The Batavi were an ancient Germanic tribe, originally part of the Chatti,[1] reported by Tacitus to have lived around the Rhine delta, in the area that is currently the Netherlands, "an uninhabited district on the extremity of the coast of Gaul, and also of a neighbouring island, surrounded by the ocean in front, and by the river Rhine in the rear and on either side" (Tacitus, Historiae iv). This led to the Latin name of insula Batavorum for the area.[2] The same name is applied to several military units, originally raised among the Batavi. The tribal name, probably a derivation from batawjō ("good island", from Germanic bat- "good, excellent" and awjō "island, land near water"), refers to the region's fertility, today known as the fruitbasket of the Netherlands (the Betuwe).
Finds of wooden tablets show that at least some were literate.
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The Batavi were mentioned by Julius Caesar in his commentary Commentarii de Bello Gallico, as living on an island formed by the Rhine River after it splits, one arm being the Waal the other the Lower Rhine/Old Rhine. The strategic position, to wit the high bank of the Waal—which offered an unimpeded view far into Germania Transrhenana (Germania Beyond the Rhine)—was recognized first by Drusus, who built a massive fortress (castra) and a headquarters (praetorium) in imperial style. The latter was in use until the Batavian revolt.
Archeological evidence suggests they lived in small villages, composed of six to 12 houses in the very fertile lands between the rivers, and lived by agriculture and cattle-raising. Finds of horse skeletons in graves suggest a strong equestrian preoccupation. On the south bank of the Waal (in what is now Nijmegen) a Roman administrative center was built, called Oppidum Batavorum. An Oppidum was a fortified warehouse, where a tribe's treasures were stored and guarded. This centre was razed during the Batavian Revolt.
The Batavi (the name is believed to derive from a West Germanic root also present in "better" (possibly meaning "superior men")) moved into the Betuwe in the late 1st century BC. The previous inhabitants of the area were Celtic-speaking Gauls, as evidenced by the two Latinised Celtic names for their chief town: Batavodurum and Noviomagus (Nijmegen, Neth).[3] It is unclear whether the existing inhabitants were simply subjugated with the Batavi forming a ruling elite, or the existing inhabitants simply displaced. For this reason it is also uncertain whether the Batavi remained Germanic-speaking or adopted the Belgic Gallic tongue of the indigenes.
The first Batavi commander we know of is named Chariovalda, who led a charge across the Visurgin (Weser) against the Cherusci led by Arminius during the campaigns of Germanicus in Germania Transrhenana (Annales II, 11).
Tacitus (De origine et situ Germanorum XXIX) described the Batavi as the bravest of the tribes of the area, hardened in the Germanic wars, with cohorts under their own commanders transferred to Britannia. They retained the honour of the ancient association with the Romans, not required to pay tribute or taxes and used by the Romans only for war: "They furnished to the Empire nothing but men and arms", Tacitus remarked. Well regarded for their skills in horsemanship and swimming—for men and horses could cross the Rhine without losing formation, according to Tacitus. Dio Cassius describes this surprise tactic employed by Aulus Plautius against the "barbarians"—the British Celts— at the battle of the River Medway, 43:
It is uncertain how they were able to accomplish this feat. The late 4th century writer on Roman military affairs Vegetius mentions soldiers using reed rafts, drawn by leather leads, to transport equipment across rivers.[4] But the sources suggest the Batavi were able to swim across rivers actually wearing full armour and weapons. This would only have been possible by the use of some kind of buoyancy device: Ammianus Marcellinus mentions that the Cornuti regiment swam across a river floating on their shields "as on a canoe" (357).[5] Since the shields were wooden, they may have provided sufficient buoyancy
The Batavi also provided a contingent for the Emperor's Horse Guard.
Numerous altars and tombstones of the cohorts of Batavi, dating to the 2nd century and 3rd century, have been found along Hadrian's Wall, notably at Castlecary and Carrawburgh, Germany, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Austria.
Despite the alliance, one of the high-ranking Batavi, Julius Paullus, to give him his Roman name, was executed by Fonteius Capito on a false charge of rebellion. His kinsman Gaius Julius Civilis was paraded in chains in Rome before Nero; though he was acquitted by Galba, he was retained at Rome, and when he returned to his kin in the year of upheaval in the Roman Empire, 69, he headed a Batavian rebellion. He managed to capture Castra Vetera, the Romans lost two legions while two others (I Germanica and XVI Gallica) were controlled by the rebels. The rebellion became a real threat to the Empire when the conflict escalated to northern Gaul and Germania. The Roman army retaliated and invaded the insula Batavorum. A bridge was built over the river Nabalia, where the warring parties approached each other on both sides to negotiate peace. The narrative was told in great detail in Tacitus' History, book iv, although, unfortunately, the narrative breaks off abruptly at the climax. Following the uprising, Legio X Gemina was housed in a stone castra to keep an eye on the Batavians.
The Batavi were still mentioned in 355 during the reign of Constantius II (317 - 361), when their island was already dominated by the Salii, a Frankish tribe that had sought Roman protection there in 297 after having been expelled from their own country by the Saxons.
Constantius Gallus added inhabitants of Batavia to his legions, "of whose discipline we still make use."[6] It has been assumed they merged with the Salii shortly before or after and, after having been expelled by another tribe (it has been proposed this was the Chamavi), shared their subsequent migration to Toxandria. In the Late Roman army there was a unit called Batavi.
The name of the Bavarian town of Passau descends from the Roman Batavis, which was named after the Batavi. The town's name is old as it shows the typical effects of the High German consonant shift (b > p, t > ss).
In the 16th-century invention of a suitably antique origin myth for the Dutch people that would be expressive of their self-identification as separate from their neighbors in the national struggle with Spain of the Eighty Years War for Dutch independence, the Batavians came to be regarded as their eponymous ancestors.[7] The mix of fancy and fact in the Cronyke van Hollandt, Zeelandt ende Vriesland (called the Divisiekronike), first published in 1517, brought the spare remarks in Tacitus' newly-rediscovered Germania to a popular public; it was being reprinted as late as 1802.[8] Contemporary Dutch virtues of independence, fortitude and industry were rendered fully recognizable among the Batavians in more scholarly history represented in Hugo Grotius' Liber de Antiquitate Republicae Batavicorum (1610). The myth was perpetuated by Romeyn de Hooghe's Spiegel van Staat der Vereenigden Nederlanden ("Mirror of the State of the United Netherlands", 1706), which also ran to many editions, and it was revived in the atmosphere of Romantic nationalism in the late eighteenth-century reforms that saw a short-lived Batavian Republic and, in the colony of the Dutch East Indies, a capital (now Jakarta) that was named Batavia. The success of this legend of origins was partly due to theories in anthropology, which were based on a tribal paradigm. Being politically and geographically inclusive and leaving at the same time space for diversity, this historical vision filled the needs of Dutch nation-building and integration in the 1890-1914 era. However, the disadvantages of this historical interpretation soon became apparent. It suggested there were no strong external borders, while allowing for the fairly clear-cut internal borders that were emerging as the society pillarized into three parts. The origins myth appeared, especially during the Second World War, allow the dangers of regional separatism and annexation to Germany. After 1945 the tribal paradigm lost its grip on anthropology; the "three-tribes-theme" was also fundamentally questioned and slowly faded away.[9]
Modern variants of the Batavian founding myth are made more credible by pointing out that the Batavians were only part of the ancestry of the Dutch people, together with the Frisians, Franks and Saxons, and by tracing patterns of DNA. Echoes of this supposed cultural continuity may still be found in popularisations of the history that follows.
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