Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/256

 GERMANIA. The popaliir assembly, oonsistiiig of Uie nobles and freemen, deliberated upon all the more important national affairs; in it the kings and other magis- trates were elected, capital ofiences were tried, &c. The meetings were either regnlar and stated, tape- ciallj at the seasons of the new moon and fnll moon, or they were eztraordinaiy meetings convened fiur certain emei^gendes. A oonsidenU>le time often elapsed before all the men arriyed at the place of meeting, which was generally near some sacred grove, or on a mountain. The men appeared in fall armoar, and a priest conducted the business; such a meeting seldom separated without a symposium. Justice also was administered in the open air, both on stated and (m extraordinary occasions. All trUls were carried on publicly and tfwd voce : the judges tried the cases; but the verdict was given by juries. In doubtful cases a question was sometimes decided by kt, or by a judicial single combat Priests were generally present at all tiie trials, which commonly ended with a drinking bout In the earlier times the Gemums had no written laws; and it was not till after the migration of nations, when all relations had become changed, that various codes of hiws, such as the Salian, Ripuarian, Thuringian, Buxgundian, and others, were drawn up. The punishments in- flicted were intended as a o(Mnpensati<m to the injured party, and consisted of money, horses, cattle, and other fines, even in case of murder; it was only in cases where the oondemned was unable to pay or make amends that he was pui to death. No free- roan could be subjected to corporal punishment, ex- cept when it was inflicted by a priest in the name of the deity* Persons gwltj of high tieasm against their country, however, cowards, and such as were guilty of unnatural lust, were hanged or drowned in marshes. Exile and captivity are mentioned only as punishments for political offences. The right of a £uni]y to take bloody vengeance, if one of its mem- bers had been murdered, is dear fronf Tadtus iGtrm. 21). IX. Languoffe <md LUertUmre, — tit has already been remarked that the language of the Germans bdongs to the Indo-European fandly, and accord- ingly is a sister of the Greek, Latin, and Celtic. Its sound to the ear of the Somans was harsh and terrible: it was of course little cultivated; and the art of writing can scarcely have been known to the Germans at the time of Augustus, except, perhaps, among the tribes occupying the left bank oif the Rhine. The laws, l^ends,and history were propagated only as traditions firom mouth to mouth. National songs in praise of Tuisco, Mannos, and of the glorious de& of ancient heroes, are expressly mentioned; and the last were termed barritut or bardituBf and were generally sung before the commencement of a battle. Writing, as was said before, was little practised hj the Germans. Tadtus ((Term. 3) indeed qieaks of German monu- ments with inscriptions in Greek characters on the frontiers of Rhaetia; but as Rhaetia was inhabited by Celts, the inscriptions were in all probability Celtic. Certain it is that the Germans bad no al- phabet of their own; when they began to write at all, they unquestionably adopted the Cdtic charac- ters, and especially the secret symbols of the Druids, called rufue. At a later period they adopted the Latin alphabet, ornamented in the Gothic fashion, which may still be seen in the old English black letter, and in the modem German alphabet. [Comp. GOTHI.] X. Butory. — If we set aside the doubtful read- GERMANU. 997 ing of the Gapitoline Fasti for the year b. c. 220, the first authentic record of events connected with German tribes is met with in the accounts of the war against the Cimbri and Teutones orTeutoui, for the latter were as decidedly Germans as the Cimbri were Celts or Cymri. But we have no connected history of the German nations until the time of Julius Caesar, from whom we learn that in b. a 72 the aid of king Ariovistus was called in by the Ar- vemi and Seqnani against the Aedui in Gaul. On that occasion Ariovistus crossed the Rhine with an army of 120,000 Germans, and subdued the greater part of Eastern Gaul. But he was defeated by Caesar in the country of the Sequani, and* driven back across the Rhine. Caesar himself crossed the same river twice, in b. c. 55 and 54, by means of bridges but he was not able to maintain himself in Germany In B.a 37, Agrippa tnmspUnted the Ubii, who were hard pressed by the Suevi, to the western bank of the Rhine, that they might serve there as a bulwark against the attacks of the other Ger- mans upon Gaul : this plan, however, was not always successful; whence Nero Claudius Drusus, the step-s(»i of Augustus, in b. g. 12, com- menced his expeditions against the Germans from the insula Batavorum. During these undertakings Drusus advanced as far as the river Albis (£lb^; but he was killed by a fall from his horse in b.c. 9. The command of bis forces was then undertaken by his brother Tiberius (afterwards emperor), who, as wdl as Domitius Ahenobarbus, was on the whde more successful than Drusus; for he actually com- pelled the part of Germany between the Rhenns and the Visurgis for a time to submit to the dominion of Rome, until after some years, a. d. 9, Arminins, prince of the Cherusd, who had lived at Rome and was acquainted with the Roman mode of warfare, de- feated the Romans in the Teutobuig forest, and put an end to the Roman dominion in that part oi Ger- many. About the same time Maroboduns, the Mar* comannian, held out manfully against the Romans, until disturbances in the south obliged them to CMKslude peace. Germanicus, the son of Drusus, who was then sent out to wipe off the disgrace d the Roman arms, succeeded in gaining some advan- tages over the barbarians, but he was unable to re- gain the ascendancy in Western Germany. Scarcely, however, had the wars with the Ramans terminated, than a violent commotion broke out among the Ger- mans themsdves, in which they lost their ablest chiefii, and which caused several Gerinan tribes to be trans- planted into the Roman dominion. The consequence of these things was, that the Romans now established themsdves in the south>westem parts of Germany. During this period, from a.d. 16 to 68, the Aoki Drcumates were formed on the east of the Upper Rhine, and on the north of the Upper Danube. This Roman part of Germany was then separated firum and protected against the rest of the country in the north by a wall and a ditch running from the Rhine near Cologne to Mount Taunus and the Odenwald, and from Lorch to Ratisbon. The great revolt of the Batavi in a. d. 70 and 71, in which the Western Germans also took part, was followed by repeated wars with several Gmnan tribes, until at last, in the reign of M. Antoninus the philosoj^er, the great Marcomannian war broke out on the Danube; many other German tribes jomed the Marcomanni, and the enemy even advanced into Italy, where they laid siege to Aquileia. M.Antoninus had to carry on the war uLtil the end of his reign, and his suo- 38 3