Note 20 — Chapter I · THE EARLY GERMANS

The lack of cities and city life among the Germans struck Tacitus with the greater force because of the complete dominance of city organization to which he, as a Roman, was accustomed. The Greek and Roman world was made up, in the last analysis, of an aggregation of civitates, or city states. Among the ancient Greeks these had usually been independent; among the Romans they were correlated under the greater or lesser control of a centralized government; but among the Germans of Tacitus's time, and long after, the mixed agricultural and nomadic character of the people effectually prevented the development of anything even approaching urban organization. Their life was that of the forest and the pasture, not that of forum, theatre, and circus.