Editing Suebi (section)

===More than one tribe===
Caesar placed the Suebi east of the [[Ubii]] apparently near modern [[Hesse]], in the position where later writers mention the [[Chatti]], and he distinguished them from their allies the [[Marcomanni]]. Some commentators believe that Caesar's Suebi were the later Chatti or possibly the [[Hermunduri]], or [[Semnones]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0062:entry=catti-harpers&highlight=chatti| last= Peck| title=Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities |year=1898}}</ref> Later authors use the term ''Suebi'' more broadly, "to cover a large number of tribes in central Germany".<ref>{{cite book|first=R. W.|last=Chambers|author-link = Raymond Wilson Chambers|title=Widseth: a Study in Old English Heroic Legend|pages=194, note on line 22 of Widsith|publisher=University Press|location=Cambridge|year=1912}} Republished in 2006 by Kissinger Publishing as {{ISBN|1-4254-9551-6}}.</ref>

While Caesar treated them as one Germanic tribe within an alliance, albeit the largest and most warlike one, later authors, such as [[Tacitus]], [[Pliny the Elder]] and [[Strabo]], specified that the Suevi "do not, like the [[Chatti]] or [[Tencteri]], constitute a single nation. They actually occupy more than half of Germania, and are divided into a number of distinct tribes under distinct names, though all generally are called Suebi".<ref>Tacitus ''Germania'' Section 8, translation by H. Mattingly.</ref> Although no classical authors explicitly call the Chatti Suevic, [[Pliny the Elder]] (23 AD – 79 AD), reported in his ''Natural History'' that the Irminones were a large grouping of related Germanic ''gentes'' or "tribes" including not only the Suebi, but also the Hermunduri, Chatti and [[Cherusci]].<ref name=plin4.14>{{cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0137:book=4:chapter=28&highlight=suevi |title=Book IV section XIV |publisher=Perseus.tufts.edu |access-date=2014-05-01}}</ref> Whether or not the Chatti were ever considered Suevi, both Tacitus and Strabo distinguish the two partly because the Chatti were more settled in one territory, whereas Suevi remained less settled.<ref name=strabo>{{cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0239:book=7:chapter=1&highlight=suevi%2Cchatti |title=Strab. 7.1 |publisher=Perseus.tufts.edu |access-date=2014-05-01}}</ref>

The definitions of the greater ethnic groupings within [[Germania]] were apparently not always consistent and clear, especially in the case of mobile groups such as the Suevi. Whereas Tacitus reported three main kinds of German peoples, Irminones, [[Istvaeones]], and [[Ingaevones]], Pliny specifically adds two more ''genera'' or "kinds", the [[Bastarnae]] and the Vandili ([[Vandals]]). The Vandals were tribes east of the Elbe, including the well-known [[Silingi]], [[Goths]], and [[Burgundians]], an area that Tacitus treated as Suebic. That the Vandals might be a separate type of Germanic people, corresponding to the modern concept of [[East Germanic]], is a possibility that Tacitus also noted, but for example the [[Varini]] are named as Vandilic by Pliny, and specifically Suebic by Tacitus.

At one time, classical ethnography had applied the name ''Suevi'' to so many Germanic tribes that it appeared as if, in the first centuries AD, that native name would replace the foreign name "Germans".<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c788wWR_bLwC&pg=PA467|page=[https://archive.org/details/lateantiquitygui00bowe/page/467 467]|title=Late Antiquity|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1999|chapter=Germanic Tribes|isbn=9780674511736|url=https://archive.org/details/lateantiquitygui00bowe/page/467}}</ref>

The modern term "Elbe Germanic" similarly covers a large grouping of Germanic peoples that at least overlaps with the classical terms "Suevi" and "Irminones". However, this term was developed mainly as an attempt to define the ancient peoples who must have spoken the Germanic dialects that led to modern [[Upper German]] dialects spoken in Austria, [[Bavaria]], [[Thuringia]], [[Alsace]], [[Baden-Württemberg]] and German speaking Switzerland. This was proposed by [[Friedrich Maurer (linguist)|Friedrich Maurer]] as one of five major ''Kulturkreise'' or "culture-groups" whose dialects developed in the southern German area from the first century BC through to the fourth century AD.<ref>{{cite book | last=Maurer | first=Friedrich | title=Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur germanischen und frühdeutschen Sprachgeschichte, Stammes – und Volkskunde | location=Bern, München | publisher=A. Franke Verlag, Leo Lehnen Verlag | orig-year=1942| year=1952}}</ref> Apart from his own linguistic work with modern dialects, he also referred to the archaeological and literary analysis of Germanic tribes done earlier by [[Gustaf Kossinna]]<ref>{{cite book | last=Kossinna | first=Gustaf | author-link=Gustaf Kossinna | title=Die Herkunft der Germanen | year=1911 | location=Leipzig | publisher=Kabitsch}}</ref> In terms of these proposed ancient dialects, the Vandals, Goths and Burgundians are generally referred to as members of the Eastern Germanic group, distinct from the Elbe Germanic.