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Veleda (fl. AD 69–84) was a seeress of the Bructeri, a Germanic people who achieved some prominence during the Batavian rebellion of AD 69–70, headed by the Romanized Batavian chieftain Gaius Julius Civilis, when she correctly predicted the initial successes of the rebels against Roman legions.
The name Veleda (pronounced [wɛ.ɫɛ.da] ) is most likely a borrowing from Gaulish *ueletā ('seeress'; cf. Gaul. uelets, Old Irish filed , Middle Welsh gwelet, Middle Breton guelet), with regular Germanic sound shift -t- > -d-. [1]
The name may be Celtic and generic title for a prophetess (from Proto-Celtic *welet- "seer", a derivative of the root *wel- "to see"). [2] [3] The ancient Germanic peoples discerned a divinity of prophecy in women and regarded prophetesses as true and living goddesses. In the latter half of the 1st century AD Veleda was regarded as a deity by most of the tribes in central Germany and enjoyed wide influence. [4] She lived in a tower near the Lippe River, a tributary of the Rhine. [5] The inhabitants of the Roman settlement of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (now Cologne) accepted her arbitration in a conflict with the Tencteri, an unfederated tribe of Germany (i.e., one outside the boundary of the Roman Empire). In her role as arbitrator, the envoys were not admitted to her presence; an interpreter conveyed their messages to her and reported her pronouncements. [5]
The Batavian leader Civilis originally raised his force as an ally of Vespasian during the Roman power struggle in AD 69, but when he saw the weakened condition of the legions in Romanized Germany he openly revolted. It is not clear whether Veleda merely prophesied the rebellion or actively incited it; given the Germans' adoration of her as a goddess, remote in her tower, the distinction may not have been clear at the time. Early in AD 70 the revolt was joined by Julius Classicus and Julius Tutor, leaders of the Treviri who like Civilis were Roman citizens. The Roman garrison at Novaesium (now Neuss) surrendered without a fight, as did the one at Castra Vetera (near modern Xanten in Niederrhein, Germany). [6] The commander of the Roman garrison, Munius Lupercus, was sent to Veleda, though he was killed en route, evidently in an ambush. Later, when the praetorian trireme was captured, it was rowed upriver on the Lippe as a gift to Veleda. [7]
A strong show of force by nine Roman legions under Gaius Licinius Mucianus caused the rebellion to collapse. Civilis was cornered on his home island of Batavia on the lower Rhine by a force commanded by Quintus Petillius Cerialis; his fate is unknown, but in general Cerialis treated the rebels with surprising lenience, so as to reconcile them to Roman rule and military service. [6] In Veleda's case, she was left at liberty for several years.
In AD 77 the Romans either captured her, perhaps as a hostage, or offered her asylum. According to Statius, her captor was then-Governor of Germania Inferior Rutilius Gallicus. [8] A Greek epigram has been found at Ardea, a few kilometres south of Rome, that satirizes her prophetic powers. [9] Veleda may have acted in the interest of Rome by negotiating the acceptance of a pro-Roman king by the Bructeri in AD 83 or 84. [7] She was evidently long since deceased by the time Tacitus wrote his Germania in AD 98. [10]
In her 1795 novel Velleda, ein Zauberroman (Velleda, a Magic Novel), Benedikte Naubert conflated the lives of two contemporaries, Boudica and Veleda, whom she romanticized as Boadicea and Velleda. In Naubert's work, Velleda is portrayed as a sorceress who offers Boadicea's daughters access to immortality in the magical world of Germanic goddesses, while Boadicea draws her daughters back to the real world. A large extract from Naubert's novel appeared in Shawn C. Jarvis and Jeannine Blackwell's The Queen's Mirror, as did Amalie von Helwig's 1814 story "Die Symbole" (The Symbols), in which she was called Welleda. [11] The forms "Velleda" and "Welleda" appear to be attempts to render the name in modern German (much as Richard Wagner rendered Odin or Wōden as Wotan in his Ring cycle).
Other 19th-century works incorporating Veleda/Velleda/Welleda included Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué's 1818 novel, Welleda und Gemma; Eduard Sobolewski's 1835 opera Velleda; E.H. Maindron's 1843–44 marble sculpture Velleda; Franz Sigret's drawing Veleda, Prophetess of the Bructeri, and Paul Dukas' cantata Velléda.
More recently, Veleda's story was fictionalized by Poul Anderson in Star of the Sea (1991), and by Lindsey Davis in The Iron Hand of Mars (1992) and Saturnalia (2007). Veleda is also referenced as a prophetess turned saint/goddess in The Veil of Years (2001) by L. Warren Douglas. She is also a character in The Dragon Lord (1979), by David Drake.
On November 5, 1872, Paul Henry of Paris discovered an asteroid which was named 126 Velleda in honor of Veleda.
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Gaius Julius Civilis was the leader of the Batavian rebellion against the Romans in 69 AD. His nomen shows that he was made a Roman citizen by either Augustus or Caligula.
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The Revolt of the Batavi took place in the Roman province of Germania Inferior between AD 69 and 70. It was an uprising against the Roman Empire started by the Batavi, a small but militarily powerful Germanic tribe that inhabited Batavia, on the delta of the river Rhine. They were soon joined by the Celtic tribes from Gallia Belgica and some Germanic tribes.
The Bructeri were a Germanic people, who lived in present-day North Rhine-Westphalia, just outside what was then the Roman empire. The Romans originally reported them living east of the lower Rhine river, in a large area centred around present day Münster stretching from both sides of the upper River Ems in the north, to both sides of the River Lippe in the south. At its greatest extent, their territory apparently stretched between the vicinities of the Rhine in the west and the Teutoburg Forest and Weser river in the east.
Quintus Petillius Cerialis Caesius Rufus, otherwise known as Quintus Petillius Cerialis, was a Roman general and administrator who served in Britain during Boudica's rebellion and went on to participate in the civil wars after the death of Nero. He later crushed the rebellion of Julius Civilis and returned to Britain as its governor.
In Germanic paganism, a seeress is a woman said to have the ability to foretell future events and perform sorcery. They are also referred to with many other names meaning "prophetess", "staff bearer" and "sorceress", and they are frequently called witches both in early sources and in modern scholarship. In Norse mythology the seeress is usually referred to as völva or vala.
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Julius Classicus was a Gaulish nobleman and military commander of the 1st century AD, belonging to the tribe of the Treviri. He served as a commander of the Roman auxiliaries. Along with Julius Tutor, another Treviran Roman auxiliary commander, and Julius Sabinus, who claimed descent from Gaius Julius Caesar, he joined the rebellion of Gaius Julius Civilis during the disorder of the Year of the Four Emperors.
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Ganna was a Germanic seeress, of the Semnoni tribe, who succeeded the seeress Veleda as the leader of a Germanic alliance in rebellion against the Roman Empire. She went together with her king Masyus as envoys to Rome to discuss with Roman emperor Domitian himself, and was received with honours, after which she returned home. She is only mentioned by name in the works of Cassius Dio, but she also appears to have provided posterity with select information about the religious practices and the mythology of the early Germanic tribes, through the contemporary Roman historian Tacitus who wrote them down in Germania. Her name may be a reference to her priestly insignia, the wand, or to her spiritual abilities, and she probably taught her craft to Waluburg who would serve as a seeress in Roman Egypt at the First Cataract of the Nile.
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