There are yet other distorting features. History was seen as a form of literature, even of oratory; for it was read aloud to select groups, who expected artistry and polish. As with Ovid’s, Tacitus’ listeners would have yawned at the detail for which we yearn. Names, times, distances, instances, circumstances, all relating to places about which genteel Romans had only the haziest notion, were unpromising material for an author who wished to thrill literary audiences. What is more Tacitus was a supreme – at times extreme – prose stylist, who valued compression above explanation. It is this, among other characteristics, which makes it impossible to translate him adequately. English, though among the most telescopable of modern languages, is brought up by Tacitean Latin as sharply as a cat by a mousehole. Nor is he temperamentally simple. Had Tacitus been possessed of three feet it could be said that one was in history, one in literature and one in philosophy, for he was often more concerned with the moral than the actual. He was pessimistic and cynical, a curiously modern victim of his own conscience. Despite these difficulties, Tacitus is rightly regarded as the greatest of Roman historians and a vein of gold in the silver age of Latin letters. The Germania, dated to about AD 98, was probably his first published work and by no means his most accomplished, though students of late prehistoric Europe are lucky to have it.
Returning to the penetration of Germany by Roman traders, this was in three directions. The most obvious was from Gaul, simply by being rowed or rafted across the Rhine. A second door was opened by the conquest of the Alps and construction of a road through today’s Switzerland. This was designed as a strategic short cut from Italy’s north-west corner to the Upper Rhine, eliminating the detour via the Rhone. Symbolically, at either end of this route, were the towns named after Augustus: Augusta Praetoria (Aosta) and Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg). Like many roads built for the military, it soon became a commercial link. Thirdly, there was a back door into Germany, from Italy’s north-east corner. This was the prehistoric commercial corridor, known today as the Amber Road. The yellow or honey-gold substance, familiar in Greece22 from the Mycenean period, had been brought southwards on an organized basis since the 6th century BC. Amber is the fossilized gum of extinct pines, cast up on northern shores. Its principal source was and still is the Baltic’s south-eastern corner, near today’s Kaliningrad and the adjacent Gulf of Danzig (Gdansk). Tacitus tells us it was known to the Germans as glesum,23 adding: ‘one may guess it is the resin of trees, certain insects and even flies often being found embedded in it.’24 He also grumbles at ‘the peculiarly feminine extravagance by which hard currency is lost to foreign or unfriendly countries in return for precious stones’.25 Nero, eager for a caesar’s share, sent an expedition (under one Julianus, director of the gladiatorial games) to trace the ‘stone’ to its source. Pliny tells us that Julianus reached the Baltic coast and there found commercia (agencies) which dealt in the trade.26 It had long been in Celtic hands, the road passing through a number of their oppida. In due course Roman merchants muscled in.27
The Amber Road is a figure of speech for what was in reality a series of tracks and waterways. These began sedately enough: up the lower Oder and Vistula and across the gently rising plain of southern Poland, via Lowicz, Lodz and Wroclaw. They then climbed the Sudeten Ranges, crossed the Bohemian Basin and rose again over the Bohemian Forest. Passing from German into Celtic territory, the Italian-bound branch made downhill toward the large oppidum at Linz. From here it dwindled into mountain paths through the Tauern,28 across the middle of what is now Austria, before dropping down to Villach. Finally the steep but shorter Carnatic Alps were followed by the winding descent through today’s Udine, entering the Italian road system at Aquileia.
This route, with its several variants, has been reconstructed from finds of amber and Roman coins on its course. The coins are commonest near the Baltic Shore and Vistula mouth, where Julianus reported that the wholesalers were established. Regarding the substance itself, we are speaking of more than a few droplets scattered along the way. In trading settlements in the Wroclaw area Polish archaeologists found three tons of raw amber!29
Looking eastwards across the wide Rhine toward the German interior, one has two impressions. From Basle down to the Ruhr the view is largely of hill and forest, an impression not greatly altered since antiquity. From the Ruhr northwards the vista changes to one of flat fields and tall skies. Once the Rhine has emerged onto the North European Plain there seems no obstacle save the river itself. But this sector is deceptive. Since ancient times nature has been modified almost beyond recognition, not just in agricultural development but in the measures which made agriculture possible. Here the water of half Europe trickles and oozes northwards onto a plain with insufficient tilt to promote its run-off and with a dense layer of glacial clay to prevent its drainage. Modern ploughing has pierced this pan, while centuries of effort in ditch cutting and the embankment of rivers have redeemed huge tracts of peat bog for the farmer. Indeed, nearer the delta these efforts have created an entire country – the Netherlands – pushed into the North Sea where in Roman times there was a hollow, with mud banks, lagoons, reeds, silty streams and rivers shifting uneasily in their beds.
In short, whoever might wish to penetrate prehistoric Germany faced a painful choice: between groping through broken uplands clothed in forest or of floundering in a morass; the one usually beginning where the other left off. Tacitus puts a Roman’s feelings toward this comfortless country into a five-word nutshell: ‘While there is some variety of scenery it is typically a land of fearful forest and fetid bog (silvis horrida aut paludibus foeda); with the rain heaviest toward the west and the wind worst toward the south.’30
Though the northern marshes were relieved by sandy heath or deposits of gravel and the southern woodlands broken by clearings, especially in the river valleys, this verdict was substantially true. Foreigners, especially Mediterranean peoples, found the forest deeply depressing. Its extent was awesome. The largest tract, then called the Hercynian Forest, is mentioned by Caesar, who locates its western end between the Alps and the middle Rhine. From here it stretched eastwards in a broad band, from today’s Baden-Württemberg, across Bavaria, Czechoslovakia and into western Russia, branching southeastwards to cover much of the Balkans and Carpathians. This was part of Europe’s primordial, broad-leaf forest belt, which once marched without interruption from the Atlantic to the Urals, beyond which rainfall becomes too light for dense growth. Gaul and the British Isles also belonged to this zone, though by the late Iron Age there seems to have been far more clearance in the Celtic world than the Germanic.
So Germany fronted the West with the double deterrent of forest and marsh. But there were chinks in each. The waterlogged plain could be penetrated by water. From the North Sea there were three rivers, the Ems, Weser and Elbe, which led into north-west Germany’s heart. Rivers were the pass-key to the forest region also. The Rhine’s eastern tributaries were corridors up which the traveller could march or row. This was something like entering darkest Amazonia and it probably inspired comparable sentiments. Both were rain forest, both had dangerous occupants and both presented formidable barriers to outsiders, as much psychological as real. Profit had, however, found a way.
Many thousand Roman coins have been discovered in Germany. Their spread was progressive. Of more than 400 hoards only thirty are of 1st-century origin and all were within 125 miles of the Rhine and Danube. However, by the century following, coinage penetrates far into Scandinavia and across eastern Europe to the Ukraine. As trade increased the German gaze became increasingly fixed westwards and southwards. Those closest would be eager visitors to the markets on the two great rivers. It is interesting to note the kind of Latin word then entering the German language: kaufen (to buy) from cauponor (to trade); Danish øre (gold) from aureus; Münze (coin) from moneta (mint); billig (cheap) from vilis, and so on. Traders exchanged metalware and household goods for skins, livestock and slaves. Though the Germans used coins for trade with the Romans
, there is no evidence of their developing a money economy amongst themselves. ‘Those nearest us value gold and silver for trading purposes and recognize and prefer certain types of Roman coin, while those further away continue to barter in the time-honoured way. Our coins which they trust most are old and familiar ones. They try to get silver rather than gold, since silver change is more convenient for everyday transactions.’31
The author recalls youthful experience in the Aden Protectorates and the preference which tribesmen showed for the big, clinking, Maria Theresean silver dollars,32 often wondering how an 18th-century coin from Austria-Hungary achieved such distant and enduring popularity. The ancient Germans were also fond of silver tableware. In addition to the Hildesheim Treasure, many of the best classical silver vessels have been found in Germany. Tacitus identified this with the diplomatic slush fund: ‘One may see among them silver vases, given as presents to the chiefs and their henchmen. The strength and power of these kings rests on Roman authority. We occasionally give them armed assistance; but more often money, which does just as well.’33
Silver and coin were not the only tastes which Rome exploited. The early Germans were prodigious drinkers. Drinking-horns of two or three-gallon capacity have been unearthed.
The tribes nearest the river bank are able to get wine in the market. [Their native drink, however, is] an extract of barley or wheat, which is fermented to make something not unlike wine. Their foods are simple: wild fruits, fresh game and sour milk. Though moderate in eating, drinking is quite another matter. Ply them with booze and you may win them more easily than by fighting them.34
Chemical examination of pottery vessels reveals traces of a fermented liquid of beer type, made from a mixture of malt and wild berries. Drinking and chewing the fat were evidently the main male pastimes, especially during the long winter. In this democracy of drunkenness weighty matters were discussed, with decisions emerging from an alcoholic haze.
After breakfast (armed, of course) they get down to business; and often as not the business is drinking. When it comes to a binge there’s no disgrace in making a day and a night of it. As you would expect among such devoted inebriates, rough-houses are common; and it’s not just the bad language which pours out but usually the bad blood too. And yet everything gets an airing at these carousals. Quarrels are patched up, alliances made, chiefs appointed and even questions of peace and war decided; as if this were a time to think straight on matters great or small!35
Few modern historians would go as far as Gibbon in asserting (though perhaps tongue-in-cheek) that thirst motivated barbarian aggression: ‘Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley and corrupted into a semblance of wine was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. The intemperate thirst for strong liquors often urged the barbarian to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents.’36
But not all Germans lost their heads at a sniff of the exotic or a sip of the alcoholic. As Caesar wrote of the Suebian tribe (said to be Germany’s biggest and strongest): ‘They allow traders to enter their territory as buyers of booty which they themselves have won in war, rather than as suppliers of outside goods. The import of wine they forbid absolutely, on the grounds that it makes men too soft and womanish to endure hardship.’37
Though Caesar described a largely animal diet this is probably truer of the north. Nevertheless many Iron Age fields have been traced in Schleswig-Holstein, southern Sweden and Jutland. Further south the Germans of the forest grew crops and tended animals in clearings. Both Caesar and Tacitus speak of shifting cultivation, but also of distaste for hard work or agricultural improvement. In view of the universal admiration for their size and strength it is, however, likely that most Germans had a good if boring diet and that farming standards were not greatly below those of the less developed parts of the empire. An interest in outside foods and Roman eating habits is suggested by the borrowing of a variety of Latin food words, as well as terms for utensils and even of cooking38 itself.
The foremost male garment was a cloak, of high-quality woven and dyed cloth; or a short cape, worn perhaps in summer. Beneath they wore close-fitting but often crudely shaped shirts and trousers of fur, leather or sealskin. Women dressed in woollen skirts, or ankle-length costumes resembling a friar’s habit, though of coloured wool or purple-striped linen.
Villages were open in layout, with rectangular huts of unfashioned timber, the walls filled in with wattle and daub. The loan-words Fenster (window) from fenestra and Kamin (chimney) from caminus (fireplace) suggest these features were copied from the Romans, huts being previously windowless and with only a central smoke-hole. Similarly Mauer (wall) from murus and (Dutch) Tegel (tile) from tegula, indicate that light, wooden construction was normal before the arrival of Rome. ‘It is well known’, wrote Tacitus, ‘that none of the Germans lives in cities.’39 They did, however, have forts, inherited from the Celts, plus mound-and-palisade or hedge-enclosed villages of their own. Roads were tracks, notoriously circuitous owing to bog or forest. Across parts of the northern quagmire there were also what the Romans called the pontes longi40 (Bohlenwege), made of logs laid crosswise in the mud and padded with turf or brushwood to form causeways. These covered limited stretches, probably hundreds of yards rather than miles. No trace of prehistoric tracks or causeways survives.
Culturally Germany was, like Celtica, a preliterate society. The Runic alphabet, using heavily modified Greek and Roman characters, does not appear until the 2nd century. Its use would in any case be limited, especially to religion. Technical development was modest. In metallurgy the Germans lagged behind their Celtic neighbours. Ancient authors spoke of a scarcity of iron, which shows in the rarity of swords and the smallness of spearheads. There were, of course, large iron sources in Germany, such as the Ruhr and Silesia, but ‘Iron Age’ Germans did not seem overly zealous in exploiting them. Dagger and spear were the main weapons, the latter used both for throwing and thrusting. Horses were small; this and the terrain accounting for the dominance of infantry. The Germans were rated as formidable fighters whether mounted or on foot. Caesar described41 how the infantry ran alongside the horses, clinging to their manes. Foot soldiers and horsemen fought together in wedge-shaped formations, each a hundred strong and composed of related families.
The finest Germanic technical achievement was in shipbuilding. Clinker42-built vessels, first and best in the ancient world, already appear in what is now Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. Survivals include the forty-foot Hjortspring twenty-paddle boat43 of the 2nd century BC and the seventy-foot Nydam boat of the 3rd century AD, with fifteen oars on each side: forerunners of the Viking longship.
Tacitus describes the Germans as monogamous and marrying for life; their existence one of chastity, without corrupting influences, with adultery rare and prostitution virtually unknown: ‘No one treats vice lightly. None says that seduction is in fashion.44 In every home one sees children, naked and apparently in impoverished circumstances; and yet they mature to a length of limb and stature of body at which Romans marvel.’45
He also describes a social and sexual condition of near equality. Slavery existed, but seems to have been confined to prisoners of war. Women were respected, even feared as possessing magical powers. Chiefs were elected and, as noted, tribal decisions were collectively if bibulously reached by all adult males. Military service was governed not by vassalage or compulsion but by honour. Loyalty was cemented by oath, freely sworn within family or tribe. Despite individual differences in wealth and prestige, this rude democracy, which Tacitus calls libertas (freedom), was recognized by him as their main strength and foremost weapon against Rome: ‘Nowhere have we pricked our fingers more painfully. German liberty has proved thornier than Parthian monarchy.’46
Here Tacitus contrasts oriental absolutism, in which the subject has no voice, with the rough-and-ready egalitarianism of prehistoric Germany. In the former case, a tyrant’s overthrow might be welcomed
as a liberation, or at least as no more than a change of masters. But to those who had known freedom and shared the decision to defend it, defeat would be unthinkable. This was something Augustus and his stepsons had failed to grasp. Rome’s experience was with oriental or African kingship and Celtic chieftainship, all more or less despotic and centralized; obedient to the rule that ‘the more contracted power is, the more easily it is destroyed’.47
Nevertheless, the picture of prehistoric Germania as the home of beery liberty and fuddled democracy requires modification if we are to account for the high quality of German resistance. Differences between the accounts of Caesar and Tacitus imply that, during the intervening century-and-a-half, Germanic society was already moving away from family and tribal counsels toward more militarily efficient, supra-tribal groupings. Tacitus writes of retainers (comites):48 young men who joined warrior bands outside their own localities, attracted by charismatic leadership and battlefield success. It is uncertain where or how these retinues lived, for villages at present excavated approximate to maxima of thirty-family size. He attributes private army formation to boredom, distaste for agricultural work and dissatisfied pride. Precedent may be sought in the migrations of the first two centuries BC, with their need for larger-than-local direction. It is a process which will end, in the late empire period, with the formation of powerful Germanic confederacies. Certainly Armin’s success in conjuring so formidable an inter-tribal force is a memorable step on this same road, suggesting that the movement had been given a decisive push by the advent of Rome and the lessons in cohesion learned from her. So, at the time of Augustus, there existed a Germanic concept of liberty as a general notion, alongside the growing influence of supra-tribal warlords with a potential for resistance far greater than that emerging from village longhouses.
Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge Page 10