The Quadi were a Germanic people during the Roman era, who were prominent in Greek and Roman records from about 20 AD to about 400 AD. By about 20 AD they had a kingdom centred in the area of present-day western Slovakia, north of the Roman border on the Danube river. After probably first settling near the Morava river the Quadi expanded their control eastwards over time until they also stretched into present day Hungary. This was part of the bigger region which had been partly vacated a generation earlier by the Celtic Boii, and their opponents the Dacians. The Quadi were the easternmost of a series of four related Suebian kingdoms that established themselves near the river frontier after 9 BC, during a period of major Roman invasions into both western Germania to the northwest of it, and Pannonia to the south of it. The other three were the Hermunduri, Naristi (also known as Varisti), and the Quadi's powerful western neighbours the Marcomanni. Despite frequent difficulties with the Romans, the Quadi survived to become an important cultural bridge between the peoples of Germania to the north, the Roman Empire to the south, and the Sarmatian peoples, most notably the Iazyges, who settled in the same period on the great plain between the Danube and the Tisza rivers.
The Marcomannic Wars, during the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his co-emperors, involved several rounds of particularly destructive conflict against the Quadi and their neighbours, who at one point even invaded Italy itself. By 180 AD when the emperor died on campaign in this region, there were new peace agreements between Rome and the Quadi, but these did not resolve the longer term problems which the region continued to face. Populations from more distant regions periodically disrupted the area, increasing tensions with Rome. Small scale raiding from the neighbouring Sarmatian plain into Roman Pannonia continued, and this played a role in triggering more conflicts between the Quadi and Romans in the third and fourth centuries. However, while the original Marcomanni settlements in the northern Bohemian forest subsequently shrank and became less important, the Quadi thrived near the Danube, and became more culturally integrated with both their Roman and Sarmatian neighbours.
After about 380 AD their Middle Danubian region experienced an influx of armed peoples from more distant parts of eastern Europe, most notably the Huns, Alans and Goths. In 395 AD, Saint Jerome listed the Quadi and their traditional neighbours the Sarmatians, Marcomanni, and Vandals, as peoples who had recently been ransacking the nearby Roman provinces together with these newcomers. In 409 he placed the Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Heruli, and even inhabitants of Roman Pannonia, in another list of peoples from the Danubian region who had recently moved west, and occupied parts of Gaul. These were the last clear contemporary records of the Quadi. Given their presence in Gaul in 409 AD the Quadi are considered likely to have been prominent among the Suevi who moved further west into Iberia by 409 AD and founded the Kingdom of the Suebi in Gallaecia, in present day northern Spain and Portugal. This Gallaecian kingdom lasted for more than a century, until it was defeated by the Visigoths, and integrated into their kingdom in 585.
Meanwhile, until he died in 453, the empire of Attila controlled the Middle Danubian region, and a much later source claimed that the Quadi fought under Attila at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451 AD. After Attila's death smaller kingdoms were founded in or near the old Marcomanni and Quadi kingdoms, by the "Danube Suevi" (), as well as the Rugii, Heruli and Sciri. These Danube Suevi are likely to have included descendants of the Quadi, Marcomanni and other Suebian peoples of the region. Their short-lived independent kingdom was defeated by Ostrogoths at the Battle of Bolia in 469. Some of them apparently moved westwards under their king Hunimund, into present-day western Austria and southern Germany, where they became allies of the Alemanni. Other Quadi are presumed to have remained in the Middle Danube region and adapted to the subsequent waves of conquerors, either among the remaining settled communities, or among the more mobile groups which were prominent during this "migration period". Like their neighbours the Heruli, Rugii and Sciri, many probably became followers of the large forces which successfully invaded Italy from the Middle Danube under Odoacer (476 AD), Theoderic the Great (493 AD), and finally the Suebian Langobards (starting in 568 AD), who are believed to have integrated many of their fellow Suebi into their ranks before moving into Italy.
Name According to the Germanische Altertumskunde Online, the etymologies proposed for the ethnonym are all fraught with difficulties: Since Jacob Grimm (d. 1863), it has often been assumed that this ethnonym is related to the Dutch adjective kwaad, which means "angry, bad, evil, wrong, poor quality" - versions of which are also found in medieval German and English. However, this would be a surprising choice of name, because it has such a negative meaning. It could therefore perhaps have started as a name given by their enemies, and it might have continued as a name intended to evoke fear. The name has also often been associated with Germanic verbs such as English "quoth", originally the past tense of medieval "quethe", which meant "say" or "declare" (preserved in the modern word "bequeath"). However, the precise meaning of this word as an ethnonym is unclear in this case. Wolfgang Krause proposed that the ethnonym might derive from a Germanic word hwatjan, meaning "to incite". However, the form of the ethnonym as it appears in ancient sources does not show the expected Germanic First Sound Shift.
First reports and location The Quadi start to appear in contemporary works only after their neighbours the Marcomanni settled in central Bohemia. The Marcomanni moved after their defeat during the Germania campaign of the elder Drusus in about 9 BC. They somehow acquired a new king Maroboduus, who had been brought up in Rome. Strabo, writing about 23 AD, appears to have written the earliest surviving mention of the Quadi, although aspects of the text are somewhat doubtful. He described a mountain range running parallel to the Danube but north of it, like a smaller version of the Alps which run south of it. Within it was the Hercynian Forest, and within this forest were tribes of Suebi including "the tribes of the Coldui [καθάπερ τὰ τῶν κολδούων], in whose territory lies Buiaimon [Βουίαιμον, the original "Bohemia"], the royal seat of Maroboduus". King Maroboduus, he wrote, had led several peoples into this forested region, including his own people the Marcomanni. He became the ruler of the Suevi peoples in this forested region, and also over other Suevi living outside it. Not only is Strabo's spelling of Quadi with an "L" unexpected when compared to later references, but also the implication that Maroboduus lived within Quadi territory. Errors are therefore suspected in the surviving text. citing Strabo, Geography 7.1.3
It is often presumed that the Quadi settled in Moravia around the same time that the Marcomanni settled in neighbouring Bohemia. It is also possible that the name "Quadi" was new, but that the same group had previously been referred to as "Suebi" in Roman accounts. The Romans defeated a group called the Suebi after they defeated the Marcomanni in 9 BC, and some scholars have speculated that these were the Quadi.
Another possibility is that the Quadi moved into the Bohemian area before the Marcomanni. This idea is supported by the archaeological evidence that Elbe Germanic peoples had been living in the region already before the Marcomanni defeat. The archaeological evidence left by the Quadi and Marcomanni is similar, making it difficult to define the borders between them, but it confirms that both shared much of their material culture with the Elbe Germani to their north, living near the central Elbe river and the Saale. The archaeological material culture which unites these groups, and distinguishes them from the previous Celtic inhabitants, is referred to as the "Grossromstedt horizon".: "Die Leute der Großromstedter Kultur, die nach Böhmen einzogen, deckten nicht sehr zahlreich das ehemals keltische Milieu ab. Die Kultur entstand archäologisch im Saale-Elbe-Gebiet wohl schon vor der Mitte des 1. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. und erschien etwa in den Jahren 40/20 v. Chr. in Böhmen". It was influenced not only by the older Jastorf culture of the Elbe region, but also by the Przeworsk culture from further east, in present day Poland. The variant which developed in the old Boii lands is called the Plaňany-Group, and also shows the residual influence of their older Celtic La Tène culture of the Boii, which had itself already come under Przeworsk influence in the generations before the Germanic influx.
Whatever their origin, the evidence indicates that the Quadi initially lived near the Morava river, in southwestern Slovakia, southern Moravia, and north-eastern Lower Austria. However, their population, perhaps divided into two distinct states, later came to be more concentrated to the east of the Little Carpathians, in what is now Slovakia, and they eventually extended as far as Vác in present-day Hungary. At its height, their kingdom also possibly stretched west into present-day Bohemia. Over time the eastern Quadi became an important cultural bridge between Romans, Sarmatians and the more distant peoples to the north and east.
A contemporary of Strabo, Velleius Paterculus, did not mention the Quadi by name but described "Boiohaemum", where Maroboduus and the Marcomanni lived, as "plains surrounded by the Hercynian forest", and he said this was the only part of Germania which the Romans did not control in the period before the Roman defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD.Velleius, 2.108: "Nothing remained to be conquered in Germany except the people of the Marcomanni, which, leaving its settlements at the summons of its leader Maroboduus, had retired into the interior and now dwelt in the plains surrounded by the Hercynian forest". (Nihil erat iam in Germania, quod vinci posset, praeter gentem Marcomannorum, quae Maroboduo duce excita sedibus suis atque in interiora refugiens incinctos Hercynia silva campos incolebat.) Velleius also remarked that Maroboduus subjugated all his neighbours either by war or treaty. Hofeneder notes that many modern scholars interpret this to mean that the Quadi were also under his overlordship. Although there is no consensus about this, it is in any case clear that the two peoples were always closely connected during the many centuries in which they appear in records. citing Velleius, 2.108: "after occupying the region we have mentioned, he proceeded to reduce all the neighbouring races by war, or to bring them under his sovereignty by treaty" (Occupatis igitur, quos praediximus, locis finitimos omnis aut bello domuit aut condicionibus iuris sui fecit)
Velleius said that Maroboduus drilled his Bohemian soldiers to almost Roman standards, and that although his policy was to avoid conflict with Rome, the Romans came to be concerned that he could invade Italy. "Races and individuals who revolted from [the Romans] found in him a refuge." From a Roman point of view he noted that the closest point of access to Bohemia was via Carnuntum.Velleius, 2.109 This was between present-day Vienna and Bratislava, and near the Quadi territory where the Morava river enters the Danube.