Sources
- Gregory of Tours, Historiën, Book II - paragraph 9.
- Claudian, Loeb classical Library, On Stilicho's Consulship (translation Platnauer)
- Edward James, De Franken
Sunno was a leader (dux) of the Franks in the late 4th century who invaded the Roman Empire in the year 388 when the usurper and leader of the whole of Roman Gaul, Magnus Maximus was surrounded in Aquileia by Theodosius I.
The invasion is documented by Gregory of Tours who cited the now-lost work of Sulpicius Alexander. According to this account, Marcomer, Sunno and Genobaud invaded the Roman provinces Germania Inferior and Belgia. They broke through the limes and killed many people, destroyed the most fruitful lands and made the city of Cologne panic. After this raid the main body of the Franks moved back over the river Rhine with their booty while some remained in the Belgian woods. When the Roman generals Magnus Maximus, Nanninus and Quintinus heard the news in Trier, they attacked those remaining Frankish forces and killed many of their number. After this engagement, Quintinus crossed the Rhine to punish the Franks in their own country, however his army was surrounded and beaten. Some Roman soldiers drowned in the marshes, others were killed by Franks, few made it back to their empire.
Nanninus and Quintinus were replaced by Charietto and Syrus, who were again confronted by an attack of unidentified Franks.
Later after the fall of Magnus Maximus, Marcomer and Sunno held a short meeting about the recent attacks with the Frank Arbogastes, who was a general (magister militum) in the Roman army. The Franks delivered hostages as usual and Arbogastes returned to his winter quarters in Trier.
A couple of years later when Arbogastes had seized power and the West Roman army was nearly completely in the hands of Frankish mercenaries, he crossed the Rhine with a Roman army into Germania because he hated his own kin. Marcomer was seen with Chatti and Ampsivarii but the two did not engage.
Later we hear from the poet Claudian that Marcomer was arrested by Romans and banned to a villa in Tuscany. His brother Sunno crossed the Rhine and tried to set himself up as leader of Marcomer's band, but he was killed by his own people.
According to the later Liber Historiae Francorum, Marcomer tried to unite the Franks after the death of Sunno. He proposed that the Franks should live under one king and proposed his own son Pharamond for the kingship. This source does not tell us if Marcomer succeeded but from other sources it may seem that Pharamond was regarded as the first king of the Francs. However, this account of the Liber Historiae Francorum is not accepted as historical by modern scholars such as Edward James because Marcomer is therein called the son of the Trojan king Priam, and Sunno the son of Antenor, obviously impossible because Priam and Antenor lived hundreds of years earlier.
The Chatti were an ancient Germanic tribe whose homeland was near the upper Weser (Visurgis). They lived in central and northern Hesse and southern Lower Saxony, along the upper reaches of that river and in the valleys and mountains of the Eder and Fulda regions, a district approximately corresponding to Hesse-Kassel, though probably somewhat more extensive. They settled within the region in the first century B.C. According to Tacitus, the Batavians and Cananefates of his time, tribes living within the Roman Empire, were descended from part of the Chatti, who left their homeland after an internal quarrel drove them out, to take up new lands at the mouth of the Rhine.
Chlothar III was the eldest son of Clovis II, king of Neustria and Burgundy, and his queen Balthild. When Clovis died in 657, Chlothar succeeded him under the regency of his mother. Only a month beforehand, according to the near-contemporary Life of Eligius by the courtier Audoin (bishop) of Rouen, Saint Eligius had prophesied the death of Clovis, Balthild's downfall, and Chlothar's short reign.
Aegidius was ruler of the short-lived Kingdom of Soissons from 461 to 464/465 AD. Before his ascension, he became magister militum per Gallias serving under Majorian, in 458 AD. An ardent supporter of Majorian, Aegidius rebelled against Ricimer when he assassinated Majorian and replaced him with Libius Severus; Aegidius may have pledged his allegiance to Leo I, the Eastern Roman Emperor. Aegidius repeatedly threatened to invade Italy and dethrone Libius Severus, but never actually launched such an invasion; historians have suggested he was unwilling to launch an invasion due to the pressure of the Visigoths, or else because it would leave Gaul exposed. Aegidius launched several campaigns against the Visigoths and the Burgundians, recapturing Lyons from the Burgundians in 458, and routing the Visigoths at the Battle of Orleans. He died suddenly after a major victory against the Visigoths; ancient historians say that he was assassinated, but do not give the name of the assassin, whereas modern historians believe it is possible that he died a natural death. After his death he was succeeded by his son Syagrius, who would be the second and last ruler of the Kingdom of Soissons.
The Revolt of the Batavi took place in the Roman province of Germania Inferior between AD 69 and 70. It was an uprising against the Roman Empire started by the Batavi, a small but militarily powerful Germanic tribe that inhabited Batavia, on the delta of the river Rhine. They were soon joined by the Celtic tribes from Gallia Belgica and some Germanic tribes.
Francia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks, Frankish Kingdom, Frankland or Frankish Empire, was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Franks during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. After the Treaty of Verdun in 843, West Francia became the predecessor of France, and East Francia became that of Germany. Francia was among the last surviving Germanic kingdoms from the Migration Period era before its partition in 843.
Pharamond, also spelled Faramund, is a legendary early king of the Franks, first referred to in the anonymous 8th-century Liber Historiae Francorum, which depicts him as the first king of the Franks.
Chlodio (d. probably after 450 also Clodio, Clodius, Clodion, Cloio or Chlogio, was a Frankish king who attacked, and apparently then held, Roman-inhabited lands and cities in the Silva Carbonaria forest, now in central Belgium, then Cambrai and Tournai, and reached as far south as the River Somme.
Flavius Victor was a Western Roman emperor from either 383/384 or 387 to August 388. He was the son of the Magister militum per Gallias Magnus Maximus, who later became an usurper of the Western Roman Empire, in opposition to Gratian. Maximus rose up in 383, and was recognized as the legitimate emperor in the west by Theodosius I. Victor was elevated to augustus of the Western Roman Empire in either 383/384 or mid-387, making him co-emperor with his father. Maximus invaded Italy, in 387, to depose Valentinian II, the brother and successor of the late Gratian. Because of Maximus' invasion, Theodosius invaded the Western Roman Empire in 388. Theodosius defeated Maximus in two battles in Pannonia, before crushing his army at Aquilea, and capturing Maximus. Maximus was executed on 28 August 388. His death was followed quickly by that of Victor, who was executed in Trier by the Frankish general Arbogast.
Marcomer, also spelled Marcomeres, Marchomer, Marchomir, was a Frankish leader (dux) in the late 4th century who invaded the Roman Empire in the year 388, when the usurper and leader of the whole of Roman Gaul, Magnus Maximus was surrounded in Aquileia by Theodosius I.
The Sicambri, also known as the Sugambri or Sicambrians, were a Germanic people who during Roman times lived on the east bank of the river Rhine, in what is now Germany, near the border with the Netherlands. They were first reported by Julius Caesar, who described them as Germanic (Germani), though he did not necessarily define this in terms of language.
This is a chronology of warfare between the Romans and various Germanic tribes between 113 BC and 596 AD. The nature of these wars varied through time between Roman conquest, Germanic uprisings and later Germanic invasions in the Roman Empire that started in the late second century BC. The series of conflicts was one factor which led to the ultimate downfall of the Western Roman Empire.
The Chamavi, Chamãves or Chamaboe (Χᾳμαβοί) were a Germanic tribe of Roman imperial times whose name survived into the Early Middle Ages. They first appear under that name in the 1st century AD Germania of Tacitus as a Germanic tribe that lived to the north of the Lower Rhine. Their name probably survives in the region today called Hamaland, which is in the Gelderland province of the Netherlands, between the IJssel and Ems rivers.
The Great Conspiracy was a year-long state of war and disorder that occurred in Roman Britain near the end of the Roman rule of the island. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus described it as a barbarica conspiratio that capitalized on a depleted military force in the province brought about by Magnentius' losses at the Battle of Mursa Major in Pannonia, after his unsuccessful bid to become emperor.
The Franks were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was first mentioned in 3rd-century Roman sources, and associated with tribes between the Lower Rhine and the Ems River, on the edge of the Roman Empire. Later the term was associated with Romanized Germanic dynasties within the collapsing Western Roman Empire, who eventually commanded the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine. They imposed power over many other post-Roman kingdoms and Germanic peoples. Beginning with Charlemagne in 800, Frankish rulers were given recognition by the Catholic Church as successors to the old rulers of the Western Roman Empire.
Arbogastes or Arbogast was a Roman army officer of Frankish origin.
Genobaud was a leader (dux) of the Franks. He invaded the Roman Empire in the year 388.
The Battle of the Boarn was an eighth century battle between the Franks and the Frisians near the mouth of the river Boarn in what is now the Dutch province of Friesland.
Frankish mythology comprises the mythology of the Germanic tribal confederation of the Franks, from its roots in polytheistic Germanic paganism through the inclusion of Greco-Roman components in the Early Middle Ages. This mythology flourished among the Franks until the conversion of the Merovingian king Clovis I to Nicene Christianity, though there were many Frankish Christians before that. After that, their paganism was gradually replaced by the process of Christianisation, but there were still pagans in the late 7th century.
Silva Carbonaria, the "charcoal forest", was the dense old-growth forest of beech and oak that formed a natural boundary during the Late Iron Age through Roman times into the Early Middle Ages across what is now western Wallonia. The Silva Carbonaria was a vast forest that stretched from the rivers Zenne and the Dijle in the north to the Sambre in the south. Its northern outliers reached the then marshy site of modern Brussels.
Berthoald was the Duke of the Saxons during the reign of the Frankish kings Chlothar II and his son Dagobert I, the last ruling Merovingians. He despised Frankish suzerainty and rebelled, but was defeated. His story is told in the Liber Historiae Francorum (727) and the Gesta Dagoberti (830s), both sources partial to the Merovingian kings.
