Lugii
Nation | Defunct
400 BCE to 411 CE
The Lugii, Lugi, Lygii, Ligii, Lugiones, Lygians, Ligians, Lugians, or Lougoi were an ancient Germanic tribe attested in the book Germania by the Roman historian Tacitus.
They lived in ca.
400 BC–300 CE in Central Europe, north of the Sudetes mountains in the basin of upper Oder and Vistula rivers, covering most of modern south and middle Poland (regions of Silesia, Greater Poland, Mazovia and Little Poland).
Most archaeologists identify the Lugians with the Przeworsk culture.
The source of their power was control of the most important middle part of the Amber Road from Sambia at the Baltic Sea to the provinces of Roman Empire: Pannonia, Noricum and Raetia.
A tribe of the same name, usually spelled as Lugi, inhabited the southern part of Sutherland in Scotland.
Roman records sometimes identify the Lugii with the Vandals, and East Germanic tribe.
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Aurelian's many victories have calmed usurpation and sedition for a while.
Aurelian's enemies in the Senate briefly succeed n passing damnatio memoriae on the Emperor, but this is reversed before the end of the year and Aurelian, like his predecessor Claudius II, is deified as Divus Aurelianus.
Six months after the emperor's assassination—his widow, Ulpia Severina, having continued the government in the interim to become perhaps the only woman to rule over the whole Roman Empire in her own power—the elderly senator Marcus Claudius Tacitus is chosen by the Senate on short notice and the choice cordially ratified by the army.
This is to be the last time the Senate elects a Roman Emperor.
Tacitus, situated at Campania when he hears the news of his election, quickly rushes to Rome.
He decided to re-involve the Senate in some consultative manner in the mechanisms of government and asks the Senate to deify Aurelian, before arresting and executing Aurelian's murderers.
He makes his own half-brother, forty-three-year-old Marcus Annius Florianus, praetorian prefect, though the senate rejects him for a consulship.
By now, however, the Franks, the Alamanni, and a tribe called the Longiones (Lugii) are invading Gaul.
The Goths and the Heruli, the campaign against the Goths having been canceled with the murder of Aurelian, have once more crossed the Black Sea to wreak havoc on Asia Minor, plundering several towns in the Eastern Roman provinces.
Aurelian’s successor Tacitus, accompanied by his reported maternal half brother Marcus Annius Florianus, the Praetorian Prefect, leads the legions into Asia Minor and defeats the barbarians in battle in spring 276, which gains the emperor the title Gothicus Maximus.
He is on his way back west to deal with a Frankish and Alamannic invasion of Gaul when, (according to Aurelius Victor, Eutropius and the Historia Augusta), he dies in Tyana in Cappadocia in July.
It is reported that he began acting strangely, declaring that he would alter the names of the months to honor himself before succumbing to a fever.
In a contrary account, Zosimus claims he was assassinated, after appointing one of his relatives to an important command in Syria.
The Senate and the armies of the West tolerate the seizure, by Florian, of his late half-brother's' imperial position; however he mints coins bearing the "SC" legend, thus showing some bonds to the Senate.
Florian continues the campaign, driving the barbarians to the brink of defeat.
Tacitus and Florian had largely dealt with the Gothic attack on Asia Minor, and the intermittent campaign against the Persians had been abandoned upon the death of Shapur, but Probus must address the situation along Rome's frontiers, where a series of attacks had taken place following the death of Aurelian.
The Germanic invasions across the Rhine have so far not been dealt with, and Probus will spend the next two years on campaign against the Franks, the Longiones, and the Vandals.
The empire remains divided and chaotic.
The Franks, the Longiones, and the Vandals, despite their huge numbers, have all been defeated within two years.
At one point, Probus had captured the leader of the Longiones, called Semnon, and upon Semnon's acceptance of terms permitted his return to his homeland with his surviving people.
At one occasion during these successful campaigns, sixteen German chiefs are said to have knelt at Probus' feet.
Hostages are taken to ensure the peace and some sixteen thousand Germans are recruited into the Roman army.
In 279, the emperor sets out for Syria, desiring to reconquer Mesopotamia from Sassanid Persia.
The Huns, victorious in the Battle of the Tanais River, fought on the traditional border between Asia and Europe, destroy the empire of the Alans and cross the Volga and the Don.
The rise of the Huns, which puts pressure on all the Germanic tribes to the immediate west, soon overwhelms the Gothic kingdoms.
Many of the Goths migrate into Roman territory in the Balkans, while others remain north of the Danube under Hunnic rule.