People
Bur
(POL · UKR) (Barrington)
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Just three letters, BVR, mark a people above the Danube, set between the Sarmatians and the Quadi. They are most likely the Buri, a Germanic tribe that the Roman historian Tacitus placed behind the Marcomanni and Quadi, sharing their Suebian speech and customs, and that the geographer Ptolemy put near the source of the Vistula, in the region of modern Poland and Ukraine. Rome knew them well: Marcus Aurelius and Commodus fought them, peace came in 182, and a centurion at Kelheim thanked Jupiter for his return from the Burian expedition. The entry probably reflects a second-century revision of the map.