Bructeri
By the end of the first century AD the Bructeri were forced to move south of the Lippe, probably absorbing the remnants of the previous inhabitants, the Sicambri and Marsi.
In the first century forms such as Latin Bructeri and Greek Βρουκτεροι dominate, but much later names which seem to evolved from those tend to begin with Bo-, Borhter, Borahtra, and Boructuarii.
[3][4] The Bructeri were one of the larger Germanic peoples, along with the coastal Frisii and Chauci who were divided by the geographer Strabo, writing in about 20 AD, into major and minor divisions.
Petrokovits argues that this implies that the Bructeri must have lived north of Rheine on the Ems at this time, in order for the river to be big enough for a naval battle.
[6] In 4 AD, Velleius Paterculus described how Tiberius crossed the Rhine that year in what is now the Netherlands and attacked, according to the badly transcribed text, “cam ui faciat Tuari Bructeri”.
[7] Based upon reports of the aftermath, in 9 AD the Bructeri must have been part of the alliance under the leadership of Arminius that defeated the Roman general Varus and annihilated his three legions at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.
[8] Germanicus took a similar route in 14 CE, to attack the Marsi at a holy site called Tamfana, and the Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipetes, who presumably all lived close by, attempted to ambush the Romans during their return from this slaughter, but it did not work.
According to Tacitus, the "troops were then marched to the furthest frontier of the Bructeri, and all the country between the rivers Amisia and Luppia was ravaged, not far from the forest of Teutoburgium, where the remains of Varus and his legions were said to lie unburied".
[19] In the battle at Castra Vetera near present day Xanten, where the Lippe enters the Rhine, a column of Bructeri were stationed on a dam which the rebels made into the river, in order to create marshy conditions.
They swam from there into the main fight, creating confusion, but the legions were later able to hold their line, while a cavalry unit found a way to attack the rebel's rear.
[21] Some years after the revolt, Rutilius Gallicus, Roman governor of Germania Inferior in about 76–78 AD, invaded the territory of the Bructeri, captured Veleda and took her to Italy.
[13] Pliny the Younger (died 113) mentioned in a letter (2.7) that in his time "a triumphal Statue was decreed by the Senate to Vestricius Spurinna", at the notion of the emperor, because he "had brought the King of the Bructeri into his Realm by force of War; and even subdu'd that rugged Nation, by the Sight and Terror of it, the most honourable kind of Victory".
The Bructeri continued to be an important people in the region, but they appear to have lost their large territories north of the Lippe, and moved into new areas south of it.
The later "4th" panegyric of 321 lists Bructeri, Chamavi, Cherusci, Lancionae, Alamanni, and Tubantes as peoples Constantine had fought against successfully, and who eventually formed an alliance against him.
[27] In 392 AD, according to a citation by Gregory of Tours, Sulpicius Alexander reported that Arbogast crossed the Rhine to punish the Franks for incursions into Gaul.
In the Peutinger map, the Bructeri also appear as a distinct entity on the opposite side of the Rhine to Cologne and Bonn, the Burcturi, with Franks to their north, and Suevi to their south.
While Ian Wood, for example, accepts these Boructuari as a likely Frankish component in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain,[33] Walter Pohl and Matthias Springer have argued that Bede may have used his specific spelling based on his knowledge of the Bructeri in Roman literature.
[35] About 738, the Borthari were one of the peoples of Germania addressed in a letter of Pope Gregory III, the others being the Hessians, Thuringians, Nistresi, Wedrecii, Lognai, Suduodi and Graffelti.
