ns
were the aggressors, the Angli lay beyond the pale of their ambition.
When the Romans were on the defensive the Angli were beyond the
opportunities of attack.

All attempts to illustrate the history of the Angles of Germany by means
of that of the nations mentioned in conjunction with them by Tacitus, is
_obscurum per obscurius_. It is more than this. The connexion creates
difficulties. The Langobardi, who gave their name to Lombardy, were
anything but Angle; inasmuch as their language was a dialect of the High
German division. Hence, if we connect them with our own ancestors we
must suppose that when they changed their locality they changed their
speech also. But no such assumption is necessary. All that we get from
the text of Tacitus is, that they were in geographical contiguity with
the Reudigni, &c.

The Varini are in a different predicament. They are mentioned in the
present text along with the Angli, and they are similarly mentioned in
the heading of a code of laws referred to the tenth century. Every name
in this latter document is attended with difficulties.

_Incipit Lex Anglorum et Werinorum, hoc est Thuringorum._--To find
_Angli_ in Thuringia by themselves would be strange. So it would be to
find _Werini_. But to find the two combined is exceedingly puzzling. I
suggest the likelihood of there having been military colonies, settled
by some of the earlier successors of Charlemagne, if not by Charlemagne
himself. There are other interpretations; but this seems the likeliest.
That the Varini and Angli were contiguous populations in the time of
Tacitus, joining each other on the Lower Elbe, even as they join each
other in his text, is likely. It is also likely that when their
respective areas were conquered, each should have supplied the elements
of a colony to the conqueror.

At the same time, I do not think that their ethnological relations were
equally close. The Varini I believe to have been Slavonians. There is no
difficulty in doing this. The only difficulty lies in the choice between
two Slavonic populations. Adam of Bremen places a tribe, which he
sometimes calls _Warnabi_, and sometimes _Warnahi_ (Helmoldus calling it
_Warnavi_), between the river Havel in Brandenburg and the Obotrites of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He mentions them, too, in conjunction with the
_Linones_ of _Lun_-eburg. Now this evidence fixes them in the parts
about the present district of _Warnow_, on the Elde, a locality which is
f