To conclude: the bearing of the criticism upon the ethnology of the populations which took part in the destruction of the Roman empire, is suggestive. There are several of them in the same category with the Gepidæ.
Mutatis mutandis: every point in the previous criticism, which applies to the Gepidæ and Iapydes, applies to the Rugi and Rhæti. Up to a certain period we have, in writers more or less classical, notices of a country called Rhætia, and a population called Rhæti. For a shorter period subsequent to this, we hear nothing, or next to nothing, of any one.
Thirdly, in the writers of the 5th and 6th centuries, when the creed begins to be Christian and the authorities German, we find the Rugi of a Rugi-land,—Rugi-land, or the land of the Rugi, being neither more nor less than the ancient province of Rhætia.
Name, then, for name, and place for place, the agreement is sufficiently close to engender the expectation that the Rhæti will be treated as the Rugi, under a classical, the Rugi as the Rhæti, under a German, designation. Yet this is not the case. And why? Because when the Rugi become prominent in history, it is the recent, foreign, and intrusive Goths and Huns with whom they are chiefly associated. Add to this, that there existed in Northern Germany a population actually called Rugii.
For all this, however, Rugiland is Rhætia, and Rhætia is Rugiland,—name for name and place for place. So, probably, is the modern Slavonic term Raczy.
[VIII.]
ETHNOLOGICA.
ON THE SUBJECTIVITY OF CERTAIN CLASSES IN ETHNOLOGY.
FROM
THE PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE FOR MAY 1853.