of civilisation, remarkable for the soundness of their understanding, and for intellectual qualities of the highest kind. Paragraph 4.-Of the Vandals.* Tacitus mentions the Vaudali as a groupe of German nations, classing them with the Suevi. He nowhere specifies what particular tribes belonged to the groupe. Pliny, as we have seen, comprehends under the name of Vindili, probably a modification of the same epithet, the Guttones, Burgundiones, Varini, and Carini. Except in these instances, where it is applied in a wide sense, the name of the Vandals is unknown in the early history of Germany. It comes forward again in the period of universal movement among the tribes, and now it appears as the designation of one nation or confederacy of warlike emigrants. The Vandals of the middle ages may have belonged to the Vandalic groupe of former times, but they could only be a part of that groupe; and there is reason to believe, as M. Zeuss has shown, that the people termed Vandals in later times were the Lygian tribes of Tacitus. On the left side of the Vistula, between that river and the mountains which bound Bohemia towards the east, Tacitus places the Lygii. "Dirimit scinditque Sueviam continuum montium jugum, ultrà quod plurimæ gentes agunt, ex quibus latissimè patet Lygiorum nomen, in plures civitates diffusum." The name appears to have comprehended most of the German tribes to the eastward of the Suevi, and reaching thence to the Vistula. Strabo mentions the Louii or Lugii in the same region, whom he terms-μéya Ovos. In the same countries, and near the Asciburgian mountain, Ptolemy places several tribes named Lugii or Luni, Buri, Omani, &c.; and a similar name occurs in the Peutingerian tables. It is mentioned for the last time by Probus. In the same country the race of Vandali became afterwards more celebrated; and it seems extremely probable, as M. Zeuss contends, that the VanWend and wand mean in Old German 'sea-coast or sea.' Even in the present time the common people in Denmark term the Baltic "Wanded." Vandalimeans, therefore, the people inhabiting "die Meeres-wand." (Voigt, 29.) + Strabo, lib. vii. p. 291. dals, who are found in all the earliest historical accounts in the same part of Germany, are the Lygian tribes under a new name, or rather under one which had then become better known. Their frequent wars upon the Danube, in Pannonia and Dacia, are principally related by Jornandes, who drew his account from Dexippus. Under Constantine the Great they were settled as subjects of the empire in Pannonia. From thence they invaded Gaul about the beginning of the fifth century, in conjunction with the Suevi and Alani, and after overrunning Spain, made their way to Africa. Paragraph 5.-Of the Suevi. A tribe distinguished by the name of Suevi, celebrated of old among the nations of Germany, appear on the Rhine as companions of the Vandals, and when the latter took their departure for Africa, remained powerful in their possessions in Spain. The real origin and extension of the name of Suevi, and the relations of the Suevi to other tribes, is a problem in German ethnography. M. Zeuss seems to be of opinion that the names of Suevic kings afford a sufficient proof that the people did not belong to the Upper-German family, or to that aggregate of nations who spoke the Ober-deutsch. They have terminations resembling the proper names of the Gothic leaders. Rechila, Maldra, Audica are Suevic names; Catualda and Ostrogotha are Gothic ones. It is uncertain to what body of the Suevic confederacy or class of nations we ought to refer the Suevi who invaded Spain. St. Jerom mentions Quadi, meaning, as it would appear, these same Suevi, among the German tribes who desolated Gaul in the march of the Vandal army; Gregory of Tours, on the other hand, calls the Suevi Alemanni. That the Alemanni of eastern France and Swabia had not long after this time the name of Suevi or Suabi is well known; but M. Zeuss contends that the allies of the Vandals could be none of these; he thinks that they were Semnones, from the north-eastern parts of Germany, who had accompanied the Vandals from the vicinity of The Vandals are placed in the Pentingerian table between the Marcomanni and the Danube. They are mentioned by several writers with the Quadi as allies of the Suevi and Marcomanni. (Zeuss, 444.) their primitive abode.* A question so obscure seems hardly to admit of satisfactory elucidation. Paragraph 6.-The Burgundians. The Burgundians are another celebrated race, who in their original seats were, as we have seen, neighbours of the Goths, and separated from them by the Lower Vistula. After the commencement of the migration of these tribes they appear still near each other, since we find from Jornandes that Fastida king of the Gepida warred against the Burgundiones, and, as it is said, "pæne usque ad internecionem delevit." Notwithstanding this calamity, we find the Burgundians, together with the Vandals, on the northern bank of the Danube, both tribes being thus to the westward of the Goths. It is said by Zosimus that the emperor Probus overcame the Frangi by the aid of his generals, and fought in person against the Burgundi and Bandili, meaning the Vandals. After this time the Burgundians took a westerly direction, and appear in the neighbourhood of the Alemanni. "Burgundiones Alamannorum agros occupavêre, sed suâ quoque clade quæsitos."+ They are mentioned by Ammianus in the neighbourhood of the Rhine and Mayne, and are termed by him "bellicosos et pubis immensæ viribus affluentes ideoque metuendos finitimis universis." Orosius speaks of them as of a new people in this quarter: "Burgundionum quoque, novorum hostium novum nomen, plus quam octoginta millia, ut ferunt, armatorum ripa Rheni fluminis insederunt."§ This refers to the reign of Valentinian. At the era of the great inroad of the Vandalic nations into Gaul, recorded by St. Jerom, the Burgundians are mentioned as in motion. They then appear to have been in the neighbourhood of Mentz, probably on both sides of the Rhine. Here their king Gundicar perished with a great number of his subjects in war against the Hunns. Here it was that the conversion of the Burgundians to Catholic Christianity took place, of which an account is given by Orosius and Socrates. The latter of these writers mentions the fact, that they still dwelt—πέραν τοῦ ποταμοῦ Zeuss, ubi supra, p. 455. + + Mamert, Paneg. ii. 17. Zeuss, 466. § Orosius, vii. 58. 'Pivov-beyond the Rhine.* It was soon after their defeat by Aetius and the Hunns that the Burgundians obtained their final settlement, and founded a powerful kingdom between the Alps and the Rhone, and reaching from the Vosges mountains to the Mediterranean. Paragraph 7.-The Langobards. Their own The Langobards were another tribe of Northern Germany, allied, as it would appear, to the Vandalic race. writers term them Vinili. Like the Goths they preserved ancient sagas respecting their origin from Scandinavia, of which the Vinili are said to have possessed a third part. "Langobardi ab extremis Germaniæ finibus Oceanique protinus litore, Scandiaque insula magna egressi et novarum sedium cupidi, Ihorea et Ajone ducibus, Vandalos primum vicerunt."+ They are placed by the same writer soon afterwards on the banks of the Elbe. Paul the son of Wanefrid, a native Lombard, who collected the traditions of his people, gives a similar account. Led from the over-peopled Scandinavia by Ajo and Ihor, sons of the prophetess Gambara, into the land of Scoringa or Skoningen, they encountered Ambri and Assi, chiefs of the Vandals, who exacted a tribute from the wanderers as a rent for the pastures where they fed their flocks. When Skoningen was no longer able to contain the multitude of their host they crossed to the continent, and afterwards to the borders of Poland and Hungary, where they settled.‡ From their settlements beyond the Danube the Lombards were induced by the emperor Justinian to pass that river and make themselves masters of Noricum and Pannonia. A war of thirty years between them and the Gepida terminated in the extirpation of the latter people.§ The Langobards were in this war commanded by Albwin, under whom they marched into the north of Italy and established the kingdom of the Lombards. Socrat. H. Eccl. vii. 50. Zeuss, 460. + Prosper. Aquit. Chron. i. 655. Zeuss, s. 472. § Paul. Diac. i. 22-27. Procop. Bell. Goth. iii. 33. Paul. Diac. ii. 7. See passages from ancient authors cited by Cluver, Germ. Antiq. iii. p. 695 et seqq.; Zeuss, 474; Gibbon, vol. vii.; and the History of Paul the son of Warnefrid, viz. Paulus Diaconus, in Grotius's Excerpts. Paragraph 8.-The Heruli. The Heruli were another German people famous for the share they took in raising a new principality on the ruins of the dominion of Rome. Their primitive seats are unknown; but M. Zeuss has conjectured with probability that they were the Suardones, the Papadɛivor of Ptolemy, under a new name, since there is no other people on the southern coast of the Baltic with whom they can with probability be identified. That they originated from that quarter we have no positive proof, but the fact seems to be implied in verses of Sidonius Apollinaris : "Hic glaucis Herulus genis vagatur Imos Oceani colens recessus, Algoso prope concolor profundo." The Heruli are first mentioned by name as accompanying the Goths on the Pontus in their piratical expeditions against Thrace and Greece in the time of Gallienus and Claudius.* They are mentioned by Trebonius Pollio and Zosimus, and more fully by Jornandes, who cites on this occasion the history of Ablavius. They were reduced under the power of the Gothic emperor Hermanrich, who, as Jornandes says, "non passus est nisi ut gentem Herulorum, quibus præerat Alaricus, magna ex parte trucidatam, reliquam suæ subigeret ditioni. Num prædicta gens, Ablavio historico referente, juxta Mæotidas paludes habitans, in locis stagnantibus quas Græci hele vocant, Heruli nominati sunt, gens quanto velox eo amplius superbissima; sed quamvis velocitas eorum ab aliis sæpe bellantibus eos tutaretur, Gothorum tamen stabilitati subjacent et tarditati."+ The Heruli were the most wandering people of the whole German race: they fought in almost every country in Europe in the various wars which in the course of three centuries established the German nations in all the provinces of the Western * Sidonius Apollinaris, Epist. in Burdegal. Zeuss, 479. + It may be observed that such writers as Jornandes, though they acquired a tolerable degree of aptitude in the construction of Latin sentences and in the use of the vocabulary-in which, however, they often give peculiar meanings to wordscould never learn with accuracy the tenses of verbs. This may account for the loss of so many Latin verbal forms in the modern languages. |