318 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



Celtic race being perceptible in various recorded names and 

 events. Thus, in A. D. 563, the Winetans elected for their 

 king Saino, a pagan Sennonian Gallic merchant, who con- 

 tinued his reign during thirty-five years. A Finnic Celt, of 

 great ability, has, during the present generation, again found 

 an elective throne in the high north. The Boii, a tribe of 

 Celto-Scytha?, wandered from Gaul to Bohemia, perhaps a pris- 

 tine home ; others resided, according to Lelewel, in Gallicia, 

 all before the Christian era; and therefore Gaul was not un- 

 known to the Vandals when they removed to the south. We 

 trace the Celtic nationality still further, in the name of Wal- 

 linische Werder, the locality where Jomsberg, one of the sister 

 cities, was built; even at Dantzig, the same influence was per- 

 ceived in the appellation of the river Rodaun. Historically, it 

 is found in the bond of long-enduring neutrality which the 

 Winetans, then called Vandals, maintained among themselves, 

 the Goths, Suevi, and Burgundians, during their offensive wars 

 against the Roman empire ; and their power, in the facility 

 which Stilicho, a native Vandal, found towards the attainment 

 of the first honors of the empire, as well as for raising up 

 enemies against it in his own cause. Political considerations 

 may have prevented the Vandal inroad from proceeding beyond 

 Pannonia towards Italy. The Illyrian Veneti probably bought 

 off the invaders, and pointed out the greater facility of con- 

 quests in the south of Gaul and Spain ; for, being inferior in 

 numbers, and less national than the Goths, as subsequent 

 events in the peninsula of Spain attest, they were well advised 

 to pass on, and, when followed, were even then compelled to 

 retire to Mauritania, where Genseric took Carthage in 439, 

 and subsequently being called over to Italy, he plundered 

 Rome in 455, but only to return to Africa. Although, accord- 

 ing to Witichindus, Wineta was then flourishing on the 

 Baltic, the Adriatic Veneti began at Venice again to form a 

 central commercial emporium, and their numbers were soon 

 so great at Constantinople, that the blue faction in the hippo- 



