34 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts and Letters. 



lated homesteads. The passage, like most passages in 

 ancient works, has been variously interpreted; the interpre- 

 tation of Mr. Seebohm and Mr. Ross is, that the method first 

 described is that followed by the free tribesmen, and that 

 the villages are of their serfs. This very ingenious theory 

 leaves the democratic features of the German institutions 

 wholly out of account. It represents the free tribesmen as 

 pett}^ barons, each with his village of serfs, and of necessity 

 assumes the free tribesmen to have been a relatively small 

 number of nobles ruling over a large conquered or subject 

 population. It explains half the facts in the case, but leaves 

 the other half unaccounted for, — and this not only in the 

 antiquarian statements of the Germania, but also in the in- 

 cidental mention in the historians, poets and writers of sagas. 

 For while, as has been already remarked, the aristocratic 

 character appears very strongly in these works, it is no less 

 apparent that the free tribesmen are a numerous, homogen- 

 eous body, inferior in wealth and influence, but equally 

 qualified members of the state. 



Again, the language of Tacitus does not warrant any so 

 broad contrast between the dwellers, in the isolated home- 

 steads, and those in the villages. Mr. Seebohm remarks, 

 (p. 339), that " It is obvious that the Germans who chose to 

 live scattered about the country sides, as spring, plain or 

 grove attracted them, were not the villagers who had spaces 

 round their houses." This we may admit; but when he adds: 

 " We are left to conclude that the first class were the chiefs 

 and the free tribesmen, . . . while the latter, the villagers, 

 must chiefly have been their servile dependents," the infer- 

 ence is not so clear. It would seem that if Tacitus had meant 

 to distinguish not individuals but classes, and especially if 

 he had meant that the one class were chiefs and the other 

 their servile dependents, he would have said so in plain 

 terms. The two kinds of residence are so coupled together, 

 that the only natural inference is that they were alike the 

 residences of the free Germans of whom he is speaking. 

 They are his subject throughout the early part of his work; 

 it is not until he is nearly through with speaking of them, 



