46. The Hunting Germans and their Fighting Ways Caius Julius Cæsar (c. 100-44 B.C.), in his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, published at Rome in 51 B.C., gives us a good picture of the life and manners of the German tribes east of the Rhine, as he learned them during his period of dealing with them. The Commentaries are noted for their accuracy and excellent literary style. Chap. 21. The Germans differ much from these usages [of the Gauls to the west, previously described], for they have neither Druids to preside over sacred offices, nor do they pay great regard to sacrifices. They rank in the number of gods those alone whom they behold, and by whose instrumentality they are obviously benefited, namely, the sun, fire, and the moon; they have not heard of the other deities even by report. Their whole life is occupied in hunting and in the pursuits of the military art; from childhood they devote themselves to fatigue and hardships. . . . Chap. 22. They do not pay much attention to agriculture, and a large portion of their food consists in milk, cheese, and flesh; nor has any one a fixed quantity of land or his own individual limits; but the magistrates and the leading men each year apportion to the tribes and families, who have united together, as much land as, and in the place. in which, they think proper, and the year after compel them to remove elsewhere. For this enactment they advance many reasons — lest, seduced by long-continued custom, they may exchange their ardor in the waging of war for agriculture; lest they may be anxious to acquire extensive estates, and the more powerful drive the weaker from their possessions; lest they construct their houses with too great a desire to avoid heat and cold; lest the desire of wealth spring up, from which cause divisions and discords arise; and that they may keep the common people in a contented state of mind, when each sees his own means placed on an equality with [those of] the most powerful. Chap. 23. It is the greatest glory to the several states to have as wide deserts as possible around them, their frontiers having been laid waste. They consider this the real evidence of their prowess, that their neighbors shall be driven out of their lands and abandon them, and that no one dare settle near them; at the same time they think that they shall be on that account the more secure, because they have removed the apprehension of a sudden incursion. When a state either repels war waged against it, or wages it against another, magistrates are chosen to preside over that war with such authority, that they have the power of life and death. In peace there is no common magistrate, but the chiefs of provinces and cantons administer justice and determine controversies among their own people. Robberies which are commit ted beyond the boundaries of each state bear no infamy, and they avow that these are committed for the purpose of disciplining their youth and of preventing sloth. And when any of their chiefs has said in an assembly "that he will be their leader, let those who are willing to follow, give in their names"; they who approve of both the enterprise and the man arise and promise their assistance and are applauded by the people; such of them as have not followed him are accounted in the number of deserters and traitors, and confidence in all matters is afterward refused them. To injure guests they regard as impious; they defend from wrong those who have come to them for any purpose whatever, and esteem them inviolable; to them the houses of all are open and maintenance is freely supplied. 47. The Germans and their Domestic Habits The Latin historian, Cornelius Tacitus (c. 54-117), about the year 100 wrote and published a book called Germania, describing the character, habits, and political institutions of the Germans. He had never visited Germany and probably obtained his information from Roman traders and soldiers. While regarded as an accurate historical writer, he nevertheless has been suspected of attempting to point a moral for the Romans by his descriptions of the better side of German life. The following extract gives a very favorable picture of their domestic ways. I agree in the opinion that the Germans have never inter-married with other nations; but to be a race pure, unmixed, and stamped with a distinct character. Hence a family likeness pervades the whole, though they are so numerous: eyes stern and blue; ruddy hair; large bodies, powerful in sudden exertions, but impatient of toil and labor, least of all capable of sustaining thirst and heat. Cold and hunger they are accustomed by their climate and soil to endure. The land, though varied to a considerable extent in its aspect, is yet universally shagged with forests, or deformed by marshes; moister on the side of Gaul, more bleak on the side of Noricum and Pannonia. It is productive of grain, but unkindly to fruit trees. It abounds in flocks and herds, but generally of a small breed. . . . It is well known that the Germans do not inhabit cities. They dwell scattered and separate, as a spring, meadow, or grove may chance to invite them. [In their villages] they are not acquainted with the use of mortar and tiles; and for every purpose use rude unshapen timber, fashioned with no view to beauty; but they take great pains to coat parts of their buildings with a kind of earth, so pure and shining that it gives them the appearance of painting. They also dig underground caves, and cover them over with a great quantity of manure. These they use as winter retreats and granaries. . The marriage bond is strict and severe among them; nor are any of their manners more praiseworthy than this. Almost singly among the Barbarians they content themselves with one wife (though a very few great chiefs are polygamists). When a woman is married she is admonished by the ceremonial that she comes to her husband as a partner of his toils and dangers, to suffer and to dare equally with him in peace and in war. The women live therefore fenced around with chastity, corrupted by no seductive spectacles, no convivial excitements. Adultery is extremely rare among so numerous a people (and profligate women are outcasts from society). Every mother suckles her own children and does not deliver them into the hands of servants and nurses (as at Rome). The young people are equally matched in their marriage, and the children inherit the vigor of their parents. 48. Effect on the Roman World of the News of the Sacking of Rome by Alaric (Dill, S., Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, p. 305. 2d ed., London, 1899) The following selection from the important book by Professor Dill states the profound impression created throughout the civilized world by the news of the fall and sacking of the Eternal City. The picture drawn by Saint Jerome may be a little overcolored; still the effect produced by the news was staggering. In 410, when after the failure of all negotiations, the city [of Rome] had at last fallen a prey to the army of Alaric, everything was changed. Eight hundred years had passed since Rome had been violated by the Gauls of Brennus. In spite of all the troubles on the frontiers, in spite of the alarms of the great invasions of the second, third, and fourth centuries, the sacred centre of government had never realized the possibility that her own stately security would ever be disturbed. Not only had all true sons of Rome a religious faith in her mission and destiny, but they had good reason to rely on the awe which she inspired in the barbarous races who ranged around her frontiers. But now the spell was broken; the mystery and awe which surrounded the great city had been pierced and set at naught. The moral force, so much more important in government than the material, had been weakened and desecrated. The shock given by this catastrophe to old Roman confidence and pride must, for the time, have been overwhelming. We can conjecture the feelings [of men of the time . . . ] from the words Saint Jerome penned in his cell in Bethlehem in the year 411. Although he had fled from the world, he was still a Roman at heart, steeped in her literary culture, and proud of her great history. When the rumor of the fall of Rome reached him, he broke off his commentary on Ezekiel; his voice was choked with sobs as he thought of the capture of the great city, "which had taken captive all the world." In an earlier letter, referring to the invasion of the eastern provinces, he says that his soul shudders at the ruin of his time. For twenty years all the lands from Constantinople to the Julian Alps are drenched with Roman blood. The provinces are a prey to Alans, Huns, Vandals, and Marcomanni. Matrons and virgins devoted to God, the noble and the priest, are made a sport of these monsters. The churches are demolished; the bones of the martyrs are dug up; horses are stabled at the altars of Christ. "The Roman world is sinking in ruin, . . . and yet we wish to live, and think that those who have been taken from such a scene are to be mourned rather than deemed happy in their fate. It is through our sins that the barbarians are strong." [In another letter] he speaks of the countless hordes that have swept from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. Great cities like Mainz, Rheims, and Nantes have been wiped out; the provinces of Aquitaine, Lyons, and Narbonne have been desolated, thousands have been butchered even in the churches, and famine has completed the work of the sword. 49. Fate of the Old Roman Towns (By Giry and Réville, in Lavisse et Rambaud's Histoire Générale; trans. by Bates and Titsworth, in their Emancipation of Medieval Towns. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1907. Reproduced by permission) The following selection describes briefly the decline and obliteration of the Roman towns which took place with the decline in power of Rome and the coming of the barbarians into the Empire. The history of the towns and of urban civilization during the first centuries of the Middle Ages is little known; indeed it would be truer to say that it is almost entirely unknown. The meager documents which these times have left us touch only the greater political events, the history of kings and of the more prominent characters; as to the fate of the people, the anonymous masses, they give us but rare and vague ideas. Nevertheless, though explicit statements are lacking, we may see in part what was the lot of the urban groups and of the individuals who composed them. The Roman Empire bequeathed to the Middle Ages a goodly number of towns. Of these the most important, by reason of population, wealth, and rank, were the cities. There were about one hundred and twelve such towns in ancient Gaul. Other towns, called castra, were simply fortified places. The cities, which for a long time had enjoyed a considerable degree of freedom, possessed municipal institutions; but this régime, under the oppressive action of the fisc and of an overwhelming centralization, was in full disintegration as early as the fourth cen tury, even before the invasions had precipitated the fall of the Empire. In the anarchy which followed the arrival of the Barbarians, nothing remained standing of all this structure, for no one was interested in preserving it. The Roman municipal régime expired. What, then, became of the cities? In most of them a certain personage soon distinguished himself among the inhabitants and gained over them an undisputed preeminence: this was the bishop. He was no longer simply the first priest of his town, he was its lord. As early as the end of the seventh century, perhaps before, Tours was under the rule of its bishop. Thus it was that most of the old Roman cities became, in the Middle Ages, episcopal seigniories. This was the case with Amiens, Laon, Beauvais, and many others. In All, however, did not have the same fate. Some, in consequence of wars, or of partitions, passed into the hands of lay princes. Angers belonged to the count of Anjou, Bordeaux to the duke of Aquitaine; Orleans and Paris were directly under the king. Elsewhere, beside the old city where the bishop ruled, there sprang up a new town, the bourg, which was under another lord, lay or ecclesiastical: thus at Marseilles the city was under the bishop, and the town under the viscount. the same way the bourg was distinguished from the city at Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse, and Tours. Other places again, pillaged, ruined, and depopulated, lost their rank as towns and were reduced to simple villages, or were even blotted out. London, after the English invasions, was a heap of ruins, and the courses of the old Roman roads which intersected it were so completely obscured that the new streets, marked out in the same directions when the town was reviving in the Middle Ages, no longer coincided with them. Viriconium, one of the richest of the British cities, was reduced to nothing, and it is only in our times (1857) that its exact situation has been discovered. In the same way the destruction of the Portus Itius, which stood upon the shores of the Strait of Dover, and that of Tauroentum, upon the coast of Provence, were so complete that to this day scholars do not agree as to where they were located. Such are the vague ideas which we possess concerning the political changes in the Roman towns at the beginning of the Middle Ages: with so much the more reason do we know nothing of the history of the small towns, of the simple fortified bourgs, which were built in great numbers at the end of the Empire. All must have come to constitute seigniories, but we do not know how this transformation took place. 50. The Invaders, and what they brought (Kingsley, Chas., Introduction to Hypatia; selected) The Reverend Charles Kingsley (1819-75), an English writer, in the Introduction to his historical novel Hypatia gives a good |