The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus
it to the wife and daughter of this great man, to show their veneration
of a husband's and a father's memory by revolving his actions and words
in their breasts, and endeavoring to retain an idea of the form and
features of his mind, rather than of his person. Not that I would reject
those resemblances of the human figure which are engraven in brass or
marbles but as their originals are frail and perishable, so likewise are
they: while the form of the mind is eternal, and not to be retained
or expressed by any foreign matter, or the artist's skill, but by the
manners of the survivors. Whatever in Agricola was the object of our
love, of our admiration, remains, and will remain in the minds of men,
transmitted in the records of fame, through an eternity of years. For,
while many great personages of antiquity will be involved in a
common oblivion with the mean and inglorious, Agricola shall survive,
represented and consigned to future ages.
FOOTNOTES
A TREATISE ON THE SITUATION, MANNERS AND INHABITANTS OF GERMANY.
[1] This treatise was written in the year of Rome 851, A.D. 98; during
the fourth consulate of the emperor Nerva, and the third of Trajan.
[2] The Germany here meant is that beyond the Rhine. The Germania
Cisrhenana, divided into the Upper and Lower, was a part of Gallia
Belgica.
[3] Rhaetia comprehended the country of the Grisons, with part of Suabia
and Bavaria.
[4] Lower Hungary, and part of Austria.
[5] The Carpathian mountains in Upper Hungary.
[6] "Broad promontories." Latos sinus. Sinus strictly signifies "a
bending," especially inwards. Hence it is applied to a gulf, or bay, of
the sea. And hence, again, by metonymy, to that projecting part of the
land, whereby the gulf is formed; and still further to any promontory
or peninsula. It is in this latter force it is here used;--and refers
especially to the Danish peninsula. See Livy xxvii, 30, xxxviii. 5;
Servius on Virgil, Aen. xi. 626.
[7] Scandinavia and Finland, of which the Romans had a very slight
knowledge, were supposed to be islands.
[8] The mountains of the Grisons. That in which the Rhine rises is at
present called Vogelberg.
[9] Now called Schwartzwald, or the Black Forest. The name Danubius was
given to that portion of the river which is included between its source
and Vindobona (Vienna); throughout the rest of its course it was called
Ister.
[10] _Donec erumpat_. The term _erumpat_ is most correctly and
graphically employed; for the Danube discharges its waters into the
Euxine with so great force, that its course may be distinctly traced for
miles out to sea.
[11] There are now but five.
[12] The ancient writers called all nations _indigenae_ (_i.e._ inde
geniti), or _autochthones_, "sprung from the soil," of whose origin they
were ignorant.
[13] It is, however, well established that the ancestors of the Germans
migrated by land from Asia. Tacitus here falls into a very common kind
of error, in assuming a local fact (viz. the manner in which migrations
took place in the basin of the Mediterranean) to be the expression of a
general law.--ED.
[14] Drusus, father of the emperor Claudius, was the first Roman general
who navigated the German Ocean. The difficulties and dangers which
Germanicus met with from the storms of this sea are related in the
Annals, ii. 23.
[15] All barbarous nations, in all ages, have applied verse to the same
use, as is still found to be the case among the North American Indians.
Charlemagne, as we are told by Eginhart, "wrote out and committed to
memory barbarous verses of great antiquity, in which the actions and
wars of ancient kings were recorded."
[16] The learned Leibnitz supposes this Tuisto to have been the Teut or
Teutates so famous throughout Gaul and Spain, who was a Celto-Scythian
king or hero, and subdued and civilized a great part of Europe and Asia.
Various other conjectures have been formed concerning him and his son
Mannus, but most of them extremely vague and improbable. Among the
rest, it has been thought that in Mannus and his three sons an obscure
tradition is preserved of Adam, and his sons Cain, Abel, and Seth; or of
Noah, and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japhet.
[17] Conringius interprets the names of the sons of Mannus into Ingäff,
Istäf, and Hermin.
[18] Pliny, iv. 14, embraces a middle opinion between these, and
mentions five capital tribes. The Vindili, to whom belong the
Burgundiones, Varini, Carini, and Guttones; the Ingaevones, including
the Cimbri, Teutoni, and Chauci; the Istaevones, near the Rhine, part
of whom are the midland Cimbri; the Hermiones, containing the Suevi,
Hermunduri, Catti, and Cherusci; and the Peucini and Bastarnae,
bordering upon the Dacians.
[19] The Marsi appear to have occupied various portions of the northwest
part of Germany at various times. In the time of Tiberius (A.D. 14) they
sustained a great slaughter from the forces of Germanicus, who ravaged
their country for fifty miles with fire and sword, sparing neither age
nor sex, neither things profane nor sacred. (See Ann. i. 51.) At this
period they were occupying the country in the neighborhood of the
Rura (Ruhr), a tributary of the Rhine. Probably this slaughter was the
destruction of them as a separate people; and by the time that Trajan
succeeded to the imperial power they seem to have been blotted out from
amongst the Germanic tribes. Hence their name will not be found in the
following account of Germany.
[20] These people are mentioned by Strabo, vii. 1, 3. Their locality is
not very easy to determine.
[21] See note, c. 38.
[22] The Vandals are said to have derived their name from the German
word _wendeln_, "to wander." They began to be troublesome to the Romans
A.D. 160, in the reigns of Aurelius and Verus. In A.D. 410 they made
themselves masters of Spain in conjunction with the Alans and Suevi,
and received for their share what from them was termed Vandalusia
(Andalusia). In A.D. 429 they crossed into Africa under Genseric, who
not only made himself master of Byzacium, Gaetulia, and part of Numidia,
but also crossed over into Italy, A.D. 455, and plundered Rome. After
the death of Genseric the Vandal power declined.
[23] That is, those of the Marsi, Gambrivii, etc. Those of Ingaevones,
Istaevones, and Hermiones, were not so much names of the people, as
terms expressing their situation. For, according to the most learned
Germans, the Ingaevones are _die Inwohner_, those dwelling inwards,
towards the sea; the Istaevones, _die Westwohner_, the inhabitants of
the western parts: and the Hermiones, _die Herumwohner_, the midland
inhabitants.
[24] It is however found in an inscription so far back as the year of
Rome 531, before Christ 222, recording the victory of Claudius Marcellus
over the Galli Insubres and their allies the Germans, at Clastidium, now
Chiastezzo in the Milanese.
[25] This is illustrated by a passage in Caesar, Bell. Gall. ii. 4,
where, after mentioning that several of the Belgae were descended from
the Germans who had formerly crossed the Rhine and expelled the Gauls,
he says, "the first of these emigrants were the Condrusii, Eburones,
Caeresi and Paemani, who were called by the common name of Germans."
The derivation of German is _Wehr mann_, a warrior, or man of war. This
appellation was first used by the victorious Cisrhenane tribes, but not
by the whole Transrhenane nation, till they gradually adopted it, as
equally due to them on account of their military reputation. The Tungri
were formerly a people of great name, the relics of which still exist in
the extent of the district now termed the ancient diocese of Tongres.
[26] Under this name Tacitus speaks of some German deity, whose
attributes corresponded in the main with those of the Greek and
Roman Hercules. What he was called by the Germans is a matter of
doubt.--_White_.
[27] _Quem barditum vocant_. The word _barditus_ is of Gallic origin,
being derived from _bardi_, "bards;" it being a custom with the Gauls
for bards to accompany the army, and celebrate the heroic deeds of their
great warriors; so that _barditum_ would thus signify "the fulfilment of
the bard's office." Hence it is clear that _barditum_ could not be used
correctly here, inasmuch as amongst the Germans not any particular,
appointed, body of men, but the whole army chanted forth the war-song.
Some editions have _baritum_, which is said to be derived from the
German word _beren_, or _baeren_, "to shout;" and hence it is translated
in some dictionaries as, "the German war-song." From the following
passage extracted from Facciolati, it would seem, however, that German
critics repudiate this idea: "De _barito_ clamore bellico, seu, ut
quaedam habent exemplaria, _bardito_, nihil audiuimus nunc in Germaniâ:
nisi hoc dixerimus, quòd _bracht_, vel _brecht_, milites Germani
appellare consueverunt; concursum videlicet certantium, et clamorem
ad pugnam descendentium; quem _bar, bar, bar_, sonuisse nonnulli
affirmant."--(Andr. Althameri, Schol. in C. Tacit De Germanis.) Ritter,
himself a German, affirms that _baritus_ is a reading worth nothing; and
that _barritus_ was not the name of the ancient German war-song, but
of the shout raised by the Romans in later ages when on the point
of engaging; and that it was derived "a clamore barrorem, _i.e._
elephantorum." The same learned editor considers that the words "quem
barditum vocant" have been originally the marginal annotation of some
unsound scholar, and have been incorporated by some transcriber into the
text of his MS. copy, whence the error has spread. He therefore encloses
them between brackets, to show that, in his judgment, they are not the
genuine production of the pen of Tacitus.--_White_.
[28] A very curious coincidence with the ancient German opinion
concerning the prophetic nature of the war-cry or song, appears in the
following passage of the Life of Sir Ewen Cameron, in "Pennant's Tour,"
1769, Append, p. 363. At the battle of Killicrankie, just before the
fight began, "he (Sir Ewen) commanded such of the Camerons as were
posted near him to make a great shout, which being seconded by those who
stood on the right and left, ran quickly through the whole army, and was
returned by the enemy. But the noise of the muskets and cannon, with the
echoing of the hills, made the Highlanders fancy that their shouts were
much louder and brisker than those of the enemy, and Lochiel cried out,
'Gentlemen, take courage, the day is ours: I am the oldest commander in
the army, and have always observed something ominous and fatal in such
a dull, hollow and feeble noise as the enemy made in their shout, which
prognosticates that they are all doomed to die by our hands this night;
whereas ours was brisk, lively and strong, and shows we have vigor and
courage.' These words, spreading quickly through the army, animated
the troops in a strange manner. The event justified the prediction; the
Highlanders obtained a complete victory."
[29] Now Asburg in the county of Meurs.
[30] The Greeks, by means of their colony at Marseilles, introduced
their letters into Gaul, and the old Gallic coins have many Greek
characters in their inscriptions. The Helvetians also, as we are
informed by Caesar, used Greek letters. Thence they might easily pass
by means of commercial intercourse to the neighboring Germans. Count
Marsili and others have found monuments with Greek inscriptions in
Germany, but not of so early an age.
[31] The large bodies of the Germans are elsewhere taken notice of by
Tacitus, and also by other authors. It would appear as if most of them
were at that time at least six feet high. They are still accounted some
of the tallest people in Europe.
[32] Bavaria and Austria.
[33] The greater degree of cold when the country was overspread with