Germania (book)
The Germania (Latin title: De Origine et situ Germanorum) is a work by Tacitus that describes the nature and location of the diverse set of Germanic tribes around 100 CE.
In the Germania, Tacitus surveys the lands, customs, and governments of the Germanic peoples. His treatment of the tribes outside the empire is of mixed value to historians: he uses what he reports of the German character as a kind of 'noble savage' as a comparison to contemporary Romans and their (in his eyes) 'degeneracy'. Thanks to this portrayal, the work was popular in Germany -- especially among German nationalists and German Romantics -- from the sixteenth century on.
Despite this bias, he does supply us with many names for tribes with which Rome had come into contact. Tacitus' information was not, in general, based on first-hand knowledge, and more recent research has shown that many of his assumptions were incorrect. In fact, contemporary historians debate whether all these tribes were really Germanic in the sense that they spoke a Germanic language - some of them, like the Batavii, may have been Celts. He is also to blame for the misnaming of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, which did not quite take place in the saltus Teutoburgiensis, as he claimed in the Germania.
Further reading
- J.G.C. Anderson (ed.), Germania; (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1938)
- T.A. Dorey, 'Agricola' and 'Germania', in Tacitus (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) (Studies in Latin Literature series)
- Rodney Potter Robinson, The Germania of Tacitus (Middletown, Connecticut; American Philological Association, 1935) (textual and manuscript analysis)
- Ronald Syme, Tacitus, vol. 1 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958)
See also
