Between the Rhine, the Main and the ridge of the Taunus lived a Germanic people who come off remarkably well in the Roman sources: the Mattiaci. Their land held hot springs, a disappointing silver mine and eventually a Roman administrative district. Their name ended up on a milestone, in a poem about hair dye, and finally on the shields of late Roman guard units. And about the one thing everybody today thinks they know about them, the ancient sources are completely silent.
The Mattiaci – Latin Mattiaci – lived on the right, the „Germanic" bank of the Rhine, in the area of modern Wiesbaden, in the foothills of the Taunus and towards the river Main. Directly opposite, on the left bank, stood Mogontiacum (Mainz), one of the most important military places in the Roman Empire: at times two legions, a governor's seat, a Rhine bridge. Anyone who wants to understand the Mattiaci has to keep that neighbourhood in mind. They were not a remote forest tribe. They lived in the shop window of the empire.
This shapes everything we know about them. Not a single Mattiacan sentence survives, no royal name, no legend. What we have are Roman texts, Roman inscriptions and Roman tile stamps. The Mattiaci appear in the record almost exclusively as what they were to Rome – and that has to be kept in mind on every page.
The central passage stands in the Germania of Tacitus, chapter 29. It follows immediately on the famous section about the Batavi, that people of the Rhine delta who paid no tribute but supplied soldiers. Tacitus places the Mattiaci in the same relationship:
Est in eodem obsequio et Mattiacorum gens; protulit enim magnitudo populi Romani ultra Rhenum ultraque veteres terminos imperii reverentiam. Ita sede finibusque in sua ripa, mente animoque nobiscum agunt, cetera similes Batavis, nisi quod ipso adhuc terrae suae solo et caelo acrius animantur.
„In the same relationship of obedience stands also the people of the Mattiaci; for the greatness of the Roman people has carried awe of the empire beyond the Rhine and beyond the old boundaries. Thus in seat and territory they are on their own bank, but in mind and spirit they are with us – in other respects like the Batavi, except that the very soil and climate of their land quickens them more keenly."Tacitus, Germania 29; translation: Glanz & Gravur
That is a remarkable formulation. Tacitus describes a people that is geographically outside and politically inside – and which interests him precisely for that reason. The closing sentence about soil and climate is pure ancient climate theory and says more about Roman ideas than about the Mattiaci. And one more thing matters: here Tacitus does not say where the Mattiaci came from.
Almost every account states that the Mattiaci were a sub-tribe or splinter group of the Chatti. That is a well-argued scholarly opinion – but it is an interpretation, not a statement in any source. It rests on three arguments: geographical proximity to Chattian territory in northern Hesse, the similarity to the name Mattium, the caput gentis of the Chatti, and the position of the passage in Tacitus directly after the Batavi, for whom he does explicitly give a Chattian origin. For the Batavi he says it. For the Mattiaci he does not.
There is also a risk of confusion that has to be kept clean. Mattium is the Chattian principal place which Germanicus destroyed in AD 15 after crossing the Adrana (Eder) (Tacitus, Annals I,56). It lies in northern Hesse, probably in the wider area of Fritzlar, and has never been located; the Altenburg, long the favourite candidate, drops out after a redating of its finds. Mattiacum or Aquae Mattiacorum, by contrast, is Wiesbaden, some 130 kilometres further south-west. Two different places, two different peoples, one similar-sounding word stem.
What made the Mattiaci interesting to Rome beyond the military question came bubbling out of the ground. Pliny the Elder notes tersely in his Naturalis historia (book 31): „sunt et Mattiaci in Germania fontes calidi trans Rhenum" – „there are also the Mattiacan hot springs in Germania across the Rhine." He means the thermal springs of Wiesbaden, above all the Kochbrunnen, whose water emerges at around 66 degrees Celsius.
The Romans used them quickly and thoroughly. Archaeologically at least three bath complexes can be identified in Wiesbaden, the largest on the Kranzplatz immediately south of the Kochbrunnen. Lead pipes stamped by the legio XIIII Gemina carried spring water into the baths. Tombstones of soldiers from units never stationed in Wiesbaden show that spa visitors died here too – the place was a bath, not merely a garrison. An inscription of the early second century even names a local deity: Diana Mattiaca, dedicated by the wife of a legionary legate from Mainz for her daughter's welfare.
There is a second, less well known Roman enterprise in Mattiacan country – and it went wrong. Tacitus reports in Annals XI,20 for the year AD 47 that the legate Curtius Rufus had shafts opened „in agro Mattiaco", in the territory of the Mattiaci, to search for veins of silver. The yield was thin and did not last. The legionaries dug water channels and underground works and got nothing but toil for it. Curtius Rufus received triumphal insignia all the same – a neat example of how Roman honours and actual success could part company.
For us the passage is valuable for a different reason. It shows that by the middle of the first century, long before any limes existed, Rome was operating quite matter-of-factly with legionaries on the right bank of the Rhine. „Beyond the Rhine" was a phrase, not a wall.
Exactly once the Mattiaci appear as an acting party in a war – and it is against Rome. During the Batavian revolt under Julius Civilis a Germanic army besieged Mogontiacum. Tacitus writes in the Histories IV,37 that the besiegers had withdrawn before the relief force under Vocula arrived: a „mixtus ex Chattis Usipis Mattiacis exercitus", an army mixed of Chatti, Usipi and Mattiaci, „sated with plunder and not without losses of their own".
The sentence is brief but revealing. First: the Mattiaci could very well fight against Rome when the situation looked promising. Second: they did so together with the Chatti and with their neighbours near the Rhine – a further indication of close entanglement with Chattian country, but only an indication. Third: the aim was plunder, not the destruction of Rome. Once enough had accumulated, everyone went home.
Opposite Mainz, where Mainz-Kastel lies today, the Romans built a bridgehead on the right bank as early as the time of Drusus, roughly between 12 and 9 BC. It secured the Rhine crossing. The wooden pontoon bridge was replaced under Vespasian in AD 71 by a fixed pile bridge with stone piers – dated dendrochronologically. That bridge probably still stood in the fifth century.
The name of the installation is attested epigraphically several times, among others in the form kastello Mattiacorum on a stone of AD 224. It simply means „fort in the land of the Mattiaci" – the tribal name served as a geographical address. The stone fort itself measured about 90 by 70 metres and is dated by tile stamps to Domitian's Chattian wars (AD 83–86). And the modern place name Kastel descends directly from this castellum: one of the few communities still carrying the name of its Roman foundation.
In Wiesbaden itself the oldest Roman finds lie in the so-called bog layer of the inner city and reach back into Augustan times. On the Heidenberg several pre-Flavian ditches can be traced, though no fort plan could be reconstructed from them. The stone auxiliary fort was built only in the 80s of the first century, after the Chattian wars, and covered 2.2 hectares. Among the garrisons attested by tombstones are the cohors V Delmatarum, the cohors I Pannoniorum, the cohors IIII Thracum and the cohors II Raetorum civium Romanorum.
We know the name of the place thanks to a milestone found in 1896 in the Große Kirchenstraße in Kastel. It names Hadrian with his sixth tribunician power and third consulship, that is AD 121/122, and gives the distance a(b) Aquis Mattiacorum m(ilia) p(assuum) VI – six Roman miles, about nine kilometres. This is the earliest attestation of the name Aquae Mattiacorum. The originals stand today in the Landesmuseum Mainz.
At some point the people became an administrative district. The civitas Mattiacorum was the lowest level of Roman self-administration in the right-bank part of the province of Germania superior, with Aquae Mattiacorum as its principal town. Its territory reached north to the limes in the Taunus, south and west to the Main and the Rhine; to the east the civitas Taunensium adjoined it, with Nida (Frankfurt-Heddernheim) as its capital. The north-western boundary remains open to this day.
It was long disputed whether the civitas was set up under Trajan or only under Hadrian. A sarcophagus from Mainz published in 2022 names the unit unambiguously as civitas Ulp(ia) Matt(iacorum). The epithet Ulpia points to Trajan – the question is regarded as settled. It is also striking how quickly the tribal name became a mere label: an inscription of AD 194 calls the inhabitants of the principal town not Mattiaci but vicani Aquenses, „villagers of Aquae". The tribal name survived as an administrative term, not as a self-designation.
Ancient mentions: Tacitus, Germania 29 (status like the Batavi, „with us in mind and spirit"); Tacitus, Annals XI,20 (the silver shafts of Curtius Rufus in the ager Mattiacus, AD 47); Tacitus, Histories IV,37 (Chatti, Usipi and Mattiaci before Mogontiacum, AD 69/70); Pliny, Naturalis historia 31 (fontes calidi trans Rhenum); Martial 14,27 (Mattiacae pilae); Ammianus Marcellinus 29,4,3 (Mattiacae aquae, Valentinian I's campaign of AD 371/372); Notitia dignitatum occ. V (Mattiaci seniores and iuniores as auxilia palatina). Epigraphically secure: the name Aquae Mattiacorum on the Hadrianic milestone of AD 121/122 (CIL XIII 9124); castellum Mattiacorum several times, among others in AD 224; civitas Ulp(ia) Matt(iacorum) on a Mainz sarcophagus published in 2022; the negotiatores civitatis Mattiacorum (CIL XIII 7587); Diana Mattiaca (CIL XIII 7565); the vicani Aquenses of AD 194 (CIL XIII 7566a). Militarily secure is the cohors II Mattiacorum, first in a military diploma of AD 78 (CIL XVI 22), last in an inscription of AD 219.
After Domitian's Chattian wars Rome began to secure the newly won right-bank territory with a chain of forts, fortlets and watchtowers. Around AD 110 the rear garrisons of Wiesbaden, Hofheim, Nida-Heddernheim and Okarben were moved forward to the limes; in Wiesbaden by AD 122 at the latest. Under Hadrian the palisade was added, fixing the line of the frontier once and for all.
According to current research the fort of Zugmantel in the Taunus had the explicit task of protecting the civitas capital Aquae Mattiacorum and the fertile Rheingau from raids. Its vicus is particularly interesting: it produced unusually many Germanic finds alongside Roman material – an indication that in the second century the Romans occasionally allowed small Germanic groups to settle inside the province, possibly in exchange for military service. The frontier was therefore never a dividing line but a zone. Anyone interested in comparable conditions further downstream will find them among the Ubii, the Vangiones, the Nemetes and the Triboci – all Rhineland peoples whose names became Roman administrative districts.
And then there is this one very Roman celebrity. In his Apophoreta, the gift tags for the Saturnalia, the poet Martial devotes a couplet to the heading Sapo, soap (14,27): „Si mutare paras longaevos cana capillos, / accipe Mattiacas – quo tibi calva? – pilas." Roughly: if you mean to change your aged grey hair, take the Mattiacan balls – what use is a bald head to you?
These pilae Mattiacae were evidently balls of a soap or sinter compound used to tint grey hair. Pliny the Elder explains the procedure (Naturalis historia 28,191): sapo is a Gallic invention for reddening the hair, made from tallow and ash, solid or liquid – and among the Germanic peoples used more by men than by women. That is a charming footnote on the vanity of the age. Only: it says almost nothing about how the Mattiaci actually lived. It says something about Roman hairdressers and about what was in demand from the north as an exotic import.
Like the Batavi, the Mattiaci also supplied soldiers. One unit is securely attested: the cohors II Mattiacorum, a part-mounted cohort. It first appears in a military diploma of AD 78 – there still simply as cohors Mattiacorum, without a numeral – then stands for decades in Moesia inferior and from about AD 155 in Thracia. Its stations include Barboși, Dinogetia, Sexaginta Prista and Sostra; tile stamps reading COH II MATT attest it on the ground. The last mention comes from the year AD 219.
What the recorded soldiers' names of this unit tell us is telling in itself: Aurelius Diophanes, Aelius Dassius, Titus Flavius Lupus, Lucius Spurennius Rufus. Roman, Greek, Balkan – hardly anything Germanic. After a few generations the cohort was recruiting locally on the Danube. The tribal name remained as a traditional designation, as was the rule with Roman auxiliary units.
From AD 213 the Alamanni become tangible in the region, when Caracalla defeated them on the Main. In AD 233 Germanic forces broke through the limes; around AD 259/260 Rome gave up the right-bank territory entirely. That ended the civitas Mattiacorum as an administrative unit – but not life on the ground. In Wiesbaden burnt layers attest destruction, yet the vicus continued in reduced form, the baths were still in use in the third century, and coin finds document civilian settlement into the fourth century.
Scholarship here is pleasingly cautious: Alamannic finds increase from the middle of the third century and the population groups mixed – but a clear Alamannic land-taking can only be spoken of from the fourth century onwards. From this late period comes the Wiesbaden Heidenmauer, a cast-mortar wall up to ten metres high with reused older stone monuments built into it. Its dating – traditionally around AD 370 under Valentinian I – is by no means fixed; the indications range from a radiocarbon mortar sample (AD 214–344) to late Roman tile stamps, and its function is unknown. It was probably never finished.
The name survived astonishingly long. Ammianus Marcellinus, describing Valentinian I's failed campaign against the Alamannic king Macrianus (AD 371/372), notes that the infantry commander Severus advanced „contra Mattiacas aquas" – towards the Mattiacan waters. And in the Notitia dignitatum of the early fifth century two guard units appear, Mattiaci seniores in Italy and Mattiaci iuniores in Gaul. By then the people themselves had long been absorbed into other groupings; the name lived on as a military label of tradition.
The modern city name Wiesbaden, however, is not derived from Mattiacum. Einhard calls the place Wisibada in a report of AD 830 about visits made in 828 and 829; then follow Wisibadun (965), Wisebadon (1022) and Wisibad (1123). Linguistically, Germanic wisa („meadow") and the root matha („mown land") considered for Mattiaci stand side by side – equivalent in meaning, but not descended one from the other. The Latin name disappeared, the Germanic one stayed.
„The Mattiaci were Chatti." That is a plausible but modern inference from proximity, name similarity and the placement of the text. No ancient source says it. Tacitus explicitly derives the Batavi from the Chatti – but not the Mattiaci. „Mattium was their capital." No: Mattium is the Chattian caput gentis in northern Hesse (Tacitus, Annals I,56), unlocated to this day. Do not confuse it with Aquae Mattiacorum/Wiesbaden. „Mattiacan soap shows how the Mattiaci lived." Hardly. Martial 14,27 is a note on a Roman cosmetic product; it says nothing about Mattiacan daily life. Incidentally: the famous spuma Batava in Martial 8,33 is Batavian, the spuma Chattica in 14,26 is Chattian – only 14,27 actually names the Mattiaci. „There was an ala and several cohorts of the Mattiaci." Only the cohors II Mattiacorum is securely attested; a cohors I cannot be demonstrated and an ala Mattiacorum not at all. The „III" appearing in one inscription is regarded as a stonecutter's error. „Ptolemy names Wiesbaden." His Mattiakon is traditionally equated with Wiesbaden, but the recalculation of the coordinates by Kleineberg and colleagues places it at Lahnau-Waldgirmes – open. „The extent of the civitas is known." The northern boundary (limes) and the southern one (Main/Rhine) are secure, the north-western one explicitly is not. And: archaeologically the material culture of Aquae Mattiacorum is provincial Roman with Celtic traits; Gallo-Roman deities such as Sirona are attested, no Germanic ones. About the religion of the Mattiaci we simply know nothing.
The Mattiaci are a good example of what Germanic history in our part of the world actually looked like: not eternal enmity across a river, but neighbourhood, trade, service, spa business and occasional war. The same frontier situation shaped our own home further downstream, where Roman roads, Germanic names and the Rhineland matron stones still lie in the ground. We engrave in Alsdorf, in a small family workshop, laser-engraved motifs from exactly this world – runes, symbols, names. What we like to send along with them is not a fantasy story but an honest one: documented as documented, conjectured as conjectured.
The Chatti · The Batavi · The Ubii · The Alemanni · The Cherusci & Arminius.
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