Germanic tribe in present-day northwestern Germany in the 1st centuries BC and AD
The Roman Empire under Hadrian (r.117–138), showing the former location of the Cherusci in northwestern Germany
The Cherusci were a Germanictribe 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 AD9. 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 AD21, 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 AD88, 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.
Cherusci (Latin:[kʰeːˈrus.kiː]) is the Latinname for the tribe. Both it and the Greek form Khēroûskoi (Χηροῦσκοι) are presumably transcriptions of an otherwise unattested Old Germanicdemonym, whose etymology is unclear. The dominant opinion in scholarship is that it may derive from *herut ("hart"), which may have had totemistic significance for the group.[1] Another hypothesis—proposed in the 19th century by Jacob Grimm and others—derives the name from *heru- (Gothic: hairus; heoru, a kind of sword).[2] Hans Kuhn has argued that the derivational suffix -sk- involved in both explanations is uncommon in Germanic. He suggested that the name may therefore be a compound of ultimately non-Germanic origin and connected to the hypothesized Nordwestblock.[3]
As part of his German campaigns, Drusus marched an army east into the territory of the Cherusci in 11BC and was ambushed as he returned west at a narrow pass called Arbalo, probably near modern Hameln or Hildesheim. The Cherusci were initially victorious but paused their attack, allowing the surviving Romans to break through the encirclement and escape.[9] By that winter, Drusus had recovered enough control that a garrison was stationed somewhere in Cheruscan territory, probably at either Haltern or Bergkamen in North Rhine-Westphalia.[9] The Cherusci continued to resist the campaigns of Tiberius, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, and M. Vinicius as late as the "vast war"[10] begun around 2BC.
Finally, in AD4, Tiberius overcame the factions of the Cherusci still hostile to Rome and by the next year he considered the tribe a Roman ally, giving it special privileges. The chieftainSegimer sent at least two sons who became Roman citizens and served in the Roman military as cavalryauxiliaries. The elder son Arminius returned as an auxiliary commander under P. Quictilius Varus, who began organizing Germany as the new province of Germania Magna in AD7. This involved expanded taxation and demands of tribute, and Arminius began organizing a combined attack on Varus's legions. A Cheruscan noble named Segestes attempted to warn the governor repeatedly, but Varus ignored him and followed Arminius into an ambush in the Teutoburg Forest and marshes in AD9. Working together, the Cherusci, Bructeri, Marsi, Sicambri, Chauci, and Chatti completely destroyed the 17th, 18th, and 19th Legions; Varus and many of the officers fell on their swords during the battle.[11][12]Cassius Dio reports that Segimer was second in command during the battle but Arminius seems to have acted as chieftain himself soon thereafter. He abducted Segestes's daughter Thusnelda and married her.
The Romans encouraged the Marcomanni to attack the Cherusci and launched punitive raids of their own, eventually recovering some of the lost eagle standards from the defeated legions. In AD14, Germanicus raided the Chatti and Marsi with 12,000 legionnaires, 26 cohorts of auxiliaries, and eight cavalry squadrons and systematically laid waste to an area 50 miles wide such that "no sex, no age found pity".[13] He then campaigned against the Cherusci,[14] freeing Segestes from captivity and seizing the pregnant Thusnelda.[15][16] Arminius assembled the Cherusci and surrounding tribes while Germanicus marched some men east from the Rhine and sailed others from the North Sea up the Ems, attacking the Bructeri on their way.[17] These two forces met and then ravaged the land between the Ems and the Lippe. When they reached the Teutoburg Forest, they found the bodies of the slain Romans unburied and in places sacrificed on German altars. The army buried the dead for half a day, after which Germanicus stopped the work to return to war against the Germans.[18] Making his way to the Cherusci heartland, Germanicus was attacked by Arminius's men at Pontes Longi ("the long causeways") in the boggy lowlands near the Ems. The Cherusci trapped and began to kill the Roman cavalry but the Roman infantry was able to check and rout them over the course of a two day battle. Tacitus considered this a victory[19] although historians such as Wells think it was more likely inconclusive.[20]
In AD16, Germanicus returned with eight legions and Gallic and Germanic auxiliary units, including men led by Arminius's younger brother Flavus. Marching from the Rhine and along the Ems and Weser, the Romans met Arminius's forces at the plains of Idistaviso by the Weser near modern Rinteln. Tacitus reports the Battle of the Weser River as a decisive Roman victory:[21][22]
The enemy were slaughtered from the fifth hour of daylight to nightfall, and for ten miles the ground was littered with corpses and weapons.
Arminius and his uncle Inguiomer were both wounded but evaded capture. The Roman soldiers proclaimed Tiberius as imperator and raised a pile of arms as a trophy with the names of the defeated tribes inscribed beneath them.[23][24] This trophy enraged the Germans, who ceased retreating beyond the Elbe and regrouped to attack the Romans at the Angrivarian Wall. This battle also ended in a decisive Roman victory, with Germanicus supposedly directing his men to exterminate the Germanic tribes. A mound was raised with an inscription reading "The army of Tiberius Caesar, after thoroughly conquering the tribes between the Rhine and the Elbe, has dedicated this monument to Mars, Jupiter, and Augustus."[25][26] In the next year, Germanicus was recalled to Rome. Tacitus reports this as partially caused by the emperor's growing jealousy of the general's fame, but permitted him to celebrate a triumphal march on 26 May:
Germanicus Caesar, celebrated his triumph over the Cherusci, Chatti, and Angrivarii, and the other tribes which extend as far as the Elbe.[27]
Germanicus was then moved to the Parthian border in Syria and soon died, possibly from poisoning. Arminius was killed in turn by Segestes and his allies in AD21.
After Arminius's murder, the Romans left the Cherusci more or less to their own devices. In AD47, the Cherusci asked Rome to send Italicus, the son of Flavus and nephew of Arminius, to become their chieftain, as civil war had destroyed their other nobility. He was initially well liked but, since he was raised in Rome as a Roman citizen, he soon fell out of favor.[28] He was succeeded by Chariomerus, presumably his son, who was defeated by the Chatti and deposed around AD88.[29]
Dwelling on one side of the Chauci and Chatti, the Cherusci long cherished, unassailed, an excessive and enervating love of peace. This was more pleasant than safe, for to be peaceful is self-deception among lawless and powerful neighbours. Where the strong hand decides, moderation and justice are terms applied only to the more powerful; and so the Cherusci, ever reputed good and just, are now called cowards and fools, while in the case of the victorious Chatti success has been identified with prudence. The downfall of the Cherusci brought with it also that of the Fosi, a neighbouring tribe, which shared equally in their disasters, though they had been inferior to them in prosperous days.[30]
Germanicus Julius Caesar was an ancient Roman general and politician most famously known for his campaigns against Arminius in Germania. The son of Nero Claudius Drusus and Antonia the Younger, Germanicus was born into an influential branch of the patrician gens Claudia. The agnomen Germanicus was added to his full name in 9 BC when it was posthumously awarded to his father in honor of his victories in Germania. In AD 4 he was adopted by his paternal uncle Tiberius, himself the stepson and heir of Germanicus' great-uncle Augustus; ten years later, Tiberius succeeded Augustus as Roman emperor. As a result of his adoption, Germanicus became an official member of the gens Julia, another prominent family, to which he was related on his mother's side. His connection to the Julii Caesares was further consolidated through a marriage between him and Agrippina the Elder, a granddaughter of Augustus. He was also the father of Caligula, the maternal grandfather of Nero, and the older brother of Claudius.
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 Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, also called the Varus Disaster or Varian Disaster by Roman historians, was a major battle between Germanic tribes and the Roman Empire that took place somewhere near modern Kalkriese from September 8–11, 9 AD, when an alliance of Germanic peoples ambushed three Roman legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus and their auxiliaries. The alliance was led by Arminius, a Germanic chieftain and officer of Varus's auxilia. Arminius had received Roman citizenship and a Roman military education; thus allowing him to deceive the Romans methodically and anticipate their tactical responses.
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.
Arminius was a chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe who is best known for commanding an alliance of Germanic tribes at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, in which three Roman legions under the command of general and governor Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed. His victory at Teutoburg Forest precipitated the Roman Empire's permanent strategic withdrawal and the decolonisation of Germania Magna, and modern historians regard it as one of Imperial Rome's greatest defeats. As it prevented the Romanization of Germanic peoples east of the Rhine, it has also been considered one of the most decisive battles in history and a turning point in human history.
Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus, commonly known in English as Drusus the Elder, was a Roman politician and military commander. He was a patrician Claudian but his mother was from a plebeian family. He was the son of Livia Drusilla and the stepson of her second husband, the Emperor Augustus. He was also brother of the Emperor Tiberius; the father of the Emperor Claudius and general Germanicus; paternal grandfather of the Emperor Caligula, and maternal great-grandfather of the Emperor Nero.
The Chauci were an ancient Germanic tribe living in the low-lying region between the Rivers Ems and Elbe, on both sides of the Weser and ranging as far inland as the upper Weser. Along the coast they lived on artificial mounds called terpen, built high enough to remain dry during the highest tide. A dense population of Chauci lived further inland, and they are presumed to have lived in a manner similar to the lives of the other Germanic peoples of the region.
Publius Quinctilius Varus was a Roman general and politician under the first Roman emperor Augustus. Varus is generally remembered for having lost three Roman legions when ambushed by a coalition of Germanic tribes led by Arminius, the chieftain of the Cherusci tribe in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, where he committed suicide to avoid capture and shameful reproach.
The Battle of the Weser River, sometimes known as the First Battle of Minden or Battle of Idistaviso, was fought in 16 AD between Roman legions commanded by Roman Emperor Tiberius's heir and adopted son, Germanicus, and an alliance of Germanic peoples, commanded by Arminius. The battle marked the end of a three-year series of campaigns by Germanicus in Germania.
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 Chamavi, Chamãves or Chamaboe (Χαμαβοί) were a Germanic tribe of Roman imperial times whose name survived into the Early Middle Ages. They first appear under that name in the 1st century AD Germania of Tacitus as a Germanic tribe that lived to the north of the Lower Rhine. Their name probably survives in the region today called Hamaland, which is in the Gelderland province of the Netherlands, between the IJssel and Ems rivers.
Segestes was a nobleman of the Germanic tribe of the Cherusci involved in the events surrounding the Roman attempts to conquer northern Germany during the reign of Augustus and then Tiberius.
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 Dulgubnii are a Germanic tribe mentioned in Tacitus' Germania as living in what is today northwest Germany. Tacitus describes them being to the north of the Angrivarii and Chamavi, and as having moved from the north into the area once belonging to the Bructeri, between Ems, Lippe, and Weser. In this same area as the Dulgubnii, north of the Chamavi and Angrivarii, were the Chasuarii, and north of these, on the North Sea coast, where the Chauci. The Chasuarii's name is thought to derive from the River Hase which feeds into the middle of the Ems from the east, just northwest of the area associated with the Angrivarii, on the Weser. So from Tacitus, it appears that the Dulgubnii probably lived near the Weser.
Germania was a short-lived Roman province for the duration of 16 years under Augustus, from 7 BC to AD 9. The possible capital of this province was Marktbreit, a castrum with a nearby canaba from the period of Emperor Augustus, located 70 km east of the "Limes Germanicus" on the River Main.
Aulus Caecina Severus was a Roman politician and general who was consul in 1 BC. He was Emperor Augustus' representative in Moesia when the Great Illyrian Revolt broke out. As a result, he spent 4 years in heavy fighting against the Illyrian tribes before the revolt was suppressed by the Romans. In 14 AD he was in charge of several legions on the lower Rhine which mutinied on the death of Augustus. He was recorded as having handled this poorly, with the situation only being salvaged by the intervention of his commander-in-chief, Germanicus.
The Roman campaigns in Germania were a series of conflicts between the Germanic tribes and the Roman Empire. Tensions between the Germanic tribes and the Romans began as early as 17/16 BC with the Clades Lolliana, where the 5th Legion under Marcus Lollius was defeated by the tribes Sicambri, Usipetes, and Tencteri. Roman Emperor Augustus responded by rapidly developing military infrastructure across Gaul. His general, Nero Claudius Drusus, began building forts along the Rhine in 13 BC and launched a retaliatory campaign across the Rhine in 12 BC.
Italicus was a chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci. He is chiefly remembered as the nephew of Arminius.
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.
Barbarians is a 2020 German historical war drama television series created by Andreas Heckmann, Arne Nolting, and Jan Martin Scharf. It stars Laurence Rupp, Jeanne Goursaud, and David Schütter. The series is a fictionalized account of events during the Roman Empire's occupation of Germania, and the subsequent rebellion of some Germanic tribes led by Arminius. The series was renewed for season 2 on November 10, 2020. It was released on Netflix on October 21, 2022.
References
Citations
↑ Reallexikon der Germanischen Alterturmskunde. Vol.4. 1981. p.430 ff., s.v. "Cherusker"; cf. also Rudolf Much; Herbert Jankuhn; Wolfgang Lange (1967). Die Germania des Tacitus. Heidelberg: Winter. p.411.
↑ Jacob Grimm (1853). Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache. Vol.2 (2nded.). Leipzig. p.426.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Reallexikon der Germanischen Alterturmskunde. Vol.1. 1973. pp.420–421, s.v. "Arminius".
1 2 Powell, Lindsay (2013), Eager for Glory: The Untold Story of Drusus the Elder, Conqueror of Germania, Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books, Chapter 5, ISBN978-1-78303-003-3, OCLC835973451 .
Max Ihm, Cherusci. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (RE). volume III,2, Stuttgart 1899, Sp. 2270–2272.
Ralf Günther Jahn, Der Römisch-Germanische Krieg (9–16 n. Chr.). Diss., Bonn 2001.
Peter Kehne, Zur Lokalisierung, Organisation und Geschichte des Cheruskerstammes. In: Michael Zelle (Hrsg.), Terra incognita? Die nördlichen Mittelgebirge im Spannungsfeld römischer und germanischer Politik um Christi Geburt. Akten des Kolloquiums im Lippischen Landesmuseum Detmold vom 17. bis 19. Juni 2004. Philipp von Zabern Verlag, Mainz 2008, ISBN978-3-8053-3632-1, pages 9–29.
Gerhard Neumann, Reinhard Wenskus, Rafael von Uslar, Cherusker. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2. Auflage. volume 4, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin – New York 1981, pages 430–435.
Ozment, Steven (2005). A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN978-0-06093-483-5.
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