1The Germans themselves I should judge to be native to the soil and very little mixed by arrivals and visits from other races, because in former times those who sought to change their homes came not by land but on fleets, and the Ocean beyond, boundless and, so to speak, hostile, is visited by few ships from our world. 2Who, besides, apart from the danger of a rough and unknown sea, would leave Asia or Africa or Italy and make for Germany, shapeless in its lands, harsh in its climate, grim to live in and to look upon, unless it were his fatherland? 3In ancient songs, which are the only kind of record and annals among them, they celebrate Tuisto, a god born from the earth.
3To him they assign a son, Mannus, as the origin and founder of the race, and to Mannus three sons, from whose names those nearest the Ocean are called Ingaevones, those in the middle Herminones, and the rest Istaevones. 4Some, as happens in the freedom of antiquity, assert that more sons were born to the god and that there are more names of the race, Marsi, Gambrivii, Suebi, Vandilii, and that these are the true and ancient names. 5But the name of Germany, they say, is recent and lately applied, since those who first crossed the Rhine and drove out the Gauls, and are now called Tungri, were then called Germans: thus the name of a tribe, not of a race, gradually prevailed, so that all were called Germans, first by the victor to inspire fear, and soon by themselves too, once the name had been found.