Helisii

The Helisii are one of the tribal states of the Lugii in Tacitus (Germania 43:3). Unfortunately this brief reference is the only mention of them as such in history.

The probable location of the Lugii raises questions concerning their ethnicity. Ancient sources consider the border between Greater Germany and Scythia to be the River Vistula. It, however, bends to the east to place all of central and southern Poland on the ancient Germania bank.

That Germanic expansion reached western Poland at least is unquestioned. Silesia was German in later historical times. It probably was the home of the Lugii, who are supposed in the sources to be in the eastern half of Suebia, which name descends to modern Schwaben. The Suebi were divided by the Black Forest. Today's Black Forest, which is a scarcely forested remnant, does not fit the description, but in ancient times it must have extended across most of southern Schwaben. The Lugii, then, as eastern Suebi, were most likely in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Slavicists tell us that the Celts played a part in Slavic ethnogenesis, appearing in place names across southern Poland and in the Ukraine. In the time of Tacitus, the Slavs must have spoken Proto-Slavic, the Balts, Proto-Baltic or languages close to it, and the Germanic tribess, various early East or West Germanic dialects. The language spoken by the Lugii, therefore, is not clear, or even if it was the same language, on any grounds, historic, archaeological or linguistic.

Considering the location, it is possible that Tacitus' name of Helisii is a Germanic form of the ancient municipality of Kalisz in central Poland, often identified with Ptolemy's Calisia, which was in Greater Germany. Helisii would in that case be from *Kalisii. Its location in Ptolemy may not be its modern location, as settlement names over time tend to duplicate or migrate along with their populations.