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The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis by Rembrandt van Rijn

The Batavians (Latin Batavi)^[1] were a Germanic tribe, originally part of the Chatti, reported by Tacitus to have lived around the Rhine delta, in the area that is currently the Netherlands, "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" (Tacitus, Historiae iv). This led to the Latin name of Batavia for the area. The same name is used for several military units, originally raised among the Batavi. The tribal name, from bat "excellent" and avjo "land", refers to the region's fertility, today known as the fruitbasket of the Netherlands (De Betuwe).

Finds of wooden tablets suggest at least some of them were literate.

In the 16th-century invention of a suitably antique origin myth for the Dutch people that would be expressive of their self-identification as separate from their neighbors in the national struggle with Spain of the Eighty Years War for Dutch independence, the Batavians came to be regarded as their eponymous ancestors.^[2] The mix of fancy and fact in the Cronyke van Hollandt, Zeelandt ende Vriesland (called the Divisiekronike), first published in 1517, brought the spare remarks in Tacitus' newly-rediscovered Germania to a popular public; it was being reprinted as late as 1802.^[3] Contemporary Dutch virtues of independence, fortitude and industry were rendered fully recognizable in more scholarly history represented in Hugo Grotius' Liber de Antiquitate Republicae Batavicorum (1610). The myth was perpetuated by Romeyn de Hooghe's Spiegel van Staat der Vereenigden Nederlanden ("Mirror of the State of the United Netherlands", 1706), which also ran to many editions, and it was revived in the atmosphere of Romantic nationalism in the late eighteenth-century reforms that saw a short-lived Batavian Republic and, in the colony of the Dutch East Indies, a capital (now Jakarta) that was named Batavia. Modern variants of the Batavian founding myth are made more credible by pointing out that the Batavians were only part of the ancestry of the Dutch people, together with the Frisians, Franks and Saxons, and by tracing patterns of DNA. Echoes of this supposed cultural continuity may still be found in popularisations of the history that follows.

The Batavians were mentioned by Julius Caesar in his commentary Commentarii de Bello Gallico, as living on an island formed by the Rhine River after it splits, one arm being the Waal the other the Lower Rhine/Old Rhine. The strategic position, to wit the high bank of the Waal-- which offered an unimpeded view far into Germania Transrhenanum (Germania Beyond the Rhine)--was recognized first by Drusus, who built a massive fortress (castra) and a headquarters (praetorium) in imperial style. The latter was in use until the Batavian revolt.

Archeological evidence suggests they lived in small villages, composed of 6 to 12 houses in the very fertile lands between the rivers, and lived by agriculture and cattle-raising . Finds of horse skeletons in graves suggest a strong equestrian preoccupation. On the south bank of the Waal (in what is now Nijmegen) a Roman administrative center was built, called Oppidum Batavorum. (An 'Oppidum' was a fortified warehouse, where a tribe's treasures were stored and guarded. It had few comforts and was rarely occupied unless it was besieged--at which time, it had no comforts at all.) This centre was razed during the Batavian Revolt.

Funerary stela of one of Nero's Corporis Custodes (imperial bodyguard). The bodyguard, Indus, was of the Batavian tribe.

The first Batavian commander we know of is named Chariovalda, who lead a charge across the Visurgin (Weser) against the Cherusci lead by Arminius during the campaigns of Germanicus in Germania Transrhenanum (Annales II, 11).

Tacitus (De origine et situ Germanorum XXIX) described the Batavians as the bravest of the tribes of the area, hardened in the Germanic wars, with cohorts under their own commanders transferred to Britannia. They retained the honour of the ancient association with the Romans, not required to pay tribute or taxes and used by the Romans only for war: "They furnished to the Empire nothing but men and arms", Tacitus remarked. Well-regarded for their skills in horsemanship and swimming—for men and horses could cross the Rhine without losing formation, according to Tacitus. Dio Cassius describes this surprise tactic employed by Aulus Plautius against the "barbarians"—the British Celts— at the battle of the River Medway, 43:

The barbarians thought that Romans would not be able to cross it without a bridge, and consequently bivouacked in rather careless fashion on the opposite bank; but he sent across a detachment of Germanic tribesmen, who were accustomed to swim easily in full armour across the most turbulent streams. [...] Thence the Britons retired to the river Thames at a point near where it empties into the ocean and at flood-tide forms a lake. This they easily crossed because they knew where the firm ground and the easy passages in this region were to be found; but the Romans in attempting to follow them were not so successful. However, the Germans swam across again and some others got over by a bridge a little way up-stream, after which they assailed the barbarians from several sides at once and cut down many of them. (Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 60:20)

The Batavians also provided a contingent for the Emperor's Imperial Horse Guard.

Numerous altars and tombstones of the Batavi, dating to the 2nd century and 3rd century, have been found along Hadrian's Wall, notably at Castlecary and Carrawburgh, Germany, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Austria. The Batavians were still mentioned in 355 during the reign of Constantius II (317 - 361), when their island was already dominated by the Salii, a Frankish tribe that had sought Roman protection there in 297 AD after having been expelled from their own country by the Saxons. Constantius Gallus added inhabitants of Batavia to his legions, "of whose discipline we still make use."^[4] It has been assumed they merged with the Salii shortly before or after and, after having been expelled by another tribe (it has been proposed this were the Chamavi) shared their subsequent migration to Belgium (358) and further history.

Main article: Batavian rebellion.

Despite the alliance, one of the high-ranking Batavi, Julius Paullus, to give him his Roman name, was executed by Fonteius Capito on a false charge of rebellion. His kinsman Gaius Julius Civilis was paraded in chains in Rome before Nero; though he was acquitted by Galba, he was retained at Rome, and when he returned to his kin in the year of upheaval in the Roman Empire, 69, he headed a Batavian rebellion which was defeated by the Romans the following year, a narrative told in great detail in Tacitus' History, book iv, although, unfortunately, the narrative breaks off abruptly at the climax. Following the uprising, Legio X Gemina was housed in a stone castra to keep an eye on the Batavians.

• Tacitus, Histories, Book iv
• A map of the Roman province Germania Inferior and neighbouring tribes.
• Cohors Primae Batavorum