Kingdoms of the Germanic Tribes

In the first century AD, vast areas of central, northern, and Eastern Europe were dark and unknown lands full of savage Germanic barbarians - at least according to the Romans. Little detail is known about many of those savage Germanic barbarians, but brief windows are opened onto their lives and organisation at various points during the existence of the Roman empire, while other Germanic groups went on to play major roles in the extinction of that empire.

The Indo-European Germanic ethnic group began as a division of the western edge of late proto-Indo-European dialects around 3300 BC, splitting away from a general westwards migration to head towards the southern coastline of the Early Baltics and then enter southern Scandinavia (see feature link, right, for more detail).

By the time in which the early Germanic tribes were becoming key players in Western European politics in the last two centuries BC, the previously dominant Celts were on the verge of being conquered and dominated by Rome (see map link for general locations). Strabo says that the Romans introduced the name 'Germani' for these 'new' barbarians because their tribes were the 'authentic Celts', seeming to mean that they were what the Celts used to be - strong, aggressive, and bold.

Once they had begun to migrate southwards out of Scandinavia, Germanic tribes carved out homelands between the Rhine and the Pripet Marshes (modern Belarus). They slowly consolidated their positions (although migrations still occurred) until they had formed tribal kingdoms which eventually threatened the Roman empire itself. This became bloody reality when they were forced west and south by later incursions of Hunnic tribes into their lands which caused tribal fractures and a degree of scattered relocation.

At first glimpse, the Victohali appear to be one result of this Hunnic intrusion and the splintering of existing Germanic groups. Variously recorded as the Victabali, Victoali, Victovali, Victuali, and Victufali (or the Greek Biktoa or Biktoloi), in the late Roman period they occupied territory on the northern side of the Danube, amongst long-established tribes such as the Sarmatian Iazyges and Roxolani.

Their status as Germanics is uncertain, but it has been suggested (by Doležal) that they could have been a division of the Vandali. This seems less likely when they were included in the list of tribes which took part in a fresh Marcomanni attack in AD 166.

Stanislav Doležal asks in his own work about the identity of these Victohali. Apart from Ammianus, only Eutropius and Historia Augusta mention this tribe, but only as a name in a list of peoples. Eutropius dryly remarked that Trajan 'conquered Dacia, once he had defeated Decebalus, and a province beyond the Danube was created in that territory, which now belongs to the Taifali, Victoali, and Tervingi'. Given the multiplicity of name variations for them, however, it could be assumed that they had a much longer existence than is often suspected, even though much of that existence may have been unrecorded.

The true nature of their origins only becomes clear when a name breakdown is attempted. They may well have been Germanic in terms of their ethnic background, but they were not in terms of name. The first element, 'vict-', is a descendant of the proto-Indo-European 'u̯eik', and its descendants are found in many languages.

The Germanic tongues, though, retain the original sequence of sounds without adding a '-t' to it. That '-t' is added often (although not always) in Italo-Celtic tongues such as Latin and Gaulish, and is still present as a 'th' sound in Cymric (Welsh) as 'gwyth'. The proto-Celtic word list gives this proposed form: 'wixta'. Again the 't' or 'th' is present.

The second element is less obvious and less certain. Since the first element is Italo-Celtic, then the second should be assumed to be the same. The 'h' in '-hal' would previously have been a 'kh' sound, and the simplest form in proto-Celtic is 'kali', meaning 'spear'.

If the tribe was indeed ethnically Germanic with a German language but the tribe's name was indeed Gaulish then this would certainly account for the spelling. The Victohali would have been 'vict', meaning 'victory, victors', and 'hal', meaning 'spears', plus the '-i' Latin plural. They were the 'winning spears' or perhaps 'victory spears'. Possibly they were a later division of the Bastarnae or Buri, two relatively local tribal bodies which also exhibited a Celto-Germanic mix.

European Kingdoms

Germanic Tribes

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