32 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



gathering about them a body of armed retainers, whom 

 they support in peace as well as in war, but whose interests 

 are wholly in war. The elected magistrates are to all 

 intents and purposes converted into barons, holding their 

 fellow-countrymen in control by armed force. Moreover, 

 although there is no indication and no likelihood that nobility 

 of birth was a necessary qualification for the office of prin- 

 ceps, it was natural that an office of so much power would 

 be filled almost exclusively from the wealthy and distin- 

 guished inembers of the nobility. The principes were not 

 nobles as a class, or by any necessity; but as individuals 

 they must in almost every instance have been of noble birth. 



We are able, in the light of this condition of things, to in- 

 terpret the single passage which has appeared to identify the 

 pi^incipes with the nobles: Tacitus Annals, i. 55, where it is 

 said that Segestes, the friend of the Romans, urged the Ro- 

 man general Varus, in view of the impending revolt of his 

 countrymen, to put in custody both himself, his rival Arm- 

 inius, and the rest of the nobles — the common people would 

 venture upon no movement when they had lost their chiefs.* 



The princi2:)es and the proceres, in their origin wholly dif- 

 ferent — the one elected magistrates, the other a social aris- 

 tocracy — became identified with each other; the office of 

 princeps would tend to become hereditary, and the social 

 aristocracy was gradually converted into a political aris- 

 tocracy. 



The primitive and fundamental democracy of the Ger- 

 mans was, therefore, in the time of Tacitus, confronted by 

 a wealthy and powerful official aristocracy, the forerunner 

 of the feudal nobility. By the side of the national army, 

 the organic divisions of which were formed by groups of 

 kindred, there appeared the bands of military followers, 

 fighting under the leadership of their personal chief, who 

 at the same time, in his official capacir.y, must have com- 

 manded also the national host. By the side of the primitive 

 communities of free tribesmen, also composed of family 

 groups, there appeared the baronial residences of the chiefs, 



* Ut se et Arviininm et ceteros proceres vinciret : nihil an^itram plehem 

 princij)ibus amoiis. 



