The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus Part 7

[160] Hence the Batavi are termed, in an ancient inscription, "the brothers and friends of the Roman people."

[161] This nation inhabited part of the countries now called the Weteraw, Hesse, Isenburg and Fulda. In this territory was Mattium, now Marpurg, and the Fontes Mattiaci, now Wisbaden, near Mentz.

[162] The several people of Germany had their respective borders, called marks or marches, which they defended by preserving them in a desert and uncultivated state. Thus Caesar, Bell. Gall. iv 3:--"They think it the greatest honor to a nation, to have as wide an extent of vacant land around their dominions as possible; by which it is indicated, that a great number of neighboring communities are unable to withstand them. On this account, the Suevi are said to have, on one side, a tract of 600 (some learned men think we should read 60) miles desert for their boundaries."

In another place Caesar mentions, as an additional reason for this policy, that they think themselves thereby rendered secure from the danger of sudden incursions. (Bell. Gall. vi. 13.)

[163] The difference between the low situation and moist air of Batavia, and the high and dry country of the Mattiaci, will sufficiently justify this remark, in the opinion of those who allow anything to the influence of climate.

[164] Now Swabia. When the Marcommanni, towards the end of the reign of Augustus, quitting their settlements near the Rhine, migrated to Bohemia, the lands they left vacant were occupied by some unsettled Gauls among the Rauraci and Sequani. They seem to have been called Dec.u.mates (Decimated), because the inhabitants, liable to the incursions of the Germans, paid a t.i.the of their products to be received under the protection of the Romans.

Adrian defended them by a rampart, which extended from Neustadt, a town on the Danube near the mouth of the river Altmuhl, to the Neckar near Wimpfen; a s.p.a.ce of sixty French leagues.

[165] Of Upper Germany.

[166] The Catti possessed a large territory between the Rhine, Mayne and Sala, and the Hartz forest on this side of the Weser; where are now the countries of Hesse, Thuringia, part of Paderborn, of Fulda, and of Franconia. Learned writers have frequently noted, that what Caesar, Florus and Ptolemy have said of the Suevi, is to be understood of the Catti.

Leibnitz supposes the Catti were so called from the active animal which they resemble in name, the German for cat being _Catte_, or _Hessen_.

[167] Pliny, who was well acquainted with Germany, gives a very striking description of the Hercynian forest:--"The vast trees of the Hercynian forest, untouched for ages, and as old as the world, by their almost immortal destiny exceed common wonders. Not to mention circ.u.mstances which would not be credited, it is certain that hills are raised by the repercussion of their meeting roots; and where the earth does not follow them, arches are formed as high as the branches, which, struggling, as it were, with each other, are bent into the form of open gates, so wide, that troops of horse may ride under them."--xvi. 2.

[168] _Duriora corpora_. "Hardier frames;" _i.e._ than the rest of the Germans. At Hist. ii 32. the Germans, in general, are said to have _fluxa corpora_; while in c. 4 of this treatise they are described as _tantum ad impetum valida_.

[169] Floras, ii. 18, well expresses this thought by the sentence "Tanti exercitus, quanti imperator." "An army is worth so much as its general is."

[170] Thus Civilis is said by our author (Hist. iv. 61), to have let his hair and beard grow in consequence of a private vow. Thus too, in Paul Warnefrid's "History of the Lombards," iii. 7, it is related, that "six thousand Saxons who survived the war, vowed that they would never cut their hair, nor shave their beards, till they had been revenged of their enemies, the Suevi." A later instance of this custom is mentioned by Strada (Bell. Belg. vii. p. 344), of William Lume, one of the Counts of Mark, "who bound himself by a vow not to cut his hair till he had revenged the deaths of Egmont and Horn."

[171] The iron ring seems to have been a badge of slavery. This custom was revived in later times, but rather with a gallant than a military intention. Thus, in the year 1414, John duke of Bourbon, in order to ingratiate himself with his mistress, vowed, together with sixteen knights and gentlemen, that they would wear, he and the knights a gold ring, the gentlemen a silver one, round their left legs, every Sunday for two years, till they had met with an equal number of knights and gentlemen to contend with them in a tournament. (Vertot, Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscr. tom. ii. p.

596.)

[172] It was this nation of Catti, which, about 150 years afterwards, uniting with the remains of the Cherusci on this side the Weser, the Attuarii, Sicambri, Chamavi, Bructeri, and Chauci, entered into the Francic league, and, conquering the Romans, seized upon Gaul. From them are derived the name, manners, and laws of the French.

[173] These two tribes, united by a community of wars and misfortunes, had formerly been driven from the settlements on the Rhine a little below Mentz. They then, according to Caesar (Bell. Gall. iv. 1, _et seq._), occupied the territories of the Menapii on both sides the Rhine. Still proving unfortunate, they obtained the lands of the Sicambri, who, in the reign of Augustus, were removed on this side the Rhine by Tiberius: these were the present counties of Berg, Mark, Lippe, and Waldeck; and the bishopric of Paderborn.

[174] Their settlements were between the rivers Rhine, Lippe (Luppia), and Ems (Amisia), and the province of Friesland; now the countries of Westphalia and Over-Issel. Alting (Not.i.t. German. Infer, p. 20) supposes they derived their name from _Broeken_, or _Bruchen_, marshes, on account of their frequency in that tract of country.

[175] Before this migration, the Chamavi were settled on the Ems, where at present are Lingen and Osnaburg; the Angrivarii, on the Weser (Visurgis), where are Minden and Schawenburg. A more ancient migration of the Chamavi to the banks of the Rhine is cursorily mentioned by Tacitus, Annal. xiii.

55. The Angrivarii were afterwards called Angrarii, and became part of the Saxon nation.

[176] They were not so entirely extirpated that no relics of them remained. They were even a conspicuous part of the Francic league, as before related. Claudian also, in his panegyric on the fourth consulate of Honorius, v. 450, mentions them.

Venit accola sylvae Bructerus Hercyniae.

"The Bructerian, borderer on the Hercynian forest, came."

After their expulsion, they settled, according to Eccard, between Cologne and Hesse.

[177] The Bructeri were under regal government, and maintained many wars against the Romans. Hence their arrogance and power. Before they were destroyed by their countrymen, Vestricius Spurinna terrified them into submission without an action, and had on that account a triumphal statue decreed him. Pliny the younger mentions this fact, book ii. epist. 7.

[178] An allusion to gladiatorial spectacles. This slaughter happened near the ca.n.a.l of Drusus, where the Roman guard on the Rhine could be spectators of the battle. The account of it came to Rome in the first year of Trajan.

[179] As this treatise was written in the reign of Trajan, when the affairs of the Romans appeared unusually prosperous, some critics have imagined that Tacitus wrote _vigentibus_, "flourishing," instead of _urgentibus_, "urgent." But it is sufficiently evident, from other pa.s.sages, that the causes which were operating gradually, but surely, to the destruction of the Roman empire, did not escape the penetration of Tacitus, even when disguised by the most flattering appearances. The common reading is therefore, probably, right.--_Aikin_.

[180] These people first resided near the head of the Lippe; and then removed to the settlements of the Chamavi and Angrivarii, who had expelled the Bructeri. They appear to have been the same with those whom Velleius Paterculus, ii. 105, calls the Attuarii, and by that name they entered into the Francic league. Strabo calls them Chattuarii.

[181] Namely, the Ansibarii and Tubantes. The Ansibarii or Amsibarii are thought by Alting to have derived their name from their neighborhood to the river Ems (Amisia); and the. Tubantes, from their frequent change of habitation, to have been called _Tho Benten_. or the wandering troops, and to have dwelt where now is Drente in Over-Issel. Among these nations, Furstenburg (Monum. Paderborn.) enumerates the Ambrones, borderers upon the river Ambrus, now Emmeren.

[182] The Frieslanders. The lesser Frisii were settled on this side, the greater, on the other, of the Flevum (Zuyderzee).

[183] In the time of the Romans this country was covered by vast meres, or lakes; which were made still larger by frequent inundations of the sea. Of these, one so late as 1530 overwhelmed seventy-two villages; and another, still more terrible, in 1569, laid under water great part of the sea-coast of Holland, and almost all Friesland, in which alone 20,000 persons were drowned.

[184] Wherever the land seemed to terminate, and it appeared impossible to proceed further, maritime nations have feigned pillars of Hercules. Those celebrated by the Frisians must have been at the extremity of Friesland, and not in Sweden and the Cimmerian promontory, as Rudbeck supposes.

[185] Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, and father of Germanicus, imposed a tribute on the Frisians, as mentioned in the Annals, iv. 72, and performed other eminent services in Germany; himself styled Germanicus.

[186] The Chauci extended along the seacoast from the Ems to the Elbe (Albis); whence they bordered on all the fore-mentioned nations, between which and the Cherusci they came round to the Catti. The Chauci were distinguished into Greater and Lesser. The Greater, according to Ptolemy, inhabited the country between the Weser and the Elbe; the Lesser, that between the Weser and Ems; but Tacitus (Annals xi. 19) seems to reverse this order. Alting supposes the Chauci had their name from _Kauken_, signifying persons eminent for valor and fidelity, which agrees with the character Tacitus gives them. Others derive it from _Kauk_, an owl, with a reference to the enmity of that animal to cats (_Catti_). Others, from _Kaiten_, daws, of which there are great numbers on their coast. Pliny has admirably described the country and manners of the maritime Chauci, in his account of people who live without any trees or fruit-bearing vegetables: --"In the North are the nations of Chauci, who are divided into Greater and Lesser. Here, the ocean, having a prodigious flux and reflux twice in the s.p.a.ce of every day and night, rolls over an immense tract, leaving it a matter of perpetual doubt whether it is part of the land or sea. In this spot, the wretched natives, occupying either the tops of hills, or artificial mounds of turf, raised out of reach of the highest tides, build their small cottages; which appear like sailing vessels when the water covers the circ.u.mjacent ground, and like wrecks when it has retired. Here from their huts they pursue the fish, continually flying from them with the waves. They do not, like their neighbors, possess cattle, and feed on milk; nor have they a warfare to maintain against wild beasts, for every fruit of the earth is far removed from them. With flags and seaweed they twist cordage for their fishing-nets. For fuel they use a kind of mud, taken up by hand, and dried, rather in the wind than the sun: with this earth they heat their food, and warm their bodies, stiffened by the rigorous north. Their only drink is rain-water collected in ditches at the thresholds of their doors. Yet this miserable people, if conquered to-day by the Roman arms, would call themselves slaves. Thus it is that fortune spares many to their own punishment."--Hist. Nat. xvi. 1.

[187] On this account, fortified posts were established by the Romans to restrain the Chauci; who by Lucan are called Cayci in the following pa.s.sage:

Et vos crinigeros bellis arcere Caycos Oppositi.--Phars. i. 463.

"You, too, tow'rds Rome advance, ye warlike band, That wont the s.h.a.ggy Cauci to withstand."--ROWE

[188] The Cherusci, at that time, dwelt between the Weser and the Elbe, where now are Luneburg, Brunswick, and part of the Marche of Brandenburg on this side the Elbe. In the reign of Augustus they occupied a more extensive tract; reaching even this side the Weser, as appears from the accounts of the expedition of Drusus given by Dio and Velleius Paterculus: unless, as Dithmar observes, what is said of the Cherusci on this side the Weser relates to the Dulgibini, their dependents. For, according to Strabo, Varus was cut off by the Cherusci, and the people subject to them.

The brave actions of Arminius, the celebrated chief of the Cherusci, are related by Tacitus in the 1st and 2d books of his Annals.

[189] Cluver, and several others, suppose the Fosi to have been the same with the ancient Saxons: but, since they bordered on the Cherusci, the opinion of Leibnitz is nearer the truth, that they inhabited the banks of the river Fusa, which enters the Aller (Allera) at Cellae; and were a sort of appendage to the Cherusci, as Hildesheim now is to Brunswick. The name of Saxons is later than Tacitus, and was not known till the reign of Antoninus Pius, at which period they poured forth from the Cimbric Chersonesus, and afterwards, in conjunction with the Angles, seized upon Britain.

[191] The name of this people still exists; and the country they inhabited is called the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Peninsula; comprehending Jutland, Sleswig, and Holstein. The renown and various fortune of the Cimbri is briefly, but accurately, related by Mallet in the "Introduction" to the "History of Denmark."

[192] Though at this time they were greatly reduced by migrations, inundations and wars, they afterwards revived; and from this storehouse of nations came forth the Franks, Saxons, Normans, and various other tribes, which brought all Europe under Germanic sway.

[193] Their fame spread through Germany, Gaul, Spain, Britain, Italy, and as far as the Sea of Azoph (Palus Maeotis), whither, according to Posidonius, they penetrated, and called the Cimmerian or Cimbrian Bosphorus after their own name.

[194] This is usually, and probably rightly, explained as relating to both sh.o.r.es of the Cimbric Chersonesus. Cluver and Dithmar, however, suppose that these encampments are to be sought for either in Italy, upon the river Athesis (Adige), or in Narbonnensian Gaul near Aquae s.e.xtiae (Aix in Provence), where Florus (iii. 3) mentions that the Teutoni defeated by Marius took post in a valley with a river running through it. Of the prodigious numbers of the Cimbri who made this terrible irruption we have an account in Plutarch, who relates that their fighting men were 300,000, with a much greater number of women and children. (Plut. Marius, p. 411.)

[195] Nerva was consul the fourth time, and Trajan the second, in the 85lst year of Rome; in which Tacitus composed this treatise.

[196] After the defeat of P. Decidius Saxa, lieutenant of Syria, by the Parthians, and the seizure of Syria by Pacorus, son of king Orodes, P.

Ventidius Ba.s.sus was sent there, and vanquished the Parthians, killed Pacorus, and entirely restored the Roman affairs.

[197] The Epitome of Livy informs us, that "in the year of Rome 640, the Cimbri, a wandering tribe, made a predatory incursion into Illyric.u.m, where they routed the consul Papirius Carbo with his army." According to Strabo, it was at Noreia, a town of the Taurisci, near Aquileia, that Carbo was defeated. In the succeeding years, the Cimbri and Teutonia ravaged Gaul, and brought great calamities on that country; but at length, deterred by the unshaken bravery of the Gauls, they turned another way; as appears from Caesar, Bell. Gal. vii. 17. They then came into Italy, and sent amba.s.sadors to the Senate, demanding lands to settle on. This was refused; and the consul M. Junius Sila.n.u.s fought an unsuccessful battle with them, in the year of Rome 645. (Epitome of Livy, lxv.)

[198] "L. Ca.s.sius the consul, in the year of Rome 647, was cut off with his army in the confines of the Allobroges, by the Tigurine Gauls, a canton of the Helvetians (now the cantons of Zurich, Appenzell, Schaffhausen, &c.), who had migrated from their settlements. The soldiers who survived the slaughter gave hostages for the payment of half they were worth, to be dismissed with safety." (Ibid.) Caesar further relates that the Roman army was pa.s.sed under the yoke by the Tigurini:--"This single canton, migrating from home, within the memory of our fathers, slew the consul L. Ca.s.sius, and pa.s.sed his army under the yoke."--Bell. Gall. i.

12.

[199] M. Aurelius Scaurus, the consul's lieutenant (or rather consul, as he appears to have served that office in the year of Rome 646), was defeated and taken by the Cimbri; and when, being asked his advice, he dissuaded them from pa.s.sing the Alps into Italy, a.s.suring them the Romans were invincible, he was slain by a furious youth, named Boiorix. (Epit.

Livy, lxvii.)

[200] Florus, in like manner, considers these two affairs separately:-- "Neither could Sila.n.u.s sustain the first onset of the barbarians; nor Manlius, the second; nor Caepio, the third." (iii. 3.) Livy joins them together:--"By the same enemy (the Cimbri) Cn. Manlius the consul, and Q.

Servilius Caepio the proconsul, were defeated in an engagement, and both dispossessed of their camps." (Epit. lxvii.) Paulus Orosius relates the affair more particularly:--"Manlius the consul, and Q. Caepio, proconsul, being sent against the Cimbri, Teutones, Tigurini, and Ambronae, Gaulish and German nations, who had conspired to extinguish the Roman empire, divided their respective provinces by the river Rhone. Here, the most violent dissensions prevailing between them, they were both overcome, to the great disgrace and danger of the Roman name. According to Antias, 80,000 Romans and allies were slaughtered. Caepio, by whose rashness this misfortune was occasioned, was condemned, and his property confiscated by order of the Roman people." (Lib. v. 16.) This happened in the year of Rome 649; and the anniversary was reckoned among the unlucky days.