Clare Island Survey — Agriculture and its History. 5 5 



parrs, they wore no clothing but skins which were so scant that a great part 

 of their bodies was exposed. 1 And referring later to the Germans as a whole 

 he reiterates the same statement : " They do not care to till the land ; and 

 the larger part of their food consists of milk, cheese and flesh. Nor has any- 

 one a determinate piece of land or boundaries of his own ; but the counsellors 

 and headmen annually assign land in a position chosen by them to the tribes 

 and families living together for the time being, whom they compel to move 

 elsewhere next year." 2 



A hundred and fifty years later the Germans had made a very consider- 

 able advance, due chiefly to two main causes, congestion and contact with 

 the Eomans. At this later date they were seen by Tacitus, from whom we 

 shall make two quotations which refer doubtless to the more western tribes 

 and which, because their interpretation is disputed, we shall quote first of 

 all in the original Latin, and then translate freely for ourselves : — 



Nullas Germanorum populis urbes habitari satis notum est, ne pati quiclem 

 inter se iunctas sedes. Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut 

 nemus placuit. Vicos locant non in nostrum morem connexis et cohaerentibus 

 aedificiis ; suam quisque domum spatio circumdat, sive adversus casus ignis 

 remedium, sive inscitia aedificandi. ~Ne caementorum quidem apud illos aut 

 tegularum usus ; materia ad omnia utuntur informi et citra speciem aut 

 delectationem. 3 



Agri pro numero cultorum ab universis in vices occupantur, quos mox 

 inter se secundum dignationem partiuntur. Facilitatem partiendi camporum 

 spatia praestant. Arva per annos mutant, et superest ager. 4 



In the first of these passages the crucial word is " sedes " in the first 

 sentence, which is usually interpreted to mean " houses " or " dwellings." 

 But this interpretation makes no clear distinction between " sedes " in this 

 sentence and " domus " in the third, and assumes that Tacitus was repeating 

 himself — a most iinlikely thing for him — in saying that each house stood 

 apart by itself. We must therefore look for some other interpretation of 

 " sedes " ; and, from the fact that in Caesar's day the Germans lived in 

 companies or communities while, many years later, both in Germany and 

 England, they lived very much in the same way in separate villages dotted all 

 over the country, we come to the conclusion that Tacitus used " sedes " here to 

 mean a collection of houses — a settlement — a meaning it carried in the plural. 



1 Gallic "War. Bk. iv. chapter i. 2 Ibid., vi, chapter xxii. 



3 Germaniit, chapter xvi. 4 Ibid., chapter xxvi, 



