FOOTNOTES
A TREATISE ON THE SITUATION, MANNERS AND INHABITANTS OF GERMANY.
[1] This treatise was written in the year of Rome 851, A.D. 98; during the fourth consulate of the emperor Nerva, and the third of Trajan.
[2] The Germany here meant is that beyond the Rhine. The Germania Cisrhenana, divided into the Upper and Lower, was a part of Gallia Belgica.
[3] Rhaetia comprehended the country of the Grisons, with part of Suabia and Bavaria.
[4] Lower Hungary, and part of Austria.
[5] The Carpathian mountains in Upper Hungary.
[6] "Broad promontories." Latos sinus. Sinus strictly signifies "a bending," especially inwards. Hence it is applied to a gulf, or bay, of the sea. And hence, again, by metonymy, to that projecting part of the land, whereby the gulf is formed; and still further to any promontory or peninsula. It is in this latter force it is here used;--and refers especially to the Danish peninsula. See Livy xxvii, 30, xxxviii. 5; Servius on Virgil, Aen. xi. 626.
[7] Scandinavia and Finland, of which the Romans had a very slight knowledge, were supposed to be islands.
[8] The mountains of the Grisons. That in which the Rhine rises is at present called Vogelberg.
[9] Now called Schwartzwald, or the Black Forest. The name Danubius was given to that portion of the river which is included between its source and Vindobona (Vienna); throughout the rest of its course it was called Ister.
[10] _Donec erumpat_. The term _erumpat_ is most correctly and graphically employed; for the Danube discharges its waters into the Euxine with so great force, that its course may be distinctly traced for miles out to sea.
[11] There are now but five.
[12] The ancient writers called all nations _indigenae_ (_i.e._ inde geniti), or _autochthones_, "sprung from the soil," of whose origin they were ignorant.
[13] It is, however, well established that the ancestors of the Germans migrated by land from Asia. Tacitus here falls into a very common kind of error, in assuming a local fact (viz. the manner in which migrations took place in the basin of the Mediterranean) to be the expression of a general law.--ED.
[14] Drusus, father of the emperor Claudius, was the first Roman general who navigated the German Ocean. The difficulties and dangers which Germanicus met with from the storms of this sea are related in the Annals, ii. 23.
[15] All barbarous nations, in all ages, have applied verse to the same use, as is still found to be the case among the North American Indians. Charlemagne, as we are told by Eginhart, "wrote out and committed to memory barbarous verses of great antiquity, in which the actions and wars of ancient kings were recorded."
[16] The learned Leibnitz supposes this Tuisto to have been the Teut or Teutates so famous throughout Gaul and Spain, who was a Celto-Scythian king or hero, and subdued and civilized a great part of Europe and Asia. Various other conjectures have been formed concerning him and his son Mannus, but most of them extremely vague and improbable. Among the rest, it has been thought that in Mannus and his three sons an obscure tradition is preserved of Adam, and his sons Cain, Abel, and Seth; or of Noah, and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japhet.
[17] Conringius interprets the names of the sons of Mannus into Ingäff, Istäf, and Hermin.
[18] Pliny, iv. 14, embraces a middle opinion between these, and mentions five capital tribes. The Vindili, to whom belong the Burgundiones, Varini, Carini, and Guttones; the Ingaevones, including the Cimbri, Teutoni, and Chauci; the Istaevones, near the Rhine, part of whom are the midland Cimbri; the Hermiones, containing the Suevi, Hermunduri, Catti, and Cherusci; and the Peucini and Bastarnae, bordering upon the Dacians.
[19] The Marsi appear to have occupied various portions of the northwest part of Germany at various times. In the time of Tiberius (A.D. 14) they sustained a great slaughter from the forces of Germanicus, who ravaged their country for fifty miles with fire and sword, sparing neither age nor sex, neither things profane nor sacred. (See Ann. i. 51.) At this period they were occupying the country in the neighborhood of the Rura (Ruhr), a tributary of the Rhine. Probably this slaughter was the destruction of them as a separate people; and by the time that Trajan succeeded to the imperial power they seem to have been blotted out from amongst the Germanic tribes. Hence their name will not be found in the following account of Germany.
[20] These people are mentioned by Strabo, vii. 1, 3. Their locality is not very easy to determine.
[21] See note, c. 38.
[22] The Vandals are said to have derived their name from the German word _wendeln_, "to wander." They began to be troublesome to the Romans A.D. 160, in the reigns of Aurelius and Verus. In A.D. 410 they made themselves masters of Spain in conjunction with the Alans and Suevi, and received for their share what from them was termed Vandalusia (Andalusia). In A.D. 429 they crossed into Africa under Genseric, who not only made himself master of Byzacium, Gaetulia, and part of Numidia, but also crossed over into Italy, A.D. 455, and plundered Rome. After the death of Genseric the Vandal power declined.
[23] That is, those of the Marsi, Gambrivii, etc. Those of Ingaevones, Istaevones, and Hermiones, were not so much names of the people, as terms expressing their situation. For, according to the most learned Germans, the Ingaevones are _die Inwohner_, those dwelling inwards, towards the sea; the Istaevones, _die Westwohner_, the inhabitants of the western parts: and the Hermiones, _die Herumwohner_, the midland inhabitants.
[24] It is however found in an inscription so far back as the year of Rome 531, before Christ 222, recording the victory of Claudius Marcellus over the Galli Insubres and their allies the Germans, at Clastidium, now Chiastezzo in the Milanese.
[25] This is illustrated by a passage in Caesar, Bell. Gall. ii. 4, where, after mentioning that several of the Belgae were descended from the Germans who had formerly crossed the Rhine and expelled the Gauls, he says, "the first of these emigrants were the Condrusii, Eburones, Caeresi and Paemani, who were called by the common name of Germans." The derivation of German is _Wehr mann_, a warrior, or man of war. This appellation was first used by the victorious Cisrhenane tribes, but not by the whole Transrhenane nation, till they gradually adopted it, as equally due to them on account of their military reputation. The Tungri were formerly a people of great name, the relics of which still exist in the extent of the district now termed the ancient diocese of Tongres.
[26] Under this name Tacitus speaks of some German deity, whose attributes corresponded in the main with those of the Greek and Roman Hercules. What he was called by the Germans is a matter of doubt.--_White_.
[27] _Quem barditum vocant_. The word _barditus_ is of Gallic origin, being derived from _bardi_, "bards;" it being a custom with the Gauls for bards to accompany the army, and celebrate the heroic deeds of their great warriors; so that _barditum_ would thus signify "the fulfilment of the bard's office." Hence it is clear that _barditum_ could not be used correctly here, inasmuch as amongst the Germans not any particular, appointed, body of men, but the whole army chanted forth the war-song. Some editions have _baritum_, which is said to be derived from the German word _beren_, or _baeren_, "to shout;" and hence it is translated in some dictionaries as, "the German war-song." From the following passage extracted from Facciolati, it would seem, however, that German critics repudiate this idea: "De _barito_ clamore bellico, seu, ut quaedam habent exemplaria, _bardito_, nihil audiuimus nunc in Germaniâ: nisi hoc dixerimus, quòd _bracht_, vel _brecht_, milites Germani appellare consueverunt; concursum videlicet certantium, et clamorem ad pugnam descendentium; quem _bar, bar, bar_, sonuisse nonnulli affirmant."--(Andr. Althameri, Schol. in C. Tacit De Germanis.) Ritter, himself a German, affirms that _baritus_ is a reading worth nothing; and that _barritus_ was not the name of the ancient German war-song, but of the shout raised by the Romans in later ages when on the point of engaging; and that it was derived "a clamore barrorem, _i.e._ elephantorum." The same learned editor considers that the words "quem barditum vocant" have been originally the marginal annotation of some unsound scholar, and have been incorporated by some transcriber into the text of his MS. copy, whence the error has spread. He therefore encloses them between brackets, to show that, in his judgment, they are not the genuine production of the pen of Tacitus.--_White_.
[28] A very curious coincidence with the ancient German opinion concerning the prophetic nature of the war-cry or song, appears in the following passage of the Life of Sir Ewen Cameron, in "Pennant's Tour," 1769, Append, p. 363. At the battle of Killicrankie, just before the fight began, "he (Sir Ewen) commanded such of the Camerons as were posted near him to make a great shout, which being seconded by those who stood on the right and left, ran quickly through the whole army, and was returned by the enemy. But the noise of the muskets and cannon, with the echoing of the hills, made the Highlanders fancy that their shouts were much louder and brisker than those of the enemy, and Lochiel cried out, 'Gentlemen, take courage, the day is ours: I am the oldest commander in the army, and have always observed something ominous and fatal in such a dull, hollow and feeble noise as the enemy made in their shout, which prognosticates that they are all doomed to die by our hands this night; whereas ours was brisk, lively and strong, and shows we have vigor and courage.' These words, spreading quickly through the army, animated the troops in a strange manner. The event justified the prediction; the Highlanders obtained a complete victory."