The Civitas Tungrorum was a large Roman administrative district dominating what is now eastern Belgium and the southern Netherlands. In the early days of the Roman Empire it was in the province of Gallia Belgica, but it later joined the neighbouring lower Rhine River border districts, within the province of Germania Inferior. Its capital was Aduatuca Tungrorum, now Tongeren.
Like many other Roman administrative districts, it was named after the tribal grouping that lived there, the Tungri, although that name is not known from the area before it became part of the Roman Empire. Also like other such districts, it became the basis for a medieval bishopric, but the bishops of Tongeren later moved to nearby Maastricht and then to Liège.
Location The geographical boundaries of the civitas probably corresponded at least roughly to the area of the large medieval Catholic diocese of Liège, which was reduced in 1559. In modern terms this large diocese contained approximately the Belgian provinces of Limburg, Liège, Namur, and part of Luxembourg; and the Netherlands provinces of Limburg, and North Brabant. It also contained the medieval imperial city of Aachen, now in Germany.
Many early medieval dioceses were based upon older Roman provinces. And it is known that this diocese saw itself as the diocese of the Civitas Tungrorum. However, doubts exist about exact borders, in this case due to the fact that the northern part of the civitas was for a long time pagan Frankish, and outside of Roman or Catholic influence. Edith Wightman, considering the question of the locations of the tribes Caesar originally met here, goes as far as saying that this region "had the least stable political situation of any within later Belgica, and since the pattern was repeated in the Middle Ages, bishopric boundaries are of no help".
In modern terms, the region covered all or most of eastern Belgium. The southern part is generally treated as if it had the same boundaries as the later diocese. East-southeast the territory apparently stretched as far as the Eifel area of modern Germany, near Prüm and Bitburg, which included the territory of the Caeroesi tribe. These were in the civitas of the Ubii, with their capital at Cologne. South-southeast, the diocese stretched into the northern part of modern Luxembourg, and bordered upon the civitas of the Treverii in Gallia Belgica, which had its capital in Trier. In the south, it stretched into the Ardennes to approximately the modern border with France. Over this border was the civitas of the Remi, with their Roman capital at Rheims, within Gallia Belgica. In the southwest, the neighbouring civitas was that of the Nervians or Nervii, which stretched through what is now central Belgium, and had its Roman capital in Bavay in what is now northern France. In medieval times their territory corresponded approximately to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cambrai, which once stretched as far north as Antwerp. In the west, the civitas and its later diocese stretched towards the Dyle river, and probably included Namur, and Leuven (which was in the medieval diocese), but it probably did not include Antwerp (which was not in the medieval diocese).
There is less certainty about the borders of the civitas to the north and east, where pagan Franks settled in between the times of Saint Servatius and Lambert of Maastricht, leading to a possible disruption of administrative districts. To the northwest and north, where the ancient Scheldt ran via the Striene to empty into the Meuse (Dutch ), the Menapii had lived during Caesar's time. Their Roman civitas appears to have ended near the Striene-Scheldt, and in their place were possibly new tribes such as the Frisiavones, Marsacii, Sturii, Canninefates and Batavians. The Batavians had their own civitas within Germania Inferior. So it is not clear if the Civitas Tungrorum reached to the North Sea, nor whether it reached to the old Meuse-Maas delta, as the later diocese of Liège did. But it is likely, in any case, that the civitas reached into the modern Netherlands province of North Brabant. To the northeast it appears that the Tungri's district reached into the northern part of the Netherlands province of Limburg, which is where the districts of the pagus Vellaus and the pagus Catualinus apparently were. It may even have stretched over the Meuse in places. On the other hand, in this direction also lay the Civitas Traianensis, inhabited by the Cugerni, and apparently also the Baetasii, which may have also stretched into this same region of the modern Netherlands. Directly to the east, proposals differ concerning the border with the province of the Ubii, the Colonia Aggripensis, with its capital in Cologne. It is sometimes suggested that the southern part of Dutch Limburg must also have been in the civitas. But it appears the Sunuci, were in the province of Cologne, and that they lived areas such as Valkenburg, Voeren and Aachen, that were later within the church diocese of Liège. So it has been proposed that the Meuse river was the border, and perhaps even Maastricht was not included. One proposal is that the civitas gained territory in Dutch Limburg already during late Roman times, for example when Germania Inferior was reorganised into Germania Secunda.
Geography The territory of the Tungri is divided into three distinct geographical areas. The north is a large sandy area known today as the Campine (Dutch ). It was not highly fertile, or heavily populated. It contains marshy areas, and the water flows partly to the Scheldt in the west and partly towards the Meuse. In Latin this area came to be known as Toxandria, but in late Roman time it became almost empty of Romanized inhabitants, and was settled by incoming Franks. A band in the centre of the civitas is hilly, loess ground. This contains the modern regions known as the Hesbaye (Dutch ), Hageland, and Condroz. It has historically always been more fertile and more heavily populated. It was here that Roman civilization held out against the invasions of the late empire, and it is therefore here that the frontier was set between Germanic languages and Romance languages, the same as it is today. (Some claim that this pattern was fixed already before Caesar, originally having been a border between Germanic and Celtic languages.) The south of the civitas is more heavily wooded and hilly and merges into the natural boundary of the Ardennes.
Origins: the Tungri
Concerning the Tungri, the name appears for the first time only when this area is part of the Roman Empire. Some authors believe it represents a name used by new immigrants coming from the eastern side of the Rhine. On the other hand, Tacitus equated them to the same group of tribes who had been known as the Germani and had lived in the area in the time of the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar, and been described by him in his famous Commentary. Tacitus claimed that "Tungri" was not their original name:-
The Germani tribes which Caesar had earlier named in this region were the Eburones, the Condrusi, the Paemani (or Caemani), the Caeroesi, and the Segni."Gallic War" VI.32 The biggest and most important tribe were the Eburones, and it is they who appear to have dominated all or most of modern-day Belgian and Dutch Limburg, with a territory probably covering all or most of the flat Campine (Dutch ) northern part of this region, and stretching into neighbouring regions of the Netherlands, Wallonia and Germany. The other tribes are thought to have lived further south, in what is today Wallonia, or else just over the border in Germany – the Condrusi in the modern Condroz, near the Segni, and the Caeroesi in the Eifel forest region of Germany.
The term Germani for these tribes requires explanation in order to avoid confusion. Caesar also referred to other tribes living over the east of the Rhine as Germani, and he called that region Germania, considering it their homeland. He may have been the first to extend the term in this way, which has now influenced many modern languages. So he distinguished the Germani in the Belgic area as "Germani cisrhenani", and treated the other "Germani" as the ones living in their real homeland, which some Roman geographers came to refer to as Magna Germania.
Whether or not any of the Belgian Germani spoke a Germanic language in the modern sense is uncertain. The names of their leaders and their tribes for the most part appear to have Celtic origins, which is in fact also true of the neighbouring tribes across the Rhine in "Germania" at that time, such as the Tencteri and Usipetes. On the other hand, place-name analysis seems to show that a Germanic language was being spoken in this region by the second century BCE, and there are also signs of an older substrate language in the Belgic region. (See Nordwestblock.) So Celtic, while influential culturally, may never have been the main language of the area.
Apart from the Germani, the Atuatuci also probably lived in what would become the Civitas Tungrorum. Caesar treated them as a distinct people from the Germani although their ancestry was also in the east, because they were descended from remnants of the Cimbri. Because they had a fort on large hill, and their name may even mean "fort people" it is thought that the Aduatuci lived in hilly Wallonia, possibly near Namur. Ambiorix, one of the two kings of the Eburones, complained to Caesar that he had to pay tribute to the Aduatuci, and that his own son and nephew were kept as captive slaves by them."Gallic War" V.27 But once in revolt against the Romans, he rode first to the Aduatuci, and then to the Nervii, searching for allies."Gallic War" V.38
The Aduatuci and the Germani (in the narrow sense) participated in an alliance of Belgic tribes against Caesar in 57 BCE. Before that battle, information from the Remi, a tribe allied with Rome, stated that the Germani (the Condrusi, the Eburones, the Caeraesi, and the Paemani; but not the Segni) had collectively promised, they thought, about 40,000 men. The Aduatuci had promised 19,000."Gallic Wars" II.4 In 54 BCE, after the defeat of this alliance in the Battle of the Sabis, the Eburones and the Aduatuci rebelled again in alliance with the Gaulish tribes to their south and west, the Treveri and Nervii.
The capital of the Eburones is named by Caesar as Aduatuca. It is possible that this is the same place as modern Tongeren (Latin Aduatuca Tungrorum), except that the term may simply mean "fortification". One reason for doubt is that Caesar seems to indicate that Aduatuca was near the centre of the Eburone territory, and that the main part of this territory lay between the Meuse (Dutch ) and the Rhine, while Tongeren lies entirely to the west of the Maas."Gallic War" V.24
After some initial success, the revolt against Caesar failed, and he conquered the area. He states that he tried to annihilate "the race and name of the state of the Eburones", for their "crime" which triggered the revolt, of having killed his lieutenants Quintus Titurius Sabinus and Lucius Aurunculeius Cotta when they had demanded to be quartered amongst the Eburones for winter during a year with bad harvests."Gallic War" VI.34 Ambiorix fled into the Ardennes, with some horse."Gallic War" VI.33 Many others escaped towards the forests, morasses, and tidal islands of the coast.
The other king of the Eburones, Cativolcus, killed himself "with the juice of the yew-tree, of which there is a great abundance in Gaul and Germany"."Gallic War" VI.31 The name "Eburones" (like other similar Celtic-based tribal names around Europe) is based on the Celtic word for the yew tree, and this might also be true of the later Toxandri.
Roman Empire