Moreover, besides the dangers from a sea
tempestuous, horrid and unknown, who would relinquish Asia, or Africa, or
Italy, to repair to Germany, a region hideous and rude, under a rigorous
climate, dismal to behold or to manure; [Footnote: To cultivate.] unless
the same were his native country? In their old ballads (which amongst them
are the only sort of registers and history) they celebrate _Tuisto_, a God
sprung from the earth, and _Mannus_ his son, as the fathers and founders
of the nation. To _Mannus_ they assign three sons, after whose names so
many people are called; the Ingaevones, dwelling next the ocean; the
Herminones, in the middle country; and all the rest, Istaevones. Some,
borrowing a warrant from the darkness of antiquity, maintain that the God
had more sons, that thence came more denominations of people, the
Marsians, Cambrians, Suevians, and Vandalians, and that these are the
names truly genuine and original. For the rest, they affirm Germany to be
a recent word, lately bestowed: for that those who first passed the Rhine
and expulsed the Gauls, and are now named Tungrians, were then called
Germans: and thus by degrees the name of a tribe prevailed, not that of
the nation; so that by an appellation at first occasioned by terror and
conquest, they afterwards chose to be distinguished, and assuming a name
lately invented were universally called _Germans_.
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