THE FIRST BOOK

OF ERASMUS STELLA LIBONOTHANUS

ON THE ANTIQUITIES OF PRUSSIA

Prussia, the last coast of Germany, beginning from the Vistula River, which it has as its limit to the west, and running along the inlets of the Baltic Sea which surround its northern side, receiving the rising sun from the Alani, with the Amaxobian mountains covering its southern side, from which it is separated by continuous ridges of forests. Jornandes, so named by himself, as his own manuscripts testify. This land was inhabited by diverse cultivators. For as Gordanus the Goth writes, the Culmigeri (Germans) held it in times past, from whom it was for some time called Culmigeria, and today that part which borders the Vistula is still called Culmigeria for Hulmigeria. But these, as soon as the Goths had descended from Scandania onto the continent, were driven from there, and they (as he says) occupied it. Ptolemy, however, recounting the more ancient inhabitants, writes that the Gotthones, Venedi, Stagnani, and Sargatii, and the Sudini had settled in these places, along with the Gelidani and likewise the Gillones and Vacini.