SUE'VI, first mentioned by Caesar, in whose history (De hello Gallko) the name is employed as the collective designation of a great number of Germanic peoples. They occupied a district of indefinite extent on the eastern side of the Rhine, and may have been the same tribes as those subsequently .known as Chatti, Longobardi, etc. Caesar states that their territory comprised 100 cantons, and was densely wooded, that they had towns (oppida), but no strongholds, and that every year a part of the population left their homes to seek employment in war. The Suevi of whom Tacitus speaks (Germania, 38, etc.) seem to have dwelt n. and e. of the Suevi of extending as far as the Elbe and the Baltic, which Tacitus calls the " Suevic sea." The peoples united under the rule of Maroboduus, the 11arcomannic chief, were Suevic, and hence the Marco manni and Quadi, who figure in the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Aurelian, are often called Suevi. After the name had fallen into disuse as a collective designation, it re-ap
peared (second half of the 3d c., Amm. Mare., etc.) as the name of a people occupying the same territory as the Suevi of Cesar, who appear, however, to have been a mixed race made up of adventurers from different parts of Germany, and who probably took the name of Suevi after possessing themselves of the country. We find them in alliance with the Burgundiaus, Alemanni, Alani, Vandals, etc. They are among the most nota ble of the barbaric peoples that broke up the Roman empire in the n.w. and west. Bursting through the passes of the Pyrenees (409 A.D.), they along with the Vandals, overran and wasted Spain (q.v.). Those who remained at home in Germany seem to have spread during the 5th c. e. to the Neckar and the Rauhe Alps, and s. as far as Switzerland. The mediaeval Swabians were their direct descendants.