Semnones

The Semnones were a Germanic people, and more specifically a Suebi people, who lived near the Elbe river in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, during the time of the Roman Empire. The 2nd century geographer Claudius Ptolemy places the Semnones between the Elbe and "Suebos" river. Modern scholars believe that the Suebos was the Oder. However, archaeological evidence suggests they stretched as far as the Spree and Havel rivers in the east, and not quite as far as the Oder. To their north was another part of the Havel, and to the south the Fläming Heath. In present day terms they were therefore in the area between the modern cities of Magdeburg and Berlin. 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. 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". They worshipped a supreme god (Latin: regnator omnium deus) at a sacred grove. 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...