Gradual, changes occurred in the next 250 years: A) Though kinship remained the primary bond, a new kind of political formation evolved: the Comitatus. Older, successful warrior chieftains took in younger aspirants, who then raided and shared the booty with each other. A kind of professional, more lethal warrior group came about, where bonds were now between man and lord, the latter signaling the beginning of a small aristocracy. B) At the same time, tribes began electing fewer, longer serving war-chiefs, as inter-tribe conflict increased, spurred by the desire to partake of Roman material culture. C) Eastern German tribes, Goths and Vandals, gradually migrated from North Poland to the Ukraine, pressuring the Danube frontier and settling north of the Black Sea, to the West of the Huns. D) Around 200, small tribes began to coalesce into supra-tribal groups. Southern Germans came together into the Alamanni, while middle Rhine groups incorporated into the Franks, as the North Germans coalesced as Saxons. By the 300s there was a continual belt of barbarian tribes all along the Roman borders from the North Sea to the Black Sea. E) Increasing numbers of Germans began to serve as Roman auxiliary forces just beyond the Roman borders, learning new tactics, acquiring better materials, coming to admire Roman society even more. Some even underwent a process of partial Romanization.

It was the gradual, at times explosive migration of Germanic Barbarians into Roman territory that would end the placidity of the early part of Marcus Aurelius' reign (r. 161-180). The migrations have come to be known as the volkerwanderung, 'wanderings of the peoples.' What set off this very unfortunate demographic avalanche was not Barbarian anti-Roman animosity. To a certain extent, it was predetermined: a defining aspect of ancient and Medieval history was the inability of settled, sedentary peoples to avoid encroachment by neighboring nomadic, transhuman groups. Beyond that, the sheer demographic pressure of the piling up of different Barbarian tribes served to encourage expansion: unsettled, roving societies traditionally do not tolerate population pressure. Thus, in the fundamental division of antiquity between an urbanized, agrarian-based, Latin civilization whose core was the Mediterranean basin, and a rural, pastoral, nomadic, non-literate Barbarian world emerging from the steppe lands, these tribes represented the citadel of Barbarism ready to move.

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