(1) There are the Germans _within_ the Roman _limes_.[525] These included the tribes who, following up the conquests of Ariovistus, had settled on the left bank of the Rhine in what was then called the province of Upper Germany, including the present Elsass and the country round the confluence of the Rhine with the Maine and Moselle. These tribes were the Tribocci, Nemetes and Vangiones.[526] Further, there were the tribes or emigrants, many of them German, gradually settling within the limits of the 'Agri Decumates.' Lastly, there were the _Batavi_ and other tribes settled in the province of Lower Germany at the mouths of the Rhine, shading off into Belgic Gaul. «Northern tribes outside it.» (2) There were the Northern tribes _outside_ the Roman province,[527] some of them tributary to the [p349] Romans and some of them hostile, the _Frisii_, the _Chatti_ (or Hessians), and other tribes, reaching from the German Ocean to the mountains, and occupying the country embracing the upper valleys of the Weser and the Elbe, some of which tribes afterwards joined the Franks and Saxons. «The _Suevic_ tribes on the borders.» (3) There were the _Suevic_ tribes[528] so familiar to Cæsar, and amongst whom were the _Angli_ and _Varini_, the _Marcomanni_ and _Hermunduri_, always hovering over the _limes_ of the provinces from the Rhine and Maine to the Danube: some of them hostile and some of them friendly; some of whom afterwards mingled with the Franks and Saxons, but most of whom were absorbed in the Alamannic and the Bavarian tribes who finally, following the course of the previous emigration, passed over the _limes_ and settled within the 'Agri Decumates' in Rhætia, and in the Roman province of Upper Germany. «Distant tribes.» (4) Behind all these tribes with whom the Romans came in contact were others vaguely described as lying far away to the north and east. The habits of _which_ of these widely different classes of German tribes did Tacitus describe? «The _Suevic_ tribes most in his mind probably.» Probably it would not be safe to go further than to say that the Germans whose manners he was most _likely_ to describe were those chiefly _Suevic_ tribes hovering round the _limes_ of the provinces, especially of the 'Agri Decumates,' with whom the Romans had most to do. It is at least possible that he left out of his picture, on the one hand, those distant northern or eastern tribes who may still have retained their early nomadic habits, and on the other hand those [p350] Germans who had silently and peaceably settled within the _limes_ of the Roman provinces, and so had become half Roman.[529] But to what class are we to refer the settlements represented by the local names with the supposed patronymic suffix? «The patronymic local names imply fixed _settlement_.» The previous study of the Welsh and Irish tribal system ought to help us to judge what they were.