| [The Germans] choose their kings
for their noble birth, their commanders for their valor. The power even
of the kings is not absolute or arbitrary. The commanders rely on example
rather than on the authority of their rank -- on the admiration they win
by showing conspicuous energy and courage and by pressing forward in front
of their own troops. Capital punishment, imprisonment, even flogging, are
allowed to none but the priests, and are not inflicted merely as punishments
or on the commanders' orders, but as it were in obedience to the god whom
the Germans believe to be present on the field of battle. They actually
carry with them into the fight certain figures and emblems taken from their
sacred groves.
A specially powerful incitement to valor is that the squadrons and divisions are not made up at random by the mustering of chance-comers, but are each composed of men of one family or clan. Close by them, too, are their nearest and dearest, so that they can hear the shrieks of their women-folk and the wailing of their children. These are the witnesses whom each man reverences most highly, whose praise he most desires. It is to their mothers and wives that they go to have their wounds treated, and the women are not afraid to count and compare the gashes. They also carry supplies of food to the combatants and encourage them. It stands on record that armies already wavering and on the point of collapse have been rallied by the women, pleading heroically with their men, thrusting forward their bared bosoms, and making them realize the imminent prospect of enslavement -- a fate which the Germans fear more desperately for their women than for themselves. Indeed, you can secure a surer hold on these nations if you compel them to include among a consignment of hostages some girls of noble family. More than this, they believe that there resides in women an element of holiness and a gift of prophecy; and so they do not scorn to ask their advice, or lightly disregard their replies. In the reign of the emperor Vespasian we saw Veleda [a seeress who helped lead a revolt against Rome] long honored by many Germans as a divinity; and even earlier they showed similar reverence for Aurinia [another seeress] and a number of others -- a reverence untainted by servile flattery or any pretense of turning women into goddesses.
Their marriage code is strict, and no feature of their morality deserves higher praise. They are almost unique among barbarians in being content with one wife apiece -- all of them, that is, except a very few who take more than one wife not to satisfy their desires but because their exalted rank brings them many pressing offers of matrimonial alliance. The dowry is brought by husband to wife, not by wife to husband. Parents and kinsmen attend and approve the gifts -- not gifts chosen to please a woman's fancy or gaily deck a young bride, but oxen, a horse with its bridle, or a shield, spear and sword. In consideration of such gifts a man gets his wife, and she in her turn brings a present of arms to her husband. This interchange of gifts typifies for them the most sacred bond of union, sanctified by mystic rites under the favor of the presiding deities of wedlock. The woman must not think that she is excluded from aspirations to manly virtues or exempt from the hazards of warfare. That is why she is reminded, in the very ceremonies which bless her marriage at the outset, that she enters her husband's home to be the partner of his toils and perils, that both in peace and war she is to share his sufferings and adventures. That is the meaning of the team of oxen, the horse ready for its rider, and the gift of arms. On these terms she must live her life and bear her children. She is receiving something that she must hand over intact and undepreciated to her children, something for her sons' wives to receive in their turn and pass on to her grandchildren.
Germania, VII-VIII, XVIII. The full text, in a different translation, is available on the Wake Up or Die site. |
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