migration. They came from the north, and the first Celtic people
with whom they came in contact were, so far as is known, the Boii,
probably in Bohemia. More exact details as to the cause and
the direction of their migration have not been recorded by
contemporaries,(17) and cannot be supplied by conjecture, since the
state of things in those times to the north of Bohemia and the Main
and to the east of the Lower Rhine lies wholly beyond our knowledge.
But the hypothesis that the Cimbri, as well as the similar horde of
the Teutones which afterwards joined them, belonged essentially not
to the Celtic nation, to which the Romans at first assigned them,
but to the Germanic, is supported by the most definite facts: viz.,
by the appearance of two small tribes of the same name--remnants
apparently left behind in their primitive seats--the Cimbri in
the modern Denmark, the Teutones in the north-east of Germany in
the neighbourhood of the Baltic, where Pytheas, a contemporary of
Alexander the Great, makes mention of them thus early in connection
with the amber trade; by the insertion of the Cimbri and Teutones in
the list of the Germanic peoples among the Ingaevones alongside of
the Chauci; by the judgment of Caesar, who first made the Romans
acquainted with the distinction betweenthe Ge rmans and the Celts,
and who includes the Cimbri, many of whom he must himself have seen,
among the Germans; and lastly, by the very names of the peoples and
the statements as to their physical appearance and habits in other
respects, which, while applying to the men of the north generally,
are especially applicable to the Germans. On the other hand it is
conceivable enough that such a horde, after having been engaged in
wandering perhaps for many years and having in its movements near to
or within the land of the Celts doubtless welcomed every brother-in-arms
who joined it, would include a certain amount of Celtic elements; so
that it is not surprising that men of Celtic name should be at
the head of the Cimbri, or that the Romans should employ spies
speaking the Celtic tongue to gain information among them. It was
a marvellous movement, the like of which the Romans had not yet seen;
not a predatory expedition of men equipped for the purpose, nor
a "-ver sacrum-" of young men migrating to a foreign land, but a
migratory people that had set out with their women and children, with
their goods and chattels, to seek a new home. The waggon, whi