Turcilingi

The Turcilingi (also spelled Torcilingi or Thorcilingi) were an obscure barbarian people, or possibly a clan or dynasty, who appear in records relating to peoples from Central Europe in the 5th century AD.

Thomas Hodgkin's map of barbarian peoples during the time of Augustulus, from his Italy and Her Invaders. The location of the Turcilingi is only a guess.

Historical sources associate them with the cluster of Middle Danubian peoples who were under power of Attila the Hun, until he died in 453. There were Torcilingi subsequently present in the Roman forces in Italy during the reign of Romulus Augustulus (475–76) when they took part in his overthrow. Their only known leader was Odoacer (or Odovacar), who led an multiethnic Middle-Danubian forces within Roman Italy, being described as a "king" of the Torcilingi and the Rugii, and also as a leader of Heruli and Sciri soldiers. Under his leadership these forces deposed Augustulus, killed his father, and took control of Roman Italy.

From the surviving contemporary records it has not been possible for modern scholars to reach a consensus about the origins, ethnic affiliations and original language of the Turcilingi. Apart from the few near-contemporary sources which explicitly mention them, other records which are considered relevant by scholars include which describe both the ethnic connections of Odoacer and his apparent family, Edeko and Onoulphus, and the other peoples associated with them including especially the Sciri and Rugii.

There has been a tendency since the 1980s for scholars to accept the possibility of a connection between the Tocilingi and two apparently different peoples with similar names, the Tervingi, and the Thuringii. The Tervingi were an earlier Gothic people from Eastern Europe, who had crossed the Danube into the Roman empire in the generations before Odoacer. The Thuringi were first mentioned in the 5th century as a people who bred a useful type of horse, similar to those bred by the Burgundians. By the 6th century they had established a kingdom based north of the Danube in what is now Germany. There is however no consensus about any connections between these three peoples.

Primary sources

All mentions of the Turcilingi probably go back to only one independent source, the 6th century writer Jordanes.^[1] He mentioned the "Thorcilingi" or "Torcilingi" in three descriptions of Odoacer in his works, twice in his Getica and once in his Romana.

• Firstly, according to Jordanes, when barbarian soldiers demanded some Italian land on which to settle from Orestes, in return for their military service, they were denied. However, Odoacer "king of the Torcilingi" (rex Torcilingorum), occupied Italy and killed Orestes. With him were also auxiliaries of various barbarian (non-Roman) peoples including Sciri and Heruli.^[2]
• Secondly, when describing this same sequence of events in his Romana, Jordanes describes Odoacer as being "of Rogus-descent, of the Thorcilingi, fortified with crowds of Sciri and Heruli" (genere Rogus Thorcilingorum Scirorum Herolorumque turbas munitus).^[3]
• Thirdly, when Theodoric the Great was looking for a pretext to invade Italy in 493, he petitioned the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno by reminding him that the city of Rome was in turmoil under the "tyranny" (unlawful rule) of the king of the Thorcilingi and of the Rogi (sub regis Thorcilingorum Rogorumque tyrranide fluctuatur).^[4]

Reynolds and Lopez noted that Jordanes consistently writes the word often translated as "Rugii", normally equated to the name of a Middle Danubian Germanic people, with an "o" and not a "u", when referring to Odoacer. They proposed that the version in the Romana could be read as "offspring of a person named Rogus" and they connect this to the fact that a person called Rogas or Ruga or Rugila was recorded as an uncle of Attila. They therefore proposed that the passage originally meant "Torcilingi-king, of the stock of Rogus, with Sciri and Herul followers".^[5] Other historians such as Maenchen-Helfen have objected to this translation, although the Latin is unusual in its grammatical structure: "Jordanes certainly wrote a queer sort of Latin, but genere Rogus means even in the most debased Latin 'by origin a Rogus', that is 'a Rugian'."^[6]

Centuries later, the Turcilingi are also mentioned works of Paul the Deacon, in both the Historia Langobardorum and Historia Romana.

• In the opening chapter of his history of the Lombards he names several peoples including Goths, Vandals, Rugii, Heruli, and "Turcilingi", who have come, he says, from Germania to Italy. He goes on to name the Lombards as latecomers from the same region.^[7]
• When describing the nations subject to Odoacer's rule, who fought on his side when he attacked the Rugian kingdom of Feletheus, he listed the Turcilingi and the Heruli and a "part of the Rugii".^[8]
• In his history of Rome, when listing the nations who were under Attila, Paul the Deacon listed the Heruli, and the Turcilingi "also called Rugii" (Eruli Turcilingi sive Rugi) as nations under him with their own petty kings. These were therefore among the forces who could be called upon for the campaign in Gaul which occurred in 451.^[9]
• In a subsequent passage, Paul describes the meeting of Odoacer with Saint Severinus of Noricum, after Orestes (father of Romulus Augustulus) had expelled Julius Nepos from Rome. He says that Odoacer was at this time making his way to Italy with a large force of Heruli supported by auxiliaries of the Turcilingi, "also called Sciri" (cum fortissima Herolorum multitudine fretus insuper Turcilingorum sive Scirorum auxiliis).^[10]

Krautschick notes that Maenchen-Helfen, in his critique of Reynolds and Lopez, missed the fact that Paul the Deacon actually equated the Torcilingi to the Sciri in one passage, and the Rugii in another. Nevertheless, he claims Paul could not have known any other source than Jordanes, and so these equations can be seen as attempts to explain the differing notices regarding Odoacer’s kingship which Jordanes gives.^[11]

There are several later references to the Turcilingi, but these are generally accepted to be derived from Jordanes or Paul.^[12]

Fredegar, writing in the middle of the 7th century, cites the Torci as living in eastern Europe. Claude Cahen argued that these were a remnant of the Turcilingi.^[13]

Language and name

Scholars debate about whether the Turcilingi were a Germanic people who spoke a Germanic language, or else a Hunnic people who spoke a Turkic language.

Since the 19th century, the Turcilingi have traditionally been considered to have been Germanic. In 1837 Johann Kaspar Zeuss, followed by Karl Müllenhoff, proposed that the 'Ρουτίχλειοι (Routikleioi) mentioned in the Geographia of Ptolemy (II.11.7) as living near the Baltic Sea, were the Turcilingi. This specific thesis requires a complex etymological argument, which is no longer accepted by scholars.^[14] Nevertheless, historians such as Herwig Wolfram have continued to classify the Turcilingi as a Germanic people, and in particular that they were the royal clan of the Sciri.^[15][16]

In 1946, Reynolds and Lopez argued that Odoacer's father was in fact a Hun, and that the Torcilingi and Scirii were also Huns. This is based on the fact that a man with the same name as Odoacer's father was described as a Hun by the contemporary source Priscus.^[17] This was criticized by Maenchen-Helfen in a communication in 1947, but the idea became influential, and were accepted by well-known historians J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, and E. A. Thompson, and included in volume 2 of the reference work Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE), although many scholars continued to object.^[18]

The problem of identification is related to the problem of etymology. Both are related to the question whether the Turcilingi were Germanic or not. The root Turci- has led some scholars to suggest that they were a Turkic-speaking tribe.^[19][13] The -ling suffix is Germanic, denoting members of a line, usually one descended from a common ancestor.^[20] Kim believes the name is a Germanization of a Turkic name.^[13]

Affiliations with other ethnic groups

In recent scholarship the Turcilingi have been identified with the Thuringii by Helmut Castritius [de] and Wolfram Brandes, and this conclusion has begun to gain more acceptance. The reasoning is based on upon the facts that the Suda, apparently drawing upon a 5th century contemporary historian, describes Odoacer's brother Onoulphus as a Thuringian on his father's side and Scirian on his mother's. While some scholars argue that the Suda (or its source) is mistaken, other scholars, such as Brandes, have argued that the name "Thorcilingi", found originally only in Jordanes, must be the mistaken one.^[21] While there is no standard linguistic explanation for the change in the word, Brandes argues that it could have been a one-off misunderstanding created by the existence of a similar term Turci.

Hyun Jin Kim, in contrast, thinks the Suda contains a hypercorrection by a scribe who did not recognise the Turcilingi. Jordanes also refers separately to both the Thorcilingi, in the context of Odoacer, and the Thuringians.^[22] Concerning the latter he refers once to Hermanafrid king of the "Thuringi", once to the "Thuringi" living north of the Alamanni, once to their quality of horses, in a passage where there are several spelling variants in manuscripts (Thyringi, Tyringi, Thiringi, Thoringi, Thoring).^[23] Kim argues that the Turcilingi were "a Turkic-speaking tribe under Hunnic rule ... probably of mixed origin ... with possibly a Germanic and Turkic (Hunnic) mixture."^[13] Cahen, too, argued they were Turkic-speaking Huns.^[24]