Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/79

 THE BARBARIAN WORLD 43 Caesar's time the Germans were again pressing into Gaul. He checked their progress and brought the territory from the Pyrenees to the Rhine under Roman rule. Through the time of the Empire the Rhine and Danube Rivers, roughly speaking, continued to be the frontier between Romans and Germans. Caesar was impressed with the differences between the Gauls and the Germans, and Tacitus regarded the Germans as quite distinct from all other peoples and prob- Personal ably an unmixed, indigenous race. His reason, a PP earan ce however, — that no one would consent to live in such wild forests and filthy swamps and so cold a climate as theirs, unless he had been born there and knew no other clime, — scarcely recommends itself to the serious consideration of the modern student of ethnology. But their large, tall bodies, fierce, blue eyes, and reddish hair all marked them off from the shorter and darker men of Mediterranean race. Skeletons — some of them seven feet long — have been found to bear out his assertion of their height, but they sometimes dyed their hair red, a fashion which came to be copied in Rome. Roman ladies imported a kind of soap from Germany for this purpose ; the Emperor Caligula wore a German wig, dyed the hair of Gallic prisoners in his triumphal procession to make them look like Germans, and had a bodyguard of Germans who were personally devoted to him, and who, when they heard of his assassination, in a fit of grief and rage tried to avenge his death by killing every one in sight. Warfare, plundering, and hunting were the favorite occu- pations; loafing, carousing, and gambling were the chief diversions of the German freeman, who left the Mode care of house, fields, and cattle to the women, old of llfe men, and others who could not fight, or to his slaves, if he was fortunate enough to own some. The hut was a rude affair of rough timber more or less plastered with mud. In winter the Germans sometimes tried to keep warm in caves dug underground. Clothing was simple and made largely of skins of animals, which left much of the body uncovered. Caesar says that they bathed in the rivers even in the depth