Sources
While Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) was well informed about the regions and tribes on the eastern banks of the Rhine, he never mentioned the Chatti by name. In the same large geographical region he clearly named the Suebi as the residents in his time, suggesting that they had recently driven out Celts, and were in his time still threatening the regions around them. [6] Strabo (64/63 BC – c. 24 AD), however, mentioned both the Suevi, who he describes as a considerable nation made up of many tribes, and the Chatti, who he described as one of the smaller Germanic tribes, and did not list among the Suevi. [7]
A century later, Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (written 77–79 AD) distinguished the Chatti and Suebi but grouped them together with the Hermunduri and the Cherusci, calling this group the Hermiones, which is a nation of Germanic tribes also mentioned by Tacitus as living in inland Germany. [8] Some commentators believe that Caesar's Suebi were therefore possibly the same as the later Chatti, a branch of the Suebian movement of people who had become more clearly identifiable. [9] If not, then the Chatti may represent a survival of an older tribal name, as opposed to the Tencteri, Usipetes, and Ubii who were all were forced from homelands in the same region by the Suebic incursions.
The first ancient writer to mention the Chatti is Velleius Paterculus. He mentioned them in 6 AD in his book 2, 109 (5): “Sentius Saturninus received the order to march with his legions through the area of the Chatti to Boiohaemum, which is the name of the area occupied by Maroboduus, cutting a passage through the Hercynian forest which bounded the region."
The second ancient writer to mention the Chatti is Strabo, some time after 16 AD, who includes the Chatti in a listing of conquered Germanic tribes who were more settled and agricultural, but also poorer, than the nomadic tribes in central and eastern Germania such as the Suebi. They were poor because they had fought the Romans, and had been defeated and plundered. [10] In his second book of Epigrams , Martial credited the emperor Domitian (51–96 AD) as having overcome the Chatti:
| Martial: Epigrams. Book ll, No. 2 |
"Creta dedit magnum, maius dedit Africa nomen,
Scipio quod uictor quodque Metellus habet;
nobilius domito tribuit Germania Rheno,
et puer hoc dignus nomine, Caesar, eras.
frater Idumaeos meruit cum patre triumphos,
quae datur ex Chattis laurea, tota tua est. | "Crete gave a great name, Africa a greater one:
Scipio the victor has one, and Metellus has the other.
Germany granted a nobler name when the Rhine had been subdued,
and even as a boy, Caesar, you were worthy of this name.
Your brother earned Idumaean triumphs together with your father,
but the laurel given for the Chatti is totally yours." |
For the first century AD, Tacitus provides important information about the Chatti's part in the Germanic wars and certain elements of their culture. He says that:
[The Chatti's] settlements begin at the Hercynian forest, where the country is not so open and marshy as in the other cantons into which Germany stretches. They are found where there are hills, and with them grow less frequent, for the Hercynian forest keeps close till it has seen the last of its native Chatti. Hardy frames, close-knit limbs, fierce countenances, and a peculiarly vigorous courage, mark the tribe. For Germans, they have much intelligence and sagacity; they promote their picked men to power, and obey those whom they promote; they keep their ranks, note their opportunities, check their impulses, portion out the day, intrench themselves by night, regard fortune as a doubtful, valour as an unfailing, resource; and what is most unusual, and only given to systematic discipline, they rely more on the general than on the army. Their whole strength is in their infantry, which, in addition to its arms, is laden with iron tools and provisions. Other tribes you see going to battle, the Chatti to a campaign. Seldom do they engage in mere raids and casual encounters. It is indeed the peculiarity of a cavalry force quickly to win and as quickly to yield a victory. Fleetness and timidity go together; deliberateness is more akin to steady courage. [11]
Tacitus also notes that like other Germanic tribes, the Chatti took an interest in traditions concerning haircuts and beards.
A practice, rare among the other German tribes, and simply characteristic of individual prowess, has become general among the Chatti, of letting the hair and beard grow as soon as they have attained manhood, and not till they have slain a foe laying aside that peculiar aspect which devotes and pledges them to valour. Over the spoiled and bleeding enemy they show their faces once more; then, and not till then, proclaiming that they have discharged the obligations of their birth, and proved themselves worthy of their country and of their parents. The coward and the unwarlike remain unshorn. The bravest of them also wear an iron ring (which otherwise is a mark of disgrace among the people) until they have released themselves by the slaughter of a foe. Most of the Chatti delight in these fashions. Even hoary-headed men are distinguished by them, and are thus conspicuous alike to enemies and to fellow-countrymen. To begin the battle always rests with them; they form the first line, an unusual spectacle. Nor even in peace do they assume a more civilised aspect. They have no home or land or occupation; they are supported by whomsoever they visit, as lavish of the property of others as they are regardless of their own, till at length the feebleness of age makes them unequal to so stern a valour. [12]
Between the Rhine and the Chatti, Tacitus places the Tencteres and Usipetes, who apparently had been moved since the time of Caesar into the old homeland of the Ubii, who had in turn settled in Cologne. [13] (Caesar had described these three tribes as under pressure from Suebi to their east, and attempting to move across the Rhine.) To the south, Tacitus also says that the Chatti's land is beyond the questionable lands, the so-called tithe lands, or agri decumates, that adventurers from the Roman sides of the Rhine and Danube had been trying to settle. [14] It is possible that at first the Chatti moved into place on the Rhine, in the old territory of the Ubii. Cassius Dio describes Drusus establishing a fort in Chatti territory on the Rhine in 11 BC, and that in 10 BC they moved out of an area where the Romans had permitted them. [15]
To the north of the Chatti, Tacitus places the large area of the Chauci. [16] To the east, the neighbours of the Chatti and Chauci were the Cherusci, who Tacitus describes as excessively peace-loving in his time. [17] (Caesar had described the Suevi, not the Chatti, as living between the Ubii on the Rhine and a forest called the Bacenis, which separated them from the Cherusci. This is why Caesar's Suevi are sometimes thought to be Chatti.)
The Chatti successfully resisted incorporation into the Roman Empire, joining the Cheruscan war leader Arminius' coalition of tribes that annihilated Varus' legions in 9 AD in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Germanicus later, in 15, [18] raided their lands in revenge, but Rome eventually responded to the Chatti's belligerent defense of their independence by building the limes border fortifications along the southern boundary of their lands in central Hesse during the early years of the first century. A major raid by the Chatti into Germania Superior was defeated decisively by the legions in 50 AD. [19] In 58 AD the Chatti were defeated by the Hermunduri in a border dispute over a religiously significant river.
Roman sources identify the fabled Mattium, beyond the Eder, as the capital of the Chatti. Destroyed by Germanicus, its location is not known today, but generally is assumed to be in the wider neighbourhood of Fritzlar north of the river Eder. [20]
The Chatti were opponents of the emperor Domitian in 84 CE, and were allies of Lucius Antonius Saturninus in his revolt of 89 CE. [21]
They appear again during the build up to the Marcomannic wars, first attacking southwards towards Germania superior and Raitia in what is now southern Germany, in 162, and then while the bigger battles were being fought they were repulsed together with the Hermunduri from the Rhine by Didius Julianus in 175.
After the early third century AD, however, the Chatti virtually disappear from the sources and are only called upon as a topical element or when writing about events of the first century. Cassius Dio is most likely not only the first author to mention the Alamanni but also the last one to record a historical appearance of the Chatti. Writing about the Germanic war of Caracalla in 213 AD, he has the emperor fight "Κέννους, Kελτικòν ἔθνος" ("the Kenni, a Celtic people"). [22] This is taken from an excerpt of Dio in the writings of Joannes Xiphilinus, however, whereas the Fragmenta Valesiana refer to the same people as "Chattoi". [23] The usage of "Kελτικός" for Germanic peoples was an archaic tradition among Greek writers.
After Cassius Dio, the name "Chattus" appears among others in a panegyric by Sidonius Apollinaris in the late fifth century, now as a poetic synonym for "Germanus". [24] The last ancient source to mention the Chatti, if only in a quotation of Sulpicius Alexander describing events of the late fourth century, was Gregory of Tours. [25]
Allegedly the Chatti were associated with the legendary "First King of the Franks". The story is told of the election of the first Frankish king. [26] The much later Liber Historiæ Francorum says that after the death of Sunno, his brother Marcomer, leader of the Ampsivarii and Chatti, proposed to the Franks that they should have one single king, contrary to their tradition. The Liber adds that Pharamond, named as Marcomer's son, was chosen as this first king (thus beginning the tradition of long-haired kings of the Franks), and then states that when he died, his son Chlodio [428 AD] was raised up as the next king. The work says no more of him.
The Chatti eventually may in any case have become a branch of the much larger neighboring Franks and their region was incorporated in the kingdom of Clovis I, probably with the Ripuarians, at the beginning of the sixth century.
The Chatti name is apparently preserved in the medieval and modern name of Hesse in Germany, which is a name that already appears early. In 723 for example, the Anglo-Saxon missionary Winfrid—subsequently called St. Boniface, Apostle of the Germans—proselytizing among the Hessians (Hessorum), felled their sacred tree, Thor's Oak, near Fritzlar, as part of his efforts to convert them and other Germanic tribes to Christianity.
The Batavi were an ancient Germanic tribe that lived around the modern Dutch Rhine delta in the area that the Romans called Batavia, from the second half of the first century BC to the third century AD. The name is also applied to several military units employed by the Romans that were originally raised among the Batavi. The tribal name, probably a derivation from batawjō, may refer to the fertile Betuwe, a region today known as the fruitbasket of the Netherlands.
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.
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 Cherusci were a Germanic tribe that inhabited parts of the plains and forests of northwestern Germania in the area of the Weser River and present-day Hanover during the first centuries BC and AD. Roman sources reported they considered themselves kin with other Irmino tribes and claimed common descent from an ancestor called Mannus. During the early Roman Empire under Augustus, the Cherusci first served as allies of Rome and sent sons of their chieftains to receive Roman education and serve in the Roman army as auxiliaries. The Cherusci leader Arminius led a confederation of tribes in the ambush that destroyed three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. He was subsequently kept from further damaging Rome by disputes with the Marcomanni and reprisal attacks led by Germanicus. After rebel Cherusci killed Arminius in AD 21, infighting among the royal family led to the highly Romanized line of his brother Flavus coming to power. Following their defeat by the Chatti around AD 88, the Cherusci do not appear in further accounts of the German tribes, apparently being absorbed into the late classical groups such as the Saxons, Thuringians, Franks, Bavarians, and Allemanni.
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 Ubii were a Germanic tribe first encountered dwelling on the east bank of the Rhine in the time of Julius Caesar, who formed an alliance with them in 55 BC in order to launch attacks across the river. They were transported in 39 BC by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa to the west bank, apparently at their own request, as they feared the incursions of their neighbors, the Chatti.
The Usipetes or Usipii were an ancient Germanic people who entered the written record when they encountered Julius Caesar in 56/55 BC when they attempted to find a new settlement west of the Rhine, together with the Tencteri, who were both attempting to move away from the aggressions of the Suevi on the east side of the Rhine. After the Romans slaughtered a great number of both tribes, they resettled on the east bank with the help of the Sicambri.
The Istvaeones were a Germanic group of tribes living near the banks of the Rhine during the Roman Empire which reportedly shared a common culture and origin. The Istaevones were contrasted to neighbouring groups, the Ingaevones on the North Sea coast, and the Herminones, living inland of these groups.
The Tungri were a tribe, or group of tribes, who lived in the Belgic part of Gaul, during the times of the Roman Empire. Within the Roman Empire, their territory was called the Civitas Tungrorum. They were described by Tacitus as being the same people who were first called "Germani" (Germanic), meaning that all other tribes who were later referred to this way, including those in Germania east of the river Rhine, were named after them. More specifically, Tacitus was thereby equating the Tungri with the "Germani Cisrhenani" described generations earlier by Julius Caesar. Their name is the source of several place names in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, including Tongeren, which was the capital of their Roman era province, the civitas Tungrorum, and also places such as Tongerlo Abbey, and Tongelre.
The Sicambri were a Germanic people who lived in the area between the Rhine, Lippe, and Wupper rivers, in what is now Germany, near the border with the Netherlands. They were first reported by Julius Caesar, who encountered them in 55 BC. They became a significant opponent of Roman imperial power in the Rhine region. After a major defeat by the Romans in 8 BC a significant part of the Sicambri were moved into Roman territory.
The Hermunduri, Hermanduri, Hermunduli, Hermonduri, or Hermonduli were an ancient Germanic tribe, who occupied an inland area near the source of the Elbe river, around what is now Bohemia from the first to the third century, though they have also been speculatively associate with Thuringia further north. According to an old proposal based on the similarity of the names, the Thuringii may have been the descendants of the Hermunduri. At times, they apparently moved to the Danube frontier with Rome. Claudius Ptolemy mentions neither tribe in his geography but instead the Teuriochaemae, who may also be connected to both.
This is a chronology of warfare between the Romans and various Germanic peoples. The nature of these wars varied through time between Roman conquest, Germanic uprisings, later Germanic invasions of the Western Roman Empire that started in the late second century BC, and more. The series of conflicts was one factor which led to the ultimate downfall of the Western Roman Empire in particular and ancient Rome in general in 476.
The Vangiones appear first in history as an ancient Germanic tribe of unknown provenance. They threw in their lot with Ariovistus in his bid of 58 BC to invade Gaul through the Doubs river valley and lost to Julius Caesar in a battle probably near Belfort. After some Celts evacuated the region in fear of the Suebi, the Vangiones, who had made a Roman peace, were allowed to settle among the Mediomatrici in northern Alsace.. They gradually assumed control of the Celtic city of Burbetomagus, later Worms.
The Angrivarii were a Germanic people of the early Roman Empire, who lived in what is now northwest Germany near the middle of the Weser river. They were mentioned by the Roman authors Tacitus and Ptolemy.
The Tubantes were a Germanic tribe, living in the eastern part of the Netherlands, north of the Rhine river. They are often equated to the Tuihanti, who are known from two inscriptions found near Hadrian's Wall. The modern name Twente derives from the word Tuihanti.
The Tencteri or Tenchteri or Tenctheri were an ancient tribe, who moved into the area on the right bank of the lower Rhine in the 1st century BC. They are known first from the surviving works of ancient authors such as Julius Caesar and Tacitus. In December 2015, archaeologists believed they found remains of the Tencteri in The Netherlands.
The Germani cisrhenani, or "Left bank Germani", were a group of Germanic peoples who lived west of the Lower Rhine at the time of the Gallic Wars in the mid-1st century BC.
The Battle of the Angrivarian Wall was fought near Porta Westfalica, Germany in 16 AD between the Roman general Germanicus and an alliance of Germanic tribes commanded by Arminius. This battle followed immediately after the Battle of Idistaviso, and was supposedly sparked by Germanic outrage over the trophy erected on that prior battlefield by the Romans.
