Ubiorum Oppidum: Roman and Germanic Origins

The urban settlement of Cologne was a product of Romano-Germanic collaboration. Its founding and early development are unimaginable without the personal patronage of the Julio-Claudian emperors or the inexorable process of Germanic tribal assimilation and expansion west of the Rhine River during the first 400-year period of its history. Julius Caesar initiated this dynamic in 58 B.C. as proconsul of the Roman Province of Gallia Narbonensis. Having used Orgetorix's Helvetian alliance-building as a pretext for intervention into Transalpine Gaul's tribal affairs, Caesar launched his series of Gallic Wars. He ultimately succeeded in extending his military authority over all of Gaul from the Pyrenees to the Rhine River. By 55 B.C. he punctuated his conquest of Belgic Gaul with a Roman intervention across the Rhine frontier into the affairs of two Germanic tribes. Caesar launched a punitive strike against the Sugambri, who had been threatening their more Roman-friendly neighbors, the Ubii, during which he even built a temporary bridge over the river. The apparently unstoppable general then left for dreams of conquest of the British late that summer.

Such imperious superimposition of Roman power soon led to armed rebellion once its leader was far away. In the late winter of 54-53 B.C. the Eburones, a multi-ethnic people of the Rhine-Maas region north of the Ardennes, whom the Romans described as both Celtic Belgae as well as Germani Cisrhenani, rose up under the leadership of their tribal warlords Ambiorix and Cativolcus (Celtic names both). The flash point for the insurrection proved to be the forcible Roman requisitioning of Eburonic foodstuffs for their winter quarters in Tongeren following a growing season that had been severely damaged by drought. The Eburones surrounded the Roman quarters of about 7,200 infantry soldiers (a legion and five cohorts) at Tongeren and induced them to withdraw with both a threat of the imminent arrival of Germanic allies as well as a promise of safe passage. After a full night's debate, the Roman army in the end chose to withdraw in a long baggage train through the thick forest at the break of day. The Eburones, however, then commenced to massacre nearly all the exposed legionaries.