Batavi (Germanic tribe)
The Batavians or Batavi were a Roman-era Germanic people that lived in Batavia in the eastern Rhine delta — an area that is now in the Netherlands, but then lay upon the northernmost border of the Roman Empire in continental Europe. Their origins are uncertain, but they appear to have settled in Batavia around 50–15 BC, when a Rome-allied Chatti military elite joined a Celtic-influenced community that had already been living there long before the arrival of the Romans. Throughout the several centuries in which they appear in historical records the Batavians were continually associated with elite cavalry units in the Roman military, who were famous for their ability to cross rivers while armed and on horseback, without breaking line.
Batavia was already referred to by the Roman leader Julius Caesar as the "Island of the Batavi" in his account of his campaigns in Gaul in 58–52 BC — although he did not explain who the Batavi were. Tacitus, writing in about 100 AD, reported that they had a special old alliance with the empire as major contributors to the Roman military, and they did not pay any other form of tribute or tax. Some modern scholars have suggested that this relationship was established by Caesar himself who had a Germanic cavalry unit which fought for him in Gaul, and then in his Roman civil war. According to these proposals, this force evolved into the later bodyguard of Caesar's imperial successors in the Julio-Claudian dynasty, who continued to recruit Batavians for this role.
Apart from the bodyguard, the Batavi in the first century AD provided 9 or 10 auxiliary cohorts which each included cavalry, all with their own Batavian command structures. Based upon estimates of the Batavian population at about 40,000 people, of whom 5000 or more were posted in the Roman military, historians believe the Batavi had a highly militarized society, even if they were able to recruit from neighbouring populations. While at least one cohort stayed close to home, eight played an important role in the Roman subjugation of Britain. In 69 AD, the "Year of the Four Emperors", Julius Civilis, a Batavi leader and Roman citizen, led the Batavian Revolt. This was one of several attempts by regional leaders to claim power during this period, and it involved not only the Batavi and their neighbours the Cananefates, but also allies from both inside and outside Roman Gaul. Vitellius, a Roman governor of their region, who was contending to become emperor was their main enemy at first, and was defeated. However, the Batavi were themselves eventually forced to come to an agreement with a new emperor, Vespasian.
After this revolt, the Batavian forces were once again posted in Britain, but in the second century Batavian forces began to be assigned to the Danubian frontier. In the second and third centuries the "Batavian" military units recruited in the provinces where they were based, and gradually became less ethnically Batavian. Networks of military families, many now Roman citizens, continued to identify as Batavi into the second century, but often while living outside of their home region. Although their name survived in the names of Roman military units and the Roman military base at Passau, the Batavians themselves disappeared from the historical record during the Crisis of the Third Century, when Rome lost control of Batavia to tribes from north of the Rhine. Their main Roman settlement at Nijmegen was abandoned by 250 AD. When the Romans recovered partial control of the region generations later, they moved large parts of the native population to other parts of the empire.
Name and language
There is little evidence concerning the language of the Roman era Batavi, but a significant number of their personal names have Germanic etymologies, while a smaller number are Celtic. Scholars believe that although, like the Chatti, the Batavi had a Celtic-influenced background, "at the very least" they were "early drawn into the process of Germanization" which was happening near the Rhine.Scholars have long reported that the regional name "Batavia" has a Germanic etymology, *bat-. The first part is reconstructed as the stem of a word * meaning "beneficial", which is reflected for example in modern English "best" or "better". The second reconstructed word could refer to floodplains, meadows, and islands, and derives ultimately from the Indo-European word for water. The name therefore means something like "good island". However, this traditional etymology is not universally accepted, and Norbert Wagner has argued that the name of the Batavi can be explained as Celtic. The first part of the name would come from a Latin-Gaulish battu, which Wagner derives from the type of gladiator called an "andabata". Older scholarship proposed that bata came from Gaulish, meaning "to strike", or "to beat", and Wagner concludes that the meaning of the Batavi name is therefore "fighters". He argues based upon the second part of the name that it is probably older than the Germanisation of the lower Rhine, and fits within a regional cluster.
There is therefore also some uncertainty about whether the ethnonym Batavi is derived from the geographical name Batavia. The standard Germanic etymology of their name would imply that an immigrating Germanic-speaking element of the Batavi must have first named the region, and then named themselves after the region. However, all of the early Roman mentions of Batavia call it simply the island of the Batavians. The Latin word "Batavia" is not found in Roman texts until centuries later, in the third century. Dio Cassius was the first to use the term, although in a Greek form,. Notably, while writing about the period of Augustus, he claimed that the Batavi were named after their country. On the other hand he also referred to the "Island of the Batavi" in another passage,. The Latin spelling Batavia started to appear in the late 3rd century and early 4th century Latin Panegyrics, but only after the area had been devastated and the Batavians themselves had ceased to appear in records.
The island of the Batavi
The Batavi are not mentioned directly by Julius Caesar in his commentary on his Gallic Wars, which lasted from 58 to 52 BC. However, he described the "Island of the Batavi" as an island in the Rhine delta. He named the first large offshoot of the Rhine where the delta begins as the Waal, and according to him the Waal then flowed into a different river, the Maas, and together the Waal and Maas formed a boundary of this island. This point where the two rivers joined was no more than 80 Roman miles from the Ocean. For modern scholars there is some uncertainty about where the Waal joined the Maas, and during which periods this happened. Nico Roymans argues that they must have joined near Lith and Rossum, where the two rivers still come close to joining today. In favour of this proposal, present day Dordrecht, another possible location, is only 40km from the coast, which does not match the distance given by Caesar.Caesar noted that there were also many other large islands in the delta, many inhabited by barbarian nations, some of whom were thought to live on fish and the eggs of birds. Apparently distinct from these he mentions that Menapii, a Gaulish tribe who he had fought as part of the alliance of the Belgae, were inhabiting both sides of the Rhine, somewhere near where it empties into the sea. He described the Menapii lands more generally as bordering upon the ocean, and containing areas with tidal islands, protected by forests and swamps. The Menapii were however forced back from the Rhine when the Germanic Tencteri and Usipetes attacked and used Menapian boats to cross the Rhine. The place near the sea where this Rhine crossing occurred is uncertain. Roymans, who believes eastern Batavia to have been inhabited at this time by Eburones, proposes that the Tencteri and Usipetes crossed only a branch of the Rhine, in the delta. According to this scenario they then wandered eastwards out of the islands, to the area between the Maas and the "Rhine", understood by Roymans to be its branch, the Waal. It was in this area that Caesar located and attacked them. He slaughtered many of the women, children and elderly at the place where this Rhine branch flowed into the Maas, forcing the survivors to the opposite side of the Rhine, where some found refuge with the Sugambri who lived east of the delta. Caesar also indicated that the lands of the Eburones, who he claimed to be defending from the Tencteri and Usipetes, also stretched to the delta. When Caesar later sought to annihilate them in 53-51 BC, many Eburones sought refuge in this region of tidal islands.
In the first century AD Tacitus and Pliny, like Caesar, continued to refer to the "Island of the Batavi", and not "Batavia". Pliny wrote about 23 AD, and described the Insula Batavorum as the most famous of the many Rhine delta islands, and he noted that the Batavi shared it with the Canninefates. On other delta islands he reported that there were Frisii, Chauci, Frisiavones, Sturii, and Marsaci. He placed the Menapii of his time south of the Scheldt, and the Eburones, crushed by Caesar, were no longer mentioned. Tacitus later agreed with Pliny that the Canninefates shared the same island with the Batavi. He also described them as being the same as the Batavi in origin, language, and valour, but smaller in numbers.
Tacitus, writing in about 100 AD, also uses the term Insula Batavorum. In his Annals he notes that it had many convenient landing places for building up a fleet, and that the island begins at the point where the Rhine first splits as it approaches the sea. He explained that the Rhine branch which splits off on the Gaulish side is called the Waal by the inhabitants, and like Caesar he describes the Waal as merging into the Maas. The other primary branch of the Rhine "retains its name and the force of its current on the side that flows past Germania". In both his Germania and his Histories Tacitus notes that apart from the island surrounded by branches of the Rhine, the Batavi also occupied a smaller neighbouring region on the neighbouring "Gaulish" bank of the river.
Tacitus also mentioned the Insula Batavorum in his account of the Batavian Revolt in his Histories, when he described how the revolt temporarily drove the Roman name out of the "island of the Batavi". In another passage he describes how the Batavians sailed a fleet into the mouth of the Meuse, which was like a sea, where it "pours its waters together with the Rhine into the Ocean". After a short naval engagement the Roman general Quintus Petillius Cerialis "mercilessly ravaged the Island of the Batavi", though he left the estates of his Batavian opponent Civilis intact. "Meanwhile, however, the autumn was far advanced, and the river, swollen by the continual rains of the season, overflowed the island, marshy and low-lying as it is, till it resembled a lake. There were no ships, no provisions at hand, and the camp, which was situated on low ground, was in process of being carried away by the force of the stream."