A THE Caius Cornelius GERMANIA OF TACITUS, WITH ETHNOLOGICAL DISSERTATIONS AND NOTES. Robert Gordon BY R. G. LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S., LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, MEMBER OF THE ETHNOLOGICAL LONDON: TAYLOR, WALTON, AND MABERLY, UPPER GOWER STREET, AND IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1851.. PREFACE. THE methods of ethnological investigation in the present volume are best collected from the text. The result is a Germany of very different magnitude from that of the usual commentators. If this be unsatisfactory, there is still some gain to the cause of scholarship. The extent to which migrations may be unnecessarily assumed, or reasonably dispensed with, is measured; so that, to draw a comparison from the exact sciences, an ethnological work without great migrations is like a geometry without axioms. The extent of the difficulties and assumptions of the existing belief as to the magnitude of ancient Germany may also be measured. The value I put upon the great writers of Germany on the same subject-Zeuss, Grimm, Niebuhr-is not thus measured. I rarely mention except to differ with them. As a set-off to this, I may add that, it is almost wholly by means of their own weapons that they are combated. Whether the present work took its present form, or |