Teutobod was a king of the Teutons, who, together with the allied Cimbri, invaded the Roman Republic in the Cimbrian War and won a spectacular victory at the Battle of Arausio in 105 BC. He was later defeated and captured at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae in 102 BC by the Roman army led by Gaius Marius.
Life
In the late 2nd century BC, together with their neighbors, allies, and possible relatives, the
Cimbri, the Teutons attacked south into the
Danube valley, southern
Gaul and northern
Italy. Here they began to intrude upon the lands of
Roman Republic (
Julius Caesar, in his
Gallic Wars account
De Bello Gallico, reports that it was the
Boii who had attacked
Noricum). The inevitable conflict which followed is called the
Cimbrian War. The Cimbri (under their King
Boiorix) and the Teutons, won the opening battles of this war, defeating tribes allied with the Romans and destroying a huge Roman army at the Battle of Arausio in 105 BC. But Rome regrouped and reorganized under
Consul Gaius Marius. In 104 BC the Cimbri left the Rhône valley to raid Spain, while the Teutons remained in Gaul, still strong but not powerful enough to march on Rome on their own. This gave Marius time to build a new army and in 102 BC he moved against the Teutons. At the Battle of Aquae Sextiae the Teutons were virtually annihilated and Teutobod along with, reportedly, 20,000 of his people, were captured. After this, he and his tribe drop out of history. He most likely was sent to Rome for a triumphal procession to celebrate his defeat, then ritually executed afterward. The following year, the Cimbri would suffer a similar fate at the Battle of Vercellae, where two of their leaders,
Caesorix and
Claodicus, were captured, while two other leaders,
Boiorix and
Lugius, were killed.
Teutobochus tomb hoax
In 1613, a gravestone engraved with the name "
Theutobochus Rex" was reputedly excavated from a sand pit in the vicinity of Langon, near
Montrigaud in southeast France, also reputedly alongside enormous bones, and silver coins depicting Gaius Marius. By the 17th century popular accounts of Teutobod considered him to be a
giant. A French surgeon named Mazurier exhibited these relics across France, and for some time they were located in apartments owned by Queen of France Marie de' Medici. However, the veracity of the story was quickly questioned and subject to much controversy, with a long-running dispute via an exchange of
between the University of Paris surgeon Nicholas Habicot, who argued for a giant identity, and botany student and anatomist Jean Riolan who argued based on comparative anatomy that the bones represented some kind of large animal (in Riolan's opinion likely an elephant), and that the supposed discovery was either mistaken or a fraud.
21 years later in 1634, French polymath Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc asked the physician Nivolet to investigate the site and the relics (except the tombstone, which was now missing). Following the details of a report that Nivolet sent to him Peiresc concluded that the story was a hoax (based on the fact that the coins were actually from Massalia and did not depict Marius, and that it was unlikely a Germanic leader would have a gravestone written in Latin which he and his people did not speak) and later after another discovery of another supposed giant within the vicinity of Montrigaud, like Riolan concluded the remains represented those of an elephant.
See also
-
Giant human skeletons
-
Giant of Castelnau
-
Patagon
-
Og
-
Orestes
-
List of tallest people#Disputed and unverified claims
