Semnones
The Semnones (Latin: Semnones, Greek: οι Σέμνωνες, Σέμνονες ) were, according to Tacitus ( Germania, 39) as the root of the nation elbgermanischen Suevi - vetustissimi Sueborum.
Phylogeny
About 6 BC, the Semnones joined the Marcomanni under Maroboduus.
In the year 5 AD Tiberius defeated by the Roman fleet, the Lombards on the lower Elbe. He moved further upriver and then got to the middle Elbe to the Semnones and finally to the Hermunduren, where he opened a warehouse and Germanic envoy received. The campaign participants Velleius Paterculus described the situation at that time as follows: Nothing was more in Germania, which could have been defeated, except the tribe of the Marcomanni.
17 AD fell from the Semnones and Lombards of Maroboduus and joined the Cheruskerbund at.
By 100 AD, their settlement area lay in the space between the Elbe and the Oder of the Bohemian limit to the Havel, but mainly east of the Oder and Warta. The Semnones had, in contrast to most western Germanic tribes at this time already kings.
According to Tacitus, they had 100 districts, ( a statement which made Gaius Iulius Caesar About 150 years earlier about the Suevi as total strain), in which the " Sacred Grove ", the religious center of the Suevi, were brought into the human sacrifice was.
From the 3rd century left the Semnones, to residual groups their home at the Havel and Spree in the direction of the Upper Rhine, and went into the Alemanni, the later Swabia.
The Semnones be the last time 260 AD, mentioned in an inscription on the 1992 discovered Augsburger Wins altar as a synonym for Juthungen, a part Alemannic tribe. At that time a large part of the Semnones was already migrated to West Germany.
Sacred Grove Semnones
" Vetustissimos se nobilissimosque Sueborum Semnones memorant; fides antiquitatis religione firmatur. Stato tempore in silvam auguriis patrum et prisca formidine Sacram omnes populi eiusdem sanguinis legationibus coeunt caesoque publice homine celebrant barbaric rite horrenda primordia. Est et alia luco reverentia: nemo nisi vinculo Ligatus ingreditur, ut minor et potestatem numinis prae se Ferens. Si forte prolapsus est, et attolli insurgere haud licitum: by humum evolvuntur. Eoque omnis superstitio respicit, tamquam inde initialized gentis, ibi deus omnium regnator, cetera subiecta atque parentia. Adicit auctoritatem fortuna Semnonum: centum pagi iis habitantur magnoque efficitur corpore ut se Sueborum caput CREDANT ".
"As the oldest and most prestigious Suevi consider the Semnones. Faith in her old age confirmed a religious custom. At certain time, all the tribes of the same Geblüts, represented by delegates, in a grove hallowed by -watched by the Fathers and by ancient sign of timidity make. There they conduct with public human sacrifice a the ghastly celebration of their raw custom. The grove is also shown otherwise worship: no one enters it, unless he is bound to show his submissiveness and the power of the deity. If anyone out, so he must not allow cancel or get up themselves; on the ground it rolls out to. Overall, the domestic cult founded on the belief that the strain is deduced from there to there, the allbeherrschende God lived, the subject everything was obedient. The wealth of Semnones enhances their reputation. They inhabit a hundred cantons, and the size of their tribe causes them to stick to the main trunk of the Suevi "