The civitas Batavorum was of great military significance throughout the Roman period, initially as a base of operations for the conquest of Germania and, from the mid-1st to the early 5th centuries AD, as part of the Roman limes. The Rhineland's military significance was not only strategic in nature. It appears to have been determined in part by the importance of warriorship in pre-Roman tribal societies and the way in which Rome capitalised on this in the frontier zones of the empire. The aim of this chapter is to explain the use and significance of weaponry and horse gear from non-military contexts against the changing socio-political backdrop. My starting point is the importance of warriorship in the pre-Roman situation and the transformation of late Iron Age traditions in the context of the Roman empire.

THE PRE-ROMAN SITUATION: THE IMPORTANCE OF WARRIORSHIP

Thanks to historical reports, in particular Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico and Tacitus’ Germania, it is widely accepted that warriorship and the acquisition of glory were key values in the ‘German’ and pre-Roman, Gallic world. Van Driel-Murray has recently emphasised how Rome exploited the ‘martial’ character of Batavian and other frontier societies in order to use them to best advantage for the purposes of frontier defence. Here she joins Enloe in the perception that states often contain politically and economically peripheral zones where tribal groups tend to play a military role. For purely strategic reasons, these marginal groups are defined as martial races that were largely dependent on the central authority for their identity and the way they operated. In order to establish whether martial values were already significant in the ‘Celtic-German’ world or whether they became so in response to Roman frontier policy, this section will compare the historical and archaeological data on warriorship in the period before and during Caesar's conquests.

My starting point is the socio-political structure of pre-Roman, northern Gallic societies. Patronclient relationships were a key element that shaped this tribal world. Here, the socio-political structure was based on personal relationships between a king or other leader (rex or princeps) and his followers (clientes).