Primordia. Initiatory rites.
Minor, sc. numine. Inferior to the god.
Prae se ferens. Expressing in his external appearance, or bearing in his own person an acknowledgment of the power of the divinity.
Evolvuntur==se evolvunt, cf. Ann. 1, 13: cum Tiberii genua advolveretur; also lavantur, 22.
Eo—tanquam. Has reference to this point, as if, i.e. to this opinion, viz. that thence, etc. Cf. illuc respicit tanquam, 12.—Inde From the grove, or the god of the grove. Cf. 3: Tuisconem … originem gentis.
Adjicit auctoritatem, sc. isti superstitioni.
Magno corpore==reipublicae magnitudine. Corpore, the body politic. So His. 4, 64: redisse vos in corpus nomenque Germanorum.—Habitantur. Al. habitant and habitantium, by conjecture. The subject is the Semnonian country implied in Semnonum: the Semnonians inhabit a hundred villages, is the idea.
XL. Langobardos. The Lombards of Mediaeval history; so called probably from their long beards (Germ, lang and bart). First mentioned by Velleius, 2, 106: gens etiam Germana feritate ferocior. See also Ann. 2, 45, 46, 62-64.—Paucitas here stands opposed to the magno corpore of the Semnones in 39.
Per—periclitando. Three different constructions, cf. notes 16, 18.
Reudigni. Perhaps the Jutes, so intimately associated with the Angles in subsequent history. See Or. in loc. In like manner, Zeuss identifies the Suardones with the Heruli, and the Nuithones with the Teutones. Suardones perhaps==sword-men.