TheHercynian Forest was an ancient and dense forest that stretched across Western Central Europe, fromNortheastern France to theCarpathian Mountains, including most ofSouthern Germany, though its boundaries are a matter of debate. It formed the northern boundary of that part of Europe known to writers of Antiquity. The ancient sources[1] are equivocal about how far east it extended. Many agree that theBlack Forest, which extended east from the Rhine valley, formed the western side of the Hercynian, except, for example,Lucius of Tongeren. According to him, it included many massifs west of theRhine.[2]
Across the Rhine to the west extended theSilva Carbonaria, the forest of theArdennes and the forest of theVosges. All theseold-growth forests of antiquity represented the original post-glacialtemperate broadleaf forestecosystem of Europe.
Relict tracts of this once-continuous forest exist with many local names: theBlack Forest, theArdennes, theBavarian Forest, theVosges, theEifel, theJura Mountains, theSihlwald, theSwabian Jura, theFranconian Jura, thePalatinate Forest, theTeutoburg Forest, theArgonne Forest, theOdenwald, theSpessart, theRhön, theThuringian Forest, theHarz, theRauhe Alb, theSteigerwald, theFichtel Mountains, theOre Mountains, theGiant Mountains, theBohemian Forest and theSudetes. In present-dayCzech Republic and southernPoland, it joined the forestedCarpathians.[3] TheMittelgebirge seem to correspond more or less to a stretch of the Hercynian mountains. Many present-day smaller forests were also included like theBienwald and theHaguenau Forest. The Hercynian Forest maybe extended northwest to theVeluwe, west to theSilva Carbonaria, southwest to theMorvan and theLangres plateau and east to thePolish Jura or even theBiałowieża Forest.
Hercynian has aProto-Celtic derivation, fromɸerkuniā, latererkunia.Julius Pokorny[4] lists Hercynian as being derived from*perkʷu- "oak" (comparequercus). He further identifies the name asCeltic.Proto-Celtic regularly loses initial*p preceding a vowel, hence the earliest attestations in Greek asἈρκόνια[5] (Aristotle, thee~a interchange common in Celtic names), later Ὀρκύνιος (Ptolemy, with theo unexplained) andἙρκύνιος δρυμός (Strabo). The latter form first appears in Latin asHercynia inJulius Caesar, inheriting the aspiration and the lettery from a Greek source.
The name is cited dozens of times in several classical authors, but most of the references are non-definitive, e.g., the Hercynian Forest isPomponius Mela'ssilvis 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 inAristotle's (Meteorologica). He refers to theArkýnia (orOrkýnios) mountains of Europe, but tells us only that, remarkably in his experience, rivers flow north from there.[6]
During the time ofJulius Caesar, the forest blocked the advance of theRoman legions intoGermania. His few statements are the most definitive. InDe Bello Gallico[7] he says that the forest stretches along theDanube from the territory of theHelvetii (present-daySwitzerland) toDacia (present-dayRomania). Its implied northern boundary is nine days' march, while its eastern boundary is indefinitely more than sixty days' march. The region fascinated him, even the old tales ofunicorns (which may have representedreindeer).[8] Caesar's references tomoose andaurochs and of elk without joints which leaned against trees to sleep in the endless forests of Germania, were probably laterinterpolations in hisCommentaries.[9] Caesar's name for the forest is the one most used:Hercynia Silva.
Pliny the Elder, inNatural History, places the eastern regions of theHercynium jugum, the "Hercynian mountain chain", inPannonia (present-dayHungary andCroatia) and Dacia.[10] He also gives us some dramatic description[11] of its composition, in which the close proximity of the forest trees causes competitive struggle among them (inter se rixantes). He mentions its giganticoaks.[12] 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 theErcinee. The impenetrable nature of theHercynia Silva hindered the last concerted Roman foray into the forest, byDrusus, during 12..9 BCE:Florus asserts thatDrusus invisum atque inaccessum in id tempus Hercynium saltum (Hercynia saltus, the "Hercynian ravine-land")[13] patefecit.[14]
The isolated modern remnants of the Hercynian Forest identify itsflora as a mixed one;Oscar Drude[15] 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'sbos cervi figura—andelk—pseudo-Caesar'salces—in the forest.[16] The wildbull which the Romans named theurus was present also, and theEuropean bison and the now-extinctaurochs,Bos primigenius.[17]
In the Roman sources, the Hercynian Forest was part of ethnographic Germania. It is believed that before theBoii theHercuniates tribe inhabited the area, later migrating toPannonia inIllyria.[18] By the middle of the first century BC, the Hercuniates were a minor tribe that was located along a narrow band of settlement close to theDanube, on the western side of the river a little way west of modernBudapest. Their name comes from an ancientproto-Indo-European word for anoak. The tribe is referred to byPliny andPtolemy as acivitas peregrina, a wandering tribe that had travelled to Pannonia from foreign parts. Little else is known of them save that they were issuing their own coins by the second century BC.[19] By AD 40 the tribe was eventually subdued by Rome.
Monks sent out fromNiederaltaich Abbey (founded in the eighth century) brought under cultivation for the first time great forested areas ofLower Bavaria as far as the territory of the presentCzech Republic, and founded 120 settlements in theBavarian Forest, as that stretch of the ancient forest came to be known. The forest is also mentioned inHypnerotomachia Poliphili as the setting for the dream allegory of the work.[20]
The German journalHercynia, published by the Universities and Landesbibliothek of Sachsen-Anhalt, pertains to ecology and environmental biology.
Some geographers apply the term Hercynian Forest to the complex of mountain ranges, mountain groups, and plateaus which stretch fromWestphalia acrossMiddle Germany and along the northern borders ofAustria to theCarpathians.[21]