription placed at a steep rocky
flank of the former Urartian capital was obviously tremendously important, for Xerxes
explicitly mentions that his father Darius already intended its construction, but only he
was able to achieve this. The inscription however, only makes sense if the choice of the
location commemorates the former capital of a substantial political entity that ended
through Teispid conquest. Together with the evidence from the Nabonidus Chronicle,
this means that in the first half of the 6th century BCE the Medes cannot have been in
permanent control of eastern Anatolia. Their power was mainly limited to the central
Zagros area.
Now, the Classical sources get important. There is, e.g., Herodotus’ testimony that
during an eclipse generally dated to 585 BCE, the Medes and the Lydians met at the
river Halys in central Anatolia to forge an alliance. Although many historians still treat
Herodotus as sourcebook, simply used like a quarry to rephrase history, it is increasingly
clear that he has to be dealt with as a literary work completed during the Peloponnesian
War, presenting a view of the past, first and foremost, through a Greek lens of around
420 BCE. In his Histories, he skilfully elaborates ancient Near Eastern history as a
sequence of empires. In this literary construction empire is modelled according to the
Persian-Achaemenid Empire of Herodotus’ own time.57 This is also the guiding prin-
ciple of Ctesias’ work, which survived only in fragments, developing Herodotus’ con-
cept of a Median ‘empire’ even further.58 It is Herodotus, and especially Ctesias, who
54Additionally,one hast to stress that the perception of space is not an absolute value. 2300 km was
a much larger distance in Cyrus’ times, when Lydia was perceived to be at the western fringes of
the world.
55Rollinger/Kellner 2019.
56Rollinger 2015, 118–120.
57Bichler 2000; Rollinger 2003c, 2014; Rollinger/Truschnegg/Bichler 2011; Dunsch/Ruffing 2013.
58Wiesehöfer/Rollinger/Lanfranchi 2011.
formed the basis for later Classical sources that structured world history as a sequence
of empires—a view that was adopted by late antique Christianity and passed on through
the Middle Ages to modern times.59 It is mainly this reception history that saved the
Medes a prominent place in a Western view of world history canonized over a lengthy
period. Both Herodotus and Ctesias describe Median history as a succession of kings
ruling a united and far-reaching territory from the beginning to the very end.60 Apart
from the name of the last king Astyages, however, they completely disagree about the
number of these kings, their names, and the duration of the Median period. They only
share two facts with indigenous ancient Near Eastern sources: It was the Medes who
brought the Assyrian Empire to an end, and it was Cyrus who overcame the last Median
king Astyages. It was apparently the fall of the Assyrian Empire that directed historical
attention towards the Medes, yet without much further information on what these Medes
really were. Herodotus, moreover, reports a famous story about how the Medes estab-
lished monarchy. But this story has been decoded as a mix of Iranian mythology and
Greek sophistic theories of the end of the 5th c. BCE on how states come into being.61
Whereas Ctesias’ Medes control the entire Ancient Near East, those of Herodotus do
not. Their reach extends as far west as the river Halys (Kızılırmak) where they allegedly
share a border with the Lydians. This border, however, looks very much like a Greek
construction of the 5th c. to organize ancient Near Eastern history.62 In order to prove
such a construction it is connected with a legendary story. This is exactly the “historical”
context for localizing the Median-Lydian treaty at the river Halys and for the famous
story about the sage Thales who has predicted an eclipse of the sun that brought Median-
Lydian strife to an end. The Medes might have been roaming through Anatolia for a very
brief period of time, and they may indeed have concluded a treaty with the Lydians, but
there was no permanent Median control of eastern—let alone central—Anatolia in the
6th c. BCE.63
Finally, some additional evidence demonstrates that the claim for a Median
‘short-term-empire’ is not without problems.64 There are no archaeological remains of
imperial centres, nor are there documentary archives surviving from a supposed Median
administration. Not a single document has come down to us from their supposed domain,
59Wiesehöfer 2003, 2005; Mari 2018; cf. also Mari 2016.

60Rollinger 2010, 2011.
61Panaino 2003; Meier/Patzek/Walter/Wiesehöfer 2004; see also Gufler 2016.
62Rollinger 2003a.
63The adoption of the term ‘Mede’ as general synonym for ‘Persian’ in Greek sources, attested
since the later 6th century BCE can be seen as evidence of an ephemeral contact between Medes
and Greeks in Asia Minor that originate in Median raids to central Anatolia.
64The alleged intermediary role in transmitting Neo-Assyrian artistic traditions with political
connotations subscribed to the Medes by modern scholars can be ascribed to Elam or the Neo-
Babylonian Empire (Seidl 1994; Liverani 2003; Waters 2005, 527; 2013; Tavernier 2018).
200 R. Rollinger
since multiple documents previously thought to have done so have been shown to be
untrustworthy. There is also no contemporary correspondence between foreign kings and
Median rulers, neither from Babylonia nor from any other country. In the entire 3000-
year history of the Ancient Near East, the Medes would thus have established the only
‘empire’ from which no kind of textual documentation, neither from inside nor from out-
side, has survived to this day.
3 Short-Term Empire or Short-Term Confederacy?
In addition to these negative findings, which result from careful re-evaluation of existing
evidence the model of a geographically and chronologically limited political ‘confeder-
acy’ dominated by Iranian peoples has been developed as an alternative to the notion of
a Median ‘empire’. In the short term, this confederacy likely played an important role in
the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Of course, as we know
from comparative history confederacies can develop into imperial policies as well.65
But this never happened with the Medes where comparable imperial structures never
emerged. A prime motivation of the members of this ‘confederacy’ is said to have been
raids reaching as far as central Anatolia. There was no organised ‘rule’ as such, no stable
authority, as the ‘confederacy’ was in itself a short-lived collective brought together by
momentarily overlapping goals and ambitions. As such, it was more likely dominated by
short-term alliances and dependencies which would scarcely have endured beyond the
next raiding season. If any coherent order of rule developed at all, as this theory goes,
it could only have happened in the central Zagros region between the lake of Urmia
and Elam. Some kind of centralization or re-organization might have taken place there
since archaeologically evidenced ‘Median’ sites like Nush-e Jan, Godin Tepe, Baba Jan
Tepe, Gūnespān-e Pātappeh (and now maybe also Haj Khan Tappeh/Tappeh Hajjiabad
near Razqan) appear to have been abandoned in the second half of the 7th c. BCE.66
One may wonder whether this process reveals changes in the political organization of
the Central Zagros region, and if so, whether these emerged before or after the sack of
the Assyrian capitals. It is easy to imagine that the latter event resulted in a subsequent
social and political restructuring triggered by the immense amount of plunder and short-
lived wealth introduced into the region. However, the dimension of this supposed to be
‘centralisation’ is absolutely unclear. When Kuraš/Cyrus overcomes Astyages/Ištumegu
according to the Nabonidus Chronicle (Appendix, text 5) the latter appears to be a struc-
turally weak ruler with no real command over his army. Obviously, this takeover had
a trans-regional dimension, otherwise the Babylonian Chronicle would not have taken
65Cf, e.g., the ‘kinetic empire’ of the highly mobile Comanches: Hämäläinen 2008, 2013. See in
general also Gehler/Rollinger 2014; Gehler/Rollinger 2020.

66This is at least clear for Nush-e Jan and Godin Tepe.
notice of the event. But this does not have to mean that Astyages/Ištumegu controlled a
gigantic area from Central Anatolia to Eastern Iran. Not at all, the event’s significance
for Babylonia was down to the fact that Astyages/Ištumegu controlled the region of
Hamadan and thus the central Zagros area. This was a node for any overland traffic to
the east, the entrance of the Khorasan Road, the later Silk Road that was of vivid inter-
est of any lowland ‘empire’, be it Babylonian or Assyrian. What we know much better
now than we did about a decade ago is that it was not only the ‘empires’ of the third
millennium like Agade and Ur III that were eager to supervise this seminal vital line of
economic and political power. From the very beginning of the second millennium BCE
Babylonian polities left their fingerprint in this region which sites like Chogha Gavaneh
clearly demonstrate.67 This continued all through the second half of the second mil-
lennium BCE when the Babylonian ‘imperial kingdoms’68 of the Kassites and Isin II
tried to control exactly that very region as far as Hamadan. Although they were again
and again challenged by Elam, on a long term perspective they were rather successful
in doing this.69 When the Neo-Assyrian Empire entered the scene in the 9th c. BCE, the
Assyrian kings were just continuing this political strategy manifesting Assyrian politi-
cal, cultural, and economic presence even far beyond the region of Hamadan.70 Seen
through this lens, the presence of a Median ‘local’ power in the central Zagros area and
its control of the gateway to the Iranian highland was of utmost Babylonian concern.
As it seems, this area slipped away from lowland control after the downfall of the Neo-
Assyrian Empire,71 although the Assyrian heartland itself appears to have been firmly
in Babylonian hands. Thus, when the Nabonidus Chronicle mentions that Kuraš/Cyrus
defeated Astyages’/Ištumegu’s there is no need to conclude that the latter must have
ruled over a vast empire. On the contrary, a closer look even highlights a somehow local
rule that was bound to Ekbatana, and, as already underlined, a rather week ruler, since
his troops refused to give him allegiance just before battle and defected (Appendix, text
67Abdi/Beckman 2007.
68Using this term, I am following a suggestion by Kulke 1986, 1–22, who developed this idea with
a view on the history of southeast Asia. ‘Imperial kingdom’ characterizes territorial states that have
an imperial claim without representing a ‘real’ empire. They are either neighbors of ‘real’ empires,
are competing for imperial primacy with other ‘imperial kingdoms’ or they are what has been
remained from former ‘real’ empires. Taken as such they represent a sort of a phenomenon that
may be dubbed as ‘imperial transformation’.
69Fuchs 2017. Potts 2017. Potts forthcoming b.
70Radner 2003, 2013; Fuchs 2011.
71This might also have had serious consequences for the Babylonian management of far-distance
trade. Examining the extant sources one has the impression that there is much more about f ar-distance
trade with the west than with the east. If eastern, i.e. Central-Asian and Indian, trading goods are con-
cerned the route via the Sealand and across the Persian Gulf appears to have played a major role in
Neo-Babylonian times. Cf. Kleber 2017, 1–29. See also in general Graslin-Thomé 2009.
202 R. Rollinger
5). That the Babylonians noticed even this detail is also revealing, for it threw some light
on the power of the new ruler who, obviously, was in a class by himself. This becomes
even more true if the Nabonidus Chronicle is a product of much later times that tele-
scopes on past events (Kuraš’s/Cyrus’s defeat of Astyages/Ištumegu) through an ex
eventu perspective (Kuraš’s/Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon, more than ten years later).72
Be that as it may, there is also no reason to doubt that Median rule was not any-
more organized around an urban center in the same way as it was the case during
Neo-Assyrian times. Hamadan/Ekbatana might have played an increasing role in this
context although we are still lacking archaeological evidence for this. In any case, the
Median core area is still inhabited by a (mainly) sedentary population. This is an impor-
tant observation, for there is a tendency in modern scholarship to qualify the Medes as
non-sedentary nomads.73 Although this has no basis in our available sources,74 it can-
not be excluded that there was also a pastoralist element tightly intertwined with
Median societies and that a ‘tribal’ element played some role in this context.75 However,
“true” nomadism, i.e. nomadism that goes beyond semi-nomadism and transhumance,
appears to emerge in Iran only around the middle of the first millennium BCE only.76
Evidence for nomadism in the geographical ranges of the Iranian highland is to a high
degree based on Classical sources,77 although there is now also increasing material from
72Waerzeggers 2015, 96, 115–116.

73Cf. above Llewellyn-Jones 2016, 1401.
74As Margaret Cool Root (Root, forthcoming) demonstrated convincingly the depiction of the
Median delegation at the Apadana of Persepolis represents, on the one hand, a notion of (non-Per-
sian) pan-Iranian connectivity, on the other hand, a concept of craft enterprise and fabrication that
does not really fit to a general idea of a pastoralist population on the move. Also in this context it
is much more appropriate to think of a mainly sedentary population where, however, horse-breed-
ing played a crucial economic role and where horse-riding became a distinctive marker of nobility
and social distinction. Moreover, Root considerably downgrades the purported prominent Median
role under the Achaemenids. This is also a crucial argument against the alleged significant Median
component of continuity between Assyria and the Achaemenids which has always been taken as a
‘major’ indication of the existence of a Median ‘empire’ (Roaf 2003).
75Cf. Waters 2005, 523–25.
76Potts 2014, 47–119. According to Di Cosmo 2002, 23–27 pastoral cultures appeared for the
first time in western Eurasian steppes in the 3rd millennium BCE which, in the course of the 2nd
millennium BCE developed into a form of Agro-Pastoralism. The transition to “actual pasto-
ral nomadism as practised by horseback riders” only emerged around the turn of the first millen-
nium BCE. Cf. also in general Honeychurch/Makarewicz 2016, and Khazanov 1994, 2015. For
the close relationship between pastoralists and sedentary societies and their intensive exchange
in Bronze Age Central Asia see Rouse/Cerasetti 2018. The same is true for Iron Age south-east-
ern Kazakhstan (Semirech’ye) where the idea of an entirely nomadic population of horse-riding
warriors turns out to be a trope (Chang 2018). What we find is a mixed agro-pastoral popula-
tion in a decentralized state of a larger sedentary population together with transhumant herders.
Nevertheless, it is these contexts, where, according to Chang a more far-reaching nomadic confed-
eracy evolved.
77Potts 2014, 88–119. See also Rapin 2007.
Achaemenid sources themselves.78 This is obviously a highly problematical testimony. It

is true that horse-riding and horse-breeding start to play an increasing role in these times,
but even in the later Achaemenid period cavalry units, although important, make up only
a minor part of the Great King’s army.79 The short-term Median reach as far as central
Anatolia in the west and the area south of the Caspian Sea in the East should not be
explained by the mobility of a tribal army but by the capacities of traditional armies of
the first millennium BCE whose resources are based on urban structures. This, obviously,
also includes cavalry units.80
However, it is not only the Classical sources that obscure our perspective. Thus, the
inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus carry clear connotations of dis-
order and chaos when dealing with the Medes. Their appearance is characterized as a
great flood and their military organisation is described as a loose bunch of people with
primitive hierarchies. The loose and mixed structure of Median rule as evidenced by this
wording only partly bears some truth. It reveals a confederacy revolving around a charis-
matic leader or warlord that is characterised by the formulation of “Kings who march at
his side”.81 Particular verses in the Book of Jeremiah paint a similar picture by describ-
ing Median kings (plural!) as part of a larger federation.82 However, these testimonies
also bear a connotation of barbarian non-sedentary hordes which is clearly ideologically
biased and constructed as opposed to Mesopotamian civilisation. All this characterizes
the short-term Median rule much more as a domination based on a confederal struc-
ture than as an empire. This may have implied, by all means, “a system of hierarchi-
cal, informal (but de facto) rule”83 that was, however, very short-lived. This rule never
included Mesopotamia properly, i.e. one of the core areas of its predecessor and succes-
sor empires. Moreover, it appears to have been based on very weak organizational struc-
tures. There is, however, one basic element Median rule shared with nearly all empires in
world history.84 This is its dominant position in later tradition where the Medes became
one of the basic empires in world history, i.e. a direct line of succeeding empires from
the Neo-Assyrian founder empire through the Roman epigone. This conception emerged
78Henkelman 2011. It is, e.g., interesting to note that only about 10% of the personal names of the
onomastikon of the Persepolis Fortification Archive are Elamite whereas about 50% of the herds-
men bear Elamite names (Henkelman 2011, 4 f.). This immediately makes clear that the popu-
lar view of a sedentary Elamite and a non-sedentary ‘Iranian’ population cannot withstand critical
assessment.
79Tuplin 2010.
80For Medes as riders see Jacobs/MacDonald 2009; Potts forthcoming a. For problems inher-
ent with the depictions at the Apadana reliefs of Persepolis and their distinctive connotations of
“Medianess” see Root, forthcoming.
81Rollinger 2003a, 318.
82Liverani 2003, 8 f; Waters 2011.
83Waters 2011, 249.
84Gehler/Rollinger 2014; 2020.

204 R. Rollinger
from an external perspective, initiated by Greek historiography, and became part of a

Christian world view that guided perceptions of world history until the end of the 18th
CE and beyond into our days. Does this imply that we have to take Median rule over
the Near East as a rare example of an empire conceptualized by tradition only that is not
based on historical reality? Maybe this is a too strict and rigorous stance.
The fall of the Neo-Assyria Empire that is the superpower of its time, was a major
event for all contemporaries and the Medes were one of the main actors on this historical
stage. Median statehood and territorial organization was very much triggered not only by
its close contact with this empire but probably also by its proximity to other territorial
states that emerged in the Zagros region in the 7th c., such as Ellipi, Mannea, Hubuškia,
Muṣaṣir, Ukku and Šubria, including Elam and Urartu at its southern and northern
fringes. This scenario offered perfect opportunities of vast expansion since these terri-
tories were already organized and coherently administered. However far Median reach
went, it was primarily a reach along the Zagros to eastern and central Anatolia and prob-
ably also to areas to the south of the Caspian Sea. In contrast, the southern Zagros area
was out of this reach. There, another transregional power center emerged that indeed
became the core of a future empire. Media was too weak to resist the expansion of this
upcoming new policy and was both overthrown in one single campaign and its capital
was sacked. This, indeed, was somehow a decapitation, but hardly a decapitation of a
short-term empire. Like many other states of this time, Media was captured by Cyrus. It
had not really moved far towards imperial structures. If one still insists to assess Median
rule as “empire” it is at its best defined as a defected empire that, at least in the central
Zagros area, paved the way for the Achaemenid-Persian super-power that would rule the
world for the next 200 years.
Appendix: Babylonian Cuneiform Sources on the Medes85
Text 1: Nabonidus (556–539 BCE); Babylon-Stele x 1′–31′ (explaining why it had taken
so long to restore the Ehulhul, a temple to the lunar deity Sîn in Harrān)86
85Translations of the texts on the basis of the editions by Schaudig 2001 and Grayson 2000 for
detailed comments on texts 1–5 see Rollinger 2003a, 2010; on texts 3–5, see also Rollinger 1999.
86Babylon Stele X 1′–31′ (after Schaudig 2001, 521): […] 1′šá iš-[ša-al-lu] 2′i-ši-it-[ta-šu-un] 3′la
ir-mu-ú šu-bat-[su]-nu 4′dAMAR.UTU be-lí ia-ti 5′ú-qá-’a-an-ni-ma 6′ú-te-ed-du-šú me-si DINGIR

7′ú-šá-áš-kin ŠU.MIN-ú-a 8′sú-ul-lu!(KU)-mu DINGIR.MEŠ ze-nu-tú 9′šu-ur-ma-a šu-bat-sú-
un 10′ina pi-i-šú el!(NIN9xMIN)-lu i-ta-me 11′a-na pa-le-e-a 12′[har]-ra-nuki É!.HÚL.HÚL 13′ša

in-na-du-u 54 MU.MEŠ 14′ina šal-pu-ut-ti ÉRIN-man-du 15′uš-tah-ri-bi eš-re-ti 16′i-te-ek-pu-uš
17′it-ti DINGIR.MEŠ 18′a-dan-nu sa-li-mu 19′54 MU.AN.NA.MEŠ 20′e-nu-ma d30 21′i-tu-ru áš-ru-
uš-šú 22′i-na-an-na 23′a-na aš-ri-šu 24′i-tu-ra-am-ma 25′d30 EN a-gi-i 26′ih-su-su šu-bat-sú 27′ṣir-ti
u DINGIR.MEŠ 28′ma-la it-ti-šú 29′ú-ṣu-ú!(AŠ) <ina > ku-um-mi-šú 30′dAMAR.UTU-ma LUGAL
DINGIR.MEŠ 31′iq-ta-bi pa-har-šú-un. Translation after Schaudig 2001, 528 with minor changes.
Cf. also Rollinger 2003, 297.
[As to rebuild the temples of the gods] whose storehouses [were plundered] and
where they had not established their residence [since …], Marduk, my lord, waited for
me and entrusted me with the restoration of the divine cults. He decreed by his pure
utterance the appeasement of the angry gods and my (re)establishment of their dwellings
(as a duty) for my rule. (Concerning) Harran (and) the Ehulhul, which had been lying
in ruins for 54 years (whose) sanctuaries had been destroyed by the devastation of the
Ummān-Manda (and), to which the sign of the gods, the time for the reconciliation, had
now approached, (after) 54 years, when Sîn should have returned to his place. Now he
had returned to his place, and Sîn, the lord of the tiara, remembered his lofty seat, and
(as to) all the gods who left his chapel with him, it is Marduk, the king of the gods, who
ordered their gathering.
Text 2: Nabonidus (556–539 BCE); Babylon-Stele ii 1′–41′ (looking back on events

around the fall of Assyria)87
He (i.e. Marduk) gave him (i.e. Nabopolassar) a helper, he caused him to have a
friend. The king of the Ummān-manda who had no rival he caused to submit to his com-
mand. He caused him to go to his assistance. Above and below, to the right and to the left
he levelled like a flood. He took revenge, for Babylon he wrought retribution. The king
of the Ummān-manda who was impudent ruined the sanctuaries of the gods of the land
Subartu (i.e. Assyria)—all of them as well as the cities bordering to the land of Akkad
which had been hostile to the king of the land of Akkad and (which) had not gone to his
assistance. He ruined their cultic rites. None he did spare. He destroyed their cult centres.
He was outstanding like a flood. The king of Babylon, the creation of Marduk, he, to
whom nastiness is a taboo, he did not lay his hands on the cult of any god. He wore dirty
hair (and) he slept on the ground.
87Babylon Stele ii 1′–41′ (after Schaudig 2001, 516): 1′re-ṣu id-din-[šum] 2′tap-pa-a ú-šar-ši-iš
3′LUGAL um-man-ma-an-da 4′šá ma-hi-ri la i-šu-u 5′ú-šak-ni-iš 6′qí-bi-tu-uš-šu 7′ú-šá-lik re-ṣu-ut-
su [e-li]-iš u šap-liš 9′[im-nu] ù šu-me-lu 10′[a-bu]-ba-niš is-pu-un 11′ú-tir gi-mil-lu 12′TIN.TIRki
8′
13′i-ri-ba tuk-te-e 14′LUGAL um-man-ma-an-da 15′la a-di-ru 16′ú-šá-al-pi-it 17′eš-re-et-su-un 18′šá
DINGIR KUR SU.BIRki 4

19′ka-la-šu-nù 20′u URUmeš pa-aṭ KUR KI.URI 21′šá it-ti LUGAL KUR
KI.URI na-ak-ru-ma la il-li-ku 24′re-ṣut-sú 25′ú-šá-al-pi-it-ma 26′mé-e-si-šu-un 27′ma-na-ma

22′ 23′
la i-zib 28′ú-šah-ri-ib 29′ma-ha-zi-šu-un 30′ú-ša-ti-ir 31′a-bu-bi-iš 32′LUGAL TIN.TIRki 33′ ši-pi-ir

dAMAR.UTU 34′ša ši-il-la-ti 35′ik-kib-šu 36′la ú-bil ŠUmin-šú 37′a-na pel-lu-de-e 38′DINGIRmeš ka-
la-ma 39′iš-ši ma-la-a 40′ma-a-a-al qaq-qar 41′i-na-al. Translation after Schaudig 2001, 523 with
minor changes. Cf. also Rollinger 2003, 301–303.
206 R. Rollinger
Text 3: Nabonidus (556–539 BCE); Ehulhul Cylinder i 15–29 (relating the divine
appearance of Marduk and Sîn in a dream and their exhortation to rebuild the temple)88
In the beginning of my everlasting reign they (Marduk and Sîn) caused me to see a
dream. Marduk, the great lord, and Sîn, the luminary of heaven and the underworld, were
standing together. Marduk spoke to me: “Nabonidus, king of Babylon, carry bricks on
your horses, build the Ehulhul and establish the dwelling of Sîn, the great lord, in its
midst”. Reverently I spoke to the Enlil of the gods, Marduk: “(But) that temple which
you told (me) to build, the Ummān-Manda surrounds it, and his might is excessive”.
But Marduk spoke to me: “The Ummān-Manda whom you mentioned, he, his country
and the kings who march at his side will cease to exist”. (And indeed), when the third
year arrived, they (Marduk and Sîn) had Cyrus, king of Anšan, his young servant, arise
against him (the Ummān-Manda). He scattered the large (armies) of the Ummān-Manda
with his small army. He captured Astyages, the king of the Ummān-Manda, and took
him to his country as captive.
Text 4: Nabonidus (556–539 BCE); Harrān-Cylinder i′7′–17′ (relating the divine appear-
ance of Marduk and Sîn in a dream and their exhortation to rebuild the temple)89
(Then Marduk spoke to me): “The Ehulhul build [quickly] and let them (i.e. Sîn,
Ningal, Nusku and Sadarnunna) have their seat therein!” [Rev]erently I spoke to the
Enlil of the gods, Marduk: “[Lord of the] lords, compassionate Marduk! But, the city and
that temple whose [erect]ing you told (me), (whose erecting) was put in your mouth –
[the Ummān-Mand]a surrounds it, and his might is excessive, [… ] … a rival he does not
have! How [… A]styages, king of the Ummān-Manda. Can I build the temple (and) have
[the gods of Ha]rran dwell ther[ein]? [… wi]th me the for[ces of … ”] (break)
88Ehulhul Cylinder i 15–29 (lines are counted according to ‘text 1’ of Schaudig 2001, 416 f.): 15i-na
re-eš LUGAL-ú-ti-ia da-rí-ti ú-šab-ru-’i-in-ni šu-ut-ti 16dAMAR.UTU EN GAL ù d+EN.ZU na-an-
na-ri AN-e ù KI-tì 17iz-zi-zu ki-lal-la-an dAMAR.UTU i-ta-ma-a it-ti-ia 18dNÀ-NÍ.TUKU LUGAL
TIN.TIRki i-na ANŠE.KUR.RA ru-ku-bi-ka 19i-ši SIGhi.a 4 É.HUL.HUL e-pu-uš-ma d+EN.ZU EN
GAL-ú 20i-na qé-er-bi-šu šu-ur-ma-a šu-ba-at-su 21pa-al-hi-iš a-ta-ma-a a-na d+EN.LÍL DINGIR.
MEŠ dAMAR.UTU 22É šu-a-tì ša taq-bu-ú e-pe-šu 23lúÉRIN-man-da sa-hi-ir-šum-ma pu-ug-gu-lu
e-mu-qá-a-šu 24dAMAR.UTU-ma i-ta-ma-a it-ti-ia lúÉRIN-man-da šá taq-bu-ú 25ša-a-šu KUR-šu
ù LUGAL.MEŠ a-lik i-di-šu ul i-ba-áš-ši 26i-na ša-lu-ul-ti MU.AN.NA i-na ka-šá-du 27ú-šat-bu-
niš-šum-ma Iku-ra-áš LUGAL kuran-za-an ÌR-su ṣa-ah-ri 28i-na um-ma-ni-šú i-ṣu-tu lúÉRIN-man-da
rap-šá-a-ti ú-sap-pi-ih 29Iiš-tu-me-gu LUGAL lúÉRIN-man-da iṣ-bat-ma ka-mu-ut-su a-na KUR-šu
89Harrān-Cylinder I´7´-17´ (after Schaudig 2001, 473): 7´É.HÚL.⌈HÚL⌉ 8´[ha-an-ṭiš] ⌈e!⌉-pu-

il-qé. Translation after Schaudig 2001, 436 f. with minor changes. Cf. also Rollinger 2010, 78 f.
uš-ma ina qer!-bi-šú ⌈šu-úr?(TU)-ma-a šu-bat-sú-un⌉ 9´[pal]-hi!?-iš a-ta-ma-a a-na dEN.LÍL

DINGIR.MEŠ ⌈dAMAR.UTU⌉ 10´[EN] EN EN reme!(ŠU)-nu-ú dAMAR.UTU ⌈um!⌉-ma URU u
⌈É! šú-a-tú⌉ 11´[šá e-p]eš-su taq-bu-ú iš-šak-nu ina pi-i-⌈ka!⌉ 12´[ÉRIN-man-d]a sa-hir-šum-ma pu-
ug-gu-lu ⌈e-mu-qa-a-šú⌉ 13´[x x x] ⌈ x⌉-ma šá-ni-ni ul i-ši ki-ki-i 14´[ x x x Ii]š-tu-me-gi LUGAL
ÉRIN!-man-da ép-pu-šu* É 15´[DINGIR.MEŠ šu-ut uruha]r-⌈ra⌉-nu ú-šeš!-še-bu qé-r[eb-šú].
Translation with minor changes after Schaudig 2001, 473. Cf. also Rollinger 2003a, 298 n. 49.
Text 5: Nabonidus Chronicle (relating to Astyages’/Ištumegu’s defeat by Kuraš/Cyrus)90:

(Astyages) mustered (his army) and marched against Cyrus (II), king of Anshan, for con-
quest […] The army rebelled against Astyages and he was taken prisoner. Th[ey handed
him over] to Cyrus (II). ([…]) Cyrus (II) <marched> to Ecbatana, the royal city. The sil-
ver, gold, goods, property, […] which he carried off as booty (from) Ecbatana he took to
Anshan. The goods (and) property of the army of […]
Characterisation of Median rule in the Ehulhul and the Harrān Cylinder

(a) Kūraš (Cyrus) is described in text 3 l. i 27 as arassu ṣahru, “his lowly servant”;
this in all likelihood refers to Marduk, not Ištumegu. This assertion has implications
reaching beyond the contentious questions of Cyrus’ supposed feudal duties towards
Ištumegu. Indeed, it may serve to further elucidate our understanding of Median king-
ship. The “numerous Ummān-manda” (ummān-manda rapšāti), whose power is as
enormous (puggulu emūqāšu) as they are apparently invincible (šānini ul iši), must
be seen in this light: characterisations such as these serve primarily to mark them as
instruments of the divine will of Marduk. It is only because they act as his instru-
ment, that the “few soldiers” (ummānīšu iṣūtu) of Cyrus, servant of Marduk, are able
to overcome their enemies. But still, these texts too, utilise the apparently widespread
image of the Ummān-manda as a vast conglomerate of peoples.
(b) In text 3 and 4, Ištumegu (Astyages) appears as “King of the Ummān-manda” (šar
ummān-manda), but the ethnonym and, by implication, his kingship carries certain
pejorative connotations. The barbarous and inchoate nature of this ‘horde’ is exem-
plified by the striking image of their prowling around (sahiršūma: Ehulhul-Zylinder,
l. i 23; Harrān-Zylinder, l. iʹ 12ʹ) the temple for a number of years. But beyond this,
we find a striking comment of the nature of Ištumegu’s rule, as the fate decreed by
Marduk and Sîn affects not only him, but also “the kings, that are marching alongside
him” (šarrāni ālik idīšu: Ehulhul-Zylinder l 25). The precise wording of this passage
is mirrored not only in the Fall of Nineveh Chronicle, but also in several passages
from the Old Testament (Jer. 25,25 f.; 51,11; 27 f.). What we have here, is in fact an
important indication of how Ištumegu’s rule was seen from a contemporary perspec-
tive (or, at the very least, from a contemporary Babylonian point of view), namely as
a form of tribal confederacy.
90Nabonidus Chronicle ii 1–4 (according to Grayson 2000, 106): 1 [id]-[ke]-e-ma ana UGU Iku-raš
LUGAL an-šá-an ana ka-š[á-di i]l-lik-ma […] 2Iiš-tu-me-gu ÉRIN-šú BAL-su-ma ina ŠUII ṣa-bít
a-na Iku-raš id-d[i-nu] 3Iku-raš a-na kura-gam-ta-nu URU LUGAL-ú-tu < il-lik-ma > KÙ.BABBAR
KÙ.SIG17 NÌ.ŠU NÌ.GUR11 […] 4šá kura-gam-ta-nu iš-lul-ú-ma a-na kuran-šá-an il-qé NÌ.ŠU
NÌ.GUR11 šá ERÍN […].
208 R. Rollinger
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In a League of Its Own? Nāder Šāh
and His Empire
Giorgio Rota
“It’s supposed to be hard, if it wasn’t hard everyone would do it”.

(Tom Hanks to Geena Davies, “A League of Their Own”)
The future Nāder Šāh1 was born in 1688 (or 1698)2 at Darre Gaz, on the present-day bor-
der between Iran and Turkmenistan, within the Turkic-speaking Afšār tribe, one of those
tribes which almost two centuries earlier had brought the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736)
to power and were collectively known under the name of Qezelbāš. In the years before
1722 we find him in the service of the governor of Abivard. There is uncertainty con-
cerning the exact details of Nāder Šāh’s youth and early career, which is partly shrouded
in legend: he may have played, at one stage or another, both the role of the sheriff and
1Although he was born as Nadrqoli (or Naẕrqoli) and became known as Ṭahmāspqoli Xān after
entering the service of Šāh Ṭahmāsp II (1722–1732), throughout the present article I will use, in
an admittedly arbitrary way, the form Nāder Šāh, which he, of course, only adopted after being
acclaimed ruler of Persia. The different names under which he was successively known are dis-
cussed in Lockhart 1938: 18, 26, 103; Avery 1991: 5–6; Axworthy 2006b: 18, 70, n. 4 p. 291.
2For a discussion of his birthdate, see Lockhart 1938: 18–20; Avery 1991: 3; Axworthy 2006b: 17,
n. 1 p. 291 (with an updated summary of the different scholarly opinions), n. 12 p. 328; Axworthy
2006a: 335–337.
G. Rota (*)
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: giorgio.rota@oeaw.ac.at

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_10
216 G. Rota
that of the bandit, and it is fair to say that he was a homo novus when the general circum-
stances of his time eventually allowed him to play a country-wide political role3.
The historical region of Xorāsān, to which both Darre Gaz and Abivard belong, was
rather composite ethnically and linguistically, including a Persian-speaking population
as well as (more or less semi-nomadic) Kurdish, Turkic and Arab tribes. It was also
exposed to the raids of the Uzbeks, Turkomans, Afghans and Kalmyks: frontier warfare
must have been the order of the day in much of the region, which represents the physical
and cultural border between the Iranian plateau, the Central Asian steppes and the plains
of northern India4.
Given the aims of the present volume, it would be helpful to resume Nāder Šāh’s
career through the dates of its most significant events.
22 October 1722: Šāh Solṭān Ḥoseyn (1694–1722) surrendered to Maḥmud, the
chief of the Ghilzay Afghans of Qandahār, thus putting an end to effective Safavid rule
over Persia. Three days later, Maḥmud entered Eṣfahān, the Safavid capital, and was
enthroned as the new Shah (reigned 1722–1725).
11 December 1726: Nāder Šāh, then still in the service of Šāh Ṭahmāsp II, the nomi-
nal ruler of the country, conquered Mašhad, the capital of the powerful warlord (and his
own former overlord) Malek Maḥmud Sistāni.
29 September 1729: Nāder Šāh decisively defeated the Afghans at the battle of
Mehmāndust.
Between 1730 and 1733, Nāder Šāh waged a mostly successful war against the
Ottomans, during which he won several resounding victories. He suffered a non-decisive
defeat outside Baġdād (1733)5 and failed to seize this city, but reconquered those parts of
Persia proper which had been lost to the Ottomans after 1722. He scored a major diplo-
matic success as well with the Treaty of Rašt (1 February 1732), whereby Russia agreed
to evacuate Gilān peacefully.
Late August—early September 1732: Nāder Šāh deposed Šāh Ṭahmāsp II on
account of his drunkenness and general inability to rule, replacing him with his son,
the eight-month-old Šāh ʿAbbās III (1732–1736). Needless to say, Nāder Šāh was, even
3Lockhart 1938: 18–24; Avery 1991: 7–11; Axworthy 2006b: 17–23, 57–58. The Turco-Iranian
political tradition knew however the figure of the qazaq, an independent fighter in whose life the
line separating political rebellion and banditry, plunder and guerrilla warfare was often very tenu-
ous and shifting. Becoming a qazaq was often a necessary stage in the career of a, later, success-
ful ruler or conqueror in order to acquire fighting and leadership skills, prestige and trustworthy
retainers: on the qazaq as “a political vagabond or a frontier freebooter”, see Lee 2016: 21–50 and
passim (quote from p. 21).
4Noelle-Karimi 2014: 6–13, 45–88.
5This first setback of Nāder Šāh could perhaps be compared, mutatis mutandis, to Napoleon’s
defeat at Aspern-Essling (1809), which did not affect the general outcome of the campaign but
showed that the Emperor could be beaten.
In a League of Its Own? Nāder Šāh and His Empire 217
more than before, the real power behind the throne. For the first time, he appealed to
what we could call the “public opinion” or the “civil society” of the time in order to
bestow legitimacy on a regime change carried out through a palace coup.
The years 1734–1735 saw a second, successful round of fighting against the
Ottomans, who were again soundly beaten in a pitched battle at Bāġāvard (1735): Nāder
Šāh failed to take Kars but reconquered the former Safavid territories located north of
the Aras River, that is, in the present-day states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. In
October 1734, Russia promised to evacuate her troops from the former Safavid territories
in the southern Caucasus that she still occupied, and this withdrawal was later made offi-
cial through the Treaty of Ganje (21 March 1735).
8 March 1736: after another massive effort at canvassing support from the “public
opinion”, Nāder Šāh had himself crowned ruler of Persia, but only after an assembly
(quriltāy, itself a term taken from the history of the Mongol world empire), composed
by thousands of notables in representation of the whole population and all the regions of
Persia, repeatedly and unanimously urged him to do so.
21 November 1736: Nāder Šāh started his most ambitious campaign, which led to a
startling series of military triumphs such as the highly symbolic reconquest of Qandahār
(24 March 1738), the victory at Karnāl over the Mughal Emperor (24 February 1739)
followed by the occupation and sack of Delhi a few weeks later, and the conquest of
Boxārā (12 September 1740). In the meantime, in autumn 1738, Nāder Šāh’s brother and
trusted (although not particularly gifted) lieutenant, Ebrāhim Xān, was ambushed and
killed by Daghestani tribesmen6.
One can describe the years 1736–1740 as the apogee of Nāder Šāh or, borrowing
an expression from the historiography of Italian Fascism, his anni del consenso (“the
consensus years”), when his actions met with the approval, or at least the lack of active
resistance, of the majority of the population (of course, it would be interesting to be
informed on the real thoughts of the members of the productive segments of the Persian
society, which had to finance the permanent war effort). Yet, as is often the case, the apo-
gee was quickly followed by the beginning of the end.
On 15 May 1741 a failed attempt on Nāder Šāh’s life took place, for which his oldest
son and appointed successor, Reżāqoli Mirzā, was later held responsible.
A few weeks later, the Shah allowed his trusted Indian physician, ʿAlavi Xān, to leave
the Royal camp, as previously agreed: the sources concur on the beneficial effects that
ʿAlavi Xān had on the physical and mental health of Nāder Šāh, as well as on the sudden
worsening of the same that followed his departure.
6For the events of the years 1722–1740, see Lockhart 1938: 21–196; Avery 1991: 14–44;
Axworthy 2006b: 45–228. On the deposition of Šāh Ṭahmāsp II and Šāh ʿAbbās III in particular,
see Tucker 2006: 35–43. An important source on the coronation of Nāder Šāh written by an eye-
witness, now available in English, is Abraham of Crete 1999: 52–145 in particular.
218 G. Rota
Between August 1741 and February 1743 Nāder Šāh led a deadly (for both friends
and foes) military campaign in Daghestan, partially in order to avenge the death of his
brother. One of the events of the campaign was, in the autumn of 1742, the blinding of
Reżāqoli Mirzā, who was accused of having masterminded the murder attempt of 1741.
Then, it should probably not come as a surprise that, after 1741, the mental conditions
of the Shah, never known for having a conciliating character and increasingly alone, got
clearly worse.
The year 1743 saw a third round of fighting against the Ottomans (with the failed
siege of Mosul7), followed by a fourth in 1744–1745 (failed siege of Kars but victory
at the second battle of Bāġāvard). Especially after 1743, local revolts, which had been
endemic under Nāder Šāh as well as other rulers before him, broke out in Persia with
increasing frequency: they were usually caused by fiscal oppression or led by more or
less real Safavid pretenders, who may have embodied feelings of nostalgia for the previ-
ous regime8.
4 September 1746: the Treaty of Kordān with the Ottomans is signed, putting an end
to years of war between the two States.
19 June 1747: Nāder Šāh is murdered in his native Xorāsān by military officers who
were fearing for their own lives9.
This necessarily quick chronological overview gives an idea of the pace and scope
of Nāder Šāh’s endeavours, and especially of the military campaigns which made him
so famous in and outside Persia. For the sake of comparison and discussion, one could
probably describe him, at least before his campaign in Daghestan, as a populist military
dictator in a way reminiscent of Napoleon, in the sense that (apart from the presence, in
the career of both men, of comparable episodes) both exploited a cause dear to “the peo-
ple” (be it the defense of the national borders, or of Shiite Islam, or of the revolutionary
ideals of “freedom and equality”, or simply the very understandable aspiration to a modi-
cum of safety and stability, without the presence of marauding military forces of more
or less foreign origin) to further a very personal political agenda, mainly through mili-
tary means. Recently, the traditional labelling of Nāder Šāh as “the Napoleon of Persia”
has been rejected or at least questioned as, predictably, Eurocentric10. Being Eurocentric
does not mean, however, being wrong, or that similarities do not exist at all. Beyond the
inevitable, almost banal, comparison between two men who won astonishing victories on
7On this particular episode, see Olson 1975.

8On these pretenders, see Perry 1971: 62–63.
9For the events of the years 1740–1747, see Lockhart 1938: 197–263; Avery 1991: 44–51;
Axworthy 2006b: 228–281.

10Babaie 2018: 221. See also, however, the remarks on the usefulness of attempting a comparison
between “Great Men of History”, and on the fact that comparison does not mean praise or worship,
in Axworthy 2018: 56.
the battlefield and reached almost absolute power after starting from relatively obscure
backgrounds, only to lose everything and die alone and forsaken by most, either assas-
sinated or in exile, some of these analogies are quite suggestive and may deserve further
investigation: for instance, the circumstance that Napoleon rose to the throne (1804) after
a constitutional referendum (which he, of course, won with an overwhelming majority)
and that he knew very well that his survival, if not his legitimacy, depended from his
military victories11.
The political career of Nāder Šāh was, as one easily sees, swift, spectacular, event-
ful and relatively short12: still only one among several competitors for power in 172613,
he became the liberator of Persia from the Afghans in 1729, its de iure absolute ruler
in 1736, and died in 1747 as (in the eyes of the European public, of course) a “great
Oriental conqueror”. For this reason, and because of his abrupt end, it is not easy to
speak about the classic stages of rise, decline and collapse. Perhaps inevitably (on
account of his famous paranoia and of his blinding of his son and appointed succes-
sor, but also because he died suddenly and at a relatively young age even by the stand-
ards of the time), Nāder Šāh not only did not ensure his own succession but he did not
really found a dynasty either, however short lived. His immediate successor, his nephew
ʿAliqoli Xān (who was in rebellion at the moment of the death of Nāder Šāh and who
ascended the throne, significantly, under the name of ʿĀdel Šāh, that is, “the Just Shah”,
1747–1748), was deposed and blinded by his own brother, Ebrāhim Mirzā (1748–1749);
the latter was deposed and blinded by the only surviving descendant of Nāder Šāh in
11Bonaparte 1995: 107 and 320 (entries of 30 December 1802 and 2 September 1816).
Unfortunately I did not have access to the original edition of this work, that is, Vie de Napoléon
par lui-même (Paris, 1930). The present writer admittedly does not know if the story of Nāder
Šāh (which can hardly have escaped the attention of young Bonaparte) may have influenced or
inspired, and to what extent, the future Empereur, nor if any scholar of the French First Empire
has concerned himself with this particular topic. For some of Napoleon’s sources of information
about the Middle East, Persia and India, see Amini 1999: 1–13; Kolla 2007: 177–178. Particularly
interesting from this point of view is Axworthy 2006b: 212: “Nader’s campaigns also featured in
Napoleon’s reading”. On at least one occasion, Napoleon compared Nāder Šāh unfavourably to
Āġā Moḥammad Xān Qājār (1785–1797): “He [Nāder Šāh] was able to conquer a great power,
he struck the insurgents with terror and was fearsome to his neighbours; he triumphed over his
enemies and reigned gloriously. But he did not have that wisdom which thinks both of the pre-
sent and of the future. His descendants did not succeed him […] Only Mehemet-Sha, your uncle,
appears to me to have thought and lived as a prince […] Afterwards he transmitted to you the sov-
ereign authority he had acquired through his victories”. We find this judgment, however, in a letter
addressed to Āġā Moḥammad Xān’s nephew and successor, Fatḥ-ʿAli Šāh (1797–1834): see Amini
(1999): 57.
12Even from this point of view there is a parallel with Napoleon’s career, which received its deci-
sive boost by the role he played at the siege of Toulon (1793) and ended at Waterloo (1815).
13His name may still have been unknown in Europe at the end of 1726 or perhaps even well into
1727: see Rota 2018: 191–194.

220 G. Rota
the male line, his sixteen-years-old grandson Šāhrox, who had the paradoxical fate of
enjoying (if one can use this word in such a troubled context) a very long and relatively
peaceful reign in Xorāsān until 1796, despite having been temporarily deposed and obvi-
ously blinded in 1750 by yet another pretender14. Several factors contributed to the “fail-
ure” of Nāder Šāh’s state15: the economic weakness of Persia, where a more and more
exhausted population had to support an increasingly large army16; Nāder Šāh’s weak
political legitimacy, mainly, but not exclusively, based on his military victories and his
ability to ensure the welfare of the population (which caused a vicious circle of war-
fare, heavy taxation to support warfare and ruthless suppression of the disaffected)17; his
attempts at religious reform, which also caused discontent at home as well as war with
the Ottomans, who adamantly rejected the Shah’s attempts to have Shiism recognised as
a fifth orthodox “school” of Islam; the lack of a successor coupled with the loss or the
alienation of important members of his family; the extreme centralization of the govern-
ment. In fairness, Nāder Šāh did not have much time to strengthen the internal structures
of Persia or to forge new ones; on the other hand, after the conquest of Delhi and Boxārā
(1739 and 1740, respectively), he chose to continue campaigning instead of giving Persia
some respite, and he chose to do it on a particularly difficult terrain for invading armies
as Daghestan, where he intended to punish some local rebels and avenge the death of his
brother. Here we see perhaps, mutatis mutandis, a parallel with Napoleon’s campaigns in
Spain and, above all, Russia, insofar as all these operations were perhaps unavoidable,
14On the later Afsharids, see Perry 1979: 2–10; Noelle-Karimi 2014: 101–102, 109–111, 121–127,
216–217. See also Lockhart 1938: 263–265; Avery 1991: 59–62; Axworthy 2006b: 282–283.
ʿAliqoli Xān and Ebrāhim Mirzā were the sons of the above-mentioned Ebrāhim Xān; Šāhrox was
the son of Reżāqoli Mirzā and a Safavid princess, the daughter of the last (more or less) effective
Safavid ruler, Šāh Solṭān Ḥoseyn.
15The reason why the word failure appears here within quotation marks will become apparent,
hopefully, later in the article.

16Not only the army kept growing in absolute numbers, but casualties must have been often appall-
ing, due not only to combat but, above all, to sickness, hunger and unfamiliar climate conditions.
The gaps in the ranks had to be filled up, and the soldiers needed not only to be recruited but also
trained, fed and paid: the logistics of the army of Nāder Šāh would certainly make a most interest-
ing topic for scholarly investigation, provided that the sources allow such a study. The most recent
contributions on the Shah’s army are Axworthy 2007: 635–646; Axworthy 2018: 44–53.
17On this rather multi-faceted topic (which also includes Nāder Šāh’s marriage alliances with
the Safavids and the Mughals, his imitation of earlier “self-made men” like Timur and Chingiz
Khan, and his appeals to a supposedly common Turkoman heritage that included the Ottomans
and the Mughals as well), see above all Tucker 2006: passim. In a certain sense, we can see here
another similarity between Nāder Šāh and Napoleon, insofar as the “great Corsican” too failed to
gain acceptance as a legitimate peer from the traditional Royal houses of Europe despite, and also
because of, his victories on the battlefield (and the subsequent conditions for peace), which often
antagonised the defeated even more instead of reconciling them to the idea of peaceful coexistence
with Napoleon.
but did not inevitably had to be led the way they were led and did not inevitably need
have very negative consequences for Nāder Šāh (or for Napoleon, for that matter)18. Or
perhaps there is a parallel with Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea (1592–1598), as
if a sort of “fear of peace” had seized both the Japanese and the Persian military dicta-
tor (as well as Napoleon)19. Indeed, one of the few institutions (if not the only one) that
enjoyed the unlimited attention of the Shah was the army, his indispensable instrument
of expansion abroad and control at home: unlike in the case of Napoleon, however, who
always held the French troops in higher esteem, the backbone of Nāder Šāh’s Grande
Armée consisted of foreign, non-Shiite (even n on-Muslim, in the case of the Georgians)
contingents, which further underscores his role as self-appointed “scourge” of the
Persian people20. All the above-mentioned factors connect, in one way or another, with
Nāder Šāh’s expansionism, which represented a major break with the Safavid tradition
and, if it earned him fame as a conqueror, also proved his undoing.
Finally, there is the question of Nāder Šāh’s mental decay, a well-known topic which
is noted by Persian and foreign sources alike. I have the impression that “madness”,
interestingly, may have been a recurrent topos among men who rescued their countries
from a state of domestic turmoil in pre- and early modern times. Apart from “exotic”
rulers like the above-mentioned Hideyoshi (1585–1598) or Tewodros II of Ethiopia
(1855–1868), an almost contemporary of Nāder Šāh like Peter I of Russia (1682–1725)
or two of his predecessors from the Safavid dynasty like Šāh Esmāʿil I (1501–1524) and
Šāh ʿAbbās I (1587–1629) certainly did not exhibit what one could call well-balanced,
“mainstream” personalities. Even the “normality” of a Napoleon is probably simply a
function of his now being, despite the hate and loath that may have surrounded him in
18The guerrilla nature of the fighting in Daghestan, of course, immediately reminds one of the
French invasion of Spain (1808) and the Peninsular War. However, there are also important dif-
ferences: Napoleon left Spain quite soon leaving the fight to his marshals and his brother, the best
units of the Grande Armée withdrew together with him and were often replaced by foreign troops
supplied by vassal States of the French Empire, and there was no foreign intervention in Daghestan
in support of the local rebels. Therefore I prefer to stand by the comparison with the invasion of
Russia, although there the Emperor faced the regular Tsarist army.
19“Hideyoshi surely was the archetypal man of action who defined himself in decisions alone” and
“what must now appear as compulsive behavior may help explain Hideyoshi’s hold over his men.
One remarkable feature of his career is his ability to command obedience in difficult circumstances
[…] Certainly Hideyoshi’s force of will had a mesmerizing impact upon his vassals”: see Berry
1982: 227 and 234. Said otherwise, Nāder Šāh “was essentially a warrior, and was at his best when
leading his army […] peace to him, in fact, was nothing more than an irksome, but sometimes nec-
essary, interlude”: see Lockhart 1938: 269. Berry 1982: 206–207 and 227–228 (“The Question of
Madness”) has several points which are useful to see Nāder Šāh’s final years in a clearer perspec-
tive, including the question of the preservation of one own’s “name and fame” for the future gen-
erations and the question of the succession.
20Here is another major difference with Napoleon, who always presented himself as the defender
of the interests and rights of the French people among the nations of Europe.
222 G. Rota
his lifetime, an integral and essential part of European history rather than an “objec-
tive” fact: in this case it is probably Eurocentrism indeed, coupled with other factors (for
instance, the ability of the Emperor at self-promotion, the existence of a political tradi-
tion in Europe that identifies itself with the “ideals” of the French Revolution, French
nationalism and cult of the gloire of the country, instinctive and unreflected admiration
for the “great men”), that still induces us to see his unremitted greed for power, his readi-
ness to sacrifice enormous amounts of human life and material wealth, or the quixotic
adventure of the Hundred Days as “normal” or even as a sign of “genius”. However, we
should perhaps ask: what are the problems, hurdles, challenges and odds facing a politi-
cal and military leader trying to put an end to a prolonged period of internal anarchy
or civil warfare, especially when he is a homo novus like Nāder Šāh (or Napoleon, or
Hideyoshi, not to mention modern dictators) and therefore has no legitimacy or power
basis beyond the one he can forge for himself? Furthermore, there is a second question,
closely connected to the previous one: what would be the psychological profile of a man
who is willing to take upon himself the mission of “saving” his country, and especially
that of a man who wants to replace an old, consolidated political and social order with a
new and untested one, incidentally led by himself? In other words, is perhaps some sort
of psychological imbalance a necessary prerequisite for a career of this kind? But it was
also because of this meteoric character that the story of Nāder Šāh acquired an exem-
plary value in the eyes of the European public opinion of the time: it was the tragic (in a
literary sense) cautionary tale of a titan who attained the highest honours by dint of his
own extraordinary virtues, only to succumb to the very common weaknesses of a human
being21.
To quote the title of the conference where this paper was originally presented, Nāder
Šāh’s state was both decapitated (by his murder) and defective (because of his ina-
bility to build a legitimacy that would go beyond that accruing to him from his mili-
tary victories), but my personal impression is that, with some luck, things could have
developed differently and in a way more favourable to both the Shah and his succes-
sors. After all, Šāh Esmāʿil I was more successful than him (insofar as he managed
to build a State and a dynasty that survived his death, despite suffering a crippling
defeat at the battle of Čālderān in 1514) but probably not less “mad”, while the politi-
cal career (and probably the life) of another giant like Frederick II of Prussia (1740–
1786), contemporaneous with Nāder Šāh and not less influential on European history
than Napoleon, was saved twice by events entirely unexpected and outside of his con-
trol: the retreat of the Austro-Russians after they all but destroyed Frederick’s army at
the battle of Kunersdorf (12 August 1759), in what the King himself aptly called “the
miracle of the House of Brandenburg”, and the death of the Russian Empress Elizaveta
Petrovna (1741–1762), whose successor Peter III (1762) not only broke the alliance with
Austria but entirely switched sides and joined Prussia in the war. On the other hand, in
21On the perception and interpretation of Nāder Šāh in Iran and Europe, see Matthee 2018: 21–41.
a highly unpredictable and dangerous environment as the battlefield, sheer luck is not
one of the least important qualities of a successful commander, and it is not by chance
that Napoleon, who was certainly not averse to taking calculated risks, used to ask Est-
il heureux? before appointing a general22. Despite final victory and the achievement of
paradigmatic, even “totemic”23 status as a victorious military leader, the Seven Years’
War (1756–1763) took a heavy toll on the personality of Frederick II. Without going to
the same length as Sanjay Subrahmanyam did in an interesting counterfactual article24,
I think it is fair to say that, at a certain point in his career, luck abandoned Nāder Šāh
and that the Shah seems to have cracked under pressure, in part physically but above all
psychologically: without speaking of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), which is
probably one of the most abused acronyms of our times25 (in particular, when evoked
by second- and third-rate Hollywood celebrities), it would be only understandable if the
stress caused by his almost continuous campaigns, the dangers involved in his quest for
the throne, the stress caused by the attempt on his life and the subsequent blinding of
Reżāqoli Mirzā, and finally the weight of absolute power coupled with micro-manage-
ment eventually took a toll. With a different personality26 and social background, Nāder
Šāh could have perhaps evolved over time into a Persian version of Frederick II, into
a ruler controlling every minute detail of the State machinery and deeply misanthropic
but not necessarily lethal for his subordinates and the population at large27. Again, this
22Quoted in Chandler 1996: 39. Again, I did not have access to the original text of this work, that
is, Chandler 1987. Another 19th-century military leader, very different from Napoleon but not less
daring than him, wrote about Bento Gonçalves da Silva (1788–1847), President and Commander-
in-Chief of the forces of the short-lived Riograndense Republic, that he was unlucky in his bat-
tles despite his many qualities, “which makes me think that luck always plays a major part in the
events of war”: see Garibaldi 1982: 36. See also the remarks in Eskandari-Qajar 2008: n. 7 p. 39.
23As in Showalter 2010: 166: er war das Symbol vergangenen Ruhmes und zukünftiger
Hoffnungen.
24Subrahmanyam 2000: 337–378.
25Van Creveld 2016: 139–177 in particular.
26See the less than flattering psychological portrait sketched in Sabéran 2013: 71–89, 129–130,
163–181, 219–236 in particular. See also Lockhart 1938: 274–276; supra, footnote 19.
27In this regard, see the Jesuit Father Bazin’s remarks quoted in Lockhart 1938: 270: la nature lui
avoit donné toutes les grandes qualités qui font les héros, et une partie même de celles qui font les
grands Rois […] rien ne lui étoit inconnu, et il n’oublioit rien […]. Lockhart already noted simi-
larities between Frederick II and Nāder Šāh, which he described as the Shah’s “position of mas-
ter strategist of his state […], his extensive recruiting beyond the borders of his own country, his
careful training of his men, and his firm belief in the importance of mobility: see Lockhart 1938:
266–267. These appear to be rather common features indeed, which could probably be ascribed to
a number of other successful military leaders, and as such not very compelling, yet this does not
mean that no parallels at all can be drawn (or, at least, suggested) between the careers of Frederick
II and Nāder Šāh. For a sketchy comparison, in a similar vein, between the Shah and Peter the
Great, see Axworthy 2006b: 284–286.
224 G. Rota
is not futile fascination with the “Great Men”, or a form of historical gossip, but rather
an attempt at defining, or at least describing, the role of the human factor in historical
events. However, Nāder Šāh did not become a Persian Frederick, and it is perhaps not by
chance that his two greatest 18th-century successors in Persia, Karim Xān Zand (1763–
1779) and Āġā Moḥammad Xān Qājār, chose a different path28: the former gave up the
idea of reunifying the former Safavid territories and went down into history as a wise
and mild ruler, whereas the second (in a way reminiscent of Šāh ʿAbbās I) did not cam-
paign beyond the “national (and formerly Safavid) borders” of Persia29 and can therefore
be considered a restorer of “national territorial integrity” but not an empire-builder. The
circumstance that foreign intervention, so often a cause of crisis or demise in the history
of empires, be they short- or long-lived, did not bring about the fall of Nāder Šāh and
did not take place after his death30 can probably be seen as a tribute to the efficacy of the
Shah as a military commander: the Ottomans, still Persia’s only real “natural enemy”
at that moment, did not repeat the mistake to invade as they had done after the fall of
Eṣfahān in 1722. Unlike Frederick II’s Prussia, Nāder Šāh’s state was a personal crea-
tion, and the Shah, like Jay Gatsby, “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He
was a son of God”31—or of the sword, as Nāder Šāh used to say of himself, which is the
same thing to the effect of the present article: when the hero could not keep up his own
role as a driving force anymore, disaster was a foregone conclusion.
At the end of the present article, I think we may want to revise our notion of failure
and that, above all, we should ask a last question: not why empire-builders failed, but
rather “why should empire-builders be successful?”. Understandably, later generations
(including ours) are somehow dazzled by those “happy few” who made it but, in the dif-
ficult field of empire-building, success is probably the exception rather than the rule32.
28To them we should add Aḥmad Šāh Dorrāni in Afghanistan (1747–1773) see Noelle-Karimi
2014: 101–127 in particular.

29Perry 1979: passim; Hambly 1991: 114–143; Eskandari-Qajar 2008: 27–30. Needless to say, the
“borders of Persia” in the view of both Šāh ʿAbbās I and Āġā Moḥammad Xān Qājār were much
broader than those of the present-day Islamic Republic of Iran.
30With the exception of Russian encroachment on outlying territories like southern Caucasus and
Gilān, which had been under Russian occupation before (and partially during) Nāder Šāh’s times.
31Fitzgerald 1925: chapter 6.
32As it appears from some of my footnotes, I could avail myself only to a limited extent of the
volume Crisis, Collapse, Militarism, and Civil War (see bibliography), which appeared after the
manuscript of my article had been completed and submitted to the editors. For the aims of the pre-
sent article, however, and besides the contributions already quoted above, Tucker 2018: 61–69 and
Floor 2018: 125–150 are especially relevant.
More importantly, and very regrettably, the editor of Crisis, Collapse, Militarism, and Civil War,
Michael Axworthy, passed away on 16 March 2019, too soon: the present article is dedicated to his
memory and his unflinching interest in Nāder Šāh and his times.
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The Barcids and Hannibal
Kai Ruffing
1 Introduction
The late antique Christian historian Orosius considers the Carthaginian realm to be
among the four principal kingdoms of world history, which are the Babylonian, the
Roman, the Macedonian and, finally, the African, which is the Carthaginian. According
to his conception the Macedonian as well as the Carthaginian kingdoms were regarded
as short-lived (brevia) and intermediate kingdoms and “…came into being through the
force of circumstances rather than from any right of succession.” (Oros. hist. 2,1,3–6).1
Thus both the Macedonian as well as the Carthaginian Empires are conceived as transi-
tory kingdoms between the Babylonian and the Roman regna. The Roman Empire, then,
was in the eyes of Orosius the final aim of the sacred history. Its worldwide dominion
began with the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.2 At this point one could argue that a
short-lived empire lasted more or less 150 years in the eyes of Orosius, since—from our
1Translation of Fear 2010: 74.—See Goetz 1980: 71–79; Cobet 2009: 76–80; Rollinger 2011:
15–316 regarding Orosius’ concept of the four regna. On Rome’s position in Orosius’ concept of
3
history see Cobet 2009: 69–75.
2Cobet 2009: 69.
I thank Robert Rollinger for his critical remarks.
K. Ruffing (*)
University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany
e-mail: kai.ruffing@uni-kassel.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_11
228 K. Ruffing
point of view—one could be tempted to presume a life span of the Carthaginian realm
as a world empire from Alexander to the destruction of Carthage. Orosius’ view, how-
ever, is entirely different. Both the Macedonian as well as the Carthaginian kingdoms fell
after a period of nearly 700 years (Oros. 7,2,9) and after 700 years of its existence even
Rome suffered from a catastrophic event, since it was nearly totally destroyed by a fire
(Oros. 7,2,10–11). Thus it becomes clear that the number 700 was especially meaningful
to him.
But, in the present context of contemporary research on empires, it is self-evident that
a life-span of 700 years cannot be seen as a characteristic of a short-lived empire. Thus
the question, if Carthage and its realm can be seen as an empire using the contemporary
historiographic category (-ies), cannot stand at the center of attention here.3 But in one
moment of Carthaginian history it can be at least asked, if there was something like a
short-lived empire: it is the case of the most famous of Carthage’s commanders in chief,
Hannibal Barcas, and his campaign against Rome, because Hannibal established some-
thing like a realm of his own. This realm, however, had its roots in the ‘Barcid king-
dom’ in Spain. Hence the establishment and development of this kingdom needs to be
discussed as well. The whole issue will be described against the background of the cat-
egories for empires provided by Michael Gehler and Robert Rollinger.4
Before doing this, something has to be said about the sources at our disposal. All liter-
ary sources, which can be used for the reconstruction of the history of Carthage in gen-
eral and that of Hannibal in particular, are written by strangers, if not enemies, of the
Carthaginians. Thus using the Greek and Latin tradition needs to be somehow conceived
as a reception of a reception. In addition modern research put forward different views
on Carthage and Carthaginians, which influenced the reconstruction and interpretation of
its history. For instance, the general view was predominant that the Carthaginians were
first and foremost traders and hence had nothing in common with warriors.5 Although
already Charles Whittaker in general and then Walter Ameling in particular took a posi-
tion against this prevailing image,6 there are still advocates of the interpretation that
Carthaginians were merchants and acted like traders in everything they did. Interestingly,
the opposite is true in the case of Hannibal, as will be shown below. Here it might be
enough to observe that he is regarded even in contemporary research as a Hellenistic
person who lived a Hellenistic life.7 The same is true for his predecessors as command-
ers-in-chief of the Carthaginian troops in Spain, Hamilcar, his father, and Hasdrubal, his
brother in law. These three able commanders reinforced, established and enlarged the
3A treatment of this issue is Ruffing forthcoming.

4Gehler, Rollinger 2014: 23–26.
5Zimmermann 2010: 10; Lancel 1997: 120–121.
6Whittaker 1978: 86; Ameling 1993: 265–274.
7See for instance Mac Donald 2015.

The Barcids and Hannibal 229
Carthaginian dominion in Spain after Carthage’s defeat in the First Punic War, until its
expansion there came to a halt during the beginning of the Second Punic War.
The Spanish dominion of Carthage has found different characterizations in mod-
ern research. Among other designations it was also called the ‘Second Carthaginian
Empire’.8 Due to the short duration of this ‘Second Carthaginian Empire’ and due to
the fact that its formation was stopped rather suddenly through the outbreak of the war
against the Romans, it might be listed among the empires which are of interest in the
present context. Thus in what follows will be discussed if this Carthaginian realm is a
short termed empire according to the definition of ‘empire’ developed by Gehler and
Rollinger. But, as will be shown below as well, other designations for the Carthaginian
dominion in Spain were established as well, which offer a contradiction to a characteri-
zation as an empire.
2 Birth, Peak, Decline and Fall of the Barcid/Hannibal’s

Realm in Spain
The Roman victory in the First Punic War (264–241 BC) brought with it for the
Carthaginians the immediate loss of their dominions in Sicily and later on Sardinia, the
latter becoming a Roman province in 238/237 BC.9 According to Polybius, who gives an
account of the conditions of the peace treaty between the Romans and the Carthaginians,
Carthage had to pay the amount of 2.200 Euboic talents of silver as reparations (Pol.
1,62,8–9). In Rome, however, the people’s assembly was not amused and refused the
ratification of the treaty. A commission of 10 men was sent to Carthage, who added a
further 1000 talents to this amount and gave the Carthaginians only the half of the time
which was originally agreed for the payment of the whole sum (Pol. 1,63,1–3).10 What
the amount of 3.200 talents meant for the Carthaginians becomes apparent, if one takes
the weight of silver to be delivered to the Romans in consideration. An Euboic-Attic tal-
ent is 29,196 kg.11 Thus they had to give 93427,2 kg or some 93 tons of silver to the
Romans, if the numbers offered by Polybius are to be considered as reliable figures.
But things became even harder for the Carthaginians. They had to bring the mercenar-
ies who fought the war against the Romans in Sicily back to Africa. Since they were
not able to pay them, the latter revolted against Carthage. This was the beginning of a
war between the mercenaries and Carthaginians, who now had to fight for survival in the
vicinity of their home town. This war was fought over a period of three and a half years
8Hoyos 2016: 423.

9Huß 1985: 249–251; 267; Wesch-Klein 2008: 315–316 with note 450; Salmeri 2015: 88–90.
10Huß 1985: 249–251.
11Walbank 1970: 127.

230 K. Ruffing
(241–237 BC). The Carthaginians evidently had to fight hard, since the war is character-
ized as a ‘truceless war’ by Polybios (Pol. 1,65,6) In the end Carthage prevailed.12 But
during this ‘truceless war’ a revolt broke out on Sardinia as well. The rebels had a lot
of military success, before they were driven back into the inner regions of the island by
the Sardinians. At the moment, in which the Carthaginians made efforts to regain con-
trol over their positions on the island, the Romans intervened, made Sardinia a province
and imposed on them the payment of another 1.200 talents. Shortly after they took over
Corsica too which meant the loss of Carthage’s positions there as well (Pol. 3,10,1–3).13
Due to the reparations that they had to pay to the Romans and due to the mineral wealth
of the island with its rich silver deposits the loss of Sardinia proved to be a real catastro-
phe for the Carthaginians.14
Thus it was a logical consequence for the Carthaginians to become active in Hispania,
which had huge silver deposits. In this way they were able to resolve the problems
resulting from their defeat in the First Punic War and the loss of Sardinia. The whole
amount of silver to be paid to the Romans after 237 BC according to the numbers pro-
vided by Polybius was 4.400 talents or 128.462,4 kg. Since the Spanish mines pro-
duced about 46.000 kg a year at least in the time of Hannibal,15 it becomes clear that
Spanish silver must have been seen as a solution for the pressing economic needs of the
Carthaginians. The mineral wealth of Hispania, especially its silver, had attracted the
Phoenicians since the end of the second millennium BC. Thus, for example, the silver
mines at Rio Tinto were first operated on a higher scale by the Phoenicians.16 Indeed,
in 237 BC the Phoenician, Punic and Carthaginian presence in Spain already had a long
history. Although the Latin literary tradition gives 1100 BC as the date for the founda-
tion of Gades as the first Phoenician colony, there is no archaeological data for such
an early foundation of permanent Phoenician settlements on the Iberian Peninsula. On
the contrary, the first Phoenician settlements developed at the beginning of 8th century
BC on both sides of the strait of Gibraltar,17 even though Phoenician presences in Spain
12Huß 1985: 252–268; Hoyos 2007.

13On the Punic/Carthaginian presence on Sardinia and Corsica see De Vincenzo 2015.
14On silver deposits on Sardina see De Vincenzo 2015: 367.
15Barceló 2011: 364.
16Craddock 2008: 95. On the silver deposits in Spain see also Hirt 2010: 39; Davies 1935: 94–139,
who provides an overview on all minerals to be found in Spain.

17Marzoli 2015: 179–180. On the Phoenician, Punic and Carthaginian presence in Spain see also
Aubet Semmler 1988 and the papers collected in Bierling, Gitin 2002. For the western Phoenician
colonies in general see Aubet 1993; Liverani 2004: 709–711.
are attested from the 10th/9th century BC onwards.18 But without any doubt Gades is
the oldest Phoenician foundation in Spain.19 Beyond these Phoenician foundations
plenty of Punic and Carthaginian settlements can be found on the Iberian Peninsula. As
demonstrated by the archaeological research, there were not less than 30 settlements
between Alicante and the estuary of the river Mondega in the 7th century BC.20 Since
Pompeius Trogus/Iustinus gives an account that the Carthaginian military intervened in
Gades in the 6th century BC (?) (Iust. 44,5,1–3),21 modern research concluded that the
Carthaginians began to take over the control of the Spanish settlements in this century.22
Thus Southern Spain was characterized by Werner Huß, a leading scholar in the field of
Carthaginian history, in his seminal study on the history of Carthage as a Carthaginian
province. He concluded that the Carthaginians might have lost the control over this
‘province’ during the First Punic War (264–241 BC).23 Though we do not know anything
about how and to what degree the Carthaginians might have exercised control over the
Phoenician and Punic settlements in Spain, it becomes clear that at least since the 7th
century BC Southern Spain was an integral part of the Phoenician/Punic world to which
Carthage belonged as well. Thus, presumably, the Carthaginian aristocracy should have
been perfectly aware that in order to cover the immense costs of peace with the Romans
it was the only way to take over or to reinforce the control over the silver mines in South
Eastern Spain.
It is interesting to see that our sources and as a consequence also the greater part of
modern research attributes to one person the responsibility for the logical conclusion that
it was for the Carthaginians something like a matter of life and death to have the boots
in Spain: Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal. Indeed it is Polybius who says that after the
18González de Canales, Serrano, Llompart 2006, 26 who argue for a slow development of the
Phoenician settlement at Huelva before the 8th century BC, which is followed by a sudden devel-
opment at the beginning of this century. See further González de Canales, Serrano, Llompart 2009
regarding these two phases of Phoenician expansion. Their conclusions are confirmed by the anal-
ysis of lead isotopes in silver hoards from the Phoenician homeland which demonstrates the use of
Iberian silver from the 9th century BC onwards: Eshel, Erel, Yahalom-Mack, Tirosh, Gilboa 2019.
The early Phoenician presence is mirrored in the Greek concept of the Pillars of Hercules, which
can be found in Greek literature from the 7th/6th century onwards and goes back to a Phoenician
concept focusing on the western end of the world and Melqart: Rollinger 2016, 137. See Quinn
2018, 113–131 and esp. 127–131 who argues for the 4th century as the time in which the cult of
Melqart was used to create a network between the western Phoenician settlements, even though
she argues for a rather early identification of Melqart with Heracles due to their close association
with colonization: Quinn 2018, 121.
19Marzoli 2015: 180. On Gadez see Aubet 1993: 220–247.
20Marzoli 2015: 181–182; Huß 1985: 28.
21Huß 1985: 68.
22Marzoli 2015: 182; Huß 1985: 68–69.
23Huß 1985: 68–69.

232 K. Ruffing
events of 237 BC Hamilcar dedicated himself with a vengeance to Spain in order to use
the Iberian Peninsula as a base for a future war against the Romans. Polybius clearly
states that in this way Hamilcar added the wrath of the Carthaginians to his own feelings
of anger (Pol. 3,10,5). Later on he says that it would be possible to furnish a lot of proof
that a substantial part of the responsibility for the outbreak of the Second War lay with
Hamilcar (Pol. 3,10,7). Thus in the Polybian text, Hamilcar’s presumed motives become
part of the debate of the war-guilt of the Second Punic War, which was already discussed
in antiquity (as a question of the causes for the war) as well as in modern research.24
Indeed, the whole story of Hamilcar’s actions in Spain is part of a larger discourse of
Polybius regarding the causes for the Second Punic War (Pol. 3,6,1–3,33,5).25 Part of this
discourse is the famous oath of Hannibal, who was forced by Hamilcar to swear eternal
hate against the Romans (Pol. 3,11,1–3,12,6),26 as well as the equally famous treaties
between Carthaginians and Romans (Pol. 3,22–25). Apparently, it becomes very clear
that in the present context Polybius is concerned about Hamilcar’s presumed responsi-
bility for the outbreak of the Second Punic War.27 He invites his audience to think that
Hamilcar, by means of his actions in Spain, only aimed at this further war against the
Romans. Polybius’s view was shared by Cornelius Nepos (Nep. Ham. 4,2), for Livy
it was clear that Hamilcar would have waged war against the Romans, if he had lived
longer (Liv. 21,2,2), and Appianus of Alexandria stated later that Hamilcar plundered
Spain, even though the people there had not done him any wrong (App. 6,1,5). But, as
already mentioned, the actions in Spain were a logical response to the economic difficul-
ties raised by the conditions for peace after the First Punic War and the events which led
to the loss of the Carthaginian positions on Sardinia. A further motive for why Hamilcar
chose Spain for his actions might have been that Romans had not shown any interest in
these regions until that point of time.
Thus, after having become στρατηγὸς ὅλης τῆς Λιβύης (commander-in-chief
of the whole of Libya), a command, which might have included the high command in
Spain, Hamilcar debarked in 237 BC together with his 9 year old son Hannibal and his
son-in-law Hasdrubal in Gades.28 The details of what followed then is obscured by the
hostility of the Greco-Roman sources towards Hamilcar. Obviously, he successfully
waged war against different tribes and coalitions in Spain and sent a part of the booty
to Carthage. He founded Leuke Akre, the modern Alicante, as an administrative center
of his Iberian realm. Thus, as it seems, he had established the Carthaginian control over
24See e.g. Hampl 1972; Huß 1985: 218–222, 285–293 and 436–439; Scardigli 1991; Seibert
1993a: 117–120; Händl-Sagawe 1995; Waldherr 2000: 194–195; Zimmermann 2013, 4–100:
Matijević 2015.
25Walbank 1970: 305–361.
26Cf. Seibert 1993b: 26–28.
27See also Seibert 1993b: 25.
28Huß 1985: 270–271; Seibert 1993b: 28–29.

Southern Spain, when he died either in battle or drowned in a river in 229 BC.29 His
successor as c ommander-in-chief was his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who again fought with
great success in Spain. By means of his military success he gained a position similar to a
king of the Carthaginian realm in Spain. Hasdrubal himself fostered such a view through
the minting of coins which showed him styled like a Hellenistic king. He founded
Carthago Nova, the modern Cartagena, which became the new administrative center of
Carthaginian Spain.30
The Carthaginian success in Spain, however, was noted in Rome. According to
Cassius Dio the Romans had already sent envoys to Hamilcar in order to spy him
out, because they were concerned with his success in Spain. Hamilcar replied that the
Carthaginians could only gather the means for paying their debts to Rome in Spain
(Cass. Dio 12,48,1). Hasdrubal’s position in Spain was regarded in Rome with even
higher concern, since the Romans prepared for war with the Celts and feared that the
Carthaginians could fight side by side with them. Thus in 226/225 BC the Romans and
Hasdrubal came to the agreement that Hasdrubal accepted the river Ebro as the north-
ern border for all Carthaginian military actions.31 Hasdrubal himself died in 221 BC—he
was murdered by a slave—and Hannibal followed him as the Carthaginian commander-
in-chief in Spain, even though there was some opposition in the Carthaginian senate
against this choice of the soldiers in Spain. In 221 and 220 BC Hannibal campaigned
against Iberian tribes, which were either rebellious against the Carthaginian domination
or were subdued by his forces for the first time.32
Then, in 219 BC, the conflict came about between Hannibal and the city of
Saguntum, which became the cause for the outbreak of the Second Punic War. As men-
tioned above, the reasons and the war-guilt question have been heavily debated in mod-
ern research and this is not the place to discuss both again,33 since both issues do not
carry weight in the present context. More importantly, as a result of Hannibal’s cam-
paign against Saguntum in 218 BC the war between Carthage and Rome broke out,
which in part was also fought in Spain, where Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal remained
as the Carthaginian commander.34 Hannibal made the first move by marching with his
troops over land to Italy. His crossing of the Alps became an issue of an intensive recep-
tion in antiquity as well as in modern times and in modern research.35 After having
defeated the Romans at different times in Italy, Hannibal had to back without his troops
29Huß 1985: 270–274.

30Huß 1985: 274–276.
31Huß 1985: 277.
32Huß 1985: 279–281.
33See the list of publications in Seibert 1993a: 117–120.
34Edwell 2011: 321–324; Leidl 1996.
35On Hannibals crossing of the Alps see Ruffing 2015.

234 K. Ruffing
to Carthage, because the able Roman commander-in-chief Scipio Africanus threatened

the town itself. At the end of the day, Hannibal was defeated in Africa and fled to the
Eastern Mediterranean, where he was harbored by Antiochus III. in the Seleucid Empire.
The latter one waged war against the Romans, who prevailed. Thus, after the peace
of Apamea in 188 BC Hannibal had to flee again and found different shelters in the
Eastern Mediterranean. In 183 BC he committed suicide, because his host Prusias, the
king of Bithynia, made efforts to hand him over to the Roman commander T. Quinctius
Flamininus.36 The Carthaginian defeat in the Second Punic War meant the loss of the
Spanish realm of Carthage which was taken over by the Romans. Carthage itself totally
lost its imperial power and was reduced to its diminished African realm.37
3 Structure and Character of the Barcid/Carthaginian Rule

in Spain
The Carthaginian dominion in Spain, conquered and enlarged by the Barcids after the
First Punic War, lasted for some 40 years. Its expansion was stopped by the outbreak of
the war against the Romans, which caused the withdrawal of Carthaginian troops from
the Iberian Peninsula. Since our sources do not provide any information regarding the
structure of the Barcid/Carthaginian realm, almost nothing can be said about it. Here in
particular as well as in general for the reconstruction of Carthaginian history it must be
underlined that the sources at our disposal were written by Greek and Roman authors.38
These ancient historiographers and biographers had not only their own political agenda
and their own authorial intentions, but they also used the political and administrative ter-
minology of their time and their culture in order to describe Carthaginian structures.39
And, last but not least, they were more concerned with persons and their motives than
with a description of how the Carthaginian realm worked.
That said it becomes clear, why there is so little evidence for the texture of the
Carthaginian dominion in general and—to be honest—no evidence for the Spanish
realm of the Barcids. Even though there is at least something which can be said about
the characteristics of Carthaginian rule. But, as will be sketched below, there is a major
disagreement about the nature of the Spanish possessions in modern scholarship. This
is influenced by the general view that modern interpreters have on the Barcids—espe-
cially on Hannibal—and their relationship to the Carthaginian government. A fairly good
36There are plenty of studies on Hannibal, his life and the Second Punic War. See the groundbreak-
ing studies of Seibert 1993a und Seibert 1993b. See further e.g. Lancel 2000; Christ 2003; Barceló
2004; Hoyos 2008.
37Huß 1985: 421–424.
38On these sources see Seibert 1993a: 1–43.
39Ruffing (forthcoming).
starting point for the description of the patterns of the Carthaginian realm in general is
a famous treaty of 215 BC between the Carthaginians and Philipp V. of Macedonia as
reported by Polybius (Pol. 7,9). Here three categories of people are distinguished: first
the ‘Carthaginians having the power’ (κύριοι Καρχηδόνιοι), second ‘those being sub-
ject to the Carthaginians and using the same laws as them’ (Καρχηδονίων ὕπαρχοι,
ὅσοι τοῖς αὐτοῖς νόμοις χρῶνται) and third the ‘cities and tribes obeying to the
Carthaginians’ (πόλεις καὶ ἔθνη Καρχηδονίων ὑπήκοα) (Pol. 7,9,5). With the first
category the citizens of Carthage are meant, with the second the former independent
Phoenician and Punic cities in the western Mediterranean, which shared certain rights
like the minting of their own money or the right of a full legal marriage, and with the
third evidently those who had no own rights within the Carthaginian realm.40 Since the
treaty was concluded in the time of the Second Punic War these differences might well
apply to the Spanish realm, but nothing is said about administrative details. Furthermore,
modern research has postulated the existence of local entities called eparchiai—prov-
inces—analogous to the Roman model. According to that model there were three
Carthaginian provinces, the African realm, the Sicilian realm and the Sardinian realm.41
At least in the third century BC the sources mention an administrative officer and evi-
dently also a military commander for the Libyan realm, which in Greek was called
στρατεγός.42 As a matter of consequence modern research drew the conclusion that
there was such an officer for Sicily and Spain as well, even though the sources are virtu-
ally silent in this regard.43
That said it becomes apparent that one way for modern research to characterize the
Spanish realm of Carthage was to see it as one province of the Carthaginian Empire.
It was supposed to have been administrated by a strategos, who had administrative as
well as military duties. This view was in particular put forward by Werner Huß in his
seminal book on the history of Carthage. According to Diodorus, Hamilcar held the
στρατηγία ὅλης τῆς Λιβύης in perpetuity (Diod. 25,8); in the view of Huß Spain thus
was part of this strategia, by means of which Hamilcar became the commander-in-chief
in Spain in perpetuity.44 In his biography of Hannibal Karl Christ also shared this view
to a certain degree. He concluded that Hamilcar’s command was linked to Carthage
and that Hamilcar as well as Hasdrubal and Hannibal never became independent rulers
of the Spanish realm in the manner of Hellenistic kings.45 However, exactly that view
was put forward in modern historiography, which styled the Spanish realm as a ‘Barcid
40Walbank 1967: 53; Huß 1985: 467–469.

41Huß 1985: 469–470. See also Moscati 1972: 614–621.
42Ameling 1993: 107–111.
43Hans 1983: 146–147 and Ameling 1993: 111 against Huß 1985: 472–473.
44Huß 1985: 270 and 473.
45Christ 2003: 45.

236 K. Ruffing
Kingdom’.46 Serge Lancel in his study on the history of Carthage saw it as an ‘Iberian
principality’, which “…sometimes seems like a family enterprise.”47 The view that
Spain became a Hellenistic-type kingdom under a charismatic leader was based on the
coins minted in Punic Spain, which bore images of Hamilcar and Hasdrubal styled as
Hellenistic Kings. But the identification of the Barcids on these coins remains contro-
versial.48 Serge Lancel concluded that the Spanish realm was somewhat like a Roman
province: “The truth is that in Spain Hamilcar Barca benefited from a proconsulate of
an assured duration […] backed by an army strongly united around their leader, who
was endowed with fairly broad autonomy and who displayed certain dynastic aspects.”49
As already mentioned above Dexter Hoyos characterized the Barcid actions in Spain as
the ‘Second Carthaginian Empire’50 or ‘Hamilcar’s New Empire in Spain’ calling it in
the same moment a new Punic province.51 All in all the exact character of the Spanish
realm remains uncertain. Furthermore it becomes visible that modern reconstructions are
highly influenced by the Roman model of imperial reign.
Also the character of the administration is hard to define. From the sources at our dis-
posal it becomes apparent that the Carthaginian/Barcid administration levied tributes and
troops.52 Furthermore, the mines in Southern Spain were exploited by the Carthaginians,
as already the Phoenicians did through trade from the very beginning of their pres-
ence on the Iberian Peninsula.53 According to Pliny the Elder the mines in Spain pro-
vided Hannibal with 300 lb of silver a day (Plin. nat. 33,97), which underlines again
the importance of the Spanish metal for the Carthaginians, which produced approxi-
mately 46 t of silver a year.54 But that said, it is almost impossible to add further details
on Carthaginian or Barcid administration in Spain.55 As it seems, Gades had a particu-
lar position in the Spanish realm, since the city beside the Barcids was the only one in
Spain, which had the right to coin its own money.56 Interestingly, the Barcids coined
their own money on the Iberian Peninsula, which was emitted in Gades, Leuke Akre (?)
and Carthago Nova; the production of coins of their own might be interpreted as a hint
for the rather independent position of the Barcids within the Carthaginian realm, since
46Lancel 1997: 377.

47Lancel 1997: 377–378.
48Huß 1985: 276; Lancel 1997: 378.
49Lancel 1997: 378–379.
50Hoyos 2016: 423.
51Hoyos 2008: 26.
52Huß 1985: 473–474.
53Sommer 2005: 135–136 on Diod. 5,35,4–5.
54Barceló 2011: 364.
55But see Barceló 2011: 360 who thinks that a terrtorial division in different pagi was possible.
56Gsell 1928: 293; Huß 1985: 494.

regarding the alloy as well as considering the images they differ from their Carthaginian
counterparts.57 Interestingly, the coinage of the Barcids thus offers problems of inter-
pretation which are similar to those of the coinage of the Arsacid Empire.58 But, on the
other hand, Iberian mercenaries were the principal element of Hannibal’s army at least,59
which means that the Barcid coinage in Spain met the needs for the payment of their
troops. Thus, coinage offers a glimpse on how Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal styled
themselves in their ‘province’. Seen through this lens, the differences between the coin-
age of Carthage and the Carthaginian cities on the one hand and the coins of the Barcids
on the other hand are revealing. Even though Barcid coins display traditional motifs like
palms, naval rams, horses and elephants, there are Hellenistic-style images of the god
Baal-Melqart, which some scholars identified with Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal,
even though the question, if all Barcids or only a part of them identified themselves on
their coinage with this god remains controversial.60
Thus all in all there are only a few indications on the administration of Barcid Spain.
If we take Polybius’s information about the treaty between Hannibal and Philipp V. of
Macedonia at face value, the Carthaginian/Barcid reign made a difference between
Punic - Phoenician cities and other indigenous populations on the Iberian Peninsula,
extracted revenues from the mines and received tributes from Spanish tribes. Although
there is no structural difference between the administration in Spain before and after the
arrival of Hamilcar, it can clearly be observed that the Carthaginian rule strengthened the
grip on land and resources. This intensification becomes mainly visible in the foundation
of new cities and the permanent presence of Carthaginian troops under able commanders.
4 Reception
Among the Barcids Hannibal has an outstanding position in ancient as well as in mod-
ern and contemporary reception.61 This is especially true for his crossing of the Alps,62
which provoked among other points a longstanding controversial discussion about
the pass which was taken by the army.63 This question inspires research even outside
57Huß 1985: 494–495.

58Hauser 2016, 474–475.
59Ameling 1993: 212–213.
60Huß 1985: 495; Barceló 2004: 27; Lancel 1997: 378.—Nevertheless Melqart is part of more than
1.500 attested Carthaginian personal names, such as Hamilcar: Quinn 2018, 116.
61Christ 2003: 153–186; Seibert 1993a: 57–82; Quinn 2018: 13–14; there is, accordingly, a huge
number of Hannibal biographies, for instance: Barcelo 1998; Barcelo 2004; Christ 2003; Garland
2012; Günther 2010; Hoyos 2008; Lancel 2000; Seibert 1993b. See further Stocks 2014.
62Jospin, Dalaine 2011; Ruffing 2015.
63Dalaine 2011.
238 K. Ruffing
Ancient History until today, as becomes evident by an article published in The Guardian
in April 2016, entitled ‘The Truth about Hannibal’s Route across the Alps’. The theme of
this article is the research of the Canadian geomorphologist Bill Mahaney and his team,
who found horse dung and feces of ruminants in a layer radio-carbon dated “…spookily
close to the date of 218 BC…” in the vicinity of the Col de la Traversette.64 Thus, even
in science the findings of dung and feces in the vicinity of a pass in the Alps is readily
interpreted in the context of Hannibal’s approach, which underlines the outstanding posi-
tion of Hannibal in Western commemorative culture. This is due to modern as well as
contemporary judgements about Hannibal in the fields of Classical Studies and History.
Thus, for instance, Leopold von Ranke conceived Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps as pav-
ing the way for European culture across this mighty frontier under the leadership of a
Semitic field commander.65 Ranke’s interpretation deserves particular attention, since,
in his view, Hannibal becomes a proponent of Western culture, even though Carthage
and Carthaginians are regularly seen as exponents of the Orient and Oriental culture,
not least because this view prevailed in Greek and Latin literature. There they are seen
as a barbarian enemy on the one hand and as ‘Levantine’ traders on the other hand.66
Ranke’s interpretation that Hannibal paved the way for European culture prompted the
view of the Barcid as a ‘New Alexander’.67 There is also a huge reception of Hannibal’s
march in several paintings since Medieval times, especially in those of the 18th and 19th
centuries, but even in today’s works of art. In this field Hannibal’s name was also used
for political propaganda. Thus, Jacques-Louis David’s painting “Napoleon Crossing the
Alps” displays the French conqueror in a mountain landscape, which is meant to depict
the Saint-Bernard Pass. On the left corner there are two inscriptions carved in the rock.
The first one reads “Napoleon”, the second one, slightly faded, “Hannibal”, by means of
which Napoleon’s march is paralleled to Hannibal’s adventurous deed. A special point of
interest for posterity was and is that Hannibal moved across the Alps with elephants.68
In general, reception highlights first and foremost Hannibal’s famous march over the
Alps as such together with his outstanding abilities as a military commander, who at
least in Italy never lost a battle against the Romans. The battle of Cannae even became
proverbial and had an intensive reception in military history as well as a tactical para-
digm for battles of annihilation.69 As a matter of consequence, the Spanish realm of the
Barcids plays only a minor role in the reception of Hannibal. His actions there as well
as those of his predecessors are usually seen as a prelude to the war against the Romans
64https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/03/where-muck-hannibals-elephants-alps-italy-
bill-mahaney-york-university-toronto?CMP=fb_gu [17.06.17].
65Ranke 1922: 107.
66Waldherr 2000: 201–206; Trapp 2003: 12–14.
67Barcelo 1998: 49.
68On this part of the Hannibal mythos see Tarpin 2011.
69Kolb 2014.
and his military deeds. Hamilcar, therefore, has experienced a much less intensive recep-
tion. But there are some interesting judgements in his regards in previous research.
Theodor Mommsen, who wrote a panegyric portrait of Hamilcar, paralleled him with the
Prussian general Gerhard von Scharnhorst and the Prussian reformer Freiherr Heinrich
Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein,70 whereas for Ludwig Heeren he was a Carthaginian
Marius who brought Carthage harm as well as support.71 Niebuhr had a very positive
view about Hamilcar, who according to him had more military endowment than all of
his contemporaries and more political foresight and intelligence than the Romans. As he
maintains, he would even have been able to save Carthage from the later destruction by
the Romans. Niebuhr, however, makes a clear difference between ordinary Carthaginians
and Hamilcar as well as the Barcids in general. Whereas he had this very positive view
on the latter, he formulated rather negative judgements about Carthage. The Barcids were
conceived as an exception.72 The same is true for how the Barcids were presented in the
Nationalsozialismus, where they were deprived of their African and Oriental roots.73
Even though much more could be said about the reception of the Barcids in the works
of German-speaking historians74 and even though much more work has to be done
regarding the reception of the Barcids in history and historiography, one major charac-
teristic becomes visible from the few glimpses mentioned so far: Hamilcar and Hannibal
were overwhelmingly seen in a positive way and deprived of presumed attributes of
Carthaginians in general such as being traders and merchants, not warriors. But even
in this point they were seen in a Carthaginian context, not as exponents of their own
realm.75
5 Carthaginian/Barcid Spain—a Short-Lived Empire?
The answer to the question as to whether Carthaginian/Barcid Spain can be seen

as a short-lived empire, depends heavily on the interpretation of the character of
the Barcid realm. As already mentioned above, in today’s research it has been unani-
mously stated that it was part of the Carthaginian dominion, even though Hamilcar,
Hasdrubal and Hannibal seemingly had a rather independent position. Again, how-
ever, it must be highlighted that our view of political life in Carthage relies on Greek
70Christ 2003, 47; Trapp 2003: 120–124 and 126–129.

71Trapp 2003: 55.
72Trapp 2003: 77–78.
73Trapp 2003: 246.
74Trapp 2003 passim: Sommer,Schmitt 2019.
75But cf. Charles-Picard, Charles-Picard 1970: 213 who maintain that the Barcids in fact if not in
law founded a new independent state. For a critical discussion of this position see Lancel 1997:
378–379.
240 K. Ruffing
and Latin historiography. As a matter of consequence—among other issues—we have

a closer look at persons than at structures and how they are styled as well as perceived
by the same Greek and Latin authors. The only evidence for the self-staging of the three
Carthaginian commanders is the Barcid coinage. Even if the coins issued in Spain might
display Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal in a Hellenistic-style manner and connect
them somehow to Baal-Melqart, this had an economic and ideological function that can
be explained. Already since the 230ies these issues were used to pay mercenaries.76 The
coins were minted for an audience which was accustomed to this kind of self-staging
and which had its origins in different cultures and different groups of people around the
Mediterranean. Beside the Carthaginians Iberians, Ligurians, Etruscans, Campanians,
Celts, Greeks and inhabitants of the Balearic Islands served in Hannibal’s army.77
As a matter of consequence, the coin images of B aal-Melqart, who was equated with
Hercules, might be owed to this ‘international’ audience and the use of the coins in a
larger Mediterranean context. Thus, there is no hard evidence for an “independent” posi-
tion of the Barcids in Spain; accordingly, neither is there evidence for a Barcid empire,
nor for a short-lived Barcid empire. Since Carthage was at least since the 8th century BC
in contact with Spain and evidently exercised some control over Southern Spain before
the debark of Hamilcar, it even seems difficult to speak about a second Carthaginian
Empire or a New Carthaginian Empire in Spain. As it seems, the Barcids as magistrates
of the Carthaginian state expanded the realm on the Iberian Peninsula as a reaction to the
losses of the First Punic War and intensified the Carthaginian control there. But there is
no reason to see this expansion as the birth of a second Carthaginian Empire, rather it
is to be seen as an answer to the economic problems of the time and, consequently, as a
shift of the main area of Carthaginian overseas outposts.
There is, however, one further question: did Hannibal aim at a total destruction of
Rome and thus at creating a new Carthaginian Empire in the Western Mediterranean by
means of waging war against the Romans? At least this is exactly what Livy says. On
the occasion of his report of how Philipp V. of Macedonia and Hannibal concluded a
treaty he refers among other stipulations to the provision that as soon as Rome would
have been defeated by Philipp and Hannibal, Italy and the city of Rome would be in
the possession of Hannibal and the Carthaginians and that Hannibal should own the
whole booty (Liv. 23, 33, 11–12). After the victory over Rome, Hannibal is supposed
to help the Macedonian king to wage war against all his enemies. As a matter of conse-
quence the cities of continental Greece as well as of the islands should belong to Philipp
(Liv. 23, 33, 12). Livy obviously refers to a Roman point of view which certainly is to
be regarded as a later invention and as a kind of contra-factual history which is based
on the awareness that at the end of the day the Romans defeated both Carthaginians and
Macedonians. Nevertheless Livy’s narrative can be interpreted as a presumed division
76Miles 2011: 267.

77Ameling 1993: 212–222.
of the Mediterranean in a Carthaginian Western Empire and a Macedonian Eastern

Empire. Yet, Polybius tells a different story. According to him the clauses of the treaty
clearly provided the existence of Rome, since the Romans are supposed to not attack
Philipp and to abandon their claims to Illyrian cities and peoples. The war objective, as
stated in treaty as reported by Polybius, clearly is the defeat of Rome and thus definitely
not its annihilation as a political entity (Pol. 7,9).78 Modern scholars have given differ-
ent answers to the question which war objectives Hannibal actually had. But there is a
consensus that the annihilation of Rome as a political entity or a Western Mediterranean
Empire under direct Carthaginian rule was beyond the scope of his war aims.79 Thus
why he crossed the Pyrenean Mountains, the Rhone as well as the Alps and led his army
to Italy? Evidently he mirrored the strategy of the Romans which brought the decision
in the First Punic war: he threatened the Roman capital, weakened the alliance between
the Romans and their Italian allies, and might have hoped that this action would motivate
the Romans to make peace on equal terms or even from an inferior position. At least
he failed in his ambitions, because the Romans twice prevented Hasdrubal from bring-
ing re-enforcements from Spain to Italy.80 Furthermore they were able to cope with the
high death toll. Although they suffered from heavy defeats they had the possibility to
draft new soldiers and to engage fresh troops, whereas Hannibal did not have any re-
enforcement and had to deal with a really difficult supply situation. And, last but least,
the Romans for better or worse had no intentions of making peace. As matter of con-
sequence the she-wolf prevailed and the victory in the 2. Punic War accelerated the
rise of the Roman Empire, which had come into being with the creation of Sicilia as
the first Roman province after the 1. Punic War and eventually embraced the whole
Mediterranean World and beyond.
The question to be put now is, if the Carthaginian realm can be characterized as an
empire according to categories established by Michael Gehler and Robert Rollinger.81
This is of course not impossible, as it was already demonstrated elsewhere: the
Carthaginian dominion had fluid frontiers—especially in Spain—, had an aristocracy
which provided administrative and military personnel, it was able to extract tributes and
to act as the protector of its allies and its subjects.82 Thus some criteria for the quali-
fication of Carthage as an empire are met. This empire, however, is qualified by the
late antique historiographer Orosius as a short-lived one, since its duration was only
700 years.
78Cf.Walbank 1967: 42–44 on the Polybian version of the treaty.

79Walbank 1967: 44; Seibert 1993a: 159–161; Lancel 1997: 391–392; Christ 2003: 96; Zimmermann
2008: 54–55.
80Zimmermann 2008: 58–59.
81Gehler, Rollinger 2014: 23–26.
82See Ruffing forthcoming.

242 K. Ruffing
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Theoderic and the Ostrogoths—a
Short-Term Empire? Decapitated
or Defective?
Christoph Schäfer
There has been and still is considerable debate as to what makes an “Empire”.
Jürgen Osterhammel, for example, understands empires as the result of processes of
wide-ranging establishments of rule, as hierarchical, oftentimes monarchical, multi-

ethnic and multi-religious constructs whose unity derives from a central administration,
a military potential for violence, cooperation with indigenous peoples, elite symbolism
and claims to universalism.1 Herfried Münkler, a scholar of political science, has fueled
further discussions by an analysis of imperial edifices ranging from the Roman Empire
to the United States.2
Recently, Michael Gehler and Robert Rollinger have produced a voluminous com-
pendium of more than 1,700 pages as a result of an international conference on Empires
across chronological and disciplinary boundaries. This volume is particularly important
for future discussions because it demonstrates Münkler’s sometimes superficial analysis
of historical sources and thus challenges some of his hypotheses. Furthermore, the edi-
tors have put future research on solid footing in establishing a provisional definition of
1Osterhammel (2004), 172 f. Osterhammel (2009), 610.

2Münkler (2005).
I thank Max Otte and Robert Rollinger for the invitation to the Blankenheim Symposium, for
the organization of what was a flawless conference and Max Otte in particular for his generous
hospitality at his private home in Blankenheim. I would also like to thank Katja Krell, Christian
Rollinger and Lisa Dünchem for their devoted help in the preparation of this paper.
C. Schäfer (*)
Universität Trier, Trier, Germany
e-mail: christoph.schaefer@uni-trier.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_12
246 C. Schäfer
what is to be understood as an “empire”; this makes comparative studies across chrono-

logical boundaries possible. From this definition, I have distilled 19 assumptions that I
will use as structural framework for a preliminary study of the Ostrogothic “empire”.
1. Empires are not a consequence of deliberate planning.3
This first assumption is surely correct in the case of the Ostrogothic empire. During
his march west, Theoderic was in no position to plan ahead or to imagine what his
future position in the context of the degrading Romanness of Italy will be. Also,
Ostrogothic policies would necessarily have to take account of what was possi-
ble under dynamically changing circumstances. After his victory over Odoacer,
Theoderic was not able to obtain Eastern Roman approval at once, and so he pro-
claimed himself king in AD 493, even though he had already done so in the Balkans
in 471 and 474.4 He also continued to experiment with the regalia and symbols of
his office, as Procopius writes: “Though he did not claim the right to assume either
the garb or the name of an emperor of the Romans, and was called rex for the rest of
his life (for the barbarians are accustomed to call their leaders that), still, in govern-
ing his own subjects he invested himself with all the qualities that are appropriate to
one who is an emperor by nature.”5
2. Empires are theoretically unlimited and universal in their claims to geographical
extent, political rule and/or authority, and influence by means of trade, cultural and
economic policies.6
The Ostrogothic Empire at no point limited itself geographically. On the contrary, it
included (at various stages) parts of the Visigothic Empire, administered in personal
union. And though the military following of the Ostrogothic kings was not particu-
larly strong numerically, the frontier regions of the Empire were closely adminis-
tered both politically and militarily, as archaeological evidence for the presence of
“Ostrogothic” military in Noricum and Raetia shows.7
3. Empires are further characterised by territorial expansion and military shows of
strength.8
Ostrogothic rulers did not hesitate to utilise military force, even before the great
wars against Justinian. Theoderic himself sent his troops to the Balkan provinces
where they defeated the Gepids and were successful in wrangling control over
3Gehler and Rollinger (2014), 22.

4Ausbüttel (2003), 23, 27 u. 69 f.
5Proc. BG 1,1,26. Transl. Kaldellis (2014). Cf. Goltz (2008), 219 f.
7While Moorhead (1992), 72 still assumes a lack of relevant burial objects in Raetia, the archaeo-
logical evidence of finds in Regensburg, Straubing and Unteraching proves an Ostrogothic pres-
ence in this region. Haas-Gebhardt (2013), 94–98. Haas-Gebhardt (2014), 250, 254 f., 262 f.
Geisler (1998), 257, 266, 328. Fischer and Dietz (2018), 266 f.
Theoderic and the Ostrogoths—a Short-Term Empire … 247
Pannonia II and its capital Sirmium from the Eastern emperor in Constantinople.9
During the follow-up to the battle of Vouillé, Ostrogothic troops also fought back
Frankish and Burgundian armies.10
4. Systematic relocation and resettlement of considerable population groups is typical
of empires.11
Groups of Theodoric’s Ostrogoths were strategically settled in Italy. From the very
beginning, a careful balance between available locations and the necessary eco-
nomic foundation for settlements and settlers was struck. They were assigned a
capital stock for their future welfare in the form of a third of the regular land tax
(annona, canon).12 Theoderic entrusted the task of overseeing this to a member of
the Roman elite, Petrus Marcellinus Felix Liberius. As large tracts of the land were
owned by Roman aristocratic families, this was politically astute: Liberius was both
a member of that aristocracy and himself a large landowner intimately familiar with
Italian circumstances. Contemporary sources show that he successfully exerted his
new authority, albeit in an almost euphorically exaggerated fashion that we should
be careful to accept as a whole.13 It is nevertheless obvious from the contemporary
reactions that a relatively amicable settlement must have been reached that was
acceptable to both sides. This was certainly aided by the fact that settlements were
spread over the whole of Italy according to military and strategic necessities. Also,
some of the estates now occupied by Ostrogoths would have been either deserted or
previously owned by adherents of Odoacer, though this does not diminish Liberius’
achievement. Apart from the literary sources, archaeological evidence indicates
that Ostrogothic settlement was concentrated heavily in Central and Northern Italy,
while Southern Italy and Sicily were practically untouched except for the occasional
garrisons.14 After the Frankish victory over the Alamanns near Zülpich, Theoderic
allowed Alamannic refugees to settle in the Alpine foothills, in Noricum, Venetia
and southwestern Pannonia.15
9Wolfram (1990), 321 f. Moorhead (1992), 174 f.

10Wolfram (1990), 311 f.
12For the much-discussed sortes and tertia, see Goffart (1980), 58 ff. Durliat (1988), 45 ff.
Wolfram (1990), 296 f., especially n. 42. Barnish (1986), 170 ff. Krieger (1992), 144 ff. Epp
(1997), 56 ff. Vera (1993), 139 ff.
13Ennod. ep. 9,23. Cass. var. 2,15,3 u. 2,16,4 f. Cf. O’Donnel (1981), 39.
14For an in-depth study of literary sources, archaeological and toponomastic evidence, see
Bierbrauer (1975), 27 ff.

15Wolfram (1990), 317.
248 C. Schäfer
5. Empires are further marked by large, ideally unlimited geographical extents, while
frontier regions are dynamic and geographically fluid zones. The result is a transter-
ritorial claim to political authority.16
Theoderic considered himself responsible for former imperial territories of Western
Rome and thus attempted to control regions formerly belonging to the Roman
Empire. He did so by following a strategy of dynastic marriages. One daughter,
Ostrogotho, was married to Sigismund of Burgundy while another, Thiudigotho,
was married to the Visigothic king Alaric II. His sister Amalafrida married
Thrasamund, king of the Vandals, his niece Amalaberga Herminafried, king of
the Thuringii. Theoderic himself married Audefleda, a sister of the Frankish king
Clovis.17 His foreign policy as a whole rested on his claim to be primus inter pares
in a family of Germanic kings ruling over formerly Roman territories, though in the
end he was unable to force this claim.
6. Empires have multi-ethnic populations and the integration of different ethnicities is
an important challenge of empires.18
The “Ostrogoths” were themselves a multi-ethnic group. On the one hand,
Theoderic had been unable to concentrate all Balkan Goths under his rule after the
death of his rival Theoderic Strabo. On the other hand, his following also included
Rugii and Visigoths that accompanied him to Italy, as well as parts of Odoacer’s
armies that joined him after the death of the latter. The army which he led against
Odoacer was likely around 10,000–12,000 strong, while the migrating Ostrogoths
themselves likely numbered around 35–40,000.19 In Italy, he encountered an indig-
enous population of Romans in vastly greater numbers.20 To this should be added
the inhabitants of territories outside Italy proper, which included Romans and non-
Romans alike.

17Wolfram (1990), 306 ff.
18Gehler and Rollinger (2014), 22 f.
19In my opinion, Burns (1978), 457 ff. gives the most realistic estimate of Ostrogothic numbers
during their Italy campaign. Cf. Burns (1984), 65; supported by Demandt (1995), 614. Wolfram
(1990), 279 accepts the estimate of Enßlin (1959), 62, who, in turn, based his calculation on
Schmidt (1941), 293 and 283: approximately 20,000 soldiers and a total of around 100,000 per-
sons. Recently, Wiemer (2018), 194, 198, has also accepted this estimate. Cf. Wiemer (2007), 164.
20I understand the term ‘Roman’ to mean all those persons living in the core territories of the
defunct western empire and in possession of Roman citizenship. If we accept the estimate of
around 4 million inhabitants of Italy (Russell [1958], 73), Theoderic’s ‘Goths’ would have repre-
sented no more than 1% of the total population, though we should also add the German followers
of Odoacer to this number. In total, then, we may assume that Germanic peoples represented no
more than 2–10% of the total population of the so-called ‘successor’ states; cf. Demandt (1995),
614.
As a consequence of this ethnic mixture, Theoderic attempted to integrate his

Ostrogothic following into the lifestyles of conquered peoples and to ensure a peace-
ful cohabitation.21 One example of this is his order to adapt Roman funerary rites,
which did not include burial gifts, to replace existing Ostrogothic ones, which did.
Likewise, graves should now be marked by decorative structures, columns and mar-
ble.22 This policy of acculturation on the part of the Ostrogoths was by no means
idle propaganda, as the Anonymus Valesianus confirms: “Only a wretched Roman
imitates a Goth, but an industrious Goth imitates a Roman.”23 While Theoderic was
no doubt a realist and did not assume that his Ostrogothic followers would readily
and quickly abandon their ancestral customs, his actions attest to his willingness and
intention to see his military clientele integrated into Italian society.24
21Epp (1997), 58 f. emphasizes the increasing particularism of the aristocracy, which, in her opin-
ion, was more important than alleged ethnic conflicts. It should be noted, however, that provincial
senators under Theoderic sought a close connection to the king, in the hopes of finding support
against the traditional urban Roman elite, particularly as far as the constant competition for honors
and offices was concerned. Cf. Schäfer (1991), 149 ff., 170 ff. u. 185 ff.
22Cass. var. 4,34. Cf. Bierbrauer (1975), 53 ff. Bierbrauer (1980), 102 f. Bierbrauer (1994), 147 f.
23Anon. Val. 61: Romanus miser imitatur Gothum et utilis Gothus imitatur Romanus. This is the
text as constituted by J. Moreau in the Teubner edition; O. Veh accepts a conjecture first proposed
by Zangemeister (1875), 315 (Veh [1966], 1224 f.: … et futilis Gothus …). Demandt (1995), 614
also gives utilis. Similiarly, and with further references, König (1997), 150 f. Wiemer (2018), 231,
translates miser as “poor” and utilis as “rich”.
24For Theoderic’s policy of integration, see Schäfer (2001), 182–197. Spielvogel (2002), 1–24.
Wiemer (2018), 197, interprets the m ulti-ethnic group of people that followed Theoderic into
Italy as a “Gewaltgesellschaft” that then transformed into a “ethnisch definierte Klasse von
Grundbesitzern mit militärischer Dienstpflicht”, which was a necessary precondition for the estab-
lishment of Theoderic’s rule. This hypothesis presupposes, however, that the newly-arrived ‘Goths’
were compensated exclusively with landed estates, which is not certain at all. It is more likely
that they received a combination of land and a part (tertia) of the duties imposed on Italian land-
owners. As the ‘Goths’ were generally part of the military, the fact that jurisdiction over them lay
with the Gothic military administration coincides with earlier arrangements under the late Roman
empire, which also knew a separate civil and military jurisdiction. There is thus no evidence for a
political concept of “Integration durch Separation”. If Theoderic had indeed wanted to construct
“eine Scheidewand zwischen Eroberern und Einheimischen”, it would have been a very risky
undertaking, given the discrepancy in numbers between the new arrivals and the Italians. On the
other hand, there are good reasons to assume an integration of ‘Goths’ into Italian society, not the
least of which is the fact that it took Justinian’s generals twenty years to conquer the peninsula.
Northern Italy especially, which is where most of the ‘Goths’ were settled, resisted for a consider-
able time, which would hardly have been feasible in the absence of integration of ‘Goths’ with the
numerically superior Italian inhabitants. Cf. Wiemer (2013), 597 f. and 601. On Gothic military
jurisdiction, see Schäfer (2017), 204 f. For the distribution of land, see Meier (2009), 101.
250 C. Schäfer
7. Empires are marked by religious pluralism.25

Religion separated Ostrogothic and Roman peoples, though it was not only the
Gothic warrior, but rather the ruler himself that belonged to a different con-
fession (that of Arius) and was thus, in the eyes of the conquered Romans, a
heretic. Ironically, the fact that he was part of a religious minority may have con-
ceivably led him to adopt a decidedly generous and tolerant attitude towards reli-
gious differences.
He emphasised and strictly enforced civilitas in religious affairs, as, for instance, in
his dealing with the Italian Jews. Thus, he opens a letter to the Jews of Milan with
the following, programmatical statement: “We freely permit what has been asked
without offence to the laws, most of all to serve civilitas, as the benefits of justice
should not be denied even to those whom we know to err in matters of faith.”26
Theoderic was careful to regard the keeping of civilitas as more important than his
own well-attested personal aversion against the Jewish faith. In this, he followed a
more tolerant path than Justinian.27 In fact, his policies resemble modern concep-
tions of freedom of religion. This happened when he allowed the Jews of Genua to
rebuild the roof of their synagogue and admitted that “I cannot command your faith,
for no one is forced to believe against his will.”28
8. Empires are not defined by constitutional norms, but develop independently forms
of rule. Individual or charismatic rulers are less important than supporting classes
and elites, whose continuity is paramount.29
After the initial settlement of the Ostrogoths in Italy, the necessity of delineating
respective spheres of authority of both Ostrogothic and Roman populaces within a
new society and a new state arose. As was the case during the Roman Empire, mili-
tary and civil administration were separated. While Gothic nobles occupied almost
all available military posts, the top offices of the civil administration were reserved
for members of the traditional senatorial elite. Thanks to the close connection
between adherence to the senatorial order and the occupancy of high offices of state
in the civil administration, and as he was the sole authority able to appoint these

26Cass. var. 5,37,1: Libenter annuimus quae sine legum iniuria postulantur, maxime dum pro serv-
anda civilitate nec illis sunt neganda beneficiis iustitiae, qui adhuc in fide noscuntur errare.
27Justinian, after the conquest of Vandal northern Africa, confiscated local synagogues (Nov. 37,
8). For jews and other heterodox groups under Justininan, see Haase (1994), 106–127; Noethlichs
(1996), 111–117.
28Cass. var. 2,27,2: religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut credat invitus. Transl.
Barnish (1992). On the legal restrictions cf. Nov. Theod. 3, 3 und 3, 5. Noethlichs (1996), 110;
Kakridi (2005), 214; Schäfer (2017), 205.
officials, Theoderic was quite successful in reconciling the Roman elite to his rule.30
Additionally, however, he also appointed a growing number of Gothic comites and
saiones with supervisory functions in many areas.31 This was met with little resist-
ance from the elite, however, as there seems to have been relatively little willingness
among senators to occupy functions of true power.32
9. Elites act as a mobilising force and allow an Empire to raise large land and/or naval
forces in relatively little time and to deploy these in military operations.33
Military operations, as a whole, were the exclusive domain of the Ostrogothic warrior
elites, the relatively small-scale presence of Italians within the Gothic army notwith-
standing. Their military readiness and service was rewarded by both the estates they
had been given to settle and by regular salaries and irregular donatives (donativa).34
In other words: Gothic warriors were given the opportunity to lead orderly lives and
to abandon their s emi-nomadic prior existence. But the economic prosperity on which
this life, as well as military logistics, depended, was provided mostly by the Italians.
30See Schäfer (1991), 1 ff. for the processes by which the most important offices were distributed
and for the upward mobility up to and including the rank of viri illustri, which alone (and in con-
trast to the viri clarissimi and spectabiles) had both seat and vote in the senate itself. In using
his right to perform adlectio to grant this status, he, as well as in other aspects of his reign, con-
sciously imitated the Roman emperors. Cf. Mommsen (1910), 424 f. Jones (1986), 532 and 541 f.
The inclusion of homines novi from northern Italy among the new illustres can thus not be seen as
an innovation, as the adlectio of provincial elites was common practice both in the principate and
in late antiquity. Cf. Eck (1970), 103 ff. Alföldy (1977), 61 ff., 75 ff. u. 84 ff. Halfmann (1979),
82 ff. Kuhoff (1983), 39 ff. Stroheker (1948), 14 ff. Näf (1995), 15 ff. Hence, there was no occa-
sion for old Italian elites to become disillusioned or upset with Theoderic (thus Epp [1997], 59),
especially as these old elites enjoyed a clear advantage when it came to the highest honors and
they expressed no recognizable interest in the less prestigious and more work-intensive offices.
The actual tensions within the senatorial class were most probably occasioned by internal rival-
ries and the condescension of established elites vis-à-vis the provincial homines novi. Cf. Schäfer
(1991)170 ff. and esp. 181 ff.
31The comitiva were created by Constantine, though Theoderic would adapt them as comitiva
Gothorum. Cf. Timpe (1984), 63 ff. Claude (1984), 66. Wolfram (1990), 290 ff.
32Cf. Schäfer (1991), 191 ff. Epp (1997), 59 f. argues that competition and rivalry between the
Gothic military administration and the traditional Roman official hierarchy would have driven the
traditional elites into the waiting arms of Byzantium. This is unlikely though, as the official cur-
sus was rather an sometimes incontrovertible inconvenience for the urban Roman senators, who, it
should be added, accepted Ostrogothic rule relatively early. These elites preferred to attain the rank
of vir illustris by honourary posts, as, indeed, they had done under the rule of the Western emper-
ors. The cursus honorum of more junior senators, many of whom were settled in northern Italy,
by contrast was more ‘labor-intensive’. However, these junior senators who occupied the rungs of
officialdom, remained largely loyal to the Gothic leadership, at least during the first phase of the
war.
34For this donative, cf. Wolfram (1990), 298 f.

252 C. Schäfer
10. Administrating an empire presupposes textuality and a certain level of

bureaucracy.35
The civil administration of the late antique Roman Empire continued functioning
under the Ostrogothic kings. The kings themselves were in constant official and
epistolary contact with the new Gothic comites and saiones, as well as with the tra-
ditional senatorial officials. The Variae, a collection of letters from the royal chan-
cellery organised by Cassiodorus, are a vivid expression of the functioning of this
bureaucratic state.36
11. As a rule, Empires are organised around a strong political centre, which may led to
conflicts and tensions between centre and periphery.37
The political centre of the Ostrogothic Empire was in Italy and grouped around two
regional power hubs: Rome itself, with its senatorial elite, and the Gothic landed
aristocracy (and northern Italian senatorial elite) centred around Ravenna.38
12. Major empires give shape to larger power structures as they attempt to form their
surrounding world according to their own norms and ideas of order. To do so, they
also combat and eliminate opposition to their ideals.39
Theoderic operated along such lines, e.g., in assassinating the Visigothic pretender
Gesalech or in militarily opposing both Gepids and Burgundians when they ran the
risk of destabilising the dynastic and political system he had established.40
13. Empires possess a distinct way of looking at the world, an ideological view that can
be described as an imperial mission to bring peace, culture and civilisation.41
Theoderic’s representation was focused around the concept of civilitas, the safe-
guarding of existing power structures, laws and order.42 In fact, this concept was
something of a leitmotiv for Theoderic and his Ostrogoths. In that it served to show
the Ostrogothic conquerors their place and rank in the Italian/Roman society, as well
as how to treat their new-found Roman co-citizens. Ennodius praises this notion of
civilitas, knowing full well that reality occasionally differed from it:
“But do you not leave space for the amenities of civil life among the combat exercises in
which you instruct everyone and by which you produce favourable portents of victory? Who
would not believe that your heroes reject fear as alien to them, if they are at peace? For the
law puts limits on men who are indomitable in battle: they submit to the rules after they

36Wolfram (1990), 312 ff.
37Gehler and Rollinger (2014), 23 f.
38Schäfer (1991), 143 ff.
40Wolfram (1990), 312–314.
42On civilitas, see especially Enßlin (1959), 215–220; Saitta (1993); Reydellet (1995), 285–296;
Stüven (1995), bes. 4–25; Ausbüttel (2003), 78–88; Heather (2007), 35–37; Lafferty (2013), 12.
have won the laurel of victory and destroyed the battle formations of the enemies; those,
from whom arms have recoiled, are themselves ruled by decrees.”43
Both Romans and Ostrogoths could consider themselves lucky to be living in a pol-
ity governed by law. The king himself proclaimed, that it “is our custom to refer eve-
rything to the law.”44 He personally defended the supremacy of law in a letter of the
imperial chancellery: “But an offence against the law is an insult of our person, as
we rightly relate any offences against the laws that we love to ourselves”.45 On the
whole, then, Roman law and jurisprudence continued to function under Theoderic,
with certain Germanic influences notable mostly in matters of family law.46
14. In internal matters, Empires refer to historical and cultural traditions as important
cornerstones of imperial identity. An influential culture of reception provides conti-
nuity for example in architecture, culture, and not least in a tradition of historiogra-
phy of outstanding importance.47
Contemporaries such as Cassiodorus, Ennodius, or Procopius continued to view the
Ostrogothic realm as western part of the Roman Empire, thus emphasising conti-
nuity and negating the nature of the Ostrogothic state as an autonomous entity.48
Theoderic undertook considerable efforts to visually represent this in his architec-
ture.49 Notably, his own funerary site, a two-storey structure capped by a cupola,
with a circular second storey superimposed on a decagonal ground floor, was pos-
sibly influenced by the Mausoleums of Hadrian or of the 3rd and 4th centuries.
The edifice was built from Istrian limestone, a material used nowhere else in late
antique Ravenna. Its construction using rectangular hewn stone was also rare in
late antiquity but likely influenced by Hellenistic examples. The monolithic cupola
provides a fittingly monumental character to the building.50 Theoderic’s inten-
tion to create a lasting, symbolic edifice is unmistakable, as well as his purpose-
ful imitation of the tomb of Constantine the Great in the Holy Apostles’ Church in
43Ennod. paneg. 87: Sed inter proeliares forte successus, quibus omnes instruis et concilias omina
secunda vincendi, civilitatis dulcedini nil reservas? Quis credat heroas tuos peregrinam non respu-
ere, dum sunt tranquilla, formidinem? Nam indomita inter acies ingenia lex coercet: summittunt
praeceptis colla post laureas et calcatis hostium cuneis, quibus arma cesserint, decreta dominantur.
44Cass. var. 3,36,1: … cum moris nostri sit ad leges cuncta remittere. Cf. Rohr (1995), 261, Anm. 80.
45Cass. var. 3,15: Iniuria quidem nostra est laesa iustitia, quia violationes earum rerum merito ad
nos trahimus quas amamus.
46Cf. Demandt (1995), 611 f.
48Cf. Börm (2008), 48–51.
49On the Flavian Amphitheatre, see CIL VI,32094. For building measures in Rome and generally
in Italy, see Enßlin (1959), 110. Ausbüttel (2003), 86 f. For Ravenna: Wood (2007), 249–260.
50On the sepulcher of Theoderic, see Deichmann (1969), 213 ff. Deichmann (1974), 211 ff.
Heidenreich and Johannes (1971).

254 C. Schäfer
Constantinople. Constantine expressed herewith the claim to the role of mediator

between the Imperium Romanum as the image of the Kingdom of God on earth and
God the Father. Just as Constantine the Great had been buried amid 12 cenotaphs of
the apostles, so did Theoderic inscribe the names of the apostles around the central
tomb.51 The small but important difference was due to religious and ecclesiastical
objections, which had also compelled Constantius II to remove the cenotaphs in
Constantinople. Theoderic was thus unable to completely emulate Constantine the
Great and had to innovate; he was buried under the central cupola in a sarcophagus
made from porphyry. The choice of apostles’ names is further evidence of a direct
influence: in both cases, Mark and Luke are included, while Bartholomew and Judas
are excluded from the list.52
Unlike the church of the Holy Apostles, however, Theoderic’s mausoleum is a
free-standing structure erected on a Gothic cemetery and not part of a larger church
structure. His choice not to associate his burial site with an Arian church may be a
reflection of the non-sectarian nature of his rule. Regardless of (or maybe because
of?) the ‘antique’ reminiscences, the mausoleum of Theoderic is a singular structure
and a striking example of royal representation. Its importance is only reinforced by
the decision of the Byzantine rulers of Ravenna in or around AD 560 to remove the
porphyry sarcophagus just because an imperial claim has been expressed here.53 Its
symbolic value was self-evident.
As far as the historiographical and literary sources are concerned, it is notably
Cassiodorus who provides us with a remarkably positive view of both Theoderic’s
rule and his kingdom. This positive slant is also noticeable in the first part of the
Anonymus Valesianus and even in later Eastern historians such as Procopius; it is
naturally also heavily endorsed in the extant panegyrics.54
15. Assurances of security and welfare are often an important part of imperial
ideology.55
Royal epistles often included admonitions of all population groups to cohabitate
peacefully which emphasise the Gothic contribution to the commonwealth. Thus,
the formula for appointing a comes Gothorum runs as follows: “Both peoples should
hear what we hold dear. To you (i.e. the Goths), the Romans are your neighbours in
terms of possessions and should be conjoined to you in love. You however, Romans,
must love the Goths with great fervour, who make you into a populous nation in
51Cf. Kaniuth (1974), esp. 34 ff. The Ostrogothic king would have been intimately familiar both with
the tomb in Constantinople and its symbolism, as he spent many years in the Eastern metropolis.
52Cf. Schneider (1941), 404 f.
53Agnellus, Lib. Pont. 39. Cf. Heidenreich and Johannes (1971), 70 ff. Sörries (1983), 290 f. Goltz
(2008), 537 f.
54Cf. Meyer-Flügel (1992), esp. 145–149. Kakridi (2005), 160–170. Goltz (2008), bes. 328–330 u.
342–348. Schäfer (2017), 197 u. 201–208.

peace and defend the whole of the res publica in war.”56 According to this, Romans
owe thanks to their Gothic neighbours on two accounts: they alone bear the respon-
sibilities and burdens of defending the country in case of war and, simultaneously,
Romans derive advantages from the increase in population. Indeed, contemporary
sources show that a demographic decline had led to a manpower shortage detrimen-
tal to agriculture.57 This is an important point. Desertion and neglect of agricultural
estates could lead to negative consequences for all surrounding inhabitants; such ter-
rain might return to a marshy state and thus give rise to Malaria and other diseases.
This was a problem not only in late antiquity, but as recently as 20th century Central
Italy.58 The royal chancellery could thus rightly stress the advantages of the Gothic
presence.
16. The ideological foundations of Empires often resulted in a sense of mission that was
relevant for internal and external concerns and for the legitimisation of imperial rule.
In the religious sphere, the ruler occupies a special plane that can be characterised as
a divine right of kings or a special means of communication with the divine sphere.
Decisions made by the ruler can be interpreted as signs of divine will.59
Theoderic naturally continued and fulfilled the Roman imperial role of the emperor
as protector of both the church and public order and it is thus not surprising that he
demands civilitas as early as 27th August 502 in a letter to the Synod in Rome.60
This is all the more remarkable as he also calls for an independent resolution of the
Synod that he himself had called to assemble on 1st September as a reaction to the
Laurentian Schism.61 He declares himself ready to accept any judgement that was
conducive to public peace in Rome, because, as he puts it, it was not “acceptable
that citizens had to yearn for civilitas in the arx of Latium (i.e. the Capitol), when
56Cass. var. 7,3,3: audiat uterque populus quod amamus. Romani vobis sicut sunt possessionibus
vicini, ita sint et caritate coniuncti. vos autem, Romani, magno studio Gothos diligere debetis, qui
et in pace numerosos vobis populos faciunt et universam rem publicam per bella defendunt.
57Cassiodorus, apparently spurred on by the number of mills in Rome and the necessity to provide
food from the provinces, reflects on earlier numbers of inhabitants: Cass. var. 11,39,1 f. For the
mills, see also Proc. BG 1,19,8 f. It is now virtually certain, however, that non-elite Goths were
also involved in agriculture throughout Italy and did not restrict themselves to a role as overseers.
Cf. Meyer-Flügel (1992), 137 ff., contra Enßlin (1959), 238 f.
58Kober (1965), 8 a. 32.
60For the date of 502, see Wirbelauer (1993), 17–34, esp. 30.
61After the death of Pope Anastasius II, two successors were elected on 22 November 498. One
was Symmachus, former deacon, the other the former Archipresbyter Laurentius. Although he was
only elected by a minority of the clergy, the nobility and senate of Rome stood on Laurentius’ side.
Until 506 the followers of the two fought each other in Rome. With Theoderic’s final decision for
Symmachus the schism ended. Wirbelauer (1993).
256 C. Schäfer
it was secure even in proximity to the enemy.”62 Even after the Synod had failed to
come to a judgement and seeing that the Schism endured, Theoderic held back for
a while until his hand was forced by foreseeable Byzantine naval operations on the
Italian coast.63 Fearing a military attack on his power centre, he was adamant that
unity had to be projected in all social and religious matters. In this difficult situa-
tion, Theoderic acted decisively: he proclaimed that Symmachus was the only legiti-
mate pope, as he had not only been elected earlier but also by a majority of clerics
entitled to vote.64 His decision was accepted by both sides, very likely because all
parties (including the members of the senatorial elite involved in the affair) acknowl-
edged him as master of the church, his Arian faith (and consequent heretecism) not-
withstanding. In the eyes of his subjects, doubts and misgivings about his personal
faith were more than compensated by his quasi-imperial position. Indeed, individual
groups had previously begged him to intervene in the matter.65
17. Rulers of empires have a specific duty of care in collecting taxes and tributes.66
Theoderic ensured the correct and unimpeachable exercise of duty on the part of
his officials. One example for this is the case of the praefectus praetorio Faustus
Niger. Niger had abused his powers to encroach on the possessions of a man called
Castorius. When the king heard of this, he ordered a public inquiry and a restitution of
lost property in the event that the accusations were proven to be accurate.67
18. An empire must necessarily be in a position to suppress insurrections and dynastic
conflicts.68
A severe dynastic conflict arose when letters from members of the Roman senato-
rial elite to the Eastern court were intercepted and shown to be concerned with the
question of royal succession after the death of Theoderic’s son-in-law Eutharic, who
had already been established as crown prince. The matter ended in a trial for high
treason, in which the magister officiorum, Boethius, as well as his father-in-law and
caput senatus, Symmachus, were involved. A senate tribunal was called in Pavia, not
62MGH AA XII, 422, 5–7: est quidem pudenda cum stupore diversitas Romanum statum in con-
finio gentium sub tranquillitate regi et in media urbe confundi, ut desideretur civilitas in arce Latii,
quae est sub hostium vicinitate secura. Cf. Krautschick (1983), 118–119, who accepts Mommsen’s
date but rejects the view of O’Donnel (1979), 96–102 that Cassiodorus was using the term civilitas
rhetorically. Livius understands arx primarily as the northern side of the Capitoline hill, but the
designation later came to signify the whole Capitol.
63The eastern Roman offensive called for extensive preparations that can hardly have escaped the
Ostrogothic leadership. On the fleet operations, cf. above, n. 29.

64Lib. Pont. 260, 5–9 (ed. Duchesne). The Laurentian Fragment (Ver. 44 [ed. Duchesne]) naturally
differs.
65Wirbelauer (1993), 38–4; Brennecke (2000), 137–138; Schäfer (2001), 192–193.
67Cass. var. 3,20. Cf. Castritius (1980), 223 f.

in Rome, which was dominated by senators rooted in northern Italy. Both defend-
ants were sentenced to death. Theoderic decided not to intervene and to pardon the
condemned but rather to make an example of them. However, this led to a permanent
rupture between the urban senators in Rome and the northern Italian elites. In the end,
the royal succession by Theoderic’s young grandson (and his mother, Amalaswintha,
as regent) proved to be smooth and trouble-free. It was not until the following years
that internal and external problems arose which destabilized the rule.69
19. An empire must ward off external threats and be able to absorb both military defeats
and political setbacks.70
While Theoderic did experience political setbacks during his lifetime (such as the
murder of his sister, Amalafrida, and her followers by the successor to Thrasamund,
Hilderic), he was spared significant military defeats after his conquest of Italy.71 The
deaths of his son-in-law, Eutharic, and of his grandson, Athanaric, however, posed
serious problems and led to a certain destabilisation of the ostrogothic rule and ulti-
mately to the Byzantine invasion of Italy. The military strength of the kingdom was
then put to the ultimate test in the two decades of war with Eastern Rome. During
this conflict, the loyalties and attitudes of the Roman populace were ambivalent.
While Southern Italy largely welcomed Byzantine troops and Rome itself opened
its gates to them, the Romans of Northern Italy, where Gothic settlements were con-
centrated, remained largely loyal to the Ostrogothic kings. This can conceivably be
interpreted as a sign that continued neighbourhood and cohabitation had led to a
lasting and firm rapprochement between the two ethnic groups. In the north, the pol-
icies of tolerance and integration pursued by the Ostrogothic kings, had obviously
met with success.72 It was to take 20 years before the last territories were wrested
from Ostrogothic control. Given that the Gothic presence in Italy never rose above
1% of the total population, this shows how successful Theoderic had been in estab-
lishing the ostrogothic rule in Italy.
The aftermath of Theoderic’s reign is ambivalent. While Charlemagne worshipped him,

medieval historiography often portrayed him as a tyrant and heretic. On the other hand,
the legend of Dietrich of Bern (= Verona) originated in the early Middle Ages. This very
positive depiction of the Ostrogoth king integrates time-shifted events and persons such
as Attila into the narrative. In later times the legend was interwoven with the Song of the
Nibelungs. The overall positive image of a tragic hero shapes the view of the early mod-
ern period. It can also be found in 19th-century literature.73 However, Theoderic is still
69Schäfer (1991), 240–262.

71On the murder of Amalafrida, see Wolfram (1990), 308. Ausbüttel (2003), 142.
72For these policies, see now Dobesch (1994), 97 u. 104 ff.
73Ausbüttel (2003), 156–160.

258 C. Schäfer
a highly controversial character in historical scholarship. Even though most historians

paint a more or less positive picture of him and his empire, there are now some voices
that want to portray him as a violent barbaric tyrant. However, this goes too far and can
hardly be justified from the sources.
It is pointless to speculate how the Ostrogothic kingdom would have evolved if
it had not been destroyed by the Reconquista of Justinian—i.e., at its core, by exter-
nal pressures. However, late antique Italy undoubtedly enjoyed a final bloom under the
Ostrogothic kings. The final result of a military conflict that stretched over two dec-
ades was by no means foreordained. The space of direct rule was smaller than that of
the hegemonic claim to power. The latter was very strongly personalized and based
on auctoritas and thus less “real rule”. There is also a certain dichotomy between a
quasi-imperial attitude and the recognition of the Eastern Roman Emperor as a quasi
superior authority. All this is delicate and full of symbolism, but powerful. But already
the Eastern Roman author Procopius writes that Theoderic was only a tyrant in name, but
in reality a real emperor. And he had not been inferior to any of his predecessors in the
Roman West.74
Theodoric’s rule of more than 30 years after the years of conquest was followed by an
astonishing consolidation, which resulted in the empire being able to resist the Byzantine
conquest for 20 years. Nevertheless, due to dynastic problems, a fundamental disagree-
ment within the Roman Senate after the execution of Boethius, and attacks from out-
side, it has existed for only about 60 years. This makes it one of the short-term empires.
Considering the main cause of the collapse, we can state that it was less a ‘defective’
than a ‘decapitated’ empire, especially in view of the successful integration of Goths and
Romans into the empire of Theoderic and the resulting resistance against the Byzantines
which lasted two decades. Justinian’s attack was the decisive moment that ultimately led
to the early demise of the Ostrogoth Empire.
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The Rise of Hitler’s Empire and Its Apex
(1933–1942)
Arnold Suppan
“Any thought of world policy is laughable,” Hitler commented in October 1941, “until we
are masters of the continent. […] Once we are the masters of Europe then we will enjoy the
dominant position in the world.”1
However, Hitler’s successes in gaining living space and inhabitants since 1933 had not
been “laughable”—at least not to his opponents. When Hitler was appointed Reich
Chancellor by Reich President Hindenburg, the German Reich had 470,699 km2 with
66,044,000 inhabitants (16 June 1933). With the Saar plebiscite on 13 January 1935
(which had been stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles), Hitler made his first acquisition,
winning 1,913 km2 with 863,736 inhabitants, most of them Germans. With the Anschluss
of Austria, on 13 March 1938, the German Reich won 83,868 km2 with 6,760,233 (31
March 1934) inhabitants—under them approx. 95% German-Austrians. Therefore, the
German Reich was now larger than the Wilhelminian Reich in Europe in 1914. With
the annexation of the Sudetenland after the Munich Conference on 29–30 September
1938 Hitler won 28,971 km2 with 3.64 million inhabitants, among them 85% Sudeten
Germans. After Hitler’s occupation of Prague, on 15 March 1939, and the establishment
of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Greater German Reich was enlarged
by 49,362 km2 with 7.38 million inhabitants, among them 95% Czechs. On 23 March
1939 the Reich annexed the Memelland/Klaipėda with 2829 km2 and 150,000 inhabit-
ants, half of them Germans, half of them Lithuanians and Jews. After Hitler’s war against
1Kershaw, Hitler II, 302–310; Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 2–3.
A. Suppan (*)
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: arnold.suppan@oeaw.ac.at

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_13
264 A. Suppan
Poland and the fourth division of Poland between Hitler and Stalin, the Greater German
Reich annexed Danzig (1893 km2 with 407,517 inhabitants, mostly Germans), West
Prussia, Posen/ Poznań, and East Upper Silesia (altogether 91,974 km2 with 9,627,311
inhabitants, mostly Poles), and established the General Government with 93,871 km2
and 12,107,418 inhabitants (mostly Poles). After the war against the Netherlands,
Belgium, Luxembourg, and France, the Greater German Reich annexed Eupen-Malmedy
(1056 km2 with 66,618 inhabitants) and put Luxembourg (2586 km2 with 296,913 inhab-
itants) as well as Alsace-Lorraine (14,522 km2 with 1,915,627 inhabitants) under civil
administration. Therefore, on 1 August 1940 the Greater German Reich contained about
844,500 km2 with approximately 109,260,000 inhabitants. The largest “minorities”
were the Poles, Czechs, Jews, and French. Since that time, Hitler had also dominated
Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and two thirds of France. After the war
against Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941, Hitler had put Lower Styria and Upper
Carniola under the German civil administration of Styria and Carinthia (in April 1941)
and established German military administrations in Serbia and some parts of Greece.2
According to Hitler’s best biographer, Ian Kershaw, “no other individual has stamped
a more profound imprint” on the twentieth century than Adolf Hitler:
“Hitler’s dictatorship, far more than that of Stalin or Mao, has the quality of a para-
digm for the twentieth century. In extreme and intense fashion it reflected, among other
things, the total claim of the modern state, unforeseen levels of state repression and
violence, previously unparalleled manipulation of the media to control and mobilize
the masses, unprecedented cynism in international relations, the acute dangers of ultra-
nationalism, and the immensely destructive power of ideologies of racial superiority and
ultimate consequences of racism, alongside the perverted usage of modern technology
and ‘social engineering.’ Above all […]: it showed how a modern, advanced, cultured
society can so rapidly sank into barbarity, culminating in ideological war, conquest of
scarcely imaginable brutality and rapaciousness, and genocide such as the world had
never previously witnessed. […] The twelve years of Hitler’s rule permanently changed
Germany, Europe, and the world. He is one of the few individuals of whom it can be said
with absolute certainty: without him, the course of history would have been different.”3
Hitler, the son of an Upper Austrian customs official at Braunau am Inn, spent
more than five years of increasing disappointment in Vienna (between February 1908
and May 1913), drifting as a painter through life without direction. Although he had
been “exposed to harsh anti-Semitic rhetoric, […] there is no contemporary evidence
that proves he was a committed anti-Semite before the end of the war” (Laurence
Rees). Still, Hitler was obsessed with the “heroic” nature of Richard Wagner’s work,
2Die Ergebnisse der Österreichischen Volkszählung vom 22. März 1934, 19; Statistik des
Deutschen Reiches auf Grund der Volkszählung 1939; Suppan, Hitler–Beneš–Tito 39–40.
3Kershaw, Hitler I, xix–xx. Until the present time, Hitler has stood uniquely as the quintessential
hate-figure of the twentieth century.

The Rise of Hitler’s Empire and Its Apex (1933–1942) 265
not only the Ring of the Nibelung but also Rienzi and Lohengrin, which he saw in the
Vienna court opera—under the direction of the Moravian Jewish conductor Gustav
Mahler—“at least ten times.” Hitler also admired Karl Lueger, “the uncrowned king
of Vienna” (Ian Kershaw), and the boulevard press in Vienna, which supported him.
Lueger defended the socio-economic self-interest of the German-speaking middle and
lower middle classes who felt threatened by the forces of international (Jewish) capital-
ism, Marxist social democracy, and Slavonic nationalism. But Hitler also learned from
Schönerer’s anti-Semitism as a cement for his anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-Catholic
(“away-from-Rome”), and anti-Habsburg ideology as well as the demand for integral
connection with Germany.4
On 24 May 1913, with a delayed legacy from his father’s will, Hitler left Vienna—
for him “the Babylon of races”—and moved to Munich, “a German city.” Although he
had failed to register for military service in Austria, he petitioned to join the Bavarian
Army on 3 August 1914 and was sent close to Ypres as an ordinary soldier of the 16th
Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment “List.” “The First World War made Hitler possi-
ble. […] And without the trauma of the war, defeat and revolution, without the political
radicalization of German society that this trauma brought about, the demagogue would
have been without an audience for his raucous, hate-filled message” (Ian Kershaw).
Under the threat of English and French machine guns and canons, grenades and bullets,
barbed wire and shrapnels, Hitler formed the view that life was a constant and brutal
struggle. As a regimental dispatch runner, he had already received the Iron Cross Second
Class in December 1914, was wounded in October 1916 at the Battle of the Somme,
and in August 1918 at the suggestion of a Jewish officer he won the Iron Cross First
Class. Lying in the Pasewalk hospital for “psychosomatic blindness,” Hitler blamed the
Armistice of Compiègne, on 11 November 1918, as “the greatest villainy of the cen-
tury.” His hospitalization in Pasewalk could have caused “a sudden, dramatic conver-
sion to paranoid anti-Semitism.” Having studied Hitler’s letters from the Somme and his
speeches at Munich in 1919–1920, Brendan Simms argues that Hitler’s fighting against
Britons, Australians, Americans, and the German-Americans taught him the increasing
strength of the British and US empires. Therefore, he began to fear the Anglo-American
threat and criticized in particular the United States for the Treaty of Versailles. Over and
beyond that he bound together his anti-Semitism with an anti-Americanism.5
The answer to the question “how Hitler was possible […] must be sought chiefly in
German society” (Ian Kershaw). From the very beginning in 1919, Hitler condemned
“Versailles,” especially the war guilt of Germany and the reparations, and praised the
idea of a “people’s community” (Volksgemeinschaft) and of a united comradeship of
front-line soldiers (Frontgemeinschaft). Michael Wildt has pointed out that almost all
4Kershaw, Hitler I, 29–67; cf. Boyer, Karl Lueger; Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna.
5Thamer, Adolf Hitler, 41–67; Kershaw, Hitler I, xxviii, 73; Sheehan, Soldiers, 109; Wolfgang
Krischke, “Hitlers Hauptfeind,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 20 July 2016, N3.
266 A. Suppan
parties in the Weimar Republic had propagated the Volksgemeinschaft as a political

program. After the lost war and the November Revolution in 1918 there was a general
wish towards social harmony and unity. Hitler also agitated against “the Jews” as well
as the “Jewish Bolshevik–regime” in the Soviet Union, and demanded “living space”
(Lebensraum) for the German people “in the East.” The Germans had to deal with the
trauma of a lost war, the destruction of their old political system and a humiliating peace
treaty that called on them to accept “guilt” for starting the war in the first place, and
placed castigatory reparations on them. The economic situation became so bad that it
seemed as if the whole financial infrastructure of the nation might collapse as hyperinfla-
tion hit in 1923. Therefore, many Germans asked themselves who was to blame for this
horror? Hitler told the growing audiences at Munich that he could answer this question:
“The bulk of the German population was not to blame for their misfortune, it was all, he
claimed, the fault of the Jews.” They had been responsible for the outbreak of World War
I [sic!], the weakness behind the home front, the profiteers who had not fought in the
war, and the new revolutionary creed of Communism.6
In early speeches, Hitler also proclaimed that one determined individual was needed
“who would rise up and restore strong leadership to Germany.” Hitler demanded that
all but “Aryans” should be excluded from German citizenship (astonishingly he himself
did not receive German citizenship until his appointment to the post of Regierungsrat
in Braunschweig in February 1932!). This call for “all true Germans” was particularly
attractive not only to young Bavarians but also to wealthy potential patrons in Munich.
Hitler became the star speaker and chief of his party, presented a “party program,” and
the party’s name was changed to “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” (NSDAP).
When the news came in October 1922 that Benito Mussolini had become prime minister
of Italy, the revolutionaries in the Nazi party became energized.7 When the French occu-
pied the Ruhr region in January 1923 because the Germans had defaulted on deliver-
ies of coal and timber, Hitler prepared a putsch to overthrow the “November criminals”
of 1918. With the support of Battle of Tannenberg hero General Erich Ludendorff and
highly-decorated air force veteran Hermann Göring, Hitler announced that the revolu-
tion had begun on the evening of 8 November 1923 and took the “state commissioner”
of Bavaria, Gustav von Kahr, into custody in the Bürgerbräukeller. But the march to the
war memorial at the Feldherrnhalle was confronted by Bavarian security forces and six-
teen of Hitler’s supporters were killed as well as four members of the security forces.
6Kershaw, Hitler I, 131–141; Rees, Hitler’s Charisma, 21–23; Snyder, Black Earth, 1–28; Matthias
Gafke, “Du bist nichts, dein Volk ist alles?,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 August 2016, 8.
Where there had been 4.20 marks to the US Dollar on the eve of World War I, there were 17,972
Reichsmark in January 1923 and barely credible 4,200,000 Reichsmark by 15 November 1923.—
Kershaw, Hitler I, 200–201.
7In his biography on Benito Mussolini, Hans Woller argues that Mussolini not only coined the term
fascismo but also that he was more than a “Hitler light.”—Woller, Mussolini.
The wounded Hitler was arrested, put on trial, and sentenced to the minimum possible
sentence of five years. The London Times reported that “Munich is chuckling over the
verdict,” which proved “that plotting against the constitution of the Reich is not consid-
ered a serious crime in Bavaria.”8
Almost nobody took Hitler’s Mein Kampf seriously. The book—written in 1924
during his imprisonment at Landsberg, and first published in two volumes in 1925
and 19269—presented a horrifying worldview. His crude Social Darwinian and anti-
Semitic vision spoke of the “Aryan race” as a “superior”, fighting against the Jews for
racial supremacy. Linking Judaism to Bolshevism, Hitler criticized the brutal rule of
the Jews through Bolshevism in Russia and demanded the destruction of the “Jewish
Bolshevism.” Combined with this Nazi “mission” was the idea of gaining Lebensraum;
therefore, Hitler stated that “fate” was calling the German people to colonize land
in “Russia and her vassal border states,” so he took up the idea of creating an empire
in the east—perhaps like Alexander the Great.10 By the time of Hitler’s release from
Landsberg, in December 1924, the Reichstag elections of that month had reflected the
catastrophic decline of support for the völkisch movement. Between the re-founding
of the NSDAP in February 1925 and the beginning of the new economic and political
turmoil in the world economic crisis, the Nazi Movement existed more at the edge of
German politics. These were Weimar’s “golden years” with strong increase in industrial
production, public spending on housing, mass use of radios, telephones, and cars as well
as an extraordinary cultural avant-garde. In these years, Hitler became the uncontested
leader of the radical right and strengthened activist cadres of the Nazi Party. In the sum-
mer of 1928, he dictated a “Second Book,” dealing with the growing economic power
of the United States and warning that the “threatened global hegemony of the North
American continent” would reduce Europe to the status of Switzerland or Holland. By
the time Hitler—“un maestro dell’aggressione verbale” (Ennio di Nolfo)—spoke for the
first time in the Berlin Sportpalast, on 16 November 1928, the mounting crisis in agricul-
ture and the rising unemployment figures produced the first dark clouds over Germany’s
economy. In the worsening conditions of the winter of 1928–1929, the NSDAP began to
attract increasing support: at the student union elections, and at state elections in Saxony,
Mecklenburg, and Baden. At Whitsun 1929, Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann
warned some men from the foreign office about Hitler: “He is the most dangerous man
in Germany. He possesses a devilish rhetoric. He has an instinct for mass psychology
8Kershaw, Hitler I, 204–219, 362; Rees, Charisma, 24–43; The Times, 2 April 1924.
9Mein Kampf. Eine Abrechnung von Adolf Hitler. It is not clear how many Germans, Austrians, and
Volksdeutsche read the tome. However, after 1933 it became a bestseller, and many municipalities
gave it to newlyweds. By the end of World War II about 13 million copies were in print.—Thamer,
Adolf Hitler, 97–110; “Hitler. What the Führer means for Germany today,” The Economist, 19
December 2015, 35–37; Hartmann, Hitler, Mein Kampf.
10Demandt, Hitler und das Griechentum, 5–6.
268 A. Suppan
like no-one else.”—Jacques Delarue added in 1962: “Hitler’s political triumph rested
exclusively on his knowledge of human weaknesses.”11
Although the League of Nations was to officially propagate principles of “interna-
tional peace and security,” in reality, it used double standards in armament: “defeated”
nations were to be disarmed, military restrictions were demanded (ban on aircraft,
armoured divisions, heavy artillery and submarines), while new nation-states of
East-Central Europe—with French help—could arm for war unobstructed. Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia maintained armies greater in number respec-
tively than the 100,000 troops of the Weimar Republic’s Reichswehr; not to mention
that the regular troops of Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria were much fewer in number.
Already in 1923, General Hans von Seeckt, Chief of Staff of the Reichswehr, ordered
a three-step plan, to create an army of 102 divisions and started to organize the re-
armament of the Reichswehr behind the backs of the government, the parliament, and
the Allied Control Commission. The eight armies and 252 generals mentioned in
the plan that was adopted in 1925 were equal to the numbers of the German Army on
1 September 1939. It was neither the loss of certain territories of the country nor the
loss of colonies, not even the 58-year-long reparations payments (according to the
Young-Plan), nor restrictions on military structures that were the greatest slap in the face
of German society and the political elite; it was the emphasis on the moral superiority
of the allies that culminated in the condemnation of Germany (alone with its allies) for
war crimes. As a result, the revision of Versailles became a political imperative for all
German politicians from far left to extreme right.12
A more psychological question was the area of conflict between pacifism and willing-
ness for war. In the aftermath of World War I in practically all of the defeated countries
of Central Europe there emerged from a collective shock over the military defeat, weak
statehood and the threat of communist revolution a specific “culture of defeat” and group
dynamics facilitating the collective application of violence as a practice in politics. The
events of 1914–1918 were recreated between roughly 1928 and 1933 in prose, poetry,
and film; there was also an outpouring of revisionist histories and political and military
memoirs. Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western
Front), published in Germany in 1929, had sold almost one million copies in Germany
and another million in Britain, France, and the United States. However, the book’s
popularity had infuriated German nationalists, and the film version’s first showing in
December 1930 was disrupted by violent demonstrations, mainly by National Socialists.
11Kershaw, Hitler I, 225, 243–250, 257–311; Rees, Charisma, 44–48, 54–55; Tooze, The Deluge,
6; Delarue, The Gestapo, 171; Di Nolfo, Storia, 159–169; Snyder, Black Earth, 8–27. At the elec-
tion of May 1928, the NSDAP won only 2.6% of the vote and twelve among 491 seats in the
Reichstag, two of them went to Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels.
12Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte 4, 408–422; Kershaw, Hitler I, 257, 309–311.
The leaders of fascist Italy and national-socialist Germany both saw themselves as radi-
cal insurgents against an oppressive and powerful world order. The spread of fascist and
national-socialist ideas in post-war Europe meant that “heroic leadership” images were
“in the air.” The practices of the Italian Fascist paramilitary squadre d’azione and the
German Sturmabteilung (SA) showed how the concept of violence as a legitimate tool of
political communication of both organizations was closely associated with the prevailing
idea of masculinity. The emergence of the Duce cult in Italy influenced the nationalist
Right in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal, and Greece.13
Although most European societies mourned millions of deaths, heavily wounded and
victims of hunger and diseases, the veterans’ organizations evoked from time to time
the memories of victories or defeats. This “splintered war memory” where some posed
as victors and some as losers, did a lot to explain the fractious character of interwar
Europe, particularly East-Central and Southeastern Europe. The result was that the male
part of the populations remained more bellicose than pacifistic, but what was about the
female part? Why did so many of them admire Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin? And, do
the modes of violence in World War II have their roots in World War I: racist imperial-
ism, the militarization of civilian life, violence against civilians, atrocities against prison-
ers of war, the murderous culling of the weak, sick and marginal, and genocide in the
name of strengthening the nation and the race?—There is no doubt, many active politi-
cians in the 1930s had been soldiers in World War I: Churchill, Daladier, Hitler, Göring,
Horthy, Gömbös, Piłsudski, Mannerheim, Dollfuß, Schuschnigg, Metaxas, and Kemal
(Atatürk)—and for many of them war remained an alternative in political affairs.14
By January 1930, four months after the Wall Street crash, there were more than four
million Germans unemployed; in January 1933—adding the new cohorts and the hidden
unemployment—over eight million, a third of the workforce. “Six million unemployed
means,” said a young economist, “with three people in one family, six times three equals
18 million without food.” Economic desperation led to violent confrontations on the
streets, especially between the Communists and the SA, the stormtroopers of the NSDAP.
Hitler tried to position himself as the political messiah who would guide Germans out of
the chaos. Hitler campaigned against the Weimar system and the Young Plan, and pre-
sented a vision, a utopia: “national liberation through strength and unity.” Already at the
general election of September 1930, the NSDAP achieved a remarkable break-through
with 18.6% of the vote (= 6 ½ million voters) and 107 seats in the Reichstag. Now Reich
13Steiner,The Lights, 756–757; De Felice, Mussolini; Kershaw, Hitler I, 182–184.

14Sheehan, Soldiers, 104–105; cf. Flacke, Mythen der Nationen; Burgwyn, The Legend; Cabanes,
The Great War; Cornwall and Newman, Sacrifice and Rebirth; Romsics, “Hungary,” 475–548;
Kontler, A History, 350; Höbelt, Die Heimwehren.
270 A. Suppan
President Hindenburg and Reich Chancellor Brüning ruled with the conservative elites in
a semi-authoritarian style.15
After a dinner together with the steel tycoon Fritz Thyssen and Hermann Göring
in January 1931, even Hjalmar Schacht, the former President of the Reichsbank, was
impressed by Hitler’s skill as “a born agitator:”
“The thing that impressed me most about this man was his absolute conviction of the right-
ness of his outlook and his determination to translate this outlook into practical action. Even
at this first meeting it was obvious to me that Hitler’s power of propaganda would have a
tremendous pull with the German population if we did not succeed in overcoming the eco-
nomic crisis and weaning the masses from radicalism.”16
An attempt by the Brüning government to finance a first wave of work creation in the
spring 1932 was struck down as unconstitutional upon intervention of the NSDAP. So,
at the end of 1932 the unemployment rate had reached thirty percent, more than eight
million unemployed persons. The mass unemployment caused not only resignation, even
apathy, but also anger and resentment as well as anxiety and worry about the future.
As the existing system had lost almost all popular support, Hitler himself increasingly
became a magnet for the angry and fearful masses. Violent clashes between Nazi and
Communist paramilitary organizations multiplyied, particularly in Berlin. Nazi agi-
tation stoked the fires of elemental rage and hatred. The middle classes saw the vio-
lence as a by-product of an entirely positive goal: the cause of national renewal. About
three-quarters of Germans wanted some form of authoritarian government. Hitler’s dem-
agogic talent promised the creation of a new social order resting on a national “people’s
community.”17
Germany also left the path of hitherto followed multilateral trade agreements and
started to build mutual foreign trade relations in East-Central and Southeastern Europe
in order to have closer ties with countries which transported industrial raw materials
and agricultural products. On the German side, they began to voice that it was “natu-
rally determined” to export industrial products into the agrarian countries of the region
and import agrarian products in return. In 1932, after cancelling its most-favored-nation
agreements, Germany negotiated bilateral clearing agreements with Bulgaria, Estonia,
15Kershaw, Hitler I, 333–334; Thamer, Adolf Hitler, 138–142. While the working-class milieus
dominated by the SPD and the Communists as well as the Catholic subculture (the Zentrum and
the BVP) remained, the bourgeois parties of the Right dropped. At least three quarters of Nazi vot-
ers were Protestants.
16Schacht, My First Seventy-Six Years, 279–280; Kershaw, Hitler I, 356–357, 404. The party news-
paper Völkischer Beobachter, founded in 1920, had started with a circulation of 8000 copies,
which increased to 120,000 in 1931, and rose to 1.7 million in 1944.
17Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte 4, 259–260; Kershaw, To Hell, 197–216. By the end of 1932,
over a fifth of employees in Britain, Sweden, and Belgium had no work; in Austria over a fourth.
Greece, Romania, and Yugoslavia. This concept fit the strategy of the National Socialists
on Grossraumwirtschaft perfectly well. Even before Schacht, the Minister of Finance of
the Reich announced his “New Plan,” new trade agreements were signed with Hungary
(February 1934) and Yugoslavia (May 1934); the next country in line was Romania
(March 1935). Germany became the center of this new currency system with the preva-
lence of bilateral exchange agreements that often subjected long lists of goods to quotas
and an elaborate system of split exchange rates, and Nazi Germany tried to exploit it for
its economic war preparations.18
After Hitler had challenged Reich President Hindenburg during the presidential
election in March 1932, the NSDAP won the Landtag elections in Prussia, Anhalt, and
Hamburg and had great success even in Bavaria and Württemberg. Although the end of
reparations was now in sight and would effectively be brought about at the Lausanne
Conference, Hindenburg brusquely sought Brüning’s resignation on 29 May 1932. The
new Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen, a Westphalian Catholic aristocrat, was depend-
ent solely upon presidential emergency decrees—and tolerating the NSDAP. After Papen
deposed the Prussian government and acted as Reich Commissar for Prussia, Hitler’s
party won 37.4% (= 13.5 million voters) and 230 seats at the general election of 31
July 1932. Hitler was now after Hindenburg the most important single individual in the
political life of the state and demanded “the leadership of the state to its full extent,”
but the old Reich President rejected an appointment of Hitler to Reich Chancellor and
carried on trusting von Papen. On 12 September 1932, the Nazis and the Communists
orchestrated a successful vote of no confidence against the Papen regime together. In
the November election, the Nazis lost four percent of the vote, while the Communists
won three percent. A real “chess match for power” (Joseph Goebbels) started. General
Kurt von Schleicher, the next chancellor, tried to split the Nazi party, but Hitler resisted.
Now, von Papen opened negotiations with Hitler, first in the house of banker Kurt von
Schröder in Cologne, then in Joachim von Ribbentrop’s villa in Berlin-Dahlem. After
huge efforts by the NSDAP in the state elections in Lippe-Detmold, von Papen accepted
Hitler as chancellor, as long as he—von Papen—became vice chancellor. Hitler showed
flexibility in the composition of the cabinet and accepted General Werner von Blomberg
as Minister of the Armed Forces, Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath as Foreign Minister
and Lutz Graf von Schwerin-Krosigk as Reich Finance Minister; Hitler demanded
“only” Wilhelm Frick as Reich Minister of the Interior and Göring as Papen’s deputy in
the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. In the end, von Papen, State Secretary Otto Meißner
and Hindenburg’s son Oskar convinced the Reich President to accept Hitler. On Monday,
30 January 1933, shortly after noon, Hindenburg legally appointed Hitler as Reich
Chancellor of Germany. On the same evening, tens of thousands of Nazi followers held
18Ránki, Economy, 135–144; Romsics, “Hungary,” 506.

272 A. Suppan
a torchlight procession, and shouted: “One people, one Reich, one leader” (Ein Volk, ein
Reich, ein Führer).19
Hitler recognized the Reichswehr as the “most important institution of the state,”
and the generals knew that Hitler would endorse their program of comprehensive rear-
mament. “The conformity between Hitler’s goal and those of the military leaders was
one of the main guarantees of the stability of the regime in the following years. […]
For the Reichswehr this alliance represented primarily a domestic guarantee of its
unchanged military and armaments objectives” (Wilhelm Deist). Indeed, already in a
dinner speech to district commanders on 3 February 1933, Hitler had called for a “clear
sweep” in home affairs: “Adjustment of youth and of the whole people to the idea that
only a struggle can save us and that everything else must be subordinated to this idea.
[…] Training of the youth and strengthening of the will to fight with all means.” He was
suitably vague about future goals: “How should political power be used when it has been
gained? That is still impossible to say. Perhaps fighting for new export possibilities, per-
haps—and probably better—the conquest of new living space in the east and its ruthless
Germanization. Certain that only through political power and struggle can the present
economic circumstances be changed.” Hitler called attention to the weakness of the
German state during the period of rearmament. “It will show whether or not France has
statesmen; if so, she will not leave us time but will attack us (presumably with eastern
satellites).”20—Obviously, the army heads were not alarmed but instead applauded.
Hitler had announced that he was the “hero” who would save Germany. During the
first eighteen months of his chancellorship, Hitler demonstrated in dramatic ways that he
was not just the leader of the Nazi party but the ruler of all Germany. Göring, as Prussian
Minister of the Interior, took direct control of the police forces also in the greater parts of
Germany. After the arson attack of the Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe at the
Reichstag, Hitler imposed a decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People
and State: The first Communists, Social Democrats and Jews were arrested and impris-
oned at Dachau Concentration Camp; tens of thousands followed soon after. Because on
5 March 1933, the Germans had given only 43.9% to the NSDAP in the last general elec-
tion, Hitler needed the support of other parties, especially the Catholic Center Party and
German nationalist parties, to pass an Enabling Law in the new Reichstag. Therefore,
Hitler promised the Catholics that his government regarded “Christianity as the unshake-
able foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation [sic!],” while he attacked
19Kershaw, Hitler I, 363–429; Thamer, Adolf Hitler, 152–159; Rees, Charisma, 56–77. Ludendorff
wrote to Hindenburg: “You have delivered up our holy German Fatherland to one of the great-
est demagogues of all time. I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into
the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your
grave for what you have done.”—Kershaw, Hitler I, 377, 427.
20Deist, “The Rearmament,” 401; Thamer, Adolf Hitler, 165–166; Notes by General Liebmann, in
Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, 628–629; Steiner, The Lights, 795–796.

the Social Democrats as “sissies,” “and not worthy of this age.” With the support of the
Center Party, the Enabling Law received 444 votes against the 94 votes cast by the Social
Democrats. “It was the moment all pretense of democracy left Germany.” The hastily
constructed emergency decree amounted to the charter of the Third Reich.21 Two days
before, on 21 March 1933, the day Bismarck had opened the Reichstag in 1871, the
Reich President and the Reich Chancellor—Hindenburg in the uniform of a Prussian
field marshal, Hitler in a black, tailored suit—met themselves at the Garnisonskirche of
Potsdam, symbolizing the union of the old and new Germany. The new Reich Minister
for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, had orchestrated a perfect spectacle. Even many
young Protestant parish priests enthusiastically agreed, while the “collaborators” under
the Catholic priests made up a tiny minority.22
In fewer than six months, all opposition parties and labor unions had been suppressed
or gone into voluntary liquidation; in January 1934, the sovereignty of the German states
(Länder) was also formally abolished, their institutions and organizations synchronized.
The rapidity of the transformation of German society and the state was possible because
of important strands of continuity in German political culture stretching back to the First
World War—chauvinistic nationalism, imperialism, racism, anti-Marxism, glorifica-
tion of war, the placing of order above freedom, caesaristic attractions of strong author-
ity are some of them—as well as the readiness of traditionally powerful groups to put
themselves at the service of the new regime. As he had promised on 3 February 1933,
Hitler’s cabinet gave military spending absolute priority and began an armaments race,
which became, in a way, a kind of exit from prolonged economic crisis. When Hjalmar
Schacht succeeded Hans Luther in March as President of the Reichsbank, Hitler found
the person he needed to mastermind the secret and unlimited funding of rearmament. In
cooperation with industrial leaders at the Reichsbank, he set up the Mefo-Bills armament
program, accepting bills of exchange issued by suppliers of the government. Through
the disguised discounting of government bills by the Reichsbank, Schacht was soon
able to guarantee the fantastic sum of 35 billion Reichmark over an eight-year period
to the Reichswehr. “Working towards the Führer” functioned as the underlying maxim
of the regime from the outset. Still, “Hitler’s exceptional demagogic talent coupled with
21Still, Hitler condemned the First Reich, the Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation) as a
failed nation-state.—Cf. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire.

22Thamer, Verführung, 256–257, 268–274; Kershaw, Hitler I, 459–465; Rees, Charisma, 81–85.
The SPD gained 18.3%, the KPD 12.3%, the Zentrum 11.2%, and the “Kampffront Schwarz-
Weiß-Rot” 8%. Possibly 30–40% of the w orking-class households voted NSDAP, more than either
Socialist or Communist.—Falter, Hitlers Wähler. “Historians have tried to ascertain the socio-
logical profile of the ‘typical’ Nazi voter (only to conclude that such a figure probably did not
exist).”—Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 43.
274 A. Suppan
his ideological certainty (though tactical flexibility) had enabled him to consolidate his
supreme power within the Nazi Movement.”23
For Hitler, the armed forces (in March 1935 changing from the Reichswehr to
the Wehrmacht) were to become the main tool for executing his plans of recreation of
German power and conquest in the future. Although both totalitarian systems with pow-
erful secret policies and propaganda services thrived on demonizing the other, until 1933
the Reichswehr and the Red Army had a secret cooperation. Then German scientists,
technicians, and weapons specialists were removed from the Soviet Union; neverthe-
less, on 20 March 1935 Germany gave a loan of 200 million Reichsmark to the USSR
to buy German machines and industrial plants. The Politburo kept armaments produc-
tion as a high priority. On the one hand, Marshal Tukhachevski wrote a memorandum
on “Hitler’s war plans;” on the other, in May 1935 both France and the Soviet Union
promised Czechoslovakia military support. Hitler wanted to change the old equilibrium,
but at the same time keep Stalin out of the center of European affairs. Chamberlain’s
appeasement policy hoped to contain Hitler using concessions concerning German popu-
lations outside the Reich. However, both the National Socialists and the Soviets had a
powerful story about who was to blame for the Great Depression: Jewish capitalists or
simply capitalists.24
When the World Disarmament Conference opened in Geneva on 2 February 1932
the size of the armed forces (army, navy and air forces) corresponded with the ups and
downs in international politics after the peace treaties: France notified 710,000 men, Italy
560,000, Japan 350,000, the United Kingdom 270,000, the United States 230,000, and
Germany 115,000.25 The leadership of the Reichswehr demanded the abolition of Part
V of the Versailles Treaty and “parity” in forces with France and “equality of status,”
at least the creation of a well-equipped twenty-one divisions field army. But after six
months of negotiations the Germans had not received the recognition of equal rights they
sought. It was only after Hitler’s rise to power that the fragility and chronic instability of
post-war arrangements came to the surface with cruel openness. As Britain and France
presented the German representatives Blomberg and Neurath only the minimal conces-
sion of the right to a 200,000-man army, on 14 October 1933 Hitler pulled Germany out
of the disarmament talks at Geneva, and left the League of Nations.26
23Kershaw, Hitler I, 434–445, 469; Thamer, Adolf Hitler, 174–178; Kershaw, To Hell, 232. While
Germany had paid 428 million Reichsmark to purchase 296,000 t of American cotton in 1930,
in 1933 it could purchase 313,000 t for as little as 217 million Reichsmark.—Weinberg, Hitler’s
Foreign Policy, 108.
24Ritschl, “Reparations,” 12; Musial, Kampfplatz Deutschland, 302–312, 390; Service, Stalin, 384.
25British forces did not include the Indian army or the Dominions.—League of Nations,
Armaments Yearbook, vol. 8 (1932); Steiner, The Lights, 755.

26Steiner, The Lights, 764–784; Thamer, Adolf Hitler, 227–228.
While this step fatally weakened the League of Nations, Hitler found a diplomatic
arrangement with Poland signing a ten-year non-aggression pact on 26 January 1934.
Marshal Piłsudski and his generals and ministers—fluctuating between fears of Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union—hoped that the danger of German aggression would
decrease in these ten years. At the same time, Austrian National Socialists began a new
series of bomb attacks, but Britain, France and Italy talked Austrian Federal Chancellor
Dollfuß out of putting this question to the League of Nations. In the spring of 1934, local
Nazis repeated terror attacks and planned a putsch against the Austrian government.
Hitler was informed that officers of the Austrian army were planning a coup, which in
reality was not true. On 25 July 1934, a SS detachment occupied the Chancellery and
killed Dollfuß, but the putsch in Vienna and in some other states (i.e. Bundesländer)
failed. The international embarrassment for Hitler was enormous, the damage to relations
with Italy considerable.27
When the leader of the SA, Ernst Röhm, called for the German Armed Forces to be
subordinated to the SA, Hitler sided with the Reichswehr and ordered the murder of fifty
SA officers, including Röhm, at Bad Wiessee on 30 June 1934 and some days later at
Munich and Dachau. Because of Goebbels’ control of the media, Hitler was able to spin
the first mass murders in the “Third Reich”—attacking the “bad” Nazis—in a way that
was extremely advantageous for him. Reichswehr Minister Blomberg praised the “sol-
dierly determination of exemplary courage” of the Führer in attacking and crushing “the
traitors and mutineers.” The practical benefits for Hitler were immediate and substantial.
When President Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, Hitler started to act as “Führer and
Reich Chancellor,” while the post of the Reich President was abolished. Although Hitler
automatically became Supreme Commander of the armed forces, on 20 August, every
member of the armed forces and all public officials swore an oath of loyalty to Hitler
personally as “Führer of the German Reich.”28
The most influential and infamous propaganda film ever made about Hitler—Leni
Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will” (Triumph des Willens)—was filmed at the 1934
Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. Purported to be a “documentary,” but in fact conceived
and structured as any work of fiction, the movie presented Hitler (who had suggested
the title) as a quasi-mystical liberating force, and the roots of National Socialism in a
combination of pseudo-religion and pseudo-Darwinian science. While Hitler spoke from
the less precise idea of “providence,” he became an object of veneration for millions.
27Craig, “The German Foreign Office,” 406–418; Borodziej, Geschichte Polens; Kindermann,
Austria, 16–18; Bauer, “Februar und Juli 1934,” 75–79.

28Thamer, Verführung, 321–332; Kershaw, Hitler I, 499–517; Rees, Charisma, 91–96; Delarue,
Gestapo, 109–126. SS men also shot the former Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his
wife, as well as the former Minister President of Bavaria, Gustav von Kahr, and the Catholic
Action leader, Erich von Klausener.—However, Stalin regarded Hitler with admiration: “What a
great fellow! How well he pulled this off!”—Service, Stalin, 340.
276 A. Suppan
Goebbels, who could not control Riefenstahl’s movie, preferred to embed Hitler in
the German psyche, commissioning a series of historical films featuring heroes from
Germany’s past, like Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Friedrich Schiller.—While
many Jewish intellectuals from Germany and Austria like Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber,
Hans Kelsen, Emil Lederer, Moritz Julius Bonn, Hermann Heller, Theodor Adorno, Max
Horkheimer, Ernst Kantorowicz, Erwin Schrödinger, as well as the conductors Bruno
Walter and Otto Klemperer were forced into exile, the composer Richard Strauß and the
conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, the constitutional
lawyer Carl Schmitt, the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch, the actors Gustav Gründgens,
Werner Krauß, and Emil Jannings as well as the poets Gerhart Hauptmann and Gottfried
Benn put themselves at the disposal of the Nazi regime.29
Because much of the German population retained a pathological fear of another war,
Hitler persuaded them for years that he was striving for peace, not war, that rearmament
was the best way to secure German defense, and that he wanted no more than “equal
rights” with the Western Powers in terms of military strength; but, in March 1935, Hitler
felt confident enough to announce a new and large Wehrmacht of 36 divisions (about
550,000 men), and the reintroduction of general military service. After Italy, France and
Britain had expressed regret at the German unilateral action on conscription in the joint
communiqué of their Stresa meeting on 11 April 1935, and after signing of the Franco-
Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact on 2 May 1935 and of the Czechoslovak-Soviet Pact
on 16 May, Hitler gave a major speech on 21 May 1935. In the Reichstag he offered
bilateral non-aggression pacts to all of his neighbors (except Lithuania), he promised
to observe the Locarno Treaty including the demilitarization of the Rhineland, and he
declared that Germany had no desire to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria. As
each of these promises was later broken, it might be asked why he would make them
and why anyone believed him. Of course, Hitler feared that the Stresa front might
bring together all of the other European powers against Germany. However, with the
Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 18 June 1935 the Stresa front was broken.30
As Hitler mentioned in Mein Kampf, a great leader also makes adversaries, even
“world enemies.” According to his Darwinian, deterministic thinking, superior races
(Germans, British, and Americans) were in a ruthless contest with lesser races for ter-
ritory and natural resources. In Hitler’s universe the Jews were an alien “counter-race,”
whose unnatural beliefs included dangerous and subversive politics. For the good of the
29Thamer, Verführung, 301–304, 465; Rees, Charisma, 98–105; Kershaw, Hitler I, 480–483,
526. Writings of Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Hugo von
Hofmannsthal, Erich Kästner, Carl von Ossietzky, Erich Maria Remarque, Kurt Tucholsky, Carl
Zuckmayer, and Stefan Zweig were outlawed as decadent or materialistic, as representative of
“moral decline” or “cultural Bolshevism.” Their books and those of many others were burned on
10 May 1933 at the Opernplatz in Berlin and at many universities.
30Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, 163–169; Kershaw, To Hell, 283–290.
planet, therefore, Jews must be removed from the face of the Earth. Because he saw the
Jews as the “World Enemy Number One,” Hitler announced a “Law for the Protection
of German Blood and German Honor” at the Nuremberg party rally in September
1935, outlawing sexual contact and marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and a “Reich
Citizenship Law” that excluded Jews from German citizenship and thus of civil protec-
tion and legal recourse. Absurd enough, against Hitler’s passionate belief that the Jews
were a “race,” the Nazis used a religious definition: A “full Jew” was held to be some-
one who had three grandparents who belonged to the Jewish religious community or
two Jewish grandparents who were practicing the Jewish faith or married to a Jew. Hitler
interwove his hatred of the Jews with his hatred of Stalin’s regime in the Soviet Union,
speaking of the rulers in Moscow as “an uncivilized Jewish-Bolshevik international guild
of criminals.” For Hitler and his ardent followers, the Jews amounted to an all-pervasive
danger that threatened Germany’s existence, poisoning its culture, undermining its val-
ues. “Externally, they were viewed as a malign international power through their pre-
sumed domination of both plutocratic capitalism and of Bolshevism.”31
The most crucial institutional driving force of racial policy—even without direct par-
allels in the Soviet Union—was the SS (Schutzstaffel—literally “Protection Squad”), “the
elite section of the Nazi movement and its most ideologically dynamic sector, commit-
ted to the pursuit of ‘racial cleansing’ both to improve the ‘political health of the nation’
and to provide the basis for future German domination of Europe.” From 1936 onward,
the SS, led by the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, which had already been running
the concentration camps, took over the leadership of the security and criminal police,
separated the secret state police (Gestapo) from court control, constructing a huge sur-
veillance network and eventually developing a military wing, the W affen-SS. A clear
indication that the mission of the combined SS-police apparatus involved a never-ending,
upward spiral of control, eradication of “internal enemies of the nation,” and the racial
purification of the “people’s community,” was that plans for the expansion of the camps
were being laid at this precise time. Alongside racial policy, the drive to build power-
ful armed forces, militarize the “people’s community” and direct the economy towards
rapid rearmament ensured a relentless tempo. By every indication, the Nazi regime and
Hitler’s own popularity could reckon with wide popular support in the mid-1930s.32
For the German elites and society perhaps more important than these propaganda
slogans was the fact that the Nazis had managed to reduce unemployment from a high
of more than eight million in January 1933 to one million in September 1936 and just
34,000 in August 1939. Founded in 1919, the Reich Ministry of Employment under the
former Stahlhelm leader Franz Seldte experienced an expansion of its competences and
31Thamer, Adolf Hitler, 199–202; Rees, Charisma, 108–111; Kershaw, To Hell, 285; Naimark,
Genocide, 77.
32Kershaw, To Hell, 286–288; Thamer, Verführung, 365–383; Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte 4,
630–631.
278 A. Suppan
played a leading role in shaping the entire work and social policy of the regime, includ-
ing employment services. This resulted in a dynamic functional change in the state struc-
tures, which overcame the traditional demarcation of bureaucracy and party. Hitler’s
propaganda instinct, not his economic know-how, led him towards initiatives like the
opening of the International Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, the announcement of the
construction of a people’s car (Volkswagen) by the Bohemian-born Ferdinand Porsche,
and the starting of Fritz Todt’s plan to construct five to six thousand kilometers of motor-
way (Reichsautobahn) between Munich–Leipzig–Berlin, Berlin–Hannover–Cologne,
Cologne–Frankfurt–Stuttgart–Munich–Salzburg, Frankfurt–Leipzig, Berlin–Breslau,
Berlin–Stettin, and Bremen–Hamburg–Lübeck. The “people’s radio” (Volksempfänger)
was spreading to more and more households, the cinemas and dancehalls were full. But
in January 1936 Goebbels changed the old slogan of the NSDAP from “Freedom and
Bread” to “Guns or Butter.”33
Hitler wanted to use Mussolini’s struggle with the Western Powers over his involve-
ment in Ethiopia and the discussions of oil sanctions by the League of Nations as well
as the ratification of the French–Soviet Pact in Paris for a change at Germany’s west-
ern border. On 7 March 1936, German troops moved into the demilitarized zone in
the Rhineland. When the news reached Paris and London, there was a shock but no
immediate action. Of course, Hitler’s order was a breach of international agreements,
of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Treaty of Locarno. In stormy meetings held
by the Locarno Powers in Paris and London, the British Government rejected sanc-
tions and other drastic measures against Germany; Mussolini signaled tacit support for
Germany; France appeared as incapable of maintaining the status quo in Europe. The
whole post-World War I security system began to collapse and lead to a complete reori-
entation of the policies of most of the European powers. Czechoslovakia was both the
most-disappointed and the most-threatened of France’s allies.34
In August 1936, Hitler and Goebbels turned the Olympic Summer Games into a vehi-
cle of nationalist politics and propaganda as never before. The new Germany should pre-
sent its best face to hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the globe. With the
eyes of the world on Berlin, anti-Semitism was kept under wraps. On 1 August 1936,
the composer Richard Strauß conducted a choir of 3000 in the singing of the national
anthem, Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, and the Nazi Party’s own anthem, the
Horst-Wessel-Lied, in the new Olympic stadium, before conducting the new “Olympic
Anthem,” which he had composed specially for the occasion. Many national delegations
offered the Nazi salute as they passed Hitler’s dais. Göring, Goebbels, and Ribbentrop
entertained hundreds of important foreign guests with fireworks, a corps de ballet, and a
33Thamer, Verführung, 75, 475; cf. Nützenadel, Das Reichsarbeitsministerium. Already in 1932,
Cologne’s mayor Konrad Adenauer had opened the first German motorway between Cologne and
Bonn.
34Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, 187–205.
Luna Park. “There has never been anything like this since the days of Louis Quatorze,”
one of Göring’s guests remarked. “Not since Nero,” retorted a highly impressed British
Conservative Member of Parliament. German athletes turned the Games into a national
triumph, the first Games to be shown on television.35
Still, Hitler wanted more. Already in September 1934, Schacht had made public the
so-called “New Plan:” “In the future I will not buy more than what I can pay for and, if
possible, we will buy from the countries that buy from us.” The German Reich based its
foreign trade with most of its trading partners on bilateral trade and payment treaties.
The fundamental principle was to buy as much as possible from nations that did not ask
for currency in return but were willing to accept German products. Not surprisingly, the
foreign trade and payments system of the New Plan automatically pointed the foreign
trade of Germany in the direction of Southeastern Europe, towards Yugoslavia, Hungary,
Romania, and Bulgaria. Then, in 1936, certain difficulties appeared because of better
world market prices for wheat, corn, meat and butter. On 4 April 1936, Hitler entrusted
Göring with “taking the necessary measures required by the raw material and currency
situation.” Hitler’s essay on the “Four Year Plan” in August 1936 designated the “final
solution” as being “in the significant expansion of the living space, that is, the raw mate-
rial and food product base of our people.” And he demanded from his Cabinet that “I.
The German armed forces must be operational within four years. II. The German econ-
omy must be fit for war within four years.” Göring was appointed to head a Four Year
Plan to increase spending on armaments. Of course, most army officers applauded.36
Since the winter 1935–1936, serious difficulties in Germany had begun with a cri-
sis over food imports, continued with raw materials shortages in the spring and sum-
mer of 1936. Therefore, discussions appeared also on the allocation of resources between
the three military services. Although in 1936 over a third of public expenditure went
towards rearmament, Hitler demanded a further increasing. Economics Minister Schacht
was by now alarmed at the accelerating tempo of rearmament. When Hitler announced
in his Reichstag speech on 30 January 1937 that “the time of the so-called surprises”
was over, he undertook a tactical deception. But Admiral Raeder, commander-in-chief
of the German Navy, felt his battleship building program was under threat because of
a lack of steel; Göring needed more materials for his Luftwaffe; and Colonel General
Werner von Fritsch, the commander-in-chief of the army demanded more for the panz-
ers and artillery. So, Göring, Raeder, Fritsch, Blomberg, and Neurath were invited
to take part in a meeting with Hitler at the Reich Chancellery, on 5 November 1937.
35Kershaw, Hitler II, 5–9. Leni Riefenstahl glorified the Olympic Games and Hitler’s regime with
the propaganda film “Olympia” (1938).
36Ránki, Economy, 145–160, 176–179; Kershaw, To Hell, 316. In the summer of 1936, Schacht
visited Belgrade and supported the establishment of the Zenica steel work by Krupp. In the autumn
1936, Göring visited Budapest and engineered a Hungarian order of 100 fighting and 50 training
planes.
280 A. Suppan
Surprisingly for the participants, Hitler started to read a long memorandum noting that
in the interest of a long-term German policy his remarks should be heeded. Because
Germany’s problem was how to “solve the need for living space,” he was resolved to
force a union with Austria and eliminate Czechoslovakia at the latest by 1943–1945.
This would also involve, of course, potential conflict not just with France but also with
Great Britain. Still, when Hitler spoke about the enlargement of the “racial community”
he was also thinking about the human, industrial and financial potential of Austria and
Czechoslovakia. Fritsch warned that Germany could not win a war against the Western
Powers, Blomberg also mentioned the strength of Czech defenses along the border with
Germany. However, at the beginning of February 1938, Hitler used private affairs to
discharge Blomberg and Fritsch and personally took over leadership of the Wehrmacht
with General Wilhelm Keitel as his slavish assistant. On the same day, Foreign Minister
Neurath was replaced by the ambitious Nazi diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop, and the
key ambassadorial posts in Rome, Tokyo, and London were given new occupants.37
At Hitler’s invitation, Mussolini visited Germany from 25 to 29 September 1937.
Hitler hoped to show Mussolini the organized might and industrial strength of Germany,
as well as the unified enthusiasm of the German people. Mussolini was feted extrava-
gantly wherever he went and greatly relished the public applause. A tour of the Krupp
Armaments’ Works in Essen and vast parades of military forces in Berlin and party ele-
ments in Munich gave Il Duce an impression of overwhelming strength. Here was a
power with which Italy would do well to align itself. Speaking in German, Mussolini
assured the audience of his gratitude for Germany’s refusal to join the sanctions against
Italy at the time of the Ethiopian War: “We shall never forget it.”—However, while the
German diplomats Neurath, Papen, and Mackensen wanted to discuss with Mussolini the
topic of Austria, Hitler was more cautious and preferred to secure Mussolini’s goodwill
by moving more slowly. Anthony Eden understood Hitler’s tactic: Germany would now
pay Italy nothing for Austria. Already on 6 November 1937, Mussolini had explained to
Ribbentrop, in response to the suggestion that the Austrian Question would finally have
to be settled “at a certain moment,” that Austria was German territory; Italy would do
nothing if a crisis arose.38
When Hitler met Lord Halifax, on 19 November 1937, the future foreign secre-
tary recognized during his visit to the Berghof “that the Chancellor had not only per-
formed great services in Germany, but also, as he would no doubt feel, had been able
by preventing the entry of Communism into his own country, to bar its passage further
West.” London and Berlin should convince Paris and Rome “that an Anglo-German
37Wendt, Großdeutschland, 187–202; Kershaw, Hitler II, 27, 45–58; Rees, Charisma, 112–113,
119–124; Craig, “The German Foreign Office,” 419–436.
38Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, 497–503. One of the results of that visit had been the dis-
missal of the Carinthian Hans Steinacher as head of the Association for Germandom Abroad
(Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland).
rapprochement would not mean an attempt to divide Berlin and Rome, any more that
it would mean an attempt to divide France and England.” The English understood
“that mistakes had been made in the Treaty of Versailles, which had to be put right.”
Therefore, it was necessary “that one might have to contemplate an adjustment to new
conditions, a correction of former mistakes and the recognition of changed circum-
stances when such need arose.” Hitler answered that in 1933/34 he had made several
proposals to restrict armaments—but without success in the democratic countries.
However, Lord Halifax suggested that the British Government would accept a change
through “peaceful evolution” in the current status of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and
Danzig/Gdańsk, though he was keen to avoid “far-reaching disturbances.” Although
Hitler told Halifax he had no wish to annex Austria or to reduce her to political depend-
ence, behind the scene he was working towards exactly such an eventuality, planning
the annexation of Austria and dismembering Czechoslovakia to dominate the Bohemian-
Moravian-Silesian region. In February 1938, Hitler played the German-national card of
the “freeing” and including of the German-Austrians and the Sudeten Germans, and in
September 1938 he claimed to want no more than to bring persecuted Germans “home to
the Reich.” But Hitler’s goal was future war, his main motivation was to incorporate the
rich human and industrial potential of Austria and of the Bohemian lands, the important
raw materials, the weapons of the Austrian and the Czechoslovak armies as well as the
gold and foreign-currency reserves of the National Banks in Vienna and Prague into the
German war economy. Therefore, one can speculate about whether Hitler’s war against
Poland would have been possible without the annexations and confiscations in Austria
and Czechoslovakia.39
Although Hitler had demanded in Mein Kampf that “German-Austria must return
to the great German mother-country, and not for any economic consideration,” Hitler’s
and Göring’s activities in the winter months of 1937–1938 concerning Austria con-
firmed economic and financial considerations as the driving force behind the Anschluss.
Perhaps, after his humiliation at the Berghof by Hitler, Schuschnigg had made “a
fatal miscalculation” (Ian Kershaw) over a plebiscite to back Austrian independence.
Particularly Göring now pushed for an immediate and radical solution to the “Austrian
Question,” then Hitler gave the Wehrmacht the order to invade. However, during the
occupation and annexation of Austria, in March 1938, hundreds of thousands Austrians
welcomed Hitler on his way from Braunau via Linz to Vienna, while no state chancel-
lery of the Great Powers or Little Entente protested (only Mexico sent a letter to the
League of Nations!), even not against the humiliation of the Jews in the streets of
Vienna. No doubt, the Anschluss was a watershed moment in the evolution of Hitler’s
39Wendt, Großdeutschland, 191–202; Evans, The Third Reich, 665–688; Kennan, From Prague,
227–229; Kershaw, To Hell, 322–323, 328. The German armaments industry also needed iron ore
from Sweden, chromium ore from Turkey, and wolfram from China.—Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign
Policy, 292–293.
282 A. Suppan
charismatic attraction, although some hundreds of Austrians—under them 154 political

prisoners, particularly supporters of the Schuschnigg regime, and some sixty Jews—
were sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp. Hitler had created “Greater Germany”
(Großdeutschland) and won a triumph of enormous political and psychological signifi-
cance. The first change to the territorial settlement of 1919 had taken place. All European
politicians with revisionist goals—from Stalin and Mussolini to Horthy and Beck—rec-
ognized that territorial revisionism of the Versailles system was possible; and the heads
of the German minorities in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia recog-
nized the possibility of an Anschluss to the Reich—perhaps without bloodshed.40
US Ambassador to Berlin Hugh Wilson wrote to Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, dis-
cussing the Anschluss:
“[I]n calling attentation to Hitler’s personal feelings in decisions of external policy, I do not
wish to suggest that these decisions are made only on impulse or emotion. He has the pro-
found political sagacity to give his resentment effective outlet only when conditions are pro-
pitious and when the most careful preparation has been made.”41
Just two weeks after the Anschluss, Hitler met with Konrad Henlein and Karl Hermann
Frank of the Sudeten German Party telling them to make a series of demands on the
Czechoslovak government that he knew would be unacceptable. At the same time,
Hitler instructed Keitel to draw up plans for military action against Czechoslovakia. The
“Weekend Crisis” of 20–22 May accelerated matters. After a warning from the British
and the French—because of an incorrect Czechoslovak report about German inten-
tions –, Hitler told his generals on 28 May 1938 “that Czechoslovakia should disappear
from the map.” Therefore, Hitler pushed forward in the building of a 400-mile concrete
fortification along Germany’s western border—the Westwall—with “dragon’s teeth” anti-
tank devices, gun emplacements, and over 11,000 bunkers. Nonetheless, Ludwig Beck,
the Army Chief of Staff, warned of a general war; but the other generals followed Hitler.
During August 1938, the British indirectly exerted pressure on the Prague government to
comply with the Sudeten German demands through the mission of Lord Runciman. But
Hitler pressured Frank and Henlein to instigate provocative “incidents” and threatened
Czechoslovakia at the Nuremberg Party Congress on 12 September. The British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax could not believe that
the Reich Chancellor would actually want another war. At the Berghof, on 15 September
40Hanisch, Der lange Schatten, 337–347; Kershaw, Hitler II, 65–86; Mazower, Empire, 46–52;
Naimark, “Foreword,” in Deák, Europe on Trial, xiii; Suppan, “Hitler und die Österreicher,”
31–56. But when Hitler visited Italy at the beginning of May 1938, at the banquet of 7 May at the
Palazzo Venezia Hitler talked enthusiastically about the “natural frontier, which providence and
history had clearly drawn for our two peoples.” Hitler delivered the German South Tyroleans to
Italy.—Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, 519; Gehler, Tirol, 148–151, 174–177.
41Wilson to Hull, 24 March 1938, Cordell Hull Papers, folder 104, cit. Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign
Policy, 516.
1938, Chamberlain announced that he was prepared for the Sudeten Germans to leave
Czechoslovakia, but he wanted assurances, which he got. Therefore, together with the
French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, they put pressure on the Czechoslovak govern-
ment to give up the Sudetenland. But a week later, at Bad Godesberg, Hitler formulated
new demands, also for Poland and Hungary. When President Beneš announced the general
mobilization of the Czechoslovak armed forces, on 26 September 1938, Hitler declared in
a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast that the Sudetenland was his last demand in Europe: “We
don’t want any Czechs at all!”—But this was a fake. Still, both the British as well as the
German diplomacy had a higher interest in settling the Sudeten Question by negotiation,
and requested Mussolini’s intervention. Indeed, Hitler accepted Mussolini’s proposal for
a meeting of the four major powers. In the afternoon and in the evening of 29 September
1938 they negotiated the Munich Agreement on the cession of the Sudeten German ter-
ritories to Germany. Beneš and the Czechoslovak government were forced to accept
within hours. While Chamberlain was fȇted in Munich and at home as the actual savior of
Europe’s peace, the agreement provided no great cause for celebration for Hitler.42
According the concept of Max Weber Hitler possessed “charismatic leadership.” For
Weber, the “charismatic leader” needs to be not only a “hero” but also a “prophet;” he
must possess a strong “missionary” element, is driven forward by a sense of personal
destiny and is almost a quasi-religious figure. “The single most important precondition
for the creation of Hitler’s charisma was his ability to connect with the feelings, hopes
and desires of millions of his fellow Germans.” (Laurence Rees) Already in 1934, a Nazi
functionary formulated as a leitmotiv that it was the duty of each person in the Third
Reich “to work towards the Führer along the titles he would wish” without awaiting
instruction from above. Therefore, Zara Steiner provoked with the question about Hitler:
“How could this basically banal and crude Austrian, hardly distinguishable from so many
other post-war politicians, have succeeded in a politically sophisticated, highly industri-
alized, and culturally advanced nation?” Nevertheless, she did not hesitate in pointing
out Hitler’s “extraordinary talents:” “Charisma, oratory, political cunning, and the sin-
gularity of a ‘vision’ that reflected and enhanced the fears, anxieties, resentments, and
desires of millions of Germans explain, in part, Hitler’s ability to mobilize the disillu-
sioned and disaffected in every class throughout Germany. Without Hitler, there could
have been no Nazi party.”43—We should add: and no World War II, and no Holocaust.
Therefore, we have to recognize Hitler’s central role not only in the running of the
Reich as well as in Nazi rule throughout Europe but also the fact that he was—together
42Biman and Cílek, Der Fall Grün, 194–220; Kershaw, Hitler II, 96–123; Rees, Charisma, 147–157;
cf. Glotz, München 1938.
43Steiner, The Triumph, 10, 12; Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte 4, 675–683; Mazower, Hitler’s
Empire, 8–9; Rees, Charisma, 3–5, 44, 125–126, 131; Thamer, Adolf Hitler, 205–215. Even Fritz
Stern speculated “that Hitler would today be hailed as a German national hero had he died in
1936.”—The Economist, 28 May 2016, 78.
284 A. Suppan
with Stalin—the most cunning, unscrupulous and Machiavellian politician of his era.
Hitler did not hesitate to use threats, murder, and terror to get his way. The Nazis rac-
ist notion of racial hygiene forced the sterilization of more than 360,000 people and the
murdering of 180,000 “sick” people under the code name “T 4” (the address of the head-
quarters of the secret organization in Berlin was Tiergartenstraße 4). Not to mention:
Hitler was the main responsible for the worst genocide in history, the “Final Solution” (a
Nazi term) or the “Holocaust” (Greek) or the Shoah (Hebrew), the mass murder of more
than 5.7 million Jews.44
After the wave of anti-Semitic savagery in Vienna, in March 1938, unmatched since
the Late Middle Ages, on the night of 9–10 November 1938—the so-called “Night of
the Breaking Glass” (Reichskristallnacht), but in fact a Reich pogrom—most German
and Austrian Jews experienced the unbridled frenzy of the Nazi regime. After the shoot-
ing of a German diplomat in Paris by a desperate Jewish youngster, whose parents had
been expelled to Poland, Propaganda Minister Goebbels ordered a nationwide pogrom,
secretly supported by Hitler and Himmler. Nazi gangs of SA, SS, and Hitler Youth
destroyed 267 synagogues, devastated 7500 businesses and homes, and murdered 91
Jewish people; they also rounded up 26,000 other Jews, beating many senseless and
dispatching the rest to concentration camps.45 Hitler saw it as important that he not be
publicly associated with this pogrom. Although many Germans, Austrians, and Sudeten
Germans were shocked by this anti-Jewish terror the Nazis fined the Jews one billion
Reichsmark for damage during the Kristallnacht, confiscated their insurance policies,
and excluded them from economic life. Other ordinances ousted Jews from universities
and the professions. SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich established a Central Office
for Jewish Emigration in Berlin, thus extending Adolf Eichmann’s Vienna-tested “con-
veyor-belt” system of deportation throughout Greater Germany. By 14 May 1939, the
number of Jews living in the Altreich had declined from 502,799 to 213,930 in the five
years since 1934; in the Ostmark from 191,481 to 81,943.46
Hitler’s essential aim versus Czechoslovakia was not the “freeing” of the Sudeten
Germans but occupying the whole Bohemian–Moravian–Silesian region because of its
rich industrial potential (engineering and electrical industries, machine-tool construc-
tion, armaments factories making tanks, canons, machine guns, etc.) and their incorpo-
ration into Germany’s war industry. The Sudeten Germans had welcomed the incoming
44Kershaw, Hitler I, xxiii, xxvi, xxix; Kershaw, Hitler II, xxx, 253–261; Wehler,
Gesellschaftsgeschichte 4, 653–675; cf. Hilberg, The Destruction; Friedländer, Nazi Germany.

When in August 1941 a courageous sermon by the bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von
Galen, enraged the public against the euthanasia, Hitler casually agreed that they should cease.—
Thamer, Verführung, 700.
45Alone in Vienna 40 to 50 synagogues were burned, 4038 Jewish shops were looted, and over
6000 people were taken into custody, of whom at least 27 were murdered, 88 were severely injured
and hundreds committed suicide.—Bukey, Hitler’s Austria, 144; Botz, “The Jews,” 189.
46Kershaw, Hitler II, 129–153; Bukey, Austria, 144–149; Botz, “The Jews,” 185–204.
Wehrmacht troops as liberators, but the Czechs certainly had not. For many Sudeten
Germans the occupation of October 1938 was a revenge for the humiliations of 1918–
1919. They felt freed from the Czech yoke. But already on 21 October, Hitler had given
the Wehrmacht a new directive to prepare for the “following eventualities:”
1. “Securing the frontiers of the German Reich and protection against surprise air
attacks;
2. The liquidation of the remainder of the Czech state;
3. The occupation of Memelland.”47
On New Year’s Day 1939, Hitler addressed the Germans on the birth of “Greater
Germany” and thanked the troops for making possible the realization of “a dream of
many centuries.” On 18 January, before 3600 recently promoted younger officers assem-
bled in the Mosaic Hall of Speer’s New Reich Chancellery, the Führer demanded “the
unconditional belief that our Germany, our German Reich, will one day be the domi-
nant power in Europe.” At the end of January, he again stressed to the Reichstag that
the Volk still needed more Lebensraum. So Berlin’s plans for the “liquidation” of the
rump Czecho-Slovak state were accelerated. In mid-March, Hitler used a power struggle
between the governments in Prague and Bratislava, pushed Father Jozef Tiso, the Slovak
prime minister, to declare Slovakia’s independence, and menaced the C zecho-Slovak
President Emil Hácha to force him to place his country under the Reich’s “protection.”
On 16 March 1939, Hitler announced the creation of the “Protectorate Bohemia and
Moravia” from the Prague’s Hradčany Castle, arguing that “the Bohemian–Moravian
countries had belonged for a millennium to the Lebensraum of the German peo-
ple.”48 It was the first German colonial statute in modern history for a “white nation”
in Europe. One week later, the Slovak government signed its own Treaty of Protection
with Germany. Prime Minister Chamberlain wondered what had happened to the prin-
ciple of national self-determination on which the Germans had placed such store; and
Italian Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Conte Ciano asked himself, “What weight can be
given in the future to those [German declarations] and promises which concern us more
directly?”49
Czech armament industries, the weapons of the Czechoslovak Army, gold and for-
eign exchange reserves (worth an estimated 100 million US$) had strongly reinforced
47Kershaw, Hitler II, 163; Suppan, Hitler–Beneš–Tito 396.

48Since the late 10th century Bohemia and Moravia had been lands of the Holy Roman Empire,
but the Přemyslid princes enjoyed a special status. This was also respected by the Luxembourg
and Habsburg rulers, at least until 1620.—Bahlcke, Eberhard, and Polívka, Böhmen und Mähren,
XVIII–CI.
49Kershaw, Hitler II, 169–173; Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 53–62; Kováč, “Czechs and Slovaks,”
364–379.
286 A. Suppan
the capabilities of the German Army, allowing it to raise the equivalent of another ten
divisions. Therefore, it was not a surprise that several German divisions, which had
fought in France in 1940 and in the Soviet Union in 1941, were armored with Czech
tanks, artillery, and machine guns. But even with the gold and the foreign exchange
reserves of Austria and the Sudetenland “the financial situation of the Reich is cata-
strophic,” Goebbels wrote in December 1938. On the one hand, Hitler attempted to
persuade Germans that he was not the aggressor; on the other he said to construction
workers that Germany needed to rearm because it should be prepared for another world
war. In his Reichstag speech, on 30 January 1939, Hitler not only made the infamous
“prophecy” about the Jews—“Should international financial Jewry succeed both within
and beyond Europe, in plunging mankind into yet another world war, then the result will
not be a Bolshevization of the earth and the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the
Jewish race in Europe”50—but he demanded more territory in the east to secure food for
the German over-population. Obviously, this demand was not fulfilled with the annexa-
tion of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. But when Hitler turned against Poland,
Chamberlain issued guarantees to Poland and Romania on 31 March 1939.51
On 15 April 1939, US President Roosevelt sent a widely publicized message to Hitler
and Mussolini listing 31 countries by name and asking for assurances that neither Italy
nor Germany would attack them for at least ten years. While Mussolini saw no reason
to respond, Hitler rose before the Reichstag, on 28 April, and gave a “brilliant oration”
(William Shirer): Germany aimed only to redress the grievances of the Versailles Treaty;
it was the British who could not be trusted; Western propaganda organs painted an unfair
picture of Germany. Then Hitler turned to Roosevelt’s specific questions: Who had scut-
tled the League of Nations by refusing to join? How had the United States come to domi-
nate North America in the first place? In the end, Hitler made a comparison of their rule:
“I have conquered chaos in Germany, re-established order and enormously increased pro-
duction, developed traffic, caused mighty roads to be built and canals to be dug, called into
being gigantic new factories. […] I have succeeded in finding useful work once more for the
whole of the seven million unemployed. […]
You, Mr. Roosevelt, have a much easier task in comparison. You became President of
the United States in 1933 when I became Chancellor of the Reich. From the very outset you
stepped to the head of one of the largest and wealthiest States in the world. […] Conditions
prevailing in your country are on such a large scale that you can find time and leisure to give
your attention to universal problems.”52
50Rees, Charisma, 164.

51Kershaw, Hitler II, 177–178; Rees, Charisma, 164–175.
52Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 423–424; Kershaw, Hitler II, 189. The German Foreign Office
put two questions to all the states enumerated by Roosevelt, with the conspicuous exceptions of
Poland, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France: Did they feel threatened by Germany? Had they
authorized Roosevelt to make his proposal?
Hitler’s sheer eloquence, craftiness, irony, sarcasm, and hypocrisy had reached a new
level. Not only the Reichstag but also American isolationists crowed that this was
Roosevelt’s reward for his gratuitous meddling. But Hitler’s speech hid his real inten-
tions. Since the end of March 1939, Hitler began to pressure Poland for concessions
concerning the incorporation of Danzig/Gdańsk into the Reich, and building transpor-
tation lines across the Polish “Corridor.” To avoid war, Poland had only the choice of
becoming Germany’s vassal or a Soviet province. It is unclear whether Hitler would
have preferred a deal with Poland, which would have included Poland in the Tripartite
Pact. Adam Tooze argues that under the increasing world-wide anti-Nazi influence of
Roosevelt, Hitler’s focusing on the Jewish-Bolshevik menace in the east had shifted to
an “anti-Western turn in Nazi anti-Semitism.”53 As soon as it became evident that Poland
would not submit to Hitler’s proposal, and would resist pressure from Germany militar-
ily, General Secretary Joseph V. Stalin saw this new situation as an opportunity to satisfy
his own territorial claims without major military action. The dismissal of Maksim M.
Litvinov and other Jews from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs was seen as a con-
cession to Hitler’s anti-Semitism, but the international public could not see that Hitler
and Stalin, without any inhibition, were suggesting for their diplomats to find ways to
reach a secret pact.54
While Britain and France changed their attitudes within days, giving Poland a guar-
antee of its sovereignty—though not of its territorial integrity (!)—in opposition to
Germany, Stalin began to make a turnaround in Soviet policy towards Hitler. Since the
Munich Agreement, Stalin had felt neglected by British and French indifference to his
power and status. Most state chancelleries as well as public opinion in Europe, includ-
ing Germany and the Soviet Union, could not believe there would be an accord between
the two totalitarian dictators, because the National Socialists and Bolsheviks had
demonized each other since the 1920s. But in the 1930s, both Hitler and Stalin showed
some grudging admiration for the crafty and brutal methods of the other. As Stalin told
British Ambassador, Stafford Cripps in July 1940, “the USSR had wanted to change
the old equilibrium. […] England and France had wanted to preserve it. Germany had
also wanted to make a change to the equilibrium, and this common desire to get rid of
the old equilibrium had created the basis for the rapprochement with Germany.” Stalin
also hoped, the Soviets could benefit from a “capitalist war”—consistently predicted
53Tooze, The Wages, 307–308. When Hitler launched the giant new battleship, the Tirpitz, on 1
April 1939 in Wilhelmshaven, he roused his audience with the memory of Britain’s brutal block-
ade in World War I.
54Maryna, Sovetskij sojuz 1, 121–124.
288 A. Suppan
by Marxist-Leninist ideology—in which Great Britain and France on the one hand and
Germany on the other would destroy one another.55
Stalin’s speech to the Communist Party Congress on 10 March 1939, attacking the
appeasement policy of the West as an encouragement of German aggression against the
Soviet Union and declaring his unwillingness to “pull the chestnuts out of the fire” for
the benefit of the capitalist powers, was shown by Ribbentrop to Hitler. By mid-April
1939, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin had remarked to Weizsäcker that ideological dif-
ferences should not hinder better relations. At the beginning of May, Litvinov (associated
with close ties to the West) was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov as Soviet Commissar
for Foreign Affairs. The German ambassador in Moscow, Count Friedrich Werner von
der Schulenburg, heard around the same time that the Soviet Union was interested in
a rapprochement with Germany, but it took until the end of June for the Soviet to sig-
nal favorable prospects for an economic agreement. New negotiations started. The old
ones had been broken off the previous February. At the beginning of August, the Soviet
Chargé d’Affaires let Ribbentrop know that the Soviet government was seriously
interested in the “improvement of mutual relations” and willing to contemplate politi-
cal negotiations. Meanwhile, Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Weizsäcker had devised the basis
of an agreement with the Soviet Union involving the partition of Poland and the Baltic
countries.56
After several weeks of secret German-Soviet negotiations on economic and politi-
cal issues, Hitler reached an extraordinary understanding with Stalin over Poland and
the whole Eastern Europe on 23 August 1939, “probably the greatest diplomatic coup
of his career.” Hitler and Stalin asked no other statesmen. They ordered only their for-
eign ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, to sign the official
non-aggression pact as well as a secret protocol that divided Eastern Europe into spheres
of influence for both powers. Stalin got more territories from the former “Russian” land
than the Western Powers had offered. The border of the new German-Soviet sphere of
influence should run along the western and southern borders of Finland, Estonia and
Latvia, along the Pissa, Narew, Vistula and San Rivers, partitioned the Bukovina, and
run along the Prut River to the Black Sea. Stalin and his comrades forgot the admonished
principles of international law, national self-determination and the free expression of the
will of the people and invaded first Eastern Poland, then Finland, the Baltic countries,
Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia. On 31 October 1939, Molotov told the Supreme
55Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 90; Weinberg, “The Nazi-Soviet Pact,” 185. Three days before sign-
ing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army and their Mongolian allies attacked Japanese
and puppet Manchukuo forces at a contested border area between Mongolia and Manchukuo; on
15 September, the Red Army under the command of General Zhukov defeated the Japanese at
Nomonhan.—Kennedy, Empire, 509.
56Kershaw, Hitler II, 194–206; Thamer, Verführung, 615–620. In August 1939, Hitler spent most of
his time on the Berghof, preparing the war against Poland.

Soviet that “nothing was left of this ugly offspring of the Versailles Treaty,” meaning
Poland.57
Although the US journalist William L. Shirer—observing the situation in Berlin on 31
August 1939—put the question: “How can a country go into a major war with a popula-
tion so dead set against it?” And his notice on 3 September: “Today, no excitement, no
hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria.”—But Hitler
wanted war and he was willing to “gamble,” to take risks. So, the “twenty-year truce”
ended (James J. Sheehan). Most Germans accepted the Nazi propaganda that “they were
caught up in a war of national defense, forced upon them by Allied machinations and
Polish aggression.” However, “it was imperialistic conquest, not revisionism,” and Hitler
had also led Germany into a war against Britain and France, although—according to mil-
itary “insiders”—the German army was less prepared for a major war that it had been
in 1914. While senior German military officers claimed that they were fighting a war to
“right the wrongs of Versailles” (Johannes Blaskowitz), both Hitler and Stalin planned
the targeted killing of tens of thousands of members of Poland’s political, social and
intellectual elite. Hitler had given his senior military commanders the very clear order:
“The destruction of Poland has priority. The aim is to eliminate active forces, not to reach a
definite line. […] Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain
what is their right. […] The stronger man is right. The greatest harshness. […] Who after all
speaks today about the annihilation of the Armenians?”58
Indeed, Himmler’s SS-Einsatzgruppen executed “all elements […] behind the fighting
troops that are hostile to the Reich and the German people”—some 60,000 Polish and
Jewish civilians, among them leading politicians, clergymen, teachers, lawyers, and writ-
ers. Similar crimes happened behind the lines of the Red Army when the Minister of
Interior Lavrentii Beria ordered the NKVD to execute large numbers of POWs—under
them 25,700 Polish officers, cadet officers, policemen, gendarmes, officials, landown-
ers, and industrials—in the near of Katyń, Kozielsk, Ostaszkov, and Starobielsk.59 It was
Hitler, who insisted that German crimes go unpunished and that ever more violence was
the answer to any Polish opposition. After the war, on 28 September 1939, Stalin offered
to change the line of partition: the Western Bug River became the demarcation line in
Poland (more or less the Curzon line of 1920!), Lithuania fell into the Soviet sphere;
57Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, 748–751; Tooze, The Wages, 665; Moscow News, 6
November 1939; Musial, Kampfplatz, 405–413; Service, Stalin, 399–403; Pietrow-Enker,

„Nichtangriffsvertrag,“ in www.1000dokumente.de.
58Kershaw, Hitler II, 207–209, 214–239; Mazower, Empire, 64; Tooze, The Wages, 321;
Kershaw, To Hell, 343–345; Naimark, Genocide, 76. Stefan Zweig, exiled in England, wrote on 3
September: The new war would be “a thousand times worse than 1914. […] I am expecting every-
thing from those criminals. What a breakdown of civilization.”
59Some 380,000 Poles—men, women, and children—were deported to remote locations in Siberia
and Central Asia.—cf. Jolluck, Exile and Identity.

290 A. Suppan
Stalin himself signed the new map. In his victory speech to the Reichstag, on 6 October
1939, Hitler promised stable German borders, a “resettlement of the splittered nationali-
ties” in the East, and peace in Eastern Europe. On the one hand, the SS-lawyer Werner
Best saw the “General Government” as “the first building block” in a new continental
Großraum; on the other, Stalin proclaimed that the Red Army had liberated its “kindred
nations,” Ukraine and Belarus, and fixed the Western Bug as the Soviet-Polish border in
the future.60
Hitler believed he was a “unique genius,” while the Deuxième Bureau (France’s
external military intelligence agency) reported that the Hitler regime would continue
to hold power until the spring of 1940—then be replaced by Communism. On the con-
trary, Hitler gave the first order for the offensive against France on 5 November 1939,
but two days later the attack was postponed because of poor weather. The German
attack on France was high risk, because the French had more fighting vehicles than
the Germans and a better Char B tank. But General Manstein’s plan to attack (the so-
called “sickle-cut”) with armored units through the Ardennes Forest, crossing the
Meuse River and making a dash for the Channel coast where the Somme River meets
the sea, functioned because of the element of surprise and bad intelligence by the Allies
in May 1940. Hitler won “as the all or nothing gambler” (Franz Halder). Only Colonel
General Rundstedt’s decision to halt German forces in front of Dunkirk, to preserve
the tanks, saved more than 330,000 Allied, particularly British soldiers. “If the British
Expeditionary Force had been lost, it is almost inconceivable that Churchill would have
survived the growing pressure from those powerful forces within Britain that were ready
to seek terms with Hitler.” (Ian Kershaw) However, on 14 June German troops entered
Paris, and on 21 June in front of Hitler the French were forced to sign the ceasefire in
Marshal Foch’ railway carriage, where the armistice of 1918 had taken place. The
Germans took more than 1.2 million French, Norwegians, Danish, Belgians, and Dutch
as prisoners of war; therefore, General Keitel called Hitler “the greatest warlord of all
time” (Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten). When Hitler returned to Berlin he met to scenes of
joy bordering on hysteria by hundreds of thousands.61
Hitler himself was euphoric. As a result, he even denied the proposal by
Hans-Heinrich Lammers, since 1933 head of the Reich Chancellery, to tighten the penal
code: “The winner amnesties, but he does not issue new penal provisions.” During 1940,
Hitler also repeatedly referred to initiatives for a territorial reorganization of Germany
60Rohde, “Hitlers Erster ‘Blitzkrieg’, 79–158; Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 63–97; Rees, Charisma,
179–186; Courtois et al., Le livre noir, 234–235. Another result of the pact was that Stalin handed
over 300 communists fleeing from Hitler to the Soviet Union to the Gestapo; most of them were
shot or sent to concentration camps and the ghetto, and only few survived.
61Kershaw, Hitler II, 283–300; Thamer, Verführung, 644–648; Rees, Charisma, 188–203. After
Stalingrad, the abbreviation “Gröfaz” (Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten) became a caricature includ-
ing criticism.
as “premature.” “For this reason, the time would only have come when it was finally
decided which new territories would be incorporated into the Reich.”62 In September
1939, the six main concentration camps in the Reich (Dachau, Sachsenhausen,
Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg, and Ravensbrück) housed some 21,400 pris-
oners, while until the beginning of 1945 the terrorist system had metastasized into an
enormous network of 27 main camps (Hauptlager) and more than 1000 sub-camps
(Außenlager) containing more than two million men, women, and children, and more
than 40,000 guards. These concentration camps—originally abbreviated as KL—were
part of the system of Nazi tyranny and linked to the life in German (and Austrian) soci-
ety, since they were generally not far from towns and villages. The driving force in the
construction of the system was the Reichsführer-SS Himmler, whose closest collabo-
rators were Theodor Eicke, the first inspector of the Dachau concentration camp, and
Oswald Pohl, the head of the SS Administrative Office. The concentration camps held
every possible group from German and Austrian political prisoners, foreign politicians
(Czechs, Poles, French, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians, Italians, etc.), Jews,
Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, “asocials,” so-called “people’s
pests,” tramps, “timber thieves,” and petty criminals. A dubious role was played by the
SS-selected “Kapos” as functional prisoners.63
One of the images Hitler had of himself was that of empire-builder, especially after
his spectacular victories in the West in the spring of 1940. In his violent fantasy of racial
mastery he believed that with his martial elite he could lord over hundreds of millions of
subjects. “For today its Germany that’s ours, and tomorrow the whole wide world,” sang
the Hitler Youth;64 German boys worried that they were “born too late;” the war would
surely be over before they saw action. Hitler again succeeded in persuading the Germans
that the responsibility for prolonging the war lay with the English “plutocrats and slave-
holders.” In July 1940, Göring’s Luftwaffe started the bombing of British dockyards, fac-
tories, and airfields, known as the battle of Britain. On 24 August German bombs fell
during the day in Central London; on the following day, as retaliation, eighty British
bombers struck Berlin. Between July and December 1940, approximately 23,000 British
civilians had been killed by German bombs. Several thousand British and German air-
craft had been shot down, more German than British; and several thousand pilots and
flight personnel had been killed. But the Blitz, the a ir-war against Britain, failed because
the Luftwaffe was simply not powerful enough to bomb Britain into submission;
62Hartmannsgruber, Akten der Reichskanzlei, vol. 7; Rainer Blasius, “Verwalteter Siegesrausch,”

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 31 Dezember 2015, 10.
63Wachsmann, KL, counted 2.3 million inmates, including Auschwitz I. Since March 1942, Jews
from Poland, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Yugoslavia, the Protectorate, and Hungary were
deported to the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than one million were killed
in gas chambers with Zyklon B gas.—Rozett and Spector, Encyclopedia, 121–123.
64Davies, Europe, 947.
292 A. Suppan
and “Preparations of a Landing Operation against England” were postponed on 17

September.65 First came Hitler’s fixation with Eastern Europe and his aim of eastwards
expansion—to occupy Lebensraum.
While Germany and the Soviet Union executed their agreement with several bloody
measures against Poles and Jews after the occupation of Poland, Italy had to wait with
an attack against Yugoslavia because Germany’s war against France. Then, in the fall of
1940, Germany forced Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia to join
the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan. When the foreign ministers of
Germany, Italy and Japan met each other in Berlin, between 25 and 27 November 1941,
to renew the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact, they were to be joined by eight new signatories:
Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain. Although
Ribbentrop prepared a “European manifesto,” Hitler limited “European solidarity” to the
anti-Bolshevik struggle and was not willing to say anything about what political arrange-
ments should emerge on the continent in peacetime. So, this manifesto could not chal-
lenge Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s Atlantic Charter from 9 August 1941, which pledged
a postwar world that would honor the principles of self-determination, free trade, nonag-
gression, and freedom of the seas. The charter also made vague reference to “the estab-
lishment of a wider and permanent system of general security.”66
Already in the summer of 1940, Hitler got the notion, “which sounds really odd
today” (Ian Kershaw): “We defeat London via Moscow, knock out the Soviet Union
in a quick Blitzkrieg war, take about four or five months, by the end of the year we’ll
destroy the Soviet Union, Britain will then be bereft of its only potential ally in Europe,
and the Americans will remain to their own hemisphere. So by another route we will
have won the war.” When on 31 July 1940 Grand Admiral Raeder gave a lengthy report
at the Berghof on the question of an invasion of Great Britain, proposing a postpone-
ment until the following year, Hitler—surprisingly—voiced his own “skepticism” about
the feasibility of such an invasion. But then he changed fronts: If an invasion were post-
poned, then “all the factors that let England hope for a change in the situation” must
be eliminated, more concretely: “Russia” must be “smashed.” Hitler’s generals agreed
that Stalin’s massacres under his generals had weakened the Red Army, as the poor per-
formance against Finland had proved. And the commanders-in-chief of the Wehrmacht
also remembered the victory against (Soviet) Russia in World War I and the Treaty of
65Kershaw, Hitler II, 301–310.

66Mazower, Empire, 323–324; Kennedy, Freedom, 496. The Anti-Comintern Pact had been con-
cluded between Germany and Japan on 23 October 1936 for cooperation between the two partners
in opposing the Communist International. In additional agreements, Germany and Japan promised
to do nothing in any way to assist the Soviet Union in case of an unprovoked attack or threat of
attack by the Soviet Union on the other partner.—Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, 269.
Brest-Litovsk in 1918. Therefore, Germany should remove the Russian threat before the
United States could go into action.67
When the Soviet Foreign Commissar Molotov visited Berlin, in November 1940,
he demanded spheres of influence in the Balkans, the Straits, and Bulgaria in particu-
lar. Hitler and Ribbentrop wanted to talk about the British and US threats, the sharing
out of the British Empire in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and India, the access to
the ice-free oceans, as well as dividing up the world with Japan, Italy and Germany.
But Molotov was interested in “petty momentary considerations,” Germany’s inten-
tions towards Finland, Romania, and Bulgaria. Nevertheless, Molotov kept returning to
the Balkans and to access to German industrial and military goods. Although the trade
relations were deepened, the distrust between Berlin and Moscow increased. The Soviet
Union protested when Hitler agreed to Marshal Antonescu’s request to send a German
military mission to protect the Ploieşti oilfields. Already on 18 December 1940, Hitler
issued the formal directive for “Operation Barbarossa” (Unternehmen Barbarossa)—the
attack on the Soviet Union as a crusade against Bolshevism. Hitler as well as most of his
military leaders grossly underestimated Soviet military strength and capacity. However,
under an agreement of January 1941, the Soviets promised delivery of 2 ½ million t
of grain and one million tons of oil by May 1942, in return for German capital goods.
But the planning for the forthcoming war was developed alongside racial ideas about
the treatment of Jews, Bolsheviks, and Russians, and produced a remarkable outpour-
ing of murderous—indeed genocidal—proposals. On 3 March 1941, Hitler told General
Jodl in the OKW that “the Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, hitherto the oppressor of the
people, must be eliminated.” A week later, Hitler gave the infamous statement that the
forthcoming war against the Soviet Union would be a “war of annihilation” to senior
German officers. So, the Nazis planned for 30 million Soviet citizens to die of hunger in
the occupied territories. Four “task-groups” (SS-Einsatzgruppen) under the direction of
SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich were supposed to operate behind the advanc-
ing German troops, executing pogroms against the Soviet Jews, killing Soviet political
officers (“commissars”), and immediately shooting partisan fighters.68
“Operation Barbarossa” was scheduled to begin in mid-May. But when Hitler was
given the news of the coup d’état in Belgrade, on 27 March 1941, he immediately
decided to knock out both the Yugoslav army and the Yugoslav kingdom. Therefore,
“Barbarossa” was postponed for five weeks. Then, in the morning of 22 June 1941, the
same day Napoléon had invaded Russia in 1812, Hitler started “the most destructive and
barbaric war in the history of mankind” (Ian Kershaw). The Blitzkrieg with 3.2 million
German soldiers, 3600 tanks, 600,000 motorized vehicles, 7000 artillery pieces, 2500
67Kershaw, Hitler II, 307–308; Thamer, Verführung, 654–657; Rees, Charisma, 207–210.
68Naimark, “Hitler, Stalin,” 57–72; Kershaw, Hitler II, 331–343; Snyder, Bloodlands, 123–141;
Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, 535–536.
294 A. Suppan
aircraft, and one million horses69 was supposed not only to cause the Bolshevism to “col-
lapse like a pack of cards” (Joseph Goebbels) but also to grab the riches of the Ukraine
(grain, iron, coal) and the Caucasus (oil); the overall objective was “to erect a barrier
against Asiatic Russia on the general line Volga–Archangel.” The intoxination of the
East (Ostrausch) worked its magic on many of those sent into rule it. Hitler talked to his
ambassador to France, Otto Abetz in September 1941:
“The Asiatics and Bolsheviks had to be driven out of Europe; the episode of 250 years of
‘Asiatics’ had come to an end. […] Europe would itself provide all the raw materials it
needed and have its own markets in the Russian area, so that we would no longer have any
need of other world trade. The new Russia, as far as the Urals, would become ‘our India’,
but one more favorably situated than that of the British. The new Greater German Reich
would comprise 135 million people and rule over an additional 150 million.”70
Stalin was shocked by “Operation Barbarossa,” establishing a Supreme Command and

a State Committee of Defense and taking the position of Supreme Commander. Already
on 11 August 1941, General Halder saw “that we have underestimated the Russian
colossus,” and there was a controversy on the priorities for the Wehrmacht: the further
advance on Moscow, which Halder and his colleagues favored, or, the destruction of
Leningrad and the advance towards the Crimea and then the oil fields of the Caucasus,
which Hitler wanted. Of course, Hitler in his Führer’s headquarters in the woods of East
Prussia, the Wolf’s Lair (Wolfsschanze) near Rastenburg, decided. Some millions of
prisoners-of-war fell into German hand, the USSR lost half its industrial and agricultural
capacity. Stalin and Marshal Zhukov organized resistance by inspiring patriotic spirit
proclaiming the conflict as a “great patriotic war.” When the Wehrmacht approached
Moscow at the beginning of December 1941, its divisions—lacking winter clothing and
equipment while the temperature had dropped to minus 35 degrees Celsius (an incredible
mistake by the army leadership!)—were already exhausted, and the Red Army launched
a successful counter-attack. The German army was pushed back before Moscow and
the reputation of the German soldiers for invincibility was decidedly weakened. The
Armaments Minister Fritz Todt informed Hitler, that “the war can no longer be won mili-
tarily,” and the only way of stopping the conflict was by some form of political solution.
But Hitler replied that he could see no way of ending the war in such a way.71
69The German Reich alone used 2.75 million horses in World War II, of which 1.5 to 1.75 million
were killed.
70Kershaw, Hitler II, 360–367; Statement by Hitler to Ambassador Abetz, 16 September 1941, in
DGFP, D, IV 13, No. 327; Mazower, Empire, 558.

71Cf. Boog et al., Der Angriff; Kershaw, Hitler II, 411, 440–441; Mazower, Empire, 4; Service,
Stalin, 410–424. After the retreat from Moscow Hitler removed Field Marshal Brauchitsch as com-
mander-in-chief of the Army High Command and appointed himself. So, he added this function
to the existing titles: Führer and Reich Chancellor, Supreme Commander of all German Armed
Forces, Leader of the Party, supreme law-lord (oberster Gerichtsherr).—Kershaw, Hitler II, 511.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941, the
US Congress declared war on Japan on 8 December with only a single dissenting vote,
amid ferocious and wrathful outcries for a vengeful war without mercy against the
treacherous “Japs.” Although the strict terms of their alliance with Japan did not require
it, since Japan had been the attacker, not the attacked, Hitler and Mussolini declared war
on the United States on 11 December 1941. Hitler felt he was doing little more than
formalizing a state of conflict that had existed unofficially for months, because US ships
were already protecting British convoys in the Atlantic and Roosevelt had made obvious
his commitment to helping Churchill. The British prime minister remembered thinking:
“So we had won after all […]! Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As
for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. […] [T]here was no more doubt about
the end.”72
Neither the German military nor Germany’s economic policy had forced its allies
to enter the war. When Hitler started the “Operation Barbarossa,” on 22 June 1941, his
crusade against “godless Bolshevism,” the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS were joined by
Finnish, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak, Croatian, Italian, and Spanish regulars as well
as volunteers from almost every European nation. The German Army crossed the Soviet
borders under explicit orders to be merciless to the Bolsheviks, the Jews, and all oth-
ers judged to be “subhumans.” As the Soviets had not signed the Geneva Conventions,
the Germans had an apparent excuse for mistreating and killing whomever they wished.
Many in the Baltic countries and the Ukraine had awaited the Germans as saviors and
liberators from the Stalinist regime, but the Nazis did not grant independence or even
autonomy to any of the nations and nationalities formerly under Soviet rule.73
The “war of annihilation” against the Soviet Union was “the perfect cover for gen-
ocide” against the Jews. Parallel to the attack of the Wehrmacht, Heydrich’s four
SS-Einsatzgruppen started the mass killings behind the front lines. Although no writ-
ten order from Hitler to kill the Jews has ever been found,74 his rhetoric set the mur-
derous goals. And Hitler demanded “continual reports about […] the work of the
Einsatzgruppen in the east.” But he saw no massacres, did not go near any concentra-
tion camps, viewed no compounds starving prisoners-of-war. Timothy Snyder argues that
absence of state structures, and the lack of legal status that ensued, aided the execution-
ers. Therefore, he stresses: “Stalinist policies paved the way for Nazi extermination.”
72Kennedy, Empire, 523–524. “If Hitler had not now obligingly declared war on the United States,
Roosevelt, given the apparent willingness of both sides to acquiesce in protracted and undeclared
naval war in the Atlantic, would have had undoubted difficulty finding a politically useable occa-
sion for declaring war against Germany.”
73Service, Stalin, 410–419; Deák, Europe, 67–80. When the Germans seized the Don Basin they
controlled more than the half of the Soviet Union’s access to coal, iron, and steel.
74On 31 July, Göring—nominally in charge of anti-Jewish policy since January 1939—signed a
draft for Heydrich, written by Eichmann, to prepare “a complete solution (Gesamtlösung) of the
Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe.”—Kershaw, Hitler II, 471.
296 A. Suppan
Citizenship, identity, protection, the right to property and ultimately life were no longer
guaranteed by any kind of legal and bureaucratic structure. In his speech to the Reichstag
on 11 December 1941, Hitler claimed the “sheer, satanic malice” of the Jews was behind
Roosevelt’s decision to embark on a “foreign policy diversion”—by which he meant mil-
itary support for Britain. The next day, Hitler spoke to Reich leaders and—recorded by
Goebbels—said that since the Jews had brought about a world war “they would expe-
rience their own extermination.” While at home, thousands of Germans and Austrians,
as well as Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, French and Dutch, observed how Jews were
being persecuted, abroad, German soldiers and their allies witnessed atrocities against
Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Serbs, Slovenes and others. “Execution tourists”
in the army took photos of massacres and sometimes sent them home. Having failed to
vanquish the Red Army, the SS-Einsatzgruppen, the Waffen-SS and the Wehrmacht took
the extermination of the Jews as a “retribution for partisan attacks.” Over and beyond
that Jews would now also take “the blame for the American–British–Soviet alliance.”
(Timothy Snyder)75.
When Heydrich discussed various issues related to the fate of the Jews at the Wannsee
Conference, in January 1942, the question of murdering by gassing was not raised. But
several different techniques of murder in extermination camps were already in develop-
ment: with gas vans at Chełmno, diesel engines at Bełżec, and Zyklon B at Auschwitz.
In April 1942, the first Jews from Slovakia arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the most
were murdered in improvised gas chambers. Already in the fall of 1941, Himmler had
ordered SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik to implement Aktion Reinhardt—the sys-
tematic extermination of the Jews in Poland. From March 1942 until November 1943
more than two million Polish Jews were killed in the extermination camps of Bełżec,
Sobibór, Treblinka, and Majdanek; between April 1942 and October 1944 a million
of European Jews were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only by the summer of 1942, it
became clear that “Final Solution” meant absolute extermination of all the Jews under
Nazi control. Sometimes, Hitler showed that he was prepared to compromise and act
pragmatically—even in relation to the assassination of Heydrich, but not in relation to
the Jews: all Jews should die.76
On the other hand, Hitler had warned in his last speech to the Reichstag on 26
April 1942: “We Germans have everything to win in this struggle of ‘to be or not to
be’ because losing the war would anyway be our end.” As the German population began
to be mistrust to the success of Hitler, in summer 1942 things were going better again:
Field Marshal Rommel with the Afrika Korps seized Tobruk, German submarines
and planes destroyed 24 of 39 ships of the Allied convoy PQ 17 in the Arctic sea, and
German armies marched towards Stalingrad and the oil fields of the Caucasus. These
75Snyder,Bloodlands, 214–216; Kershaw, Hitler II, 446, 500.

76Rees,Charisma, 250–255; Rozett, Spector, Encyclopedia, 103–104; Kershaw, Hitler II, 461–
495; Snyder, Bloodlands, 254–276.
offensives in the summer of 1942 enlarged Hitler’s empire from the Arctic tip of Norway
to El Alamein in western Egypt and from Pyrenees to the Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus.
Hitler predicted in his Ukrainian headquarters at Vinnycja to Albert Speer, the Reich
minister of armaments:
“If in the course of the next year we manage to cover only the same distance […] by the end
of 1943 we will pitch our tents in Tehran, in Baghdad and on the Persian Gulf. Then the oil
wells will at last be dry as far as the English are concerned.”77
In October 1942, Hitler commanded more people (about 250 million) than the US
President and had a more densely populated and more economically productive landmass
than anywhere else in the world. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia were
completely stripped of their identities. But why should Europeans accept the leader-
ship of National Socialist Germany at all except under coercion? Goebbels worked hard
to portray Hitler as the commander of a European crusade against communism and to
win the support of the Catholic and Protestant bishops not only in Germany and Austria
but also in most of the occupied or allied countries.78 Hitler could not run his occupa-
tion policy without the cooperation and collaboration of many European peoples. He
used officers, soldiers, and policemen, industrialists and businessmen, employees and
civil servants, doctors and nurses, peasants and workers, servants and guards not only
from the annexed Austria and the Sudetenland, from the Germans (Volksdeutsche) in
the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, in Slovakia, Poland, France, the Baltic lands,
Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and Italy, but also from the French, Flemish, Dutch,
Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Czech, Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian Muslim, Serbian,
Ukrainian, Baltic, Belarusian, Russian, Italian, and Spanish populations—more than
seven million forced laborers, but hundreds of thousands as volunteers. Until August
1944, Slovaks, Romanians, and Bulgarians followed also German orders, until January
1945 the Hungarians. Plans were made in the Reich Employment Ministry to establish a
“national social order” for the continent.79
Since the Anschluss of Austria and of the Sudetenland and the establishment of the
Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia Hitler, Göring, the Economics Minister Walter
Funk and their economists thought about the building up of commercial and industrial
domination in Central and Eastern Europe and the integration of a European economic
area. Just as Germany had shown the world how to emerge from the Depression, so it
would now lead “a united Europe” to prosperity and higher living standards. Slovakia
77Mazower, Empire, 206; Davies, Europe at War, 240–241.

78Even the Orthodox monks of the Russian monastery Haghios Panteleimonos at the Mount Athos
praised Hitler as a protector, like the Orthodox patriarchs and the Russian czars.—Demandt, Hitler
und das Griechentum, 15.
79Mazower, Empire, 3–7, 48, 245; Davies, Europe at War, 293; Magocsi, Historical Atlas, maps 50
and 51; Umbreit, “Auf dem Weg,” 3–345.

298 A. Suppan
accepted German “advisers” in some ministries, also Denmark, Norway, and the
Netherlands. Minister Schacht started to organize a Reichsmark bloc, including the
Protectorate, Slovakia, the General Government, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The Todt
Organization (OT), a state-run engineering group, emerged to carry out construction pro-
jects for fortifications and bridges but also for continental super-railways between Paris,
Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev, and Rostov on the Don, as well as from Berlin over Vienna and
Belgrade to Constantinople. The SS presided over an astonishing growth of the camp
population—from 21,400 in 1939 to more than 700,000 by early 1945.80
Himmler, also Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of Germandom (RKFDV), and
his demographers were excited too. They counted the Germanic peoples of Europe—85
million Germans, ten million Dutchmen, five million Flemish, 300,000 Luxembourgers,
seven million Swedes, four million Danes, three million Norwegians, and ten million
supposed Slavs who could be “re-Germanized”—coming up with a grand total of 125
million real or potential “Germans.” In their “General Plan East” (Generalplan Ost)
Himmler and Professor Konrad Meyer planned the Germanization of the “East” with
rings of German towns and villages at key railway stations and road junctions. While
Poland, the Protectorate, the Baltic countries, and the Crimean Peninsula would have to
be Germanized, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt designated more than 30 million people
as racially undesirable and slated for expulsion: 80% of the population of Poland, 64%
of Belarus, and 75% of the Ukraine.81
Although Hitlers’s and Göring’s intent was to establish a colonial empire in
Eastern Europe and convert the Ukraine and European Russia into a food surplus
region, Germany’s imports of food from rich, industrialized France, the Netherlands,
and Denmark ran at several times the level of its food seizures in the Soviet Union.
Concerning the economic importance, also Belgium and the Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia, as well as neutral Switzerland and Sweden were more useful to the German
war effort than the official allies. Seeking to make the Reichsmark the “most important
European currency,” Berlin forced its Allies and the occupied countries to channel their
trade and money flows through the German capital. The Germans combined the so-called
occupation costs with forced loans. According to OKW calculations, by March 1944
France had paid 35.1 billion Reichsmark (amounting to between a quarter and a third
of its national income over that period), the Netherlands 12 billion, Belgium 9.3 billion,
the General Government (of Poland) 5.5 billion, and the occupied eastern territories 4.5
billion. However, energy not food was the real Achilles heel of the German war effort.
As the Germans controlled only the oil fields of Romania, the conquest of the Soviet
oil fields in the Caucasus became more urgent, especially from May 1942 onwards.
80Mazower, Empire, 121–133; Thamer, Verführung, 663–664.

81Mazower, Empire, 204–210; Longerich, Himmler, 595–607.
Although the Wehrmacht occupied Maikop in August and Grozny in October 1942, the
whole attack failed.82
The National Socialist rule in more than half of Europe stood under the leitmotif of
the right to hegemony, conquest and economic exploitation of other peoples by “the
chosen”—until the expulsion or even the biological destruction. Although “allied propa-
ganda spoke of the uniform suffering of captive nations, in reality, life in Hitler’s Europe
was more divergent than perhaps at any time in history” (István Deák). German treat-
ment of the Poles in the General Government was infinitely more criminal than the treat-
ment of the Czechs in the Protectorate; Slovaks, Croats, and Bulgarians were respected
as Nazi Germany’s (military) allies, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians only as “sub-
humans” (Untermenschen). The “large-scale predatory exploitation” in the conquered
countries had the result that in January 1943 the caloric value of German food rations
was 1,980, in the Netherlands 1,765, in Belgium 1,320, in France 1,080, but in the
General Government only 855. German soldiers and policemen (including the Gestapo)
were numerous enough to rule the lands from Norway to Greece and from France to the
Ukraine, but not enough to control every town, village, and forest. “As a consequence,
national governments, local authorities, native populations, and diverse social classes and
interest groups, as well as many individuals, were eager, for myriad reasons, to tolerate
the inevitable presence of, actively collaborate with, or oppose the ruling Germans. […]
Much depended on where and when a person confronted the dilemma of passive accom-
modation, active collaboration, or resistance.”83
Hitler’s New Order showed the weakness of the nation-states established by the
Versailles order and how deep fault lines within them ran—of class, language, ideology,
and religion. Germany certainly needed to coerce the populations it ruled and crushed
the spirits of resistance with “murderous retaliatory instincts” in some terrifying events;
but the great majority of the foreign soldiers—especially in the Waffen-SS84—did not
have to be coerced into fighting. Since the fall of 1941, there had been no significant
distinction between SS and Wehrmacht soldiers treating Jews, Slavs and Greeks as sub-
humans. “It was the war that completely altered the position of the Führer himself,
allowing him to trample over what was left of judicial discretion inside Germany.” The
violence of war led “to an almost limitless escalation in the use of force and a constant
revision of rule and norms.” Murdering more than three million Jews in extermination
82Mazower, Empire, 271, 290–291; Kennedy, Freedom, 584–587.

83Broadberry and O’Rourke, The Cambridge Economic History 2, 218; Deák, Europe, 1, 21,
38–47, 70–71, 83.
84No fewer than 350,000 Europeans eventually served in the ranks of the Waffen-SS: about 55,000
Dutchmen, 31,000 Latvians, 30,000 Cossacks, 25,000 Caucasians, 23,000 Flemings, 20,000
Walloons, 20,000 French, 20,000 Estonians, 20,000 Ukrainians, 17,000 Bosnian Muslims, 6000
Danes, 6000 Norwegians as well as 54,000 ethnic Germans from Romania, 22,000 from Hungary,
21,500 from Serbia, 5000 from Slovakia, and 1300 from Denmark.—Mazower, Empire, 455;
Hilgemann, Atlas, 238–240.
300 A. Suppan
camps and killing another million by the SS-Einsatzgruppen would not have happened
without the war. Millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles perished also
in pursuit of the Nazi’s destruction war. But as a consequence of Hitler’s war, more than
eight million German soldiers and civilians perished too.85
Although Russian food output fell by two-thirds and the fate of the Soviet Union was
on a knife edge in 1942, the economic system did not break down—as in 1917—and
the Soviet war effort sustained itself at the most critical moment of the war. On 23 July
1942, Hitler ordered further attacks in the direction of Stalingrad and Baku. To pre-
vent any repetition of the kind of panic in the fall of 1941, Stalin issued Order No. 227,
“Not a Step Backward,” on 28 July 1942. Although in the fall of 1942 the German Sixth
Army occupied most of Stalingrad, the Red Army encircled the Sixth Army as well as
two Romanian armies, attempts to relieve failed, and Göring’s boast to supply the army
from the air turned out to be mere wishful thinking. But Hitler rejected all pleas to con-
sider a break in the siege, and a relief attempt by the Fourth Panzer Army failed. For
the German people, quite especially for the many families with loved ones in the Sixth
Army, Christmas 1942 was a depressing festival. After Christmas 1942, “things detori-
ated rapidly in terms of morale” and food supplies, told a German battalion commander.
Many soldiers still believed that the Führer would not give up them; but Hitler had
given them up—with no consideration for the soldiers and their families. The Battle of
Stalingrad did not end “heroically,” with a Wagnerian ending, a Götterdämmerung, but
with the end of the Sixth Army. The German Sixth Army lost 147,000 men; 91,000 were
taken captive; only 6000 POWs survived. Time magazine named Stalin its “Man of the
Year.” Stalingrad marked the psychological turning point in perceptions of Hitler’s char-
ismatic leadership. “For the first time,” as Ulrich von Hassell noted, “the critical mur-
murings related directly to him.”—Nonetheless, when Hitler spoke to the Reichs- and
Gauleiter for almost two hours at his headquarters on 7 February 1943, there was not a
trace of demoralization, depression, or uncertainty. He believed in victory more than ever
and he categorically ruled out any possibility of capitulation.86
Hitler’s military and economic empire had reached its apex in October 1942, a victim
of imperial overstretch. In the end, two questions should be raised:
1. What were the main reasons for Hitler’s incredibly quick power accumulation? In a
period of eight years, he had risen up to Europe’s most powerful ruler and had devel-
oped Nazi Germany to an empire, which from May 1940 onward had rivaled the
British Empire; from June 1941, the Soviet Empire, and from December 1941, the US
Empire.
85Mazower, Empire, 8–12; Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte 4, 898–899.

86Kershaw, Hitler II, 543–555; Hubatsch, Hitlers Weisungen, 196–201; Service, Stalin, 424–429,
452; Rees, Charisma, 267–271.
2. Why had Hitler overstretched of his power by October 1942, and begun—uninten-
tionally, of course—the decline of his Nazi empire, which led to its total dissolution
and destruction within the next two and a half years?
Ad 1) In January 1933, Hitler was legally appointed to the position of Reich Chancellor
and, within one and a half years, had expanded his power to become a totalitarian
„Führer and Reichskanzler,“not only by marshaling the support of the Reich President,
the Reichswehr, and the highest levels of almost all the non-Nazi-elite groups (in business,
industry, and the German civil service) but also by using modern propaganda methods
and consequential policy measures against high unemployment.87 Hitler’s system of rule
included enticement, observation, and threats of violence, on the one hand, enticement
through propaganda via newspapers, broadcasting, movies, and the 1936 Olympic Games
and on the other, by violence against political opponents, trade unions, and Jews. In this
connection, Hitler ruthless use of the SS including the Sicherheitspolizei, Sicherheits
dienst. and Gestapo under the command of Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.
Successes in foreign policy such as the Saar Plebiscite in 1935, the re-militarization of
the Rhineland in 1936, the “Anschluss” of Austria in March 1938, and the annexation
of the Sudetenland in October 1938 (following the Munich Agreement) made Hitler the
creator of a “Greater German Empire.” The Western Powers’ criticism of Hitler’s foreign
policy did not begin prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the founding of the
“Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” in March 1939, including all Czechs and mak-
ing Slovakia a dependent satellite state. While Great Britain and France promised sup-
port to Poland, Hitler concluded a secret agreement with Stalin, in late August of 1939
that divided all of Eastern Europe, stretching from Finland to Romania, into German and
Soviet spheres of influence. After the conclusion of the war against Poland and the divi-
sion of that country between Berlin and Moscow, Hitler, conrolled most of East-Central
and Southeastern Europe as part of his realm until May 1941, including the Romanian
oilfields and the Yugoslav ore mines. In the spring of 1940, Hitler and his generals had
occupied most of the countries in Northwestern and Western Europe without significant
losses. Only the British were able to evacuate most of their troops across the English
Channel and defend themselves against Hitler in the Battle of Britain. No one knows what
the capture of the British Expeditionary Forces at Dunkirk or an earlier invasion of the
USSR due to the five-week postponement of the start of Operation Barbarossa because of
the invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece would have been.
Ad 2) Although Hitler’s empire extended from the North Cape to Crete and from the
Bretagne to the Black Sea in May 1941, he did not give up his obsession with occu-
pying “living space in the East” (Lebensraum im Osten), meaning the occupation and
exploitation of the Soviet Union as far as the Volga River or even the Ural Mountains.
Astonishingly, Hitler did not try to persuade Japan to open a second front against the
87Kershaw, Hitler II, 839.

302 A. Suppan
Soviet Union. Obviously, Hitler and many of his generals underestimated the distances
of the supply routes and the difficult climate in European Russia as well as Stalin’s and
the Red Army’s robustness. The decisive turning point in World War II occurred within
one week. On 5 December 1941, the Germans stopped their advance toward Moscow,
and the Soviet counterattack began. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese attacked the
US fleet at Pearl Harbor and the following morning, President Roosevelt declared war
on Japan. On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States. On 12 December,
Hitler adressed the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter about the consequences of Pearl Harbor
and the war in the east. “With regard to the Jewish Question,” Goebbels noted in his
diary entry of 13, “the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the
Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would live to see their annihila-
tion in it. That wasn’t just a catchword…. If the German people have now again sac-
rificed 160,000 dead on the Eastern Front, then those responsible for this bloody
conflict will have to pay with their lives.”—However, in the spring of 1942, Hitler’s
new minister for armaments, Albert Speer, mobilized all possible resources. Still, the
new German attacks against Stalingrad, into the northern Caucasus (to get the oil from
Maikop and Grozny) and to El Alamein stalled in October, because the German troops
were exhausted. Meanwhile, Allied arms production had surpassed that of the Germans,
and Britain’s nightly bombing raids against western Germany had intensified. While the
United States’ Lend-Lease Bill strengthened Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union,
Hitler’s, Göring’s, and Himmler’s policies of exploitation weakened not only the occu-
pied countries but also Germany’s satellite states. Nevertheless, Hitler took the path to
Germany’s ruin and the ruin of practically all the European peoples under his control.
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From Warlord to Emperor: The Careers
of Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi
Marc Van De Mieroop
Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates, two rivers that shape the lives
of all inhabitants of the area of modern-day Iraq and its surroundings, was the region
where states first developed in world history and chronological surveys of political
organization, such as Michael Mann’s magisterial Sources of Social Power,1 start with
an outline of what happened there. This is where “history begins” to paraphrase the title
of a popular book from the 1950s.2 It is thus no surprise that we find there also the first
evidence of what we can call “short-term empires,” that is, ephemeral imperial forma-
tions whose “rise and fall” often depended much on the exploits of one individual as
many cases in this volume show. I will examine here two examples from the early centu-
ries of the second millennium BC (all my dates will be BC) that were discrete in that the
later one was not a successor of the former, but that were related in that they grew out of
the same political circumstances. They were the personal achievements of two individu-
als—great men if we want to take a 19th century approach to History. The earlier one
was Shamshi-Adad who unified northern Mesopotamia and occupied the throne of the
city Assur from 1809 to 1776. In the long list of kings who did so until 614 BC he was
the first with that name—ultimately there would be five of them. The second character
I will discuss is the much more famous Hammurabi, who ruled from 1792 to 1750 as a
member of the dynasty that had its capital at Babylon. He unified southern Mesopotamia
but is best-known today because of his laws, which are often somewhat mistakenly
1Mann 1986.
2Kramer 1958.
M. Van De Mieroop (*)

Columbia University, New York, USA
e-mail: mv1@columbia.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_14
308 M. Van De Mieroop
presented as the earliest recorded laws in world history (in reality, the first known law
collections were written down some 300 years before). The two men achieved simi-
lar political results through similar means and although there is no causal relationship
between their mutual careers the parallelisms provide us with a better understanding of
both cases individually. As I state in my title they evolved from warlords to emperors—
but the “empires” they founded (if the term empire is really appropriate for them) were
short-lived.
For a proper understanding of how their empires came about we have to consider
the political conditions in the region beforehand. The urban setting of Mesopotamia’s
political organization is the primary characteristic of the region’s early history as it is
revealed through the textual sources available to us. Power was held in cities with local
dynasties, and the city-state was the foundation of political organization for 2000 years
from the mid-fourth to the mid-second millennium. There was a difference in the size
of the states involved between the south of Mesopotamia, better known in early peri-
ods, and the north. In the south, Babylonia, these were spaced some 30 km apart, while
in the north, Assyria, they were located at greater distances from one another. The dis-
similarity was the result of agricultural practices. The irrigated fields in the south had
much greater yields and required more intensive labor than the rainfed ones in the north.
The urban hinterlands were thus smaller in Babylonia than in Assyria, but in essence the
political organization was the same: Rulers lived in cities and claimed control over the
surrounding countryside that fed those cities. The claims of territorial control were often
more imaginary than real—Seth Richardson has called these early states very appositely
“presumptive” states3—and there were other players on the scene such as non-sedentary
groups, which appear mostly on the margins of our textual and archaeological sources.
But for an ancient Mesopotamian the idea of political control was inherently connected
to cities.
From early on we see how individual city-states tried to establish hegemony over their
neighbors and some were very successful at it, especially in the later third millennium:
first a dynasty with its capital in northern Babylonian Akkad (23rd–22nd centuries) and
later one under a dynasty from southern Babylonian Ur (21st century).4 Those hegem-
onic states—many historians call them empires5—also exerted military control over
areas adjacent to Babylonia, but as in earlier cases of political domination in the region
the grasp of the central power soon folded and independent city-states reemerged. When
Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi were born Mesopotamia was a patchwork of states,
some more powerful than others, and although some attempts at regional unification
were in progress, none would equal what these two men accomplished.6 Seth Richardson
3Richardson 2012.
4See Neumann 2014 or Van De Mieroop 2016, chapter 4 for concise surveys of their histories.
5See, for example, Garelli et al. 1997 or Neumann 2014: esp. p. 40 and 47.
6A detailed account of the history of the period is Charpin 2004.

From Warlord to Emperor: The Careers of Shamshi-Adad … 309
has drawn an implicit parallel with ancient Chinese history by calling this the “era of the
warring states”7: in the first millennium BC there too the hegemony of the Zhou dynasty
dissipated and Warring States competed with one another for centuries until one of them,
Qin, unified a vast territory in 221 BC under Shi Huangdi, “First August Emperor.”
Scholars who study the early periods of history obviously work with a data base
that is much more restricted than those of modern times and there are many gaps in our
knowledge of these short-term empires. We should not exaggerate the lack of informa-
tion, however. Both Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi left behind a set of inscriptions in
which they celebrated their military actions oftentimes in contexts that focus on other
aspects of their activities.8 Take the famous Code of Hammurabi, for example.9 The larg-
est part of it enumerates laws, but the introduction to them, the so-called prologue, can
be read as an account not only of what city-states Hammurabi conquered but also of how
violent his actions had been while doing so. When he presents himself as the one “who
gathers together the scattered peoples of the city of Isin,” he reveals that earlier on during
his campaign he had forced people to flee their homes. When he states that he “revital-
izes the city of Uruk and provides abundant waters for its people,” he admits that he
had cut off the water supply. All the beneficial acts he mentions were restorations of the
devastations he wrought. In addition to the kings’ own statements we have those of some
of their neighbors, and a very important source for the history of the entire Near East in
the late 19th to mid-18th centuries are letters emissaries and ambassadors from the king
of Mari sent to their master.10 Hammurabi cut off that source when he conquered the
city in 1761—his own archives have not been found. Letters from Mari and other cit-
ies also allow us to reconstruct government practices to some extent. Letters and royal
inscriptions are undated, unfortunately, but the practice in Babylonia of naming years
after a prominent event in the previous year gives us a chronological framework for
Hammurabi’s reign at least,11 but not for Shamshi-Adad’s. Archaeological information
also helps: the destruction of cities can sometimes be connected to a known campaign,
for example, Hammurabi’s sack of Mari, while building activities in others can be shown
to have been commissioned by one of these kings, for example, Shamshi-Adad’s work at
Shubat-Enlil.
Hammurabi’s career is best-known to us and we can place the events in a chronologi-
cal order because each year of his reign was named after an accomplishment he consid-
ered to be important.12 In 1792 he came to the throne as the fifth member of a dynasty
7Richardson 2010.
8Those have been conveniently collected in Frayne 1990 (Hammurabi) and Grayson 1987
(Shamshi-Adad).
9Translated in Roth 1997: 71–142.
10A rich selection of these letters is translated into French by Durand 1997–2000.
11A convenient list is available online at http://cdli.ucla.edu/tools/yearnames/HTML/T12K6.htm.
12For narratives of his life, see Van De Mieroop 2005 and Charpin 2012.
of relatively little importance in the northern Babylonian city of Babylon, succeeding

his father and grandfather. At the time his kingdom included some other cities (Sippar,
Kish, perhaps Borsippa), but it was not a major player in the region and was hemmed
in by larger forces. To its north was the domain of Shamshi-Adad and to its south the
kingdom of Larsa, whose king, Rim-Sin, had just unified the whole of southern and cen-
tral Babylonia. To the east of Babylon was another powerful state, Eshnunna, and farther
away in western Iran, Elam, whose ruler meddled in Babylonian affairs and was treated
with great respect by his colleagues there. These were restless times and early on in his
reign Hammurabi engaged in some military action, regularly in alliance with others,
including Shamshi-Adad. The campaigns did not have a lasting impact, however. Nor
did the death of Shamshi-Adad and the fragmentation of his empire help Babylon, as the
kingdoms of Eshnunna and Mari to the north occupied the void it left behind.
The situation suddenly changed in 1766, Hammurabi’s 27th year as king, when he
started a five-year long military operation eliminating one rival after the other. The trig-
ger for this seems to have been Elam’s meddling in Babylonian affairs, which he suc-
cessfully repulsed. The victory may have inspired him to continue fighting and in the end
he defanged the kingdom of Eshnunna’s military, occupied the entire territory of Larsa,
and destroyed Mari. Letters sent to the king of the latter state show us how he oper-
ated. For example, for the conquest of Larsa Hammurabi made a coalition with the kings
of Mari, Andariq in northern Syria, and Malgium near Babylon, and he asked Elam for
help even though he had just clashed with its troops. Larsa fielded 40,000 men in its
defense, so the attackers must have been similar in number. These are gigantic armies
for ancient times. After taking over secondary cities in the state of Larsa, Hammurabi
laid siege to the capital, which lasted six months. His allies started to get impatient and
wanted to withdraw troops, but finally the city fell and its king, Rim-Sin, who had ruled
for 60 years, was taken prisoner. Hammurabi did not show much gratitude to his allies
and after raids in Eshnunna and northern Mesopotamia, he turned against Mari, which
he captured in 1761. Two years later he razed the city’s walls and destroyed Malgium.
The discontinuation of the Mari diplomatic correspondence after he took that city denies
us detailed knowledge of what happened afterwards. Year names report that he did not
stop campaigning until 1755, but these operations seem to have been limited to north-
ern Mesopotamia and did not lead to territorial gains. By 1760 Hammurabi was supreme
ruler over all of Babylonia and had created spaces with weak states around its borders to
act as buffers with the strong powers of Elam and Aleppo farther away. When he com-
missioned his law code he could declare himself protector of all city-states in Babylonia.
Hammurabi was not alone in this behavior. All the rulers of the time habitually con-
cluded and broke alliances and they often negotiated with the two parties in a conflict
before they decided what side to choose or to stay on the sidelines. Shamshi-Adad seems
to have created his empire in the same way, although his campaigns seem to have been
spread out more over his lifetime than Hammurabi’s.13 His origins are obscure: the first
city where he is attested as holding power was Ekallatum, located near Assur but exactly
where is not known. This happened in 1830, when he was 18 years old (he was born in
1847). Several years later he had to flee Ekallatum because the king of Eshnunna cap-
tured it, and spent seven years in exile in Babylon until 1811. Three years after his return
he seized the throne of Assur (1808) and gradually he expanded his control over northern
Mesopotamia. Around 1792 he captured Mari and its extensive territory which reached
the western Euphrates. The wars continued. In 1781, Dadusha the king of Eshnunna
claimed proudly that he conquered cities to the east of the Tigris river, and stated that
he handed the land over to Shamshi-Adad, who must have been his ally, if not the major
force in the attack.14 Only five years later Shamshi-Adad died, possibly in battle con-
fronting a joint attack from the east and the west. He was 68 years old by then.
The parallels between the two cases are clear. Both Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi
were warlords who took advantage of the general conditions of military competition to
pick off one opponent after the other. In doing so they enlisted the help of others, who
regularly became the next target. They captured the centers of political power, that is,
cities and inserted themselves in the existing dynastic structures. This is most evident
for Shamshi-Adad who with his ancestors became incorporated into the list of kings of
Assur.15 Likewise, Hammurabi dated the records from Larsa in his first year there as “the
year that Hammurabi became king.” Alongside being warriors they must have been good
diplomats as well, negotiating alliances with men who must have been aware that they
could be easily stabbed in the back. And they could be ruthless as Hammurabi showed
when he razed Mari in 1759 for reasons unknown. The territories they managed to bring
together were very large, although it is hard for us to draw exact borders. And those
shifted constantly as there were other lesser known rivals who stood up to the men dis-
cussed here. We focus on Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi because there is enough evi-
dence to write their histories. Were we to know more about western Syria and western
Iran, surely we would see similar behavior and accomplishments there, especially from
the rulers of Aleppo and Elam.
How did Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi administer these extensive territories? The
evidence from the north is better than that for the south because it includes the exten-
sive palace archives from Mari and smaller ones from other cities (e.g., Shushara).
Shamshi-Adad called himself “great king” and set up a capital in the north of his state,
refurbishing an existing town and renaming it Shubat-Enlil, “the residence of the god
13A somewhat outdated survey of his life is Villard 1995. See also the relevant passages in Charpin
2004.
14For an English translation of the relevant inscription, see Van Koppen 2006. In Shamshi-Adad’s
version of the event, he was the main actor (Grayson 1987 A.0.39.1001). Cf. Rollinger 2017 for a
recent discussion of these inscriptions.
15Grayson 1980–83: 102.
Enlil,” an ideological statement that connected him to the head of the Babylonian pan-
theon. He erected a large temple on the citadel and constructed a palace more than
one hectare in size in the lower town—unfortunately the written remains excavated in
them reveal nothing of substance about his administration beyond the fact that his name
appears. The revamped city was a show piece, a “hollow capital” with official buildings
but few inhabitants.16 On the other hand, he did develop the surrounding countryside as
we know he settled refugees from the east there, probably for agricultural work.17
The kingdom was too large to be administered by one man and Shamshi-Adad placed
two of his sons on thrones of important and strategically located cities: Mari in the west,
which controlled the Syrian desert and access to Babylonia, and Ekallatum, which was
near the conflict zones east of the Tigris. He also had military governors in other strate-
gic places, and allowed some erstwhile rulers to remain in charge as his vassals. Letters
he and others sent to Mari show that he kept a close watch on all these men.18 Yet, we see
no heavy-handed attempts at coordinating practices across the region, except perhaps in
the dating system which now followed the habit of naming each year after an eponymous
official, a system seemingly developed in Assur.19 Otherwise his administration has been
called “desperately chaotic … replete with ad hoc measures necessary to forge a sem-
blance of cohesion.”20 This is perhaps too harsh a verdict, but in essence it seems correct.
Information in Hammurabi’s administration is relatively limited and mostly derives
from Larsa after it was incorporated in his state in 1763. He used bureaucrats who were
personally responsible to him and may have come from local families. These received a
stream of letters from him—some 200 to two men alone have been preserved—, which
show an interest in what seem to be really minor matters, such as the allocation of a field
of one hectare. The attention to detail has inspired some scholars to dismiss Hammurabi
as a petty king who was too busy with small matters of government to merit the title of a
great ruler:
In general it may be thought that the letters of Hammurabi and his ministers hardly give
the impression of a strong administration; what appears is a system too much absorbed in
day-to-day detail, sadly lacking in proper support of its officers, and rather unworthily timid
of criticism, even from interested parties. Such excessive complaisance is most probably due
to a conscious insecurity of the régime; the officers addressed were newly installed in a con-
quered territory, and appeasement of the subjects at any cost is doubtless the policy which
prompts these uneasy phrases.21
16Ristvet and Weiss 2013: 265–67.

17Eidem 2014: 141.
18Villard 1995: 876–77.
19Michel and Villard 2001.
20Eidem 2014: 138.
21Gadd 1973: 187.

This judgement ignores the ancient Near Eastern principle that a king had to be acces-
sible—he was a “shepherd” to his people22—and that the administration spoke in his
name. In any case, the capital wanted input in local affairs and the king had confiscated
so much landed estates during his conquests that he needed a large labor force to make
them profitable. He instituted a system of corvée labor and military service that covered
all able-bodies free men of, at least, southern Babylonia.23 Administrative services that
had been the domain of entrepreneurs in various cities seem to have been centralized in
few cities, such as Larsa, and we see how men at Ur, for example, lost their business.24
Hammurabi also boasted of his infrastructural works in his year names, several of which
commemorate the construction of irrigation works. The political unification of Babylonia
permitted the creation of integrated systems that stretched from the north of the region
to its south along the multiple branches of the Euphrates river, and probably much of his
work was a restoration of canals that had been cut during the extended period of war-
fare and a merging of pre-existing ones. He claimed, for example, that he dug the canal
named “Hammurabi-is-the-abundance-of-the-people,” a canal that ran for 200 km from
the central Babylonian city of Nippur to the marshes at the head of the Persian Gulf.25
States do not only express control over their territories and the people who inhabit
them through material projects, they also try to convince their subjects of the benefits
they bring through other means. In this respect the laws of Hammurabi stand out as an
eloquent statement by the king that he had pacified all the lands he had conquered and
brought justice to the people. We know that he erected several monuments inscribed with
the text, only one of which has been preserved intact, the famous stele now in the Louvre
Museum in Paris. But upon closer consideration it is clear that these laws in practice
had little or no impact on the legal systems in Babylonian cities. There are no explicit
references to its paragraphs and established local procedures continued in use. Despite
Hammurabi’s self-presentation as an omnipotent ruler, his ability to affect the daily lives
of his subjects was weak.26
It should be clear by now that both “empires” were the outcome of the personal
initiatives of two men, who created them through successful military actions. Both
Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi spent a substantial part of their careers on the battle-
field and we imagine that they were personally responsible for the belligerent policies
their states pursued (the available evidence leaves us totally in the dark about the input
of others in these matters). Naturally they needed the support of their armies to maintain
the high level of activity, and in the case of Shamshi-Adad it has been suggested that
22Kraus 1974.
23Fiette2018 and Michalowski and Streck 2018.
24Van De Mieroop 1992: 244–45.
25See Van De Mieroop 2005: chapter 7 for a survey of Hammurabi’s projects and administrative
practices as we can reconstruct them from various sources.

26Richardson 2017.
he was successful because he interacted well with his troops on a personal level.27 All
royal inscriptions from ancient Mesopotamia present the ruler as charismatic and having
a special interest in the well-being of his subjects. This idea was certainly very strong in
the official rhetoric under Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi, and in Weberian terms it was
the basis of their authority. How this manifested itself in reality is hard to gauge for us,
but the textual record at least—including the letter correspondence that survives—shows
both men as personally at the center of their states. “L’état c’est moi” would certainly not
sound inappropriate to these men.
It is thus not surprising that the empires disappeared pretty much with their creators.
When Shamshi-Adad died in 1776, perhaps in battle, various men who claimed descent
from earlier dynasties picked up pieces of his empire—Zimri-Lim at Mari, for example.
Shamshi-Adad’s son, Ishme-Dagan, remained king of Ekallatum and Assur, but had to
flee to Babylon twelve years later. Hammurabi’s raids in the region caused a further frag-
mentation of power and by 1750 no strong state remained. In Babylonia the collapse was
not as immediate. Hammurabi’s son, Samsu-iluna, kept the empire going for ten more
years but then, in 1742, several regions rebelled. In the south at least the leaders claimed
that they continued dynasties that had existed before Hammurabi’s conquest. A man who
called himself Rim-Sin took the throne of Larsa, for example. Babylon’s reaction was
harsh and its attempt to crush the rebellions may have involved a burnt-earth policy. By
1712, it had lost control over the entire south and center of Babylonia but the urban char-
acter of the region vanished as well. Natural circumstances may have played a role in
this: there may have been a general drying of the climate at the time, the consequences
of which were exacerbated with Babylon’s decision to disrupt life in the south by cutting
off its irrigation water.28 Elite families fled to northern cities, possibly because they had
collaborated with the imperial regime. Babylon’s grasp over northern Babylonia did not
slip, however, and for the next century a sequence of long-lived monarchs ruled what
seems to have been a prosperous region until ca. 1600.
The highly personal nature of these empires most likely explains why they were so
ephemeral. They were the creations of two men who were very skilled in war and prob-
ably had much luck. They gained power through the sword and Shamshi-Adad may have
died by the sword as well. Upon their deaths, the people they had subjected sought inde-
pendence when they felt that central authority had weakened. Neither Shamshi-Adad nor
Hammurabi had enough time to merge their conquests into a single whole, and their suc-
cessors—respectively Ishme-Dagan and Samsu-iluna—did not have their father’s abili-
ties to keep the entities they inherited together. In northern Mesopotamia Zimri-Lim of
Mari was partly successful in taking over Shamshi-Adad’s hegemony in the region, until
Hammurabi ended his career. In the south the reaction to the independence movements
27Ziegler 2008.
28Van Lerberghe et al. 2017.
may have been so violent that it destroyed all urban life, but Babylon was able to hold on
to a territory much reduced in size.
When we take a long term perspective on the histories of these regions, we see, how-
ever, that the situations Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi created may have had an impact
later on. Or perhaps it is better to say that they were part of a development that led to
a restructuring of the political organization of Mesopotamia. The middle of the sec-
ond millennium BC was a Dark Age in the history of Mesopotamia and when it ended,
ca. 1500 in the north and ca. 1400 in the south, the concept of what a state meant had
changed. The earlier city-states of Babylonia were united under a foreign dynasty—
the Kassites—that had its capital in Babylon and ruled a unified land with twenty-one
provinces, a system of tax collection, and a claim to a defined territory in international
affairs.29 Northern Mesopotamia was under the control of a state called Mittani which
had control over a greater territory than Shamshi-Adad had. It may have had less cohe-
sion than Babylonia with a system of vassalage rather than provinces, but it too was seen
as a single entity in its foreign relations. The processes of competition and absorption
of neighbors that characterized the early second millennium had somehow changed the
ideal of city-state rule to one of territorial rule. Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi were not
the only ones responsible for this change, but their creations were certainly harbingers
for what was to become the norm.
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The ‘Empire’ of the Hephthalites
Josef Wiesehöfer and Robert Rollinger
1 Methodological Preliminaries
“At a later time, the Persian King Perozes became involved in a war concerning boundaries
with the nation of the Ephthalitae Huns, who are called White Huns, gathered an imposing
army, and marched against them. The Ephthalitae are of the stock of the Huns in fact as
well as in name; however, they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us, for they
occupy a land neither adjoining nor even very near to them; but their territory lies imme-
diately to the north of Persia; indeed, their city, called Gorgo, is located over against the
Persian frontier, and is consequently the centre of frequent contests concerning boundary
lines between the two peoples. For they are not nomads like the other Hunnic peoples, but
for a long period have been established in a goodly land. As a result of this they have never
made any incursion into the Roman territory except in company with the Median army.
They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are
not ugly. It is also true that their manner of living is unlike that of their kinsmen, nor do they
live a savage life as they do; but they are ruled by one king, and since they possess a lawful
constitution, they observe right and justice in their dealings both with one another and with
their neighbours, in no degree less than the Romans and the Persians. Moreover, the wealthy
We wholeheartedly thank our friend Michael Alram (Vienna) for valuable hints and him and
Nicholas Sims-Williams (London) for allowing us to use the illustrations that are part of this
contribution.
J. Wiesehöfer (*)
University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany
e-mail: jwiesehoefer@email.uni-kiel.de
R. Rollinger

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9_15
318 J. Wiesehöfer and R. Rollinger
citizens are in the habit of attaching to themselves friends to the number of twenty or more,
as the case may be, and these become permanently their banquet-companions, and have a
share in all their property, enjoying some kind of a common right in this matter. Then, when
the man who has gathered such a company together comes to die, it is the custom that all
these men be borne alive into the tomb with him.” (Procop. i 3.1–7; transl. H.B. Dewing).
It has been stressed repeatedly that the fame and horror of the Hephthalites as mani-
fested in their victories over the Sasanians are “quite disproportionate” to what we actu-
ally know about them.1 And so it is not surprising that, in addition to references in the
work of the Syriac-speaking Christian author Pseudo-Josua Stylites from the 6th cen-
tury AD, it is precisely this just-cited long excerpt from the work of the East Roman
historian Procopius, who wrote around the middle of that same century, that is always
used to provide some basic information about the Hephthalites, their origins, their social
conditions, and their way of life. It is the work of an author, however, who wrote from
over two thousand kilometres to the west of the places where his objects of investigation
were at home. And it is, by the way, also Procopius, to whom, as we have heard, we owe
(in addition to the local testimonies) the name Hephthalites (hephthalitai); Pseudo-Josua
always calls them just “Huns” or “Chionites”, the latter being the Middle Persian render-
ing of Huns.2
The situation is not entirely different when it comes to the historiographical tradition
of Iran: it is as ‘foreign’ as the Roman one, from hostile territory, and, in any case in
the versions passed down to us, separated by centuries from the events of the fifth and
sixth centuries, the time of the heyday of Hephthalite power. Such Islamic or Zoroastrian
texts, written in Arabic, Middle or New Persian, go back to older, contemporary tradi-
tion. However, recent research has shown how multifaceted Late Sasanian ‘historical’
tradition must have been, and how many winding paths must have led from the famous
semi-official “Book of Lords”-tradition of the 6th century to Firdausi’s Shahnameh and
early Abbasid historiography, all with their respective own agendas. It was paths we
know extremely little about.3
Much more decisive for our topic are the Bactrian documents in cursive Bactrian
script, derived from the Greek alphabet, which were found in various markets in north-
ern Pakistan and are now in the Khalili Collection.4 Most of them are written on leather
or parchment, some on cloth or wooden sticks; in terms of content, we may distinguish
letters, legal contracts, economic texts such as sales receipts or tax-lists, and religious
Buddhist texts. Many of them mention their place of composition, most of them come
from the vicinity of the ‘town’ (Bactrian šar) Rob, about 200 kilometres south of Balkh,
1Rezakhani 2017, 125.

2Itshould be mentioned that very often the name Hephthalites is improperly used to designate all
groups which might be called Huns (i.e. Kidarites, Alkhan, Nezak and Hephthalites).
3Cf. Hämeen-Anttila 2018.
4Sims Williams 2000–2012. For their chronology, see Sims-Williams/de Blois 2018.
The ‘Empire’ of the Hephthalites 319
along the route over the Hindu Kush to Bamiyan. They provide insight into the political,
social, economic and religious conditions in this district in the period between the 4th
and 8th century AD, i.e. in Kushano-Sasanian, Hephthalite and Turk times. We will have
to go into them in more detail.
Some of the documents were sealed; these seals allowed to date, or even to geo-
graphically assign, analogous seals and seal imprints, which up until then had appeared
almost exclusively in the commercial art market, without any indication of their origin.5
As regards the pictorial repertoire of these seals from the territories between Bactria and
Gandhara, male ‘portraits’ outweigh other images; sometimes, names and titles or func-
tions of the seal holders are engraved on the seals.
The coins (of the Hephthalites and Sasanians) have also been particularly promi-
nent in modern research on Hephthalite Eastern Iran, contemporary and local
testimonies, whose range of dissemination, typology, iconography and legends are his-
torically particularly significant.6 This assessment is due to the numismatic research of
the last few years, which has succeeded in clarifying the features of the so-called genu-
ine Hephthalite coins, i.e. the coins with the Bactrian letters ηβ (ēb) as the abbreviation
for ēbodalo (“Hephthalite”). This success was achieved not least because the new rul-
ers—for political and ideological as well as economic reasons—not only took over the
Sasanian eastern mints, e.g. Balkh and the mobile Sasanian mint, and their staff, partly
also their dies, but also oriented their own coinages on the Sasanian silver coins and
partly also on the Kushano-Sasanian gold scyphates. In the possession of such approved
means of payment—that we can already state right here—the Hephthalite rulers secured
the loyalty of their warriors, as well as those of the Iranian aristocratic and administrative
elites who had previously made a promise of loyalty to the Sasanians or their vassals in
the East.
The Bactrian documents, the seals, and above all archaeological research have shown
that the Hunnic successors of the Kushan and Kushano-Sasanian masters of Eastern Iran
also ruled from cities; cities remained political, administrative and economic centres, like
in Sasanian-governed Iran. The urban centres of the Hephthalite dominion lay in Eastern
Bactria, its most important residence city probably in southeast Bactria near the ancient
Kushan site of Surkh Kotal.
As far as the rule of the Hephthalites is concerned, the following methodological
problems, caveats and questions arise from what has been said so far: In the first place,
we will hardly be able to present much more than a very general history of Tokharistan
in the Hephthalite period. As a result, it often remains unclear what the extent was of the
rulers’ influence, and how internal and external relations were arranged. In the light of
the dearth of sources, how are we to imagine the Hephthalites, what statements can be
made about their ethnogenesis and about ethnicity as a distinction strategy? Secondly,
5Cf. Lerner/Sims-Williams 2011.

6See, not least, Vondrovec 2014, 397–418; Alram 2016, 97–103. Cf. also Alram/Pfisterer 2010.
the information on the administrative, socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the ter-
ritories controlled by the Hephthalites is not only very limited, but also concentrated on
specific areas and times and can therefore not easily be transferred to other times and
places.
2 A Short History of the Iranian East (Pl. 1)7
Around the middle of the third century AD, the Kushan territories between Bactria
and Gandhara, i.e. the fertile regions north, south, and east of the Hindu Kush, passed
into the hands of the Sasanians. In his famous res gestae on the Ka˓ba-i Zardusht at
Naqsh-i Rustam, published in the 260s, the second Sasanian ruler, Shabuhr I, called
this area “Kushanshahr as far as Peshawar”. A sub-Sasanid dynasty (the so-called
Kushano-Sasanians), based in Balkh, whose coins show Sasanian as well as Kushan tra-
ditions, was keen to control Kushanshahr and the trade routes running through it for the
“Kings of Kings” in Ctesiphon.
7Cf. Vondrovec 2014, 405 f.; Payne 2015; 2016; Alram 2016, 97–99; Rezakhani 2017, passim, not
least pp. 125–146; Rezakhani 2019. For the view of Sasanian-Hephthalite relations in the literary
sources see now also Potts 2018, 292–299.
In the second half of the 4th century, the Sasanians (under their king Shabuhr II, the vic-
tor over the Roman Emperor Julian) lost the northeastern regions of Kushanshahr to pas-
toralist-elitist groups, who put themselves in the tradition of the Xiongnu—we will return
to that—but were known among their contemporaries as “Huns” (Sogdian xwn, Middle
Persian xyōn). The two most significant of these ‘Hunnic’ groups were the Kidarites and
the Alkhan. After the Kidarites had conquered Bactria, the Kabul valley and Gandhara
from about 370 AD onwards, and ShabuhrII had not been able to oust them from their
position, the Alkhan appeared on the scene, conquered the Kabul valley and the areas south
of the Hindu Kush, expelled the Kidarites from Gandhara before the middle of the 5th cen-
tury and pushed forward into the Punjab and Kashmir. In the first half of the 6th century,
the centre of their empire was in Gandhara, and they shared the Kabul valley with another
Hunnic group, the Nezak. Roman and Chinese sources, on the other hand, confirm that the
Kidarites still controlled Bactria and Sogdia between 420 and about 470 AD.
However, shortly after Balkh had been lost to the Sasanids in 467, a third Hunnic
group, our Hephthalites, replaced the Kidarites in Bactria and Sogdia. They captured
Balkh in 474 from the Sasanians, and, in 484, inflicted another devastating defeat on the
Sasanian shahanshah Peroz, who even met his death in battle. Until 509, Sogdia became
part of their dominion, and until the arrival of the Western Turks around the year 560, the
Hephthalites could extend their territories even into the Tarim Basin. The victory of 484
gave the Hephthalites decade-long influence on the internal affairs of Iran. This is illus-
trated, apart from the tributes paid by the Sasanians, by the political and military assistance
the Huns gave to Peroz’ son Kawad, who had lived with them as a hostage. With their help,
the Sasanian prince was twice able to enter the throne of Iran (against his two rivals, his
uncle Walash in 488 and, later (in 499), against his brother Jamasp and their respective sup-
porters). Overall, the Hephthalites could, in the first two decades of the 6th century, win a
weighty part of the nobility in Iran over to a pro-Hephthalite and a nti-Roman policy, and
this situation did only change in the late 520s, during a throne-crisis and Khusro I’s election
as heir to the throne. It was not least the Hephthalite successes in the years between 470
and 560 that made scholars call their time the “epoch of the Imperial Hephthalites”.8
Most scholars do agree that after 560/561 AD, after the severe defeat of the
Hephthalites against a Sasanid-Western Turk coalition, Bactria once again became
Sasanian territory and smaller semi-autonomous Hephthalite ‘principalities’ survived
under Sasanian and Western Turk rule.
3 Characteristics of Hephthalite Rule
The empire of the Hephthalites is peculiar in many respects. Its duration of about
80 years between 474 (conquest of Balkh) and 550 (emergence of the Turk khaganate)
barely justifies its assessment as a short-term empire. However, this time span is already
8Grenet 2002, 209.

at the upper limit to meet the definition criteria according to the contributions in this
volume, i.e. not to exist longer than three generations. The Hephthalite empire has not
enjoyed a major reception after its downfall and has not been a point of reference for
later empires. However, it was not only part of an imperial tradition from the very begin-
ning but also arose in an epoch of major change and transformation that would have as
such a huge impact on the history of Eurasia for centuries to come.
The Hephthalites, or better their state-forming elites, shared and promulgated a tradi-
tion that tied in with the awe-inspiring name of the Xiongnu and their imperial founda-
tion in the distant past. Therefore, they referred to themselves as “Huns” (Sogdian xwn),
a strategy of self-representation they had in common with the Kidarites and Alkhan in
Central Asia and with Attila’s Huns in the west. This reference is not necessarily a sign
of strength since the state-forming elites and their followers had been forced to leave
their homesteads in the northern frontier zones of China seeking their fortunes in the
west. It is much more a sign of self-assurance, and since there were competing groups,
all of them referring to the Xiongnu by an act of highlighting their legitimate claim
to rule over larger formations of people, strategies of demarcation towards each other
became inevitable. This became even more important when such a rule did not only
include populations of ‘eastern’ origin but also groups of people with age-old traditions
of their own. These people, linguistically mainly of Indo-Iranian origin, populated the
fertile zones of Sogdiana, Bactria, Kabulistan, Gandhara, and Punjab. They had been part
of other imperial traditions, those of a Sasanian, Kushano-Sasanian and Indian kind, with
a different language of power and different ways of political communication. Rather than
qualifying these people as ‘sedentary’ and the core-elite of the Hephthalites as ‘nomads’
it is more appropriate to describe the emerging empire of the Hephthalites (as well as the
empires of the Kidarites and the Alkhan) as one of the first imperial state formations of
Eurasia. Here, western and eastern traditions merged in a larger process of transforma-
tion that developed new forms of empire with new forms of self-representations. Richard
Payne has appropriately characterized this process as “general narrowing of imperial
horizons in Late Antiquity”.9 There can be no doubt that the empire of the Hephthalites
was part of a major process of upheavals and transitions that affected entire Central Asia.
This process was responsible for the rise and decline of the empire, and it did not come
to an end with the establishment of the Turk khaganate in the period immediately after.
The Hephthalites overthrew the Kidarites as they were themselves smashed by a
superior coalition of Sasanians and Turks. Although this was a time of political turbu-
lence and never-ending military engagements the emergence of the Hephthalite empire
is not connected with a charismatic leader whose ascent is celebrated in a master nar-
rative. This might be simply due to a lack of sources since we are generally not very
well informed about the political developments leading to the rise and fall of this
empire. However, the information we have is sufficient to qualify the dominion of the
Hephthalites as an empire as well as a short-term one.
9Payne 2016, 5.
The Hephthalites’ imperial agenda is recognizable in their strategies of legitima-

tion that exhibit ‘eastern’ as well as ‘western’ elements. Eastern is the reference to
the Xiongnu, western is the taking over of Iranian institutions such as the royal resi-
dence and itinerant kingship and the adaption and appropriation of the mints and coin-
age of the Sasanian court with its focus on the ruler’s portrait and the crown; with all
of that, they left no doubt that they did not understand themselves as the successors
of the sub-Sasanian Kushano-Sasanians, but as rivals of the Sasanians themselves.
On the funerary couch of a Sogdian merchant from China, dating from 579 AD,10 the
Hephthalite ruler appears with a winged crown, which corresponds to the third crown
of the Sasanian king Peroz; and numismatists have confirmed this imitation with the
help of the Hephthalites’ main coin-type that closely copies Perozian drachms with the
king wearing exactly that crown (pl. 2). Thereby, the Hephthalites were competing with
and challenging Sasanian rule by developing their own strategies of imperial self-repre-
sentation. Since Sasanian silver drachms were not only a symbol of empire but also an
incentive to participate, economically and ideologically, in a network of transregionally
orientated elites the adaption of this coinage by the Hephthalites was as practical as it
was meaningful. This claim for an imperial position between China, Iran and India was,
however, not only expressed on the level of coinage and symbolism.
The Hephthalites were inspired by many Iranian models, not least certainly for the sake
of securing the loyalty of their Bactrian subjects. However, at the same time, they placed
great emphasis on stressing their Hunnic peculiarity, for example in the form of new por-
traits with pastoralist symbols of majesty on their coins (such as the caftan or the goblet)
or by the construction of specific kurgan-like burial grounds in Bactria. Such an effort
10For this famous “limestone couch of An Qie (Jia)” from the northern suburbs of Xi´an see Cheng
2010, 86, 88 fig. 6 f., 114 fig. 20; https://sogdians.si.edu/an-qies-funerary-bed/ (May 2020); cf.
also Huber 2020, 129 f.
for distinction, however, is not to be equated with social division: the onomastics of our
Bactrian documents testify to a close co-operation between Hunnic and local groups, as
well as to marriage alliances. On the other hand, the non-Iranian elites set themselves apart
as decisively Hephthalite from the other Hunnic dynasties or aristocracies (cf. the legends
ēb, ēbo = ēbodal on the coins). And they probably also developed over the course of time,
although there is no explicit mention of it in the sources, ideas of a great Hephthalite past
and common ancestors and forefathers. The Western testimonies reveal such double efforts
when they, on the one hand, call the Kidarites and the Hephthalites Huns, but on the other
hand, also know the self-designations of the immigrants which appear on coins and seals.
The Sasanians were well aware of the Hephthalite challenge. For this reason, Peroz
(457–484 AD) campaigned against his new neighbours in the east. This, however, ended
in disaster. The Sasanian army was considerably defeated and the shahanshah had to rec-
ognize Hephthalite overlordship. This ‘submission’ was mainly expressed on a symbolic
level. However, it is important to highlight that the Hephthalites were well aware of the
standards concerning the international language of power and the appropriate rituals that
communicated their superiority over the Sasanians. Peroz had to pay tribute, which was
not substantial in scope, but nevertheless left no doubt about the fact of dependence.11
Moreover, his son Kawad was sent as a hostage to the Hephthalite court. Although mod-
ern scholarship made evident that, on a practical level, this was not a very successful
strategy to enforce a policy of claimed superiority,12 it was a very meaningful declaration
of Hephthalite supremacy. Apparently, this was an unbearable situation for the Sasanians
on the long run. Yet, Peroz’ second campaign ended in a catastrophe with the Sasanian
king dying on the battlefield. Thus, at the turn of the 5th to the 6th century, the shahan-
shas had become Hephthalite client-kings.13
For several decades, according to Western historiographical sources, Hephthalite
influence became apparent in the Sasanian Empire at court (under Kawad, who owed
the throne to his neighbours in the east), and—not least to avert the “strategic dilemma”
of a war on two fronts14—in foreign affairs supporters of a pro-Hephthalite direction
argued with those of a pro-Roman one.15 However, the decisive proof that the Sasanians
perceived the Hephthalites as powerful neighbours with their own foreign policy and
11If we were to believe Pseudo-Josua Stylites (10 f.), one of the war contributions after the
Sasanian defeat of 474 was the payment of thirty mule packs of silver drachms (i.e. 4500 kg), that
is, in view of this rather small sum, the recognition of the tributary dependency of Iran. It was thus
mainly the symbolic character of the payment that was important: in the eyes of the—not least
Iranian—subjects and for the neighbours, the Hephthalites’ legitimacy and sovereignty, and even
their superiority over the Sasanians, had thus been demonstrated.
12Nabel 2017.
13Howard-Johnston 2017, 293.
14Howard-Johnston 2010.
15Börm 2007, 311–325.

military agenda is Khusro I’s campaign of extermination against them, coordinated with
the Turks. His success may have been the inspiration for his grandson’s attempt to get rid
of his dangerous Eastern Roman neighbour in the West a few decades later, instead of
responding to the generous peace offer of the Senate in Constantinople.
“… which [I] paid for the … and ten dirhams. And I gave to the temple every year in settle-
ment of the … for the dead and for the de[parted], (the amount) which my brother spent(?),
thirty-six dirhams (as) a … for what (my) brother spent(?). Then every month (I) gave five
dirhams (as) a subsistence allowance for the Hephthalites and for the Persians. [And] I both
handed over(?) the city and paid to the …, when Gawan the scribe tethered cows [in] the
city, … dirhams for Red-far of the fortress guard. And I paid, for …-bid the chief of the for-
tress guard and for Khwade-spad the member of a company of ten, to the Hephthalites for
the dead and for the departed twelve dirhams in settlement of the … And I gave for (Verso)
linen (cloth as) the … for the temple every year ten dirhams. And when the governor of the
city drank wine, then I [again] paid two dirhams. And I gave to the … and to [the] scripto-
rium two dirhams. And I gave, when … drank wine here in the city, six dinars. And I [gave],
(as) an offering and (mark of) ho[nour] for Wirishtmish the lord, two dinars, and [the] lord
… And I [gave towards] the Hephthalite levy, for the vessels of earthenware(?) [and for]
those of silver, and for the offerings, and for fod[der] [for] the sheep, six dinars. And a horse
belonging to the Hephthalites died [in] the city: then I paid five dirhams. And [I gave] two
dinars to the … And I gave [every] month, for the Hephthalite lord or the king, for the …”
(Document al, Sims-Williams 2000, 162 f.)
However, it is not only imperial self-representation and an acknowledged power politics

that clearly characterize the polity of the Hephthalites as an empire. The famous Bactrian
archive of about 150 letters, contracts, and receipts,16 offers considerable insights also in
the internal agendas of the Hephthalites. The texts exhibit a multicultural and multilin-
gual state with elites of Iranian, Turk and Hun origin operating as main actors. We face a
mixed Iranian and Turkic terminology for various offices and titles, high engagement in
agricultural production and a consequent policy of taxation that does not only follow tra-
ditional concepts but also testifies to Hephthalite inventiveness to exploit new resources.
The Bactrian documents from the region of Rob have shown that the administration,
which had been working in this area in the Kushano-Sasanian period, continued to exist
under the Hephthalites. But, e.g., the yabghu of Hephthal (ηβοδαλο ιαβγο) and ruler
(khar) of Rob (ρωβοχαρο), a ruler who was subordinate to the Hephthalites (Doc. jb),
the kadagbid (καδαγοβιδο), a high functionary and mediator between the regional aris-
tocracy (the so-called “free”) and the court in Balkh (Doc. F, Y), the satrap (Doc. V, J
[pl. 3]), the governor of the city, the chief of the fortress guard, or other functionaries or
nobles (Doc. al), were now no longer loyal to the Kushano-Sasanian, and thus ultimately
to the Sasanian, but rather to the Hephthalite king (*xšāwā [ϸαυο]). The functionaries’
main task was the levying of taxes on the one hand, and the conscription of aristocratic
cavalry on the other. For the year 260 of an era, which was customary in Bactria and
16See above.
probably started in 223 AD, i.e. for 482/483, a year before the devastating defeat of
Peroz, the so-called “Hephthalite (Poll) Tax” (ēbodal tōg) is documented in our Bactrian
texts for the first time (Doc. I, J). We do, however, not know whether it was a Hephthalite
creation or was modelled after a Sasanian precursor. The quoted text refers to additional
charges in the form of silver drachms and gold dinars, which had to be paid on the most
varied occasions (Doc. al). In sum, there is an obvious continuity of institutions and
practices but also Hephthalite reconfigurations where the ēbodal tōg, the “Hephthalite
poll tax” played a considerable role. As Richard Payne put it: “The post-Iranian polities
rested on fiscal foundations no less robust than those the Iranian Empire had enjoyed,
and the imperial administrative apparatus was adapted to the distinct demands and
requirements of the Huns and the Turks”.17 The question as to whether the tax pressure
on the Bactrian elites, of which the Bactrian documents provide information, could have
been one of the causes for the end of the Hephthalite rule or the success of Sasanians and
Turks, cannot yet be answered in view of the lack of sources.
17Payne 2016, 14.

Cities remained nodal points of communication and administration, taxation and

minting, self-representation and political performance. The Hephthalites may even have
founded a new residence in Eastern Bactria which might explain that some of the urban
centres in northern Bactria experienced a contraction from the fourth to the seventh cen-
tury AD. In any case, the Hephthalites, as well as the Kidarites and Alkhan, presented
themselves as legitimate successors to Iran thus establishing an imperial language of
self-awareness that was later adapted by the Turk khaganate.
In the so-called Iranian National History, the threefold division of the world into Iran
and the powerful and usually hostile neighbours in the West and in the East had prob-
ably already been extant in the pre-Sasanian period. In its written versions, which came
into being only in the late Sasanian period, the eastern enemies of the Iranian dynasty
of the Kayanids, the heirs of prince Eraj, are the Turanians, the descendants of Tur,
the brother and murderer of Eraj. The battles between the heroes and kings of Iran and
Turan are said to reflect, on the one hand, the conflicts between the ‘sedentary’ societies
of Iran and the ‘nomadic-pastoralist’ groups, which often threatened Iran, sometimes in
co-operation with the other arch-enemy, Rum, in the West. On the other hand, however,
the biography of the most famous hero of Iran, Rostam, shows that a simple friend-foe
mindset, a simple good-evil contrast between Iran and Turan obscures many important
aspects of that West-Eastern relationship: Rostam himself is the offspring of a marriage
alliance between an Iranian hero and the daughter of an idol-worshipping king of Kabul,
and his son Sokhrab, whom the father will kill in single combat in ignorance of his son’s
identity, comes from the union with the daughter of the king of Samangan, the border
country between Iran and Turan, and was raised by Afrasiyab, the Turanian arch-enemy.
Again and again, attempts have been made to link figures or events of the myth with
historical facts, Afrasiyab, for example, with one of the historical Hephthalite or Turk
kings; and to this day, such myths are used by nationalist historians to transport—in
the worst case—stereotypes, prejudices, and negative images of foreigners and to plant
them firmly in the minds of people.
4 Conclusion
Research on the domination of the Hephthalites over Eastern Iran has for a long time
been affected by the lack of sources and the methodological problems mentioned before.
On the other hand, however, the horror vacui has prevailed. In order to be able to write
a well-readable account of Hephthalite rule over Tokharistan, many scholars have will-
ingly relied on the foreign East-Roman and the very late Arabic or New Persian tradi-
tion, often ignoring the problems arising from such an approach. It was only the quite
recent work of, e.g., Nicholas Sims-Williams, Michael Alram, Klaus Vondrovec, Richard
Payne, Khodadad Rezakhani and others, which made a decisive impact on research
on Hunnic Eastern Iran. It gave the local and contemporary testimonies (parchments,
seals, coins, archaeological material, etc.) the attention they deserve, and it kept, in case
of doubt, to a non liquet where our local sources fail to inform us. However, what we
can state for certain is that the crucial points of Hephthalite success, ascent and fail-
ure appear to be related to the overall political circumstances. The Hephthalite empire
emerged in a time of political transformations that became relevant for Central Asia as a
whole. This was also an era of new and dynamic forms of self-definition and demarca-
tion, an era in which the Hephthalites were an important actor, but only for a short period
of time.
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Index
A Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, 106

Aachen, 48 Aleppo, 92, 310, 311
ʿAbbās III, 216 Alexander the Great, 7, 15–18, 134, 140–143,
Abbasid Empire, 155, 156, 160 228, 267
Abbasids, 98 Alexios, 107
Abd al-Latif, 97 Alexios IV Angelos, 114
Abdu’l Qasim Babur, 97, 98 Alkhan, 321, 322, 327
Abetz, Otto, 294 Almus, 80
Abi-ešuḫ, 181 Alps, 233, 237, 238, 241
Abivard, 215, 216 Alram, Michael, 317, 327
Abu Sa’id, 98 Alsace-Lorraine, 264
Abu’l Khayr, 94, 98 Altai, 88
Achaemenid Empire, 18, 191 Altvater, Elmar, 31, 32
Achaia, 109, 110, 118 Amalaberga, 248
Achyraus, 109 Amalafrida, 248, 257
Adorno, Theodor, 276 Amalaswintha, 257
Adramyttion, 109 Amaseia, 146
Adrianople, 113 Amastris, 136
Adriatic Sea, 112 Ambrose, 63
Afghan Mountains, 158 Ameling, Walter, 228
Afghanistan, 32, 156, 157 Amilzuri, 79
Afrasiyab, 327 Amir Husayn Qara’unas, 89
Africa, 31, 32, 229, 234, 250 Amiranshah, 94, 98
Agesilaos II, 140 Ammianus Marcellinus, 59, 61–63, 66
Ahmad Jalayir, 92 Amsterdam, 44
Ahmad Yasawi, 96 Anastasius II, 255
Akatziri, 65, 66, 69, 71, 74, 75, 83 Anatolia, 87, 91–93, 99, 100, 132, 196–201,
Akkad, 167, 168, 170, 178, 185, 308 203, 204
Alamanni, 63, 69, 74 Andariq, 310
Alamanns, 247 Andijan, 91
Alans, 61–63, 68, 69, 75, 77 Anglo-Saxons, 65
Alaric, 63 Angold, Michael, 114
Alaric II, 248 Anhalt, 271
Albania, 37 Ankara, 92

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29435-9
332 Index
Anshan, 12 B
Antigonos Monophthalmos, 135 Baal-Melqart, 237, 240
Antioch, 108 Baba Jan Tepe, 194, 200
Antiochos VII Grypos, 139 Babur, 87, 99
Antiochus III, 135, 234 Babur Mirza, 87
Antonescu, Ion, 293 Babylon, 4, 168–170, 172–176, 178, 185, 198,
Apamea, 234 202, 310, 311, 314, 315
Appian, 132, 145, 232 Babylonia, 173, 175, 189, 308–310, 312–315
Aqqoyunlu, 91–93, 98, 100 Bactria, 319–323, 325, 327
Aquitaine, 66 Bad Godesberg, 283
Aral Sea, 64 Bad Wiessee, 275
Aras, 217 Baden, 267
Arcadiopolis, 80 Bāġāvard, 217, 218
Ardennes Forest, 290 Baghdad, 88, 91, 157, 216
Arderic, 77–79 Baku, 300
Ariarathes VI, 135 Baldwin I, 108, 110, 113–116
Ariarathes VII of Kappadokia, 139 Baldwin II, 113, 115
Aristonikos, 135 Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, 108
Arius, 250 Balkans, 57, 80, 84, 113, 246, 293
Armenia, 136, 138, 139, 217 Balkh, 318–321, 325
Arsacid Empire, 139, 148 Bamiyan, 319
Artabazos, 134, 135 Barquq, 92
Artaxerxes III, 18 Barroso, José Manuel, 30
Asia, 13, 28, 32, 135, 137, 138, 140, 143, 145 Barth, Fredrik, 70, 76
Asia Minor, 108, 109, 113, 118, 130, 136, 139, Bavaria, 267, 271
140, 143, 147, 148, 195 Beck, Ludwig, 282
Assur, 4, 195, 311, 312, 314 Beck, Ulrich, 35
Aššur, 170, 172, 174 Belarus, 290, 298
Assyria, 171, 173, 174, 177, 189, 196, 308 Belgium, 264, 298
Assyrian Empire, 190, 195, 199 Belgrade, 298
Astarabad, 98 Bełżec, 296
Astyages, 190, 196, 199–202 Benelux countries, 26, 44
Atakam, 84 Beneš, Edvard, 283
Athanaric, 257 Benn, Gottfried, 276
Athens, 109, 139, 140 Berichus, 70
Attalos III of Pergamon, 133 Berlin, 42, 271, 278, 280, 281, 283, 284,
Attila, 4, 8, 9, 12, 57–61, 64–75, 77–84, 257, 288–293, 298, 301
322 Bessarabia, 288
Audefleda, 248 Best, Werner, 290
Auschwitz, 296 Bieling, Hans-Jürgen, 23
Auschwitz-Birkenau, 296 Bigelis, 79
Australia, 47 Birecik, 197
Austria, 27, 46, 222, 263, 265, 268, 269, 276, Bisitun, 196
280, 281, 286, 297, 301 Bismarck, Otto von, 273, 276
Avars, 68, 83, 84 Bithynia, 109, 131, 136–139, 145, 148, 234
Azarbaijan, 90–92, 94, 97, 100 Bizye, 80
Azerbaijan, 217 Black Sea, 40, 57, 62, 118, 132, 136–138, 140,
288, 301
Index 333
Blankenheim, 245 Carniola, 264

Blaskowitz, Johannes, 289 Carpathian Mountains, 59, 61, 63, 64, 67, 68,
Bleda, 61, 64, 70, 73 72, 83
Blomberg, Werner von, 271, 275, 279, 280 Carthage, 227–235, 237–240
Bodonitsa, 109 Carthago Nova, 233, 236
Boethius, 256, 258 Caspian Sea, 64, 196, 203, 204
Bohemia, 263, 281, 284, 286, 297, 298, 301 Cassiodorus, 58, 253–255
Boisci, 79 Cassius Dio, 233
Boniface of Montferrat, 108–110 Castorius, 256
Bonn, 42 Castra Martis, 79
Bonn, Moritz Julius, 276 Catalaunian fields, 68
Borsippa, 310 Caucasus, 63, 66, 90, 217, 294, 296–298, 302
Bosnia, 37 Cemandri, 79
Bosporus, 115 Central Asia, 88, 91, 99, 202, 216, 322,
Bosworth, Albert B., 134 328
Boxārā, 217, 220 Chaghadai, 88, 95
Brasidas, 140 Chamberlain, Neville, 274, 282, 283, 285, 286
Bratislava, 285 Charlemagne, 37, 257
Braudel, Fernand, 18 Charles V, 33
Braunau am Inn, 264, 281 Charpin, Dominique, 168
Braunschweig, 266 Chełmno, 296
Bremen, 278 Chersonesos, 136, 140
Brenner Pass, 31 China, 28, 38, 88, 91, 93, 302, 322, 323
Breslau, 278 Chinggis Khan, 87–90, 95, 96, 99
Bretagne, 301 Chogha Gavaneh, 201
Briant, Pierre, 18 Christ, Karl, 235
Britain, 268 Churchill, Winston, 269, 290, 292, 295
Brüning, Heinrich, 270, 271 Chusros I, 325
Brussels, 27, 30, 34, 40, 42, 48 Ciano, Galeazzo Conte, 285
Buchenwald, 291 Claudian, 63
Bug, 289, 290 Cleitus the Black, 17
Bukhara, 89 Clovis, 78, 248
Bukovina, 288 Cologne, 197, 271, 278
Bulgaria, 12, 25–27, 268, 270, 279, 292, 293 Compiègne, 265
Bulgars, 12, 78 Constantine the Great, 253, 254
Burgundians, 252 Constantine Tornikes, 112
Bush, George H. W., 45 Constantine VII Porphyryogenitus, 58, 68
Būyids, 157, 159, 160 Constantinople, 4, 5, 7–11, 57, 58, 66, 73, 81,
Byzantine Empire, 107, 108 104–106, 108, 110–120, 247, 254, 298,
Byzantion, 142 325
Byzantium, 107, 108, 111, 112, 115 Constantius II, 254
Cooper, Robert, 30
Copenhagen, 24
C Cornelius Nepos, 232
Čālderān, 222 Corsica, 230
Callataÿ, François de, 147 Crete, 105, 109, 301
Canada, 47 Crimea, 87, 89, 136, 138, 140, 148, 294, 298
Cannae, 238 Cripps, Stafford, 287
Carinthia, 264 Croatia, 25, 27, 292
334 Index
Crone, Patricia, 163 Draghi, Mario, 33, 43

Ctesias, 198, 199 Dunkirk, 290, 301
Ctesiphon, 320
Cyaxares, 5, 6, 195
Cyprus, 27 E
Cyrus the Great, 17, 143, 144, 190, 196–200, Eastern Roman Empire, 57, 63
202, 204 Ebro, 233
Czech Republic, 27, 40 Edeco, 70, 78, 79, 81
Czechoslovakia, 268, 274, 278, 280–284, 297, Eden, Anthony, 280
301 Edessa, 108
Egypt, 297
Ehulhul, 196
D Eichmann, Adolf, 284
Dachau, 275, 282, 291 Eicke, Theodor, 291
Dacia, 80 Einstein, Albert, 276
Dadusha, 311 Ekallatum, 311, 312, 314
Daghestan, 218, 220 Ekbatana, 196, 198, 201, 202
Daladier, Édouard, 269, 283 El Alamein, 297, 302
Dalmatia, 82 Elam, 173, 200, 201, 204, 310, 311
Damascus, 92 Ellipi, 204
Dandānqān, 157, 162 Emnetzur, 80
Dandolo, Enrico, 108 Empire of Nicaea, 108, 109, 117
Danube, 59, 62–64, 67, 69, 72, 78 Engels, David, 143
Danzig, 264, 281, 287 England, 281
Dareios I, 134, 135, 143 Ennodius, 252, 253
Darius I, 7, 196, 198 Epirus, 108, 113, 119
Darre Gaz, 215, 216 Eraj, 327
David, Jacques-Louis, 238 Erbil, 197
Davies, N., 120 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 12, 45
Deák, István, 299 Ermenaric, 62, 63
Deioces, 189 Esarhaddon, 192
Deist, Wilhelm, 272 Eṣfahān, 216, 224
Delarue, Jacques, 268 Eshnunna, 310, 311
Delhi, 87, 91, 93–95, 217, 220 Ešnunna, 173
Delors, Jacques, 5, 24, 46 Essen, 280
Delos, 136, 139 Estonia, 27, 270, 288
Demandt, Alexander, 1 Ethiopia, 278
Demetrios Tornikes, 112 Etienne de Perche, 109
Dengizich, 57, 73–75, 78 Euboea, 105
Denmark, 27, 264, 292, 298 Eupen-Malmedy, 264
Didymoteichon, 113 Euphrates, 197, 307, 311, 313
Dietrich of Bern, 257 Eurasia, 322
Diodorus, 235 Europe, 25–27, 29–31, 35–38, 40–42, 44, 45,
Dionysios I of Syracuse, 140 49, 60, 61, 84, 108, 109, 119, 267–270,
Dionysos, 140, 149 277, 278, 283, 286, 287, 292, 297, 299,
Dniester, 63 301
Dollfuß, Engelbert, 269, 275 European Union, 5, 12, 23–26,
Don, 62 34–41
Doyle, Michael, 27 Eutharic, 256, 257
Index 335
F Germany, 26, 28, 29, 41–43, 46, 267–280,

Faraj, 92 282–290, 292, 293, 297–299, 302
Fars, 91 Gesalech, 252
Fatimids, 158 Ghazna, 156, 158–160, 162
Faustus Niger, 256 Ghaznavid Empire, 156, 163
Ferghana, 100 Ghaznavids, 12, 155–163
Ferguson, Niall, 1, 23 Ghurids, 158
Finland, 12, 27, 288, 292, 293 Gibraltar, 230
Firdausi, 318 Gilān, 216
Firdawsi, 159 Girsu, 173
Flavius Aetius, 73 Globocnik, Odilo, 296
Flavius Valens, 62 Godin Tepe, 194, 200
Florus, 132 Goebbels, Joseph, 271, 273, 275, 276, 278,
Flossenbürg, 291 284, 286, 294, 296, 297, 302
France, 26, 28, 29, 33, 37, 42, 44, 114, 119, Gömbös, Gyula, 269
264, 268, 272, 274–276, 278, 280, 281, Gorbachev, Michael, 39
286–290, 292, 294, 297–299, 301 Gorgo, 317
Frank, Hans, 282 Göring, Hermann, 266, 269–272, 278, 279,
Frank, Karl Hermann, 282 281, 291, 297, 298, 300, 302
Frankfurt, 27, 34, 278 Goths, 63, 67, 69, 71–75, 77, 78, 81–83, 248
Franks, 65, 67, 69, 75, 78 Grande, Edgar, 35
Frederick II of Prussia, 222–224 Great Hungarian Plain, 57, 59, 61, 64, 67, 68,
Frederick the Great, 13, 276 78, 83
Frick, Wilhelm, 271 Greece, 27, 43, 46, 105, 109, 113, 117, 119,
Fritsch, Werner von, 279, 280 120, 130, 136, 137, 139, 140, 148, 240,
Funk, Walter, 297 264, 269, 271, 299, 301
Furtwängler, Wilhelm, 276 Greuthungi, 62, 63, 72
Grozny, 299, 302
Gründgens, Gustav, 276
G Gūnespān-e Pātappeh, 194, 200
Gades, 230–232, 236
Galatia, 136
Gandhara, 319–322 H
Ganje, 217 Haber, Fritz, 276
Gatsby, Jay, 224 Habicht, Christian, 139
Gaul, 84 Hácha, Emil, 285
Gaulle, Charles de, 29 Hadrian, 253
Gaziantep, 197 Hadrianople, 59
Gdańsk, 281, 287 Hagmatana, 196
Gehler, Michael, 228, 229, 241, 245 Haj Khan Tappeh, 194, 200
Geneva, 274 Halder, Franz, 290, 294
Genghis Khan, 7 Halys, 136, 198, 199
Genoa, 113 Hamadan, 195, 196, 198, 201, 202
Geoffrey de Champlitte, 109 Hamburg, 271, 278
Geoffrey de Villehardouin, 106, 109 Hamilcar, 228, 231–233, 235–237, 239, 240
George Akropolites, 107 Hammurabi, 4, 6, 13, 169–171, 173, 174, 178,
Georgia, 217 185, 308–315
Gepids, 67, 69, 71, 75, 77, 78, 246, 252 Hannibal, 4, 6, 8, 12, 129, 130, 228, 230–241
German Reich, 263, 264, 285 Hannover, 278
336 Index
Harran, 195 Husayn Bayqara, 98, 99, 101

Hasdrubal, 228, 232, 233, 235–237, 239–241 Huß, Werner, 231, 235
Hassell, Ulrich von, 300 Hydaspes, 134
Hauptmann, Gerhart, 276 Hystaspes, 134
Heeren, Ludwig, 239
Heidegger, Martin, 276
Helianax, 139 I
Heller, Hermann, 276 Ibal-pi-El, 173
Hendrickx, Benjamin, 105 Ibn Khaldun, 100
Henlein, Konrad, 282 Ibrahim, 158
Henry de Hainaut, 109, 110 Ilkhanate, 88
Henry I, 111, 113–116, 119 Imperium Romanum, 33, 34, 36, 254
Henry of Valenciennes, 106 India, 91, 92, 99, 156–159, 162, 216, 293, 323
Hephthalites, 4, 5, 12, 317–325, 327, 328 Innocent III, 116, 117
Herat, 89, 94, 97–99 Ionia, 140
Hercules, 240 Iran, 88–91, 94, 96–101, 155–159, 161, 163,
Herminafried, 248 195, 196, 201, 202, 215, 310, 311, 318,
Hernac, 57, 78, 80 319, 321, 323, 324, 327
Herodotos, 141, 144, 189, 198, 199 Iraq, 32, 88, 157, 163, 307
Heruli, 69, 75, 77, 78, 81 Ireland, 12, 27
Herzegovina, 37 Isaakios II, 107
Heydrich, Reinhard, 284, 293, 295, 296, 301 Isfahan, 97
Hilderic, 257 Ishme-Dagan, 314
Himmler, Heinrich, 284, 289, 291, 296, 298, Isin, 309
301, 302 Isin II, 201
Hims, 92 Išme-Dagan, 174
Hindenburg, Oskar von, 271 Issyk Kul, 93, 94
Hindenburg, Paul von, 263, 269, 271, 273, 275 Ištumegu, 196, 200, 201
Hindu Kush, 319–321 Italy, 12, 26, 46, 79–82, 84, 119, 233, 238, 240,
Hispania, 230 241, 246–252, 255, 257, 258, 266, 269,
Hitler, Adolf, 4, 6–8, 11, 263–267, 269–302 274–276, 280, 286, 292, 293, 297
Hittites, 174, 175 Itimari, 79
Holland, 267 Iustinus, 231
Holy Roman Empire, 24, 30, 33, 37, 115 Izmir, 95
Horkheimer, Max, 276
Hormidac, 79
Horthy, Miklós, 269, 282 J
Hoyer, Werner, 33 Jacoby, David, 105, 119
Hoyos, Dexter, 236 Jacques de d’Avesnes, 109
Hubuškia, 204 Jahangir, 94
Huelva, 231 Jahanshah, 98
Hugh of Saint-Pol, 108 Jalayir, 92
Hülegü, 88 Jamasp, 321
Hungary, 12, 27, 40, 268, 269, 271, 279, 282, Jannings, Emil, 276
283, 292, 297 Japan, 28, 47, 274, 292, 293, 295, 301, 302
Hunnic Empire, 57, 59, 60, 65, 67, 70, 71, Jaxartes, 93, 96
73–79, 81, 82 Jeanne d’ Arc, 6
Huns, 57–68, 71–79, 81, 83, 84, 317, 318, 321, Jerusalem, 108
322, 324 Jochi, 88, 90
Index 337
Jodl, Alfred, 293 Klokotnitsa, 113

John III Vatatzes, 113 Kohl, Helmut, 5
John of Brienne, 113 Kolchis, 136, 138
Jordanes, 58, 69, 72, 74, 77–79 Kordān, 218
Julius Caesar, 138, 192 Korea, 221
Juncker, Jean-Claude, 33, 46 Kozielsk, 289
Justinian, 12, 246, 249, 250, 258 Krauß, Werner, 276
Kühnhardt, Ludger, 25, 34
Kunersdorf, 222
K Kurigalzu, 181
Ka˓ba-i Zardusht, 320 Kushan, 319, 320
Kabeira, 146 Kushanshahr, 320, 321
Kabul, 87, 91, 94, 327
Kabul valley, 321
Kabulistan, 322 L
Kadašman-Enlil, 181 Lactantius, 134
Kadašman-Harbe I, 183, 185 Lake Urmia, 193, 200
Kahr, Gustav von, 266 Lammers, Hans-Heinrich, 290
Kalojan, 113 Lampedusa, 46
Kantorowicz, Ernst, 276 Lancel, Serge, 236
Kappadokia, 135–137, 145 Landsberg, 267
Karnāl, 217 Laodike, 135, 136
Kars, 217, 218 Laqueur, Walter, 25
Kashghar, 91, 94, 100 Larsa, 173, 310–314
Kashmir, 321 Latvia, 27, 288
Kassites, 175, 201, 315 Laurentius, 255
Katyń, 289 Lederer, Emil, 276
Kawad, 321, 324 Leipzig, 278
Kayanids, 327 Leningrad, 294
Kazakhstan, 202 Leonhardt, Holm A., 25
Keitel, Wilhelm, 280, 282, 290 Leuke Akre, 232, 236
Kelsen, Hans, 276 Libya, 232
Kemal, Mustafa, 269 Licinius Murena, 137
Kennedy, Paul, 1 Lindner, Rudi, 61, 67, 68
Kerkenes Dağı, 195 Linz, 281
Kerman, 97, 161 Lisbon, 27, 35–38, 41, 47
Kershaw, Ian, 6, 264, 265, 281, 290, 292, 293 Lithuania, 27, 276, 289
Khanna, Parag, 30 Litvinov, Maksim M., 287, 288
Khorasan, 89–91, 94, 97–99, 156, 157, 160, Livy, 232, 240
161, 201, 216, 218, 220 Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd, 191
Khorezm, 89, 90, 94, 100 Locarno, 276, 278
Khusro I, 321 Lombards, 69
Kidarites, 321, 322, 324, 327 London, 278, 280, 291, 292, 317
Kiev, 298 Lopadion, 109
Kim, H. J., 60, 61, 63–66, 78–80, 82 Loth, Wilfried, 34
Kimiata, 135 Louis de Blois, 108, 113
Kirt, Romain, 34 Louis IX the Saint, 118
Kish, 310 Lubbe, Marius von der, 272
Klemperer, Otto, 276 Lübeck, 278
338 Index
Lucullus, 133, 137 McGing, Brian C., 147

Ludendorff, Erich, 266 Mecklenburg, 267
Lueger, Karl, 265 Medes, 4, 5, 190–196, 198–200, 204
Lughman, 90 Media, 204
Lundestad, Geir, 35 Meißner, Otto, 271
Luther, Hans, 273 Memelland, 263
Luxembourg, 27, 34, 264 Menzel, Ulrich, 24, 36
Lydia, 197, 198 Mercosur, 47
Lysimachos, 142 Merkel, Angela, 41, 45, 48
Merodach-baladan II, 182
Mesopotamia, 194, 197, 307, 308, 310, 311,
M 314, 315
Maastricht, 24, 30, 35, 46 Messembria, 142
Macedon, 17 Metaxas, Ioannis, 269
Macedonia, 37, 109, 113, 116, 118, 136, 137 Meuse, 290
Mackensen, August von, 280 Mexico, 47, 281
Macron, Emmanuel, 48 Meyer, Konrad, 298
Madsen, Jesper Majbom, 147 Michael I, 113
Maenchen-Helfen, Otto, 62 Michels, Christoph, 140
Mahaney, Bill, 238 Middle East, 293
Mahler, Gustav, 265 Mieroop, Marc Van De, 170
Mahmud of Ghazna, 4, 6–11, 91, 157, 159, Ming dynasty, 91, 93
161, 163 Miranshah, 90, 91, 94
Mahnkopf, Birgit, 31, 32 Mirzā, Ebrāhim, 219
Maier, Charles S., 103 Mirzā, Reżāqoli, 217, 218, 223
Maikop, 299, 302 Mithradates Chrestos, 136
Majdanek, 296 Mithradates I, 134, 135
Malgium, 310 Mithradates II, 135, 139, 142, 148
Malta, 27 Mithradates III, 135, 147
Mamas, 84 Mithradates IV, 135, 147
Mamluks, 90, 93, 94 Mithradates V, 135, 146
Mann, Michael, 307 Mithradates VI, 4, 7, 8, 12–14, 129–149
Mannea, 204 Mittani, 315
Mannerheim, Carl Gustaf Emil, 269 Mitterrand, François, 5
Manstein, Erich von, 290 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 288, 293
Mao Zedong, 264 Mommsen, Theodor, 239
Marduk, 175 Mondega, 231
Marduk-apla-iddina II, 183 Möngke, 88
Marduk-šapik-zeri, 182 Mongol Empire, 88
Marduk-zakir-šumi, 182 Mongolia, 88, 92
Mari, 173, 309–312, 314 Mongols, 88, 95
Marino Zeno, 112 Monnet, Jean, 5
Martinaccio, Giovanni, 118 Montenegro, 37
Mašhad, 216 Moravia, 263, 281, 284, 286, 297, 298, 301
Masʿūd, 157, 158, 162 Morosini, Thomas, 116
Matthew of Paris, 106 Morris, Ian, 1
Maurice, 68 Moscow, 87, 95, 197, 277, 288, 292–294, 301,
Mauthausen, 291 302
Mazandaran, 97, 98 Mosul, 218
Index 339
Mount Elbrus, 297 North Cape, 301

Mughal dynasty, 87, 99 Norway, 264, 297–299
Muhammad b. Baysunghur, 96 Nuremberg, 275, 277, 282
Mundzuk, 64 Nush-e Jan, 194, 200
Munich, 263, 265, 266, 275, 278, 280, 283,
287, 301
Münkler, Herfried, 1, 27, 36, 245 O
Muṣaṣir, 204 Octar, 64
Mussolini, Benito, 4, 7, 8, 11, 266, 269, 278, Oder-Neisse, 31
280, 282, 283, 286, 295 Odessos, 142
Odoacer, 246–248
Odovacar, 70, 79–81
N Oebarsius, 64
Nabonidus, 195–197, 203 Oescus, 80
Nabopolassar, 195 Ögedei, 88, 90
Nāder Šāh, 4, 7–13, 215–224 Olbrycht, Marek Jan, 139
Nadir Shah, 6, 7, 99 Olympiodorus, 59, 64, 66, 83
Nanna, 181 Onegesius, 69–71
Napoleon, 4, 6–8, 12, 197, 218, 219, 221–223, Onoulphus, 70
238 Orestes, 78, 79
Napoléon II, 7 Orosius, 13, 227, 228, 241
Naqsh-i Rustam, 320 Ostaszkov, 289
Naram-Sin, 168, 171 Osterhammel, Jürgen, 103, 245
Narew, 288 Ostrogoth, 12, 81, 247–250
NATO, 25, 36, 40, 48 Ostrogotho, 248
Nebuchadnezzar I, 182 Ostrogoths, 248, 252
Nebuchadnezzar II, 173 Othon de la Roche, 109
Nedao, 77 Otrar, 93
Negroponte, 109 Otte, Max, 245
Neo-Assyrian Empire, 196, 200, 204 Ottomans, 12, 93, 94, 100, 114, 216–218, 220, 224
Nero, 279 Oxus, 89
Netherlands, 29, 264, 298 Ozbaki Tepe, 194
Neurath, Konstantin Freiherr von, 271, 279,
280
New Zealand, 47 P
Nezak, 321 Padova, 190
Nicaea, 108, 112, 113, 116, 117, 119 Pakistan, 318
Nicomedia, 109 Palestine, 107
Niebuhr, Carsten, 239 Pallavicini, Guy, 109
Niketas Choniates, 107 Pannonia, 68, 77, 247
Nikolaos Mesarites, 107 Pannonia II, 247
Nikomedes III of Bithynia, 136 Papen, Franz von, 271, 280
Nikomedes IV of Bithynia, 133, 137 Paphlagonia, 135, 136
Nineveh, 195 Paris, 42, 57, 278, 280, 284, 290, 298, 313
Nippur, 313 Parmenio, 17
Nolfo, Ennio di, 267 Parthian Empire, 36
Nolte, Hans-Heinrich, 23 Pasewalk, 265
Noricum, 246, 247 Paulus, Susanne, 178
340 Index
Pavia, 256 Prussia, 222, 224, 271, 294

Payne, Richard, 322, 326, 327 Prut, 288
Pearl Harbor, 295, 302 Pseudo-Josua Stylites, 318, 324
Peloponessus, 120 Punjab, 17, 157, 321, 322
Peloponnesus, 105, 109 Putin, Vladimir, 13, 45
Pergamon, 135 Pyrenean Mountains, 241
Peroz, 317, 321, 323, 324, 326 Pyrenees, 297
Persepolis, 198 Pyrrhos, 129
Perseus, 141
Persia, 216–220, 224, 317
Persian Gulf, 293, 313 Q
Peshawar, 320 Qājār, Āġā Moḥammad Xān, 224
Peter I of Russia, 221 Qandahār, 217
Peter III, 222 Qarachar Noyan, 95
Petrovna, Elizaveta, 222 Qarākhānids, 157
Petrus Marcellinus Felix Liberius, 247 Qaraqoyunlu, 91–94, 98, 100, 101
Pharnakes I, 135 Qazwin, 96
Pharnakes II, 138 Qezelbāš, 215
Philadelpheia, 109 Qin, 309
Philipp V of Macedonia, 235, 237, 240 Quatorze, Louis, 279
Philippe Mouskes, 106 Querini, Giberto, 118
Philippoupolis, 108 Quintus Sertorius, 145
Philotas, 17 Qum, 96
Phraates III, 133, 137, 148
Phrygia, 134, 135
Piłsudski, Józef, 269, 275 R
Pissa, 288 Raeder, Erich, 279, 292
Pliny the Elder, 236 Raetia, 246
Plutarch, 132 Ranke, Leopold von, 238
Pohl, Oswald, 291 Rašt, 216
Poland, 27, 40, 268, 269, 275, 281–284, Rastenburg, 294
286–289, 292, 296–298, 301 Ravenna, 58, 252–254
Polybius, 229–232, 235, 237, 241 Ravensbrück, 291
Pompeius Trogus, 231 Rayy, 96, 157, 159
Pompey, 129, 133, 137, 138, 143 Razqan, 194, 200
Pompey Trogus, 132 Rees, Laurence, 283
Pontos, 132, 133, 137, 138, 141, 143, 144, 146, Rehn, Oli, 30
148 Remarque, Erich Maria, 268
Porsche, Ferdinand, 278 Remus, 26
Portugal, 27, 269 Renier de Trit, 109
Posen, 264 Rey, 192
Posener, Alan, 27, 31 Rezakhani, Khodadad, 327
Potsdam, 273 Rhine, 31, 66, 192
Poznań, 264 Rhineland, 276, 278, 301
Prague, 263, 281, 282, 285 Rhone, 241
Priscus of Panium, 58, 65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 73, Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 271, 278, 280, 288,
75, 76, 79 292, 293
Procopius, 82, 246, 253, 254, 318 Richardson, Seth, 308
Prusias, 234 Riefenstahl, Leni, 275
Index 341
Rifkin, Jeremy, 31 Samarqand, 87, 89, 92–94, 96, 98

Rim-Sin, 173, 310, 314 Šamaš, 175
Rio Tinto, 230 Šamši-Adad, 170, 171, 173, 174
Rob, 318, 325 Šamši-Adad I, 173
Robert de Clari, 106, 114 Šamši-Adad II, 173
Robert of Courtenay, 110, 113 Samsuiluna, 168
Röhm, Ernst, 275 Samsu-iluna, 314
Rollinger, Robert, 24, 228, 229, 241, 245 San, 288
Roman Empire, 10, 24, 34–36, 66, 84 Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Heleen, 190, 191
Romania, 12, 25–27, 112, 120, 268, 271, 279, Santer, Jacques, 14
286, 292, 293, 297, 298 Saracens, 61
Rome, 12, 17, 24, 34, 35, 43, 104, 129–140, Sardinia, 229, 230, 232
143, 145, 147–149, 228, 229, 233, 240, Sardis, 197
241, 248, 252, 255, 257, 280, 281 Sargon II, 194
Rommel, Erwin, 296 Sargon of Akkad, 170, 171
Romulus, 26 Sarmatians, 69, 75, 79
Romulus Augustulus, 78, 79 Sasanian Empire, 36
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 286, 287, 292, 295, Sasanid Empire, 324
296, 302 Sasanids, 321, 324, 326
Root, Margaret Cool, 202 Sauerbruch, Ferdinand, 276
Rostam, 327 Saxony, 267
Rostov on the Don, 298 Schacht, Hjalmar, 270, 273, 279, 298
Rota, Giorgio, 8, 11, 14 Scharnhorst, Gerhard von, 239
Rua, 72 Scheidel, Walter, 1
Ruga, 64, 66, 67, 83, 84 Schiller, Friedrich, 276
Rugi, 67, 69, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83 Schleicher, Kurt von, 271
Rugii, 248 Schmale, Wolfgang, 26
Ruhr region, 266 Schmitt, Carl, 276
Runciman, Walter, 282 Schröder, Gerhard, 43
Rundstedt, Gerd von, 290 Schröder, Kurt von, 271
Russia, 12, 39, 40, 216, 217, 220, 267, Schrödinger, Erwin, 276
292–294, 298, 302 Schulenburg, Friedrich Werner von der, 288
Schuschnigg, Kurt, 269, 281, 282
Schwerin-Krosigk, Lutz Graf von, 271
S Scipio Africanus, 234
Saar, 263, 301 Sciri, 67–70, 75, 78, 79, 81, 83
Sachsenhausen, 291 Scottas, 70
Sadagarii, 79 Scythia Minor, 57, 79, 80
Safavids, 87, 100 Sebüktegin, 156, 157, 159, 160
Saguntum, 233 Seeckt, Hans von, 268
Šāh ʿAbbās I, 221, 224 Seldte, Franz, 277
Šāh Esmāʿil I, 221, 222 Seleucid Empire, 234
Šāhrox, 220 Seleukos, 143
Sallust, 132, 133 Seljukids, 95
Šalmaneser, 171 Seljuks, 12
Salona, 109 Seljūqids, 157–162
Salzburg, 278 Semiramis, 6
Samangan, 327 Serbia, 37, 264
Sāmānids, 156, 157, 159, 162 Serenissima, 112, 113
342 Index
Shabuhr, 321 Starobielsk, 289

Shabuhr I, 320 Stein, Freiherr Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom
Shabuhr II, 321 und zum Stein, 239
Shah Rukh, 5 Steiner, Zara, 283
Shahnameh, 159, 318 Steinmeier, Frank Walter, 41
Shahrukh, 91, 92, 94–97, 99, 100 Sternberger, Dolf, 26
Shalmaneser III, 192, 193 Stettin, 278
Shamshi-Adad, 4, 6, 307–315 Strabo, 132
Sharaf al-Din ′Ali Yazdi, 96 Strasbourg, 27, 34
Shawross, Theresa, 114 Strauß, Richard, 276, 278
Shayegan, M. Rahim, 142, 143 Stresa, 276
Sheehan, James J., 289 Stresemann, Gustav, 267
Shi Huangdi, 309 Stuttgart, 278
Shibani Khan Uzbek, 99 Styria, 264
Shiraz, 97 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, 223
Shirer, William, 286, 289 Šubria, 204
Shubat-Enlil, 309, 311 Sudetenland, 263
Shushara, 311 Suevi, 69, 75, 77, 78, 81
Sicily, 229, 247 Sulla, 137, 145
Sigismund of Burgundy, 248 Sultan Husayn, 99
Silesia, 264, 281, 284 Sultaniyya, 90, 96
Silk Road, 201 Sumer, 178, 185
Simms, Brendan, 265 Suppan, Arnold, 6
Sims-Williams, Nicholas, 317, 327 Surkh Kotal, 319
Sîn, 194 Susa, 198
Sinatrukes, 148 Šu-Sin, 168
Sinope, 135, 146 Sweden, 27, 298
Sippar, 310 Switzerland, 12, 267, 298
Sirmium, 247 Symmachus, 255, 256
Sloterdijk, Peter, 30 Syria, 92, 107, 139, 163, 195, 196, 310, 311
Slovakia, 24, 27, 285, 292, 296–298, 301
Slovenia, 27
Snyder, Timothy, 295, 296 T
Sobibór, 296 Tabaristan, 161
Sogdia, 321 Ṭāhirids, 156, 163
Sogdiana, 322 Ṭahmāsp II, 216
Sokhrab, 327 Tajani, Antonio, 33
Somme, 265, 290 Tannenberg, 266
Sorogsi, 79 Tarim Basin, 321
Soviet Union, 26, 28, 35, 40, 266, 274, 275, Taurika, 140
277, 286–288, 292, 293, 295, 298, Teheran, 192
300–302 Temür, 87–101
Spain, 12, 27, 46, 145, 220, 228–237, 239–241, Tervingi, 62, 63, 72
269, 292 Tewodros II of Ethiopia, 221
Speer, Albert, 297, 302 Thales, 199
Stagnario, Zaccaria, 118 The Hague, 27
Stalin, Josef, 11, 264, 269, 274, 277, 282, 284, Theoderic, 5, 13, 58, 74, 80, 81, 246–258
287–290, 292, 294, 300–302 Theoderic Strabo, 248
Stalingrad, 296, 300, 302 Theodimund, 80
Index 343
Theodore Branas, 112 U

Theodore I Laskaris, 113 Ukku, 204
Thessaloniki, 109, 110, 113, 117, 120 Ukraine, 290, 294, 295, 298, 299
Thessaly, 109, 113 Uldin, 63, 68, 83
Thierry de Loos, 109 Ulfila, 80
Thiudigotho, 248 Ultzindur, 80
Thiudimer, 80, 81 Ulugh Beg, 94, 97
Thomas d’Autremencourt, 109 Umakištar, 195, 196
Thompson, E. A., 61 Umar Shaykh, 91, 94
Thrace, 69, 72, 108, 109, 112, 116, 118, 136, United Kingdom, 27, 29, 33, 46, 274–276, 280,
137 287–289, 291, 292, 301, 302
Thrasamund, 248, 257 United States, 23, 24, 28, 31, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40,
Thuringians, 69, 75 45, 47, 267, 268, 286, 293, 295, 302
Thyssen, Fritz, 270 Ur, 167, 173, 308, 313
Tiberius, 129 Ural Mountains, 301
Tietmeyer, Hans, 43 Urartu, 204
Tigranes of Armenia, 137, 148 Uruk, 167, 173, 309
Tigranocerta, 137 Uzbeks, 87, 94, 98
Tigris, 197, 198, 307, 311, 312
Timur, 5–10, 13
Timurids, 12, 92, 96, 101 V
Tiso, Jozef, 285 Valamer, 74, 77–82
Titus Quinctius Flamininus, 234 Van de Mieroop, Marc, 6
Tobruk, 296 Van Tricht, F., 110
Todt, Fritz, 278, 294 Velleius Paterculus, 14, 129, 132
Tokharistan, 319, 327 Venetia, 247
Tokhtamısh, 90, 91 Venice, 10, 104, 105, 112–114, 116
Tokyo, 280 Verona, 257
Tolui, 88, 89, 92 Versailles, 263, 265, 268, 274, 278, 281, 282,
Tooze, Adam, 287 286, 289, 299
Tounsoures, 79 Vidimer, 80, 81
Toyotomi, Hideyoshi, 221, 222 Vienna, 264, 265, 275, 281, 284, 298, 317
Transoxania, 157 Viminacium, 69
Transoxiana, 88, 89, 94, 97–100 Vinnycja, 297
Trapezous, 136 Visigoths, 248
Trebizond, 108 Vistula, 288
Treblinka, 296 Vithimer, 63
Tripolis, 108 Volga, 66, 301
Trogus-Justin, 144 Volga Steppe, 59, 64
Trump, Donald, 13, 23, 32, 40, 45 Vondrovec, Klaus, 327
Tuplin, Christopher, 191 Vouillé, 247
Tur, 327
Turan, 327
Turkestan, 95 W
Turkey, 12, 24, 38, 45 Wagner, Richard, 264
Turkic Khaghanate, 88 Walash, 321
Turkistan, 88, 89, 96 Walter, Bruno, 276
Turkmenistan, 215 Wannsee, 296
Tusk, Donald, 33 Warsaw, 27, 298
344 Index
Washington, 30, 45 Y
Waters, Matthew, 189, 191 Yazd, 97
Weber, Max, 283 Yildirim Bayezid, 92, 99
Weimar, 267–269 Ypres, 265
Weizsäcker, Ernst von, 288 Yūan dynasty, 88, 92
West Prussia, 264 Yugoslavia, 264, 268, 269, 271, 279, 282, 292,
Western Roman Empire, 74 297, 301
Wheatley, Pat, 134
Whittaker, Charles, 228
Wildt, Michael, 265 Z
Wilhelminian Reich, 263 Zagros, 192, 193, 195, 196, 198, 200, 201, 204
Wilson, Hugh, 282 Zand, Karim Xān, 224
Wolff, R. L., 105, 120 Zara, 107
Wolfram, Herwig, 71 Zela, 137, 138
Wood, Edward 1. Earl of Halifax, 280–282 Zenobia, 6
Württemberg, 271 Zhukov, Georgi Konstantinowitsch, 294
Ziegler, Jean, 31
Zielonka, Jan, 32, 33
X Zimri-Lim, 173, 314
Xān, ʿAlavi, 217 Zülpich, 247
Xān, ʿAliqoli, 219
Xān, Ebrāhim, 217
Xenophon, 17, 141
Xerxes, 135, 198
Xiongnu, 60, 61, 65, 66, 79, 80, 83, 321–323

Short-Term Empires in World History: Robert Rollinger Julian Degen Michael Gehler Editors

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Universal- und kulturhistorische Studien.

Studies in Universal and Cultural History

Robert Rollinger · Julian Degen

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15609

Short-term Empires in World

ISSN 2524-3780 ISSN 2524-3799 (electronic)

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020

Responsible Editor: Frank Schindler

This volume assembles the papers presented at the international conference

• In a chronologically broad and general way: the longue durée of Empires;

3Gehler/Rollinger (eds.) 2014; Gehler/Rollinger (eds.) (forthcoming 2020); Gehler/Rollinger/

Strobl (eds.) (forthcoming 2021). Nickel/Rollinger (eds.) (forthcoming 2021).

Approaching Short-Term Empires in World History, a First Attempt. . . . . . . . . 1

Theoderic and the Ostrogoths—a Short-Term Empire? Decapitated

Robert Rollinger, Julian Degen and Michael Gehler

1Foran overview see Gehler/Rollinger 2014. Gehler/Rollinger 2020.

R. Rollinger (*) · J. Degen

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 1

3Cf. Gehler/Rollinger 2014. Gehler/Rollinger 2020.

Sources and Historical memory

7Cf. the contributions of Mitsiou, and Wiesehöfer/Rollinger in this volume.

8Cf. the contribution of Suppan in this volume.

11Cf. the contributions of Mitsiou, and Wiesehöfer/Rollinger in his volume.

12Cf. the contributions of Rollinger, and Gehler in this volume.

13Gehler 2018, 185, 199, 202, 363.

17Cf. the contributions of Suppan, and Van de Mieroop in this volume.

18Cf. the contributions of Ruffing, Reinfandt, and Manz in this volume.

19Cf. the contributions of Manz, and Rota in this volume.

20Cf. the contribution of Rollinger in this volume.

Military over-engagement and its consequences

24Cf. the contribution of Mitsiou in this volume.

This primacy of conquest and military engagement had considerable consequences.

Lack of loyalty in a mid-term perspective

26Cf. the contributions of Suppan, and Reinfandt in this volume.

30Cf. the contribution of Rota in this volume.

33Cf. the contributions of Heather, Manz, and Rota.

36Cf. the contribution of Manz in this volume.

37Cf. the contributions of Suppan, Heather, Mitsiou, Reinfandt, and Rota.

38Rota, this volume.

42Cf. the contribution of Reinfandt in this volume.

43Cf. the contribution of Manz in this volume.

44Cf. the contribution of Mitsiou in this volume.

45Cf. the contributions of Reinfandt, Manz, and Rota in this volume.

46Cf. the contributions of Rollinger, and Heather in this volume.

49Cf. the contribution of Heather in this volume.

50Cf. the contribution of Gehler in this volume.

Superior opponents, contingency, and a historian’s aporia

54Cf.the contribution by Rota in this volume, and see Payne 2016.

57Ruffing, this volume.

58Reinfandt, this volume.

59Manz, this volume.

60Heather, this volume.

61Rota, this volume.

62Rollinger, this volume.

63Schäfer, this volume.

64Wiesehöfer/Rollinger, this volume.

65Gehler, this volume.

Moving beyond aporia towards multi-faceted empirical explanations

70Cf. the contributions of Van de Mieroop and Schäfer in this volume.

71Cf. the contribution of Manz in this volume.

72Cf. the contribution of Ruffing, this volume.

74Cf. also the contribution by Müller in this volume.

What about Alexander III (the Great) and his “empire”?

1.1 Coming into Existence

1.4 Perceptions and Reactions

1.5 Decline and Disintegration

2.1 Successes and Failures

2.2 Imagined Receptions

2.3 References, Forerunners and Historical Consciousness

2.4 The Holy Roman Empire as Predecessor?—Historiographies

2.5 Roman Empire, State of the Art and Historical Comparisons

3 First Assessments and Possible Developments

3.1 The “Lisbon Strategy” and the Lisbon Treaty—Not Enough

3.2 The Open Question of the Finalité Politique

3.3 Nation-States Acting as EU-Members in a Globalized Context

3.4 NATO-, EU-Eastern Enlargement and the Relationship

4 End and Decline of a Short-Term Empire? Conversely,

4.1 The Inevitable Integration Imperative Germany

4.2 The Integrated Legal Community

4.3 The Common and Single Market

4.4 The Euro as Anchor

4.5 The Majority of Community Institutions

4.6 Non-contractual Regulations

4.7 External Crises as Stimulators