We find the Cimbri and Teutons combined with Celts from the island of Batavia[143] in the first Germanic invasion of the Roman Empire.

Jutes, Saxons and Angles started in close succession for Britain, and the Saxon group included Frisians.[144] An unavoidable concomitant of great migrations, especially those of nomads, is their tendency to sweep into the vortex of their movement any people whom they brush on the way.

Both individuals and tribes are thus caught up by the current.

The general convergence of the central German tribes towards the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire during the Marcomannic War drew in its train the Lombards from the lower Elbe down to the middle Danube and Theiss.[145] The force of the Lombards invading Italy in 568 included twenty thousand Saxons from Swabia, Gepidae from the middle Danube, Bulgarians, Slavs from the Russian Ukraine, together with various tribes from the Alpine district of Noricum and the fluvial plains of Pannonia.

Two centuries later the names of these non-Lombard tribes still survived in certain villages of Italy which had formed their centers.[146] The army which Attila the Hun brought into Gaul was a motley crowd, comprising peoples of probable Slav origin from the Russian steppes, Teutonic Ostrogoths and Gepidae, and numerous German tribes, besides the Huns themselves.