Page "Bastarnae" Paragraph 20

The Bastarnae first appear in the historical record in 179 BC, when they crossed the Danube in massive force ( probably ca.

60, 000 men, both cavalry and infantry, plus a wagon-train of accompanying women and children ).

They did so at the invitation of their long-time ally, king Philip V of Macedon, a direct descendant of Antigonus, one of the Diadochi, the generals of Alexander the Great who had shared out his empire after his death in 323 BC.

The Macedonian king had suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Romans in the Second Macedonian War ( 200-197 BC ), which had reduced him from a powerful Hellenistic monarch to the status of a petty client-king with a much-reduced territory and a tiny army.

After nearly 20 years of slavish adherence to the Roman Senate's dictats, Philip had been goaded beyond endurance by the incessant and devastating raiding of the Dardani, a warlike Thraco-Illyrian tribe on his northern border, which his treaty-limited army was too small to counter effectively.

Counting on the Bastarnae, with whom he had forged friendly relations in earlier times, he plotted a strategy to deal with the Dardani and then to regain his lost territories in Greece and his political independence.

First, he would unleash the Bastarnae against the Dardani.

After the latter had been crushed, Philip planned to settle Bastarnae families in Dardania ( southern Kosovo / Skopje region ), to ensure that the region was permanently subdued.

In a second phase, Philip aimed to launch the Bastarnae on an invasion of Italy via the Adriatic coast.

Although he was aware that the Bastarnae were hardly likely to achieve the same success as Hannibal some 40 years earlier, and would most likely end up cut to pieces by the Romans, Philip hoped that the Romans would be distracted long enough to allow him to reoccupy his former possessions in Greece.