"2. The Sabalingii.—then—
"3. The Kobandi.—above these—
"4. The Chali.—and above them, but more to the west—
"5. The Phundusii.—more to the east—
"6. The Charudes.—and most to the north of all—
"7. The Cimbri."
8. The Pharodini lay next to the Saxons, between the Rivers Chalusus and Suebus.
Tacitus' geography is obscure; Ptolemy's is difficult. One wants light. The other gives us conflicting facts. Neither have the attempts to reconcile them been successful. The first point that strikes us is the difference of the names in the two authors. No Sigulones and Sabalingii in Tacitus. No Nuithones and Reudigni in Ptolemy. Then there is the extremely northern position which the latter gives the Cimbri. His Charudes, too, cannot well be separated from Cæsar's Harudes. Nevertheless, their area is inconveniently distant from the seat of war in the invasion of Gaul under Ariovistus, of whose armies the Harudes form a part. The River Chalusus is reasonably[160] considered to be the Trave. But the Suebus is not the Oder; though the two are often identified: inasmuch as the geographer continues to state that after the Pharodini come "the Sidini to the river Iadua" (the Oder?), "and, after them, the Rutikleii as far as the Vistula."
Zeuss has allowed himself to simplify some of the details by identifying certain of the Ptolemæan names with those of Tacitus. Thus he thinks that, by supposing the original word to have been Σφαρόδ-ινοι, the Φαρόδιν-οι and Suardon-es may be made the same. Kobandi, too, he thinks may be reduced to Chaviones, or Aviones. Thirdly, by the prefix Φ, and the insertion of N, Eudos-es may be converted into Φουνδοῦσ-ιοι.
Those who know the degree to which the modern German philologists act upon the doctrine that Truth is stranger than Fiction, and, by unparallelled manipulations reconcile a so-called iron-bound system of scientific letter-changes with results as extraordinary as those of the Keltic and Hebraic dreamers of the last century, will see in such comparisons as these nothing extraordinary. On the contrary, they will give them credit for being moderate. And so they are: for it is extremely likely that whilst Tacitus got his names from German, Ptolemy got his from Keltic, or Slavonic, sources; and if such be the case, a very considerable latitude is allowable.[161]