Civitas Tungrorum

The Civitas Tungrorum was a large Roman administrative district dominating what is now eastern Belgium and the southern Netherlands.

The geographical boundaries of the civitas probably corresponded at least roughly to the area of the large medieval Catholic diocese of Liège, which was reduced in 1559.

However, doubts exist about exact borders, in this case due to the fact that the northern part of the civitas was for a long time pagan Frankish, and outside of Roman or Catholic influence.

Edith Wightman, considering the question of the locations of the tribes Caesar originally met here, goes as far as saying that this region "had the least stable political situation of any within later Belgica, and since the pattern was repeated in the Middle Ages, bishopric boundaries are of no help".

There is less certainty about the borders of the civitas to the north and east, where pagan Franks settled in between the times of Saint Servatius and Lambert of Maastricht, leading to a possible disruption of administrative districts.

On the other hand, Tacitus equated them to the same group of tribes who had been known as the Germani and had lived in the area in the time of the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar, and been described by him in his famous Commentary.

[11]The Germani tribes which Caesar had earlier named in this region were the Eburones, the Condrusi, the Paemani (or Caemani), the Caeroesi, and the Segni.

Caesar also referred to other tribes living over the east of the Rhine as Germani, and he called that region Germania, considering it their homeland.

Ambiorix, one of the two kings of the Eburones, complained to Caesar that he had to pay tribute to the Aduatuci, and that his own son and nephew were kept as captive slaves by them.

Before that battle, information from the Remi, a tribe allied with Rome, stated that the Germani (the Condrusi, the Eburones, the Caeraesi, and the Paemani; but not the Segni) had collectively promised, they thought, about 40,000 men.

To the north of the Tungri, in the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta in the modern Netherlands were the Batavians and Frisiavones and possibly still some of the Menapii who had been there in Caesar's time.

[23] The name of one of the Germani tribal groups has survived from Caesar's time until today, the Condrusi, who lived in the Condroz of Wallonia.

[5] The pagus Catualinus apparently existed in or near Heel on the Meuse, which corresponds with Catvalium in the Tabula Peutingeriana map.

As Tacitus wrote, "The Rhine bank itself is occupied by tribes unquestionably German,—the Vangiones, the Triboci, and the Nemetes.

Nor do even the Ubii, though they have earned the distinction of being a Roman colony, and prefer to be called Agrippinenses, from the name of their founder, blush to own their origin.

The Roman empire proceeded to form two new cisrhenane provinces named "Germania" on the Gaulish, western, side of the Rhine.

So the two Roman provinces named Germania, both mainly on the west of the Rhine, gave an official form to the concept of germani cisrhenani.

The northern part of the Civitas Tungrorum became depopulated, and was then settled by the Salian Franks, who referred to this territory by its old name of Toxandria.