Tacitus Writes Germania - First Ethnography of the Germans
Tacitus wrote the Germania in 98 CE, early in the reign of Trajan. The work is a monograph describing the land, peoples, customs, and individual tribes of Germania. The first half describes the Germans in general: their appearance (tall, blue-eyed, red-haired), their assembly-based governance, their fierce martial culture, their respect for women as prophets, their religious practices including sacred groves rather than temples. The second half surveys individual tribes. Scholars debate Tacitus's purpose; the work may be partly a political tract using Germanic virtue to criticize Roman moral decline. The Germania became enormously influential in later centuries, and German nationalists from the 18th century onward used it to construct a noble Germanic past.
- Year: 98 CE
- Category: Cultural
