Historical attestations Roman era The earliest records of the Germanic peoples were recorded by the Romans, and in these works Thor is frequently referred to – via a process known as (where characteristics perceived to be similar by Romans result in identification of a non-Roman god as a Roman deity) – as either the Roman god Jupiter (also known as Jove) or the Greco-Roman god Hercules. The first clear example of this occurs in the Roman historian Tacitus's late first-century work , where, writing about the religion of the (a confederation of Germanic peoples), he comments that "among the gods Mercury is the one they principally worship. They regard it as a religious duty to offer to him, on fixed days, human as well as other sacrificial victims. Hercules and Mars they appease by animal offerings of the permitted kind" and adds that a portion of the also venerate "Isis". In this instance, Tacitus refers to the god Odin as "Mercury", Thor as "Hercules", and the god as "Mars", and the identity of the Isis of the Suebi has been debated. In Thor's case, the identification with the god Hercules is likely at least in part due to similarities between Thor's hammer and Hercules' club. In his Annals, Tacitus again refers to the veneration of "Hercules" by the Germanic peoples; he records a wood beyond the river Weser (in what is now northwestern Germany) as dedicated to him. A deity known as Hercules Magusanus was venerated in Germania Inferior; due to the Roman identification of Thor with Hercules, Rudolf Simek has suggested that Magusanus was originally an epithet attached to the Proto-Germanic deity *Þunraz. Post-Roman era The first recorded instance of the name of the god appears upon the Nordendorf fibulae, a piece of jewelry created during the Migration Period and found in Bavaria. The item bears an Elder Futhark inscribed with the name (i.e. ), the southern Germanic form of Thor's name. Around the second half of the 8th century, Old English texts mention (), which likely refers to a Saxon version of the god. In relation, is sometimes used in Old English texts to gloss Jupiter, the god may be referenced in the poem Solomon and Saturn, where the thunder strikes the devil with a "fiery axe", and the Old English expression ("thunder ride") may refer to the god's thunderous, goat-led chariot. A 9th-century AD codex from Mainz,