TEUTONIC, a term applied to a group of nations as well as of languages, forming an important division or stem of the Aryan (q.v.) family. The Teutonic languages will be found enumerated and classified in the table at the end of the article PHILOLOGY. The Teutonic stock of nations, as they exist at the present day, is divided into two principal branches:. (1) The Scandinavian, embracing Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders; and (2) the Germanic, which includes, besides the German-speaking inhabitants of Ger many proper (see GERMANY) and Switzerland (q.v.), also the population of the Nether lands (the Dutch), the Flemings of Belgium, and the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons in Great Britain, together with their offspring in North America, Australia, and other British colonies. It is necessary in this case, as in all similar cases, to guard against making language the sole test of race. In many parts of Germany where German now prevails, Slavic dialects were spoken down to recent times, and in some places are not yet quite extinct. And in Great Britain it is unreasonable to suppose that the Anglo-Saxon invaders exterminated the native Celtic population, or even drove more than a tithe of them into the Highlands. The mass undoubtedly remained as subject serfs, learned the language and customs of their masters, and gradually amalgamated with them; so that, in point of blood, the English are perhaps as much Celtic as Teutonic.
Of the various tribes and nations spoken of as inhabiting northern Europe in ancient times, it is often difficult to determine which were really of Germanic race, and which Celtic or Slavic; the classic writers, having no skill in detecting the affinities of Ian gunge, had only confused notions of ethnology. Of undoubted German nations who took
part in the destruction of the Roman empire, the most prominent were the Goths (q.v.), Lombards (q.v.),Vandals (q.v.), and Franks (q.v.). The term Teutonic is derived from Teu tones, the name of a nation or tribe first mentioned by Pytheas, who wrote about 320 B. c., as then inhabiting a part of the Chnbric Chersonesus, or Jutland. For the next 200 years there is no further mention of the Teutones, that is, not until 113 B.C., when they appear in history as ravaging Gaul, and in conjunction with the Cimbri and Ambrones, threat ening the very existence of the Roman republic. The Cimbri having gone into Spain, the Teutones and Ambrones were at length defeated by C. Marius in a great battle at Aquae Sexthe, or Aix, in Gaul, 102 n.c., in which from 100,000 to 200,000 of the invad ina army were slain, and many thousands made prisoners. A similar victory was gained by Marius in the following year over the Cimbri in the plains of Lombardy. It is disputed among ethnologists and historians whether the Cimbri so defeated were of the Celtic or of the Germanic race, and doubts have even been thrown on the claim of the Teutones to be considered Germans, although the best German scholars hold the claim to be established. Be that as it may, Roman writers, after the time of Caesar and Taci tus, began to use the adjective Teutonicus as equivalent to Germanicus; and this practice was adopted in the middle ages by Germans writing in Latin. The native term was theodisk, from Goth., Mind, people; and it is from this word, and not from Teu tonic, that the modern Deutsch, is derived. See GERM ANY.