legends of the ancient Scandinavians written in the Middle Ages are added to the Roman reports, two detailed accounts are obtained concerning the gods and myths of the Germans; but it is very doubtful if the older inhabitants of Germany proper, who alone are spoken of in the Roman histories, had one and the same faith and worship as the Scandinavians. According to the usual theory, the principal god of the Germans was Woden or Odin; as the god ruling over all, the "All-father"; and as the founder of the German race he was called Tuisko. Next to him came his elder sons, the god of thunder, Thonar or Thor, whose memory is still preserved in the word Thursday, and the god of war, Tyr or Tir from whose name the word Tuesday is derived. Woden's wife and the goddess of marriage was Freia, to whom Friday was dedicated. Another wife of Woden was Hertha, or the goddess of the earth. Besides these the Scandinavians honoured the god of poetry, Bragi; Balder, the hero of the gods distinguished for his beauty; the goddess of youth, Iduna; the Norns or goddesses of fate and other divinities. The Scandinavians had just as many poetical myths concerning the life and fate of the gods as the ancient Greeks. Besides the gods, they believed in two unseen worlds of giants and dwarfs. They also believed in immortality, and depicted the life after death in their own fashion. For example, they thought that those who fell in battle lived in the palace of Valhalla with Woden, and spent their time fighting, hunting, and drinking, and at their banquets were attended by the Valkyries, or goddesses of battle, who spun the web of the battle with terrible songs. The Romans tell us more about the worship and the priests of the Germans living in Germany than about their gods. The German priests were held in great respect, but they did not form a special class like the Druids or the priests of the Gauls. Their singers, like those of the Gauls, were not priests but poets and singers of battle songs. The Germans had no images of their gods, and they did not honour them in temples but in sacred groves in which the priests offered up sacrifices for the people. Among the victims there were captive foes. The will of the gods and the future were interpreted in different manners, preferably by the neighing of sacred white horses which were kept in the groves of the gods. If we turn back from this general observation of the Germanic nations to their wars with Augustus, we find the Romans in hostile contact with them on the Rhine and the Danube. Since the time of Cæsar some German tribes of which the Ubii in the region of Cologne and the Vangiones, Tribocci, and Nemetes between Schlettstadt and Oppenheim, were the most important—had settled on the left bank of the Rhine and had begun to adopt Roman customs.b THE GERMAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE AGAINST ROME Augustus had no liking for war; he was wont to say that laurels were beautiful but barren, and it was his glory and pride that during his reign the Temple of Janus at Rome was repeatedly closed, and that the Parthians voluntarily restored the ensigns and prisoners captured from the army of Crassus. His mind was not set on the augmentation and extension of the empire but upon the founding and consolidation of monarchical institutions, his wars in Spain and the Alpine regions were undertaken for the purpose of protecting and safeguarding the frontiers of the empire, and the war in [16-11 B.0.] Dalmatia and Pannonia was purely defensive. On the Rhine alone he indulged in schemes of conquest; there Cæsar's Gallic campaigns were to be continued, and the martial honours of the Julian race and name enhanced. As long as Gaul was not completely tranquillised, and stubborn tribes defended their hereditary liberties in the Alpine valleys, the Germans were treated with consideration. The imperator Augustus even confided the safety of his person and of the Capitol to a German troop of horse, as the divine Julius had done before him, and Vipsanius Agrippa settled the Ubii, who were hard pressed by the Suevi, on the left bank of the Rhine and founded the "Agrippine Colony," the parent city of Cologne. Even the attack made by the eastern dwellers on the lower Rhine on the camp of M. Lollius, who had made an inroad into their territory because they had seized and crucified some Roman spies, went unpunished. But when the new division of Gaul into provinces had been accomplished, and the Alpine districts had been reduced to submission to the sway of Rome, Drusus the gallant and daring step-son of Augustus conceived the project of extending the borders of the empire beyond the Rhine and advancing further along the road which the great Cæsar had trodden. After providing for the protection of the river by strongly fortifying the ancient confederate towns from Basel (Augusta Rauracorum) to Cologne (Colonia Agrippina)—to wit, Strasburg (Argentoratum), Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Bonn, etc., and creating fresh bulwarks and points d'appui both for defence and attack by founding the "Old Camp" (Castra Vetera) where Xanten now stands, and other castella, he next attempted to secure the northern districts. He induced the Batavians, who inhabited the marshy lowlands from the Rhine and Vaal to the North Sea, and their neighbours on the east, the Frisians, who occupied the seacoast as far as the Ems, to enter into friendship and alliance with the Romans; and then, by constructing a navigable canal which bears the name of "Drusus-Furt" to this day, he connected the lower course of the Rhine by means of the Yssel with the inland lake of Flevo, which at that time communicated with the sea by a navigable river of the same name, but which has since been widened out by the floods into an open bay, the Zuyder Zee. He then sailed into the German ocean with the fleet built on the Rhine, and, skirting the Frisian coast, came to the mouth of the Ems, where the legions fought some skirmishes with the Bructeri and Chauci. The fleet was here exposed to a great danger, for the ebb of the tide drew the waters of the channel away from the ships and left them high and dry. They were only saved from destruction by the aid of the Frisians who had accompanied the Romans by land with an army. When the incoming tide floated the ships once more Drusus returned to Batavia. The hardihood of the enterprise, unsuccessful as it was, seems to have alarmed the Germans. The tribes between the Rhine and Weser therefore entered into an alliance for the defence of their country against the enemy who menaced it. The Chatti refused to join this league, and their neighbours the Sugambri consequently went to war with them, just as Drusus, who had spent the winter in Rome, reappeared on the Rhine and crossed the boundary stream at the "Old Standing Camp" (at Xanten). He subjugated the Usipetes, and having made a bridge over the Lupia (Lippe), he traversed unopposed the country of the Sigambri, which was denuded of its fighting men, and attacked the Cherusci on the left bank of the Weser. Scarcity of provisions and the approach of winter forced him, however, to retreat. On his return march the Germans attacked him [11-9 B.C.] fiercely on all sides. Pent in a narrow gorge and hard beset, he and his army would have been irretrievably lost had not the Germans, thinking the enemy already vanquished, ventured upon the final massacre with savage eagerness and without any order or method. The victory of which. they thought themselves certain passed over to Roman strategy. The Germans were beaten and had to look on while the Romans built the castellum of Aliso which they garrisoned and used as a point d'appui for later undertakings. The emperor refused the title of imperator, by which the army hailed their general, but granted his victorious son an ovation and triumphal honours. To secure a strong base for his campaigns of conquest Drusus, after a personal interview with his imperial father, had great fortifications constructed the next year on the German river. The banks of the Rhine were lined with more than fifty castella, of which the most important, situated opposite the standing camp of Mogontiacum (Mainz), grew into a town in course of time; Bonn was connected by a bridge with the right bank of the royal stream, the high angle between the Rhine, the Main, and the Lahn was guarded by a series of lines on the Taunus which still proclaim their first framer in their name of "Drususgraben." They formed the basis of that great frontier rampart which in later days divided Roman territory from free Germania. DRUSUS After these preparations Drusus undertook his third campaign against middle Germany. Assisted by the warlike Nervii and other Gallic auxiliaries and allied with the Frisians, who supplied him with necessaries, the bold leader advanced northeastwards along the right bank of the Main, defeated the Chatti in a sanguinary pitched battle, penetrated across the Werra and through the Hercynian forest (Thüringerwald) into the country of the Cherusci, and reached the western bank of the Elbe, passing through tracts which no Roman had ever trod, to tribes which had never heard the Roman name. Dion repeats a legend of how, when Drusus was preparing to cross this distant stream, he was met by a woman of superhuman stature, who addressed him in Latin, saying: "Whither, O Drusus, thou insatiable one? It is not allotted to thee by fate to see all this; turn back, already thou standest at the term of thy life and of thy deeds!" He hastened back on account of the approach of winter, but he was never to see the Rhine again. He died on the way back; of sickness according to some, according to others from the results of a fracture of the leg caused by the fall of his horse. He died in the thirtieth year of his age, in the arms of his brother Tiberius, who had hastened to meet him. His body was borne with great [9 B.C.-5 A.D.] pomp and mourning through Gaul and Italy to Rome, where it was committed to a funeral pyre on the Field of Mars and the ashes interred in the imperial vault. An altar in the neighbourhood of the Lippe, a statue in military attire, together with an empty sepulchral monument at Mainz (the remains of which are said still to be preserved in the "Eichelstein ") around which the legions every year celebrated the anniversary of his death with funeral games, and a triumphal arch on the Appian way, were intended to preserve for all time the memory of the brave and beloved prince who was the first of all the Romans to press forward to the Elbe. The title of "Germanicus" Conqueror of the Germans, which Augustus had bestowed upon him, passed over to his son. The place of the heroic Drusus was taken by his brother Tiberius. The latter, in accordance with his character, chose the paths of cunning, treachery, and prudent negotiation, and by these means gained more than his knightly brother had won by force of arms. It was through his agency that the German tribes, including even the Sugambri who had at first refused, sent a number of distinguished chiefs with proposals of peace to the emperor when he was staying in Gaul. In defiance of honour and justice they were arrested and carried in custody to Gallic cities, where they took their own lives. By this perfidious deed the Romans gained their end. Tiberius took advantage of the consternation of the Germans to lead his legions straight over the Rhine. At variance among themselves and deprived of their chiefs and leaders, the German tribes could offer no permanent resistance to the invader. Victoriously the general traversed the devastated districts, and by the might of his legions and the terror of the Roman name succeeded in making the inhabitants bow amazed and hopeless to superior might (though not till after forty thousand of them, Sugambri for the most part, had been carried away and settled on the left side of the beautiful river). A Roman governorship was then established between Rhine and Weser. The events of the next few years are shrouded in obscurity. The triumph that Tiberius celebrated for his German victory was likewise the beginning of the imperial displeasure which kept him for seven years at Rhodes. During this period rumour is silent on German affairs; one campaign only is mentioned, that of Domitius Ahenobarbus, a haughty, arrogant, and overbearing man. He crossed the Elbe, the eastern bank of which he adorned with an altar to Augustus; assigned dwelling-places in south Germany, between the Main and Danube, to the German tribe of the Hermunduri; and began the construction of the "long bridges," those causeways of piles between the Rhine and Weser, which were to facilitate the junction of the legions across the bogs and marshes which abounded in that insecure ground. Both Domitius and his successor Vinicius won triumphal honours by their exploits, but we have no information concerning the particulars of their achievements. The fact that Augustus expressly forbade the crossing of the Elbe would seem to indicate that up to that time such enterprises had been unsuccessful. At Rome it was resolved to have recourse to the old and tried methods of craft, subornation, and treachery, instead of to the force of arms; and that master of guile, Tiberius, accordingly betook himself to the Rhine, accompanied by the servile flatterer, Velleius Paterculus, at that time leader of the cavalry. In pompous bombast the latter vaunts the exploits of his hero, that he may at the same time gather some of the beams of this glory about his own head. In two campaigns the tribes between Weser and Elbe were subjugated, the gigantic Chauci, and the Longobards "savage [5-9 A.D.] with more than German savagery," and the fleet meanwhile sailed along the coast of the North Sea and joined hands with the land forces. But in spite of these vaunted achievements Roman dominion struck no root in those parts; their ancient freedom suffered but a temporary eclipse and quickly returned when once the legions were withdrawn. The adroit prince was all the more successful in binding the tribes between the Rhine and Weser to Rome. The strength of the army, The strength of the army, which had permanent bases at Xanten and Aliso,—and the arts of subornation, cunning, and treachery, which Tiberius employed with masterly skill, did not fail of effect upon the divided and contentious Germans. Roman influence established itself more and more strongly, especially when Sentius Saturninus, an upright and able man who combined the austerity of a strict commander with the genial manners of a consummate statesman, occupied the post of Roman governor. He was able to win over the simple and primitive people to appreciate the manners and advantages of civilised life by displaying to them in an attractive form "the superiority of Roman ways and arts." The Germans began to "realise their own rudeness," and to take pleasure in "a world of strict order, rigid law, and manifold arts and enjoyments.' The standing camps of the army became markets where foreign merchants offered the wares of the south for sale, where the children of nature made the acquaintance of the charm and sweetness of a wealthy civilisation. A brisk traffic familiarised the natives with Roman speech and manners, Roman law met with increasing recognition and regard, German youths already fought in the Roman ranks and prided themselves on their foreign weapons and their rights as Roman citizens. The characteristics of German nationality would have been gravely compromised if the Romans had succeeded in extending their dominion across the Rhine and the Danube, if the German princes, such as Arminius and Marboduus, whom they enticed into their service had remained loyal and devoted to them. But they had now to learn that the love of liberty and the fatherland was not yet extinct. Marboduus, chief of the Marcomanni, a powerful tribe belonging to the Suevian confederation, which was entrusted with the charge of the frontier southwards from the Main, was sprung of a noble race and possessed a strong frame and a bold spirit. As a young man he had won the favour of Augustus during a two years' stay in Rome, and had so thoroughly assimilated foreign culture "that the Romans could scarcely recognise the barbarian in him." About the time that Drusus bore the Roman eagles to the Elbe Marboduus returned to his native land, well versed in Roman strategy and politics. At the head of his own people he conceived the bold plan of leading the Marcomanni away from their settlements on the Rhine in the perilous neighbourhood of Rome, and winning a safe home for them farther east. By force or treaty he gained possession of the mountain-girt land of the Boii (Bojenheim or Bohemia), and made this "mighty stronghold of nature" the centre of a tribal confederacy which was to be extended to the northern bank of the Danube, and to impose a limit on the expansion of the world-empire of Rome. With a valiant army practised in Roman tactics at his disposal, and surrounded, like the imperator, with a body-guard, Marboduus was able in a few years to make the Marcomannian league a power in the land, and to inspire the Romans with justifiable apprehension. For however the wary and prudent prince might at first demonstrate in his outward behaviour his friendship and devotion to Rome, whatever facilities for access to his country and traffic with his people he might give to the Roman merchants and traders, |