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Tencteri


The Tencteri or Tenchteri or Tenctheri (in Plutarch's Greek, Tenteritē and possibly the same as the Tenkeroi mentioned by Claudius Ptolemy if these were not the Tungri) were an ancient tribe, who moved into the area on the right bank (the northern or eastern bank) of the lower Rhine in the 1st century BC. They are known first from the surviving works of ancient authors such as Julius Caesar and Tacitus. In December 2015, archaeologists found remains of the Tencteri in The Netherlands.

While the Tencteri were referred to by the Romans as Germanic rather than Gauls, their recorded names are most reasonably explained as Celtic: Tencteri is generally translated as "the faithful".

In his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Caesar describes how two tribes, the Tencteri and Usipetes, had been driven from their traditional lands by the Germanic Suebi, whose military dominance had led to constant warfare and neglect of agriculture. This original homeland of the two tribes is not clear but must have been close to where the Suebi had settled by the time of Caesar, whom he described as living in a very large wooded area to the east of the Ubii, who at this time lived on the east bank of the Rhine, on the opposite bank from where Cologne is today. It has been argued that the Tencteri and Usipetes specifically may have come from the area of the Weser river to the east of the Sigambri, because it is near to where the two tribes appeared on the Rhine, and Caesar reports the Suevi in this area. It would also explain the apparently friendly relations of the Tencteri and Usipetes with the Sigambri, who might have been their traditional neighbours. (In later Roman times this area inhabited by Caesar's Suebi was inhabited by the Chatti.)


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