[210] 138.  The ancient Greeks and the modern Orientals agree in saying that Zoroaster called the good God Oromazes, or rather Oromasdes, and the evil God Arimanius.  When I pondered on the fact that great princes of Upper Asia had the name of Hormisdas and that Irminius or Herminius was the name of a god or ancient hero of the Scythian Celts, that is, of the Germani, it occurred to me that this Arimanius or Irminius might have been a great conqueror of very ancient time coming from the west, just as Genghis Khan and Tamburlaine were later, coming from the east.  Arimanius would therefore have come from the north-west, that is, from Germania and Sarmatia, through the territory of the Alani and Massagetae, to raid the dominions of one Ormisdas, a great king in Upper Asia, just as other Scythians did in the days of Cyaxares, King of the Medes, according to the account given by Herodotus.  The monarch governing civilized peoples, and working to defend them against the barbarians, would have gone down to posterity, amongst the same peoples, as the good god; but the chief of these devastators will have become the symbol of the evil principle:  that is altogether reasonable.  It appears from this same mythology that these two princes contended for long, but that neither of them was victorious.  Thus they both held their own, just as the two principles shared the empire of the world according to the hypothesis attributed to Zoroaster.

139.  It remains to be proved that an ancient god or hero of the Germani was called Herman, Arimanius or Irminius.  Tacitus relates that the three tribes which composed Germania, the Ingaevones, the Istaevones and the Herminones or Hermiones, were thus named from the three sons of Mannus.  Whether that be true or not, he wished in any case to indicate that there was a hero named Herminius, from whom he was told the Herminones were named.  Herminones, Hermenner, Hermunduri all mean the same, that is, Soldiers.  Even in the Dark Ages Arimanni were viri militares, and there is feudum Arimandiae in Lombard law.

140.  I have shown elsewhere that apparently the name of one part of Germania was given to the whole, and that from these Herminones or Hermunduri all the Teutonic peoples were named Hermanni or Germani.  The difference between these two words is only in the force of the aspiration:  there is the same difference of initial letter between the Germani of the Latins and Hermanos of the Spaniards, or in the Gammarus of the Latins and the Hummer (that is, marine crayfish) of the Low Germans. [211] Besides it is very usual for one part of a nation to give the name to the whole:  so all the Germani were called Alemanni by the French, and yet this, according to the old nomenclature, only applied to the Suabians and the Swiss.  Although Tacitus did not actually know the origin of the name of the Germani, he said something which supports my opinion, when he observed that it was a name which