Hercynian Forest - Ancient References

Ancient References

The name is cited dozens of times in several classical authors, but most of the references are non-definitive, e.g., The Hercynian Forest is Pomponius Mela's silvis ac paludibus invia, "trackless forest and swamps" (Mela, De Chorographia, iii.29), as the author is assuming the reader would know where the forest is. The earliest reference is in Aristotle's (Meteorologica). He refers to the Arkýnia (or Orkýnios) mountains of Europe, but tells us only that, remarkably in his experience, rivers flow north from there.

During the time of Julius Caesar, this forest blocked the advance of the Roman legions into Germania. His few statements are the most definitive. In De Bello Gallico he says that the forest stretches along the Danube from the territory of the Helvetii (present-day Switzerland) to Dacia (present-day Romania). Its implied northern dimension is nine days' march. Its eastern dimension is indefinitely more than sixty days' march. The concept fascinated him, even the old tales of unicorns (which may have represented reindeer). Caesar's references to moose and aurochs and of elk without joints which leaned against trees to sleep in the endless forests of Germania, were probably later interpolations in his Commentaries. Caesar's name for the forest is the one most used: Hercynia Silva.

Pliny the Elder, in Natural History, places the eastern regions of the Hercynium jugum, the "Hercynian mountain chain", in Pannonia (present-day Hungary) and Dacia (present-day Romania. He also gives us some dramaticised description of its composition, in which the close proximity of the forest trees causes competitive struggle among them (inter se rixantes). He mentions its gigantic oaks. But even he—if the passage in question is not an interpolated marginal gloss—is subject to the legends of the gloomy forest. He mentions unusual birds, which have feathers that "shine like fires at night". Medieval bestiaries named these birds the Ercinee. The impenetrable nature of the Hercynian Silva hindered the last concerted Roman foray into the forest, by Drusus, during 12..9 BCE: Florus asserts that Drusus invisum atque inaccessum in id tempus Hercynium saltum (Hercynia saltus, the "Hercynian ravine-land"). patefecit.

The isolated modern remnants of the Hercynian Forest identify its flora as a mixed one; Oscar Drude identified its Baltic elements associated with North Alpine flora, and North Atlantic species with circumpolar representatives. Similarly, Edward Gibbon noted the presence of reindeer—pseudo-Caesar's bos cervi figura—and elk—pseudo-Caesar's alces—in the forest. The wild bull which the Romans named the urus was present also, and the European bison and the now-extinct aurochs, Bos primigenius.

In the Roman sources, the Hercynian Forest was part of ethnographic Germania. There is an indication that this circumstance was fairly recent; that is, Posidonius states that the Boii, who were allegedly Celtic, were once there (as well as in Bohemia which is named for them).