Boii? |
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Boii is a name for 3 ancient Celtic tribes living in:
- Transalpine Gaul, modern France
- Cisalpine Gaul, or northern Italy
- Bohemia, Moravia and western Slovakia
The European region of Bohemia most likely derives its name from the early Celtic people known as the Boii.
Historians in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries also sometimes linked the Boii to the origins of the Bavarians (Lat. Baioari), although that particular link is seldom accepted today.
Despite the derivation of the name, the ancient Boii should neither be confused with the inhabitants of what it now the modern state of Bavaria in Germany, nor those of Bohemia in the Czech Republic. An argument can be made for an early intermixing with Etruscans from Italy; however, the same argument can also be made for the Celtic tribes in any area they inhabited.
Sometime between 205 and 184 BCE, T. Maccius Plautus refers to the Boii in his work, Captivi. "But now he is not a Sicilian--he is a Boian; he has got a Boian woman."
Sometime between 100 and 44 BCE, Caius Julius Caesar refers to the Boii in his work, De Bello Gallico. "They persuade the Rauraci, and the Tulingi, and the Latobrigi, their neighbours, to adopt the same plan, and after burning down their towns and villages, to set out with them: and they admit to their party and unite to themselves as confederates the Boii, who had dwelt on the other side of the Rhine, and had crossed over into the Norican territory, and assaulted Noreia."
Sometime between 59 BCE and 17 CE, in volume 21 of his work The History of Rome, Titus Livius (Livy) says that it was a Boii that offered to show Hannibal the way across the Alps. "When, after the action had thus occurred, his own men returned to each general, Scipio could adopt no fixed plan of proceeding, except that he should form his measures from the plans and undertakings of the enemy: and Hannibal, uncertain whether he should pursue the march he had commenced into Italy, or fight with the Roman army which had first presented itself, the arrival of ambassadors from the Boii, and of a petty prince called Magalus, diverted from an immediate engagement; who, declaring that they would be the guides of his journey and the companions of his dangers, gave it as their opinion, that Italy ought to be attacked with the entire force of the war, his strength having been no where previously impaired."
References
- T. Maccius Plautus, The Captiva and the Mostellaria, as published by Project Gutenberg, as published 1 January 2005 (EBook #7282) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7282 Accessed 29 January 2005.
- Caius Julius Caesar, "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries, as published by Project Gutenberg, 9 January 2004 (EBook #10657) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10657 Accessed 29 January 2005.
- Titus Livius, "The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six, as published by Project Gutenberg, 1 February 2004 (eBook #10907) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10907 Accessed 31 January 2005.