Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/178

172 for the women and the wealthy. They lived on milk, meat, wild fruit and, as Pliny adds, oatmeal porridge which is the Celtic national dish in Ireland and Scotland to-day. Their wealth consisted in cattle of an inferior race. The kine were small, of unattractive appearance and without horns; the horses, little ponies, were not fast runners. Money, Roman coin only, was rarely used. They did not make ornaments of gold and silver, nor did they value these metals. Iron was scarce and, at least among the tribes on the Rhine and the Danube, was apparently only imported, not mined by themselves. The Runen script (imitations of Greek and Latin letters) was only used as a cipher and exclusively for religious sorcery. Human sacrifices were still in vogue. In short, they were a nation just emerged out of the middle stage of barbarism into the upper stage. But while the tribes whose immediate contact with the Romans facilitated the import of Roman products, were thereby prevented from acquiring a metal and textile industry of their own, there is not the least doubt that the tribes of the Northeast, on the Baltic, developed these industries. The pieces of armor found in the bogs of Sleswick—a long iron sword, a coat of mail, a silver helmet, etc., together with Roman coins from the close of the second century—, and the German metal ware spread by the migrations represent a peculiar type of a superior finish, even such as were modeled after Roman originals. With the exception of England, the emigration into the civilized Roman empire everywhere put an end to this home industry. How simultaneously this industry arose and developed, is shown e. g. by the bronze spangles. The specimens found in Burgundy, in Roumania and on the Sea of Asow, might have been manufactured in the same shop with those