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Indigenous British tribe of the Iron Age and Roman periods whose territory covered much of mid-Wales. the Ordovices were the northern neighbours of the Silures and the southern neighbours of the Degeangli. After the Claudian invasion the Ordovices and the Silures were stirred into rebellion by Caratacus.
The late Iron Age and early 1st-millennium ad tribal grouping occupying the central mountainous area and narrow coastal plain of west Wales, south of the Gangani and north of the Demetae. Very little is known about their settlements or material culture.
[hammer fighters]. People of pre-Roman and Roman Wales, cited by the ancient geographer Ptolemy (2nd cent. AD), whose territory extended from Herefordshire on the Welsh border to Anglesey. The gloss of their name may link them with the pre-historic stone-axe ‘factory’ at Graig Lwyd in Caernarvonshire. Tacitus (1st cent. AD) describes a Roman campaign against the Ordovices, AD 59, in which the legions were confronted with black-robed women with dishevelled hair like furies, brandishing torches.
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The Ordovices were one of the Celtic tribes living in the British Islands, before the Roman invasion of Britain. Its tribal lands were located in Wales between the Silures to the south and the Deceangli to the north-east. The Ordovices were conquered by the Roman governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola in the campaign of AD 77/78.
The name Ordo-vic- probably means "those fighting with a hammer". Irish Ord "hammer", Welsh Gordd "hammer" (with a G- prothetic), Breton Horzh "hammer" (with a H- prothetic).
The Ordovices were farmers and shepherds but had a strong military tradition and lived in fortified strongholds and hillforts. They were among the few British tribes that resisted the Roman invasion. The resistance was mainly organized by the Celtic leader Caratacus, exiled in their lands after the defeat of his tribe in the Battle of the Medway. Caratacus became the warlord of the Ordovices and neighbouring Silures, and a Roman public enemy in the decade of 50. Following the Battle of Caer Caradoc, where governor Publius Ostorius Scapula defeated Caratacus, the Ordovices stopped being a threat to Rome, probably due to heavy losses.
In the 70s, the Ordovices rebelled against Roman occupation and destroyed a cavalry squadron. This act of war provoked an equally strong response by Agricola, who, according to Tacitus, exterminated the whole tribe. No other mention of the tribe appears in the historical records, but in view of the terrain of the area occupied by the Ordovices it is questionable whether Agricola could have wiped out the entire population. The name of this tribe appears to be preserved in the place name Dinorwig ("Fort of the Ordovices") in North Wales.
The Ordovician geologic period was first described by Charles Lapworth in 1879 based on rocks located in the original lands of the Ordovices and was named after them.
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 | British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Archaeology Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology. Copyright © 2002, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Celtic Mythology. A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Copyright © James MacKillop 1998, 2004. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ordovices". Read more |
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