and also active within the same alliance. But he does not describe where they were living. Strabo wrote that the Suebi "excel all the others in power and numbers." He describes Suebic peoples (Greek ethnē) as having come to dominate Germany between the Rhine and Elbe, with the exception of the Rhine valley, on the frontier with the Roman empire, and the "coastal" regions north of the Rhine. The geographer Ptolemy (c. AD 90 – c. AD 168), in a fairly extensive account of Greater Germany, makes several unusual mentions of Suebi between the Rhine and the Elbe. He describes their position as stretching out in a band from the Elbe, all the way to the northern Rhine, near the Sugambri. The "Suevi Langobardi" are the Suevi located closest to the Rhine, far to the east of where most sources report them. To the east of the Langobardi, are the "Suevi Angili", extending as far north as the middle Elbe, also to the east of the position reported in other sources. It has been speculated that Ptolemy may have been confused by his sources, or else that this position of the Langobardi represented a particular moment in history. As discussed below, in the third century a large group of Suebi, also referred to as the Allemanni, moved up to the Rhine bank in modern Schwaben, which had previously been controlled by the Romans. They competed in this region with Burgundians who had arrived from further east. The Elbe Strabo does not say much about the Suebi east of the Elbe, saying that this region was still unknown to Romans, but mentions that a part of the Suebi live there, naming only specifically the Hermunduri and the Langobardi. But he mentions these are there because of recent defeats at Roman hands which had forced them over the river. (Tacitus mentions that the Hermunduri were later welcomed on to the Roman border at the Danube.) In any case he says that the area near the Elbe itself is held by the Suebi. From Tacitus and Ptolemy we can derive more details: The Semnones are described by Tacitus as "the oldest and noblest of the Suebi", and, like the Suebi described by Caesar, they have 100 cantons. Tacitus says that "the vastness of their community makes them regard themselves as the head of the Suevic race". According to Ptolemy the "Suevi Semnones" live