v BRITISH ETHNOLOGY. 259 



proves that the Belgsp were already sensibly different 

 from their ancestors, whom Strabo had found almost 

 identical with their brothers on the other side of the 

 Rhine." 



But the fact recorded by Suetonius, if fact it 

 be, proves nothing; for the Germans themselves 

 were in the habit of reddening their hair. Ammi- 

 anus Marcellinus * tells how, in the year 367 A- D-, 

 the Roman commander, Jovinus, surprised a body 

 of Alemanni near the town now called Charpeigne, 

 in the valley of the Moselle; and how the Roman 

 soldiers, as, concealed by the thick wood, they stole 

 upon their unsuspecting enemies, saw that some 

 were bathing and others " comas rutilantes ex 

 more/' More than two centuries earlier Pliny 

 gives indirect evidence to the same effect when he 

 says of soap: — 



" Galliarum hoc inventum rutilandis capillis . . . apud 

 Germanos ma j ore in usu viris quam foeminis." f 



Here we have a w r riter who flourished not very 

 long after the date of the Caligula story, telling us 

 that the Gauls invented soap for the purpose of 

 doing that which, according to Suetonius, Caligula 

 forced them to do. And, further, the combined 

 and independent testimony of Pliny and Ammianus 

 assures us that the Germans were as much in the 

 habit of reddening their hair as the Gauls. As 

 to De Belloguet's supposition that, even in Cal- 



* Res Gcsttr, xxvii. f Historia Naturalis, xxviii. 51. 



