Related Research Articles
The Baiuvarii, Bavarii, sometimes simply called Bavarians were a Germanic people who lived in or near present day southern Bavaria, which is named after them.
Bohemia is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohemian kings, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, in which case the smaller region is referred to as Bohemia proper as a means of distinction.
The Marcomanni were a Germanic people who lived close to the border of the Roman empire, north of the River Danube. They were one of the most important members of the powerful cluster of related Suebian peoples in this region, which also included the Hermunduri, Varisti, and Quadi along the Danube, and the Semnones and Langobardi to their north, and they were particularly important to the Romans. They appear in Roman records from approximately 60 BC until about 400 AD.
Maroboduus, also known as Marbod, was a king of the Marcomanni, who were a Germanic Suebian people. He spent part of his youth in Rome, and returning, found his people under pressure from invasions by the Roman Empire between the Rhine and Elbe. He led them into the forests of Bohemia, near to the Quadi who already lived nearby, and established a large alliance.
The Suebi were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names such as the Marcomanni, Quadi, Hermunduri, Semnones, and Lombards. New groupings formed later, such as the Alamanni and Bavarians, and two kingdoms in the Migration Period were simply referred to as Suebian.
The Chatti were an ancient Germanic tribe whose homeland was near the upper Weser (Visurgis) river. They lived in central and northern Hesse and southern Lower Saxony, along the upper reaches of that river and in the valleys and mountains of the Eder and Fulda regions, a district approximately corresponding to Hesse-Kassel, though probably somewhat more extensive. They settled within the region in the first century BC. According to Tacitus, the Batavians and Cananefates of his time, tribes living within the Roman Empire, were descended from part of the Chatti, who left their homeland after an internal quarrel drove them out, to take up new lands at the mouth of the Rhine.
Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians, its core in Transylvania, stretching to the Danube in the south, the Black Sea in the east, and the Tisza in the west. The Carpathian Mountains were located in the middle of Dacia. It thus roughly corresponds to present-day Romania, as well as parts of Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
The Irminones, also referred to as Herminones or Hermiones, were a large group of early Germanic tribes settling in the Elbe watershed and by the first century AD expanding into Bavaria, Swabia, and Bohemia. Notably this included the large sub-group of the Suevi, that itself contained many different tribal groups, but the Irminones also included for example the Chatti.
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, 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 Iyzyges, who settled in the same period to their east in present day Hungary.
The Bohemian Forest, known in Czech as Šumava and in German as Böhmerwald, is a low mountain range in Central Europe. Geographically, the mountains extend from Plzeň Region and the South Bohemian Region in the Czech Republic to Austria and Bavaria in Germany, and form the highest truncated uplands of the Bohemian Massif, up to 50 km wide. They create a natural border between the Czech Republic on one side and Austria and Germany on the other.
The Varini, Warni or Warini were one or more Germanic peoples who originally lived in what is now northeastern Germany, near the Baltic Sea.
The Hercynian Forest was an ancient and dense forest that stretched across Western Central Europe, from Northeastern France to the Carpathian Mountains, including most of Southern Germany, though its boundaries are a matter of debate. It formed the northern boundary of that part of Europe known to writers of Antiquity. The ancient sources are equivocal about how far east it extended. Many agree that the Black Forest, which extended east from the Rhine valley, formed the western side of the Hercynian, except, for example, Lucius of Tongeren. According to him, it included many massifs west of the Rhine.
The Gabreta Forest is an ancient forest mentioned by the Greek geographers, Strabo and Ptolemy. In the former it is termed the hule megale Gabreta, or "large forest, Gabreta", and in the latter, hule Gabreta, "Gabreta Forest". It was located in the country of the Marcomanni and Quadi, south of the Sudetes, which identifies it with today's Šumava mountains straddling the border between Czech Republic and Bavaria. The name is believed to originate from the Celtic word gabro, as the region is part of Bohemia, from which the Marcomanni and Quadi had driven the Celtic Boii not long before. One derivation yields woody mountain.
Despite the large variations in spellings of their name the Varisci, Varisti, Naristi, or Narisci were a single Germanic people, known from several historical records from the Roman era. They lived near the Roman frontier on the Danube river, east of the Hermunduri, and west of the Marcomanni and Quadi. Ptolemy adds that the Ouaristoi were south of the Sudeten Mountains and west of Gabreta Forest. The sources thus agree on their location.
The Adrabaecampi and Parmaecampi were two divisions of the Kampoi (Κάμποι), a tribe of greater Germany who, according to Ptolemy, dwelled on the north bank of the Danube south of the Gabreta Forest after the Marcomanni and Sudini.
The Avarpi or Auarpoi or Avarni were Germanic tribe attested in Ptolemy's Geography. The attested Greek is Auarpoi. Avarpi is a scholarly transliteration into Latin, with some using Avarni on the assumption that the name refers to the Varni of Mecklenburg. However, Ptolemy uses Farodeinoi for Varini and clearly says that the Auarpoi are next to the Teutonikai and between the Sueboi and the Farodeinoi. This location is not precise, but is somewhere in the Pommern/Propommern region.
The Baemi or Baimoi, were a large Germanic people who are only known by their mention in Ptolemy's Geography. He described them as living on the north side of the Danube, south of the Luna forest and iron mines, with the Quadi still further north and the Hercynian forest above them. West of the Baemi on the Danube were the Adrabaecampi, who had the Sudini north of them, the Marcomanni still further north, and a forest called the Gabreta north of them. This would place them in or around modern Slovakia, Moravia and Lower Austria.
The Buri were a Germanic tribe in the time of the Roman empire who lived in mountainous and forested lands north of the Danube, in an area near what is now the west of modern Slovakia.
The Anartes were Celtic tribes, or, in the case of those sub-groups of Anartes which penetrated the ancient region of Dacia, Celts culturally assimilated by the Dacians.
The Elbe Germans or Elbe Germanic peoples were Germanic tribes whose settlement area, based on archaeological finds, lay either side of the Elbe estuary on both sides of the river and which extended as far as Bohemia and Moravia, clearly the result of a migration up the Elbe river from the northwest in advance of the main Migration Period until the individual groups ran into the Roman Danube Limes around 200 AD.
References
- ↑ Ptolemy 2.10
- ↑ Tac. Ger. 28
- ↑ Strab. 7.1
- ↑ Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, 1854
- ↑ Schütte (1917), Ptolemy's maps of northern Europe, a reconstruction of the prototypes, Kjøbenhavn, H. Hagerup
- ↑ Schütte (1917), Ptolemy's maps of northern Europe, a reconstruction of the prototypes, Kjøbenhavn, H. Hagerup, p. 111
