Quadi

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The Quadi were an important Germanic people during the Roman era, who lived in a kingdom north of the Roman border on the Upper Danube river, approximately in the area of present-day southwestern Slovakia and southern Moravia. They were the easternmost of a series of powerful Suebian kingdoms along the river frontier, that the Romans sought to control and manipulate over several centuries. Most notably, the powerful Marcomanni kingdom neighboured the Quadi to the west, in the present-day Czech Republic. To the north, in the western Carpathian mountains were more Germanic peoples who the Romans considered to be more barbarous. To the south of the Quadi, the Danube, and therefore the Roman border, turns southwards between present-day Bratislava and Budapest. So while the Roman province of Pannonia faced the Quadi to the south, to the southeast of the Quadi lay the Great Hungarian Plain which Roman geographers considered to be outside of Germania. This was inhabited by the Sarmatian Iazyges.

During the Marcomannic wars in the second century AD the Quadi and their neighbours went through several rounds of violent conflict with the Roman empire during the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his co-emperors. By 480 when he died there were new peace agreements between Rome and the Quadi, but it did not resolve the longer term problems which the region faced from populations periodically wishing to move towards the Roman empire.

Around 400 AD the Marcomanni and Quadi names disappear from contemporary records, and it came under the domination of peoples who had migrated from eastern Europe, most notably the Huns and Goths. In 409 Saint Jerome listed the Quadi and many other Middle Danubian peoples in a list of peoples who had recently occupied parts of Gaul.

Although there were many Suebian tribes living in different parts of Europe, the Quadi and their Upper Danubian neighbours are likely to be ancestors of the "Danubian Suevi" who established a kingdom during the 5th century in the Danube region, apparently near Lake Balaton, within the northern part of what had been the Roman province of Pannonia Valeria. Given their presence in Gaul in 409 the Quadi may also have been among the Suevi who founded the Kingdom of the Suebi in Gallaecia in northwestern Iberia. The Danubian Suebian kingdom was defeated by Ostrogoths at the Battle of Bolia in 469, and under their king Hunimund many of them apparently moved to present-day southern Germany. The Iberian Suevi were defeated by the Visigoths and integrated into their kingdom in 585.