Frisiavones

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Frisiavones

The Frisiavones (also Frisævones or, to distinguish more explicitly from the Frisians

Frisians

The Frisians are an ethnic group of Germanic people living in coastal parts of The Netherlands and Germany. They are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia....
, Frisiabones) is a Germanic tribe usually considered as a southern subdivision of the Frisians that came into the scope of Roman domination but mentioned by Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
as being another tribe next to the Frisii.

According to inscriptions found in Roman Britain (dated between 103-249 AD) the Frisiavones in the Roman Army

Roman army

The Roman Army was employed by the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire, as part of the Roman military. Its most important infantry constituent for much of its history was the Roman legion....
are synonym to Frisians.

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The Frisiavones (also Frisævones or, to distinguish more explicitly from the Frisians

Frisians

Pliny the Elder

Roman army

Procopius

Procopius of Caesarea was a prominent Byzantine Empire scholar of the family Procopius . A participant himself in the wars of the Emperor Justinian I, he was the major historian of the 6th century, writing the Wars of Justinian, the Buildings of Justinian and the celebrated Secret History....
(† 562 AD) referred to Frisians as "Phrissones", a transcription of Frisiavones, being one amongst three tribes dwelling in Britain. However, in Latin sources Frisians were referred to normally as Frisii. Book IV of Pliny's encyclopedic compilation Naturalis Historia
Naturalis Historia

Naturalis Historia is an encyclopedia written circa AD 77 by Pliny the Elder. It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman empire to the modern day, and was one of the first reference works developed in the Classical period to examine natural and man-made objects, both organic and mineral, as well as many natura...
mentions this tribe at two different occasions, not necessarily related one to the other, thus raising questions about the Frisians being the only people known as such and being exclusively related to the traditional inhabitants of modern Frisia

Frisia

Frisia is a coastal region along the southeastern corner of the North Sea, i.e. the German Bight. Frisia is the traditional homeland of the Frisians, a Germanic people who speak Frisian languages, a language group closely related to the English language....
. So far all knowledge on this issue is based on deduction.

In his Germania the Roman historian Tacitus mentions two different sections of Frisians, maioribus minoribusque frisii, (major and minor Frisians), both having settled downstream the Rhine

Rhine

File:Swiss Grand Canyon.jpgThe Rhine is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe, at , with an average discharge of more than ....
. However, it is assumed the Frisian people only sought to dwell these westernmost parts of the rivermouth after the Batavian

Batavians

The Batavians were a Germanic tribes tribe, originally part of the Chatti, reported by Gaius Cornelius Tacitus to have lived around the Rhine delta, in the area that is currently the Netherlands, "an uninhabited district on the extremity of the coast of Gaul, and also of a neighbouring island, surrounded by the ocean in...
revolt of Julius Civilis (70 AD), when this part of the delta was abandoned by the Canninefates

Canninefates

The Cananefates - also referred to as Canninefates, Caninefates, or Canenefatae; meaning leek masters - were a Germanic peoples tribe that lived in the Rhine delta, on the western part of the Batavians Island , in the Ancient Rome era, before and during the Roman conquest....
. This seems to be in contradiction to the chronology of Naturalis Historia, that has been offered to emperor Titus

Titus

Titus Flavius Vespasianus, commonly known as Titus , was a Roman Emperor who briefly reigned from 79 until his death in 81. Titus was the second emperor of the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Roman Empire between 69 and 96, encompassing the reigns of Titus's father Vespasian , Titus himself and his younger brother Domitian ....
Flavius Vespasianus II only in 77 AD. thus rendering too little time for a new people to originate from Frisians by this migration alone.

Striking in Pliny's account is the similarity between the two tribenames Frisiavones and Frisii. This could be due to coincidence, to tribal relationship or to a similar etymology. Since the Frisians should be counted among the Ingvaeones, first mentioned by Pytheas

Pytheas

Pytheas of Massilia , 4th century BC, was a Greece geography and exploration from the Greek colonies colony, Massilia . He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe at about 325 BC....
(as "Guiones", 4th century BC), that dwelled the shores of the Nordsea, thus - according to Tacitus - being the alleged worshippers of god Ing

Yngvi

Yngvi, Yngvin, Ingwine, Inguin are names that relate to an older theonym Ing and which appears to have been the older name for the god Freyr ....
; and since god "Fro" (Old Nordic "Freyr

Freyr

Freyr is one of the most important gods of Norse paganism. Freyr was highly associated with agriculture, weather and, as a phallus fertility god, Freyr "bestows peace and pleasure on mortals"....
") is often taken as a synonym to Ingus, a similar "Fro"-cult could be considered for being the common origin to both tribenames.

A clue to the geographic location could be the order of reference by Pliny. Frisiavones are mentioned first at paragraph 101, in this order: Frisii, Chauci, Frisiavones, Sturii and Marsacii. In this list only the Frisii (normally read as "Frisians") and Chauci are sufficiently known form other sources. About the Marsacii there are some indications they dwelled in the south-west of the Netherlands, and they might have been close relatives to the Celtic Morini
Morini

The Morini were a Belgic tribe in the time of the Roman Empire. We know little about their language but one of their cities, Boulogne-sur-Mer was called Bononia by Zosimus and Bonen in the Middle Ages....
. The identification of the Sturii with the ancient Frisian town of Stavoren

Stavoren

Stavoren is a small town on the coast of the IJsselmeer, about 5km south of Hindeloopen. It lies within the municipality of Nijefurd. Because Stavoren was granted City rights in the Netherlands in the 11th century, it is counted as one of the eleven cities in Friesland....
is a mere guess. Since the name Frisiavones appears several times as a synonym to Frisian, modern writers seem to have an intuitive preference to identify them with the Frisian section mentioned bij Tacitus that went south-west later on, thus showing - if anything - how the acceptance of both names (Frisii and Frisiavones) moved away from any straightforward interpretation of any such order of location provided by Pliny. Otherwise, read in order from west to east (opposite the order one might expect here from Pliny) would locate the Frisiavones and the Sturgii and Marsacii as well east from the Chauci. However, so far east would be across the river Elbe, where the geographical knowledge of Romans is known to be blurred. Tacitus could remember the Cimbri

Cimbri

The Cimbri were a Celtic or Germanic peoples tribe who together with the Teutones and the Ambrones threatened the Roman Republic in the late 2nd century BC....
dwelling there, a tribe impossible to slip Roman memory after having been inflicted near defeat by them at 113 BC, but otherwise he seems to have considered the whole coastal area from Elbe to Sweden as interconnected and inhabited by tribes impossible to locate exactly. To mention those unknown tribes would be impossible to reconcile with the absence in that region of more important tribes known by Tacitus, like the Anglii.

However, normally Pliny consider geography and the people he mentions from east to west. Thus not the Frisii, but Frisiavones would equate the people that nowadays are well-known all over by the name Frisians. Indeed Frisiavones can be read several times in Roman sources and inscriptions as a synonym to Frisians. Thus the question could even be reversed: Who were the Frisii? Like Tacitus, Pliny wouldn't have heard anything more but rumours about the people dwelling well behind the Roman frontiers and well behind tribes they waged war with. If, like nowadays, indeed any people with a name similar to Frisii already existed far back in ancient times dwelling in any stretch of land across the Elbe, no more can be held against this but the general concept that though Frisian influence might at a time have reached much farther to the east, the central base of Frisian power has always been much more to the west.

A second reference by Pliny to Frisiavones, in paragraph 106, located the people in the middle of the (most of al) Celtic tribes in nowadays Belgium. Here Plinius take pains to explicitly mention the people west to east, thus placing Frisiavones probably somewhere nowadays Limburg in between the Sunuci and the Baetasi. This new location remains shrouded by mysteries and no certaincy exists whether this Frisiavones are indeed the same people or rather a seccion that migrated to the south.

In more serious modern writings straightforward reference to Frisiavones or other synonyms to distinguish from other Frisians tends to be avoided. More important is the growing awareness that the Frisian people made up an important share of a wider "Frisian" culture or melting pot, in which various neighbouring and kindred tribes participated whose names history couldn't always deliver to our knowledge.

Frisiavones

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