Costoboci


The Costoboci were a Dacian tribe located, during the Roman imperial era, between the Carpathian Mountains and the river Dniester. During the Marcomannic Wars the Costoboci invaded the Roman Empire in AD 170 or 171, pillaging its Balkan provinces as far as Central Greece, until they were driven out by the Romans. Shortly afterwards, the Costoboci's territory was invaded and occupied by Vandal Hasdingi and the Costoboci disappeared from surviving historical sources, except for a mention by the late Roman Ammianus Marcellinus, writing around AD 400.

Name etymology

The name of the tribe is attested in a variety of spellings in and in.
According to Ion I. Russu, this is a Thracian compound name meaning "the shining ones". The first element is the perfect passive participle Cos-to-, derived from the Proto-Indo-European root kʷek̂-, kʷōk̂- "to seem, see, show", and the second element is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root bhā-, bhō- "to shine", extended by the suffix -k-. Ivan Duridanov considered it a Dacian name with unclear etymology.
Some scholars argue that "Costoboci" has a Celtic etymology.
N.B. Georgiev considers all etymologies based on Indo-European root-words to be "devoid of scientific value": the root-words themselves are reconstructions, are necessarily incomplete and can have multiple descendants in several IE languages. In this case, the name Costoboci could mean "the shining ones" in languages other than Thracian or it could have a different root than the ones surmised by Russu. For example, as pronounced ‘Costoboci‘ reads as “people that stab bones” in Serbian language.

Territory

Mainstream modern scholarship locates this tribe to the north or north-east of Roman Dacia. Some scholars considered that the earliest known mention of this tribe is in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, published c. AD 77, as a Sarmatian tribe named the Cotobacchi living in the lower Don valley. Other scholars have challenged this identification and have recognised the "Cotobacchi" as a distinct tribe.
Ammianus Marcellinus, writing c. 400, locates the Costoboci between the Dniester and Danube rivers, probably to the north-east of the former Roman province of Dacia. In his Geographia, the Greek geographer Ptolemy seems to indicate that the Costoboci inhabited north-western or north-eastern Dacia. In addition, some scholars identify the people called Transmontanoi by Ptolemy, located to the north of the Carpathians, as Dacian Costoboci.

Material culture

Some scholars associate the Costoboci with the Lipiţa culture. However, Roger Batty, reluctant to correlate material culture with group identity, argues that Lipiţa culture belonged either to a subgroup of the Costoboci or to some population they ruled over. This culture developed on the northern side of the Carpathians in the Upper Dniester and Prut basins in the Late La Tène period.
The bearers of this culture had a sedentary lifestyle and practiced agriculture, cattle-breeding, iron-working and pottery. The settlements were not fortified and contained sunken floored buildings, surface buildings, storage pits, hearths, ovens and kilns. There are numerous pottery finds of various types, both wheel and hand-made, with similarities in shape and decoration to the pottery of the pre-Roman Dacia. The pottery finds of the northern Lipiţa sites in the upper Zolota Lypa basin are similar to that of the Zarubintsy culture.The cemeteries were found close to settlements. The predominant funeral rite was cremation, with urns containing ashes buried in plain graves, but several inhumation graves were also excavated.

Onomastics

A Latin-language funerary inscription found in Rome, believed to date from the 2nd century AD, was dedicated to Zia or Ziais the Dacian, the daughter of Tiatus and the wife of Pieporus, a king of the Costoboci. The monument was set up by Natoporus and Drigisa, Zia's grandsons. The inscription was first published by the Italian scholar Mariangelus Accursius in the 16th century, but it is now lost.

Inscription

D M
ZIAI
TIATI FIL
DACAE. UXORI
PIEPORI. REGIS
COISSTOBOCENSIS
NATOPORUS ET
DRIGISA AVIAE
CARISS B M FECER

Translation

"To the Spirits of the Dead. to ZIA the Dacian, Daughter of TIATUS, Wife of PIEPORUS, Costobocan king. NATOPORUS and DRIGISA made for their most dear, well-deserving grandmother."

Name analysis

  • Drigisa: a Thracian or Dacian name. It is considered a variant of the consonant -l- of the name Drigisa, the name of the Roman veteran Aurelius Drigisa from Moesia Inferior and of the legionary Titus Aurelius Drigissa from Moesia Superior. The final element -gisa is frequent in Dacian onomastics.
  • Natoporus: a Thracian or Dacian name. A soldier Natopor is known from several ostraca found at Mons Claudianus in eastern Egypt. A Roman military diploma was issued in 127 in Mauretania Caesariensis for a Dacian soldier and his two children, a son Nattoporis and a daughter Duccidava. It is a name ending in -por, a frequent Thracian and Dacian onomastic element. On a military diploma issued in 127 in Germania Inferior, a Dacian soldier's father is named Natusis, a name formed with the same first element nat- and a suffix -zi-/''-si-.
  • Pieporus: a Thracian or Dacian name. It is a name ending in -por, a frequent Thracian and Dacian onomastic element.
  • Tiatus: a Thracian or Dacian name. Tiatus is maybe a name starting in thia-, typical for Dacians. A name Tiato is attested on a fragmentary dipinto found at Maximianon, a Roman fort in eastern Egypt.
  • Zia or Ziais: a Thracian or Dacian name. Zia'' is a female name attested in Moesia Inferior.

    Ethnolinguistic affiliation

The ethnic and linguistic affiliation of the Costoboci is uncertain due to lack of evidence. The mainstream view is that they were a Dacian tribe, among the so-called "Free Dacians" not subjected to Roman rule. However some scholars suggested they were Thracian, Sarmatian, Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, or Dacian with a Celtic superstratum.
The evidence adduced in support of the main ethnic hypotheses may be summarised as follows:

Dacian

  1. Onomastics: The family of a Costobocan king called Pieporus had names considered by some scholars to be of Dacian origin.
  2. The rubric Dacpetoporiani on the Tabula Peutingeriana has been interpreted by some scholars as an elision of "Daci Petoporiani" meaning the "Dacians of King Petoporus". Schütte argued Petoporus is one and the same as Pieporus, the king of the Costoboci.
  3. Archaeology: The Costoboci have been linked, on the basis of their geographical location, with the Lipitsa culture. This culture's features, especially its pottery styles and burial customs, have been identified as Dacian by some scholars, leading to the conclusion that the Costoboci were an ethnic-Dacian tribe.
  4. Name etymology: According to Schütte, the Dacian element -bokoi is also occurring in the name of another Dacian tribe, the Sabokoi. However, Roger Batty argues that the Lipitsa culture is a poor fit for the Costoboci, not least because it appears to have disappeared during the 1st century BC, long before the period AD 100–200 when they are attested in and around Dacia by surviving historical documents.

    Thracian

  5. Onomastics: Some scholars consider the names of Pieporus and of his grandsons to be Thracian.
  6. Archaeology: According to Jazdewski, in the early Roman period, on the Upper Dniestr, the features of the Lipitsa culture indicate ethnic Thracians under strong Celtic cultural influence, or who had simply absorbed Celtic ethnic components.
  7. The fact that queen Zia is specifically characterised as "Dacian" may indicate that Pieporus and the Costoboci were not themselves Dacians.

    Celtic

  8. The name Costoboci is considered by some scholars to be of Celtic etymology. In particular, they see the first element of their name as a corruption of coto-, a Celtic root meaning "old" or "crooked". However, Faliyeyev argues that while possible, a Celtic derivation is less likely than an "autochthonous" one.
  9. During the period 400–200 BC, Transylvania and Bessarabia saw intensive Celtic settlement, as evidenced by heavy concentrations of La Tène-type cemeteries. Central Transylvania appears to have become a Celtic enclave or unitary kingdom, according to Batty. Ptolemy lists 3 tribes as present in Transylvania: : the Taurisci, Anartes and Costoboci. The first two are generally considered by scholars to be of Celtic origin.
  10. The Lipitsa culture displays numerous Celtic features.

    Scytho-Sarmatian

According to some scholars, the Costoboci were not a sedentary group at all, but a semi-nomadic steppe horse-based culture of Scytho-Sarmatian character. This hypothesis was originally proposed by the eminent 19th-century German classical scholar Theodor Mommsen.
  1. The tribe called Cotobacchi in a list of Sarmatian tribes in Pliny's Naturalis Historia is considered by some scholars to refer to the Costoboci. However, Russu and other scholars consider the Cotobacchi to be a distinct group, unconnected to the Costoboci.
  2. The statement by Ammianus Marcellinus, that a region of the north Pontic steppes was inhabited by "the European Alans, the Costobocae and innumerable Scythian tribes". According to some scholars, the region referred to is the entire steppe between the Danube and the river Don and the passage identifies the Costobocae as an Iranic steppe-nomadic people. However, other scholars argue that the region referred to is much smaller, that between the Danube and Dniester.
  3. The presence, throughout the region identified by ancient geographers as inhabited by the Costoboci, interspersed among the sites of sedentary cremation cultures such as Lipitsa, of distinct Sarmatian-style inhumation cemeteries dating from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.
  4. An inscription found in the Sanctuary of the Mysteries at Eleusis in Greece, which is believed to have been carved by priests after this temple was sacked by the Costoboci during their invasion of 170/1. The inscription refers to the "crimes of the Sarmatians". Some scholars argue that this proves the Costoboci were Sarmatians. However, other scholars suggest that the name of the Sarmatians was used as an umbrella term for raiders crossing the lower Danube, or that it attests a joint invasion by Costoboci and Sarmatians.