tract is not only possessed but filled by the Chauci, a people who maintain their greatness by justice rather than violence. They abound in men and horses, and maintain their military fame even in peace. Pliny visited the country of the Chauci, and described the people and their mode of life from personal observation. “On this coast," he says, "the Ocean twice in each day and night ebbs and flows over an immense space, which is subject to an eternal controversy between the sea and land. Here the miserable inhabitants keep themselves in cabins fixed on hillocks, and are like people floating in boats when the sea has risen, and like shipwrecked wretches when it subsides, and they catch around their dwellings the fishes which fly from them in the retiring waters. They can feed no cattle for food or milk, nor even carry on war against wild beasts like their rude neighbours, since neither pastures nor thickets are at hand. They weave into cords sea-weed and marshy reeds, and with these materials frame nets for catching fish; they have no other drink than water collected in troughs from showers of rain. Yet these nations, if conquered by the Romans, would deem the lot of servitude their greatest calamity. Thus does fortune indulge many for their own punishment." B. Nations of the Cimbric Peninsula and the neighbouring countries. We have already mentioned the Cimbri among thenations whose connection with the Celtic race is rendered on the whole probable, by a few words of their language which are yet extant, and by the description left of their manners. The Romans took them for Germans, as Plutarch says, judging from their complexion. An argument which probably had more weight was their connection with German tribes, particularly with the Teutones. It does not appear, however, quite clear that the Cimbri left their northern abode in company with the Teutones. It might be supposed, from the occasion on which the Teutones are first mentioned, that they met the Cimbri accidentally, when both nations were engaged in a similar attempt. The Cimbri were first seen by the * Tacitus, Germ. c. 35. Romans under the Consulate of C. C. Metellus and Cn. Papirius Carbo, B. C. 115, when they invaded Illyricum and defeated the consular armies.* Noreja is mentioned by Strabo as the place of the conflict. Neither of the writers names the Teutones on this occasion. Appian, indeed, probably by mistake, terms the host merely Teutones. He mentions their departure thence into Gaul. In the south of Gaul the Cimbri were again victorious: they passed the Rhone, and, after defeating the Roman generals, traversed the Pyrenees into Spain, and were repulsed by the Celtiberi. After their return to Gaul they resolved upon the invasion of Italy, and here they are found acting in concert with the Teutones. But they marched by separate routes: the Teutones and Ambrones, who appear to have been more closely connected, passed in one body through Liguria, while it fell to the lot of the Cimbri to traverse Noricum by a north-eastern route. The defeat of both armies by Marius immediately ensued. This account leaves it somewhat doubtful whether the migration of these tribes from the north was a simultaneous movement; and even if it were, the circumstance by no means proves their consanguinity. The Tigurini, who joined their expedition into Italy, are known as a Celtic tribe.§ The armies of Attila included bands of Goths, Alani, and other nations, and the Teutones and Ambrones may have been people reduced under the more powerful Cimbri, without any family relationship. The Teutones are supposed to be mentioned by Pytheas :|| Pliny names them among the Ingævones or German tribes, who inhabited the sea-coast. Tacitus appears to term them Nuithones, among the nations beyond the Elbe. Ptolemy places them opposite the Langobards from the Elbe to the Oder, between the Saxones, Suardones, Suevi, and Varini, that is, near the lakes of Mecklenburg and the Havel. The Ambrones, closely connected, as it appears, with the Teutones, vanish from history. Nothing is found to indicate + Strabo, v. p. 214. * Livii Epit. 65. Liv. Epit. 67. Eutropius mentions them thus: " Romani Consules in Cimbris et Teutonibus, et Tigurinis et Ambronibus quæ erant Germanorum et Gallorum gentes victi sunt." (Lib. v. 1.) The passage of Pliny in which Pytheas appears to have mentioned the Teutones is probably corrupt, as we shall afterwards observe. from what quarter of the north they came, and M. Zeuss conjectures that their descendants are the Saxons beyond the Elbe. The Teutones were identical with the Jutes. The Saxones.-The original tribe of Saxons must be distinguished from the Saxon confederacy of late times, which embraced many tribes or divisions of tribes. The Saxons named and described by Ptolemy are a single tribe, whose abode was opposite the Cauchi, on the neck of the Cimbric peninsula; they reached from the mouth of the Elbe to the river Chalusus, supposed to be the Trawe. Ptolemy also mentions three islands belonging to the Saxones in the mouth of the Elbe, probably Nordstrand, Föhr, and Silt. This was the tribe whence came the followers of Hengist.* Several tribes of lesser note are mentioned by Ptolemy as living southward of the Saxons, on the peninsula of the Cimbri. The Anglii were the most southern tribe of this groupe of nations. Ptolemy mentions the Angili or Anglii as a Suevic nation: he places them to the eastward of the Langobards, and extending northwards to the Elbe. This position indicates that they lived near the Lower Saale, along the Elbe, down as far nearly as the Ohre. The situation of the Angles on the western bank of the Elbe, opposite the Semnones and Varini, and in the neighbourhood of Hermunduri, Langobards and Cherusci, might lead to the suspicion that they belonged like those tribes to the Upper German stock; but their intimate connection with their northern neighbours, and the remains of the Anglo-Saxon literature, which display no varieties of dialect, combined with other arguments, leave no doubt that the Angles were a Low-German race. C. Tribes on the coast of the Baltic: Suardones, Rugii, Turcilingi, and Sciri. The Sciri were the most remote people of the German race. They lived beyond the Vistula, in the neighbourhood of the Wends and Aistians. I shall mention the nations of the fourth, or northern or * The name of Saxons is supposed by many, and M. Zeuss adopts this opinion, to be derived from the weapons which the Saxons bore: "Erat autem illis diebus Saxonibus magnorum cultellorum usus, quibus usque hodie Angli utuntur, morem gentes antiquæ sectantes. Cultelli nostra lingua sahs dicuntur."-Witech. Corbej. p. iii.—Zeuss, 150. Nennius makes Hengist say to his followers, "Nimed eare saxes,"-Take your weapons. Scandinavian, branch of the German stock, in a future sec tion. Paragraph 3.-German tribes of the north-eastern region. Nations of the German race in the north-eastern region beyond the Oder, and spreading thence to the Vistula, and beyond that river through countries long since occupied by tribes of a different lineage, may be considered as a particular division of great Teutonic people. By M. Zeuss these nations are supposed to be the third department of the German tribes termed Istævones, but this identification is by no means so well established as the two former.* It is more evident that the eastern German nations are the Vindili of Pliny, who mentions the particular names-" Vindili, quorum pars Burgundiones, Varini, Carini, Guttones." The first and last of these are known to have inhabited countries bordering on the Vistula. In a following section I shall endeavour to investigate the history of the principal nations belonging to this groupe, and I shall at present merely advert to their ancient positions. 1. The principal nation among them are the Guttones, doubtless the Gothones of Tacitus.† All modern geographers place this tribe beyond the Vistula. Pytheas found a people of the same name in that country, that is inhabiting the coast of the Frische Haff, three centuries before the Christian era. Their name is recognised in that of the river Guttalus, supposed by Voigt to be the Pregel, which flows by Königsberg into the gulf of Dantzig.‡ • Tacitus places the Ingævones on the ocean, as we have seen, and Pliny mentions them among the Chauci and Teutoni. The Hermiones of Tacitus are the Middle or Midland tribes-Hermiones medii. Pliny mentions them, namely, Suevii, Hermunduri, Chatti, and Cherusci. Thus far there is no doubt, but we have no hint from Tacitus who were the Istævones; he only says that they were the remaining tribes. But Pliny terms the Istævones "proximi Rheno." Pliny must then have been mistaken, if the Istævones are the eastern German nations. Yet he is said to have collected his information respecting Germany in the country. + Tacitus places the Gothones beyond the Lygian nations, which is near the situation of the Guttones of Pliny. That the Guttalus was some river to the eastward of the Vistula appears, as Voigt observes, from the order in which it is mentioned. In enumerating the rivers of this country Pliny mentions the Guttalus first, then the Vistula, and the Albis or Elbe last. It appears that he begins from the eastward. See Voigt's Geschichte von Preussen, b. i. s. 40. 2. To the westward of the Vistula were the Burgundians, mentioned by Pliny among the Vindili. By Ptolemy their situation is marked out: he says they are next to the Semnones, whose position upon the Oder is known, and reaching to the river Vistula.* Reichard, Voigt, and Zeuss suppose them to have inhabited the coast of Pomerania about the rivers Netze and Warta. 3. Of the other tribes mentioned by Pliny, the Varini are placed by Voigt in Mecklenburg and Swedish Pomerania, where the river Warnow, Warnemunde, and other local names seem to preserve their national epithet. They are probably the people known to late writers, as Jornandes and Fredegarius, by the name of Warni. The Carini are entirely lost. 4. Semnones, who according to Velleius and Ptolemy occupied an extensive country reaching from the Elbe to the Oder, are considered by Zeuss as belonging to the eastern German race. They were a great Suevic nation, and, if the name of Suevi had any ethnological meaning, would rather seem to be associated with the Hermiones or nations of the Central Highlands. SECTION III. Of the Migrations of the German Tribes into the Roman Empire, and the subsequent Distribution of the German Races. We have seen that the German tribes, previously to the movements among them which commenced about the second century of the Christian era, held a local position nearly corresponding with the division of their families and dialects. Along the coast of the German Ocean, and across the isthmus of the Cimbric peninsula to the shore of the Baltic, were spread the tribes of the Chauci and Frisii, the Anglii, Saxones, and the Teutones or Jutes, who spoke the Low-German languages, and formed one of the four divisions of the German race, corresponding, as it appears, with the Ingævones of Tacitus and Pliny. In the higher and more central parts the second * Ptolemy names them τὸ τῶν Βουγουντῶν ἔθνος. There can be no room for doubt that he means the Burgundiones. |