Heruli (East Germanic tribe)

In Jordanes's description of Scandza (from the sixth century work, Getica), the ancient writer says that the Dani were of the same stock as the Suetidi (Swedes, Suithiod?) and expelled the Heruli and took their lands.

The Old English poems Widsith and Beowulf, as well as works by later Scandinavian writers—notably by Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200)—provide some of the earliest references to Danes.

Nerva, whose public works are few because his reign is brief, instead completes projects that had been initiated under Flavian rule.

This include extensive repairs to the Roman road system and the expansion of the aqueducts.

The latter program is headed by the former consul Sextus Julius Frontinus, who helps to put an end to abuses.

Frontinus, water commissioner of Rome in 97 and consul in 98, describes, in his treatise De aquis urbis Romae (”Concerning the Waters of the City of Rome”), the city's aqueducts, enumerates the technical and administrative staff responsible for them, and discusses problems of maintenance.

The Crimean Goths and the Heruls, a Germanic people from northern Europe, dare to venture on the seas beginning in 253, ravaging the shores of the Black Sea in violation of a treaty signed with Rome.

The Goths move south to ravage the Aegean island ports, as well as several mainland Greek towns.

The first of two massive invasions into Roman territory by "Scythian" tribes (as our sources anachronistically call them, probably referring to their geographical origin—Scythia, i.e., the Pontic region north of the Danube—rather than to the Scythian people, steppe nomads of Iranic origin, related to the Sarmatians, who had supplanted the Scythians' dominance of the steppes in the period BCE) comes during Gallienus's reign.

It begins in 267 when the Heruli, raiding from five hundred ships, ravage the southern Black Sea coast and unsuccessfully attack Byzantium and Cyzicus.

Defeated by the Roman navy, they manage to escape into the Aegean Sea, where they ravage the islands of Lemnos and Scyros and sack several cities of the southern Greece province of Achaea, including Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta.

An Athenian militia, led by the historian Dexippus, then pushes the invaders to the North, where they are intercepted by the Roman army under Gallienus.

He wins an important victory near the Nessos (Nestos) river, on the boundary between Macedonia and Thrace, with the aid of the Dalmatian cavalry.

Reported barbarian casualties are three thousand men.

The Heruli leader Naulobatus subsequently comes to terms with the Romans.

The empire’s period of relative peace ends in 267, when the Goths of the northern Black Sea coast attack Byzantium in alliance with the fleet of the Heruli.

Gallienus leads a large Roman force into Moesia to cut off the army of Goths, three hundred and twenty thousand strong, now retreating by land from its plunder of Aegean coastal cities.

The two armies meet at Naissus (modern Niš, Serbia), where the Romans slaughter the Goths by the thousands.

His attention demanded by the revolt of a usurper, Aureolus, in Italy, Gallienus returns there without further pursuit of the survivors, who flee to armed encampments to the northeast.

The combined Goth and Herul fleet sails from Byzantium south into the Aegean in 267 to attack various cities of Greece as far south as Sparta, devastating Laconia.

Greece, its weakened frontiers unprotected by Rome, suffers greatly under the ravages of the Goths and pirates.

The walls of Athens, which had been neglected since Sulla's capture of the city in 86 BCE and have fallen into ruin, had been rebuilt under Valerian, and the circuit had been extended to include the new suburb northeast of the Olympieion (Temple of Hadrian Olympios).

This has been done because of the threat of a barbarian invasion, but the walls are of no avail in 267 when that invasion comes.

The Heruli easily capture Athens, and, though the historian Publius Herennius Dexippus rallies two thousand men on the city outskirts, they can only resort to guerrilla tactics.

The lower town is sacked, and all the buildings of the Agora are burned and destroyed.

The Acropolis, however, may have held out; at least there is no evidence of extensive damage at this time. (The Bibliotheca, a ninth-century encyclopedia by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, credits Dexippus with three major works: a four-book history of the diadochoi (successors) of Alexander the Great, a history of the struggle of Rome against the Goths after CE 238, and a twelve-book annalistic chronicle from legendary times to CE 270. Although none of these survive, numerous fragments have been recognized in the compilations of later historians. Several Athenian inscriptions attest to the high public offices held by Dexippus, his father, and his children.)