The Frisii were the inhabitants of what are now the coastal regions north of the Rhine delta during the Roman Empire, corresponding to what is now the coastal Netherlands north of the Rhine and approximately the provinces of North Holland, Friesland and Groningen. They are known from Roman records between about 12 BC and 297 AD, and after this the name of the Frisii disappeared from records for approximately 300 years. The details of the connection between them and the later medieval Frisians is uncertain because there is a long gap in the records, and evidence of a major decrease and change in the population during that period.
During the 1st century BC, Romans took control of the Rhine delta and made a treaty with the Frisii to the north of the river which required them to supply cattle hides, but they managed to maintain some level of independence and they fought in several major revolts against the Romans in the first century AD. Frisii were enlisted in the Roman military, and the elite German bodyguard of the emperors.
During the Crisis of the Third Century, the Roman Empire lost control of the Rhine delta and peoples from north of the Rhine including Frisii and Chamavi settled south of the Rhine. The military Tetrarchy emperors pacified the region by moving large parts of the population out of the region, as servile laeti or soldiers in the Roman military. The Latin Panegyrics report them being used as farm labourers in Gaul. At this time it appears that at least some Frisii were, like neighbouring peoples, categorized by Romans as Franks, and administratively the people removed from Batavia itself at this time were apparently placed into military units and laeti prefectures named after the Batavi, who had originally lived in that district.
After the third century, written records ceased to mention the Frisii for several centuries during the so-called Migration Period. The new terms Frank and Saxon were used to refer to the peoples who often raided from north of the Rhine,. The two terms covered several peoples and were apparently not mutually exclusive at first. Archaeological records show that in the coastal region where the Frisii had lived there was significant population decline and social disruption, possibly connected to frequent flooding caused by sea level rise. Apart from Frisii who became Franks, or Roman soldiers or settlers, it is probable that many Frisii were among the early "Saxons" who settled in Britain. A smaller population also continued to exist in the original Frisii lands.
The population of Frisia began to increase again in the 5th century and this involved a cultural influence, and probably settlers, from the coastal regions to the east, now in Northwestern Germany or Southwestern Denmark. Some scholars refer to the culture which influenced the Frisians as an "Anglo Saxon" culture because the Anglo Saxons who settled in Britain in this period are also believed to have come from the Frisian, German and Danish coasts and were influenced by the culture there. By the 7th century, these continental coastal dwellers people were being referred to with a name derived from the old name of the Frisii—the Frisians. This new Frisian culture subsequently stretched along a longer coastal fringe than the original Frisii, roughly from Bruges to Bremen, and it included many of small offshore islands.
Name and language Over many generations of scholarship, there have been numerous proposals about the meaning of the name of the Frisii, but no consensus has been reached.
Many proposals assume that the Frisii spoke a Germanic language like the medieval Frisians, but there is no longer a consensus about this. In more recent modern scholarship, the language of the original Roman-era Frisii continues to be a topic of scholarly debate and uncertainty. The similar name of the Frisiavones, who also lived near the Rhine delta, is likely to derive from a Celtic language and the Frisiavones are believed to have been culturally Celtic, or strongly influenced by Celtic culture and language, as were their neighbouring tribes. Some scholars have also suggested that before the Romans the entire area was originally neither Germanic nor Celtic, but rather a zone where another language related to both was spoken.
Pliny the Elder did not include the Frisii among the Germani, although he did include their neighbours the Chauci.
The names of the Frisian leaders Verritus and Malorix have been interpreted as Celtic compounds meaning respectively “strong runner” and “praise-king".
Archaeological evidence (Roman and pre-Roman)
Before and during the early Roman period, the northern Netherlands belonged to a wider North Sea coastal plain and salt-marsh zone, extending toward north-western Germany. In this landscape, habitation was often adapted to flooding through artificial dwelling mounds, known in Dutch as terpen or wierden.,
Before the Romans there are no written records but pottery from the Frisii regions was related the pottery of the people who lived to their east along what is now the German coast, which in Roman times was the territory of the Chauci., Around the beginning of the Common Era, Taayke identifies a handmade pottery tradition which he calls "Frisian" as dominant in the coastal area. This pottery was characterized by a tripartite profile and by the so-called ornament, used between about 200 BC and AD 50. The distribution of this late Iron Age and early Roman "Frisian" pottery was not limited to modern Friesland. Taayke maps and describes finds from Utrecht and the Batavian region in the delta, to North Holland, to Friesland, and to Groningen, and then further east into the German coastal plain.. This means this pottery style stretched beyond the regions associated with Frisii by Roman era authors. Scholars note that these archaeological labels should not be read as direct ethnic labels. Galestin stresses that the term "Frisian pottery" does not prove that its makers identified themselves as Frisii, or that all people whom Roman authors called Frisii made this pottery.
Clearer regional differentiation followed in the first century AD, and a stronger east–west contrast existed in the second and third centuries. During the Roman era, pottery studies suggest both continuing connections and regional differentiations between the areas associated with the Frisii and their eastern neighbours, the Chauci. Near the end of the first century BC, pottery styles in Friesland, Groningen and North Holland were related. However, from the early first century AD, handmade pottery in Groningen diverged from the Frisian tradition and showed closer affinities with pottery from the northern German coastal plain., Taayke labels the first-century Groningen and north-west German material as "Chaucian pottery", and connects it with the coastal plain between the Ems and Elbe, the area associated in Roman sources with the Chauci.. Taayke does not present this as a violent replacement, noting that at Paddepoel, near Groningen, the older Frisian style and the newer Chaucian-style pottery coexisted for a time, while settlement numbers increased in newly habitable parts of the salt marshes.
In the second and third centuries, Taayke places the main pottery contrast around the Lauwers, a river and former inlet between modern Friesland and Groningen. West of the Lauwers he describes a Frisian pottery territory extending south to the Oude Rijn (the old main course of the Rhine) near Leiden. East of the Lauwers he uses the term "North Sea coastal pottery" for the pottery of Groningen, Drenthe and the adjacent German coastal area, noting that the older "Chauci" label is less useful after the first century.
Location Pomponius Mela, writing in about 43 AD, described one region of the Frisii without mentioning them. He explained how the northern channel of the Rhine within the delta is at first narrow and unchanged, then it spreads out and covers a vast expanse, and where it floods the fields it becomes no longer a river but a huge lake called Lake Flevo. This lake contains islands of the same name. Eventually the Rhine becomes narrower again, and enters the sea as a river.
Writing in about 70 AD, Pliny the Elder wrote the earliest contemporary description specifically mentioning the Frisii. He numbered them among the peoples living on the islands of the Rhine-Meuse delta, which he defined in a broad way to include lands north of the Roman line of forts along the Old Rhine (Oude Rijn) which had its outlet at modern Katwijk. His definition included areas as far north as Flevum (modern Velsen) where the waters of Lake Flevo also discharged into the North Sea via the Oer-IJ, which was in the same place as the modern North Sea Canal between Velsen and Amsterdam. At Flevum the Romans also maintained a fort in Frisian territory.
Within the delta Pliny listed peoples who inhabited the islands within the delta. Apart from "the most notable island the Batavi and Cananefates, which is almost a hundred miles in length" there were also islands inhabited by Frisii, Chauci, Frisiavones, Sturii and Marsacii. He therefore clearly distinguished the Frisii and the similarly named Frisiavones (or "Frisiabones"), who lived in different locations., citing Pliny, Natural History, 4.101 English, Latin Concerning the Frisiavones, Pliny also lists them in another region, among peoples living south of the Rhine delta, between the Sunuci and Betasii. citing Pliny, Natural History, 4.106
In another discussion about trees, Pliny said that in the land of the Chauci, near the two lakes there, oaks grew up to the edge of the waterline and sometimes became a hazard to Roman boats there.Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 16.2
Writing in about 100 AD, Tacitus described the Frisii of his time as living by the sea, and he distinguished greater and lesser Frisians according to their military strength, saying that both tribes are bordered by the Rhine as far as the Ocean and also live around enormous lakes. He does not define the locations of these two parts of the Frisii. Their neighbours further along the coast were the Chauci, who Tacitus believed held a very large coastal country. citing Tacitus, Germania, 34
In his accounts of events Tacitus indicates that the Frisii lived across the Rhine from the Cananefates, who were under Roman command, but were able to call upon the Frisii as allies. He also mentioned, in the context the hides which the Frisii supplied to Rome as a tax, that the forests of such Germani abound in huge cattle, while their domestic cattle are undersized.Tacitus, Annals, 4.72 And in the context of events in 58 AD, he explains how in order to settle a part of the Rhine bank Frisii, non-fighting Frisii travelled by boat over the lakes, while the youth went through the swamps and forests.
The much later geography of Ptolemy, written in about 170 AD, is the only source which says that the boundary between the Frisii and Chauci in his time was the Ems river. This is however not easy to reconcile with Pliny's listing of the Chauci as one of the peoples inhabiting islands in the Rhine delta.
Classical historians Roman and Greek authors are the earliest surviving sources for the name of the . However, unlike some other peoples of the region, they were not mentioned by Julius Caesar in his account of his campaigns in Gaul in 58–52 BC.