- Celts and Germans in the Rhineland -
The confusion that arises from Caesar's reference to Germans living on the left
bank of the Rhine and to various tribes as having the tradition of German origins and
of having come from beyond the Rhine can be resolved by supposing that there are
in fact two types of 'German'. Caesar has either misunderstood the situation, or is
perpetrating a politically advantageous deception. On the one hand there are the
tribes along the Rhine, originally settled for the most part on the right bank, like the
Usipetes, Tencteri and Ubii, who call themselves or are called by their neighbours
'German', whatever this means (the etymology is obscure), but who are in fact
Celtic, or strongly celticized. In this sense 'German' is perhaps parallel to 'Gaulish'
or 'Belgian' as a designation for a tribal grouping. On the other hand are the
'northerners' like the Suebi, who in Caesar's day are at a more primitive, semi-
nomadic state of social and economic development, and who are already pressing on
the margins of the late La Tene world before the Romans under Caesar irrupt
into central and northern Gaul and the Rhineland and cause their own brand of
disturbance. These 'northerners' speak, not Celtic, but what we now call a Germanic
dialect, although Caesar is the first to pin the label 'German' on them. It is in his
interest to fix in Roman minds the idea that the Rhine is a natural ethnic frontier,
because that explains why his conquests go thus far and no further. From the
statement that (some) Germans come from beyond the Rhine, certainly true of
the Celtic Germans, like the Ubii and probably the Germani cisrhenani, we pass
imperceptibly to the proposition that all tribes beyond the Rhine are 'German',
including the intrusive 'northerners' like the Suebi and the Chatti, and because the
latter by Augustus's day have come to dominate the area beyond the Rhine, they
come virtually to monopolize the title 'German', which was not originally theirs,
with resulting terminological confusion.
If then the culture and language on both banks of the Rhine seem to be alike
before the Romans and the intrusive 'Germans', as we must henceforth call them,
came in to disrupt the pattern, it should not surprise us, even if it conflicts with
Caesar's evidence. Historically, rivers are not natural frontiers; they join rather than
separate, and serve more readily as highways than as barriers. The history of post-
colonial Africa has been bedevilled by frontiers inherited from the colonial powers,
who were less concerned to respect tribal groupings and the cultural and linguistic
unity of both banks of a river than they were to use the rivers, when they wished
to negotiate a frontier, as convenient lines of demarcation. The Romans were not
negotiating with barbarians as with equals; there was a 'moral barrier' on the Rhine
and the Danube.^34 It was only when the Romans themselves had stabilized their
frontier along these convenient rivers, and had set up forts and fortresses, with
customs posts and artificial restrictions on natural freedom of movement along and
across the river, that a real cultural gap was created between the provincial on the one
side and the barbarian on the other, although even so there extended beyond the river
a zone of Roman influence, if not in fact actual political control,35
Archaeological evidence for the disruption of the unity of the late La Tene world
in the course of the first century Be by 'northern' elements, 'German' in Caesar's
sense of the term, is not hard to find. Although no archaeological evidence has been
found for Ariovistus's Suebi in Gaul, we have seen what happened in the Wetterau,
and archaeology attests to the destruction of La Tene or 'Celtic' settlements in the