Editing Saxons (section)

==Possible mention in Ptolemy (2nd century AD)==
[[File:Roman Empire 125.png|thumb|upright=1.35|Map of the Roman Empire and contemporary indigenous Europe in 125{{nbsp}}AD, showing the location of the Saxons in Northern Germany, according to some copies of Ptolemy's work]]
[[Ptolemy]]'s ''[[Geographia]]'', written in the 2nd century, is sometimes considered to contain the first mention of the Saxons. Some copies of this text mention a tribe called ''Saxones'' in the area just to the north of the lower [[Elbe]], and there were also three islands north of the Elbe's mouth which were called the Saxon islands.{{sfn|Liccardo|2023|p=60}} However, other versions refer to the same tribe as ''Axones''. Some scholars such as Mathias Springer have proposed that this may be a misspelling of the tribe that [[Tacitus]] in his ''[[Germania (book)|Germania]]'' called ''[[Aviones]]''. According to this theory, ''Saxones'' was the result of later scribes trying to correct a name that meant nothing to them.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Green |first1=D. H. |title=The Continental Saxons from the Migration Period to the Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective |last2=Siegmund |first2=F. |date=2003 |publisher=[[Boydell Press]] |isbn=978-1-84383-026-9 |pages=14–15}}</ref> On the other hand, [[Gudmund Schütte|Schütte]], in his analysis of such problems in ''Ptolemy's Maps of Northern Europe'', believed that ''Saxones'' is correct. He notes that the loss of first letters occurs in numerous places in various copies of Ptolemy's work, and also that the manuscripts without ''Saxones'' are generally inferior overall.{{Sfn|Schütte|1917|pp=22–23}} According to Liccardo "Even though the reference is found in a section of the ''Geographia'' difficult to interpret, the scholarly consensus considers this passage to be genuine".{{sfn|Liccardo|2023|p=60}} 

For the majority of scholars who accept the existence of Saxons in Ptolemy, their reappearance as a much more important and widespread people in third century records is nonetheless remarkable.