…Vindobona (modern Vienna), in Pannonia Superior, which will be the legion's camp until the fifth century.

Marcus Aurelius, a philosopher emperor, has lowered taxes and displayed charity toward the less fortunate.

He keeps, even during his campaigns against the Germans, a "spiritual diary," later known as the Meditations, which document his internal struggle to reconcile his Stoic philosophy of virtue and self-sacrifice with his role as a warrior-sovereign.

Marcus' Meditations offer a window on his inner life, but are largely undatable, and make few specific references to worldly affairs.

Marcus Aurelius has written the twelve books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement.

It is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spends much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180.

Some of it was written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia, because internal notes tell us that the second book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova (modern-day Hron) and the third book was written at Carnuntum.

It is not clear that he ever intended the writings to be published, so the title Meditations is but one of several commonly assigned to the collection.

These writings take the form of quotations varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs.

His stoic ideas often involve avoiding indulgence in sensory affections, a skill which, he says, will free a man from the pains and pleasures of the material world.

He claims that the only way a man can be harmed by others is to allow his reaction to overpower him.

An order or logos permeates existence.

Rationality and clearmindedness allow one to live in harmony with the logos.

This allows one to rise above faulty perceptions of "good" and "bad".

Having acquired the reputation of a philosopher king within his lifetime, the title will remain his after death; both Dio Cassius and the biographer call him "the philosopher".

Christians—Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Melito—give him the title as well.

Commodus has little interest in pursuing the war.

Against the advice of his senior generals, after negotiating a peace treaty with the Marcomanni and the Quadi, he leaves for Rome in early autumn 180, where he celebrates a triumph for the conclusion of the wars on October 22.

Marcus moves against the Quadi in 179-180, chasing them westwards, deeper into Greater Germania, where the praetorian prefect Tarutenius Paternus later achieves another decisive victory against them.

The inhabitants of Pannonia have retained their own culture into the second century CE, but Romanization has proceeded rapidly, especially in the west.

Pannonia Superior is the focal point of the Roman wars with the Marcomanni in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, who is determined to pass from defense to offense and to an expansionist redrawing of Rome's northern boundaries.

His determination seems to be winning success when, on March 17, 180, he dies at his military headquarters at Vindobona (modern Vienna), having just had time to commend to the regime's chief advisers to his son Commodus, who quickly comes to terms with the Germans.

The emperor is immediately deified and his ashes are returned to Rome, and rest in Hadrian's mausoleum (modern Castel Sant'Angelo) until the Visigoth sack of the city in 410.

His campaigns against Germans and Sarmatians will also be commemorated by a column and a temple built in Rome.

The Rugi, a Germanic tribe that migrated from southwest Norway to Pomerania around CE 100 and from there to the Danube River valley, had been allies of Attila until his death; they have settled in what is now Austria.

Feletheus is the son of Flaccitheus, king of the Rugii and founder of the Kingdom of the Rugii; his brother is Ferderuchus.

Feletheus is married to the Goth Gisa, who is probably the cousin of the Amal Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great.

After the death of his father, probably in 475, Feletheus had succeeded his father as king of the Rugii.

Their territory at the time was based in Lower Austria.

In 476, Feletheus had supported Odoacer and his Scirian and Herulian in overthrow of the Roman Emperor Romulus Augustus.

Feletheus is a close confidant of Severinus of Noricum.

After the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno attempts to create conflict between the Rugii and Odoacer, Feletheus executes his brother Ferderuchus, who supported Odoacer.

Odoacer subsequently invades the Kingdom of the Rugii in 487, dealing them a crushing defeat in their own territory and taking Feletheus and his wife into captivity, later executing them in Ravenna.

When word comes that Feletheus' son, Fredericus, had returned to his people, Odoacer sends his brother Onoulphus with an army back to Noricum against him.

Onoulphus finds it necessary to evacuate the remaining Romans from the ravaged territory and resettles them in Italy.

The Lombards, migrating south from the upper Elbe, settle the abandoned Rugian territory in 493.

Intermittent wars have occurred between the Lombards, or Langobards, and the Gepidae, who are allied to Constantinople, from 536.

When Alboin succeeds his father, Audoin, about 563 or 565, the Lombards occupy Noricum and Pannonia (now in Austria and western Hungary), while their long-standing enemies the Gepidae border them on the east in Dacia (now Hungary).

As is customary among the Lombards, Alboin had taken the crown after an election by the tribe's freemen, who traditionally select the king from the dead sovereign's clan.

Shortly afterwards, in 565, a new war erupts with the Gepids, now led by Cunimund.

According to multiple sources, the former king, Thurisind,had been Cunimund's own father, and the enmity that both had for the Lombards was allegedly partly a result of Alboin's murder of Cunimund's brother (Thurisind's son), Turismod.

The true cause of the conflict is uncertain, as the sources are divided; the Lombard Paul the Deacon accuses the Gepids, while the Byzantine historian Menander Protector places the blame on Alboin, an interpretation favored by historian Walter Pohl.

An account of the war by the Byzantine Theophylact Simocatta sentimentalizes the reasons behind the conflict, claiming it originated with Alboin's vain courting and subsequent kidnapping of Cunimund's daughter Rosamund, that Alboin proceeded then to marry.

The tale is treated with skepticism by Walter Goffart, who observes that it conflicts with the Origo Gentis Langobardorum, where she was captured only after the death of her father.

The Gepids obtain the support of the Emperor in exchange for a promise to cede him the region of Sirmium, the seat of the Gepid kings.

Thus, in 565 or 566, Justinian's successor Justin II sends his son-in-law Baduarius as magister militum (field commander) to lead an imperial army against Alboin in support of Cunimund, ending in the Lombards' complete defeat.