Marcomanni

The Marcomanni were a Suebic people who migrated from the Main into Bohemia around 9 BC under Maroboduus, a noble who had been educated at Rome in Augustus's household and who built something no Germanic leader had built before: a centralised kingdom with a standing army reported at seventy thousand foot and four thousand horse, a fixed royal seat, and a foreign policy of strict neutrality. Rome regarded it as the most dangerous state beyond the frontier and prepared a two-pronged invasion in AD 6, which was abandoned at the last moment when Pannonia revolted. Maroboduus then refused to join Arminius against Rome after Teutoburg, which preserved him and destroyed his reputation; he was overthrown by his own nobility in AD 19 and lived out eighteen years in Roman exile at Ravenna. The kingdom reverted to a confederation. Its greatest impact came a century and a half later, when population pressure from further east pushed the Marcomanni and their neighbours the Quadi across the Danube in the 160s, into Noricum and Pannonia and as far as Aquileia in northern Italy - the first invasion of Italy in two hundred and fifty years. Marcus Aurelius spent most of the rest of his life on that frontier and wrote the Meditations there. The wars ended inconclusively in 180. The Marcomanni persisted in Bohemia until the migration period and are generally taken to have been absorbed into the Bavarians. Maroboduus is the first Germanic ruler whose policy can be traced in detail. His capital has never been located. The wars against his successors are carved on the column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Bohemia takes its name from the Boii, whom the Marcomanni displaced.

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