Note 2914 — BOOK IV. AN ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, SEAS, TOWNS, HAVENS, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, DISTANCES, AND PEOPLES WHO NOW EXIST OR FORMERLY EXISTED.

One of the great tribes of Germany, which rose to importance after the decay of the power of the Cherusci. It is thought by ethnographers that their name is still preserved in the word “Hessen.” They formed the chief tribe of the Hermiones here mentioned, and are described by Cæsar as belonging to the Suevi, though Tacitus distinguishes them, and no German tribe in fact occupied more permanently its original locality than the Chatti. Their original abode seems to have extended from the Westerwald in the west to the Saale in Franconia, and from the river Maine in the south as far as the sources of the Elison and the Weser, so that they occupied exactly the modern country of Hessen, including perhaps a portion of the north-west of Bavaria. See Gibbon, vol. iii. 99. Bohn’s Ed.