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Rh on the east by the Dacians and Sarmatians; and on the north and north-west by the ocean. But this area is far too large if we admit into it pure German races alone. In the time of Domitian or Trajan but little was known of the population near the Elbe, still less of that between that river and the Vistula. Roman generals, indeed, had penetrated the country as far as the left bank of the Elbe; but they speedily withdrew from it, and had little leisure, whether advancing or retreating, to make themselves familiar with the inhabitants, their manners or modes of life. Such knowledge as they picked up consisted of reports given by spies or deserters, by guides who very likely purposely misinformed them—for ignorance in a Roman was security for the German—or by such adventurous hawkers and pedlars as brought to these savage or semi-savage regions the luxuries of more civilised lands. There is reason for believing Tacitus to have confounded Sclavonian with German tribes. Almost the entire region cast of the Elbe was inhabited by the former people alone—some centuries later it certainly was so; and there is neither record nor tradition of the Sclaves having expelled the Teutons between the first and ninth centuries of the Christian era.

Ancient historians, when they met with a people whose origin they could not trace, and whose manners and institutions puzzled them, generally put them down as sons of the soil—aborigines: and Tacitus is not an exception to this easy mode of meeting a difficulty. Of thy Germans he writes; "I regard them as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse." Having in mind probably the maritime Greeks and the Phœnicians, he proceeds: "In