Germania

Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus’s (c. 57 CE - death date unknown) Germania is an ancient ethnography, written in 98 CE, about the Germanic peoples outside of the Roman Empire. Tacitus aims to familiarize his readers with the Germani– a group the Romans had been long exposed to via conflict and commercial exchange– as a “whole”, as well as with each group’s characteristic variations. 

By the mid-first century BCE, it was an established convention for Roman writers to incorporate ethnography into their historical works. The Germani entered this tradition at some time in the first half of the first century. 

It is necessary to note that Tacitus is a political historian, mostly concerned with the nature and effects of power. Furthermore, Tacitus often included a moral dimension to his writing – accentuating the negative while also commending the duty to the command good. These focuses are present throughout Germania. 

Germania was originally written in Latin.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius. Tacitus - Germania / James Boykin Rives (Ed.). Ed. J. B. Rives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Print.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius, Anthony Birley. Agricola and Germany / Tacitus ; Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Anthony R. Birley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print.

Rives’ translation is helpful in that he includes an expansive commentary that not only offers grammatical points of note but also substantial analysis. This analysis is, perhaps, a bit distracting at points. Before the reader can even begin to read Rives’ Germania, they are first subjected to his introduction and reading of the text, including his main points of emphasis on Tacitus’ traits as a writer, and the general structure of the text according to Rives’ perspective. However, his analysis is quite robust and helpful when thinking about smaller details of the text that could be missed otherwise. 

Birley does not intend to imitate Tacitus’ original Latin technique and style, but rather conveys the author’s original meaning; the prose ultimately reads seamlessly and clearly in English. It is crucial to note that this translator argues that using the word “tribe” and “race” to describe Germany’s native peoples is misleading, which differs from prior translations. The original Latin includes a range of vocabulary, like civitas, gens, and natio when describing the Germani. He instead opts for terms like “state”, “peoples”, “community”, and “nation” to mirror the broadness of the original lexicon, depending on the context. This choice is important because the valence of “tribe” has been charged with colonial nuance, because Europeans often used the term to label groups they deemed as inferior or less civilized. Similarly, the translator’s avoidance of “race”– for the most part– avoids misleading readers to imagine that ancient Germanic communities were forebears to the modern German nation-state. Birley likewise includes a robust introduction on Tacitus’ life and Rome’s relationship to the “Northern ‘Barbarians’”  that will acquaint the reader with necessary background to situate this work in its historical context.

Germania is split into two halves; the first part introduces the Germani as a whole (1-27) and the second familiarizes readers with individual communities (28-46). Tacitus calls attention to this transition at 27.2. 

The first half covers the boundaries of the region (1), the origin of its inhabitants (2-4), and their customs (5-27). The second half of the text reads more as a tour of Germania itself. Tribes appear one after another, as the reader is ushered between and across lands. 

Tacitus is most concerned with drawing contrasts between the Roman Empire and the Germani people. More often than not, Tacitus relies on the reader to take Roman culture as an implied point of comparison, and leave any negative contrasts to stand on their own. For example, in the first half of the book, Tacitus draws attention to the fact that none of the Germani have sophisticated weapons, and not many have breastplates (6. 1), kings do not have unlimited power (7. 1), they inhabit no cities (16. 1), the women do not wear long sleeves (17. 2), and even their cattle lack proper horns (5. 1) (Rives 61). Rather than being ruled by reason, the Germani are controlled by emotions: in battle the men are inspired to be brave by example of their leaders and in the presence of their families (7.1-2). This also extends to their treatment of guests (21.2) or even passion for gambling (24.2). Above all, these emotional bonds hold together the warrior band of a chief and his followers (13.2-14.1), the central institution of Germanic society, per Tacitus’ analysis.

• Ancient Ethnography
• Roman-German relations
• Classifications
• Northern Barbarians/Barbaric
• Noble Savage

This work uses Roman customs, habits, and ways of life– the “us”– as the implicit touchstone, or the criterion by which other identities like the northern barbarians, or Germani– the “them”– are explained and judged. However, Tacitus does not necessarily argue that “our” Roman identities are always inherently superior to “theirs”. Elements of Germanic customs and behaviors have moral charges attached to them, in Tacitus’s view. Uncorrupted marriage codes and fidelity are actually positive traits, but aspects like excessive drinking are negative. 

Tacitus’ portrayal of Germans as primitive develops a prototype of the “noble savage” trope that gained popularity in the Enlightenment. The northern barbarians are free of the finer luxuries that civilized Romans have gained. Thus, the “uncorrupted” German can have admirable, positive traits in some respects. 

Germania carefully describes the traits of Germani people and society. If we take the word race, as Rebecca Futo Kennedy does, to mean a political and social tool about how society organizes itself into units, then Germania might not be explicitly tackling issues of race. Indeed, if race is a modern category to manage populations, Tacitus is not talking about race as one might in the 21st century. 

However, if we adopt Sarah Debrew’s reading that race in antiquity is not constructed by now-discredited biological formulations, but as outward-facing categories of evaluation, then Tacitus is talking about race. Perhaps thinking about identity and people’s self ascribed conceptualization of themselves are fruitful ways to think of how Tacitus evaluates the Germani.

With that in mind, here are a few select passages related to these ideas of race and identity that help to emphasize differences between the Romans and Germani:

• (1. 4) “I myself accept the view of those who judge that the peoples of Germany have never been contaminated by intermarriage with other nations and that the race remains unique, pure, and unlike any other. As a result, their physical appearance too, if one may generalize about so large a population, is always the same: fierce blue eyes, red hair, and large bodies. Their bodies, however, are strong only for a violent outburst. These same large frames cannot last out for work and effort, and can scarcely tolerate thirst or heat, although their climate has made them accustomed to cold and their poor soil to hunger” (Birley, 39). 
• (15. 1) Whenever not engaged in war, they spend a little time hunting but much more relaxing, devoting themselves to sleep and food (Rives)
• (18. 1) And yet marriage there is a serious matter: no other part of their culture could one praise more. For almost alone of barbarians they are content with one wife each, excepting just a few who, not because of lust but on account of their distinction, are solicited with numerous matches (Rives)
• “But as far as thirst is concerned they are less restrained: if you indulge their intemperance by supplying as much as they crave, they will be as easily defeated by their vices as by force of arms” (Birley, 49). 
• (21. 2) No other race indulges more lavishly in feasts and entertaining (Rives)
• (45. 6) The tribes of the Sitones begin where the Suiones end. In most respects they are similar, but they differ in one thing, the fact that a woman rules: so much do they sink not merely below freedom but even below slavery (Rives)

Germania was greatly influenced by the tradition for Roman writers to incorporate ethnography into historical works. For example, Caesar followed this tradition when he wrote on the Gauls and Germani in his Gallic War, and Sallust also did so in the late 40s BC in his monograph on Rome's war with the Numidian king Jugurtha (Rives 14). Indeed, in his first book Caesar highlighted the ferocity and ‘savagery’ of the Germani by stressing that even the Guals feared them. Furthermore, the Romans were also connected to the Germani through military and diplomatic interaction and systems of commercial exchange.

Germania was not widely cited before the Renaissance (there are some exceptions, like Lucian who perhaps imitated a sentence from it or Cassiodorus in the 6th century who used it more extensively). As a single manuscript, Germania, was found in Herfeld Abbey (a Benedictine imperial abbey in the town of Bad Hersfeld in Hessem, Germany) in 1425 and was subsequently brought to Italy where Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II, first analyzed the book, sparking interest among German humanists. Since its discovery, the text remained important to German history, philology, and ethnology studies. 

By 1956 Arnaldo Momigliano, a Jewish-Italian historian, could call Germania one of the most dangerous books ever written. More recently, Christopher Krebs, a classicist at Stanford, published “A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’ Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich,” in which he examined how the Nazis came to extol the text as “a bible.” Mainstream German reception sees’ Tacitus’ descriptions as much more patronizing than complimentary, a predecessor to the ‘noble savage’ ideology prevalent in much of 17th and 18th century European literature.

1. How would you define race or racecraft as presented in Germania? 
2. In what ways does Tacitus praise or critique the Germani’s ways of living?
3. Why would the Romans care to learn more about the Germani? What can Tacitus’ text tell us about this question?
4. What are the dangers this type of ethnographic text can present (especially in regard to reception studies)?
5. Compare other translations of Germania that uses “tribe” or “race” more frequently as opposed to “state”, “peoples”, “nation”, or “community”. How do the terms work (or don’t work) in their respective contexts?