Chatti

The Chatti occupied the Hesse uplands around the Eder and the Fulda and were, by Tacitus's account, the most disciplined of the Germanic peoples - the one that fought in formed ranks rather than as a rush, that fortified camps, and that treated war as a trade rather than an occasion. He records that their young men grew hair and beards until they had killed an enemy, and that some wore an iron ring like a fetter until released by the same act. They were Rome's most persistent northern opponent after the Cherusci declined: they fought Germanicus, backed the Batavian revolt of AD 69, and were the target of Domitian's campaign of AD 83, which produced a triumph of doubtful merit and, more durably, the beginning of the fortified limes between the Rhine and the Danube. They fought again under Marcus Aurelius and raided into Gaul in the third century. Their long feud with the Hermunduri over a salt-producing river is described by Tacitus as fought with both sides having vowed the enemy to their gods, which meant no prisoners. In the third century the Chatti are absorbed into the larger Frankish confederation forming along the lower and middle Rhine, and the name stops appearing as an independent people; it survives in Hesse, whose inhabitants are still called Hessians, and the Hessian territory of the later empire lies squarely on theirs. The entry runs to 476 because the people persisted inside the Frankish world long after the name did. Tacitus admired them and said so plainly. Their territory is the heart of modern Hesse. The limes they provoked ran for five hundred kilometres. It is now a World Heritage site.

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