But it is time to return to the Germans: for the Germans were the successors of the Romans as masters of Western Europe. The Germans in their primitive tribal condition possessed a great aptitude for forming large political communities by the union of many small communities:--an aptitude which is probably common to all peoples in a tribal condition:--and they inhabited a flat country which put no obstacles in the way of the amalgamation of their tribes. At any rate the German tribes between 150 A.D. and 400 A.D. were engaged in a process of amalgamation. About 150 A.D. Ptolemy enumerated more than fifty of them[9]: by the year 400 all or nearly all of these had gathered themselves into a few great hordes or associations of tribes, (which may themselves be called overgrown tribes,) bearing severally the names of the Saxons, the Salian Franks, the Ripuarian Franks, the Angli, the Alamanni, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Lombards. After 400 A.D. came the great migrations of the German peoples: some of them invaded the provinces of the Western Roman Empire, still full of wealth and of such civilisation as the Romans had planted there: others, in the second half of the fifth century, betook themselves to Britain, from whence the Romans had departed in the year 407. [9] Smith's _Atlas of Ancient Geography_, Map 13, contains a map of Germania Magna according to Ptolemy. During the eleven centuries which intervened between the migrations of the Germans and the year 1500, the Germans who went to Britain, Spain and Gaul succeeded in forming certain large political communities which are usually known as the nations of medieval Europe. These political communities as they existed about the year 1480 or 1500 possessed three of the distinguishing features of nations: for each of them was of large size, lived under a single government, and was composed of men well suited for living together and under one government: but all of them lacked one quality which is essential for the making of a perfect nation: and that lacking quality was a strong cohesion between the inhabitants of the different parts of their territories. But it will be necessary to observe in detail the processes by which the large political communities were built up.