Semnones

The Semnones were a Germanic and specifically a Suebi people, located between the Elbe and the Oder in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, during the time of the Roman empire.

The approximate positions of some Germanic peoples reported by Graeco-Roman authors in the 1st century AD. Suevian peoples in red, and other Irminones in purple.

Although the 2nd century geography Claudius Ptolemy places them between the Elbe and Oder rivers, archaeological evidence suggests they stretched as far east as the Spree rivers, and not quite as far as the Oder. To their north was the Havel river and to the south the Fläming Heath. In present day terms they were therefore in the area of the modern cities of Magdeburg and Berlin.^[1]

During the reign of Augustus (63 BC - 14 AD), Velleius Paterculus reported that the future emperor Tiberius reached the Elbe river which flows through the lands of the Semnones and Hermunduri.^[2] The Res Gestae Divi Augusti reports that Augustus extended the Roman boundaries to the Elbe river and that after he sailed a fleet to present day Denmark, the Cimbri, Charydes and Semnones along with other Germanic peoples of that same region "through their envoys sought my friendship and that of the Roman people".^[3]

They were described in the late 1st century by Tacitus in his Germania:

"The Semnones give themselves out to be the most ancient and renowned branch of the Suebi. Their antiquity is strongly attested by their religion. At a stated period, all the tribes of the same group assemble by their representatives in a grove consecrated by the auguries of their forefathers, and by immemorial associations of terror. Here, having publicly slaughtered a human victim, they celebrate the horrible beginning of their barbarous rite. Reverence also in other ways is paid to the grove. No one enters it except bound with a chain, as an inferior acknowledging the might of the local divinity. If he chance to fall, it is not lawful for him to be lifted up, or to rise to his feet; he must crawl out along the ground. All this superstition implies the belief that from this spot the nation took its origin, that here dwells the supreme and all-ruling deity, to whom all else is subject and obedient. The fortunate lot of the Semnones strengthens this belief; a hundred cantons are in their occupation, and the vastness of their community makes them regard themselves as the head of the Suebic tribe."^[4]

The Semnones's own name is apparently etymologically similar or even the same as the one recorded by Roman authors as "Suebi" and during his own time Julius Caesar, had mentioned Suebi but not Semnones, being a powerful tribal group with 100 cantons.

The king of the Semnones Masyas and his priestess Ganna are mentioned by Cassius Dio. They worshipped a supreme god (Latin: regnator omnium deus) at a sacred grove. A grove of fetters is also mentioned in the eddic poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana II. Ptolemy's map of Germania mentions a forest called Semanus Silva, but a relation to the Semnones is unknown.

In the 3rd century, the Semnones shifted southwards and eventually ended up as part of the Alemanni people.

See also

• List of ancient Germanic peoples
• Germania – The Origin and Situation of the Germans