ny calls Vindeli, Vandals, all the
people of the north-east of Europe, because at that epoch the Vandals
were doubtless the conquering tribe. Caesar, on the contrary, ranges
under the name of Suevi, many of the tribes whom Pliny reckons as
Vandals, because the Suevi, properly so called, were then the most
powerful tribe in Germany. When the Goths, become in their turn
conquerors, had subjugated the nations whom they encountered on their
way, these nations lost their name with their liberty, and became of
Gothic origin. The Vandals themselves were then considered as Goths; the
Heruli, the Gepidae, &c., suffered the same fate. A common origin was
thus attributed to tribes who had only been united by the conquests of
some dominant nation, and this confusion has given rise to a number of
historical errors.--G. ----M. St. Martin has a learned note (to Le Beau,
v. 261) on the origin of the Vandals. The difficulty appears to be in
rejecting the close analogy of the name with the Vend or Wendish race,
who were of Sclavonian, not of Suevian or German, origin. M. St. Martin
supposes that the different races spread from the head of the Adriatic
to the Baltic, and even the Veneti, on the shores of the Adriatic, the
Vindelici, the tribes which gave their name to Vindobena, Vindoduna,
Vindonissa, were branches of the same stock with the Sclavonian Venedi,
who at one time gave their name to the Baltic; that they all spoke
dialects of the Wendish language, which still prevails in Carinthia,
Carniola, part of Bohemia, and Lusatia, and is hardly extinct in
Mecklenburgh and Pomerania. The Vandal race, once so fearfully
celebrated in the annals of mankind, has so utterly perished from the
face of the earth, that we are not aware that any vestiges of their
language can be traced, so as to throw light on the disputed question of
their German, their Sclavonian, or independent origin. The weight of
ancient authority seems against M. St. Martin's opinion. Compare, on the
Vandals, Malte Brun. 394. Also Gibbon's note, c. xli. n. 38.--M.]

In the age of the Antonines, the Goths were still seated in Prussia.
About the reign of Alexander Severus, the Roman province of Dacia had
already experienced their proximity by frequent and destructive inroads.
[19] In this interval, therefore, of about seventy years, we must place
the second migration of about seventy years, we must place the second
migration of the Goths from the Baltic to the Euxine; but the