The Tubantes were a Germanic tribe, living in the eastern part of The Netherlands, north of the Rhine river. They are often equated to the Tuihanti, who are known from two inscriptions found near Hadrian's Wall. The modern name Twente derives from the word Tuihanti.
Little is known about the Tubantes.
The first time they are mentioned at all, is in a description of the first expedition of Germanicus against the Marsi in the year 14 AD, when they ambushed the Roman forces returning to their winter-quarters, in coalition with the Bructeri and Usipetes, probably somewhere in the Münsterland.
In 17 AD, the Tubantes are apparently referred to as the Tubattii, in Strabo's in a list of Germanic peoples defeated by Rome under Germanicus.Geography,
In 58 AD, Tacitus reports in his Annals that the Ampsivarii, in their plea to the Romans concerning some land north of the Rhine reserved by the Roman military, that it had belonged in sequence to the Chamavi, Tubantes, and then the Usipii. (The Usipii are known to have moved into the Rhine region around the time of Caesar (55 BC), but not yet to have found permanent settlement in that time, and to have been resident at the afore-mentioned northern bank of the Rhine by the time of Drusus around 11 AD.)
In 69 AD, they provided a cohort during the Batavian Revolt, which was destroyed by the Ubii.
Claudius Ptolemy in his Geographia (2.10), appears to describe a north to south series starting with the Chamavi "under" whom are the Chatti and Tubanti, and then between these and the Sudetes mountains, thought to be the Erzgebirge, the Teuriochaemae (an otherwise unknown name, but in the place previously inhabited by the Hermanduri and later by the Thuringii, with these three names often thought to be equivalent). But the position of the Chamavi and Tubantes so far to the southeast does not match other sources, and Chamavi also seem to be mentioned under another name in a more expected place, south of the coastal Chauci, and north of the Bructeri, in between Ems and Weser. Confusingly, other tribes normally from the region of the Tubantes, the Chattuari and Chasuarii, are also described as if they are in southern Germany in this passage.