Page:Tacitus; (IA tacituswilliam00donnrich).pdf/59

Rh arrange in our fashion, with the buildings connected and joined together; but every person surrounds his dwelling with an open space, either as a precaution against the disasters of fire, or because they do not know how to build. No use is made by them of stone or tile; they employ timber for all purposes—rude masses, without ornament or attractiveness. Some parts of their buildings they stain move carefully with a clay so clear and bright that it resembles painting, or a coloured design. "They are wont also to dig out subterranean caves and pile on them great heaps of dung as a shelter from winter, and as a receptacle for the year's produce, for by such places they mitigate the rigour of the cold."

The account of the religion of the Germans given by Tacitus differs materially from that of Cæsar; but the opportunities of the later writer may have been the better. Mercury, he says, they honoured most among deities; at certain seasons they deemed it expedient to propitiate him by the sacrifice of human victims. To Hercules and Mars they offered animals, and a portion of the Suevic nation practised the worship of Isis.

The fondness of both Greek and Roman writers for identifying their own rites and mythology with those of less civilised or imperfectly known countries throws much obscurity on the history of religion generally. It is scarcely necessary to apprise the English reader that Mercury and Hercules, Mars and Isis, were as little known to the Germans as the Syrian Astarte or the Punic Moloch. Cæsar denies the existence of a priestly caste among the Germans, ant Tacitus nowhere actually contradicts him; for the "priest of a state"