They were described by Tacitus as being the same people who were first called "Germani" (Germanic), meaning that all other tribes who were later referred to this way, including those in Germania east of the river Rhine, were named after them.
Later, Caesar himself encouraged the Sicambri to cross the Rhine into the territory of the Eburones, seeking to plunder the lands of the people whose fortress he had just taken.
Later, as the area became part of the Roman Empire, some of these tribes from over the Rhine, including the Sicambri and the Ubii, were forced by Tiberius to settle in the northeast of Gaul.
The exact history of each of the populations is not known although the areas nearer to the Rhine appear to have had larger-scale immigration, and the Tungri were suspected, according to Tacitus, of having been less influenced in their makeup by that process.
[9] To the north of the Tungri, in the Rhine-Maas delta, were the Batavians, a similarly new formation, apparently made up of incoming Chatti, with a possible contribution from the Eburones.
In his Natural History, he notes that their region...[12]...has a spring of great renown, which sparkles as it bursts forth with bubbles innumerable, and has a certain ferruginous taste, only to be perceived after it has been drunk.
[14] Apart from Tongeren the capital, both Pliny and Ptolemy's Geography are unclear concerning the exact boundaries of the Tungri's country but are understood as placing it east of the Scheldt, and to the north of the Arduenna Silva (Forest of Ardennes), somewhere near the middle and lower valley of the Mosa (Meuse).
In other directions, their neighbours in Roman times were the Belgic Nervii on the west and the Remi and Treveri to the south, all of which were tribes who had been in those regions since before Caesar's campaign.
The Tungri were mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum, an early fifth-century document, in which every military and governmental post in the late Roman Empire was transcribed.