Taifals

The dragon-and-pearl device of the shields of the Equites Hono-riani Taifali iuniores unit based in Gaul. The dragon was blue,as was the “pearl” (the central boss). The band around the bosswas red. The field was white.

The Taifals or Tayfals (Latin: Taifali, Taifalae or ei-fali) were a people group of Germanic or Sarmatian ori-gin, first documented north of the lower Danube in themid third century AD. They experienced an unsettled andfragmented history, for the most part in association withvarious Gothic peoples, and alternately fighting against orfor the Romans. In the late fourth century some Taifaliwere settled within the Roman Empire, notably in west-ern Gaul in the modern province of Poitou. They subse-quently supplied mounted units to the Roman army andcontinued to be a significant source of cavalry for earlyMerovingian armies. By the sixth century their region ofwestern Gaul had acquired a distinct identity as Thifalia.

1 Settlement in Oltenia

One of the earliest mentions of the Taifals puts themin the following of the Gothic king Cniva when hecampaigned in Dacia and Moesia in 250 and the yearsfollowing.[1] They are sometimes classified as a Germanictribe closely related to the Goths, although some believethey were related to the (non-Germanic) Sarmatians withwhom they might have emigrated from the Central Asi-atic steppes.[2]

In the late third century they settled on the Danube on

Taifals in Oltenia and the political landscape in the 4th-centuryBalkans

both sides of the Carpathians, dividing the territory withthe Goths, who maintained political authority over all ofit.[3] In Spring 291 they formed a special alliance withtheGothic Thervingi, forming a tribal confederation fromthis date until 376,[4] and fought the Vandals and Gepids:Tervingi, pars alia Gothorum, adiuncta manu Taifalorum,adversum Vandalos Gipedesque concurrunt.[5][6] Alongwith the Victufali, the Taifals and Thervingi were thetribes mentioned as having possessed the former Romanprovince of Dacia by 350 “at the very latest”.[6] Archaeo-logical evidence suggests that the Gepids were contestingTransylvania, the region around the Someş River, with theThervingi and Taifals.[6] The Taifals were subsequentlymade foederati of the Romans, from whom they obtainedthe right to settle in Oltenia.[7] They were at that time in-dependent of the Goths.[8]

Buckle from the first hoard of Coşoveni, 5th century, possibly ofTaifal origin,[9] from Coşoveni, Oltenia, Romania

In 328 Constantine the Great conquered Oltenia and theTaifals, probably taking this opportunity to resettle alarge number in Phrygia, in the diocese of Nicholas of

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2 3 COLONI AND LAETI OF THE EMPIRE

Myra.[10][11] In 332 he sent his son Constantine II toattack the Thervingi, who were routed. According toZosimus (ii.31.3), a 500-man Taifal cavalry regiment en-gaged the Romans in a “running fight”, and there is noevidence that this campaign was a failure.[10][11] Nonethe-less, the Taifals largely fell into the hands of the Romansat this time.Around 336 they revolted against Constantine and wereput down by the generals Herpylion, Virius Nepo-tianus, and Ursus.[12] By 358 the Taifals were indepen-dent foederati of Rome and Oltenia lay outside Ro-man control.[13] They launched campaigns as allies ofthe Romans from their own Oltenic bases, against theLimigantes (358 and 359) and the Sarmatians (358).[14]However, campaigns against the Thervingi by the em-peror Valens in 367 and 368 were inhibited by the in-dependence of Oltenia.[13] It is possible, however, thatthe Taifals at this time were still fighting alongside theGoths.[15] In 365 the emperor ordered the constructionof defensive towers in Dacia Ripensis, but whether thiswas Oltenia is unclear.[16] Archaeological evidence evi-dences no sedes Taifalorum (Taifal settlements) west ofthe Olt River.[4]

2 Crossing the Danube

With the Iazyges and the Carpi, the Taifals were ha-rassing the Roman province of Dacia in the mid fourthcentury. However, the arrival of a new threat—Huns—from Central Asia changed the political layout of Da-cia: “the Huns threw themselves upon the Alans, theAlans upon the Goths, and the Goths upon the Taifaliand Sarmatae.”[17] Athanaric had refused to extend hisdefensive preparations to the Taifalian territory and theHuns forced the Taifals to abandon Oltenia and west-ern Muntenia by 370.[18][19] The Taifals allied with theGreuthungi of Farnobius against Rome; they crossed theDanube in 377, but were defeated in late autumn thatyear.[20] The Taifals were prominent among the survivorsof Farnobius’ coalition. After the Gothic victory at Adri-anople (378) under Fritigern, the Thervingian king Atha-naric began to assail the Taifals.[17] Athanaric had notincluded the Taifals in his defensive construction effortsagainst the Huns earlier (376).[21] The breaking of the al-liance between Thervingia and Taifal may have had some-thing to do with disagreements over tactics in light of theHuns and the crossing of the Danube, the Taifals beinghorsemen and the Thervingi infantry.[22]

Sometime before their conversion to Christianity,Ammianus Marcellinus wrote:

It is said that this nation of the Taifaliwas so profligate, and so immersed in thefoulest obscenities of life, that they indulgedin all kinds of unnatural lusts, exhausting thevigour both of youth and manhood in the

most polluted defilements of debauchery. Butif any adult caught a boar or slew a bearsingle-handed, he was then exempted from allcompulsion of submitting to such ignominiouspollution.[23]

The Taifals were probably never Arians. Their conversionto the Orthodox Catholic faith probably occurred throughRoman evangelism in the mid fifth century.[24]

A page of the Insignia viri illustris magistri Equitum frommanuscript Canon. Misc. 378 of Notitia Dignitatum, since 1817in the Bodleian Library[25]

3 Coloni and laeti of the Empire

Subsequent to their defeat and falling out with Athanaric,the Taifals were officially resettled as coloni to farm landsin northern Italy (Modena, Parma, Reggio, Emilia) andAquitaine by the victorious general Frigeridus.[26] Aban-doned Oltenia was settled by the Huns c. 400. SomeTaifals allied with the Huns as early as 378, and somewere later still allied with them at the Battle of Châlons(451). However, the victory of Adrianople in 378 meantthat those Taifals who remained with the Visigoths foughtagainst their cousins at Châlons. In 412, the Taifals en-tered Aquitaine in the train of the Visigoths.The Taifals were often teamed with the Sarmatians andthe Citrati iuniores by the Romans and subsequently byClovis I. According to the Notitia Dignitatum of the early

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fifth century, there was a unit called the Equites Taifaliestablished by Honorius under the comes Britanniarumin Britannia.[27] Possibly this unit may have been sent tothe island by Stilicho in 399, and they may have beenthe same unit as the Equites Honoriani seniores men-tioned around the same time. Thus, the Equites Hono-riani Taifali seniores served in Britain while the Equi-tes Honoriani Taifali iuniores served in Gaul under themagister Equitum. The Taifali iuniores used the dragon-and-pearl device on their shields.[28] The Equites Taifaliseniores had mirrored bears holding the shield boss, asillustrated in the Notitia Dignitatum. The Notitia also listsa unit called the Comites Taifali in the Eastern Empire,which was probably formed in the reign of TheodosiusI.[29]

4 Presence in Merovingian Gaul

Also according to the Notitia, there was a praefectus Sar-matarum et Taifalorum gentilium, Pictavis in Galia, thatis, a Sarmatian and Taifal prefect in Poitiers in Gaul.[30]The region of Poitou was even called Thifalia, Theiphaliaor Theofalgicus pagus (all meaning “Taifal country”) inthe sixth century. The Taifals were instrumental in de-feating the Visigothic cavalry hand to hand at the Battleof Vouillé in 507.[31]

Under the Merovingians, Theiphalia had its own dux(duke).[32] It is possible that the Taifal laeti who hadserved the Romans also served as garrisons for theFranks, but this is not referred to in primary records.[33]The laeti were formally integrated into the Merovingianmilitary establishment under Childebert I.[34] Gregoryof Tours, the principal source for the Taifals in thesixth century, says that a certain Frankish dux namedAustrapius “oppressed” the Taifals (probably in the vicin-ity of Tiffauges); they revolted and killed him.[35] The lastmention of the Taifals as a distinct gens dates from year565,[36] but their Oltenic remnants almost certainly tookpart in the Lombard migration and invasion of Italy in568.[37]

The most famous Taifal was Saint Senoch, who foundedan abbey at the Roman ruins which are now called Saint-Senoch.[38] The Taifal influence extended into the ninthcentury and their fortresses, like Tiffauges and Lusignan,continued in use under the Carolingians.[39] It has evenbeen suggested that the Asiatic Taifals and Sarmatians in-fluenced the Germanic arts.[40] They also left their markin the municipal nomenclature of the region: asides fromTiffauges, mentioned above, Taphaleschat[41] in Corrèze,Touffailles and Touffaillou in Aquitaine, and Chauffailles(formerly Taïfailia) in Burgundy owe their names toTaifal settlement. Perhaps the town of Tafalla in theNavarre owes its name to these people, but if so, it is un-known if the Taifals were established in Hispania (prob-ably to subdue the Basques) by the Romans before 412or by the Visigoths after that. The town of Taivola in

northern Italy was also a Taifal settlement.[42]

5 Sources

• Bachrach, Bernard S. “Procopius, Agathias and theFrankish Military.” Speculum, Vol. 45, No. 3. (Jul.,1970), pp 435–441.

• Bachrach, Bernard S. Merovingian Military Organi-zation, 481–751. Minneapolis: University of Min-nesota Press, 1971.

• Bachrach, Bernard S. “Military Organization inAquitaine under the Early Carolingians.” Speculum,Vol. 49, No. 1. (Jan., 1974), pp 1–33.

• Barnes, T. D. “Another Forty Missing Persons (A.D. 260–395).” Phoenix, Vol. 28, No. 2. (Summer,1974), pp 224–233.

• Barnes, T. D. “Constans andGratian in Rome.”Har-vard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 79. (1975),pp 325–333.

• Greenberg, David. The Construction of Homosexu-ality. 1988.

• Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks. 2vol. O. M. Dalton, trans. Oxford: Clarendon Press,1967.

• Heather, Peter. “The Huns and the End of the Ro-man Empire in Western Europe.” The English His-torical Review, Vol. 110, No. 435. (Feb., 1995),pp 4–41. (See map for Taifal migration route inBalkans, p. 8.)

• Lenski, Noel. “Initiummali Romano imperio: Con-temporary Reactions to the Battle of Adrianople (inHistory and Ideology).” Transactions of the Ameri-can Philological Association, Vol. 127. (1997), pp129–168.

• Maenchen-Helfen, J. Otto; Knight, Max (ed). TheWorld of the Huns: Studies in their History and Cul-ture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.ISBN 0-520-01596-7.

• Musset, Lucien. The Germanic Invasions: TheMak-ing of Europe AD 400–600. Edward and ColumbaJames, trans. London: Paul Elek, 1975. ISBN0-236-17620-X. Originally published as Les Inva-sions: Les Vagues Germaniques. Paris: Presses Uni-versitaires de France, 1965.

• Nickel, Helmut. “The Dragon and the Pearl.”Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 26. (1991), pp139–146.

4 7 EXTERNAL LINKS

• Nischer, E. C. “The Army Reforms of Diocletianand Constantine and Their Modifications up to theTime of the Notitia Dignitatum.” The Journal of Ro-man Studies, Vol. 13. (1923), pp 1–55.

• Thompson, E. A. The Visigoths in the Time of Ulfila.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.

• Wolfram, Herwig. History of the Goths. ThomasJ. Dunlap, trans. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1988.

6 Notes[1] Wolfram, 45.

[2] Maenchen-Helfen, 26 n50, says there is “no evidence theywere Germans”. Dalton, I, 172 n7, calls them “proba-bly of Asiatic descent.” Wolfram, 92, mentions hypoth-esised Vandalic origin which equates the Taifals with theLacringi and considers “Taifali” to be a Celtic “cult name”.

[3] Wolfram, 56.

[4] Wolfram, 91.

[5] Panegyrici Latini, iii[xi].17, cited in Thompson, 9 n2.

[6] Wolfram, 57ff, mentions a panegyric delivered on 1 April291 which refers to Thervings and Taiflas defeating aVandal-Gepid coalition.

[7] Thompson, 4.

[8] Musset, 36.

[9] http://www.comunacosoveni.ro/cultura-locala/prezentare-locala

[10] Thompson, 11 and n3.

[11] Wolfram, 61 and n141.

[12] Barnes, “Forty”, 226, and “Constans”, 331–332.

[13] Thompson, 13.

[14] Wolfram, 63.

[15] Wolfram, 67.

[16] Thompson, 14 n1.

[17] Ambrose of Milan, Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam,X.10, quoted in Maenchen-Helfen, 20.

[18] Maenchen-Helfen, 26 and n50.

[19] Wolfram, 408 n225.

[20] Id. Ammianus wrote of their annihilation, but Zosimusplaced them second to the Goths in importance. Theywere evidently numerous.

[21] Wolfram, 71.

[22] Wolfram, 99.

[23] Ammianus, 31.IX.v. Greenberg, 243, believes this refersto practices of ritualistic homosexual pederasty among theTaifali warrior class.

[24] Wolfram, 238.

[25] ThisMSwas bought by the Bodleian from the estate of theVenetian Jesuit Matteo Luigi Canonici (1727–c.1806). Itwas originally made in 1436 for Pietro Donato, Bishop ofPadua.

[26] Wolfram, 123.

[27] Wolfram, 478 n562.

[28] Nickel, 139.

[29] Nischer, 51.

[30] Bachrach, Merovingian, 12 n30.

[31] Bachrach, Merovingian, 17.

[32] Bachrach, Merovingian, 29 and 38.

[33] Dalton, I, 226, who calls them foederati.

[34] Dalton, I, 44.

[35] Gregory, IV.18.

[36] In Gregory, Wolfram, 238. Gregory’s generally friendlyattitude towards the Taifals attests to their orthodoxy andto their relative lack of Gothicisation considering theirmany years spent in Gothic alliances.

[37] Musset, 88.

[38] Gregory, V.7.

[39] Bachrach, Aquitaine, 24.

[40] Dalton, I, 172 n7.

[41] http://maps.google.fr/maps?hl=fr&num=30&q=Taphaleschat+Saint-Sulpice-les-Bois&ie=UTF8&split=0&gl=fr&ei=zoiaSv3dH5qsjAeN34m7BQ&ll=46.739861,4.350586&spn=15.511101,27.817383&t=h&z=5&iwloc=A

[42] Wolfram, 92.

7 External links• Riders of the Comitatus historical reenactment andliving history group portray members of the late Ro-man Equites Honoriani Taifali seniores in northernEngland

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