"Under Antoninus, the Son of Severus, a new and more severe war once more (A. D. 213) broke out in Raetia. This also was waged against the Chatti; but by their side a second people is named, which we here meet for the first time--the Alamanni. Whence they came, we known not. According to a Roman writing a little later, they were a conflux of mixed elements; the appellation also seems to point to a league of communities, as well as the fact that, afterwards, the different tribes comprehended under this name stand forth--more than is the case among the other great Germanic peoples--in their separate character, and the Juthungi, the Lentienses, and other Alamannic peoples not seldom act independently. But that it is not the Germans of this region who here emerge, allied under the new name and strengthened by the alliance, is shown as well by the naming of the Alamanni along side of the Chatti, as by the mention of the unwonted skilfulness of the Alamanni in equestrian combat. On the contrary, it was certainly, in the main, hordes coming on from the East that lent new strength to the almost extinguished German resistance on the Rhine; it is not improbable that the powerful Semnones, in earlier times dwelling on the middle Elbe, of whom there is no further mention after the end of the second century, furnished a strong contingent to the Alamanni." _T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 4._ "The standard quotation respecting the derivation of the name from 'al'='all' and m-n= man', so that the word (somewhat exceptionably) denotes 'men of all sorts,' is from Agathias, who quotes Asinius Quadratus. ... Notwithstanding this, I think it is an open question, whether the name may not have been applied by the truer and more unequivocal Germans of Suabia and Franconia, to certain less definitely Germanic allies from Wurtemberg and Baden,--parts of the Decumates Agri--parts which may have supplied a Gallic, a Gallo-Roman, or even a Slavonic element to the confederacy; in which case, a name so German as to have given the present French and Italian name for Germany, may, originally, have applied to a population other than Germanic. I know the apparently paradoxical elements in this view; but I also know that, in the way of etymology, it is quite as safe to translate 'all' by 'alii' as by 'omnes': and I cannot help thinking that the 'al-' in Ale-manni is the 'al-' in 'alir-arto' (a foreigner or man of another sort), 'eli-benzo' (an alien), and 'ali-land' (captivity in foreign land).--Grimm, ii. 628.--Rechsalterth, page 359. And still more satisfied am I that the 'al-' in Al-emanni is the 'al-' in Alsatia='el-sass'='ali-satz'='foreign settlement.' In other words, the prefix in question is more probably the 'al-' in 'el-se', than the 'al-' in 'all.' Little, however, of importance turns on this.