Ariovistus
The Suebi became a threat to the Romans in the first century B.C.E., as recorded in the writings of Julius Caesar, when they invaded Gaul (roughly modern France and Belgium) to aid the Sequani, considered predominantly a Celtic people although perhaps part Germanic. The leader of the Suebi at the time was Ariovistus, who is referred to by the term Suebian rather than by the name of a particular tribe in historical texts. The main Suebian towns at the time were reportedly Argentorac on the Upper Rhine and Manching on the Upper Danube. It is known that the Nemetes, Triboci, and Vangiones were part of his campaign. The allied Germanic force first crossed the Rhine into Gaul in 71 b.c.e. and aided the Sequani against the Celtic Aedui, allies of Rome. After his campaign against the Helvetii Caesar defeated Ariovistus's army somewhere in present-day northeastern France in 58 b.c.e. Then he turned to the conquest of Gaul.
Although Rome had at first tried diplomatic means of containing the Suebi by making Ariovistus an ally in 60 b.c.e., Caesar in 55 b.c.e. convinced the Senate that the Suebi were a continuing threat and had to be reduced by force, and further that the only means of containing them and other Germanic tribes was to seize control of the whole of Gaul. He raised the specter of Italy and Rome's being overrun by
Germanics as they had earlier been by the Celts. It seems clear that at least part of Caesar's insistence on conquering Gaul derived from personal ambition. in any case the Suebi furnished Caesar with his excuse to extend vastly the reach of Roman hegemony.
It was not only the Suebi under Ariovistus who were pushing out of Germania; Suebian tribes were trying to move from all along the Elbe due west toward Gaul and southeast toward the middle Danube region. To counter this in the decades after the mid-first century b.c.e. the Romans expanded through the Alps to take control of the Upper to Middle Danube.
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