Triboci

In classical antiquity, the Triboci or Tribocci were a Germanic people of eastern Gaul, inhabiting much of what is now Alsace. Besides the forms Triboci and Tribocci, Schneider has the form “Triboces” in the accusative plural. Pliny has Tribochi, and Strabo Τριβόκχοι (Tribokchoi). In the passage of Caesar, it is said that all manuscripts have “Tribucorum”. "Three beeches" (Celtic tri, Germanic boc) has been suggested as an etymology, as has Germanic dribòn ("drivers [of cattle, livestock]"). Ptolemy places the Tribocci in Germania Superior, but he incorrectly places the Vangiones between the Nemetes and the Tribocci, for the Nemetes bordered on the Tribocci. However he places the Tribocci next to the Rauraci, and he names Breucomagus (Brocomagus, today's Brumath) and Elcebus (Helcebus) as the two towns of the Tribocci, making Argentoratum (Strasbourg) a city of the Vangiones. D'Anville supposes that the territory of the Tribocci corresponded to the mediaeval diocese of Strasbourg. Consequently, a Tribocci burial ground was excavated in Diersheim on the right bank of the Rhine in today's Germany. Saletio (Seltz), we may suppose, belonged to the Nemetes, as in modern times it belonged to the diocese of Speyer; and it is near the northern limits of the diocese of Strasbourg. On the south towards the Rauraci, a place named Marckolsheim, on the southern limit of the diocese of Strasbourg and bordering on that of Basel, indicates a boundary by a Teutonic name (mark), as fines does in those parts of Gaul where the Roman tongue prevailed. The name of the Tribocci does not appear in the Notitia provinciarum Galliae, though the names of the Nemetes and Vangiones are there; but instead of the Tribocci we have Civitas Argentoratum (Strasbourg), the chief place of the Tribocci. The Triboci were in the army of the Germanic king Ariovistus in the great battle in which Julius Caesar defeated him; and though Caesar does not say directly that they were Germans, his narrative shows that he considered them to be Germans.