Lethargic Man (anag.)

A little while ago, having repeatedly come across references to Tacitus' essay "On the Origin and Situation of the Germanic Peoples", better known as "Germania", I decided I ought to read it myself.

This is the oldest work describing the Germanic peoples—it dates from the year 98—hence its interest to modern Germans, and people interested in Germany, myself included—though I should point out that the Roman use of "German" refers to the ancestors of all the Germanic peoples, including today's Nordic peoples, and the peoples of the Low Countries and of England. Indeed, today German distinguishes between "Germanisch", describing the ancients, and "Deutsch", describing today's Germans—and so did English too once upon a time (see below).

Moreover the distinction between Germans and Celts then wasn't as clear cut as it is today; and even the name "German" is possibly of Celtic origin.

Anyhow, I thought I'd write up a little about the essay here, in case anyone's interested, and to record my own reaction for my own futurity; what follows is a combination of my own insights, what I've read online, and what I've heard in the History of English podcast.

A couple of things before I plunge into the text: Tacitus is not necessarily being a good ethnographer here. For a start, he's using secondhand information. For example:

Winter, Spring, and Summer, they understand; and for each have proper appellations. Of the name and blessings of Autumn, they are equally ignorant.

Actually, this is rubbish, or at least: by no more than three or four hundred years later, i.e. the point at which English split from German, there was certainly a word for it in English, hærfest (as "harvest", it later changed its meaning), which also survives in modern German as Herbst; and a quick glance at an etymological dictionary shows the word goes back to a proto-Indo-European root, so I think it not unlikely that it already had the meaning "autumn" in Tacitus' time. (<also checks Kluge, who in his etymological dictionary mentions Tacitus to reject what he wrote in this regard>)

Moreover, Tacitus is not being even-handed, as he is using his report on the Germans as a critique of his own Roman society, for example:

Yet the laws of matrimony are severely observed there; for in the whole of their manners is aught more praiseworthy than this: for they are almost the only Barbarians contented with one wife.

And:

Amongst a people so numerous, adultery is exceeding rare; a crime instantly punished [...]. To a woman who has prostituted her person, no pardon is ever granted. However beautiful she may be, however young, however abounding in wealth, a husband she can never find. In truth, nobody turns vices into mirth there, nor is the practice of corrupting and of yielding to corruption, called the custom of the Age.

Wikipedia perceives Tacitus' portrayal of the German people as a precursor of the later concept of the Noble Savage; examples of passages showing the underdeveloped nature of their society include:

For their covering a mantle is what they all wear, fastened with a clasp or, for want of it, with a thorn. As far as this reaches not they are naked, and lie whole days before the fire. The most wealthy are distinguished with a vest, not one large and flowing like those of Sarmatians and Parthians, but girt close about them and expressing the proportion of every limb. They likewise wear the skins of savage beasts, a dress which those bordering upon the Rhine use without any fondness or delicacy, but about which such who live further in the country are more curious, as void of all apparel introduced by commerce.

(Tacitus goes on to describe the Fenni as even more primitive, but it's thought that (despite the resemblance to modern "Finns"), those were the Sami (Lapp) people, not Germans.) Also:

That none of the several people in Germany live together in cities, is abundantly known; nay, that amongst them none of their dwellings are suffered to be contiguous. They inhabit apart and distinct, just as a fountain, or a field, or a wood happened to invite them to settle. They raise their villages in opposite rows, but not in our manner with the houses joined one to another. Every man has a vacant space quite round his own, whether for security against accidents from fire, or that they want the art of building. With them in truth, is unknown even the use of mortar and of tiles. In all their structures they employ materials quite gross and unhewn, void of fashion and comeliness. Some parts they besmear with an earth so pure and resplendent, that it resembles painting and colours. They are likewise wont to scoop caves deep in the ground, and over them to lay great heaps of dung. Thither they retire for shelter in the winter, and thither convey their grain: for by such close places they mollify the rigorous and excessive cold.

And:

Their food is very simple; wild fruit, fresh venison, or coagulated milk.

Though sometimes I wonder what the modern Germans see to be proud of in Tacitus' description:

Upon any recess from war, they do not much attend the chase. Much more of their time they pass in indolence, resigned to sleep and repasts. All the most brave, all the most warlike, apply to nothing at all; but to their wives, to the ancient men, and to even the most impotent domestic, trust all the care of their house, and of their lands and possessions. They themselves loiter. Such is the amazing diversity of their nature, that in the same men is found so much delight in sloth, with so much enmity to tranquillity and repose.

Some of the culture portrayed is familiar from the later epic poems of the Old English and Norse, for example:

All the enmities of your house, whether of your father or of your kindred, you must necessarily adopt; as well as all their friendships. Neither are such enmities unappeasable and permanent: since even for so great a crime as homicide, compensation is made by a fixed number of sheep and cattle, and by it the whole family is pacified to content. A temper this, wholesome to the State; because to a free nation, animosities and faction are always more menacing and perilous.

In social feasts, and deeds of hospitality, no nation upon earth was ever more liberal and abounding. To refuse admitting under your roof any man whatsoever, is held wicked and inhuman. Every man receives every comer, and treats him with repasts as large as his ability can possibly furnish.

The history of the text itself is quite interesting: It was lost in the Dark Ages, then a single copy was rediscovered in England in the fifteen century, following which it went on to excite much interest amongst the German people, who derived from it a sense of historical depth and unity. In fact, it was only after its discovery that the words "German" and "Germany" entered English; before that, the country was called in English Allemayn.

However, there is a dark side to this renewed interest in "Germania", which I think derives primarily from the following two passages:

The Germans, I am apt to believe, derive their original from no other people; and are nowise mixed with different nations arriving amongst them.

And:

For myself, I concur in opinion with such as suppose the people of Germany never to have mingled by inter-marriages with other nations, but to have remained a people pure, and independent, and resembling none but themselves. Hence amongst such a mighty multitude of men, the same make and form is found in all, eyes stern and blue, yellow hair, huge bodies, but vigorous only in the first onset. Of pains and labour they are not equally patient, nor can they at all endure thrift and heat. To bear hunger and cold they are hardened by their climate and soil.

Again, the linguistic evidence argues against this (there are a large number of words of non-Indo-European origin in the Germanic languages, and it's thought the Germans picked them up from their non-Indo-European neighbours during the first millennium BCE); but I don't need to tell you where taking Tacitus' description of German racial purity as prescription led.

Of course, Tacitus is writing as a Roman, and it can be amusing to see the Mediterranean bias in his viewpoint:

Besides the dangers from a sea tempestuous, horrid and unknown, who would relinquish Asia, or Africa, or Italy, to repair to Germany, a region hideous and rude, under a rigorous climate, dismal to behold or to manure unless the same were his native country?

And:

Their lands, however somewhat different in aspect, yet taken all together consist of gloomy forests or nasty marshes

Moreover, as a speaker of a Germanic language myself (viz., English), there are certain things that leap out at me, even after nineteen hundred years, which would have been completely opaque to Tacitus. For example:

In their old ballads (which amongst them are the only sort of registers and history) they celebrate Tuisto, a God sprung from the earth, and Mannus his son, as the fathers and founders of the nation.

"Mannus"—or, to strip off the tacked-on Latin ending, "Mann"—doesn't even need translating. It reminds me of the way the Bible also calls the first human Human (Hebrew āðām).

Tacitus also says:

Here are some of the opinion that Ulysses, whilst he wandered about in his long and fabulous voyages, was carried into this ocean and entered Germany, and that by him Asciburgium was founded and named, a city at this day standing and inhabited upon the bank of the Rhine

Stripping off again the Latin ending, if you apply the knowledge that "sh" was originally spelled "sc" in Old English (and even longer ago pronounced that way), this name turns into Ashburg: the castle of the ash trees.

The former of the above passages continues:

To Mannus they assign three sons, after whose names so many people are called; the Ingaevones, dwelling next the ocean; the Herminones, in the middle country; and all the rest, Instaevones.

The Ingaevones, or as Pliny more accurately records it, Ingvaeones, were the ancestors of the English and the Frisians, and the name means, I read somewhere, "people of Yngve" (a name which, aside from being the ancient name of a god, is alive and well today, and which I first encountered when my brother introduced me to the music of heavy metal musician Yngwie Malmsteen twenty years ago), or, as Wikipedia has it, "the Ingwine, 'friends of Ing' familiar from Beowulf" (though not so familiar to me who's never read it).

Annoyingly, Tacitus follows the normal Graeco-Roman practice of, instead of giving the German names for their gods, giving the (Greek or) Roman (or, once, Egyptian) equivalent, which makes it hard to identify the gods with the familiar ones from later Old English, Norse and German culture. The only god(dess) he gives in original form is "Herthum; that is to say, the Mother Earth": once again, a name that scarcely needs translating for us as Germanic-speaking readers.

Tacitus doesn't give the names of many tribes familiar from later history; Kevin Stroud in the History of English podcast suggests that the later tribes arose from agglomerations of earlier ones. Tribes which Tacitus does give which we are familiar with from later times include Suebi (Swabians), Angles (the same ones who later conquered and gave their name to England), Frisians (not, according to Stroud, necessarily the same as the later Frisians, for the land was depopulated and then repopulated), Vandals, Langobards ("long-beards", the name would later become corrupted into Lombards) and Suiones, who might be the same as the people called today the Svear, or in English, Swedes.

What else does Tacitus say about the Germans?

Neither in reckoning of time do they count, like us, the number of days but that of nights. In this style their ordinances are framed, in this style their diets appointed; and with them the night seems to lead and govern the day.

This time, he has got it spot on. Have you ever noticed that we talk in English about a fortnight, not a fortday (and that a week used to be called a sennight)? Well, this is the reason why.

For their drink, they draw a liquor from barley or other grain; and ferment the same so as to make it resemble wine.

Well, nothing's changed there then. (Tacitus, as a Roman, has never heard of beer ale.)

Nay, they who dwell upon the bank of the Rhine deal in wine.

Nor there.

Tacitus ends by saying:

What further accounts we have are fabulous: as that the Hellusians and Oxiones have the countenances and aspect of men, with the bodies and limbs of savage beasts. This, as a thing about which I have no certain information, I shall leave untouched.

Which just goes to show that ideas of this kind go a lot further back than Sir John de Mandeville.