Editing Batavia (region) (section)

==Pre-Roman==
{{Main|Batavi (Germanic tribe)}}
The "Batavian island" in the [[Rhine river]] was mentioned by [[Julius Caesar]] in his commentary ''[[Commentarii de Bello Gallico]]''. The island's easternmost point is at a split in the Rhine, one arm being the [[Waal (river)|Waal]] and the other the [[Nederrijn|Lower Rhine]]/[[Oude Rijn (Utrecht and South Holland)|Old Rhine]] (hence the Latin name ''Insula Batavorum'', "Island of the Batavi").<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0001:book=4:chapter=10&highlight=batavi|title=C. Julius Caesar, ''Gallic War'', Book 4, chapter 10|work=tufts.edu}}</ref> Much later [[Tacitus]] wrote that the Batavians who lived there had originally been a part of the [[Chatti]], a tribe in [[Germany]] never mentioned by Caesar, who were forced by internal dissension to move to their new home.<ref>Cornelius Tacitus, ''Germany and its Tribes'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0083%3Achapter%3D29 1.29]</ref>

Tacitus also reports that before their arrival the area had been "an uninhabited district on the extremity of the coast of [[Gaul]], and also of a neighbouring island, surrounded by the ocean in front, and by the river Rhine in the rear and on either side".<ref>Tacitus, ''Historiae'' iv.12</ref> In a more detailed description he writes: 
<blockquote>The island of the Batavi was the appointed rendezvous because of its easy landing-places, and its convenience for receiving the army and carrying the war across the river. For the Rhine after flowing continuously in a single channel or encircling merely insignificant islands, divides itself, so to say, where the Batavian territory begins, into two rivers, retaining its name and the rapidity of its course in the stream which washes Germany, till it mingles with the ocean. On the Gallic bank, its flow is broader and gentler; it is called by an altered name, the [[Waal river|Vahal]], by the inhabitants of its shore. Soon that name too is changed for the [[Meuse|Mosa]] river, through whose vast mouth it empties itself into the same ocean.<ref>Tacitus, ''The Annals'', [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0078:book=2:chapter=6 II.6]</ref></blockquote>

Modern archaeologists disagree with Tacitus, noting that that island had a pre-Roman and pre-Germanic population, apparently already called the Batavians. Caesar indeed had not only implied the existence of pre-Roman Batavians, but also mentioned that the Belgic [[Menapii]] of the [[Flemish Region|Flemish]] coast had settlements stretching as far as the beginning of the delta, near the modern border with Germany.<ref>N. Roymans, "The Lower Rhine ''Triquetrum'' Coinages and the Ethnogenesis of the Batavians", in: T. Grünewald & H.-J. Schalles (eds.), ''Germania Inferior: Besiedlung, Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft an der Grenze der römisch-germanischen Welt'' (2000), 93–145, esp. 94.</ref>