Costoboci sack Eleusis

With the Danube armies drawn into the war against the Marcomanni and Quadi — the legion V Macedonica had been moved from Troesmis to Dacia in 167 — the lower Danube was weakly held. In 170 or 171 the Costoboci crossed the river, burned a district of Histria and swept through Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia into Achaea. Pausanias, who lived through the raid, tells how at Elateia in Phocis the Olympic champion runner Mnesibulus gathered a band of men, killed many of the invaders and fell in the fighting. The raiders then reached Attica and sacked the sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis, one of the holiest places of the Greek world; the orator Aelius Aristides lamented the sacrilege in a speech at Smyrna in May or June 171. An inscription at Eleusis speaks of the “crimes of the Sarmatians”, which may mean that Sarmatians took part in the raid or that the name was used loosely for raiders from across the Danube.

The procurator Lucius Julius Vehilius Gratus Julianus was sent to Greece with a detachment of troops and destroyed the remaining bands. Soon afterwards the Vandal Astingi, encouraged by the governor of Dacia, occupied the lands of the Costoboci, who then all but disappear from the sources. How much damage the sanctuary suffered is debated, but Marcus Aurelius had its hall of initiation, the Telesterion, rebuilt on a larger scale.