VII.

GEOGRAPHICA.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF A NATION BEARING THE NAME OF _SERES_ OR A COUNTRY CALLED _SERICA_ OR _TERRA SERICA_.

FROM THE CLASSICAL MUSEUM OF 1846. VOL. 3.

The following train of thought presented itself to the writer upon the perusal of Mr. James Yates's learned and interesting work entitled Textrinum Antiquorum or an account of the art of weaving among the ancients. With scarcely a single exception the facts and references are supplied from that work so that to the author of the present paper nothing belongs beyond the reasoning that he has applied to them.

This statement is made once for all for the sake of saving a multiplicity of recurring references.

The negative assertions as well as the positive ones are also made upon the full faith in the exhaustive learning of the writer in question.

Now the conviction that is come to is this, that no tribe, nation or country ever existed which can be shewn to have borne, either in the vernacular or in any neighbouring language, the name Seres, Serica, or Terra Serica or any equivalent term, a conclusion that may save some trouble to the inquirers into ancient geography.

The nation called Seres has never had a specific existence under that name. Whence then originated the frequent indications of such a nation recurring in the writings of the ancients? The doctrine, founded upon the facts of Mr. Yates and laid down as a proposition; is as follows.--

That the name under which the article _silk_ was introduced to the Greeks and Romans wore the appearance of a Gentile adjective and that the imaginary root of the accredited adjective passed for the substantive name of a nation. Thus, in the original form _seric_, the _-ic_ had the appearance of being an adjectival termination, as in _Medic-us Persic-us_ &c.; whilst _ser-_ was treated as the substantive name of a nation or people from whence the article in question (i. e. the _seric_ article) was derived. The _Seres_ therefore were the hypothetical producers of the article that bore their name (_seric_). Whether this view involves more improbabilities than the current one will be seen from the forthcoming observations.--

1. In the first place the crude form _seric_ was neither Latin nor Greek, so that the _-ic_ could not be adjectival.

2. Neither was it in the simpler form _ser-_ that the term was introduced into the classical languages so that the adjectival _-ic_ might be appended afterwards.--

3. The name in question whatever might have been its remote origin was introduced into Greece from the Semitic tongues (probably the Phoenician) and was the word שריק in Isaiah XIX. 9. where the יק (the _-ic_) is not an adjectival appendage but a radical part of the word. And here it may be well to indicate that, except under the improbable supposition that the Hebrew name was borrowed from the Greek or Latin, it is a matter of indifference whether the word in question was indigenous to the Semitic Languages or introduced from abroad, and also that is a matter of indifference whether silk was known in the time of the Old Testament or not. It is sufficient if a term afterwards applied to that article was Hebrew at the time of Isaiah. Of any connection between the substance called שריק and a nation called Seres there is in the Semitic tongues no trace. The foundation of the present scepticism originated in the observation that the supposed national existence of the Seres coincided with the introduction of the term _seric_ into languages where _ic-_ was an adjectival affix.--

As early as the Augustan age the substantive _Seres_ appears by the side of the adjective _Sericus_. In Virgil, Horace and Ovid the words may be found and from this time downwards the express notice of a nation so called is found through a long series of writers.--

Notwithstanding this it is as late as the time of Mela before we find any author mentioning with detail and precision a geographical nationality for the Seres. "He (Mela) describes them as a very honest people who brought what they had to sell, laid it down and went away and then returned for the price of it" (Yates p. 184). Now this notice is anything rather than definite. Its accuracy moreover may be suspected, since it belongs to the ambiguous class of what may be called convertible descriptions. The same story is told of an African nation in Herodotus IV. 169.

To the statement of Mela we may add a notice from Ammianus Marcellinus of the quiet and peaceable character of the Seres (XXIII. 6.) and a statement from the novelist Heliodorus that at the nuptials of Theagenes and Chariclea the ambassadors of the Seres came bringing the thread and webs of their spiders (Aethiop. X. p. 494. Commelini).

Now notices more definite than the above of the national existence of the Seres anterior to the time of Justinian we have none whilst subsequently to the reign of that emperor there is an equal silence on the part both of historians and geographers. Neither have modern ethnographers found unequivocal traces of tribes bearing that name.

The probability of a confusion like the one indicated at the commencement of the paper is increased by the facts stated in p. 222. of the Textrinum. Here we see that besides Pausanias, Hesychius, Photius and other writers give two senses to the root _ser-_ which they say is (1.) a worm (2.) the name of a nation. Probably Clemens Alexandrinus does the same νῆμα χρυσοῦ καὶ σῆρας Ἰνδικοὺς καὶ τοὺς περιέργους βόμβυκας χαίρειν ἐῶντας. A passage from Ulpian (Textrinum p. 192) leads to the belief that σῆρας here means silk-worm. Vestimentorum sunt omnia lanea lineaque, vel _serica_ vel bombycina.

Finally the probability of the assumed confusion is verified by the statement of Procopius αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ μέταξα ἐξ ἧς εἰώθασι τὴν ἐσθῆτα ἐργάζεσθαι, ἣν πάλαι μὲν Ἥλληνες Μηδικὴν ἐκάλουν, τανῦν δὲ σηρικὴν ὀνομάζουσιν. (De Bell. Persic. I. 20.).

Militating against these views I find little unsusceptible of explanation.--

1. The expression σηρικα δερματα of the author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei means skins from the silk country.

2. The intricacy introduced into the question by a passage of Procopius is greater. In the account of the first introduction of the silk worm into Europe in the reign of Justinian the monks who introduced it having arrived from India stated that they had long resided in the country called Serinda inhabited by Indian nations where they had learned how raw silk might be produced in the country of the Romans (Textrinum p. 231). This is so much in favor of the root Ser-being gentile, but at the same time so much against the Seres being Chinese. Sanskrit scholars may perhaps adjust this matter. The Serinda is probably the fabulous Serendib.

In the countries around the original localities of the silk-worm the name for silk is as follows--

In Corean _Sir_. Chinese _se_. Mongolian _sirkek_. Mandchoo _sirghe_.

It is the conviction of the present writer that a nation called Seres had no geographical existence.

ON THE EVIDENCE OF A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CIMBRI AND THE CHERSONESUS CIMBRICA.

READ BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

FEBRUARY 9, 1844.

It is considered that the evidence of any local connection between the Cimbri conquered by Marius, and the Chersonesus Cimbrica, is insufficient to counterbalance the natural improbability of a long and difficult national migration. Of such a connection, however, the identity of name and the concurrent belief of respectable writers are _primâ facie_ evidence. This, however, is disposed of if such a theory as the following can be established, viz. that, for certain reasons, the knowledge of the precise origin and locality of the nations conquered by Marius was, at an early period, confused and indefinite; that new countries were made known without giving any further information; that, hence, the locality of the Cimbri was always pushed forwards beyond the limits of the geographical areas accurately ascertained; and finally, that thus their supposed locality retrograded continually northwards until it fixed itself in the districts of Sleswick and Jutland, where the barrier of the sea and the increase of geographical knowledge (with one exception) prevented it from getting farther. Now this view arises out of the examination of the language of the historians and geographers as examined in order, from Sallust to Ptolemy.

Of Sallust and Cicero, the language points to Gaul as the home of the nation in question; and that without the least intimation of its being any particularly distant portion of that country. "Per idem tempus adversus Gallos ab ducibus nostris, Q. Cæpione et M. Manlio, malè pugnatum--Marius Consul absens factus, et ei decreta Provincia Gallia." _Bell._ _Jugurth._ 114. "Ipse ille Marius--influentes in Italiam Gallorum maximas copias repressit." _Cicero de Prov. Consul._ 13. And here an objection may be anticipated. It is undoubtedly true that even if the Cimbri had originated in a locality so distant as the Chersonese, it would have been almost impossible to have made such a fact accurately understood. Yet it is also true, that if any material difference had existed between the Cimbri and the Gauls of Gaul, such must have been familiarly known in Rome, since slaves of both sorts must there have been common.

Cæsar, whose evidence ought to be conclusive (inasmuch as he knew of Germany as well as of Gaul), fixes them to the south of the Marne and Seine. This we learn, not from the direct text, but from inference: "Gallos--a Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit." _Bell. Gall._ i. "Belgas--solos esse qui, patrum nostrûm memoria, omni Galliâ vexatâ, Teutones Cimbrosque intra fines suos ingredi prohibuerunt." _Bell. Gall._ ii. 4. Now if the Teutones and Cimbri had moved from north to south, they would have clashed with the Belgæ first and with the other Gauls afterwards. The converse, however, was the fact. It is right here to state, that the last observation may be explained away by supposing, either that the Teutones and Cimbri here meant may be a _remnant_ of the confederation on their _return_, or else a portion that settled down in Gaul upon their way; or finally, a division that made a circle towards the place of their destination in a south-east direction. None of these however seem the plain and natural construction; and I would rather, if reduced to the alternative, read "_Germania_" instead of "_Gallia_" than acquiesce in the most probable of them.

Diodorus Siculus, without defining their locality, deals throughout with the Cimbri as a Gaulish tribe. Besides this, he gives us one of the elements of the assumed indistinctness of ideas in regard to their origin, viz. their hypothetical connexion with the Cimmerii. In this recognition of what might have been called the _Cimmerian theory_, he is followed by Strabo and Plutarch.--_Diod. Sicul._ v. 32. _Strabo_ vii. _Plutarch. Vit. Marii._

The next writer who mentions them is Strabo. In confirmation of the view taken above, this author places the Cimbri on the northernmost limit of the area geographically known to him, viz. _beyond_ Gaul and _in_ Germany, between the Rhine and the Elbe: τῶν δὲ Γερμάνων ὡς εἶπον, ὁὶ μὲν προσάρκτιοι παρηκοῦσι τῷ Ὠκεανῷ. Γνωρίζονται δ' ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκβολῶν τοῦ Ῥήνου λαβόντες τὴν ἀρχὴν μέχρι τοῦ Ἄλβιος. Τούτων δὲ εἰσὶ γνωριμώτατοι Σούγαμβροί τε καὶ Κίμβροι. Τὰ δὲ πέραν τοῦ Ἄλβιος τὰ πρὸς τῷ Ὠκεανῷ ἄγνωστα ἡμῖν ἐστιν.. (B. iv.) Further proof that this was the frontier of the Roman world we get from the statement which soon follows, viz. that "thus much was known to the Romans from their successful wars, and that more would have been known had it not been for the injunction of Augustus forbidding his generals to cross the Elbe." (B. iv.)

Velleius Paterculus agrees with his contemporary Strabo. He places them beyond the Rhine and deals with them as Germans:--"tum Cimbri et Teutoni transcendere Rhenum, multis mox nostris suisque cladibus nobiles." (ii. 9.) "Effusa--immanis vis Germanarum gentium quibus nomen Cimbris et Teutonis erat." (_Ibid._ 12.)

From the _Germania_ of Tacitus a well-known passage will be considered in the sequel. Tacitus' locality coincides with that of Strabo.

_Ptolemy._--Now the author who most mentions in detail the tribes beyond the Elbe is also the author who most pushes back the Cimbri towards the north. Coincident with his improved information as to the parts southward, he places them at the extremity of the area known to him: Καῦχοι οἱ μείζονες μέχρι τού Ἀλβίου ποταμοῦ· ἐφεξῆς δὲ ἐπὶ αὔχενα τῆς Κιμβρικῆς Χερσονήσου Σάξονες, αὐτὴν δὲ τὴν Χερσόνησον· ὑπερ μὲν τοὺς Σάξονας, Σιγουλώνες ἀπὸ δυσμῶν· εἶτα Σαβαλίγγιοι εἶτα Κόβανδοι, ὑπὲρ οὓς Χάλοι· καὶ ἔτι ὑπερτάτους δυσμικώτεροι μὲν Φουνδούσιοι, ἀνατολικώτεροι δὲ Χαροῦδες, πάντων δὲ ἀρτικώτεροι Κύμβροι--_Ptolemæi Germania._

Such is the evidence of those writers, Greek or Roman, who deal with the local habitation of the Cimbri rather than with the general history of that tribe. As a measure of the indefinitude of their ideas, we have the confusion, already noticed, between the Cimbri and Cimmerii, on the parts of Diodorus, Strabo, and Plutarch. A better measure occurs in the following extract from Pliny, who not only fixes the Cimbri in three places at once, but also (as far as we can find any meaning in his language) removes them so far northward as Norway: "Alterum genus Ingævones, quorum pars Cimbri Teutoni ac Chaucorum gentes. Proximi Rheno Istævones, quorum pars Cimbri mediterranei." (iv. 14.) "Promontorium Cimbrorum excurrens in maria longe Peninsulam efficit quæ Carthis appellatur." _Ibid._ "Sevo Mons (the mountain-chains of Norway) immanem ad Cimbrorum usque promontorium efficit sinum, qui Codanus vocatur, refertus insulis, quarum clarissima Scandinavia, incompertæ magnitudinis." (iv. 13.) Upon confusion like this it is not considered necessary to expend further evidence. So few statements coincide, that under all views there must be a misconception somewhere; and of such misconception great must the amount be, to become more improbable than a national migration from Jutland to Italy.

Over and above, however, this particular question of evidence, there stands a second one; viz. the determination of the Ethnographical relations of the nations under consideration. This is the point as to whether the Cimbri conquered by Marius were Celts or Goths, akin to the Gauls, or akin to the Germans; a disputed point, and one which, for its own sake only, were worth discussing, even at the expense of raising a wholly independent question. Such however it is not. If the Cimbri were Celts, the improbability of their originating in the Cimbric Chersonese would be increased, and with it the amount of evidence required; since, laying aside other considerations, the natural unlikelihood of a large area being traversed by a mass of emigrants is greatly enhanced by the fact of any intermediate portion of that area being possessed by tribes as alien to each other as the Gauls and Germans. Hence therefore the fact of the Cimbri being Celts will (if proved) be considered as making against the probability of their origin in the Cimbric Chersonese; whilst if they be shown to be Goths, the difficulties of the supposition will be in some degree diminished. Whichever way this latter point is settled, something will be gained for the historian; since the supposed presence of Celts in the Cimbric Chersonese has complicated more than one question in ethnography.

Previous to proceeding in the inquiry it may be well to lay down once for all as a postulate, that whatever, in the way of ethnography, is proved concerning any one tribe of the Cimbro-Teutonic league, must be considered as proved concerning the remainder; since all explanations grounded upon the idea that one part was Gothic and another part Celtic have a certain amount of _primâ facie_ improbability to set aside. The same conditions as to the burden of proof apply also to any hypotheses founded on the notion of _retiring_ Cimbri _posterior_ to the attempted invasion of Italy. On this point the list of authors quoted will not be brought below the time of Ptolemy. With the testimonies anterior to that writer, bearing upon the question of the ethnography, the attempt however will be made to be exhaustive. Furthermore, as the question in hand is not so much the absolute fact as to whether the Cimbri were Celts or Goths, but one as to the amount of evidence upon which we believe them to be either the one or the other, statements will be noticed under the head of evidence, not because they are really proofs, but simply because they have ever been looked upon as such. Beginning then with the Germanic origin of the Cimbro-Teutonic confederation, and dealing separately with such tribes as are separately mentioned, we first find the

_Ambrones._--In the Anglo-Saxon poem called the Traveller's Song, there is a notice of a tribe called _Ymbre_, _Ymbras_, or _Ymbran_. Suhm, the historian of Denmark, has allowed himself to imagine that these represent the _Ambrones_, and that their name still exists in that of the island _Amron_ of the coast of Sleswick, and perhaps in _Amerland_, a part of Oldenburg.--Thorpe's note on the Traveller's Song in the _Codex Exoniensis_.

_Teutones._--In the way of evidence of there being Teutones amongst the Germans, over and above the associate mention of their names with that of the Cimbri, there is but little. They are not so mentioned either by Tacitus or Strabo. Ptolemy, however, mentions _a_) the Teutonarii, _b_) the Teutones: Τευτονοάριοι καὶ Ουίρουνοι--Φαραδεινῶν δὲ καὶ Συήβων, Τεύτονες καὶ Ἄμαρποι. Besides this, however, arguments have been taken from _a_) the meaning of the root _teut_ = _people_ (_þiuda_, M. G.; _þeód_, A. S.; _diot_, O. H. G.): _b_) the _Saltus Teutobergius_: _c_) the supposed connection of the present word _Deut-sch_ = _German_ with the classical word _Teutones_. These may briefly be disposed of.

_a._) It is not unlikely for an invading nation to call themselves _the nation_, _the nations_, _the people_, &c. Neither, if the tribe in question had done so (presuming them to have been Germans or Goths), would the word employed be very unlike _Teuton-es_. Although the word _þiud-a_ = _nation_ or _people_, is generally strong in its declension (so making the plural _þiud-ôs_), it is found also in a weak form with its plural _thiot-ûn_ = _Teuton-_. See _Deutsche Grammatik_, i. 630.

_b._) The _Saltus Teutobergius_ mentioned by Tacitus (_Ann._ i. 60) can scarcely have taken its name from a tribe, or, on the other hand, have given it to one. It means either _the hill of the people_, or _the city of the people_; according as the syllable _-berg-_ is derived from _báirgs_ = _a hill_, or from _baúrgs_ = _a city_. In either case the compound is allowable, _e. g._ diot-_wëc_, _public way_, O. H. G.; thiod-_scatho_, _robber of the people_, O. S.; þëód-_cyning_, þeod-_mearc_, _boundary of the nation_, A. S.; þiód-_land_, þiód-_vëgr_, _people's way_, Icelandic;--Theud-_e-mirus_, Theud-_e-linda_, Theud-_i-gotha_, proper names (from _þiud-_): _himil_-bërac, _velt_-përac; _friðu_-përac, O. H. G.; _himin_biörg, _val_biörg, Icelandic (from _báirgs_ = _hill_)--_asci_purc, _hasal_purc, _saltz_purc, &c., O. H. G. (from _baúrgs_ = _city_). The particular word _diot-puruc_ = _civitas magna_ occurs in O. H. G.--See _Deutsche Grammatik_, iii. p. 478.

_c._ Akin to this is the reasoning founded upon the connection (real or supposed) between the root _Teut-_ in _Teuton-_, and the root _deut-_ in _Deut-sch_. It runs thus. The syllable in question is common to the word _Teut-ones_, _Teut-onicus_, _Theod-iscus_, _teud-iscus_, _teut-iscus_, _tût-iske_, _dût-iske_, _tiut-sche_, _deut-sch_; whilst the word _Deut-sch_ means _German_. As the _Teut-ones_ were Germans, so were the Cimbri also. Now this line of argument is set aside by the circumstance that the syllable _Teut-_ in _Teut-ones_ and _Teut-onicus_, as the names of the confederates of the Cimbri, is wholly unconnected with the _Teut-_ in _theod-iscus_, and _Deut-sch_. This is fully shown by Grimm in his dissertation on the words _German_ and _Dutch_. In its oldest form the latter word meant _popular_, _national_, _vernacular_; it was an adjective applied to the _vulgar tongue_, or the vernacular German, in opposition to the Latin. In the tenth century the secondary form _Teut-onicus_ came in vogue even with German writers. Whether this arose out of imitation of the Latin form _Romanice_, or out of the idea of an historical connection with the Teutones of the classics, is immaterial. It is clear that the present word _deut-sch_ proves nothing respecting the _Teutones_. Perhaps, however, as early as the time of Martial the word _Teutonicus_ was used in a general sense, denoting the Germans in general. Certain it is that before his time it meant the particular people conquered by Marius, irrespective of origin or locality.--See Grimm's _Deutsche Grammatik_, i. p. 17, 3rd edit. Martial, xiv. 26, _Teutonici capilli_. Claudian. in Eutrop. i. 406, _Teutonicum hostem_.

The _Cimbri_.--Evidence to the Gothic origin of the Cimbri (treated separately) begins with the writers under Augustus and Tiberius.

_Vell. Paterculus._--The testimony of this writer as to the affinities of the nations in question is involved in his testimony as to their locality, and, consequently, subject to the same criticism. His mention of them (as Germans) is incidental.

_Strabo._--Over and above the references already made, Strabo has certain specific statements concerning the Cimbri: _a._) That according to a tradition (which he does not believe) they left their country on account of an inundation of the sea. This is applicable to Germany rather than to Gaul. This liability to inundations must not, however, be supposed to indicate a locality in the Cimbric Chersonese as well as a German origin, since the coast between the Scheldt and Elbe is as obnoxious to the ocean as the coasts of Holstein, Sleswick and Jutland. _b._) That against the German Cimbri and Teutones the Belgæ alone kept their ground--ὥστε μόνους (Βέλγας) ἀντέχειν πρὸς τὴν τῶν Γερμάνων ἔφοδον, Κίμβρων καὶ Τευτόνων (iv. 3.) This is merely a translation of Cæsar (see above) with the interpolation Γερμάνων. _c._) That they inhabited their original country, and that they sent ambassadors to Augustus--καὶ γὰρ νῦν ἔχουσι τὴν χώραν ἣν εἶχον πρότερον καὶ ἕπεμπσαν τῷ Σεβαστῷ ιἑρώτατον παρ' αὐτοῖς, λέβητα, αἰτούμενοι φιλίαν καὶ ἀμνηστίαν τῶν ὑπουργμένων· τυχόντες δὲ ὧν ἠξίουν ἀφῇραν. (B. i.) Full weight must be given to the definite character of this statement.

_Tacitus._--Tacitus coincides with Strabo, in giving to the Cimbri a specific locality, and in stating special circumstances of their history. Let full weight be given to the words of a writer like Tacitus; but let it also be remembered that he wrote from hearsay evidence, that he is anything rather than an independent witness, that his statement is scarcely reconcileable with those of Ptolemy and Cæsar, and that above all the locality which both he and Strabo give the _Cimbri_ is also the locality of the _Sicambri_, of which latter tribe no mention is made by Tacitus, although their wars with the Romans were matters of comparatively recent history. For my own part, I think, that between a confusion of the _Cimbri_ with the _Cimmerii_ on the one hand, and of the _Cimbri_ with the _Sicambri_ on the other, we have the clue to the misconceptions assumed at the commencement of the paper. There is no proof that in the eyes of the writers under the Republic, the origin of the Cimbri was a matter of either doubt or speculation. Catulus, in the History of his Consulship, commended by Cicero (_Brutus_, xxxv.), and Sylla in his Commentaries, must have spoken of them in a straightforward manner as Gauls, otherwise Cicero and Sallust would have spoken of them less decidedly. (See Plutarch's _Life of Marius_, and _note_.) Confusion arose when Greek readers of Homer and Herodotus began to theorize, and this grew greater when formidable enemies under the name of _Sicambri_ were found in Germany. It is highly probable that in both Strabo and Tacitus we have a commentary on the lines of Horace--

Te cæde gaudentes Sicambri Compositis venerantur armis.

"Eumdem (with the Chauci, Catti, and Cherusci) Germaniæ sinum proximi Oceano Cimbri tenent, parva nunc civitas, sed gloria ingens: veterisque famæ lata vestigia manent, utrâque ripâ castra ac spatia, quorum ambitu nunc quoque metiaris molem manusque gentis, et tam magni exitus fidem--occasione discordiæ nostræ et civilium armorum, expugnatis legionum hibernis, etiam Gallias affectavêre; ac rursus pulsi, inde proximis temporibus triumphati magis quam victi sunt." (_German._ 38.)

_Justin._--Justin writes--"Simul e _Germaniâ_ Cimbros--inundâsse Italiam." Now this extract would be valuable if we were sure that the word _Germania_ came from Justin's original, Trogus Pompeius; who was a Vocontian Gaul, living soon after the Cimbric defeat. To him, however, the term _Germania_ must have been wholly unknown; since, besides general reasons, Tacitus says--"Germaniæ vocabulum recens et nuper additum: quoniam, qui primum Rhenum transgressi Gallos expulerint, ac nunc Tungri, tunc Germani vocati sint: ita nationis nomen, non gentis evaluisse paullatim, ut omnes, primum a victore ob metum, mox a seipsis invento nomine _Germani_ vocarentur." Justin's interpolation of _Germania_ corresponds with the similar one on the part of Strabo.

Such is the evidence for the Germanic origin of the Cimbri and Teutones, against which may now be set the following testimonies as to their affinity with the Celts, each tribe being dealt with separately.

_The Ambrones._--Strabo mentions them along with the Tigurini, an undoubted Celtic tribe--Κατὰ τὸν πρὸς Ἄμβρωνας καὶ Τωϋγενοὺς πόλεμον.

Suetonius places them with the Transpadani--"per Ambronas et Transpadanos." (_Cæsar_, § 9.)

Plutarch mentions that their war-cries were understood and answered by the Ligurians. Now it is possible that the Ligurians were Celts, whilst it is certain that they were not Goths.

_The Teutones._--Appian speaks of the Teutones having invaded Noricum, and this under the head Κέλτικα.

Florus calls one of the kings of the Teutones Teutobocchus, a name Celtic rather than Gothic.

Virgil has the following lines:--

... late jam tum ditione premebat Sarrastes populos, et quæ rigat æquora Sarnus; Quique Rufas, Batulumque tenent, atque arva Celennæ; Et quos maliferæ despectant mœnia Abellæ: _Teutonico_ ritu soliti torquere _cateias_. Tegmina queis capitum raptus de subere cortex, Æratæque micant peltæ, micat æreus ensis.--_Æn._ vii. 737-743.

Now this word _cateia_ may be a provincialism from the neighbourhood of Sarraste. It may also (amongst other things) be a true Teutonic word. From what follows it will appear that this latter view is at least as likely as any other. The commentators state that it is _vox Celtica_. That this is true may be seen from the following forms--Irish: _ga_, _spear_, _javelin_; _gaoth_, _ditto_, _a dart_; _goth_, _a spear_ (O'Reilly); _gaothadh_, _a javelin_; _gadh_, _spear_; _gai_, _ditto_; _crann gaidh_, _spear-shaft_ (Begly)--Cornish: _geu_, _gew_, _gu_, _gui_ = _lance_, _spear_, _javelin_, _shaft_ (Pryce)--Breton: _goas_, _goaff_ (Rostremer).

_The Cimbri_--_The Teutones._--Of either the Cimbri separately or of the Cimbri and Teutones collectively, being of Gallic origin, we have, in the way of direct evidence, the testimonies exhibited above, viz. of Sallust, Cicero, Cæsar, Diodorus. To this may be added that of Dion Cassius, who not only had access to the contemporary accounts which spoke of them as Gauls, but also was enabled to use them critically, being possessed of information concerning Germany as well as France.

Of Appian the whole evidence goes one way, viz. that the tribes in question were Gauls. His expressions are: πλεῖστον τι καὶ μαχιμώτατον--χρῆμα Κελτῶν εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν καὶ τὴν Γαλατίαν εἰσέβαλε. (iv. 2.) In his book on Illyria he states that the Celts and Cimbri, along with the Illyrian tribe of the Autariæ, had, previous to the battle against Marius, attacked Delphi and suffered for their impiety. (Ἰλλυρ. δ. 4.)

Quintilian may be considered to give us upon the subject the notions of two writers--Virgil, and either Cæsar or Crassus. In dealing, however, with the words of Quintilian, it will be seen that there are two assumptions. That either Cæsar or Crassus considered the Cimbri to be Gauls we infer from the following passage:--"Rarum est autem, ut oculis subjicere contingat (_sc._ vituperationem), ut fecit C. Julius, qui cum Helvio Manciæ sæpius obstrepenti sibi diceret, _jam ostendam, qualis sis_: isque plane instaret interrogatione, qualem se tandem ostensurus esset, digito demonstravit imaginem Galli in scuto Mariano Cimbrico pictam, cui Mancia tum simillimus est visus. Tabernæ autem erant circum Forum, ac scutum illud signi gratiâ positum." _Inst. Orat._ vi. 3. 38. Pliny tells the story of Crassus (39. 4.). Although in this passage the word upon which the argument turns has been written _galli_, and translated _cock_, the current interpretation is the one given above.--_Vid. not._ ed. Gesner.

In the same author is preserved the epigram of Virgil's called Catalecta, and commented on by Ausonius of Bordeaux. Here we learn that T. Annius _Cimber_ was a Gaul; whilst it is assumed that there was no other reason to believe that he was called _Cimber_ than that of his being descended from some slave or freedman of that nation:--"Non appareat affectatio, in quam mirifice Virgilius,

Corinthiorum amator iste verborum, Ille iste rhetor: namque quatenus totus Thucydides Britannus, Atticæ febres, _Tau_-Gallicum, _min-_, _al-_ spinæ male illisit. Ita omnia ista verba miscuit fratri.

Cimber hic fuit a quo fratrem necatum hoc Ciceronis dictum notatum est; _Germanum Cimber occidit_."--_Inst. Orat._ viii. 3. _cum not_.

Dic, quid significent Catalecta Maronis? in his _al-_ Celtarum posuit, sequitur non lucidius _tau-_, Et quod germano mistum male letiferum _min-_.--_Auson._

Undoubtedly the pronunciation here ridiculed is that of the Gauls, and it is just possible that in it is foreshadowed the curtailed form that the Latin tongue in general puts on in the present French. Again, the slave whose courage failed him when ordered to slay Caius Marius is called both a Gaul and a Cimbrian by Plutarch, as well as by Lucan. In the latter writer we have probably but a piece of rhetoric (_Pharsalia._ lib. ii.)

Amongst tribes undoubtedly Gallic the Nervii claimed descent from the Teutones and Cimbri. The passage of Tacitus that connects the Nervii with the _Germans_ connects them also with the Treveri. Now a well-known passage in St. Jerome tells us that the Treveri were Gauls:--Νέρβιοι ἠσαν δὲ Κίμβρων καὶ Τευτόνων ἀπόγονοι.--_Appian_, iv. 1. 4. "Treveri et Nervii circa adfectationem Germanicæ originis ultrò ambitiosi sunt, tamquam, per hanc gloriam sanguinis, a similitudine et inertiâ Gallorum separentur." _German._ 28. Finally, in the Life of Marius by Plutarch we have dialogues between the Cimbri and the Romans. Now a Gallic interpreter was probable, but not so a German one.

Such are the notices bearing upon the ethnography of the Cimbri. Others occur, especially amongst the poets; of these little or no use can be made, for a reason indicated above. Justin speaks of embassies between Mithridates and the Cimbri. Suetonius connects the Cimbri with the Gallic Senones; he is writing however about Germany, so that his evidence, slight as it is, is neutralized. Theories grounded upon the national name may be raised on both sides; _Cimbri_ may coincide with either the Germanic _kempa_ = _a warrior_ or _champion_, or with the Celtic _Cymry_ = _Cambrians_. Equally equivocal seem the arguments drawn from the descriptions either of their physical conformation or their manners. The silence of the Gothic traditions as to the Cimbri being Germanic, proves more in the way of negative evidence than the similar silence of the Celtic ones, since the Gothic legends are the most numerous and the most ancient. Besides this, they deal very especially with genealogies, national and individual. The name of Bojorix, a Cimbric king mentioned in _Epitome Liviana_ (lxvii.), is Celtic rather than Gothic, although in the latter dialects proper names ending in _-ric_, (_Alaric_, _Genseric_) frequently occur.

Measuring the evidence, which is in its character essentially cumulative, consisting of a number of details unimportant in themselves, but of value when taken in the mass, the balance seems to be in favour of the Cimbri, Teutones and Ambrones being Gauls rather than Germans, Celts rather than Goths.

An argument now forthcoming stands alone, inasmuch as it seems to prove two things at once, viz. not only the Celtic origin of the Cimbri, but, at the same time, their locality in the Chersonese. It is brought forward by Dr. Pritchard in his 'Physical History of Mankind,' and runs as follows:--(_a._) It is a statement of Pliny that the sea in their neighbourhood was called by the Cimbri _Morimarusa_, or the _dead sea_ = _mare mortuum_. (_b._) It is a fact that in Celtic Welsh _mor marwth_ = _mare mortuum_, _morimarusa_, _dead sea_. Hence the language of the Cimbric coast is to be considered as Celtic. Now the following facts invalidate this conclusion:--(1.) Putting aside the contradictions in Pliny's statement, the epithet _dead_ is inapplicable to either the German Ocean or the Baltic. (2.) Pliny's authority was a writer named Philemon: out of the numerous Philemons enumerated by Fabricius, it is likely that the one here adduced was a contemporary of Alexander the Great; and it is not probable that at that time glosses from the Baltic were known in the Mediterranean. (3.) The subject upon which this Philemon wrote was the Homeric Poems. This, taken along with the geography of the time, makes it highly probable that the original Greek was not Κίμβροι, but Κιμμέριοι; indeed we are not absolutely sure of Pliny having written _Cimbri_. (4.) As applied to Cimmerian sea the epithet _dead_ was applicable. (5.) The term _Morimarusa_ = _mare mortuum_, although good Celtic, is better Slavonic, since throughout that stock of languages, as in many other of the Indo-European tongues (the Celtic and Latin included), the roots _mor_ and _mori_ mean _sea_ and _dead_ respectively:--"Septemtrionalis Oceanus, Amalchium eum Hecatæus appellat, a Paropamiso amne, qua Scythiam alluit, quod nomen ejus gentis linguâ significat congelatum, Philemon _Morimarusam_ a Cimbris (qu. _Cimmeriis_) vocari scribit: hoc est _mare mortuum_ usque ad promontorium Rubeas, ultra deinde Cronium." (13.)

One point, however, still remains: it may be dealt with briefly, but it should not be wholly overlooked, viz. the question, whether over and above the theories as to the location of the Cimbri in the Cimbric Chersonese, there is reason to believe, on independent grounds, that Celtic tribes were the early inhabitants of the peninsula in question? If such were actually the case, all that has preceded would, up to a certain point, be invalidated. Now I know no sufficient reasons for believing such to be the case, although there are current in ethnography many insufficient ones.

1. In the way of Philology, it is undoubtedly true that words common to the Celtic tribes occur in the Danish of Jutland, and in the Frisian and Low German of Sleswick and Holstein; but there is no reason to consider that they belong to an aboriginal Celtic tribe. The _à priori_ probability of Celts in the peninsula involves hypotheses in ethnography which are, to say the least, far from being generally recognized. The evidence as to the language of aborigines derived from the significance of the names of old geographical localities is wanting for the Cimbric Chersonese.

2. No traditions, either Scandinavian or German, point towards an aboriginal Celtic population for the localities in question.

3. There are no satisfactory proofs of such in either Archæology or Natural History. A paper noticed by Dr. Pritchard of Professor Eschricht's upon certain Tumuli in Jutland states, that the earliest specimens of art (anterior to the discovery of metals), as well as the character of the tumuli themselves, have a Celtic character. He adds, however, that the character of the tumuli is as much Siberian as Celtic. The early specimens of art are undoubtedly like similar specimens found in England. It happens, however, that such things are in _all_ countries more or less alike. In Professor Siebold's museum at Leyden, stone-axes from tumuli in Japan and Jutland are laid side by side, for the sake of comparison, and between them there is no perceptible difference. The oldest skulls in these tumuli are said to be other than Gothic. They are, however, Finnic rather than Celtic.

4. The statement in Tacitus (_German._ 44.), that a nation on the Baltic called the Æstii spoke a language somewhat akin to the British, cannot be considered as conclusive to the existence of Celts in the North of Germany. Any language, not German, would probably so be denoted. Such might exist in the mother-tongue of either the Lithuanic or the Esthonian.

It is considered that in the foregoing pages the following propositions are either proved or involved:--1. That the Cimbri conquered by Marius came from either Gaul or Switzerland, and that they were Celts. 2. That the Teutones and Ambrones were equally Celtic with the Cimbri. 3. That no nation north of the Elbe was known to Republican Rome. 4. That there is no evidence of Celtic tribes ever having existed north of the Elbe. 5. That the epithet _Cimbrica_ applied to the Chersonesus proves nothing more in respect to the inhabitants of that locality than is proved by words like _West Indian_ and _North-American Indian_. 6. That in the word _cateia_ we are in possession of a new Celtic gloss. 7. That in the term _Morimarusa_ we are in possession of a gloss at once Cimmerian and Slavonic. 8. That for any positive theory as to the Cimbro-Teutonic league we have at present no data, but that the hypothesis that would reconcile the greatest variety of statements would run thus: viz. that an organized Celtic confederation conterminous with the Belgæ, the Ligurians, and the Helvetians descended with its eastern divisions upon Noricum, and with its western ones upon Provence.

ADDENDA.

JANUARY 1859.

(1)

In this paper the notice of the Monumentum Ancyranum is omitted. It is CIMBRIQVE ET CHRIIDES ET SEMNONES ET EJVSDEM TRACTVS ALII GERMANORVM POPVLI PER LEGATOS AMICITIAM MEAM ET POPVLI ROMANI PETIERVNT. This seems to connect itself with Strabo's notice. It may also connect itself with that of Tacitus. Assuming the CHARIIDES to be the Harudes, and the Harudes to be the Cherusci (a doctrine for which I have given reasons in my edition of the Germania) the position of the Cimbri in the text of Tacitus is very nearly that of them in the Inscription. In the inscription, the order is Cimbri, Harudes, Semnones; in Tacitus, Cherusci, Cimbri, Semnones. In both cases the 3 names are associated.

(2)

I would now modify the proposition with which the preceding dissertation concludes, continuing, however, to hold the main doctrine of the text, viz. the fact of the Cimbri having been unknown in respect to their name and locality and, so, having been pushed northwards, and more northwards still, as fresh areas were explored without supplying an undoubted and unequivocal origin for them.

I think that the Ambrones, the Tigurini, and the Teutones were Gauls of Helvetia, and South Eastern Gallia, and that the alliance between them and the Cimbri (assuming it to be real) is _primâ facie_ evidence of the latter being Galli also. But it is no more.

That the Cimbri were the Eastern members of the confederation seems certain. More than one notice connects them with Noricum. _Here_ they may have been native. They may also have been intrusive.

Holding that the greater part of Noricum was Slavonic, and that almost all the country along its northern and eastern frontier was the same, I see my way to the Cimbri having been Slavonic also. That they were Germans is out of the question. Gauls could hardly have been so unknown and mysterious to the Romans. Gaul they knew well, and Germany sufficiently--yet no where did they find Cimbri.

The evidence of Posidonius favours this view. "He" writes Strabo "does not unreasonably conceive that these Cimbri being predatory and wandering might carry their expeditions as far as the Mæotis, and that the Bosporus might, from them, take its name of _Cimmerian_, i. e. _Cimbrian_, the Greeks calling the _Cimbri Cimmerii_. He says that the Boii originally inhabited the Hercynian Forest, that the Cimbri attacked them, that they were repulsed, that they then descended on the Danube, and the country of the Scordisci who are Galatæ; thence upon the Taurisci," who "are also Galatæ, then upon the Helvetians &c."--_Strabo._ 7, p. 293.

For a fuller explanation of the doctrine which makes the Cimbri possible Slavonians see my Edition of Prichard's origin of the Celtic nations--_Supplementary Chapter--Ambrones, Tigurini, Teutones, Boii, Slavonic hypothesis_ &c.

ON THE ORIGINAL EXTENT OF THE SLAVONIC AREA.

READ BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, FEBRUARY 8, 1850.

The current opinion, that a great portion of the area now occupied by Slavonians, and a still greater portion so occupied in the ninth and tenth centuries, were, in the times of Cæsar and Tacitus, either German, or something other than what it is found to be at the beginning of the period of authentic and contemporary history, has appeared so unsatisfactory to the present writer, that he has been induced to consider the evidence on which it rests. What (for instance) are the grounds for believing that, in the _first_ century, Bohemia was not just as Slavonic as it is now? What the arguments in favour of a Germanic population between the Elbe and Vistula in the _second_?

The fact that, at the very earliest period when any definite and detailed knowledge of either of the parts in question commences, both are as little German as the Ukraine is at the present moment, is one which no one denies. How many, however, will agree with the present writer in the value to be attributed to it, is another question. For his own part, he takes the existence of a given division of the human race (whether Celtic, Slavonic, Gothic or aught else) on a given area, as a sufficient reason for considering it to have been indigenous or aboriginal to that area, _until reasons be shown to the contrary_. Gratuitous as this postulate may seem in the first instance, it is nothing more than the legitimate deduction from the rule in reasoning which forbids us to multiply causes unnecessarily. Displacements therefore, conquests, migrations, and the other disturbing causes are not to be assumed, merely for the sake of accounting for assumed changes, but to be supported by specific evidence; which evidence, in its turn, must have a ratio to the probability or the improbability of the disturbing causes alleged. These positions seem so self-evident, that it is only by comparing the amount of improbabilities which are accepted with the insufficiency of the testimony on which they rest, that we ascertain, from the extent to which they have been neglected, the necessity of insisting upon them.

The ethnological condition of a given population at a certain time is _primâ facie_ evidence of a similar ethnological condition at a previous one. The testimony of a writer as to the ethnological condition of a given population at a certain time is also _primâ facie_ evidence of such a condition being a real one; since even the worst authorities are to be considered correct until reasons are shown for doubting them.

It now remains to see how far these two methods are concordant or antagonistic for the area in question; all that is assumed being, that when we find even a good writer asserting that at one period (say the third century) a certain locality was German, whereas we know that at a subsequent one (say the tenth) it was other than German, it is no improper scepticism to ask, whether it is more likely that the writer was mistaken, or that changes have occurred in the interval; in other words, if error on the one side is not to be lightly assumed, neither are migrations, &c. on the other. Both are likely, or unlikely, according to the particular case in point. It is more probable that an habitually conquering nation should have displaced an habitually conquered one, than that a bad writer should be wrong. It is more likely that a good writer should be wrong than that an habitually conquered nation should have displaced an habitually conquering one.

The application of criticism of this sort materially alters the relations of the Celtic, Gothic, Roman and Slavonic populations, giving to the latter a prominence in the ancient world much more proportionate to their present preponderance as a European population than is usually admitted.

Beginning with the south-western frontier of the present Slavonians, let us ask what are the reasons against supposing the population of Bohemia to have been in the time of Cæsar other than what it is now, _i. e._ Slavonic.

In the first place, if it were not so, it must have changed within the historical period. If so, when? No writer has ever grappled with the details of the question. It could scarcely have been subsequent to the development of the Germanic power on the Danube, since this would be within the period of annalists and historians, who would have mentioned it. As little is it likely to have been during the time when the Goths and Germans, victorious everywhere, were displacing others rather than being displaced themselves.

The evidence of the language is in the same direction. Whence could it have been introduced? Not from the Saxon frontier, since there the Slavonic is Polish rather than Bohemian. Still less from the Silesian, and least of all from the Bavarian. To have developed its differential characteristics, it must have had either Bohemia itself as an original locality, or else the parts south and east of it.

We will now take what is either an undoubted Slavonic locality, or a locality in the neighbourhood of Slavonians, _i. e._ the country between the rivers Danube and Theiss and that range of hills which connect the Bakonyer-wald with the Carpathians, the country of the _Jazyges_. Now as _Jazyg_ is a Slavonic word, meaning _speech_ or _language_, we have, over and above the external evidence which makes the Jazyges Sarmatian, internal evidence as well; evidence subject only to one exception, viz. that perhaps the name in question was not native to the population which it designated, but only a term applied by some Slavonic tribe to some of their neighbours who might or might not be Slavonic. I admit that this is possible, although the name is not of the kind that would be given by one tribe to another different from itself. Admitting, however, this, it still leaves a Slavonic population in the contiguous districts; since, whether borne by the people to whom it was applied or not, _Jazyg_ is a Slavonic gloss from the Valley of the Tibiscus.

Next comes the question as to the _date_ of this population. To put this in the form least favourable to the views of the present writer, is to state that the first author who mentions a population in these parts, either called by others or calling itself _Jazyges_, is a writer so late as Ptolemy, and that he adds to it the qualifying epithet _Metanastæ_ (Μετανάσται), a term suggestive of their removal from some other area, and of the recent character of their arrival on the Danube. Giving full value to all this, there still remains the fact of primary importance in all our investigations on the subject in question, viz. that in the time of Ptolemy (at least) there were Slavonians on (or near) the river Theiss.

At present it is sufficient to say that there are no _à priori_ reasons for considering these Jazyges as the most western of the branch to which they belonged, since the whole of the Pannonians may as easily be considered Slavonic as aught else. They were not Germans. They were not Celts; in which case the common rules of ethnological criticism induce us to consider them as belonging to the same class with the population conterminous to them; since unless we do this, we must assume a new division of the human species altogether; a fact, which, though possible, and even probable, is not lightly to be taken up.

So much for the _à priori_ probabilities: the known facts by no means traverse them. The Pannonians, we learn from Dio, were of the same class with the Illyrians, _i. e._ the northern tribes of that nation. These must have belonged to one of three divisions; the Slavonic, the Albanian, or some division now lost. Of these, the latter is not to be assumed, and the first is more probable than the second. Indeed, the more we make the Pannonians and Illyrians other than Slavonic, the more do we isolate the _Jazyges_; and the more we isolate these, the more difficulties we create in a question otherwise simple.

That the portion of Pannonia to the north of the Danube (_i. e._ the north-west portion of Hungary, or the valley of the Waag and Gran) was different from the country around the lake Peiso (Pelso), is a position, which can only be upheld by considering it to be the country of the Quadi, and the Quadi to have been Germanic;--a view, against which there are numerous objections.

Now, here re-appears the term Daci; so that we must recognise the important fact, that east of the _Jazyges_ there are the Dacians (and Getæ) of the Lower, and west of the _Jazyges_ the Daci of the Upper Danube. These must be placed in the same category, both being equally either Slavonic or non-Slavonic.

_a._ Of these alternatives, the first involves the following real or apparent difficulty, _i. e._ that, if the Getæ are what the Daci are, the Thracians are what the Getæ are. Hence, if all three be Slavonic, we magnify the area immensely, and bring the Slavonians of Thrace in contact with the Greeks of Macedonia. Granted. But are there any reasons against this? So far from there being any such in the nature of the thing itself, it is no more than what is actually the case at the present moment.

_b._ The latter alternative isolates the _Jazyges_, and adds to the difficulties created by their ethnological position, under the supposition that they are the only Slavonians of the parts in question; since if out-lyers to the area (_exceptional_, so to say), they must be either invaders from without, or else relics of an earlier and more extended population. If they be the former, we can only bring them from the north of the Carpathian mountains (a fact not in itself improbable, but not to be assumed, except for the sake of avoiding greater difficulties); if the latter, they prove the original Slavonic character of the area.

The present writer considers the Daci then (western and eastern) as Slavonic, and the following passage brings them as far west as the _Maros_ or _Morawe_, which gives the name to the present Moravians, a population at once Slavonic and Bohemian:--"Campos et plana Jazyges Sarmatæ, montes vero et saltus pulsi ab his Daci ad Pathissum amnem a Maro sive Duria ... tenent."--_Plin._ iv. 12.

The evidence as to the population of Moravia and North-eastern Hungary being Dacian, is Strabo's Γέγονε ... τῆς χόρας μερισμὸς συμμένων παλαιοῦ· τοὺς μὲν γὰρ Δάκους προσαγορεύουσι, τοὺς δὲ Γέτας, Γέτας μὲν πρὸς τὸν Πόντον κεκλιμένους, καὶ πρὸς τὲν ἕω, Δάκους δὲ τοὺς εἰς τἀνάντια πρὸς Γερμανίαν καὶ τὰς τοῦ Ἴστρου πήγας.--From Zeuss, in _vv. Getæ, Daci_.

In Moravia we have as the basis of argument, an _existing_ Slavonic population, speaking a language identical with the Bohemian, but different from the other Slavonic languages, and (as such) requiring a considerable period for the evolution of its differential characters. This brings us to Bohemia. At present it is Slavonic. When did it begin to be otherwise? No one informs us on this point. Why should it not have been so _ab initio_, or at least at the beginning of the historical period for these parts? The necessity of an answer to this question is admitted; and it consists chiefly (if not wholly) in the following arguments;--_a._ those connected with the term _Marcomanni_; _b._ those connected with the term _Boiohemum_.

_a._ _Marcomanni._--This word is so truly Germanic, and so truly capable of being translated into English, that those who believe in no other etymology whatever may believe that _Marc-o-manni_, or _Marchmen_, means the _men of the (boundaries) marches_; and without overlooking either the remarks of Mr. Kemble on the limited nature of the word _mearc_, when applied to the smaller divisions of land, or the doctrine of Grimm, that its primary signification is _wood_ or _forest_, it would be an over-refinement to adopt any other meaning for it in the present question than that which it has in its undoubted combinations, _Markgrave_, _Altmark_, _Mittelmark_, _Ukermark_, and the _Marches of Wales and Scotland_. If so, it was the name of a line of _enclosing frontier_ rather than of an _area enclosed_; so that to call a country like the _whole_ of Bohemia, _Marcomannic_, would be like calling _all_ Scotland or _all_ Wales _the Marches_.

Again, as the name arose on the western, Germanic or Gallic side of the _March_, it must have been the name of an _eastern_ frontier in respect to Gaul and Germany; so that to suppose that there were Germans on the Bohemian line of the _Marcomanni_, is to suppose that the _march_ was no _mark_ (or boundary) at all, at least in an _ethnological_ sense. This qualification involves a difficulty which the writer has no wish to conceal; a _march_ may be other than an _ethnological_ division. It may be a _political_ one. In other words, it may be like the Scottish Border, rather than like the Welsh and the Slavono-Germanic marches of Altmark, Mittelmark and Ukermark. At any rate, the necessity for a _march_ being a line of frontier rather than a large compact kingdom, is conclusive against the whole of Bohemia having been Germanic _because it was Marcomannic_.

_b._ The arguments founded on the name _Boiohemum_ are best met by showing that the so-called _country (home) of the Boii_ was not _Bohemia_ but _Bavaria_. This will be better done in the sequel than now. At present, however, it may be as well to state that so strong are the facts in favour of _Boiohemum_ and _Baiovarii_ meaning, not the one Bohemia and the other Bavaria, but _one of the two countries_, that Zeuss, one of the strongest supporters of the doctrine of an originally Germanic population in Bohemia, applies both of them to the firstnamed kingdom; a circumstance which prepares us for expecting, that if the names fit the countries to which they apply thus loosely, _Boiohemum_ may as easily be _Bavaria_, as the country of the _Baiovarii_ be _Bohemia_; in other words, that we have a _convertible form_ of argument.

ADDENDA (1859).

(1)

Too much stress is, perhaps, laid on the name Jazyges. The fact of the word Jaszag in Magyar meaning a _bowman_ complicates it. The probability, too, of the word for _Language_ being the name of a nation is less than it is ought to be, considering the great extent to which it is admitted.

(2)

The statements respecting Bohemia are over-strong. _Some_ portion of it was, probably, Marcomannic and German. The greater part, however, of the original Boio-_hem_-um, or _home_ of the _Boii_, I still continue to give to the country of the _Boian occupants_--Baio-_var_-ii = _Bavaria_; the word itself being a compound of the same kind as Cant-_wære_ = _inhabitants of Kent_. (See Zeuss in _v. Baiovarii_).

ON THE ORIGINAL EXTENT OF THE SLAVONIC AREA.

READ BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

MARCH 8, 1850.

The portion of the Slavonic frontier which will be considered this evening is the north-western, beginning with the parts about the Cimbric peninsula, and ending at the point of contact between the present kingdoms of Saxony and Bohemia; the leading physical link between the two extreme populations being the Elbe.

For this tract, the historical period begins in the ninth century. The classification which best shows the really westerly disposition of the Slavonians of this period, and which gives us the fullest measure of the extent to which, _at that time at least_, they limited the easterly extension of the Germans, is to divide them into--_a._ the Slavonians of the Cimbric peninsula; _b._ the Slavonians of the right bank of the Elbe; _c._ the Slavonians of the _left_ bank of the Elbe; the first and last being the most important, as best showing the amount of what may be called the _Slavonic protrusion into the accredited Germanic area_.

_a._ _The Slavonians of the Cimbric Peninsula._--Like the Slavonians that constitute the next section, these are on the right bank of the Elbe; but as they are _north_ of that river rather than east of it, the division is natural.

_The Wagrians._--Occupants of the country between the Trave and the upper portion of the southern branch of the Eyder.

_The Polabi._--Conterminous with the Wagrians and the Saxons of Sturmar, from whom they were separated by the river Bille.

_b._ _Slavonians of the right bank of the Elbe._--_The Obodriti._--This is a generic rather than a specific term; so that it is probable that several of the Slavonic populations about to be noticed may be but subdivisions of the great Obotrit section. The same applies to the divisions already noticed--the Wagri and Polabi: indeed the classification is so uncertain, that we have, for these parts and times, no accurate means of ascertaining whether we are dealing with _sub_-divisions or _cross_-divisions of the Slavonians. At any rate the word _Obotriti_ was one of the best-known of the whole list; so much so, that it is likely, in some cases, to have equalled in import the more general term _Wend_. The varieties of orthography and pronunciation may be collected from Zeuss (_in voce_), where we find _Obotriti_, _Obotritæ_, _Abotriti_, _Abotridi_, _Apodritæ_, _Abatareni_, _Apdrede_, _Abdrede_, _Abtrezi_. Furthermore, as evidence of the generic character of the word, we find certain _East-Obotrits_ (_Oster-Abtrezi_), conterminous with the Bulgarians, as well as the _North-Obotrits_ (_Nort-Abtrezi_), for the parts in question. These are the northern districts of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, from the Trave to the Warnow, chiefly along the coast. Zeuss makes Schwerin their most inland locality. The _Descriptio Civitatum_ gives them fifty-three towns.

In the more limited sense of the term, the Obotrits are not conterminous with any German tribe, being separated by the Wagri and Polabi. Hence when Alfred writes _Norðan Eald-Seaxum is Apdrede_, he probably merges the two sections last-named in the Obotritic.

Although not a frontier population, the Obotrits find place in the present paper. They show that the Wagri and Polabi were not mere isolated and outlying portions of the great family to which they belonged, but that they were in due continuity with the main branches of it.

_Varnahi._--This is the form which the name takes in Adam of Bremen. It is also that of the Varni, Varini, and Viruni of the classical writers; as well as of the Werini of the Introduction to the _Leges Angliorum et Werinorum, hoc est Thuringorum_. Now whatever the Varini of Tacitus may have been, and however much the affinities of the Werini were with the Angli, the Varnahi of Adam of Bremen are Slavonic.

_c._ _Cis-Albian Slavonians._--Beyond the boundaries of the Duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg, the existence of Germans on the right bank of the Elbe is _nil_.

With Altmark the evidence of a Slavonic population changes, and takes strength. The present Altmark is not German, as Kent is Saxon, but only as Cornwall is, _i. e._ the traces of the previous Slavonic population are like the traces of the Celtic occupants of Cornwall, the rule rather than the exception. Most of the geographical names in Altmark are Slavonic, the remarkable exception being the name of the _Old March_ itself.

The Slavono-German frontier for the parts south of Altmark becomes so complex as to require to stand over for future consideration. All that will be done at present is to indicate the train of reasoning applicable here, and applicable along the line of frontier. If such was the state of things in the eighth and ninth centuries, what reason is there for believing it to have been otherwise in the previous ones? The answer is the testimony of Tacitus and others in the way of external, and certain etymologies, &c. in the way of internal, evidence. Without at present saying anything in the way of disparagement to either of these series of proofs, the present writer, who considers that the inferences which have generally been drawn from them are illegitimate, is satisfied with exhibiting the amount of _à priori_ improbability which they have to neutralize. If, when Tacitus wrote, the area between the Elbe and Vistula was not Slavonic, but Gothic, the Slavonians of the time of Charlemagne must have immigrated between the second and eighth centuries; must have done so, not in parts, but for the whole frontier; must have, for the first and last time, displaced a population which has generally been the conqueror rather than the conquered; must have displaced it during one of the strongest periods of its history; must have displaced it everywhere, and wholly; and (what is stranger still) that not permanently--since from the time in question, those same Germans, who between A.D. 200 and A.D. 800 are supposed to have always retreated before the Slavonians, have from A.D. 800 to A.D. 1800 always reversed the process and encroached upon their former dispossessors.

ADDENDA (1859).

(1)

The details of the Slavonic area to the south of Altmark are as follows.

_Brandenburg_, at the beginning of the historical period, was Slavonic, and one portion of it, the Circle of Cotbus, is so at the present moment. It is full of geographical names significant in the Slavonic languages. Of Germans to the East of the Elbe there are no signs until after the time of Charlemagne. But the Elbe is not even their eastern boundary. The Saale is the river which divides the Slavonians from the Thuringians--not only at the time when its drainage first comes to be known, but long afterwards. More than this, there were, in the 11th and 12th centuries, Slavonians in Thuringia, Slavonians in Franconia--facts which can be found in full in Zeuss _vv. Fränkische und Thüringische Slawen_--(_Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme_).

_Saxony_ brings us down to the point with which the preceding paper concluded viz: the frontier of Bohemia. This was in the same category with Brandenburg. In Leipzig Slavonic was spoken A. D. 1327. In Lusatia it is spoken at the present moment. When were the hypothetical Germans of all these parts eliminated, or (if not eliminated) amalgamated with a population of intruders who displaced their language, not on one spot or on two, but every where?

If the Slavonians of the time of Charlemagne were indigenous to the western portion of their area, they were, _a fortiori_, indigenous to the eastern. At any rate, few who hold that the German populations of Bohemia, Mecklenburg, Luneburg, Altmark, Brandenburg, Saxony, Silesia, and Lusatia are recent, will doubt their being so in Pomerania.

In his Edition of the Germania of Tacitus the only Germans east of the Elbe, Saale and the Fichtel Gebirge, recognised by the present writer are certain intrusive Marcomanni; who (by hypothesis) derived from Thuringia, reached the Danube by way of the valley of Naab, and pressed eastward to some point unknown--but beyond the southern frontier of Moravia. Here they skirted the Slavonic populations of the north, and formed to their several areas the several Marches from which they took their name.

As far as we have gone hitherto we have gone in the direction of the doctrine that the Slavonians of Franconia, Thuringia, Saxony, Altmark, Luneburg, Mecklenburg, Holstein, and Brandenburg &c. were all old occupants of the districts in which they were found in the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries; also that the present Czekhs of Bohemia and Moravia, the present Serbs of Lusatia and Brandenburg, the present Kassubs of Pomerania, and the present Slovaks of Hungary represent aboriginal populations. We now ask how far this was the case with the frontagers of North-eastern Italy, and the Slavonians of Carinthia and Carniola. The conclusion to which we arrive in respect to these will apply to those of Bosnia, Servia, and Dalmatia.

That the Carinthians and Carniolans were the descendants of the Carni of the Alpes Carnicæ would never have been doubted but for the following statements--"The Krobati who now occupy the parts in the direction of Delmatia are derived from the Unbaptized Krobati, the Krovati Aspri so-called; who dwelt on the otherside of Turkey, and near France, conterminous with the Unbaptized Slaves--_i. e._ the Serbi. The word Krobati is explained by the dialect of the Slaves. It means the possessors of a large country"--_Constantinus Porphyrogeneta_--_De Adm. Imp._ 31. _ed. Par._ _p._ 97.

Again--"But the Krobati dwelt then in the direction of Bagivareia" (Bavaria) "where the Belokrobati are now. One tribe (γενεὰ) separated. Five brothers led them. Clukas, and Lobelos, and Kosentes, and Muklô, and Krobatos, and two sisters, Tuga and Buga. These with their people came to Delmatia--The other Krobati stayed about France, and are called Belokrobati, _i. e._ Aspri Krobati, having their own leader. They are subject to Otho the great king of France and Saxony. They continue Unbaptized, intermarrying" (συμπενθερίας καὶ ἀγάπας ἔχοντες) "with the Turks"--_c._ 30. _p._ 95.--The statement that the Kroatians of Dalmatia came from the Asprocroatians is repeated. The evidence, however, lies in the preceding passages; upon which it is scarcely necessary to remark that _bel_ = _white_ in Slavonic, and _aspro_ = _white_ in Romaic.

So much for the Croatians. The evidence that the Servians were in the same category, is also Constantine's.--"It must be understood that the Servians are from the Unbaptized Servians, called also Aspri, beyond Turkey, near a place called Boiki, near France--just like the Great Crobatia, also Unbaptized and White. Thence, originally, came the Servians"--_c._ 32. _p._ 99.

In the following passages the evidence improves--"The same Krobati came as suppliants to the Emperor Heraclius, before the Servians did the same, at the time of the inroads of the Avars--By his order these same Krobati having conquered the Avars, expelled them, occupied the country they occupied, and do so now"--_c._ 31. _p._ 97.

Their country extended from the River Zentina to the frontier of Istria and, thence, to Tzentina and Chlebena in Servia. Their towns were Nona, Belogradon, Belitzein, Scordona, Chlebena, Stolpon, Tenen, Kori, Klaboca--(_c._ 31. _p._ 97. 98). Their country was divided into 11. _Supan-rics_ (Ζουπανιας).

They extended themselves. From the Krobati "who came into Dalmatia a portion detached themselves, and conquered the Illyrian country and Pannonia" (_c._ 30 _p._ 95).

The further notices of the Servians are of the same kind. Two brothers succeeded to the kingdom, of which one offered his men and services to Heraclius, who placed them at first in the Theme Thessalonica, where they grew homesick, crossed the Danube about Belgrade, repented, turned back, were placed in Servia, in the parts occupied by the Avars, and, finally, were baptized. (_c._ 32. _p._ 99.)

It is clear that all this applies to the Slavonians of Croatia, Bosnia, Servia, and Slavonia--_i. e._ the triangle at the junction of the Save and Danube. It has no application to Istria, Carniola, Carinthia, and Styria. Have any writers so applied it? Some have, some have not. More than this, many who have never applied it argue just as if they had. Zeuss, especially stating that the Slavonic population of the parts in question was earlier than that of Croatia, still, makes it recent. Why? This will soon be seen. At present, it is enough to state that it is not by the _direct_ application of the passage in Porphyrogeneta that the antiquity of the Slavonic character of the Carinthians, Carniolans, and Istrians is impugned.

The real reason lies in the fact of the two populations being alike in other respects. What is this worth? Something--perhaps, much. Which way, however, does it tell? That depends on circumstances. If the Croatians be recent, the Carinthians should be so too. But what if the evidence make the Carinthians old? Then, the recency of the Croatians is impugned. Now Zeuss (_vv. Alpenslawen, Carantani, and Creinarii_) distinctly shews that there were Slavonians in the present districts before the time of Heraclius--not much before, but still before. Why not much? "They came only a little before", inasmuch as Procopius "gives us nothing but the old names Carni, and Norici". But what if these were Slavonic?

The present meaning of the root _Carn-_ is _March_, just as it is in U-_krain_. In a notice of the year A. D. 974 we find "quod _Carn_-iola vocatur, et quod vulgo vocatur _Creina marcha_", the Slavonic word being translated into German. Such a fact, under ordinary circumstances would make the _Carn-_ in Alpes _Carn_-icæ, a Slavonic gloss; as it almost certainly is. I do not, however, know the etymologist who has claimed it. Zeuss does not--though it is from his pages that I get the chief evidence of its being one.

Croatia, Bosnia, and Servia now come under the application of the Constantine text.

Let it pass for historical; notwithstanding the length of time between its author and the events which it records.

Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the high probability of _Crobyzi_, a word used in Servia before the Christian æra, being the same as _Krobati_.

Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the chances that it is only an inference from the presence of an allied population on both sides of Pannonia.

Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the leadership of the five brothers (one the eponymus _Krobatos_) and the two sisters.

Let it do this, and then let us ask how it is to be interpreted. Widely or strictly? We see what stands against it viz: the existing conditions of three mountainous regions exhibiting the signs of being the occupancies of an aboriginal population as much as any countries on the face of the earth.

What then is the strict interpretation? Even this--that Heraclius introduced certain Croatians from the north into the occupancies of the dispossessed Avars apparently as military colonies. Does this mean that they were the first of their lineage? By no means. The late emperor of Russian planted Slavonic colonies of Servians in Slavonic Russia. Metal upon metal is false heraldry; but it does not follow that Slave upon Slave is bad ethnology.

With such a full realization of the insufficiency of the evidence which makes Bohemia, Carinthia, Servia &c. other than Slavonic _ab initio_, we may proceed to the ethnology of the parts to the west, and southwest--the Tyrol, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg. In respect to these, we may either distribute them among the populations of the frontier, or imagine for them some fresh division of the population of Europe, once existent, but now extinct. We shall not, however, choose this latter alternative unless we forget the wholesome rule which forbids us to multiply causes unnecessarily.

Let us say, then, that the southern frontier of the division represented by the Slavonians of Carniola was originally prolonged until it touched that of the northernmost Italians. In like manner, let the Styrian and Bohemian Slaves extend till they meet the Kelts of Gaul. With this general expression I take leave of this part of the subject--a subject worked out in detail elsewhere (_Edition of Prichard's Eastern origin of the Celtic Nation, and The Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological Notes_,--_Native Races of the Russian Empire_ &c.).

The _northern_ and _eastern_ frontiers of the Slavonians involve those of (1) Ugrians, (2) the Lithuanians.

In respect to the former, I think a case can be made out for continuing the _earliest_ occupancy of the populations represented by the Liefs of Courland, and the Rahwas of Estonia to the Oder at least; perhaps further. This means along the coast. Their extent inland is a more complex question. The so called Fin hypothesis in its full form is regarded, by the present writer, as untenable. But between this and a vast extension of the Fin area beyond its present bounds there is a great difference. It is one thing to connect the Basks of Spain with the Khonds of India; another to bring the Estonians as far west as the Oder, or even as the Elbe. It is one thing to make an allied population occupant of Sweden, Spain, and Ireland; another to refer the oldest population of western Russia to the stock to which the eastern undeniably belongs. This latter is a mere question of more or less. The other is a difference, not of kind, but of degree. With this distinction we may start from the most southern portion of the present Ugrian area; which is that of the Morduins in the Government of Penza. Or we may start from the most western which is that of the Liefs of Courland. What are the traces of Fin occupancy between these and the Vistula and Danube--the Vistula westward, the Danube on the South. How distinct are they? And of what kind? We cannot expect them to be either obvious or numerous. Say that they are the vestiges of a state of things that has passed away a thousand years, and we only come to the time of Nestor. Say that they are doubly so old, and we have only reached the days of Herodotus; in whose time there had been a sufficient amount of encroachment and displacement to fill the southern Governments of Russia with Scythians of Asiatic origin. The Britons were the occupants of Kent at the beginning of our æra. How faint are the traces of them. We must regulate, then, our expectations according to the conditions of the question. We must expect to find things just a little more Ugrian than aught else.

From that part of Russia which could, even a thousand years ago, exhibit an indigenous population we must subtract all those districts which were occupied by the Scythians. We do not know how much comes under this category. We only know that the Agathyrsi were in Hungary, and that they were, probably, intruders. We must substract the Governments of Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Taurida at the very least--much of each if not all. That this is not too much is evident from the expressed opinions of competent investigators. Francis Newman carries the Scythia of Herodotus as far as Volhynia, and, in Volhynia, there were Cumanian Turks as late as the 11th century. Say, however that the aborigines were not Fins. At any rate they were not the ancestors of the present Russians--and it is the original area of these that we are now considering. In the North there were Fins when Novorogod, and in the East Fins when Moscow, was founded. In Koursk, writes Haxthausen, there is a notable difference in the physiognomy of the inhabitants; the features being Fin rather than Slavonic.

I now notice the name of Roxolani. Prichard and, doubtless, others besides see in this a Fin gloss, the termination _-lani_ being the termination _-lainen_ in Suome_lainen_, Hame_lainen_ and several other Fin words, _i. e._ a gentile termination. It does not follow from this that the people themselves were Fins. It only follows that they were in a Fin neigbourhood. Some one who spoke a language in which the form in _-lain-_ was used to denote the name of a people was on their frontier, and this frontier must have been South of that of the Roxolani themselves--else how did it come to the ears of the Greeks and Romans? If this were not the case, then was the name native, and the Roxolani were Ugrian. In either case we have a Fin gloss, and a Fin locality suggested by it. Now the country of the Roxolani either reached, or approached, the Danube.

In the account of Herodotus a population named _Neuri_ occupied a marshy district at the back of the Scythian area; probably the marshes of Pinsk. This is, perhaps, a Fin gloss. The town of _Narym_ in the Ostiak country takes its name from the marshes round it.

The Lithuanian language avoids the letter _f._--using _p._ instead; sometimes _m._ The Greek φιλεω is _m_ylu in Lithuanic. The name, then, that a Fin locality would take in the mouth of a Lithuanian would not be _F_insk but _M_insk, or _P_insk, and these are the names we find on what I think was, at one time, the Finno-Lithuanic frontier.

I should add that the _Kour-_ in _Kour_-sk seems to be the _Kour-_ in _Kour_-land, the _Kor-_ in _Kor_-alli (a Fin population of the Middle Ages), and the _Car-_ in the eminently, and almost typically, Fin _Kar_elians.

This is not much in the way of evidence. Much or little, however, it is more than can be got for any other population. Much or little it is got at by a very cursory investigation. No special research has been instituted. No tumulus has been appealed to. No local dialect has been analysed. No ordnance map has been pored over. All this will, doubtless, be done in time, and if, when it has been done, no confirmation of the present doctrine be found, the propounder will reconsider it. If the evidence point elsewhere he will abandon it. At present he brings the early Fin frontier to Minsk and Pinsk:

There it touched that of the Lithuanians. To make these the most eastern members of the Sarmatian stock is, at the first view, to fly in the face of the testimony of their present position. They are, in one sense, the most western. The Germans of Prussia touch them on the side of Europe. Between them and the Fins of Asia, the vast Russian area of the Governments of Smolensko, Novogorod &c. intervene. Speaking laxly, one may say that all Russia lies beyond them. Nevertheless, it is with the Fins of Estonia that they are also in contact; whilst the explanation of the German and Russian contact is transparently clear. The Germans (as a matter of history) cut their way through whole masses of Slavonians in Pomerania, before they reached them; so displacing the Slavonians to the west of them. The Russians (again a matter of history) pressed up to them by a circuit from the south and west. The Lithuanians have kept their position--but one population has stretched beyond, and another has pressed up to them. Their language is eminently akin to the Sanskrit. Their physiognomy is the most Fin of any thoroughly European population.

There were no Slavonians, _in situ_, to the East of the Lithuanic area; none originally. By encroachment and change of place there are, in later times, many. There are, as aforesaid, all the Russians of the present moment. The question, however, before us is the original area, the primordial _situs_.

The westward extension of the Lithuanians is a matter upon which I do not press the details. I think that the Vistula may have been to them and the Slavonians what the Rhine was to the Gauls and Germans. The main question is how far can we bring them south? What justifies us in making them reach the Carpathians? At present we find them in Livonia, Courland, East Prussia, Vilna, and Grodno; but further south than Grodno nowhere; nowhere, at least, with the definite characteristics of name and language. Every inch that is given them south of Grodno must have its proper evidence to support it.

The Gothini of Tacitus are the first population that we may make Lithuanic. What says Tacitus? They were not Germans; their language proved this. They were not Sarmatians. The Sarmatians imposed a tribute upon, as on men of another stock--_tributa ut alienigenis imponunt_. The Quadi did the same. If neither Germans nor Sarmatians what were they? Members of a stock now extinct? The rule against the unnecessary multiplication of causes forbids us to resort to this supposition. Do so once and we may always be doing it. Were they Fins? Say that they were, and what do we gain by it? We may as well prolong the Lithuania area from Grodno as the Fin from Pinsk. Nay, better. That Grodno is Lithuanian we _know_. That Pinsk was Fin we _infer_. Were they Scythians? We know of no Scythians beyond the Maros; so that the reasoning which told against the Fin hypothesis tells equally against the Turk. Beyond the Germans, the Slavonians, the Fins, the [6]Turks, and the Lithuanians we have nothing to choose from; and I submit that the _minimum_ amount of assumption lies with the population last named.

[Footnote 6: The term _Turk_ is used in its wide Ethnological sense, and includes the _Scythæ_.]

Now comes the name of their Language. The Language of the Gothini was _Gallica_--Osos Pannonica, Gothinos _Gallica_ arguit non esse Romanos. I have given reasons elsewhere (Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological notes) for translating Gallica Gallician,--not Gallic. Say, however, that the latter is the better translation; Gothini would still be the name of the people.

There is a country, then, of the Gothini sufficiently far south to be in contact with the Quadi and Sarmatæ--the Quadi in Moravia and Upper Hungary, the Sarmatæ in the parts between the Theiss and the Danube. Gallicia meets these conditions. It was a mining country. Gallicia is this. It was on the Upper Vistula--probably at its head-waters. At the _mouth_ of the same river the name re-appears, in that of the _Goth_ones, _Gutt_ones, _Gyth_ones &c. of the Amber country. These were either the nearest neighbours of the Aestyii, or the Aestyii themselves under a name other than German--for Aestyii is an undoubted German gloss, just like _Est-_ in _Est-_ onia.

Are we justified in identifying these two populations on the strength of the name? No. What we _are_ justified in doing, however, is this. We are justified in placing on the frontier of both a language in which the root _Goth-_ was part of a national name.

At the beginning of the historical period these Gothones were the Lithaunians of East Prussia, and their neighbours called them _Guddon_. They were the congeners of those Lithuanians whose area, even now, extents as far south as Grodno.

It is easy to connect the Gothones with Grodno; but what connects Grodno with Gothinian Gallicia? What _can_ connect it now? All is Polish or Russian. What are the proofs that it was not so from the beginning? The following--the populations between Grodno and the frontier of Gallicia, appear, for the first time in history in the 13th century; but not as Poles, nor yet as Russians, but as Lithuanians--"cum _Pruthenica_ et _Lithuanica_ lingua habens magna ex parte similitudinem et intelligentiam"--"lingua, ritu, religione, et moribus magnam habebat cum _Lithuanis_, _Pruthenis_ et _Samogitis_" (the present Lithuanians of East Prussia) "conformitatem".

We cannot bring these quite down to Gallicia; and this is not to be wondered at. The first notice we have of them is very nearly the last as well. The narrative which gives us the preceding texts is the narrative of their subjugation and extinction.

What was the name of this people? I premise that we get it through a double medium, the Latin, and the Slavonic--the latter language always being greatly disguised in its adaptation to the former. The commonest form is Jaczwingi (Lat.) Jatwyazi (Slavonic); then (in documents) _Getuin_-zitæ, a word giving the root _Gothon-_. Finally, we have "Pollexiani _Getharum_ seu Prussorum gens".

Such are the reasons for connecting the Gothini of the Marcomannic frontier with the Gothini of the Baltic, and also for making both (along with the connecting Jaczwingi) Lithuanians. This latter point, however, is unessential to the present investigation; which simply considers the area of the Slavonians. For the parts north of the Carpathians, it was limited by a continuous line of _Gothini_, _Getuinzitæ_, and _Gothones_. Whatever those were they were not Slavonic.

Such is the sketch of the chief reasons for believing that originally the Vistula (there or thereabouts) was the boundary of the Slavonians on the North East; a belief confirmed by the phenomena of the languages spoken, at the present moment, beyond that river. They fall into few dialects; a fact which is _prima facie_ evidence of recent introduction. The Polish branch shews itself in varieties and subvarieties on its western frontier; the Russian on its southern and south-eastern. The further they are found East and North, the newer they are.

I may add that I find no facts in the special ethnology of the early Poles, that complicate this view. On the contrary, the special facts, such as they are, are confirmatory rather than aught else of the western _origin_ and the eastern _direction_, of a Polish line of encroachment, migration, occupancy, displacement, invasion, or conquest. Under the early kings of the blood of Piast (an individual wholly unhistoric), the locality for their exploits and occupancies is no part of the country about the present capital, Warsaw; but the district round Posen and Gnesen; this being the area to which the earliest legends attach themselves.

Where this is not the case, where the Duchy of Posen or Prussian Poland does not give us the earliest signs of Polish occupancy, the parts about Cracow do. At any rate, the legends lie in the west and south rather than in the east; on the Saxon or the Bohemian frontier rather than the Lithuanic.

The Slavonic area south of the Carpathians gives us a much more complex question--one, indeed, too complex to investigate it in all its bearings.

That there were both Slavonians and Lithuanians in Dacia, Lower Mœsia, Thrace, and, even, Macedon is nearly certain--and that early. Say that they were this at the beginning of the historical period. It will, by no means, make them aboriginal.

Such being the case I limit myself to the statement that, at the beginning of the historical period, the evidence and reasoning that connects the Thracians with the Getæ, the Getæ with the Daci, and the Daci with the Sarmatian stock in general is sufficient. Whether it makes them indigenous to their several areas is another question. It is also another question whether the relationship between them was so close as the current statements make it. These identify the Getæ and Daci. I imagine that they were (there or thereabouts) as different as the Bohemians and the Lithuanians--the Getic Lithuanians, and the Dacian (Daci = Τζαχοι) Czekhs; both, however being Sarmatian.

I also abstain from the details of a question of still greater importance and interest viz: the extent to which a _third_ language of the class which contains the Slavonian and Lithuanic may or may not have been spoken in the parts under notice. There was room for it in the parts to the South of the Fin, and the east of the Lithuanic, areas. There was room for it in the present Governments of Podolia, and Volhynia, to say nothing of large portions of the drainage of the Lower Danube. The language of such an area, if its structure coincided with its geographical position would be liker the Lithuanic and the most eastern branch of the Slavonic than any other Languages of the so-called Indo-European Stock. It would also be more Sarmatian than either German or Classical. Yet it would be both Classical and German also, on the strength of the term Indo-European. It would be the most Asiatic of the tongues so denominated; with some Ugrian affinities, and others with the languages in the direction of Armenia, and Persia. It would be a language, however, which would soon be obliterated; in as much as the parts upon which we place it were, at an early date, overrun by Scythians from the East, and Slavonians from the West. When we know Volhynia, it is Turk, and Polish,--anything but aboriginal. Such a language, however, might, in case the populations who spoke it had made early conquests elsewhere, be, still, preserved to our own times. Or it might have been, at a similarly early period, committed to writings; the works in which it was embodied having come down to us. If so, its relations to its congeners would be remarkable. _They_ would only be known in a modern, _it_ only in an ancient, form. Such being the case the original affinity might be disguised; especially if the transfer of the earlier language had been to some very distant and unlikely point.

I will now apply this hypothetical series of arguments. It has long been known that the ancient, sacred, and literary language of Northern India has its closest grammatical affinities in Europe. With none of the tongues of the neighbouring countries, with no form of the Tibetan of the Himalayas or the Burmese dialects of the north-east, with no Tamul dialect of the southern part of the Peninsula itself has it half such close resemblances as it has with the distant and disconnected Lithuanian.

As to the Lithuanian, it has, of course, its closest affinities with the Slavonic tongues of Russia, Bohemia, Poland, and Servia, as aforesaid. And when we go beyond the Sarmatian stock, and bring into the field of comparison the other tongues of Europe, the Latin, the Greek, the German, and the Keltic, we find that the Lithuanic is more or less connected with them.

Now, the botanist who, found in Asia, extended over a comparatively small area, a single species, belonging to a genus which covered two-thirds of Europe (except so far as he might urge that everything came from the east, and so convert the specific question into an hypothesis as to the origin of vegetation in general) would pronounce the _genus_ to be European. The zoologist, in a case of zoology, would do the same.

_Mutatis mutandis_, the logic of the philologue should be that of the naturalist. Yet it is not.

1. The area of Asiatic languages in Asia allied to the ancient Language of India, is smaller than the area of European languages allied to the Lithuanic; and--

2. The class or genus to which the two tongues equally belong, is represented in Asia by the Indian division only; whereas in Europe it falls into three divisions, each of, at least, equal value with the single Asiatic one.

Nevertheless, the so-called Indo-European languages are deduced from Asia.

I do not ask whether, as a matter of fact, this deduction is right or wrong. I only state, as a matter of philological history, that it is made, adding that the hypothesis which makes it is illegitimate. It rests on the assumption that it is easier to bring a population from India to Russia than to take one from Russia to India. In the case of the more extreme language of which it takes cognisance this postulate becomes still more inadmissible. It assumes, in the matter of the Keltic (for instance), that it is easier to bring the people of Galway from the Punjab, than the tribes of the Punjab from Eastern Europe. In short, it seems to be a generally received rule amongst investigators, that so long as we bring our migration from east to west we may let a very little evidence go a very long way; whereas, so soon as we reverse the process, and suppose a line from west to east, the converse becomes requisite, and a great deal of evidence is to go but a little way. The effect of this has been to create innumerable Asiatic hypotheses and few or no European ones. Russia may have been peopled from Persia, or Lithuania from Hindostan, or Greece from Asia, or any place west of a given meridian from any place east of it--but the converse, never. No one asks for proofs in the former case; or if he do, he is satisfied with a very scanty modicum: whereas, in the latter, the best authenticated statements undergo stringent scrutiny. Inferences fare worse. They are hardly allowed at all. It is all "theory and hypothesis" if we resort to them in cases from west to east; but it is no "theory" and no "hypothesis" when we follow the sun and move westwards.

Let the two lines be put on a level, and let ethnographical philology cease to be so one-sided as it is. Let the possibility of a Western origin of the Sanskrit language take its natural place as the member of an alternative hitherto ignored. I do not say what will follow in the way of historical detail. I only say (in the present paper at least) that the logic of an important class of philological questions will be improved. As it stands at present, it is little more than a remarkable phenomenon in the pathology of the philological mind, a symptom of the morbid condition of the scientific imagination of learned men.

Turning westwards we now take up the Slovenians of Carinthia and Styria on their western frontier, not forgetting the southermost of the Czekhs of Bohemia. How far did the Slavonic area extend in the direction of Switzerland, Gaul, and Italy?

In the Tyrol we have such geographical names as Scharn-_itz_, Gsh_nitz_-thal, and _Vintsh_-gau; in the Vorarlberg, Ked-_nitz_ and Windisch-_matrei_. Even where the names are less definitely Slavonic, the compound sibilant _tsh_, so predominant in Slavonic, so exceptional in German, is of frequent occurrence. This, perhaps, is little, yet is more than can be found in any country _known_ to have been other than Slavonic.

Again--a Slavonic population in the Vorarlberg and Southern Bavaria best accounts for the name _Vind_-elicia.

If the Slavonians are aboriginal, and if the Czekhs are the same, the decisive evidence that, within the historical period, they have both receded is in favor of their respective areas having originally been greater than they are at present. Such being the case, we may bring them both further south and further west. How far? This is a question of minute detail, not to be answered off-hand. The rule of parsimony, however, by which we are forbidden to multiply stocks unnecessarily, carries them to the frontier of the Gauls in one direction, and the Italians on the other.

If so, there may have been Slavonians on the frontier of Liguria. More than this the Rhæti may have been Slavonic also. But many make the Etruscans Rhætian. Is it possible however, that even the Etruscans were Slavonic?

I know of numerous _opinions_ against their being so. I know of no _facts_.

ON THE TERMS OF _GOTHI_ AND _GETÆ_.

OBSERVATIONS LAID BEFORE THE ETHNOLOGICAL SECTION, AT THE MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, HELD AT BIRMINGHAM 1849.

So far from the Gothi and Getæ being identical there is no reason to believe that any nation of Germany ever bore the former of these two names until it reached the country of the population designated by the latter. If so, the Goths were Gothic, just as certain Spaniards are Mexican and Peruvian; and just as certain Englishmen are Britons _i.e._ not at all.

The Goths of the Danube, etc. leave Germany as Grutungs and Thervings, become Marcomanni along the Bohemian and Moravian frontiers, Ostrogoths and Visigoths, on the Lower Danube (or the land of the Getæ), and Mœsogoths (from the locality in which they become Christian) in Mœsia.

What were the Goths of Scandinavia? _It is not I who am the_ first by many scores of investigators to place all the numerous populations to which the possible modifications of the root _G--t_ apply in the same category. I only deny that that category is German. Few separate the Jutes of Jutland, from the Goths of Gothland. Then there is the word _Vitæ_; which is to _Gut-_, as _Will_-iam is to _Gul_-ielmus, a form that was probably Lithuanic.

If _J_+_t_, as it occurs in the word _Jute_, be, really, the same as the _G_+_t_ in _Got_ or _Goth_, we have a reason in favour of _one_ of the earlier Danish populations having been Lithuanic.

The four islands of Sealand, Laaland, Moen, and Falster formed the ancient _Vithesleth_. This division is of considerable import; since the true country of _Dan_, the eponymus of the _Danes_, was not Jutland, nor yet Skaane, nor yet Fyen. It was the Four Islands of the Vithesleth:--"Dan--rex primo super Sialandiam, Monam, Falstriam, et Lalandiam, cujus regnum dicebatur _Vithesleth_. Deinde super alias provincias et insulas et totum regnum."--Petri Olai Chron. Regum Daniæ. Also, "Vidit autem Dan regionem suam, super quam regnavit, Jutiam, Fioniam, _Withesleth_, Scaniam quod esset bona."--Annal. Esrom. p. 224.

That the Swedes and Norwegians are the newest Scandinavians and that certain Ugrians were the oldest, is undoubted. But it by no means follows that the succession was simple. Between the first and last there may have been any amount of intercalations. Was this the case? My own opinion is, that the first encroachments upon the originally Ugrian area of Scandinavia were not from the south-west, but from the south-east, not from Hanover but from Prussia and Courland, not German but Lithuanic, and (as a practical proof of the inconvenience of the present nomenclature) although not German, _Gothic_.

Whether these encroachments were wholly Lithuanic, rather than Slavonic as well, is doubtful. When the archæology of Scandinavia is read aright, _i. e._ without a German prepossession, the evidence of a second population will become clear. This however, is a detail.

The Gothic historian Jornandes, deduces the Goths of the Danube first from the southern coasts of the Baltic, and ultimately from Scandinavia. I think, however, that whoever reads his notices will be satisfied that he has fallen into the same confusion in respect to the Germans of the Lower Danube and the Getæ whose country they settled in, as an English writer would do who should adapt the legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth respecting the British kings to the genealogies of Ecbert and Alfred or to the origin of the warriors under Hengist. The legends of the soil and the legends of its invaders have been mixed together.

Nor is such confusion unnatural. The real facts before the historian were remarkable. There were Goths on the Lower Danube, Germanic in blood, and known by the same name as the older inhabitants of the country. There were Gothones, or Guttones, in the Baltic, the essential part of whose name was _Goth-_; the _-n-_ being, probably, and almost certainly, an inflexion.

Thirdly, there were Goths in Scandinavia, and Goths in an intermediate island of the Baltic. With such a series of _Goth_-lands, the single error of mistaking the old _Getic_ legends for those of the more recent Germans (now called _Goths_), would easily engender others; and the most distant of the three Gothic areas would naturally pass for being the oldest also. Hence, the deduction of the Goths of the Danube from the Scandinavian Gothland.

ON THE JAPODES AND GEPIDÆ

READ BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, JANUARY 15TH 1857.

Of the nations whose movements are connected with the decline and fall of the Roman empire, though several are more important than the _Gepidæ_, few are of a greater interest. This is because the question of their ethnological relations is more obscure than that of any other similar population of equal historical prominence. How far they were Goths rather than Vandals, or Vandals rather than Goths, how far they were neither one nor the other, has scarcely been investigated. Neither has their origin been determined. Nor have the details of their movements been ascertained. That the current account, as it stands in the pages of Jornandes Diaconus, is anything but unexceptionable, will be shown in the present paper. It is this account, however, which has been adopted by the majority of inquirers.

The results to which the present writer commits himself are widely different from those of his predecessors; he believes them, however, to be of the most ordinary and commonplace character. Why, then, have they not been attained long ago? Because certain statements, to a contrary effect, being taken up without a due amount of preliminary criticism, have directed the views of historians and ethnologists towards a wrong point.

These, however, for the present will be ignored, and nothing, in the first instance, will be attended to but the primary facts upon which the argument, in its simplest form, depends. These being adduced, the ordinary interpretation of them will be suggested; after which, the extent to which it is modified by the statements upon which the current doctrines are founded will be investigated.

If we turn to Strabo's account of the parts on the north-eastern side of the Adriatic, the occupancies of the numerous tribes of the Roman province of Illyricum, we shall find that no slight prominence is given to the population called Ἰάποδες. They join the Carni. The Culpa (Κολαπις) flows through their land. They stretch along the coast to the river Tedanius; Senia is their chief town. The Moentini, the Avendeatæ, the Auripini, are their chief tribes. Vendos (Avendo) is one of their occupancies. Such are the notices of Strabo, Ptolemy, Appian, and Pliny; Pliny's form of the word being Japydes.

The Iapodes, then, or Japydes, of the authors in question, are neither an obscure nor an inconsiderable nation. They extend along the sea-coast of the Adriatic. They occupy the valley of the Culpa. They are Illyrian, but conterminous with Pannonia.

As Pliny seems to have taken his name from Strabo, the authors just quoted may all be called Greek. With the latest of them we lose the forms Ἰάποδες or Japydes.

As the Roman empire declines and its writers become less and less classical, their geographical records become less systematic and more fragmentary; and it is not till we get to the times of Probus and Maximian that we find any name approaching Ἰάποδες. Probus, however, plants a colony of _Gepidæ_ within the empire (_Vopiscus, Vit. Pub._ c. 18). The Tervings also fight against the Vandals and Gipedes (_Mamertinus in Genethl. Max._ c. 17). Sidonius makes the fierce Gepida (_Gepida trux_) a portion of the army of Attila. Finally, we have the Gepidæ, the Lombards, and the Avars, as the three most prominent populations of the sixth century.

The Gepid locality in the fifth century is the parts about Sirmium and Singidunum--Alt Schabacz and Belgrade--within the limits of Pannonia, and beyond those of Illyricum, _i. e._ a little to the north of the occupancy of the Iapodes and Japydes of Strabo and Pliny.

There is, then, a little difference in name between Japydes and Gepidæ, and a little difference in locality between the Gepids and Iapodes. I ask, however, whether this is sufficient to raise any doubt as to the identity of the two words? Whether the populations they denoted were the same is another matter. I only submit that, word for word, _Japyd_ and _Gepid_ are one. Yet they have never been considered so. On the contrary, the obscure history of the Japydes is generally made to end with Ptolemy; the more brilliant one of the Gepidæ to begin with Vopiscus. This may be seen in Gibbon, in Zeuss, or in any author whatever who notices either, or both, of the two populations.

There is a reason for this; it does not, however, lie in the difference of name. Wider ones than this are overlooked by even the most cautious of investigators. Indeed, the acknowledged and known varieties of the word Gepidæ itself, are far more divergent from each other than _Gepidæ_ is from _Japydes_. Thus Gypides, Γήπαιδες, Γετίπαιδες, are all admitted varieties,--varieties that no one has objected to.

Nor yet does the reason for thus ignoring the connexion between _Gepidæ_ and _Japydes_ lie in the difference of their respective localities. For a period of conquests and invasions, the intrusion of a population from the north of Illyricum to the south of Pannonia is a mere trifle in the eye of the ordinary historian, who generally moves large nations from one extremity of Europe to another as freely as a chess-player moves a queen or castle on a chess-board. In fact, some change, both of name and place, is to be expected. The name that Strabo, for instance, would get through an Illyrian, Vopiscus or Sidonius would get through a Gothic, and Procopius through (probably) an Avar, authority--directly or indirectly.

The true reason for the agreement in question having been ignored, lies in the great change which had taken place in the political relations of the populations, not only of Illyricum and Pannonia, but of all parts of the Roman empire. The Japydes are merely details in the conquest of Illyricum and Dalmatia; the Gepid history, on the contrary, is connected with that of two populations eminently foreign and intrusive on the soil of Pannonia,--the Avars and the Lombards. How easy, then, to make the Gepidæ foreign and intrusive also. Rarely mentioned, except in connexion with the exotic Goth, the exotic Vandal, the exotic Avar, and the still more exotic Lombard, the Gepid becomes, in the eyes of the historian, exotic also.

This error is by no means modern. It dates from the reign of Justinian; and occurs in the writings of such seeming authorities as Procopius and Jornandes. With many scholars this may appear conclusive against our doctrine; since Procopius and Jornandes may reasonably be considered as competent and sufficient witnesses, not only of their foreign origin, but also of their Gothic affinities. Let us, however, examine their statements. Procopius writes, that "the Gothic nations are many, the greatest being the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaides. They were originally called the Sauromatæ and Melanchlæni. Some call them the Getic nations. They differ in name, but in nothing else. They are all whiteskinned and yellow-haired, tall and good-looking, of the same creed, for they are all Arians. Their language is one, called Gothic." This, though clear, is far from unexceptionable (_B. Vand._ i. 2). Their common language may have been no older than their common Arianism.

Again, the Sciri and Alani are especially stated to be Goths, which neither of them were,--the Alans, not even in the eyes of such claimants for Germany as Grimm and Zeuss.

Jornandes writes: "Quomodo vero Getæ Gepidæque sint parentes si quæris, paucis absolvam. Meminisse debes, me initio de Scanziæ insulæ gremio Gothos dixisse egressos cum Berich suo rege, tribus tantum navibus vectos ad citerioris Oceani ripam; quarum trium una navis, ut assolet, tardius vecta, nomen genti fertur dedisse; nam lingua eorum pigra _Gepanta_ dicitur. Hinc factum est, ut paullatim et corrupte nomen eis ex convitio nasceretur. Gepidæ namque sine dubio ex Gothorum prosapia ducunt originem: sed quia, ut dixi, _Gepanta_ pigrum aliquid tardumque signat, pro gratuito convitio Gepidarum nomen exortum est, quod nec ipsum, credo, falsissinum. Sunt enim tardioris ingenii, graviores corporum velocitate. Hi ergo Gepidæ tacti invidia, dudum spreta provincia, commanebant in insula Visclæ amnis vadis circumacta, quam pro patrio sermone dicebant Gepidojos. Nunc eam, ut fertur, insulam gens Vividaria incolit, ipsis ad meliores terras meantibus. Qui Vividarii ex diversis nationibus acsi in unum asylum collecti sunt, et gentem fecisse noscuntur."

I submit that this account is anything but historical. Be it so. It may, however, be the expression of a real Gothic affinity on the part of the Gepids, though wrong in its details. Even this is doubtful. That it may indicate a political alliance, that it may indicate a partial assumption of a Gothic nationality, I, by no means, deny. I only deny that it vitiates the doctrine that _Japydes_ and _Gepidæ_ are, according to the common-sense interpretation of them, the same word.

The present is no place for exhibiting in full the reasons for considering Jornandes to be a very worthless writer, a writer whose legends (if we may call them so) concerning the Goths, are only Gothic in the way that the fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth are English, _i. e._ tales belonging to a country which the Goths took possession of, rather than tales concerning the invaders themselves.

It is suggested then, that the statements of Procopius and Jornandes being ignored, the common-sense interpretation of the geographical and etymological relations of the _Iapodes_ and _Gepidæ_--word for word, and place for place--be allowed to take its course; the Gepidæ being looked upon as Illyrians, whatever may be the import of that word; occupants, at least, of the country of the Iapodes, and probably their descendants.

Thus far the criticism of the present paper goes towards separating the Gepidæ from the stock with which they are generally connected, viz. the German,--also from any emigrants from the parts north of the Danube, _e. g._ Poland, Prussia, Scandinavia, and the like. So far from doing anything of this kind, it makes them indigenous to the parts to the north-east of the head of the Adriatic. As such, what were they? Strabo makes them a mixed nation--Kelt and Illyrian.

What is Illyrian? Either Albanian or Slavonic; it being Illyria where the populations represented by the Dalmatians of Dalmatia come in contact with the populations represented by the Skipetar of Albania.

The remaining object of the present paper is to raise two fresh questions:--

1. The first connects itself with the early history of Italy, and asks how far migrations from the eastern side of the Adriatic may have modified the original population of Italy. Something--perhaps much--in this way is suggested by Niebuhr; suggested, if not absolutely stated. The Chaonian name, as well as other geographical and ethnological relations, is shown to be common to both sides of the Gulf. Can the class of facts indicated hereby be enlarged? The name, which is, perhaps, the most important, is that of the _Galabri_. These are, writes Strabo, a "people of the Dardaniatæ, in whose land is an ancient city" (p. 316). Word for word this is _Calabri_--whatever the geographical and ethnological relations may be. Without being exactly Iapodes, these Calabri are in the Iapod neighbourhood.

Without being identical, the name of the Italian Iapyges (which was to all intents and purposes another name for Calabri) is closely akin to Iapodes; so that, in Italy, we have Calabri called also Iapyges, and, in Illyria, Iapodes near a population called Galabri.

More than this, Niebuhr (see Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography, v. _Japygia_) suggests that Apulia may be Iapygia, word for word. The writer of the article just quoted demurs to his. At the same time the change from _l_ to _d_ is, at the present moment, a South Italian characteristic. The Sicilian for _bello_ was _beddo_. On the other hand, this is a change in the wrong direction; still it is a change of the kind required.

The evidence that there was a foreign population in Calabria is satisfactory--the most definite fact being the statement that the Sallentines were partly Cretans, associated with Locrians and _Illyrians_. (See _Calabria_.)

Again, this district, wherein the legends concerning Diomed prevailed, was also the district of the Daunii, whom Festus (v. _Daunia_) connects with _Illyria_.

I suggest that, if the Calabri were Galabri, the Iapyges were Iapodes. Without enlarging upon the views that the definite recognition of Illyrian elements in Southern Italy suggests, we proceed to the next division of our subject.

2. Is there any connexion between the names _Iapod-es_ and _Iapet-us_? The answer to this is to be found in the exposition of the criticism requisite for such problems. Special evidence there is none.

The first doctrine that presents itself to either the ethnologist or the historian of fiction, in connexion with the name Iapetus, is that it is the name of some _eponymus_--a name like Hellen, or Æolus, Ion, or Dorus. But this is opposed by the fact that no nation of any great historical prominence bears such a designation. Doubtless, if the Thracians, the Indians, the Ægyptians, &c. had been named _Iapeti_, the doctrine in question would have taken firm root, and that at once. But such is not the case.

May it not, however, have been borne by an obscure population? The name _Greek_ was so born. So, at first, was the name _Hellen_. So, probably, the names to which we owe the wide and comprehensive terms _Europe_, _Asia_, _Africa_, and others. Admit then that it may have belonged to an obscure population;--next, admitting this, what name so like as that of the Iapodes? Of all known names (unless an exception be made in favour of the _-gypt_ in _Æ-gypt_) it must be this or none. No other has any resemblance at all.

Who were on the confines of the non-Hellenic area? Iapyges on the west; Iapodes on the north-west. The suggested area was not beyond the limits of the Greek mythos. It was the area of the tales about Diomed. It was the area of the tales about Antenor. It was but a little to the north of the land of the _Lapithæ_, whose name, in its latter two-thirds, is _I-apod_. It ran in the direction of Orphic and Bacchic Thrace to the north. It ran in the direction of Cyclopæan and Lestrygonian Sicily to the west. It was on the borders of that _terra incognita_ which so often supplies eponymi to unknown and mysterious generations.

Say that this suggestion prove true, and we have the first of the term _Iapodes_ in Homer and Hesiod, the last in the German genealogies of the geography of Jornandes and in the Traveller's Song--unless, indeed, the modern name _Schabacz_ be word for word, _Gepid_. In the Traveller's Song we get the word in a German form, _Gifþe_ or _Gifþas_. The _Gifþas_ are mentioned in conjunction with the _Wends_.

In Jornandes we get _Gapt_ as the head of the Gothic genealogies:--Horum ergo (ut ipsi suis fabulis ferunt) primus fuit _Gapt_, qui genuit Halmal; Halmal vero genuit Augis, &c. Now _Gapt_ here may stand for the eponymus of the _Gepidæ_, or it may stand for _Japhet_, the son of Noah. More than one of the old German pedigrees begins with what is called a Gothic legend, and ends with the book of Genesis.

To conclude: the bearing of the criticism upon the ethnology of the populations which took part in the destruction of the Roman empire, is suggestive. There are several of them in the same category with the Gepidæ.

_Mutatis mutandis_: every point in the previous criticism, which applies to the Gepidæ and Iapydes, applies to the _Rugi_ and _Rhæti_. Up to a certain period we have, in writers more or less classical, notices of a country called _Rhætia_, and a population called _Rhæti_. For a shorter period subsequent to this, we hear nothing, or next to nothing, of any one.

Thirdly, in the writers of the 5th and 6th centuries, when the creed begins to be Christian and the authorities German, we find the _Rugi_ of a _Rugi-land_,--_Rugi-land_, or the land of the _Rugi_, being neither more nor less than the ancient province of _Rhætia_.

Name, then, for name, and place for place, the agreement is sufficiently close to engender the expectation that the _Rhæti_ will be treated as the _Rugi_, under a classical, the _Rugi_ as the _Rhæti_, under a German, designation. Yet this is not the case. And why? Because when the Rugi become prominent in history, it is the recent, foreign, and intrusive Goths and Huns with whom they are chiefly associated. Add to this, that there existed in Northern Germany a population actually called _Rugii_.

For all this, however, _Rugiland_ is _Rhætia_, and _Rhætia_ is _Rugiland_,--name for name and place for place. So, probably, is the modern Slavonic term _Raczy_.