These, whom Polybius designates as the "Celts in the Alps and on the Rhone, who on account of their character as military adventurers are called Gaesatae (free lances)," are in the Capitoline Fasti named -Germani-.

It is possible that the contemporary annalists may have here mentioned Celts alone, and that it was the historical speculation of the age of Caesar and Augustus that first induced the redactors of these Fasti to treat them as "Germans." If, on the other hand, the mention of the Germans in the Fasti was based on contemporary records -- in which case this is the earliest mention of the name--we shall here have to think not of the Germanic races who were afterwards so called, but of a Celtic horde..