Veleda

In the Batavian rebellion of AD 69–70, led by the Romanized Batavian chieftain Gaius Julius Civilis, Veleda, a seeress of the Bructeri, a Germanic people, rose to some notoriety when she anticipates the rebels' initial victories over Roman legions. The rebels were led by this Romanized Batavian chieftain.

Veleda was revered as a divinity by the majority of the tribes in central Germany in the second half of the first century AD and had a significant effect. She resided in a tower close to the Rhine's branch, the Lippe River. The residents of the Roman colony of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (now Cologne) accepted her adjudication in a disagreement with the Tencteri, a confederated tribe of Germany (i.e., one beyond the limits of the Roman Empire) (i.e., one outside the boundary of the Roman Empire). The envoys were not allowed in her presence since she was acting as an arbiter; instead, an interpreter relayed their words to her and reported her decisions.

During the Roman power struggle in AD 69, the Batavian leader Civilis first built his army as a Vespasian friend, but when he observed the depleted state of the legions in Romanized Germany, he openly rebelled. Veleda merely foretold the insurrection and actively encouraged it. However, the uprising was put down as a result of a powerful display of force by nine Roman legions led by Gaius Licinius Mucianus. Quintus Petillius Cerialis' troops ambushed Civilis on his native island of Batavia in the lower Rhine; it is unknown what became of him, but Cerialis generally treated the rebels with remarkable decency in an effort to win them over to Roman rule and military service. For Veleda, she was given several years of freedom. The Romans either kidnapped her or offered her shelter in AD 77. Rutilius Gallicus, the governor of Germany, was her captor at the time. A Greek letter that mocked her prophecy was discovered near Ardea, a few miles south of Rome. Veleda behaved in Rome's best interests in those circumstances by securing Bructeri's acceptance of a pro-Roman ruler in AD 83 or 84.