Teutones

The Teutons or ''Teutones'' (from s did not associate the name ''Teutons'' with their Proto-Germanic ancestors until the 13th Century .

More than 100 years Before Christ many of the Teutones, as well as the Cimbri , migrated south and west to the Danube valley, where they encountered the expanding Roman Empire .

During the late 2nd Century BC , the Teutons are recorded as marching south through Gaul along with their neighbors, the Cimbri , and attacking Roman Italy . After several victories for the invading armies, the Cimbri and Teutones were then defeated by Marius in 102 BC at the Battle Of Aquae Sextiae (near present-day Aix-en-Provence ). Their King, Teutobod , was taken in irons.

The captured women committed mass suicide, which passed into Roman legends of Germanic heroism (cf Jerome , letter cxxiii.8, 409 AD {Link without Title} ):

By the conditions of the surrender three hundred of their married women were to be handed over to the Romans. When the Teuton matrons heard of this stipulation they first begged the consul that they might be set apart to minister in the temples of Ceres and Venus ; and then when they failed to obtain their request and were removed by the Lictor s, they slew their little children and next morning were all found dead in each other's arms having strangled themselves in the night.

''Þeudanōs'' (meaning "they of the tribe"), the word ---''þeudā'' being a Proto-Germanic name for "tribe". The words can be further reconstructed as an earlier name --- and the root ---, which is a western Proto-Indo-European word root meaning "people".

''þeudā'' is found not only in German ''deutsch'' (=German, from ---''þeudiskaz''), Old English ''þēod'', Gothic ''þiuda'' and Old Norse ''þjóð'' "people", but also in the Old Irish word for "people," ''tuath''.

The root also probably appears in words of Romance origin such as ''total'', ''tutti'', ''factotum'', ''teetotum'' from Latin ''totus'' ( AHF ).

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Teutones