Ancient Germanic People
From Dialogus, Agricola, Germania by Cornelius Tacitus, translated by William Peterson, 1914.
From: Unknown To: 120 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
The Germans
From Dialogus, Agricola, Germania by Cornelius Tacitus, translated by William Peterson, 1914.
Undivided Germany is separated from the Gauls, Rhaetians, and Pannonians by the rivers Rhine and Danube: from the Sarmatians and Dacians by mutual misgivings or mountains: the rest of it is surrounded by the ocean, which enfolds wide peninsulas and islands of vast expanse, some of whose peoples and kings have but recently become known to us: war has lifted the curtain.
The Rhine, rising from the inaccessible and precipitous crest of the Rhaetian Alps, after turning west for a reach of some length is lost in the North Sea. The Danube pours from the sloping and not very lofty ridge of Mount Abnoba, and visits several peoples on its course, until at length it emerges by six of its channels into the Pontic Sea: the seventh mouth is swallowed in marshes.
As for the Germans themselves, I should suppose them to be indigenous and very slightly blended with new arrivals from other races or alliances; for originally people who sought to migrate reached their destination in fleets and not by land; whilst, in the second place, the leagues of ocean on the further side of Germany, at the opposite end of the world, so to speak, from us, are rarely visited by ships from our world. Besides, who, apart from the perils of an awful and unknown sea, would have left Asia or Africa or Italy to look for Germany? With its wild scenery and harsh climate it is pleasant neither to live in nor to look upon unless it be one’s home.
Their ancient hymns—the only style of record or history which they possess celebrate a god Tuisto, a scion of the soil, and his son Mannus as the beginning and the founders of their race. To Mannus they ascribe three sons, from whose names the tribes of the sea-shore are to be known as Ingaevones, the central tribes as Herminones, and the rest as Istaevones. Some authorities, using the licence which pertains to antiquity, pronounce for more sons to the god and a larger number of race names, Marsi, Gambravii, Suebi, Vandilii: these are, as they say, real and ancient names, while the name of “Germany” is new and a recent addition. The first tribes in fact to cross the Rhine and expel the Gauls, though now called Tungri, were then styled Germans: so little by little the name—a tribal, not a national, name—prevailed, until the whole people were called by the artificial name of “Germans” first only by the victorious tribe in order to intimidate the Gauls, but afterwards among themselves also.
They further record how Hercules appeared among the Germans, and on the eve of battle the natives hymn “Hercules, the first of brave men.” They have also those cries by the utterance of which—“barritus” is the name they use—they inspire courage; and they divine the fortunes of the coming battle from the circumstances of the cry. Intimidation or timidity depends on the concert of the warriors; it seems to them to mean not so much unison of voices as union of hearts; the object they specially seek is a certain volume of hoarseness, a crashing roar, their shields being brought up to their lips, that the voice may swell to a fuller and deeper note by means of the echo.
To return. Ulysses also—in the opinion of some authorities—was carried, during those long and legendary wanderings, into this ocean, and reached the countries of Germany. Asciburgium, which stands on the banks of the Rhine and has inhabitants today, was founded, they say, and named by him; further, they say that an altar dedicated by Ulysses, who coupled therewith the name of his father Laertes, was once found at that same place, and that certain monuments and barrows, inscribed with Greek letters, are still extant on the borderland between Germany and Rhaetia. I have no intention of furnishing evidence to establish or refute these assertions: every one according to his temperament may minimise or magnify their credibility.
Personally I associate myself with the opinions of those who hold that in the peoples of Germany there has been given to the world a race untainted by intermarriage with other races, a peculiar people and pure, like no one but themselves; whence it comes that their physique, in spite of their vast numbers, is identical: fierce blue eyes, red hair, tall frames, powerful only spasmodically, and impatient at the same time of labor and hard work, and by no means habituated to bearing thirst and heat; to cold and hunger, thanks to the climate and the soil, they are accustomed
Tacitus, Cornelius. Dialogus, Agricola, Germania. Edited by T. E. Page and W. H. D. Rouse. Translated by William Peterson, W. Heinemann, 1914.
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