{{Short description, Gothic leader of the Tervings (died 271) Cannabaudes or Cannabas (died 271) was a third-century leader of the Gothic tribe of the Tervings, who died in a battle against the Roman emperor

Aurelian Aurelian (; ; 9 September ) was a Roman emperor who reigned from 270 to 275 AD during the Crisis of the Third Century. As emperor, he won an unprecedented series of military victories which reunited the Roman Empire after it had nearly disinte ...

Life

In the third century many

Germanic peoples The Germanic peoples were tribal groups who lived in Northern Europe in Classical antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In modern scholarship, they typically include not only the Roman-era ''Germani'' who lived in both ''Germania'' and parts of ...

invaded the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

and plundered the border regions. Among these, the Goths were the largest group crossing the Roman borders and devastating the

Balkan peninsula The Balkans ( , ), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throug ...

. They also raided the coasts of the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

and the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...

. Emperor Aurelian, the former

magister equitum The , in English Master of the Horse or Master of the Cavalry, was a Roman magistrate appointed as lieutenant to a dictator. His nominal function was to serve as commander of the Roman cavalry in time of war, but just as a dictator could be n ...

of emperor

Claudius Gothicus Marcus Aurelius Claudius "Gothicus" (10 May 214 – August/September 270), also known as Claudius II, was Roman emperor from 268 to 270. During his reign he fought successfully against the Alemanni and decisively defeated the Goths at the Batt ...

, who had died of the plague, was occupied fighting the dead emperor’s brother

Quintillus Marcus Aurelius Claudius Quintillus (died 270) was a short-lived Roman emperor. He took power after the death of his brother, Emperor Claudius Gothicus, in 270 CE. After reigning for a few weeks Quintillus was overthrown by Aurelian, who had be ...

for the Roman throne and later fighting against the

Vandals The Vandals were a Germanic people who were first reported in the written records as inhabitants of what is now Poland, during the period of the Roman Empire. Much later, in the fifth century, a group of Vandals led by kings established Vand ...

and Juthungi in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. The Tervings under their leader Cannabaudes took advantage of this situation and devastated the provinces of the lower

Danube The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...

and sacked some cities. On his march to the East to reintegrate the

Palmyrene Empire The Palmyrene Empire was a short-lived breakaway state from the Roman Empire resulting from the Crisis of the Third Century. Named after its capital city, Palmyra, it encompassed the Roman provinces of Syria Palaestina, Arabia Petraea, and Egypt ...

to the Roman Empire, Aurelian drove the Tervings out of the Roman empire and, unlike others before him, followed them over the Danube. In the ensuing battle, Cannabaudes died along with 5,000 of his men. For this victory Aurelian received the surname Gothicus Maximus. At his triumph after his victory over the Palmyrene Empire, he paraded Gothic women, dressed as

Amazons The Amazons (Ancient Greek: ', singular '; in Latin ', ') were a people in Greek mythology, portrayed in a number of ancient epic poems and legends, such as the Labours of Hercules, Labours of Heracles, the ''Argonautica'' and the ''Iliad''. ...

, and a chariot, pulled by four stags, that was said to have belonged to Cannabaudes. Despite his victory over Cannabaudes, Aurelian abandoned the province of

Dacia Dacia (, ; ) was the land inhabited by the Dacians, its core in Transylvania, stretching to the Danube in the south, the Black Sea in the east, and the Tisza in the west. The Carpathian Mountains were located in the middle of Dacia. It thus ro ...

, which was populated by barbaric tribes such as the Goths. Through his military achievements, Aurelian averted a further Gothic intrusions into Roman lands for a century. While some historians call Cannabaudes a king of the Goths, others consider that he was only one of the more powerful leaders of the Goths. The only ancient source mentioning his name is the ''

Historia Augusta The ''Historia Augusta'' (English: ''Augustan History'') is a late Roman collection of biographies, written in Latin, of the Roman emperors, their junior colleagues, Caesar (title), designated heirs and Roman usurper, usurpers from 117 to 284. S ...

'', which is not a generally reliable source. Nevertheless, Cannabaudes is seen as a historic person by most historians. Some historians want to identify Cannabaudes with Cniva, the Gothic leader who defeated and killed emperor

Decius Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius ( 201June 251), known as Trajan Decius or simply Decius (), was Roman emperor from 249 to 251. A distinguished politician during the reign of Philip the Arab, Decius was proclaimed emperor by his troops a ...

at the Battle of Abrittus twenty years earlier, others historians consider that he was Cniva's son.Barnes 1978, 70.

Notes

Ancient sources

*Historia Augusta, vita Aureliani.

Modern literature

*Wolf von Barloewen: Geschichte der Germanen bis 376 n.Chr., in: Wolf von Barloewen d. Abriss der Geschichte antiker Randkulturen, Oldenbourg, Munich 1961. * Timothy Barnes: The Sources of the Historia Augusta, Ed. Latomus, Brüssel 1978. *Thomas Burns: A History of the Ostrogoths, Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington 1984. *Thomas Gerhardt, Udo Hartmann: Fasti, Die germanischen Herrscher, in: Klaus-Peter Johne d. Die Zeit der Soldatenkaiser, Berlin 2008, p. 1192-1198. *Andreas Goltz: Die Völker an der mittleren und nordöstlichen Reichsgrenze, in: Klaus-Peter Johne d. Die Zeit der Soldatenkaiser, Berlin 2008, p. 449-464. * Edmund Groag: Domitius 6Aurelian,

Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft The Pauly encyclopedias or the Pauly-Wissowa family of encyclopedias, are a set of related encyclopedias on Greco-Roman world, Greco-Roman classical studies, topics and scholarship. The first of these, or (1839–1852), was begun by compiler A ...

V 1, Stuttgart 1903, p. 1347-1419. *Udo Hartmann: Claudius Gothicus und Aurelian, in: Klaus-Peter Johne d. Die Zeit der Soldatenkaiser, Berlin 2008, p. 297-324. * Peter Heather: The Goths, Blackwell, Oxford, Cambridge/Massachusetts 1996. *Michael Kulikowski: Rome’s Gothic Wars, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge u.a. 2007. *Bruno Rappaport: Die Einfälle der Goten in das Römische Reich bis auf Constantin, Hirschfeld, Leipzig 1899. *Alaric Watson: Aurelian and the third Century, London, New York 1998. *

Herwig Wolfram Herwig Wolfram (born 14 February 1934) is an Austrian historian who is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History and Auxiliary Sciences of History at the University of Vienna and the former Director of the . He is a leading member of the Vienna Schoo ...

: Die Goten, Beck, Munich ³1990. *Herwig Wolfram: Kniva, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 17, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 2001, p. 34-37. *Herwig Wolfram: Die Goten und ihre Geschichte, Beck, Munich ²2005. *Herwig Wolfram: Gotische Studien, Beck, Munich 2005.

Life

Notes

Ancient sources

Modern literature

See also