Cherusci

The Cherusci (sometimes called the Cherusks) were a Germanic tribe that inhabited parts of the plains and forests of northwestern Germany, in the area possibly near present-day Hanover, during the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. Ethnically, Pliny the Elder groups them with their neighbours the Suebi and Chatti, as well as the Hermunduri, as Hermiones, one of the Germanic groupings said to descend from an ancestor named Mannus. They led an important war against the Roman Empire. Subsequently they were probably absorbed into the tribal confederations such as the Franks and Allemanni.

The etymological origin of the name Cherusci is not known with certainty. According to the dominant opinion in scholarship, the name may derive from the ancient Germanic word *herut (Modern English hart, i. e. "deer"). The tribe may have been named after the deer because it had a totemistic significance in Germanic symbolism. A different hypothesis, proposed in the 19th century by Jacob Grimm and others, derives the name from *heru-, a word for "sword" (cf. Gothic hairus, Old English heoru). Hans Kuhn has argued that the derivational suffix -sk-, involved in both explanations, is otherwise not common in Germanic. He suggested that the name may therefore be a compound of ultimately non-Germanic origin, connected to the hypothesized Nordwestblock.

The first historical mention of the Cherusci occurs in Book 6.10 of Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico, which recounts events of 53 BC. Caesar relates that he crossed the Rhine again to punish the Suebi for sending reinforcements to the Treveri. He mentions that the Bacenis forest (a relatively impenetrable Beech forest, possibly the Harz) separated the territory of the Cherusci from that of the Suebi. In 12 BC, the Cherusci and other Germanic tribes were subjugated by the Romans. They appear to have been living in the same homeland when Tacitus wrote, 150 years later, describing them as living east of the Chauci and Chatti. This is generally interpreted to be an area between the rivers Weser and Elbe.

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