34!8 PLINT'S NATUBAL HISTOBT. [Book I Y. 



the Cherusci^ : the fifth race is that of the Peucini', who are 

 also the Basternae, adjoining the Daci previously mentioned. 

 The more famous rivers that flow into the ocean are the 

 Gruttalus^ the Vistillus or Vistula, the Albis"*, the Yisurgis^ 

 the Amisius®, the Rhine, aiM the Mosa''. In the interior is 

 the long extent of the Hercjnian^ range, which in grandeur 

 is inferior to none. 



•wald in the west to the Saale in Franconia, and from the river Maine 

 in the south as far as the sources of the Ehson and the Weser, so that 

 they occupied exactly the modern country of Hessen, inchidmg perhaps 

 a portion of the north-west of Bavaria. See Gribbon, vol. iii. 99, JSohn's Ed. 

 ^ The Cherusci were the most celebrated of all the Grerman tribes, and 

 are mentioned by Caesar as of the same importance as the Suevi, from 

 whom they were separated by the Silva Bacensis. There is some diffi- 

 culty in stating their exact locahty, but it is generally supposed that 

 their country extended from the Visurgis or Weser in the west to the 

 Albis or Elbe in the east, and fi'om MeUbocus in the north to the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Sudeti in the south, so that the Chamavi and Lango- 

 bardi were their northern neighbours, the Chatti the western, the Her- 

 munduri the southern, and the Sihngi and Semnones their eastern 

 neighbours. Tliis tribe, mider their chief Arminius or Hermann, form- 

 ing a confederation with many smaller tribes in a.d. 9, completely defeated 

 the Romans in the famou.s battle of the Teutoburg Forest. In later times 

 they were conquered by the Chatti, so that Ptolemy speaks of them 

 only as a small tribe on the south of the Hartz mountain. Their name 

 afterwards appears, in the beginning of the fourth centmy, in the con- 

 federation of the Franks. 



2 The Peucini are mentioned here, as also by Tacitus, as identical with 

 the Bastemse. As already mentioned, supposing them to be names for 

 distinct nations, they must be taken a*^ only names of individual tribes, 

 and not of groups of tribes. It is generally supposed that their first 

 settlements in Sarmatia were in the highlands between the Theiss and 

 the March, whence they passed onward to the lower Danube, as far as 

 its mouth, where a portion of them, settling in the island of Pence, ob- 

 tained the name of Peucini. In the later geographers we find them 

 settled between the Tyrus or Dniester, and the Borysthenes or Dnieper, 

 the Peucini remaining at the mouth of the Danube. 



3 According to Parisot, the GTuttalus is the same as the Alle, a tribu- 

 tary of the Pregel. Cluver thinks that it is the same as the Oder. 

 Other writers again consider it the same as the Pregel. 



4 Or Elbe. ^ Now the Weser. ^ The modem Ems. 7 TheMeuse. 

 * The ' Hercynia Silva,' Hercynian Forest or Range, is very differently 



described by the writers of various ages. The earUest mention of it is 

 by Aristotle. Judging from the accovmts given by Csesar, Pomponius 

 Mela, and Strabo, the ' Hercynia SUva' appears to have been a general 

 name for almost all the mountains of Southern and Central G-ermany, 

 that is, from the sources of the Danube to Transylvania, comprising the 



