Calucones


The Calucones were a Rhaetian tribe mentioned by a few of the classical sources, but not all. Pliny the Elder quotes a monument to the reign of Augustus, the tropeaum Alpium, located in the Rhaetia of his day, stating that Augustus subdued the Alpine peoples from the upper sea to the lower sea, including the Calucones.
Ptolemy in Geography on the other hand locates the Kaloukones on either side of the Elbe "below" the Silingae or Silesians. Since the Elbe does not drain the Alps, if the two Calucones are the same, the tropeaum cannot have meant that Augustus subdued only Rhaetia. However, the tropeaum also lists the Rugusci, another Rhaetian tribe, but some have hypothesized this the tribe he intended to reference was the Rugii who at that time would have been located on or near Rügen. According to this theory, Pliny's upper and lower seas would have been the Baltic and the Mediterranean respectively. This hypothesis is not likely to be true, unless Augustus achieved some sort of alliance with Germanic tribes stretching over the entire region from the Danube to the Baltic Sea.