Tacitus on Germany, Translated | Page 3

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Etext prepared by Dagny, [email protected] and John Bickers,

[email protected]

TACITUS ON GERMANY
Translated by Thomas Gordon

PREPARER'S NOTE
This text was prepared from a 1910 edition, published by P F Collier &
Son Company, New York.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The dates of the birth and death of Tacitus are uncertain, but it is
probable that he was born about 54 A. D. and died after 117. He was a
contemporary and friend of the younger Pliny, who addressed to him
some of his most famous epistles. Tacitus was apparently of the
equestrian class, was an advocate by training, and had a reputation as
an orator, though none of his speeches has survived. He held a number
of important public offices, and married the daughter of Agricola, the
conqueror of Britain, whose life he wrote.
The two chief works of Tacitus, the "Annals" and the "Histories,"
covered the history of Rome from the death of Augustus to A. D. 96;
but the greater part of the "Histories" is lost, and the fragment that
remains deals only with the year 69 and part of 70. In the "Annals"
there are several gaps, but what survives describes a large part of the
reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero. His minor works, besides the
life of Agricola, already mentioned, are a "Dialogue on Orators" and
the account of Germany, its situation, its inhabitants, their character
and customs, which is here printed.
Tacitus stands in the front rank of the historians of antiquity for the
accuracy of his learning, the fairness of his judgments, the richness,
concentration, and precision of his style. His great successor, Gibbon,
called him a "philosophical historian, whose writings will instruct the
last generations of mankind"; and Montaigne knew no author "who, in
a work of history, has taken so broad a view of human events or given a
more just analysis of particular characters."
The "Germany" is a document of the greatest interest and importance,
since it gives us by far the most detailed account of the state of culture

among the tribes that are the ancestors of the modern Teutonic