the close of the 4th century AD, Claudian, court poet to the emperor Honorius and the patrician Stilicho, uses the ethnonym Getae to refer to the Visigoths. During 5th and 6th centuries, several historians and ethnographers (Marcellinus Comes, Orosius, John Lydus, Isidore of Seville, Procopius of Caesarea) used the same ethnonym Getae to name populations invading the Eastern Roman Empire (Goths, Gepids, Kutrigurs, Slavs). For instance, in the third book of the History of the Wars Procopius details: "There were many Gothic nations in earlier times, just as also at the present, but the greatest and most important of all are the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaedes. In ancient times, however, they were named Sauromatae and Melanchlaeni; and there were some too who called these nations Getic." The Getae were considered the same people as the Goths by Jordanes in his Getica written at the middle of the 6th century. He also claims that at one point the "Getae" migrated out of Scandza, while identifying their deity Zalmoxis as a Gothic king. Jordanes assumed the earlier testimony of Orosius. The 9th-century work De Universo of Rabanus Maurus states, "The Massagetae are in origin from the tribe of the Scythians, and are called Massagetae, as if heavy, that is, strong Getae. Suggested link to Jats There have long been attempts to link the Getae and Massagetae to the Jats of South Asia. Likewise, the Dacians have been linked to the Dahae of Central Asia (and the Dahae to the Dasas of South Asia).W. W. Hunter claimed in 1886, suggested that the Jats were an Iranian people – most likely Scythian/Saka in origin, Alexander Cunningham (1888) believed that references in classical European sourceslike Strabo, Ptolemy and Plinyto peoples such as the Zaths, may have been the Getae and/or Jats. More recent authors, like Tadeusz Sulimirski, Weer Rajendra Rishi, and Chandra Chakraberty, have also linked the Getae and Jats. Less credible, however, are parallel claims by Alexander Cunningham that the Xanthii (or Zanthi) and Iatioimentioned by Strabo, Ptolemy and Plinymay have been synonymous with the Getae and/or Jats. The Xanthii were later established to be a subgroup (tribe or clan) of the Dahae. Subsequent scholars, such as Edwin Pulleyblank, Josef Markwart (also known as Joseph Marquart) and László Torday, suggest that Iatioi may be another name for a people known in classical Chinese sources as the Yuezhi and in South Asian contexts as