Carpi (people) - Conflict With Rome

Conflict With Rome

Although the Carpi are recorded as resident in the Dacian region from at least the 140's onwards, they are not mentioned in Roman accounts of several campaigns in the Dacian region in the second century. For example, in Rome's vast and protracted conflict with the trans-danubian tribes, known as the Marcomannic Wars (166-80), during which Dacia province suffered at least two major invasions (167, 170), only their neighbours the Costoboci are mentioned specifically. Silence on the role of the Carpi in these conflicts may imply that they were Roman allies in this period.

Around AD 200 a phase of major population movements started in the European barbaricum (the region outside the borders of the empire). The cause of this dislocation is unknown, but an important factor may have been the Antonine Plague (165-180), a devastating smallpox pandemic, which may have killed 15-30% of the Roman empire's inhabitants. The impact on the barbarian regions would have resulted in many weakened tribes and empty regions that may have induced the stronger tribes to expand. A well-known example is the Goths. These were probably recorded by the Roman historian Tacitus, under the name Gotones, as inhabiting the area East of the Vistula river in central Poland in AD 100. By 250, the Goths had moved South into western Ukraine and were frequently raiding the empire in conjunction with local tribes.

It was in this context of upheaval that, in the middle of the third century, the Carpi emerged as a major barbarian threat to Rome's lower Danubian provinces. They were described by Jordanes as "a race of men very eager to make war, and often hostile to the Romans". A series of major Carpi incursions into the empire are recorded, either alone or in alliance with their neighbouring Sarmatian or Germanic tribes (including Roxolani, Bastarnae, Goths). However, the role of the Carpi in the coalition's incursions is not always clear, as the most comprehensive account, that of the 6th-century chronicler Zosimus, is chronologically confused and often denotes the participants under the vague term "Scythians" (meaning inhabitants of the geographical region called Scythia (i.e. roughly modern Ukraine), not ethnic Scythians).

The involvement of the Carpi in attacks by the Free Dacians into Roman Dacia is also uncertain. Supporters of a Dacian ethnicity for the Carpi have tended to assume that they participated in campaigns where Roman emperors claimed the title Dacicus Maximus, in addition to those resulting in a Carpicus Maximus acclamation. But all incursions in which the Carpi are specifically reported by ancient sources were into Moesia Inferior, not Dacia. The following is a list of recorded incursions in which Carpi participation is specifically attested to by the sources: