12 The Earliest Farming 



strong as a result. They saw that agriculture by giving them 

 abundance also gave them time to do other things than hunt 

 like beasts of prey for every day's food. They grew as much as 

 they could of corn and all the seeds and fruits which they found 

 nourishing. None of them tells what a long fight went on among 

 their own people before they reached this stage, but Caesar and 

 others from these civilized countries who visited Britain or saw 

 German tribes on the eastern frontier of Gaul, tell us what 

 a struggle our savage ancestors were having at that time over 

 this question. 



Writing about the people in Western Germany he says : 

 * Their whole life is given up to hunting and fighting. . . . They 

 do not apply themselves to agriculture. The greater part of 

 their food consists of milk, cheese and meat. No one holds 

 a fixed amount of land, or any that he can call his own, but the 

 magistrates and chiefs from year to year allot to the tribes and 

 families who live together as much land as they think proper, 

 and in whatever place they please, and in the following year they 

 compel them to move to another place. They give many reasons 

 for this arrangement. They fear that the habit of settlement 

 may grow on them and change their inclination for fighting into 

 a love of agriculture, that they may become eager to acquire 

 large estates, that the more powerful may turn the weaker out 

 of their holdings, and that they may build their houses too 

 carefully to avoid cold and heat.' 



Caesar gives other reasons which led the German rulers to 

 discourage the pursuit of corn-growing. Most of these reasons 

 can be reduced to two. First of all they thought the people 

 would become soft and unfit for fighting if they settled down 

 steadily to the cultivation of land, and to be able to fight was 

 the greatest virtue in a man in those times. In the second place 

 they could not see how they could retain the freedom and equality 

 which they enjoyed as nomads. 



