Tougener

The Tougener or Toygener ( Latin Toygenes / Tougeni, ancient Greek Τωϋγενοί Tōygenoí) were one of the four Gaue ( pagi ) of the Celtic Helvetii .

history

Celtic and Rhaetian colonization of today's Switzerland in the 1st century BC Chr.

The settlement area of ​​the Tougener cannot be clearly determined. The few facts about the Tougeners can be described as vague: Poseidonios mentions four Helvetic sub-tribes, namely the Tougener and the Toutonen ; the Greek geographer Strabo three pagi .

Tougenes could come from the Gallic language and mean " battle ax people " or from Irish túag for "hatchet".

The Helvetic tribes of the Tougener and the Tiguriner enter with the Cimbri procession in 107 BC. Historically in appearance. The first mention of the Helvetii in Poseidonios, which has been passed down through Strabon's geography, is in this context. Around 115 BC The Germanic peoples of the Cimbri and Ambrones moved south from northern Germany and Denmark. After their victory over the Romans at Noreia , they came around 111 BC. In what is now southern Germany, where they were joined by Celtic tribes, such as the Helvetian tribes of the Tigurines and Tougener.

To what extent the Tougens or Toutons and the Teutons , who are traditionally called the Cimbri, are the same people is controversial. A possible explanation of the uninterpreted name would be the spelling of Τουτονοί to Τουγενοί in an early stage of the Strabo tradition, in which the Tougener appear in the form Τωυγενοί. The allied Celtic and Germanic tribes invaded Gaul together , but undertook separate campaigns there, whereby the trail of the Tougener is lost or merges into the history of the Cimbri and Teutons.

See also

• Battle of Vercellae
• Cimbrian Wars
• Teutons

literature

• Andres Furger: The Helvetians: cultural history of a Celtic people . Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-85823-565-2
• Ernst Howald, Ernst Meyer: The Roman Switzerland . Zurich 1940.
• Felix Stähelin : Switzerland in Roman times . Edited by the Schnyder v. Wartensee, Basel 1927.
• Tougener. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 12/1, Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-01482-7 .

Web links

• Celts in Switzerland
• Celts and Teutons: The Cimbri and Teutons migrate

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stähelin, 1948, p. 59.
2. ↑ Strabon, Geographika 4,1,8; 7.2.2
3. ↑ The fact that Teutons, Toutonen, Tougener and Toygener are supposed to refer to the same people goes back to Stählin and his work Switzerland in Roman times (1927). He advocates the thesis that the different spellings go back to traditional errors in Strabon's writings and that actually one and the same tribe is meant. Stähelin should not take into account the Greek cartographer and discoverer Pytheas (* around 380 BC; † around 310 BC). Source: Celts in Switzerland.
4. ↑ Strabo 4,1,8; 7.2.2.