Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/462

Chap. XII. OF MANCHESTER. 4 a 7 dared by Dio to have been diftinguifhed by the equivalent ap- pellation of Celts from the earlieft period And the broad line of nations which extended along the ocean and reached to the borders of Scythia were all known to the learned in the days of Diodorus by the fame expreffive appellation of VaXaJcu or Gauls 8 . Of thefe nations the moft noted were the Si-Cambri and the Cimbri 9 ; the former being feated near the channel of the Rhine 10 , and the latter inhabiting the peninfula of Jutland ". The denominations of both fufficiently indicate their original, and evince both to have been derived from the common flock of the Celtic, and to have been of the fame Celtic kindred with the Cimbri of our own Somerfetfhire and with the Cymri or Cambrians of our own Wales. The Cimbri are accordingly denominated Celtas by Strabo ". The Cimbri are accordingly aflerted to be Gauls by Diodorus, to be the defcendants of thofe Gauls who facked the city of Rome, who plundered the temple of Delphos, and who fubdued a great part of Europe and fbme regions of Afia x Immediately to the fouth of the Cimbri were the Saxons, and extended frpni the ifthmus of the Cherfonefus to the current of the Elbe l Thefe were equally Celtic in their origin as their neighbours. Thefe were equally denominated Ambrones as Saxones ls , and as fuch are included by Tacitus under the ge- neral appellation of Cimbri 16 , and are comprehended in Plu- tarch under the more general appellation of Celto-Scythae X7 . And this denomination of Ambrones appears to have been undoubt- edly Gallic in itfelf, being common to the Saxons beyond the Elbe and to the Ligurians in Cifalpine Gaul, as both found to their furprize on the irruption of the former into Italy with the Cimbri ". Thefe Saxons or Ambrons compofed a body of more than thirty thoufand men in that irruption, and were principally concerned in cutting to pieces the large armies of Manlius and Caepio I5> . And the appellation of Saxons muft be equally Cel- tic as the denomination of Ambrons. It muft originally have been the fame with the Belgic Sueffones of Gaul, the capital of Hi 2 the