Cimbri

• 1. Introduction

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  The Cimbri gave Rome a phrase that outlasted them: terror cimbricus, the Cimbrian terror. Ancient Romans coined it to describe what this tribe from far northern Europe had made them feel. They fought the Roman Republic for little more than a decade. Within that time, they handed Roman armies a series of significant defeats. Then they were crushed and all but erased. Their ethnic identity, their language, and even their precise homeland were never settled. Where exactly did they come from? What language did they speak? And two thousand years later, why do communities in Denmark and the mountains of northern Italy still claim the Cimbri as their own?

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• 2. Homeland and Origins

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  On the map drawn by the Greek geographer Ptolemy, the Kimbroi appear at the northernmost tip of a peninsula jutting into the sea. That peninsula, called the Cimbrian peninsula in classical texts, corresponds to modern Jutland in Denmark. Most scholars accept Jutland as the Cimbri's original homeland. Archaeologists, however, have found no clear evidence of a mass migration from there in the early Iron Age.

  The Greek writer Strabo rejected the most popular ancient explanation for why the Cimbri had left. According to that tradition, a great flood had driven them from their homes. Strabo called the claim 'ridiculous.' He observed that the Cimbri still held the same territory they had always occupied. They had even sent Augustus a gift of their most sacred kettle and petitioned for forgiveness before sailing home.

  Augustus himself left a record of the encounter. His Res gestae notes that a Roman fleet sailed from the Rhine eastward as far as 'the lands of the Cimbri.' He wrote that Cimbrian envoys arrived to seek his friendship and amnesty for their 'earlier offences.' A remnant community had clearly survived in the north well into the 1st century AD.

  The Gundestrup Cauldron, deposited in a Himmerland bog sometime in the 2nd or 1st century BC, hints at connections reaching well beyond Jutland. Ancient sources note that northern European peoples made annual winter migrations to what is now central Iberia and southern France. Trade routes and cross-cultural marriages formed in those wintering grounds. Such contacts may be part of what the cauldron reflects, though the name the Cimbri gave themselves carries a puzzle of its own.

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• 3. A Name Disputed

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  The origin of the name Cimbri has never been firmly established. One proposed root traces it to a Proto-Indo-European stem meaning 'home.' That same root is connected to the English word home and has a Slavic cognate, sębrъ, meaning 'farmer.' A second explanation links the name to the word kimme, meaning 'rim,' suggesting the Cimbri thought of themselves as people of the coast.

  Since antiquity, the name has also been linked to that of the Cimmerians, an older and separate people. The similarity proved durable even without a proven linguistic relationship.

  The Welsh name for their own people, Cymry, has repeatedly drawn comparison. Linguists have traced it to the Brittonic word Kombrogi, meaning 'compatriots.' The resemblance to Cimbri is coincidental and the two words are linguistically unrelated.

  In the Latin sources, the name appears with a hard c. Some scholars argue the original tribal name began with a Germanic h sound, as in the form himbra. Latin had no ready equivalent for the Proto-Germanic h, which was pronounced deep in the throat. Celtic-speaking interpreters may have rendered it as c. A parallel process may explain how the Germanic form Þeuðanōz became the Latin Teutones.

  The Old Danish name for the Himmerland region, Himbersysel, has long been proposed as a linguistic descendant of the Cimbri's own name. According to this view, the Latin Cimbri with its c represents an older form of the word, before Grimm's law shifted the Proto-Indo-European k toward the Germanic h. The Cimbri's own chief names would become the sharpest evidence in the language debate. Each name could be read as either Celtic or Germanic, depending on the scholar.

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• 4. Rome's Worst Fear

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  Some time before 100 BC, the Cimbri, the Teutons, and the Ambrones moved south from their northern territories. Their first significant encounter with Rome came around 113 BC in Noricum, a region in what is now central Europe. They had entered the territory of the Taurisci, an ally of Rome. The Roman consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo was sent to defend them. The Cimbri agreed to withdraw, only to find themselves ambushed at what became known as the Battle of Noreia. They won. Only a storm that separated the two sides saved the Roman forces from complete destruction.

  In 109 BC, a Roman army under the consul Marcus Junius Silanus was defeated in the province of Gallia Narbonensis. Two years later, a Roman force under the consul Gaius Cassius Longinus was destroyed and Longinus was killed at the Battle of Burdigala, the settlement now called Bordeaux. His opponents were the Tigurini, allies of the Cimbri.

  The catastrophe for Rome arrived in 105 BC. Along the Rhône, the Cimbri confronted two separate Roman armies. Discord between the proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio and the consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus made coordination impossible. The legate Marcus Aurelius Scaurus fell first. Then the Battle of Arausio destroyed the forces of Caepio and Maximus together. The historian Livy put Roman losses at up to 80,000 men. The historian Mommsen, accounting for auxiliary cavalry and non-combatants, estimated the total at closer to 112,000.

  Gaius Marius, who had already defeated the North African king Jugurtha, was the Senate's answer to the crisis. They elected him consul and supreme commander for five consecutive years, from 104 to 100 BC, breaking their own constitutional rules to do it. The Cimbri did not march on Rome. In 104-103 BC, they turned toward the Iberian Peninsula. They raided widely until a coalition of Celtiberian peoples halted them. Defeated, they returned to Gaul to rejoin the Teutons, while Marius used the interval to prepare. Within the year, he would stand ready at the Rhône, and the Teutons and Ambrones would face him first.

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• 5. The End at Vercellae

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  The Cimbri crossed the Alps into northern Italy while their allies faced Marius to the south. The Roman consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus had chosen not to defend the mountain passes. He retreated behind the river Po, leaving a broad stretch of land open to the invaders. The Cimbri did not hurry, which gave Marius time to march north and join Catulus with reinforcements.

  Marius had needed that time. At Aquae Sextiae in 102 BC, he won two engagements against the Teutons and Ambrones. The Teuton king Teutobod was taken prisoner. With those allies out of the fight, everything depended on what happened next in the north.

  The confluence of the river Sesia with the Po became the Cimbri's final battlefield. In 101 BC, the two Roman armies and the Cimbri met there at the Battle of Vercellae. Two chieftains, Lugius and Boiorix, died on the field. Two others, Caesorix and Claodicus, were captured. The women of the tribe killed their children and then themselves rather than face enslavement. The Cimbri were annihilated as a fighting force.

  Spartacus's gladiatorial uprising, known as the Third Servile War, may have included sons of Cimbrian prisoners taken at Vercellae. Justin's account of the historian Trogus records something further: Mithridates VI of Pontus sent envoys to the Cimbri during the Social War of 91-88 BC. This suggests a Cimbrian presence in Italy more than a decade after Vercellae.

  Boiorix, who died commanding his tribe at Vercellae, bore a name that linguists would argue over for centuries. Its roots could plausibly be read as Celtic or Germanic, or as a mixture of both.

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• 6. Ritual Life

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  Strabo, writing in the 1st century BC, left the most detailed account of Cimbric religious practice in any ancient source. He described aged women serving as priestesses. They wore white garments with flaxen cloaks fastened by clasps, bronze girdles at their waists, and no shoes. Sword in hand, they moved through the prisoner-of-war camps. They crowned each captive with a wreath, led him to a bronze vessel holding about twenty amphorae, and cut his throat over the rim. From the blood that poured into the vessel, some priestesses drew prophecy. Others split the bodies open and read the entrails for omens of victory.

  During battle, a different group of women beat on hides stretched over the wicker sides of wagons. Strabo described the sound as 'unearthly.' The Cimbri were known as warriors who did not fear death, and the ritual surrounding their warfare reflected that.

  The Haraldskær Woman, discovered in a Jutland bog in 1835, shows what such practices may have looked like in the physical record. Her body showed noosemarks and skin piercing. She had been deposited in the bog rather than buried or cremated. If the Cimbri originated in Jutland, deposits of this kind may represent material evidence of the rituals Strabo described.

  The Gundestrup Cauldron may itself be the kind of vessel Strabo had in mind. Its artistic style reflects Thracian silver work, while many of its engravings depict Celtic objects. Whether the cauldron was Cimbrian property or a traded object, no inscription survives to say. The question of what language the people who owned it spoke is one that text, not artefacts, comes closer to answering.

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• 7. A Language Without Proof

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  Pliny the Elder recorded the one word scholars can reliably attribute to the Cimbric language. The Cimbri, he wrote, called the Northern Ocean Morimarusa, meaning the Dead Sea. The Gaulish words for 'sea' and 'dead' closely match the components: mori and maruo. Their modern equivalents survive in Irish, Welsh, and Breton. Pliny had not heard the word directly from a native speaker, though. It may have passed through a Gaulish intermediary before reaching him, which would explain the Celtic appearance without proving Cimbric was itself a Celtic language.

  Boiorix, Gaesorix, Lugius: the known chief names of the Cimbri have been studied closely for clues. Boiorix may mean 'King of the Boii' or, more literally, 'King of Strikers.' Gaesorix translates as 'Spear King.' Lugius appears linked to the Celtic god Lugus. The scholar Henri Hubert stated plainly: 'All these names are Celtic, and they cannot be anything else.' Others have argued that Boiorix could carry Proto-Germanic roots as easily as Celtic ones. The Cimbri spent years among Gaulish peoples, which would have encouraged adoption of Celtic naming conventions.

  Julius Caesar was among the first ancient writers to draw a careful distinction between Celtae and Germani. He had political reasons for doing so: designating the Rhine as Rome's boundary served his military ambitions. Most writers before him had applied 'Gaul,' 'Celt,' and 'Germani' as rough labels for any people living north of the familiar world. His distinctions were not purely scholarly.

  Before the Battle of Vercellae, the Romans enlisted Gaulish Celts to spy inside the Cimbri camp. The apparent assumption was that they could pass as insiders. The community that eventually claimed Cimbrian descent in the mountains of northern Italy kept a language called Cimbro alive for centuries, offering one more piece of evidence for linguists to weigh.

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• 8. Living Legacies

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  Julius Caesar reported that a Belgian tribe called the Atuatuci traced their descent to Cimbri and Teutons. They were fighters left behind on the western bank of the Rhine during the migration south. Six thousand had been stationed there as a garrison. They founded the city of Atuatuca in the territory of a people called the Eburones, whom they came to dominate. The Eburone king Ambiorix paid tribute to the Atuatuci and handed over his son and nephew as hostages. By the 1st century AD, the Eburones had been replaced or absorbed by the Germanic Tungri. Their city became known as Atuatuca Tungrorum, the settlement now called Tongeren in modern Belgium.

  A different claim arose in the mountains between Vicenza, Verona, and Trento in northern Italy. A community of German speakers in an area known as the Seven Communities has maintained this claim for centuries. Their roughly 4,400 inhabitants have long held that they descend from Cimbri who retreated to the Alps after Vercellae. The Cimbrian origin story for this community was promoted by humanists as early as the 14th century. Linguists today find a medieval Bavarian immigration, in the 11th or 12th century AD, far more plausible. Genetic studies suggest Celtic rather than Germanic ancestry for most of the region's inhabitants. Yet the original Cimbro place names survive alongside more modern ones, and the identity persists.

  In 1709, Frederick IV of Denmark visited the community and was received as their king. The population had maintained its independence throughout the era of the Venice Republic. World War I devastated the region severely, and many inhabitants left to form an effective worldwide diaspora.

  The Himmerland-born author Johannes V. Jensen won the Nobel Prize. He gave the Cimbri their most enduring literary treatment in his 1922 novel Cimbrernes Tog. The book was part of the epic cycle Den lange Rejse, published in English as The Long Journey in 1923. The sculptor Anders Bundgaard made the memory physical. His Cimbrian bull, called in Danish Cimbrertyren, was erected on the 14th of April, 1937, in a central square in Aalborg. Aalborg is the capital of North Jutland, the same stretch of land that Ptolemy mapped and that Augustus's fleet had once sailed to reach.

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