As the Roman Empire expanded, they came into contact with various peoples. None of
them was to have a more significant or enduring influence on the shaping of Western
civilization than the Germans, whose chieftains eventually would supplant Roman
authority in Western Europe. That at least some Romans had an inkling of the
Germans’ later importance is evident in the Germania of the Roman historian Tacitus,
(56-117 C.E.), a Roman official and well-known historian, who wrote this work at the
end of the first century C.E.
Occupying much of central Europe north of the Roman Empire, ancient
Germanic-speaking peoples were never a single “nation” but rather a collection of
tribes, clans, and chiefdoms. They were regarded by the Romans as barbarians, though
admired and feared for their military skills. These Germanic peoples were famously
described by Tacitus, who wrote the most detailed early description of the Germans. In
doing so, he was also commenting on the Rome of his own time, as much as on the
German themselves.
Tacitus himself had never visited the lands of the people he describes; rather, he
relied on earlier written documents and interviews with merchants and soldiers who had
traveled and lived in the region to write this ethnography (i.e. a written description of an
“ethnic” group). Unlike earlier Herodotus, he wrote about people who lived without the
states and cities characteristic of civilizations.
PROMPT: In this class, we will read about the Roman Empire and Roman
civilization. We are reading a book (Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And
the End of Civilization) on the Romans’ relationship with the Germanic Tribes to
their north. Your task in this paper is to analyze the historical document attached
here in terms of what it tells you about this relationship. Do not simply summarize
the document, but rather analyze it in terms of what it tells you about this
historical relationship as well as what it tells you about the Roman and the
Germanic tribes, respectively. A “deep” reading of the document will be
absolutely necessary here. You should also keep in mind that Tacitus does not
represent the “typical” Roman view on these “barbarians.”
You are strongly advised to read ahead on the Romans in the Hunt
textbook (i.e. pages 169-199). You should have at least some sense of what is
going on politically and socially in Rome during the First Century (the time
Tacitus is writing).
You should consider the following questions in your analysis of the document:
• What can we learn from Tacitus’s account about the economy, politics, society, and culture of the Germanic peoples of the first century C.E.?
• In what ways are his accounts descriptive of the economy, politics, society, and culture of the Romans of the first century C.E.? In what ways are his descriptions of the Germans implicitly comments on the Romans? Provide specific examples.
• As described by Tacitus, what were some of the principle values that governed German society? How did those values compare with values of imperial Roman societies, as evidenced implicitly in Tacitus’s account?
• Modern scholars have argued that Tacitus used the Germanic peoples to implicitly criticize aspects of his own Roman culture. What evidence mightsupport this point of view? From what you have read about Roman
civilization, what does this document reveal aspects of Romans?
• Given that Tacitus’s intended audience are Romans, why wouldn’t Tacitus make his criticisms of Roman culture more explicit?
• Which statements of Tacitus might you regard as reliable, and which are more suspect? Why?
• In what ways did Tacitus regard Germanic peoples as distinctly inferior to Romans? In what ways were they not?
• How might he have responded to the idea that these people would play a major role in the collapse of the Roman Empire several centuries later?
• Does Tacitus’s account, in any way, explain the cause of the Western Roman Empire’s collapse in the fifth century CE? Here Ward-Perkin’s book with be crucial. Please keep in mind Tacitus is writing while the empire is strong. This is hundreds of years before the Western Roman Empire is invaded by the Germanic people.
• What similarities and differences might you notice between the description of Herodotus’s Histories (in Hunt, 81) of a neighboring civilization of the Greeks and Tacitus’s discussion of the Germans?
