**MARCOMANNI**
A Germanic people whose history can be traced during the Roman Empire. The etymology of their name is universally accepted: "men of the borderlands," originally in relation to tribes of another name or perhaps of a different stock (Celts?). They are first mentioned when they take part, together with the Suebi of Ariovistus, in the expeditions across the Rhine undertaken following the appeal of the Sequani in their struggle with the Aedui, and are driven back by Caesar along with the Suebi (De bell. Gall., I, 31-58). They were again defeated by the Roman legions when Drusus advanced as far as the Elba (Dio Cassius, Hist. Rom., LV, 10 a), and as a result of this Roman pressure they moved south-eastward, deeper into Germany toward Bohemia.
Their fortunes were revived by a skilled and valiant leader, Maroboduus, who gathered around him other Germanic tribes and succeeded in forming a powerful state between the Danube, the Elba, and the Oder. So much so that Augustus was forestalled and considered a major expedition against them, to be entrusted to Tiberius and Sentius Saturninus. The disaster of Varus in Germania Inferior caused the abandonment of overly ambitious plans for the interior of Germany. The taciturn Arminius, Varus’s conqueror, sought to secure Maroboduus’s alliance and sent him the head of Varus to compromise him, but Maroboduus returned this macabre trophy to Augustus. He thus remained on good terms with the Romans, to whom he appealed for hospitality when internal discord and conflicts with other Germanic tribes forced him to flee his homeland. Tiberius fostered the union of the Marcomanni with the Quadi, relying on the authority of chieftains whom Roman diplomacy managed to have accepted by them. Hostilities arose when the Marcomanni asserted themselves more decisively on the left bank of the middle Danube.
They were fought by Domitian, more than once unsuccessfully, despite repeated imperial acclamations. Only under the empire of Marcus Aurelius did the great, protracted wars begin. In 166, countless barbarians returned, operating simultaneously along the entire Danube line, breaking through Roman defenses at multiple points and surging like a destructive torrent into the provinces on the right bank. The Quadi and the Marcomanni, better armed and organized than the others, advanced as far as the Alps, destroyed Opitergium (Oderzo), and laid siege to Aquileia. The city militias (praetorians, urban cohorts, classiarii), the only forces available since a large part of the legions had been sent east against the Parthians, were bloodily defeated. Only the swift return of the two emperors (Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus) from the East halted the furious onslaught. Unfortunately, the legions brought back from the eastern regions carried the plague with them. The war was directed especially against the most formidable enemies: the Quadi and the Marcomanni, and it was a long and sanguinary conflict (166-72). The ferocity with which it was waged is attested, in the meagerness of literary sources, by the news of the deaths in battle of distinguished Roman commanders (Furius Victorinus and Marcianus Vindex, praetorian prefects; Marcus Claudius Fronto, governor of Moesia) and, indirectly, by the fierce and desperate character revealed in the reliefs of the Column of Marcus.
In 172, the Germans sought and obtained peace, agreeing to accept Roman garrisons within their borders. Talk even arose of a province of Marcomannia and Sarmatia, which, if it ever existed, had only a fleeting life. In 177, war flared up again, interrupted by the death of Marcus Aurelius at Vindobona on March 17, 180, and immediately abandoned by his son and successor Commodus, eager to hasten to Rome to secure the imperial crown. It is therefore understandable that the peace granted must have been fairly lenient, and on the other hand the heavy losses inflicted by such long wars meant that the name of the Marcomanni no longer stood out prominently among those of other Germanic peoples.
Christianity must have penetrated among them about the same time it took hold among other Germanic groups. No certain information survives, nor can the account in Paulinus’s Vita Ambrosii, 36 (PL 14, 42) be taken literally, according to which “a certain queen of the Marcomanni, Frigitis,” having heard of the saint’s great virtues, “believed in Christ... sent gifts to Milan through envoys and asked through them to be instructed by his writings on how she ought to believe.” If, through St. Ambrose, Christianity did indeed reach the Marcomanni, it would not have been tainted with Arianism, as was the faith of the Goths and many other Germanic peoples.