Here end the
territories of the Suevians.
Whether amongst the Sarmatians or the Germans I ought to account the
Peucinians, the Venedians, and the Fennians, is what I cannot determine;
though the Peucinians, whom some call Basstarnians, speak the same
language with the Germans, use the same attire, build like them, and live
like them, in that dirtiness and sloth so common to all. Somewhat they are
corrupted into the fashion of the Sarmatians by the intermarriages of the
principal sort with that nation: from whence the Venedians have derived
very many of their customs and a great resemblance. For they are
continually traversing and infesting with robberies all the forests and
mountains lying between the Peucinians and Fennians. Yet they are rather
reckoned amongst the Germans, for that they have fixed houses, and carry
shields, and prefer travelling on foot, and excel in swiftness. Usages
these, all widely differing from those of the Sarmatians, who live on
horseback and dwell in waggons. In wonderful savageness live the nation of
the Fennians, and in beastly poverty, destitute of arms, of horses, and of
homes; their food, the common herbs; their apparel, skins; their bed, the
earth; their only hope in their arrows, which for want of iron they point
with bones.
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