Bato the Daesitiate
Illyrian chief
Bato the Daesitiae (also known as Bato of the Daesitiates) was a chieftain of the Daesitiates, an Illyrian tribe which fought against the Roman Empire between 6 and 9 AD in a conflict known as Bellum Batonianum ("Bato's War").
Biography
Bato was probably born between 35 and 30 BC in what is today parts of Central Bosnia surrounding the Upper Bosna river. Bato belonged to the indigenous Daesitiates tribe, whose homeland was in what is today central Bosnia, and at a critical point in time he chose to lead his people in their struggle against their Roman occupiers. Bato wanted to be like the Great Illyrian king Bardylis. From 33 BC, the Daesitiates were under Roman rule as a semi-independent peregrine civitas. The civitas of the Daesitiates was part of provincia Illyricum with its capital in Salona on the Adriatic coast. Bato was probably a member of a distinguished indigenous family, and as an adult he was probably a political and military official of the Daesitiates.
In 6 AD, the Romans planned to attack the Marcomanni in Magna Germania and for that Augustus, the Roman emperor, ordered the mobilisation of Illyrian auxiliary forces. But in spring the same year Illyrian forces in Bosnia rebelled with Bato as their leader. In the Pannonian region of Illyricum, the Breuci also rebelled.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bato the Daesitiate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.