5 6 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



Thus the first passage becomes intelligible, and the two may be translated 

 as follows : — 



It is well known the Germans have no cities. Nor can they bear even to 

 have their settlements close together, but establish them separately and apart, 

 as a spring, or a plain, or a wood has induced them. Nor do they build their 

 villages as we do, with the houses joined together ; but everybody has an open 

 space round his house, either as a precaution against fire or because they 

 know not how to build. The use of even unhewn stones or tiles is unknown 

 among them ; and, for all purposes, timber, undressed and without beauty 

 or attractiveness is used. 



Fields proportionate to the size of the community are occupied in turn 

 and divided up among the inhabitants according to their worth. The extent 

 of the plains facilitates division. The tilled land is changed from year to 

 year, and abundance of untilled land is still left over. 



These two disputed passages interpreted as above, chiefly in the light of 

 earlier and later history, show that the Germans — some of them at any rate — 

 of Tacitus's time had ceased to be nomads, that they lived in villages which 

 preferably were well apart from each other, and that the houses in a village 

 were built separately. They also show that the land was divided up among 

 the members of a community and that the same piece of land was not 

 yet tilled year after year. 



From other passages in Tacitus we learn other facts about the Germans. 

 Their food was still plain : wild fruit, fresh game and curdled milk ; but the 

 women were now wearing linen, 1 from which we may infer the introduction 

 of flax; and we infer the manufacture of wool and therefore the keeping 

 of sheep from the statements that the men wore woollen cloaks 5 and that 

 homicide was expiated by payments of cattle and sheep. 3 Already the germ 

 of feudalism can be discerned in the bands of warriors which grew up within 

 the tribes to make their living by warfare 4 and eventually to become supreme 

 over those who were not warriors. 



But more interesting from our present point of view was the consumption 

 of a liquor which was made, according to Tacitus, from barley or corn — ex 

 hordeo aut frumento. From this it may not be absolutely safe to say that 

 the Germans were now growing barley ; for Tacitus may have put it in as 

 most likely to account for the liquor they brewed, not knowing that millet 



1 Germania, xvii. 



2 Tegumen omnibus sngum. Ibid., xvii. 



3 I,uitur euim eiiani homicidium certo armentorum ac pecorum numero. Ibid., xxi, 

 1 Ibid., xiii and xiv. 



