Tigurini

The Tigurini (Latin: Tigurini; Ancient Greek: Τιγυρηνοί) were an Iron Age Celtic people whom Caesar counted as one of the four pagi (cantons) of the Helvetii. Whether they were Helvetian in origin is disputed, since several ancient authors treat them as a people in their own right. They are named only in connection with the Cimbrian War and with Caesar's campaign in Gaul. The Tigurini took part in the migration of the Cimbri and Teutoni at the end of the 2nd century BC. In 107 BC, acting on their own under their leader Divico, they crushed the army of the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus near Agen and sent the survivors under the yoke. This defeat, the clades Cassiana, was the feat for which they were remembered at Rome. When the Cimbri and Teutoni were destroyed in 102 and 101 BC, the Tigurini escaped. In 58 BC they joined the westward migration of the Helvetii, and Caesar destroyed a large part of them as they crossed the Arar. The Tigurini may have settled in the western Swiss Plateau after the war, moving there from the Neckar valley. A pagus Tigurinus is recorded there by an inscription of the imperial period at Avenches, the only Helvetian pagus known from epigraphy. In the 16th century humanist scholars gave Zurich the Neo-Latin name Tigurum after the people. Divico and the victory of 107 BC became emblems of the Swiss national myth in the 19th century.