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Sicambri

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The approximate positions of some Germanic peoples reported by Graeco-Roman authors in the 1st century.
Roman Gaul and Germania east of the Rhine around AD 70. The Sicambri by this point may have been living in the area labelled Cugerni.

The Sicambri (also Sugambri) were a Germanic people who lived on the east bank of the river Rhine, in what is now Germany, near the border with the Netherlands. They were first reported by Julius Caesar, who encountered them in 55 BC.

Caesar already categorized them as a Germanic people (Germani), although he did not necessarily define ethnicity in terms of language. Whether or not the Sicambri spoke a Germanic or Celtic language, or something else, is not certain. They lived in a contact zone where these two language families came into contact and were both influential.

By the 3rd century, the region in which they and their neighbours had lived had become part of the territory of the Franks, which was a new name that possibly represented a new alliance of older tribes, possibly including the Sicambri. However, many Sicambri had been moved into the Roman empire by this time.

Name and language

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The specific way the name is spelt differs can differ considerably across sources. The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography gives four variant spellings under the entry Sicambri: Sycambri, Sygambri, Sugambri, and Sucambri.[1] The earliest source, Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, calls them Sugambri but in later sources they are more commonly called Sicambri.[2]

The material culture of the early Sicambri which was a variant of the La Tène culture, which is associated with Celtic languages.[3] Like the Cimbri, and like their neighbours across the Rhine, the Eburones, many names of Sicambrian leaders end in typical Celtic suffixes like -rix (Baetorix, Deudorix, etc.). If the Sicambri were not Celtic speakers themselves, this could also indicate intense contacts with Celtic peoples across the Rhine in Gaul.

History

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The first mention of the Sicambri is in the fourth book, corresponding to year 55 BC, of Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Caesar reports that near the confluence of the Rhine and Meuse, a battle took place in the land of the Menapii with a large number of mobile Tencteri and Usipetes, who had come to the Rhine from east, and were planning to move south into the territory of the Eburones. When these two peoples were routed by Caesar, their cavalry escaped and found asylum on the far side of the Rhine with the Sicambri. Caesar then built a bridge across the river to punish the Sicambri. The Sicambri, however, did not wait for his arrival, but, on the advice of their wards, withdrew into forests and uninhabited areas where Caesar was unable to follow them.

The position of the Sicambri at this time is interpreted by modern historians as lying roughly between the Sieg and Lippe rivers, with a core area between the Rhine, Lippe, and Wupper. This is believed to have been an area of substantial economic and strategic significance for trading networks.[3]

In 53 BC, when Caesar defeated the Eburones, he reported that he invited all of the peoples that were interested to destroy the remainder. The Sicambri responded to Caesar's call. They took large amounts of cattle, slaves and plunder. Caesar commented that "these men are born for war and raids". "No swamp or marsh will stop them". After the raid on the Eburones they moved on against the Romans. They destroyed some of Caesar's units, in revenge for his campaign against them, and when the remains of the legion withdrew into the city of Atuatuca, the Sicambri went back across the Rhine.

Under the ensuing hegemony of the Romans in this region, the Rhine became a frontier, and the successors of Caesar helped fortify and reinforce their allies the Ubii, to the south of the Sicambri near modern Cologne. A faction of Chatti were also able to settle in Roman-controlled Batavia, in the Rhine delta just east of the Sugambri. The Sicambri were thus enclosed within a pincer movement by Rome's frontier policy.[3]

In 16 BC their leader Melo, brother of Baetorix, organised a raid and defeated a Roman army under the command of Marcus Lollius, which sparked a reaction from the Roman Empire and helped start the series of Germanic Wars. Later the Sicambri under Deudorix, son of Baetorix, joined the rebellion of Arminius which subsequently annihilated the 3 Roman legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus.

In 12 BC and 11 BC, the descriptions of the wars of Nero Claudius Drusus show that the tribe was living to the south of the river Lippe, with the Usipetes now settled to their north.[4] In 9 BC the Sicambri battled the Romans in an alliance with the Cherusci and Suevi and lost. At least a part was forced to move to the south side of the lower Rhine, where they possibly merged into Romanized populations such as the Tungri or Cugerni.[5]

Strabo, writing around 20 AD, described the position of Sicambri using similar words to Caesar, and possibly based upon them. He placed them next to the Menapii, “who dwell on both sides of the river Rhine near its mouth, in marshes and low thorny woods. It is opposite to these Menapii that the Sicambri are situated". Strabo describes them as Germanic, and notes that beyond them are the Suevi and other peoples.[6] Elsewhere however, Strabo mentions that the Rhine valley Germans have mainly been displaced: "there are but few remaining, and some portion of them are Sicambri". He apparently understood their position on the Rhine to literally be on the coast.[7] With the German wars still on-going, he describes them as being one of the most well-known Germanic tribes in his time.[8]

In contrast to those Sicambri who were moved west of the Rhine, the main part of the Sicambri "migrated deep into the country anticipating the Romans" according to Strabo. It has been suggested that the Marsi were a part of the Sicambri who managed to stay east of the Rhine after most had been moved from the area to join the Eburones and other Germani cisrhenani.[9]

In 8-7 BC, during the reign of Augustus, Suetonius reported that the future emperor Tiberius moved the Sicambri, presumably only a part of them, to the Roman side of the Rhine, like the Ubii to their south.[10][11] Whether this constituted an end to their independent existence is disputed,[12] and they may have been settled in the area described as Cugerni.[13]

In 26 AD, some Sicambrian auxiliaries allied to Rome were involved in crushing an uprising of Thracian tribesmen.[14] By the time of Rome's conflict with the British Silures, Tacitus reports that the Sicambri could be mentioned as an historical example of a tribe who "had been formerly destroyed or transplanted into Gaul".[15]

Martial, in his Liber De Spectaculis, a series of epigrams written to celebrate the games in the Colosseum under Titus or Domitian, noted the attendance of numerous peoples, including the Sicambri: "With locks twisted into a knot, are come the Sicambrians..."[16]

Claudius Ptolemy, in the second century AD, still located the Sicambri, together with the Bructeri Minores, at the most northern part of the Rhine and south of the Frisii who inhabit the coast north of the river. However it is likely that this part of his geography was based upon earlier Roman authors.

Legacy

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Late antique authors regularly, by convention, referred to foreign tribes with names drawn from older sources such as Herodotus and Tacitus. In such sources, including Claudian, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Gregory of Tours,[17] the Franks were called Sicambri.[18] Other examples of such appelation can be found in Venantius Fortunatus,[19] Panegyrici Latini, Life of King Sigismund, and Life of King Dagobert.[citation needed]

The Sicambri were also later referenced in Frankish mythology, with an anonymous work from AD 727 called Liber Historiae Francorum creating a mythological Trojan ancestry. It reports that following the fall of Troy, 12,000 Trojans led by chiefs Priam and Antenor moved to the Tanais (Don) river, settled in Pannonia near the Sea of Azov and founded a city called Sicambria. After altercations the Alans and Emperor Valentinian (r. 364–375), who renamed them Franks, they moved to the Rhine.[dubious – discuss] Frankish chronicler Fredegar also has the Franks originate in Troy but lets them move straight to the Rhine.[citation needed] These stories have obvious difficulties and are rejected as fictitious.[20] Historians and archaeologists firmly place Frankish origins in the Rhine region.[21]

Notes

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  1. ^ Public Domain Smith, William, ed. (1854–1857). "Sicambri". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray.
  2. ^ van Loon 2016, p. 60; Caesar, Bellum Gallicum, 4.16.
  3. ^ a b c Heinrichs 2005.
  4. ^ Cassius Dio 54.32.
  5. ^ Florus, II.30 (also here). Also see Orosius.
  6. ^ Strabo, "3", Geography, vol. IV
  7. ^ Strabo book 7 chap 1
  8. ^ book 7 chap 2.
  9. ^ J. N. Lanting & J. van der Plicht (Dec 15, 2010). "De ¹⁴C Chronologie van de Nederlandse Pre- en Protohistorie VI". Palaeohistoria. 51/52. Barkhuis. ISBN 9789077922736. Retrieved 2015-04-25.
  10. ^ van Loon 2016, p. 61.
  11. ^ Suetonius, Augustus, 21.
  12. ^ van Loon 2016, p. 61, contra Heinrichs 2005, noting a continued ethnic identification of certain auxiliary cohorts as Sugambri.
  13. ^ van Loon 2016, p. 62.
  14. ^ Tacitus, The Annals 4.47
  15. ^ Tacitus, Annals, 12.39.
  16. ^ Martial, Liber de spectaculis, epigram 3, line 9.
  17. ^ Gregory of Tours. History of the Franks. 2.31. Merovingian Frankish leader Clovis I, on the occasion of his baptism into the Catholic faith, was addressed as a "Sicamber" by Saint Remigius, the officiating bishop of Rheims.
  18. ^ Goffart, Walter (1981). "Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians". American Historical Review. 86 (2): 275–306. doi:10.2307/1857439. ISSN 0002-8762. JSTOR 1857439. Also van Loon 2016, p. 67.
  19. ^ Buchberger, Erica (2016). "Romans, barbarians, and Franks in the writings of Venantius Fortunatus". Early Medieval Europe. 24 (3): 293–307. doi:10.1111/emed.12153. ISSN 0963-9462. See pp. 302–3.
  20. ^ Wood 1993, p. 34. "These tales are obviously no more than legend".
  21. ^ Wood 1993, p. 35.

Bibliography

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Modern sources

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Ancient sources

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  • Caesar. Commentarii de Bello Gallico.
  • Fredegar (1960). The fourth book of the Chronicle of Fredegar; with its continuations. Translated by Wallace-Hadrill, J M. OCLC 401901.
  • Martial. Liber de Spectaculis. Chapter 3.
  • Ptolemy. Geography.
  • Strabo. Geography.
  • Suetonius. The Deified Augustus. Lives of the Caesars.
  • Tacitus. Annales.

See also

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