BOOK portance at this period; for in this peninsula, which II. is now divided into Jutland, Sleswick, and Holstein,

no fewer than six other nations were stationed, besides the Saxones and the remnant of the Cimbri.2

BUT it is not probable, that the Saxons should have started suddenly into existence, in the days of Ptolemy. The question of their previous history has been therefore much agitated; and an equal quantity of learning and of absurdity has been brought forward upon the subject.

3

It has been observed, that to explain the origin of the Saxons, the most wild and inconsistent fictions have been framed. But it is not this nation only, which has been thus distinguished by the verseness of the human mind, labouring to explore inscrutible antiquity; every people may recount similar puerilities.

per

To claim an extravagant duration, has been the folly of every state which has risen to any emi ́nence. We have heard, in our childhood, of the dreams of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Indians, and Chinese; and we know, that even Athenians could wear a golden grashopper 4, as an emblem, that they sprung fortuitously from the earth they cultivated,

2 Cl. Ptolemæus Georg. lib. ii. c. 11. Marcianus of Heraclea, somewhat later than Ptolemy, gives the Saxons the same position on the neck of the Chersonesus. Pont. ib. 651. The geographical Lexicographer of Byzantium, usually named Stephanus, briefly says, " dwelling in the Cimbric Chersonesus." Steph. Byz. voc. Saxones.

3 Krantz remarked this: "Ita puerilibus fabulis et anilibus deliramentis omnia scatent, ut nihil in his sibi constet, nihil quadret. Saxonia, p. 1. Yet the absurdity of others did not preserve him from an imitation.

4 Potter's Antiq. of Greece, vol. i. p. 2. So the Arcadians boasted they were won, or before the moon. Ib. p. 1.

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in ages far beyond the reach of human history: we CHAP. may therefore pardon and forget the fables of the Saxon patriots.

Ir has caused much surprise, that Tacitus, who Not noticed by wrote a particular description of Germany, many Tacitus. years before Ptolemy, should have omitted to name the Saxons. Every author has been unwilling to suppose, that they came to the Elbe in the short interval between these authors; and therefore it has been very generally imagined, that the nation, to whom Tacitus gave the denomination of Fosi", were the warriors, who acquired afterwards so much celebrity, under the name of Saxons.

BEFORE such violent suppositions are admitted, it seems necessary to ask, if Ptolemy mentions any other people, in his geography of Germany, whom Tacitus has not noticed? if he does, the omission of Tacitus is not, in the present, instance, singular; if he does not, the conjecture that the Fosi were the Saxons, comes to us with authority.

tribes

UPON comparing the Cimbric Chersonesus of Other Tacitus, with the delineation of the same place by omitted by Ptolemy, the question above stated is decided. Tacitus. Ptolemy does not mention the Saxones only, as being there; on the contrary, he names, separately, six other nations, before he comes to the

5 Conringius thinks, that by some unexplained accident, time has effaced from the text of Tacitus a passage about the Saxons. Schilter's Thes. Ant. Teut. iii. p. 704.

6 Cellarius Geog. Ant. i. p. 303., and Cluverius, iii. Germ. Ant. 87., and many others assert this. Spener with diffidence defends it. Notit. Germ. Ant. 363. With a manly but rare impartiality he states forcibly the objections to the opinion he adopts, 371. Leibnitz places the Fosi on the Fusa, a river which falls into the Aller, near Zell. Ibid. 372.

II.

BOOK Cimbri. Tacitus, after mentioning the Frisii, Chauci, aud Cherusci, speaks of the Fosi, and closes his account of this part of Germany with the Cimbri. Tacitus has not merely neglected to name the Saxons, but also the Sigulones, the Sabalingii, the Cobandi, the Chali, the Phundusii, and the Charudes." If either of these tribes had risen to eminence, the one, so successful, would have been thought the Fosi. The Saxons became renowned, and their celebrity, rather than their situation, has made some persons desirous to find them in Tacitus. The name of Fosi cannot be strictly applied to the Saxons, with more justice than to the others."

BUT it cannot be inferred from the silence of Tacitus, that the Saxons were not above the Elbe in his days. In this part of his map of Germany, he does not seem to have intended to give that minute detail of information, which Ptolemy, fortunately for our subject, has delivered. Tacitus directed his philosophical eye on the German states, who differed in manners, as well as in name. He seldom presents a mere nomenclature; he seems to enumerate those the most carefully, whose wars,

7 Cluverius thus stations these tribes.

The Sigulones northward from the Saxons, as far as Tunderen and Appenrade ; Sabalingii, above these, to the Nipsa and Tobesket, on which are Ripen and Kolding; Cobandi, thence to Holm and Horsens; Chali, beyond these to Hensburg and Hald; the Phundusii and Charudes on the west and east, northward, to the Lymfort; and the Cimbri in Wensussel. Ant. Ger. iii. p. 94. See also on this Chorography Pontanus, p. 649.

8 Strabo, Tacitus, and Ptolemy, exhibit a very natural progression of information on the German geography. Tacitus gives a more accurate detail than Strabo, and Ptolemy, writing later, is still more minute.

I.

customs, fame, vicissitudes, and power, had dis- CHAP. tinguished them from the rest. As the Saxons,

and their neighbours, were not remarkable in either of these circumstances, he knew them not, or he passed them over; but Ptolemy pursues the plan of a plain and accurate chorographer; he is solicitous to mark positions, latitudes, distances, and names, leaving narrations of history and manners almost out of his consideration. It was therefore a part of his plan to notice the Saxons, as it was consistent in Tacitus to have omitted them.

THE only inferences which can be safely drawn from the silence of Tacitus, and the preceding geographers, are, that the Saxons were then an obscure and inconsiderable people, and had neither molested the nations of greater notoriety, nor incurred the enmity of the Roman government.

It will be unnecessary to employ our time, in The Scyenumerating the many fallacious theories which thian po pulation of have been framed, on the origin of our Anglo- Europe. Saxon ancestors. It will be more useful to select those few facts which may be gleaned from the writers of antiquity on this subject, and to state to the reader, rather what he may believe, than what he must reject.

THE early Occupation of Europe, by the Kimmerian and Keltic races, has been already displayed. The next stream of barbaric tribes, whose progress formed the second great influx of population into Europe, were the Scythian, German, and Gothic tribes. They also entered it out of Asia. It is of importance to recollect the fact of their primeval locality, because it corresponds with this circumstance, that Herodotus, besides the

II.

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BOOK main Scythia, which he places, in Europe, mentions also an Eastern or Asiatic Scythia, beyond the Caspian and Iaxartes.' As these new comers pressed on the Kimmerians and Kelts, their predecessors, those nations retired towards the western and southern extremities of Europe, pursued still by the Scythian invaders. This new wave of population gradually spread over the mountains, and into the vast forests and marches of Europe, until, under the name of Germans, an appellation which Tacitus calls a recent name 10, they had not only reached the Rhine, but had also crossed it into France. Here Cæsar found one great body firmly settled, descended from them, whom he calls Belgæ; though its component states had their peculiar denominations", besides a very large

9 This Asiatic Scythia suits Mr. Abel Remusat's inference, in his Memoir lately read before the Academie des Inscriptions, that the Goths originally issued from Tartary, because near Mount Altai inscriptions have been found in Runic characters like those of Scandinavia. On this point we must always recollect, that the northern traditions about Odin, the common ancestor of the Scandinavians, Saxons, and Goths, bring him, at the head of the Asæ, from the Asiatic regions.

10 De Mor. Germ.

11 De Bell. Gall. The fact that nations of the same origin had yet different local or provincial names; as the Germans who passed the Rhine becoming Tungri, and part of the Belgæ, Bellovaci, &c., must be remembered, when we consider the derivation of nations; as the omission of this recollection has occasioned many antiquaries to consider those people as distinct in origin, who were really related. Tacitus remarks, that the Trevisi and Nervii were ambitious of a German origin, though residing in and near Gaul. Indeed his whole book, on the Germans, proves that each tribe went by very distinct appellations, though all were Germans. This may lessen the scruples of those who doubt whether the Geta and Goths were Scythian nations.