Suebi: Encyclopedia II - Suebi - Early history

Suebi - Early history

2000 years ago the Baltic Sea was known to the Romans as the Mare Suebicum. Partially because of his unfamiliarity with the various Germanic peoples interacting with Rome at the time, the historian Tacitus referred to all Elbe-Germanics as Suebi. More recent scholarship has shown that view to be an oversimplification. The Suebi eventually migrated south and west to reside for a while in the Rhineland area of modern Germany, where their name survives in the historic region known as Swabia. The Suebi under Ariovistus were invited into Gallia by the Aedui but soon came to dominate them and were finally defeated by Julius Caesar in 58 BC.

Closely related to the Alamanni and often working in concert with them, the Suebi for the most part stayed on the right bank of the Rhine until December 31, 406, when much of the tribe joined the Vandals and Alans in breaching the Roman frontier at Mainz, thus launching an invasion of the province of Gaul.

While the Vandals and Alans clashed with the Roman-allied Franks for supremacy in Gaul, the Suebi under their king Hermerico worked their way to the south, eventually crossing the Pyrenees and entering the Iberian Peninsula which was out of Imperial rule since the rebellion of Gerontius and Maximus on 409.

Passing through the Basque country, they settled in the Roman province of Gallaecia, in north-western Hispania, swore fealty to the Emperor Honorius and were accepted as foederati and permitted to settle, under their own autonomous governance. Contemporaneously with the self-governing province of Britannia, the kingdom of the Suebi in Galicia became the first of the sub-Roman kingdoms to be formed in the disintegrating territory of the Western Roman Empire. Sueve Gallaecia was the first kingdom separated from the Roman Empire to mint coins.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early history", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki