EASTERLINGS OF RHÛN AND KHAND
In the Middle-earth of the Third Age, Tolkien’s history of the Dúnedain kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor was undoubtedly inspired in good part by the history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The history of the southern kingdom, Gondor, is comparable to the history of the Eastern Roman Empire (later Byzantium), and the history of the northern kingdom, Arnor, is comparable to the history of the Western Roman Empire. Tolkien’s Easterling barbarian hordes in the service of the Evil Eye of Sauron, who for centuries menace the kingdoms’ eastern borders, are certainly comparable to the Germanic hordes, who, in the service of the one-eyed necromancer god Odin, for centuries menaced the Roman Empire’s northern borders.
From TA 490 onwards, the first wave of Easterling invaders appeared on Gondor’s eastern borders, resulting in pitched battles and centuries of conflict. A parallel can be drawn with the first wave of Germanic invaders who harried Rome’s borders in the 1st century BC, culminating in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 BC – a cataclysmic battle that proved to be only the first of many conflicts and wars over the following centuries between Rome and the Germanic peoples.
Tolkien’s century of Wainrider invasions of Gondor (TA1851–1944), which result in the loss of Gondor’s eastern territories, owes something to historic accounts of the century-long Roman conflict with the Ostrogoths (East Goths) and its culmination in the Battle of Adrianople (AD 378), resulting in the loss of Rome’s eastern provinces. The Wainriders of Rhûn are a nomadic confederacy of people that travels as an army and nation in vast caravans of wains (wagons) and war chariots. This is certainly comparable to the nomadic Ostrogoths, whom ancient historians described as “an entire nation on the move in great wains”.
Balchoth Easterlings
Then, too, in TA 2050, the forces of Gondor are about to be routed in the critical Battle of the Field of Celebrant by a massive invading Easterling horde known as the Balchoth, when unexpectedly the cavalry of the Éothéod (forebears of the Horsemen of Rohan) join forces with the Men of Gondor and turn the tide of battle. This has an historical precedent in the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in AD 451 when the Roman army formed an alliance with the Visigoths (West Goths) and the Lombard cavalry, and defeated the massive barbarian horde of Attila the Hun. This is often considered one of the most crucial battles in the history of Europe as it turned back what seemed an unstoppable wave of Asiatic conquest of the West. In the wake of the Battle of the Field of Celebrant, the Easterling and Balchoth confederacies rapidly disintegrate, as did the Hunnish confederacies after the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, when its various factions fought among themselves.
In the 6th-century AD history of Rome called the Romana – one of Tolkien’s primary sources for the history of Gondor and Arnor – its author, the Eastern Roman Jordanes, described how the allies of the Hun confederacy met their destruction in the Battle of Nedao in AD 454:
And so the bravest nations tore themselves to pieces. For then, I think, must have occurred a most remarkable spectacle, where one might see the Goths fighting with pikes, the Gepidae raging with the sword, the Rugi breaking off the spears in their own wounds, the Suavi fighting on foot, the Huns with bows, the Alani drawing up a battle-line of heavy-armed [warriors] and the Heruli of light-armed warriors.
The defeat at the Catalaunian Fields combined with the sudden and unexpected death of Attila the Hun resulted in a chaotic dispute over succession that brought about the collapse and dissolution of the Hunnic Empire. It is easy to see how such vivid historic records might have inspired Tolkien in his own accounts of the Easterling wars.
