Note 26 — Chapter VI · GENS AND STATE IN ROME.
Gerhard Ernest Untermann translation
Author's note.
The Latin rex is equivalent to the Celtic-Irish righ (tribal chief) and the Gothic reiks. That this, like the German Fürst, English first and Danish forste, originally signified gentile or tribal chief is evident from the fact that the Goths in the fourth century already had a special term for the king of later times, the military chief of a whole nation, viz., thiudans. In Ulfila's translation of the Bible Artaxerxes and Herod are never called reiks, but thiudans, and the empire of the emperor Tiberius not reiki, but thiudinassus. In the name of the Gothic thiudans, or king as we inaccurately translate, Thiudareiks (Theodoric, German Dietrich), both names flow together.