in the early 1st century. In the West, these tribes were primarily Germans, living beyond the Rhine. There is no mention in the sources of laeti in the Eastern section of the Empire. Literary sources mention laeti only from the late 3rd and 4th centuries.

Although the literary sources mention laeti only from the 4th century onwards, it is likely that their antecedents existed from as early as the 2nd century: the 3rd-century historian Dio Cassius