Tacitus’s Germania is a thoroughly itemized ethnographic text detailing the geography, climate and social structure of Germany and its people. Unlike his Histories and Annales Tacitus doesn’t offer a story line to be followed, but instead, he nudges forth an unspoken comparison to be made between two cultures. Each of the Germania’s 46 passages deals with a particular area of German civilization among which Tacitus develops a two-tiered theme. The two points he tries to make generally clear are the following:
A) The Germans are barbaric, savage and stupid…but… B) The Germans are quaint, noble and have some redeeming qualities that make them a formidable enemy worthy of fighting. However, these two points don’t manifest themselves during the Germania’s first passage on physical location. Tacitus lets us know right off the start where Germany is positioned in terms of its bordering territories and informs us among several other geographical details that the rivers Rhine and Danube separate Germany from the Galli, Rhaeti and Pannonii.
The name “Germany” according to Tacitus originates from the name of a tribe that drove the Gauls out of what would ultimately become German territory. Ever since those times, the name “Germany” was believed to inspire terror when heard. Tacitus makes mention of the fact that within sections of their mythological and religious structure, Hercules and Ulysses carry significant influence and this contributes to his theory (along with their distinctive looks) that the Germans developed their particular cultural/racial niche from intermarriage with foreigners.
Tacitus further comments on the German culture, as being one that is less able to bear laborious work and endure heat and thirst. But without delving too much into a diatribe on the German’s laziness, Tacitus moves into describing the forested and swampy German landscape. He mentions that precious metals are low in quantity and as a result they use the iron they have available to make spears as opposed to swords. Their battle formation resembles that of a wedge and (like Roman culture) it is of the utmost shame to throw down one’s shield during battle in order to run away.
But Tacitus abandons the subject of battle for a moment and discusses the appointment of positions of authority, where the kings are determined by birth and the generals by merit. He adds that it is not the Kings or the Generals who deal out punishments when they need administering, but instead it is the priests who perform the disciplinary actions as they act on the mandate of the god whom they believe inspires the warrior. We then learn from Tacitus that the German battle squadrons were formed according to family and clan.
Close by during battle would be the women and infants seeing as Germans believed women to be the most sacred witnesses of a man’s bravery. Tacitus actually recalls some accounts where German women successfully rallied their faltering armies to victory. He comments on the fact that women’s counsels were anything but despised and how their advice was teeming with sanctity and similarly begins to name off a few Roman examples including that of Vespasian and Veleda. Tacitus then switches gears by shifting into the subject of worshipping patterns and beliefs. He remarks that they chiefly worship Mercury and often provide him with human sacrifices.
Occasionally, Hercules and Mars are provided with offerings as well and some Germans also sacrifice to Isis. The Germans don’t believe in confining their gods within walls or likening them to any human form. Instead, they consecrate woods and groves and apply the names of deities to the abstraction, which they see only during worship. As for German augury and divination, Tacitus describes a process by which a bough is chopped off a fruit-bearing tree, cut into small pieces and examined after being tossed “carelessly” onto a white garment after which they are examined.
Tacitus adds that the Germans also adhere to the following of bird flight paths just as the Romans do, but tend to have a peculiar interest in the horse as an object of divination. The horse to the Germans is the most trusted species of augury and at public expense they have white horses kept in sacred groves for the taking of auspices which is conducted by noting the horse’s various snorts and neighs. Tacitus claims that business was not tended to without being armed and for the younger men, a sword and shield would be bestowed upon them at a certain age which he describes as a seeming equivalent to the Roman toga of manhood.
To be surrounded by a large group of picked young armed men was a prestigious and honorable thing, or as Tacitus would put it, “an ornament in peace and defense in war”. The Germans according to Tacitus found their nobility through war and felt that it was better to receive from blood and wounds than to receive from hard work and sweat tilling a field. Their post-battle feasts were “inelegant” by Tacitus’s standards, but once again, winning a meal by means of bloodshed was more appreciated than winning it by farming.
German city structure was rather unorganized and houses were scattered all over-not close together. The houses were made of wood and as Tacitus believed, were ugly as well. He assumes that their scattering of houses was either due to the avoidance of fire or because they simply hadn’t a clue how to build. As for German clothing, it consisted mainly of cloaks and wild beast skins worn with generally nothing underneath them while the chiefs wore tight dress-like garments that clung to their bodies.
Pertaining to subject of marriage, Tacitus believed that no part of German manners was more praiseworthy. Relationships were extremely monogamist and the husband was the one responsible for offering a dowry while the parents of the bride would offer arms in return. If and when adultery ever occurred, it was punished by being stripped naked, having one’s hair shaven off and then being forced to run through town while being flogged. Tacitus comments by adding that in Germany “good habits here are more effectual than good laws anywhere else”.
The German’s sleep to late hours in the day and as Tacitus proclaims, “if you indulge their love of drinking they will be as overcome by their own vices as easily as by the arms of an enemy”. Also known to gamble, Germans were not beyond using their own freedom as a bargaining chip and risk voluntary slavery. As for their own slaves, they were treated more like tenants as they all had their own households to govern and were essentially only required to make payments to their master in the form of grain and other farmed goods.
They knew nothing of lending money on interest which Tacitus believes was “a more effectual safeguard than if (it were) prohibited”. Their farmland was split among the community according to rank and crafty business and profit seeking were not in the German’s vocabulary. Around this point of the book, Tacitus declares that he will now touch on the differing institutions and religious rites of the separate tribes of Germany beginning with the Western tribes.
In general, Tacitus indicates that the Batavi tribe in Western Germany is part of the Roman empire and is used as war reserves for the Romans. The Chatti tribe (also located in the West) was quite intelligent and well organized according to Tacitus. Says Tacitus, “Other tribes you see going to battle, the Chatti to a campaign”. After discussing a few other Western tribes, Tacitus works himself into a little bit of a huff and explains how Germany has been the toughest adversary the Romans have ever faced and that Rome has been trying to conquer them for nearly 210 years.
Tacitus states, “we have celebrated triumphs rather than won conquests over them”. Forging on in his description of the nature of the Northern and Central German tribes he finally brings the book to an end by commenting on a tribe called the Sitones: a tribe ruled by a woman. One of Tacitus’s last acerbic comments in the book pertains to this tribe as he says, “so low they have fallen not merely from freedom, but slavery itself”.