Sicambri
The Sicambri (also Sugambri) were a Germanic people who lived in the area between the Rhine, Lippe, and Wupper rivers, in what is now Germany, near the border with the Netherlands.
The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography gives four variant spellings under the entry Sicambri: Sycambri, Sygambri, Sugambri, and Sucambri.
The first element su- is proposed to be a little-known Germanic version of Indo-European meaning "good", which is better attested in Celtic languages.
[4] Like the Cimbri, and like their neighbours across the Rhine, the Eburones, many names of Sicambrian leaders end in typical Celtic suffixes like -rix (Baetorix, Deudorix, etc.).
Two other transrhenic tribes, the Tencteri and Usipetes, crossed into the Eburones' territory on the western side of the Rhine, where large numbers were slaughtered by Caesar.
Their cavalry escaped across the Rhine and received refuge with the Sicambri, who refused Caesar's demand that the refugees be handed over.
The Sicambri did not wait for his arrival, but on the advice of their wards, withdrew into forests and uninhabited areas where Caesar was unable to follow them.
[7] In 53 BC, after Caesar defeated the Eburones, but failed to capture their leader Ambiorix, he reported that he invited neighbouring peoples to destroy the remainder.
In his report Caesar emphasized that the landscape was difficult for the Romans, but "neither morass nor forest obstructs these men, born amid war and depredations".
[8] Under the ensuing hegemony of the Romans in this region, the Rhine became a frontier, and the successors of Caesar helped fortify and reinforce their allies the Ubii, to the south of the Sicambri near modern Cologne.
Drusus faced stiff resistance upon his return, but he defeated the Sicambri and it was probably at this time that the Romans built their fort at Oberaden, well east of the Rhine in Sicambrian territory.
In 8-7 BC, after this defeat and the death of Drusus, the future emperor Tiberius forced the Sicambri, or a part of them, to move to the western, Roman-controlled, side of the Rhine.
Modern historians speculate that they possibly merged into Romanized population immediately facing their old lands, who were known from about this time as the Cugerni.
[10] In 9 AD, Deudorix, son of Baetorix, joined the Germanic rebellion of Arminius, of the Cherusci, which annihilated the 3 Roman legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus.
It has been suggested that the Marsi were a part of the Sicambri who managed to stay east of the Rhine after most had been moved from the area to join the Eburones and other cisrhenic Germans.
[18] By the time of Rome's conflict with the British Silures, Tacitus reports that the Sicambri could be mentioned as an historical example of a tribe who "had been formerly destroyed or transplanted into Gaul".
[19] Claudius Ptolemy, in the second century AD, still located the Sicambri, together with the Bructeri Minores, at the most northern part of the Rhine and south of the Frisii who inhabit the coast north of the river.
For example, in the later part of the first century AD, Martial, in his Liber De Spectaculis, a series of epigrams written to celebrate the games in the Colosseum under Titus or Domitian, noted the attendance of numerous peoples, including the Sicambri: "With locks twisted into a knot, are come the Sicambrians..."[25] Another poet who used this trope was Horace, in his Odes.
A Roman emperor called Valentinian, offering remission of taxes, incited the Franks to fight the Alans in the Maeotic Swamps on the Sea of Azov.
This apparently refers to Xanten, the fort built to confront the Sicambri, and known in Latin as Colonia Ulpia Traiana, after the emperor Trajan.
