ance of manners, complexion, religion,
and language, seemed to indicate that the Vandals and the Goths were
originally one great people. [17] The latter appear to have been
subdivided into Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepidae. [18] The distinction
among the Vandals was more strongly marked by the independent names of
Heruli, Burgundians, Lombards, and a variety of other petty states, many
of which, in a future age, expanded themselves into powerful monarchies.
[181]

[Footnote 13: Tacit. Germania, c. 44.]

[Footnote 14: Tacit. Annal. ii. 62. If we could yield a firm assent to
the navigations of Pytheas of Marseilles, we must allow that the Goths
had passed the Baltic at least three hundred years before Christ.]

[Footnote 15: Ptolemy, l. ii.]

[Footnote 16: By the German colonies who followed the arms of the
Teutonic knights. The conquest and conversion of Prussia were completed
by those adventurers in the thirteenth century.]

[Footnote 17: Pliny (Hist. Natur. iv. 14) and Procopius (in Bell.
Vandal. l. i. c. l) agree in this opinion. They lived in distant ages,
and possessed different means of investigating the truth.]

[Footnote 18: The Ostro and Visi, the eastern and western Goths,
obtained those denominations from their original seats in Scandinavia.
In all their future marches and settlements they preserved, with their
names, the same relative situation. When they first departed from
Sweden, the infant colony was contained in three vessels. The third,
being a heavy sailer, lagged behind, and the crew, which afterwards
swelled into a nation, received from that circumstance the appellation
of Gepidae or Loiterers. Jornandes, c. 17. * Note: It was not in
Scandinavia that the Goths were divided into Ostrogoths and Visigoths;
that division took place after their irruption into Dacia in the third
century: those who came from Mecklenburgh and Pomerania were called
Visigoths; those who came from the south of Prussia, and the northwest
of Poland, called themselves Ostrogoths. Adelung, Hist. All. p. 202
Gatterer, Hist. Univ. 431.--G.]

[Footnote 181: This opinion is by no means probable. The Vandals and the
Goths equally belonged to the great division of the Suevi, but the
two tribes were very different. Those who have treated on this part
of history, appear to me to have neglected to remark that the ancients
almost always gave the name of the dominant and conquering people to all
the weaker and conquered races. So Pli