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in this treatise on the manners and social condition of the Germans, affords a clue to the date of its composition. "Rome," says Tacitus, "was in her 640th year, when we first heard of the Cimbrian invader in the consulship of Cæcilius Metellus and Papirius Carbo, from which time to the second consulship of the Emperor Trajan, we find to be an interval of about 210 years." Consequently it was under its author's hand at least in the year 98

And here our positive information about the 'Germany' ends. It has been pronounced to be a geographical and ethnological essay; a chapter, or a draft of one, intended for insertion in some historical narrative, or a satire on Roman morals as well as a record of German manners. If the 'History' had come down to us unmutilated, the problem might very likely have been solved. Tacitus delighted in episodes on the character of foreign nations. We have a fragment of one in his account of the Jews; had he composed his projected life of Trajan there would possibly have been a special account of the Parthians; and we may owe this treatise on the Germans to the interest awakened in him when