Page:Tacitus; (IA tacituswilliam00donnrich).pdf/58

46 In former times, too, they venerated Aurania and many other women, but not with servile flatteries and shameful deifications." This is apparently a parting compliment to the Cæsars, who, if they did not themselves adore, required their subjects to deify imperial wives. The respect which Tacitus displays for these female diviners was bestowed on their prophetic gifts alone, and did not extend to their sex generally; for in his brief account of a tribe called Sitones he says, "They are ruled by a woman, so low have they fallen, not merely from freedom, but even from slavery itself."

Tn these notes on the domestic condition of the Germans, it is hardly possible to mistake the purpose of Tacitus. In the hardy lives and warlike activity of the Germans he glances at the extravagance and luxury of the Roman nobles of his time. In their poverty, a consequence of their ignorance and indolence when at peace, in their chastity, politic because of their poverty, he saw an image, though a rude one, of those ages of Rome when consuls drove their own ploughs, or "roasted turnips on a Sabine farm." In many a German hovel might be found a counterpart of a Cato or a Siccius Dentatus, but not one of a Sejanus or a Tigellinus; in many a German swamp or forest dwelt a Cornelia and her young Gracchi, an Agrippina, a chaste and fruitful wife, but neither a Messalina nor a Poppæa.

The following sketch of a German village has led some to suppose it drawn by an eyewitness:—

"The natives of Germany have no cities; they do not even tolerate closely contiguous dwellings. They live scattered and apart, just as a spring, a meadow, or a wood has attracted them. Their villages they do not