The Sitones were a

Germanic people The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and e ...

living somewhere in Northern Europe in the first century CE. They are mentioned only by

Cornelius Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...

in 97 CE in

Germania Germania ( ; ), also called Magna Germania (English: ''Great Germania''), Germania Libera (English: ''Free Germania''), or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a large historical region in north ...

. Tacitus considered them similar to

Suiones The Swedes ( sv, svear; Old Norse: ''svíar'') (probably from the PIE reflexive pronominal root * s(w)e, "one's own ribesmen/kinsmen;Bandle, Oskar. 2002. The Nordic languages: an international handbook of the history of the North Germanic lang ...

(ancestors of modern

Swedes Swedes ( sv, svenskar) are a North Germanic ethnic group native to the Nordic region, primarily their nation state of Sweden, who share a common ancestry, culture, history and language. They mostly inhabit Sweden and the other Nordic countri ...

) apart from one descriptor, namely that women were the ruling sex.

Upon the Suiones, border the people Sitones; and, agreeing with them in all other things, differ from them in one, that here the sovereignty is exercised by a woman. So notoriously do they degenerate not only from a state of liberty, but even below a state of bondage.

Speculations on the Sitones' background are numerous. According to one theory, the name is a partial misunderstanding of

Sigtuna Sigtuna () is a locality situated in Sigtuna Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden with 8,444 inhabitants in 2010. It is the namesake of the municipality even though the seat is in Märsta. Sigtuna is for historical reasons often still refe ...

, one of the central locations in the Swedish kingdom, which much later had a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

spelling ''Situne''. Another view is that the "queen" of the Sitones derives by linguistic confusion with an

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

word for "woman" from the name of the Kvens or Quains. According to medievalist

Kemp Malone Kemp Malone (March 14, 1889 in Minter City, Mississippi – October 13, 1971) was a prolific medievalist, etymologist, philologist, and specialist in Chaucer who was lecturer and then professor of English Literature at Johns Hopkins Univers ...

(1925), Tacitus' characterization of both the Suiones and the Sitones is "a work of art, not a piece of historical research", with the Sitones' submission to a woman as the logical culminating degeneracy after the Suiones' total submission to their king and surrendering of their weapons to a slave.

, "The Suiones of Tacitus", ''The American Journal of Philology'' 46.2, 1925
pp. 170–76
pp. 173–74.

References

{{Germanic peoples Early Germanic peoples North Germanic tribes Prehistory of Sweden Scandinavia

See also

References