We get the evidence of a good writer, that six nations considered by him as sufficiently Germanic to be included in his Germania, were far enough north of the Germans who came in immediate contact with Rome to be briefly and imperfectly described and near enough the sea to frequent an island worshipping a goddess with a German name and certain remarkable attributes. This is the most we get; and to get this we must shut our eyes to more than one complication.
a. Thus the country that can most reasonably be assigned to the Varini, is in the tenth century the country of the Varnavi, who are no Germans, but Slavonians.
b. Another reading, instead of Hertham, is Nerthum, a name less decidedly Germanic.
All we get beyond this is from their subsequent histories; and of these subsequent histories[148] there is only one—the Angle or English. Truly, then, may we say that the Angles of Germany are only known from their relations to the Angles of England.
Let us inquire into the geographical and ethnological conditions of the Angli of Tacitus; and first in respect to their geography.
1. They must be placed as far north as the Weser; because the area required for the Cherusci, Fosi, Chasuarii, Dulgubini, Chamavi, and Angrivarii must be carried to a certain extent northwards; and the populations in question lay beyond these.
2. They must not be carried very far north of the Elbe. The reasons for this are less conclusive. They lie, however, in the circumstance of Ptolemy's notices placing them in a decidedly southern direction; and, as Tacitus has left their locality an open question, the evidence of even a worse authority than Ptolemy ought to be decisive,—"of the nations of the interior the greatest is that of Suevi Angili, who are the most eastern of the Longobardi, stretching as far northwards as the middle Elbe." The same writer precludes us from placing them in Holstein and Sleswick by filling up the Peninsula by populations other than Angle, one of which is the Saxon. But these Saxons we are not at liberty to identify with the Angli of Tacitus, because, by so doing, we separate[149] them from the more evidently related Angili of Ptolemy. Ptolemy draws a distinction between the two, and writes that "after the Chauci on the neck of the Cimbric Chersonese, came the Saxons, after the Saxons, as far as the river Chalusus, the Pharodini. In the Chersonese itself there extend, beyond the Saxons, the Sigulones on the west, then the Sabalingii, then the Cobandi, above them the Chali, then above these, but more to the west, the Phundusii; more to the east the Charudes, and most of all to the north, the Cimbri."
3. They must not come quite up to the sea, since we have seen from Ptolemy that the Chauci and Saxones joined, and as the Saxons were on the neck of the Peninsula, or the south-eastern parts of Holstein, the Chauci must have lain between the Angli and the sea, probably, however, on a very narrow strip of coast.
4. They must not have reached eastwards much farther than the frontiers of Lauenburg and Luneburg, since, as soon as we get definite historical notices of these countries, they are Slavonic—and, whatever may be said to the contrary, there is no evidence of this Slavonic occupancy being recent.
These conditions give us the northern part of the kingdom of Hanover as the original Angle area.