Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge (14 page)

Silver and coin were not the only tastes which Rome exploited. The early Germans were prodigious drinkers. Drinking-horns of two or three-gallon capacity have been unearthed.

The tribes nearest the river bank are able to get wine in the market. [Their native drink, however, is] an extract of barley or wheat, which is fermented to make something not unlike wine. Their foods are simple: wild fruits, fresh game and sour milk. Though moderate in eating, drinking is quite another matter. Ply them with booze and you may win them more easily than by fighting them.
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Chemical examination of pottery vessels reveals traces of a fermented liquid of beer type, made from a mixture of malt and wild berries. Drinking and chewing the fat were evidently the main male pastimes, especially during the long winter. In this democracy of drunkenness weighty matters were discussed, with decisions emerging from an alcoholic haze.

After breakfast (armed, of course) they get down to business; and often as not the business is drinking. When it comes to a binge there's no disgrace in making a day and a night of it. As you would expect among such devoted inebriates, rough-houses are common; and it's not just the bad language which pours out but usually the bad blood too. And yet everything gets an airing at these carousals. Quarrels are patched up, alliances made, chiefs appointed and even questions of peace and war decided; as if this were a time to think straight on matters great or small!
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Few modern historians would go as far as Gibbon in asserting (though perhaps tongue-in-cheek) that thirst motivated barbarian aggression: ‘Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley and corrupted into a semblance of wine was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. The intemperate thirst for strong liquors often urged the barbarian to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents.'
36

But not all Germans lost their heads at a sniff of the exotic or a sip of the alcoholic. As Caesar wrote of the Suebian tribe (said to be Germany's biggest and strongest): ‘They allow traders to enter their territory as buyers of booty which they themselves have won in war, rather than as suppliers of outside goods. The import of wine they forbid absolutely, on the grounds that it makes men too soft and womanish to endure hardship.'
37

Though Caesar described a largely animal diet this is probably truer of the north. Nevertheless many Iron Age fields have been traced in Schleswig-Holstein, southern Sweden and Jutland. Further south the Germans of the forest grew crops and tended animals in clearings. Both Caesar and Tacitus speak of shifting cultivation, but also of distaste for hard work or agricultural improvement. In view of the universal admiration for their size and strength it is, however, likely that most Germans had a good if boring diet and that farming standards were not greatly below those of the less developed parts of the empire. An interest in outside foods and Roman eating habits is suggested by the borrowing of a variety of Latin food words, as well as terms for utensils and even of cooking
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itself.

The foremost male garment was a cloak, of high-quality woven and dyed cloth; or a short cape, worn perhaps in summer. Beneath they wore close-fitting but often crudely shaped shirts and trousers of fur, leather or sealskin. Women dressed in woollen skirts, or ankle-length costumes resembling a friar's habit, though of coloured wool or purple-striped linen.

Villages were open in layout, with rectangular huts of unfashioned timber, the walls filled in with wattle and daub. The loan-words
Fenster
(window) from
fenestra
and
Kamin
(chimney) from
caminus
(fireplace) suggest these features were copied from the Romans, huts being previously windowless and with only a central smoke-hole. Similarly
Mauer
(wall) from
murus
and (Dutch)
Tegel
(tile) from
tegula,
indicate that light, wooden construction was normal before the arrival of Rome. ‘It is well known', wrote Tacitus, ‘that none of the Germans lives in cities.'
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They did, however, have forts, inherited from the Celts, plus mound-and-palisade or hedge-enclosed villages of their own. Roads were tracks, notoriously circuitous owing to bog or forest. Across parts of the northern quagmire there were also what the Romans called the
pontes longi
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(
Bohlenwege
), made of logs laid crosswise in the mud and padded with turf or brushwood to form causeways. These covered limited stretches, probably hundreds of yards rather than miles. No trace of prehistoric tracks or causeways survives.

Culturally Germany was, like Celtica, a preliterate society. The Runic alphabet, using heavily modified Greek and Roman characters, does not appear until the 2nd century. Its use would in any case be limited, especially to religion. Technical development was modest. In metallurgy the Germans lagged behind their Celtic neighbours. Ancient authors spoke of a scarcity of iron, which shows in the rarity of swords and the smallness of spearheads. There were, of course, large iron sources in Germany, such as the Ruhr and Silesia, but ‘Iron Age' Germans did not seem overly zealous in exploiting them. Dagger and spear were the main weapons, the latter used both for throwing and thrusting. Horses were small; this and the terrain accounting for the dominance of infantry. The Germans were rated as formidable fighters whether mounted or on foot. Caesar described
41
how the infantry ran alongside the horses, clinging to their manes. Foot soldiers and horsemen fought together in wedge-shaped formations, each a hundred strong and composed of related families.

The finest Germanic technical achievement was in shipbuilding. Clinker
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-built vessels, first and best in the ancient world, already appear in what is now Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. Survivals include the forty-foot Hjortspring twenty-paddle boat
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of the 2nd century
BC
and the seventy-foot Nydam boat of the 3rd century
AD
, with fifteen oars on each side: forerunners of the Viking longship.

Tacitus describes the Germans as monogamous and marrying for life; their existence one of chastity, without corrupting influences, with adultery rare and prostitution virtually unknown: ‘No one treats vice lightly. None says that seduction is in fashion.
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In every home one sees children, naked and apparently in impoverished circumstances; and yet they mature to a length of limb and stature of body at which Romans marvel.'
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He also describes a social and sexual condition of near equality. Slavery existed, but seems to have been confined to prisoners of war. Women were respected, even feared as possessing magical powers. Chiefs were elected and, as noted, tribal decisions were collectively if bibulously reached by all adult males. Military service was governed not by vassalage or compulsion but by honour. Loyalty was cemented by oath, freely sworn within family or tribe. Despite individual differences in wealth and prestige, this rude democracy, which Tacitus calls
libertas
(freedom), was recognized by him as their main strength and foremost weapon against Rome: ‘Nowhere have we pricked our fingers more painfully. German liberty has proved thornier than Parthian monarchy.'
46

Here Tacitus contrasts oriental absolutism, in which the subject has no voice, with the rough-and-ready egalitarianism of prehistoric Germany. In the former case, a tyrant's overthrow might be welcomed as a liberation, or at least as no more than a change of masters. But to those who had known freedom and shared the decision to defend it, defeat would be unthinkable. This was something Augustus and his stepsons had failed to grasp. Rome's experience was with oriental or African kingship and Celtic chieftainship, all more or less despotic and centralized; obedient to the rule that ‘the more contracted power is, the more easily it is destroyed'.
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Nevertheless, the picture of prehistoric Germania as the home of beery liberty and fuddled democracy requires modification if we are to account for the high quality of German resistance. Differences between the accounts of Caesar and Tacitus imply that, during the intervening century-and-a-half, Germanic society was already moving away from family and tribal counsels toward more militarily efficient, supra-tribal groupings. Tacitus writes of retainers (
comites
):
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young men who joined warrior bands outside their own localities, attracted by charismatic leadership and battlefield success. It is uncertain where or how these retinues lived, for villages at present excavated approximate to maxima of thirty-family size. He attributes private army formation to boredom, distaste for agricultural work and dissatisfied pride. Precedent may be sought in the migrations of the first two centuries
BC
, with their need for larger-than-local direction. It is a process which will end, in the late empire period, with the formation of powerful Germanic confederacies. Certainly Armin's success in conjuring so formidable an inter-tribal force is a memorable step on this same road, suggesting that the movement had been given a decisive push by the advent of Rome and the lessons in cohesion learned from her. So, at the time of Augustus, there existed a Germanic concept of liberty as a general notion, alongside the growing influence of supra-tribal warlords with a potential for resistance far greater than that emerging from village longhouses.

Surprisingly the concept of nationhood was unknown; the quality of ‘Germanness' recognized by outsiders long before it occurred to the Germans themselves. In calling them by one name,
Germani,
it may be that the Romans mistook a tribal name,
Hermunduri,
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for a national one. Alternatively they perhaps confused
Herman,
or a similar expression, which could have been ancient German for ‘brother', or ‘fellow-countryman', with that of the people as a whole; for some such word was also taken into Latin as
germanitas
(brotherhood), surviving in the Spanish
hermano.
The Germans did not use a national name until the 11th century:
tiudisc,
50
which became
deutsch.

Regarding appearance and character, Tacitus summarizes: ‘Their physique, as far as one can generalize, is the same: blue and wild of eye, red of hair,
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tall of body; strong but inconstant in energy and not too fond of hard work; inured to cold and hunger but not to heat and thirst.'
52

Josephus points to two other characteristics: ‘First they are incapable of rational thought and ready to dash into danger, however hopeless. Secondly, they hate Rome, for they know that only the Romans have ever brought them to slavery.'
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In the matter of impetuosity, Josephus is following Roman tradition, in which it was usual to attribute courage without prudence to northerners and prudence without courage to southerners, only those in between possessing both. German savagery was a stock Roman cliché. Their carrying of arms is described as compulsive, their behaviour as moodily aggressive: ‘they do no business public or private, unarmed.
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They are one minute abject, the next menacing.'
55
Caesar suggests that no conflict existed in their minds between inter-tribal banditry and warfare proper. This may be taken as a general rule for the
Barbaricum,
where to bear arms was universal and to use them habitual. In the absence of an external enemy, brigandage was the next best thing. ‘No shame is associated with banditry, providing it happens outside a tribe's own territory. Indeed they look on it as training for war, which keeps the young men active and alert. When a chieftain decides to lead a raid, those who volunteer to go with him are cheered by all.'
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Tacitus also notes a peculiar restlessness, ‘a temperamental paradox, by which they love to sleep but hate to be quiet'.
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Treachery, turbulence, bellicosity, dishonesty, lethargy and untrustworthiness were standard accusations against Celt, Sarmatian and German alike. In Germany's case they would prove, at least during the first two centuries of our era, an exaggeration. Though a period of migration had scarcely ended and Germany was still disturbed, she would remain a peaceful neighbour for most of the early imperial period. Contrasting the countless hillforts of Gaul, Spain and Britain with the open or lightly defended Germanic settlements, and considering the rudimentary development of tactics and weaponry, it is the Celtic character which seems the more quarrelsome. Germany's bad reputation may merely have reflected Roman priorities. Because the Celts were nearer, their turn had come first. With Gaul's teeth now drawn, Roman propaganda shifted toward a Germany whose teeth were still sharp.

If, however, one awards points for savagery between Celt and German the outcome might be close-run, especially in matters of ritual. The best hope for a Roman prisoner of war in German hands was slavery. Strabo gives this account of what jargon calls a ‘worst-case scenario':

The priestess greeted the captives, crowned them with wreaths and led them to a bronze cauldron of about 120 gallon capacity. Mounting a rostrum above the vessel, one priestess cut each prisoner's throat, making a prophecy based on the blood which ran into the receptacle. Another slit open the stomach, inspected the entrails and from them forecast a victory for their own tribal arms.
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Prisoners were also forced to fight duels with their captors, the outcome being taken as a prophecy of victory or defeat in battles to come. German priestesses were of fearsome aspect and regarded by Roman soldiers with superstitious loathing. Plutarch described how the Teutonic horde facing Marius at Aix-en-Provence was goaded on by such furies; and how they slaughtered all who retreated: ‘Their priestesses were formidable and tall, with glaring eyes, in white robes and carrying a sacrificial knife. Marius took with his army a Syrian prophetess called Martha, to act as an antidote…'
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