De Origine et Situ Germanorum Liber
by Cornelius Tacitus

Introduction to "The Germania"

"Later in the same year [98, when Agricola was published] came the Germania (De Origine et situ Germanorum). In its first half (to 27.1), after arguing briefly that the Germans are indigenous and racially pure, Tacitus describes their public and private life. Comparisons, implicit and explicit, between Germans and contemporary Roman society abound, not always to the advantage of the latter. However, the Germania is not to be seen as a mirror of morals (or, as some have argued, a historical excursus): its second half, devoted entirely to describing individual tribes, confirms that it is an ethnographical monograph, in which (naturally enough) a foreign people is viewed through Roman eyes."
-- from "Tacitus", Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford UP, NY, 1996.

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