The Germans of Tacitus 66 Teutonic Traits that furnished by Tacitus, who wrote his Germania, A.D. 98. The Germans, as he called all the tribes north of Gaul, were a race pure, unmixed, and stamped with a distinct character. Hence a family likeness pervades the whole, though their numbers are so great: eyes stern and blue; ruddy hair; large bodies powerful in sudden exertions, but impatient of toil and labor." Their land abounded in flocks and herds, which were their only wealth. In battle they were fierce and determined, rushing to the onslaught with terrible cries and hoarse songs. "It is reproach and infamy during a whole succeeding life to retreat from the field, leaving their chief. To aid, to protect him, to place their own gallant actions to the account of his glory, is their first and most sacred engagement." They suppose somewhat of sanctity and prescience to be inherent in the female sex"; "the matrimonial bond is strict and severe"; "they live fenced about with chastity." As to their daily habits of life, Tacitus observes that as soon as they arise from sleep, which they generally protract till late in the day, they bathe, ... take their meal, each on a distinct seat, and at a separate table. Then they proceed armed to business, and not less frequently to convivial parties, in which it is no disgrace to pass days and nights, without intermission, in drinking. The frequent quarrels that arise amongst them, when intoxicated, seldom terminate in abusive language but more frequently in blood." 66 66 SUGGESTED READING. Tacitus, Germania, Oxford Edition. Beowulf. (Ten Brink, i., 23; Morley, i., 6; Brooke, Early English Literature, 12-74). But we do not have The Saga of Beowulf A Song of Battle and Blood to depend alone on the testimony of Roman historians who at best could have had only a superficial knowledge of the subject. This early Englishman has given us a picture of himself which stands complete. To gain anything like a clear conception of these dwellers in the German forests we must go to Beowulf, doubtless the oldest poem in the English language, and indeed in any modern European tongue. Scholars differ as to its date, but it is generally supposed to have been composed before the English conquest and passed on by tradition during several centuries till it was finally put into writing in some of the early monasteries, perhaps in Northumbria. Mutilated as it has been by time and by Christian copyists, who freely inserted pious antidotes for its heathenism, it nevertheless breathes the very soul of those fierce seamen who in the fifth and sixth centuries laid the foundations of the English nation. Here we have the Teuton untouched by extraneous influences; here we have the child not afraid to be himself, not concealed by artificial forms and requirements; here we have the Englishman stripped of fifteen centuries of culture. To get at the heart of things we must turn to this old saga. He who reads Beowulf through at a sitting goes away with a maze of impressions. It is a song of blood, of battle, of wassailing, of the sea. The clang of battlesarks; the flash of war-bills; black ships darting over the foaming currents; warriors boasting and bragging; horses racing at furious speed; fen-moors, windy nesses; blood in torrents, the waters boiling with it; the roll and welter of waves; nickers and fen-stalkers; hoarse shouts of drunken warriors at the mead-benches; scops and gleemen "yelling out the joys of fight"-a confusion of The Landscape of Beowulf The North Sea graphic pictures following each other fast, a wild landscape seen by lightning flashes on a black night. There It is a The landscape in Beowulf is vague and vast. are no tilled fields,-all is wild, weird, stirring. land of "mist-covered fen-moors," ""sea-cliffs gleaming, precipitous mountains, nesses enormous," " blustering bluffs." The inland regions are unknown and terrible; how can mere words hold more of uncanny suggestion than those giving the description of the haunts of Grendel? They guard the wolf-coverts, Lands inaccessible, wind-beaten nesses, Fearfulest fen-deeps, where a flood from the mountains The stream under earth: not far is it henceward A firm-rooted forest, the floods overshadow. There ever at night one an ill-meaning portent A fire-flood may see; 'mong children of men Though harassed by hounds the heath-stepper seek for, To cover his head. Uncanny the place is : Thence upward ascendeth the surging of waters, Wan to the welkin, when the wind is stirring The weathers unpleasing till the air groweth gloomy, Before this vague land lay the sea, a welter of waters, cold, dark, storm-troubled. Everywhere in the poem wave-deeps tossing, fighting the fierce wind"; icebonds that close the currents; the return of spring, and 1 Dr. Hall's translation. The Prehistoric Teuton 66 66 His Fatalism and Gloom the sea-rovers, winter-weary, eager for new wandering; the waves twisting the sea on the sands"; fleet ships, ocean-wood,"-" foamy-necked, fanned by the breezes," gliding like sea-birds over the " fallow flood"; the dead sea-king in his best ship set adrift, given “to the god of storms." In this environment, against this background, move a wild people, teeming with animal life,-Titanic, somber. They have no nerves, no pity, no fancy. They are serious and earnest. Their appetites are enormous; they eat to repletion, drink to drunkenness, and then sleep heavily upon the mead-benches. Hoarse shouts of revelry echo from every page. Their dream of earthly happiness is to be surrounded by heroes, to bathe in a surfeit of slaughter, and after the battle to divide the booty, to lavish gifts upon each other, to sit in the mead-hall drinking and boasting while "bench glee" and carousing run wild. The crowning desire of King Hrothgar's life was To urge his folk to found a great building, A mead-hall grander than men of the era Ever had heard of, and in it to share With young and old all of the blessings The Lord had allowed him save life and retainers.1 99 66 66 Al Blood and slaughter run through the poem like a scarlet thread: "seething soul gore, sword-drink, hottest of war-sweats -over and over the idea is repeated. most every trait of character mentioned by Tacitus is here portrayed, often in pictures as realistic as photographs: the liegeman who will die before he will desert his lord; the honor everywhere paid to women, who are admitted to the mead-halls, and who even make speeches to the 'Dr. Hall's translation. The Plaint of Hrothgar Teutonic Honesty and Simplicity warriors; the quarrels that arise among intoxicated revelAs in Tacitus, we have the record of a whole day with all its occupations from morn till midnight. ers. The view of life taken by these men was cheerless and stoical. A level gloom is the atmosphere of the poem. It begins and ends with a funeral; there is in it not a laughing voice, nor a singing bird, nor a word of pity or of hope. A keen sense of the brevity of life hung heavily over these primitive men. Death was the great horror not because they shrank from its physical terrors, nor because it snatched its victim to scenes he knew not of, but because it was the time for " the leaving of life-joys. Man was in the hands of the weirds, and why should he struggle? Fate would take him when his days were numbered, and not before. The plaint of the aged Hrothgar is typical: Beware of arrogance, world-famous champion! Or flight of the war-spear, or age with its horrors, Or thine eyes' bright flashing shall fade into darkness: That death shall subdue thee.1 But there is a primitive sweetness, a simplicity of view, a true pathos, an honesty about the poem that is most delightful. These old Teutons, with all their fierceness, appetite, and gloom, were true men, as wholesome as nature herself. Compared with the civilized nations to the south, they were purity personified. They were full of a vigorous animal health, uncorrupted, unweakened; 1 Dr. Hall's translation. |