Voccio

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Voccio (fl. mid-1st century BCE) was a king of Noricum and an independent ally of the Roman Republic. He is named by Julius Caesar in the first book of his Gallic Wars (1.53.4). Additional evidence possibly pertaining to Voccio has been construed without firm scholarly consensus from a reference to a king of Noricum in Caesar's commentary on Rome's civil war in the 40s BCE and a legend on a Norican coin.

Contents

The Kingdom of Noricum

By the 1st century BCE, the various tribes living in an area corresponding to much of today's Austria and part of Slovenia had achieved a stable military and political structure that the Romans referred to as the regnum Noricum, unified under a king (rex) acknowledged by the Romans as the central authority in the region. [1] However, tribal leaders continued to have a considerable degree of independence in governing at the local level, including the issuing of coinage. [1] Except for one contested example, the name of Voccio does not appear on extant coinage at all. [1] The Roman historian Livy recognized these local rulers as constituting a nobility as early as the 2nd century BCE and calls them the comites of the king. [2] Not much is known about the social hierarchy that the king occupied the peak of; in addition to the nobility, it appears to have comprised "free peasants, herdsmen, miners, manual workers, and traders", along with enslaved people. [2]

Voccio had become king no later than 60 BCE; Alföldy believed that he was still ruling in 49 BCE, when Caesar notes, without giving a name, that the king of Noricum sent a unit of 300 cavalry auxiliaries to support him during the civil war he was waging with Pompeius (Bello Civile 1.18.5). [3] Alföldy conjectured that this king was Voccio. [4] [5]

Alliance with Ariovistus

During Voccio's rule, Celtic-speaking Boii attempted to move into Noricum after they were displaced by Dacian expansionism under Burebista. [6] [7] To prevent the Boii from settling in Norican lands, around 60 BCE Voccio secured an alliance with Ariovistus, the leader of the Germanic Suebi, to whom he gave his sister as a second, presumably Celtic-speaking wife. [8] [9] [7] The linking of marriage and alliance is indicative of the ethnic complexities between western and eastern Europe during this period of frequent migration and invasion. [9] [7]

When the Boii laid siege to the stronghold of Noreia, [10] the combined forces of Voccio and Ariovistus were able to repel them. [6] [11] The exact site of Noreia is unknown, but archaeological evidence shows that an oppidum (stronghold) at Magdalensberg, a major Norican center, suffered damage consistent with a siege. [6] Rome considered Noricum with its mineral wealth and advanced metallurgy to be a vital trading partner, [12] [2] and the defense of Noreia earned Ariovistus recognition as Friend of the Roman People during the consulship of Julius Caesar in 59. [7]

The Boii sought refuge among the Helvetii, in present-day Switzerland, and joined their planned migration into Gaul. [13] Under threat of being overrun, the Aedui of central Gaul invoked their longstanding treaty with Rome to secure aid from Caesar as the newly appointed proconsul of Gaul in 58 BC. [14] In the first campaign in what become Caesar's Gallic War, Helvetii were defeated and sent back to their homeland, and the Boii resettled on Aeduan land. [15]

But the Aedui were also under continued threat from Ariovistus, who had inflicted a heavy defeat on them the previous year and continued his push west. Their Gallic rivals the Sequani to the east, and the Arverni to the west, both of whom also had established relations with Rome, had brought in Ariovistus [9] to fight against the Aedui. He then turned his dominance against the Sequani themselves and had occupied their territory by the time Caesar became governor of southern Gaul, already a Roman province. The encroachment on Roman allies along Roman borders caused Caesar to divert his attention to the Suebi. [7] Diplomatic efforts to force Ariovistus back across the Rhine failed, and during the eventual battle that succeeded in doing so, the sister of Voccio was killed. [16]

Despite the death, Ariovistus' reversal of fortune seems not to have affected Noricum's alliance with Rome. [8] [4] Alföldy conjectured that Caesar sent Roman engineers to help rebuild Noreia following the siege as one way to maintain relations. [4]

Name and Numismatics

Noricum Kugelreiter type 88000571.jpg
Keltische Fursten Munzen.JPG
Example of a Kugelreiter coin from Noricum, and the reverse of three Norican coins showing Celtic names

The etymology of the name Voccio is uncertain. [17] [18] It is possibly but not necessarily a Celtic name, and the doubled c may indicate a hypocoristic formation. [19] Voccio is not listed in the 2003 edition of Delamarre’s dictionary of Gaulish. [20] Evans, while finding no proof of the name's Celticity, compares it to Celtic personal names such as Voccius in the Narbonensis and Dalmatia, [21] Vocco in Germania Superior, [22] Voccilus in the Lugdunensis, [23] and Vocconianus in Aquitania. [24]

A Norican tetradrachm with the legend VOKK has been thought by some scholars to be a clear reference to Voccio. [25] [26] [27] The coin belongs to the Kugelreiter typology of silver Norican coinage with a legend in a script interpreted as Venetic. [28] The Kugelreiter type features a head characteristic of Apollo on the obverse and on the reverse a rider on a horse depicted with emphatic musculature on the forequarter. [29]

However, the dating of the coin may not support an identification as the Voccio mentioned by Caesar. [3] [30] Even the reading V.O.K.K. itself may be a scholarly "will-o'-the-wisp", in the view of Karl Strobel — begotten by "wishful thinking" in the absence of evidence for Voccio outside Caesar's text; [31] the better reading may be .n.no.u. = N(?) No(?)V(?), an undetermined Celtic name. [32] Numismatist Peter Kos reads the legend as .n.no.l, dates the coin to the mid-2nd century BCE, and considers the attribution to Caesar's Voccio as "quite impossible". [33]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Alföldy 1974, p. 42.
  2. 1 2 3 Alföldy 1974, p. 43.
  3. 1 2 Mackensen 1975, p. 266.
  4. 1 2 3 Alföldy 1974, p. 41.
  5. ↑ Mackensen 1975, p. 266, expressing caution about the identification.
  6. 1 2 3 Alföldy 1974, p. 40.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Rankin 1996, p. 126.
  8. 1 2 Demougeot 1978, p. 924, n. 74.
  9. 1 2 3 Briggs 2023, p. 1114.
  10. ↑ Demougeot 1978, p. 924, taking the view that Voccio called in Ariovistus after the Boii succeeded in taking Noreia.
  11. ↑ Mócsy 1974, pp. 17.
  12. ↑ Demougeot 1978, p. 924.
  13. ↑ Alföldy 1974, pp. 40–41.
  14. ↑ Rankin 1996, p. 125.
  15. ↑ Johnston 2017, p. 109.
  16. ↑ Rankin 1996, pp. 126–127.
  17. ↑ Duval 1965, p. 412.
  18. ↑ Evans 1967, p. 479.
  19. ↑ Bachellery 1968, p. 352.
  20. ↑ Delamarre 2003, pp. 324–326, not listed in entries such as uo- and uocontii and not in either the list of personal names (p. 375 for those beginning Uo-) or addenda pp. 339–340.
  21. ↑ Evans 1967, pp. 478–479, citing J. Whatmough, The Dialects of Ancient Gaul (DAG) 83 and 244.
  22. ↑ Evans 1967, p. 479, citing CIL 13.6362.
  23. ↑ Evans 1967, p. 479, citing DAG 182.
  24. ↑ Evans 1967, p. 479, citing DAG 151 and 156.
  25. ↑ Mackensen 1975, pp. 251, 266.
  26. ↑ Geiser, Genechesi & Scoccimarro 2012, p. 92, n. 40, citing R. Göbl, Typologie und Chronologie der keltischen Münzprägung in Noricum (1973) p. 86, and P. Kos and A. Šemrov, "A Hoard of Celtic and Roman Coins from the Ljubljanica River: A Contribution to the Chronology of the Coinage of the Taurisci", Archeološki vestnik 54 (2003) p. 388.
  27. ↑ Kos 2004, pp. 105–106, surveying scholarship and arguing against this view.
  28. ↑ Mackensen 1975, pp. 251–252.
  29. ↑ Mackensen 1975, p. 250.
  30. ↑ Geiser, Genechesi & Scoccimarro 2012, p. 92, n. 40, citing G. Gorini , "Nuove indagini sulle leggende delle emissioni preromane dell’Italia settentrionale", in Moneta qua Scripta, la moneda como soporte de escritura, Actes de la IIIe rencontre péninsulaire de numismatique antique (2004) pp. 291–300..
  31. ↑ Strober 2012, pp. 13–14, "ein Phantom der Forschung", noting that "der Wunsch der Vater des Gedankens war".
  32. ↑ Strober 2012, p. 14.
  33. ↑ Kos 2004, p. 110.

Bibliography

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