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40 are brought into immediate contact with each other, it is difficult to avoid a semblance of satire.

Leaving now the question of the drift of Tacitus in writing his 'Germany,' we proceed to examine its contents. He closes the 27th section of it with these words: "Such, on the whole, is the account which I have received of the origin and manners of the entire German people." Evidently he had consulted either eyewitnesses of the "people," or writers on the subject, and one very voluminous author may possibly have been among his instructors. So intimate a friend of the younger Pliny can hardly have been quite unacquainted with the elder. Now Pliny the natural historian, at the age of twenty-three, served in Germany. He wrote also a history of the Germanic wars in twenty books, and, as was his laudable fashion, collected his materials for them when he was on the spot, for his nephew tells us that he commenced his work before returning from Belgium to Rome. Curious as he was on ethnological matters, he can hardly have spoken of Germanic wars without some mention of the Germanic races. But whether Tacitus were indebted to Pliny or not, the second part of this treatise is more perplexing than useful to ethnologists, although it has long been a field for much controversy about German names, places, and pedigrees. For such inquiries, indeed, with a few exceptions, the ancients were very poorly equipped. Both Greeks and Romans looked down with contempt on all languages except their own, and thus deprived themselves of one of the most valuable pass-keys to a history of nations.

The Germany described by Tacitus is bounded on the west and south by the Rhine and the Danube;