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Chamavi

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The Chamavi (Χαμαβοί) were a Germanic people of Roman imperial times who lived just north of the Roman border (Limes) along the Rhine river delta in what is now the Netherlands, and perhaps stretching into what is now Germany.

In the Roman records of the third and fourth century, when the tribes began to be categorized as Franks or Saxons, the Chamavi were at different listed as both, and sometimes distinguished from both.

Their name probably survives in the region today still called Hamaland, which is in the Gelderland province of the Netherlands, near present day Deventer between the IJssel and Ems rivers.

Etymology

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The etymology of the Chamavi name is uncertain, but it is generally believed to come from a Germanic language. Its construction is similar to those of neighbouring peoples, the Batavi and Frisiavi (Frisiavones).[1]

The Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde lists three speculative proposals which have been made for a Germanic etymology:[1]

  • The tribal name name may come from the Germanic verb reconstructed as *hammjan ("to press, hinder, hem in"). The meaning might be something like "immobile, powerless," perhaps originating as a nickname.
  • It has been proposed that the word might be related to Old English hamm, which possibly comes from the same verb, and meant an "enclosed piece of land". The Chamavi would then be "those who dwell on enclosed pieces of land".
  • The tribal name might be related to modern German Hemd, Dutch hemd, both meaning "shirt", reconstructed into Proto-West Germanic as *hamiþi. In this case the name might refer to war garments.

A Germanic name has been reconstructed as *Hamawiz from the name of the Matrones Hamavehae [de], evidence for whom was found between Jülich and Aachen.[1]

Location and historical mentions

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According to Velleius Paterculus, in 4 AD, Tiberius crossed the Rhine and attacked, in sequence, either the Chamavi or Cananefates (the surviving text says Cananefates but is sometimes believed to be in error), and then the Chattuari and Bructeri implying that if the emendation is correct the Chamavi lived west of the other two named tribes.[2]

Tacitus reports in his Annals that in the time of Nero (apparently 58 AD), the Ampsivarii, having been ejected from their homes further to the north, pleaded with Rome to allow them to live in a military buffer zone on the northern bank of the Rhine, saying that "these fields belonged to the Chamavi; then to the Tubantes; after them to the Usipii".[3] These fields, being on the Rhine between IJssel and Lippe, were to the southeast of modern Hamaland, south of modern Twente, and to the west of the Bructeri.

In his Germania, Tacitus reported that the Chamavi and Angrivarii had moved, apparently recently in his time (around 100 AD) into the lands of the Bructeri, who are described as neighbours: "the Bructeri having been expelled and utterly destroyed by an alliance of neighboring peoples".[4] The Bructeri lived in the area between the Lippe and Ems rivers, to the southeast of modern Hamaland, which is to the west of the Ems. Tacitus also reports that behind the Chamavi and Angrivarii, further away from the Rhine, lived "the Dulgubini and Chasuarii, and other tribes not equally famous".[5] According to Tacitus, the Tencteri and Usipii lived to their south at that time, between the Rhine and the Chatti.[6] (However, the Bructeri continued to appear in later records, apparently also moving south of the river Lippe.)

Ptolemy in his Geographia (2.10), written in the second century, mentions several tribal names which could refer to the Chamavi. But the text is notoriously garbled, using older sources with different formats including an itinerary map similar to the Tabula Peutinger. The clearest mention of the Chamavi in this text calls them the Chaemae (Χαῖμαι), in a section which Schütte interprets as a synthesis of early first century maps (Schütte's prototypes A and Aa), from before the time of Tacitus (the Bructeri are still placed north of the Sicambri), and an itinerary (Schütte's prototype C). These Chaemae were south of the part of the Chauci living on the coast between the Ems and Weser rivers. South of them, between the upper Ems and Weser, were the main part of the Bructeri, with another part to their west on the bank of the Rhine, with Frisians to their north and Sicambri to their south. East of these Chaemae, across the Weser, are the Angrivarii. Surprisingly then, these Chaemae are east of the Ems, and Schütte notes: "Ptolemy places the Frisians too far south, practically at the place of the Chamavi, and so it is possible that they have displaced the latter towards the east".[7]

The Chamavi are also described much further east in the Ptolemy text, where they are called the Kamauoi (which can be Latinized to Camavi). They are placed with the Cherusci, between the Lower Elbe and Harz mountains. Schütte interprets this to result from the use of an itinerary map where Germania between Rhine and Elbe was compressed, as it is in the Tabula Peutinger. He notes that to the neighbouring them to the south, the "Chattai and Tubantoi have equally been transplanted from the Rhenish districts to interior Germany".[8]

In about 293 or 294 AD, according to the Latin Panegyrics VIII, Constantius Chlorus, had victories in the Scheldt delta, and his opponents included the Chamavi and Frisii, because the author of the text then mentions that as a result, Chamavi and Frisii now plow his land and the price of food is lower. Some also apparently became soldiers, and about 300 the 11th cohort "chamadoroi" were noted in Peamou in Upper Egypt, corresponding to the 11th cohort Chamavi known from the Notitia Dignitatum.[9] We know the Chamavi were among them because there was a settlement pagus (Ch)amavorum (French; Amous) .

In 313, Constantine the Great also defeated Franks near the Rhine. The Panegyric which survives mentions the Bructeri, Chamavi, Cherusci, Lancionae, Alemanni and Tubantes.[9] The new name "Franks" also started to be used to refer to Salians, Chamavi, and some other tribes, in this period. The Laterculus Veronensis of about 314, which includes a list of barbarians under Roman domination distinguishes the "Camari" and several of their neighbouring tribes from both the Saxons and the Franks.[10] On the Peutinger map, which dates to as early as the 4th century, is a brief note written in the space north of the Rhine, generally interpreted as Hamavi qui et Pranci which is translated as The Hamavi, who are Franks.

In the 350s there were many conquests claimed by emperor Julian against Franks on the Rhine. In the winter of 357/358 he defeated plundering Salians and Chamavi on the Maas river, and left the Salians in Roman territory because of their permission to live there, but forced the Chamavi to leave.[11] Unlike the Salii, these Chamavi were expelled from Roman lands, though they clearly lived close by, where their grain was disappointingly unready for Roman use.[12] In an apparent description of the same events, Zosimus does not mention the Chamavi, but a Saxon group known as the "Kouadoi", a Greek spelling of "Quadi", which is considered a misunderstanding for the Chamavi who are named in other reports of these events, including such specific details as the capture of their king's son. According to him, this tribe had pushed into Batavia, displacing the Salians.[13]

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. He first devastated the territory of the Bricteri, near the bank of the Rhine, then the Chamavi, apparently their neighbours. Both tribes did not confront him. The Ampsivarii and the Chatti however were under military leadership of the Frankish princes Marcomer and Sunno and they appeared "on the ridges of distant hills". At this time the Bructeri apparently lived near Cologne. Note that the Chamavi and the Ampsivarii are the two peoples that Tacitus had long before noted as having conquered the Bructeri from their north. This description would place the lands of the Chamavi still close to the old Bructeri lands.

Gregory of Tours also mentions the Chamavi as having been among the Franks.

The Lex Chamavorum Francorum is the modern name of a Frankish legal code known from the 9th century, which was official under Charlemagne. It is not clear whether it was really intended to refer to Chamavi.[14]

See also

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Citations

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  1. ^ a b c Neumann 1981, p. 368.
  2. ^ Lanting; van der Plicht (2010), "De 14C-chronologie van de Nederlandse Pre- en Protohistorie VI: Romeinse tijd en Merovingische periode, deel A: historische bronnen en chronologische schema's", Palaeohistoria, 51/52: 62, ISBN 9789077922736
  3. ^ Tac. Ann. 13.55
  4. ^ Tac. Ger. 33
  5. ^ Tac. Ger. 34
  6. ^ Tac. Ger. 32
  7. ^ Schütte 1917, p. 121.
  8. ^ Schütte 1917, p. 119.
  9. ^ a b Nixon, C. E. V.; Rodgers, Barbara Saylor (1994-01-01). In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-08326-4.
  10. ^ Liccardo, Salvatore (2023), Old Names, New Peoples: Listing Ethnonyms in Late Antiquity, Brill, doi:10.1163/9789004686601, ISBN 978-90-04-68660-1
  11. ^ Lanting; van der Plicht (2010) p. 67
  12. ^ Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, Book XVII-8
  13. ^ Zosimus Nova Historia Book III compare to Eunapius fragment 12.
  14. ^ Text: here, but there are doubts, see for example here.

Bibliography

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Primary sources

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