788 
ward advance of the Germans by Caesar’s defeat of 
Ariovistus, the later campaigns of Drusus and Tibe- 
rius, and finally by the limes, or line of fortified 
posts constructed from the Rhine across to the Dan- 
ube in the second century.1 The Germans, at the 
time of Caesar, cultivated the ground to a certain 
extent, — a form of industry not inconsistent with 
the slow migration, occupying perhaps several centu- 
ries, by which they passed from their original home 
to central Europe. Once this migratory movement 
stopped, no longer finding scope for expansion, the 
Germans appear to have settled quietly within their 
now established boundaries, and to have passed with 
great rapidity into a settled condition of society, with 
permanent occupation of land, and a regular system 
of cultivating it. 
At this point there is an absolute blank in our 
knowledge for a period of nearly three hundred years, 
after which time, in the weakness and disruption of 
the Roman empire, the Germans burst over the bar- 
riers which had held them stationary, and began a 
new series of migrations, of a very different type. 
These years, as I have said, are a complete blank, 
except so far as we are enabled to infer what hap- 
pened during the interval, from what appears at its 
close. In the time of Caesar, and probably in that 
of Tacitus, when the limes was in process of con- 
struction, the Germans appear to have been still in 
the stage of temporary occupation of land by groups 
of kinsmen. What was the nature and organization 
of these family groups it is impossible to tell; only we 
have every reason to conclude that they were of far 
less importance in their system than in that of either 
Greeks, Romans, Slavs, or Celts. Like the Romans, 
the Germans advanced to the territorial or political 
stage at a relatively very early period; but while the 
Romans continued, even under their highly devel- 
oped political system, to retain their gentile organ- 
ization unimpaired, — although only as a branch of 
private law, — the corresponding institutions among 
the Germans were rapidly outgrown, and have left 
very slight traces in their later institutions. The 
larger subdivisions, which may very likely have been 
gentes in their origin, appear, in the time of Caesar 
and Tacitus, to have become purely territorial dis- 
tricts, in which, so far as our information extends, 
there is absolutely no feature of the family prin- 
ciple. They are administered, not by an hereditary 
or quasi-hereditary chief representing the original 
patriarch, as among the Slavs and Celts, but by 
elected magistrates (principes), in which no trace of 
the patriarchal origin is discernible; and so strongly 
developed are the political habits of the people, that 
these magistrates are elected by the entire nation in 
their public assembly, and assigned to the several 
districts.2, Within these districts the family groups 
still continue, and receive annual assignments of 
land at the discretion of the magistrates. This is 
1 For the historical importance of this limes, see Arnold, 
Deutsche urzeit, book i. chap. iii. 
2 This subject I have discussed more fully in a paper in vol. 
vi. of the Transactions of the Wisconsin academy of sciences, 
arts, and letters, now in press. 
SCIENCE. 
‘ature. 
in the time of Caesar. In the time of Tacitus, even 
these lesser family groups appear to have lost much 
of their original character; for he does not mention 
it as a feature of their constitution. When we reach 
the settlement of the Angles and Saxons in England, 
we find that the maegth, or legal kin, was not a pre- 
cisely defined group, like the Roman agnatio, but was — 
irregular and fluctuating in the highest degree.1 The 
same fact, the inferior importance of the kin as com- 
pared with all the other European branches of the 
Aryan race, is shown distinctly in the popular liter- 
In the story of Burnt Njal, for example, the 
patriarch lives surrounded by his sons and daughters; 
but so far is he from possessing the Roman patria 
potestas, that he has no power even to withhold his 
sons from the perpetration of a gross crime. 
When the Germans come under our observation 
again, at the time of the migrations in the fourth and 
fifth centuries, we find, in place of the system of 
shifting occupation of land, a fully developed system 
of individual ownership. This Mr. Ross appears to 
have completely proved. That the ownership was 
not yet complete, for the purposes of alienation and 
devise, does not affect the main question. It was 
precisely so among the ancient Romans, who possessed 
the most vigorous and logical conception of individual 
property (dominium) in land which any people has 
ever had; nevertheless, the paterfamilias held this 
property in trust, as it were, for his heirs, without 
power either of alienation or devise. Here comes in 
the importance of the distinction made by Mr. Ross 
between common and undivided property. The land 
belonged to the freeman and his heirs, not to the 
community, and, when divided, was divided per 
stirpes: it was therefore not common, but undivided. 
The question now arises, What connection was 
there between the system of shifting occupation de- 
scribed by Caesar and Tacitus, and that of individual 
ownership which existed at the time of the migra- 
tions? To answer this question, we have absolutely 
no positive data, but may arrive at certain inferences 
by following deductively the tendencies at work in 
the earlier period, or by detecting in the later period 
survivals of perished institutions. 
It may be said that the natural course of events 
would be something like this. The family group, 
which in the time-of Caesar received an assignment 
of land for a year at a time, appears in the time of 
Tacitus to have held it for a series of years; its family 
character being, perhaps, at the same time modified. 
This is what we should naturally expect, and it is 
the most probable explanation of the much-disputed 
passage in the twenty-sixth chapter of the Germania. 
This shifting occupation, the natural accompani- 
ment of semi-nomadic or migratory life, would cease 
by the force of circumstances when this form of life 
came to anend. The German nations being confined 
within definite territories, divided into permanent 
districts, the lesser groups would likewise become 
fixed. The habits of settled agriculture, the at- 
tachment to lands and residences once occupied, ~ 
would very soon transform the shifting occupation — 
1 See Professor Young’s essay upon Anglo-Saxon family law. 
