LECTURE II. The Roman and the Teuton. Comparison of the Political and Social Condition of the Empire and its German Neighbours.

§ 1. The Roman.

Before I proceed to describe the collision between the Roman Empire and its Northern neighbours, I wish to sketch, in rapid outline, the chief features of the political and social condition of these two worlds, so close to one another in geographical position, so far removed from one another in the stages of their respective development.

The Imperial Majesty.

We saw something in the last lecture of the process by which the Roman Augustus had grown to be what he was, the man with the mightiest opportunities for good or for evil of any on the surface of our planet. Let us now look for a few minutes at the outward presentation of this greatness to the eyes of his subjects. If we enter the Imperial palace and pass the first veil which guards the ante-chamber of the sovereign we find ourselves at length before a second veil, in front of which are watching thirty Silentiarii in brightly burnished helmet and breastplate, defending the ‘Silence’ of the innermost sanctuary from any rude intrusion. Without the favour of some ‘illustrious’ functionary there would be for us but little hope of entrance into that august seclusion: but we who have travelled back over fifteen centuries of time can push aside the spectral Silentiarius who would forbid our entrance, and can gaze, without the humiliating ceremony of prostration (exacted from all his contemporary subjects), upon the face and figure of the dread Augustus. He has perhaps just returned from the amphitheatre, and wears therefore the full robes of royalty in which he displays himself on state occasions to his subjects. On his head is the diadem, a broad white band studded with two rows of pearls, and with an emerald or a carbuncle blazing in the centre. Jewelled ear-rings hang down on either side of his face. Over his shoulders is hung a purple robe, richly embroidered with gold, similar to the vestis picta which a conquering general used to wear in old times when he was drawn in triumph to the Capitol. The use of that purple colour is now jealously reserved to the Emperor himself, the members of the Imperial family, the Consuls, and a few of the most highly placed officers of state. For any ordinary subject to wear it would be an act of laesa majestas (high treason). More than once has a Roman citizen lost his life, simply because a purple robe has been found in his possession. Upon his feet the Emperor wears sandals of the same purple dye, and these also are richly studded with jewels.

In the midst of all this pomp, though sleek eunuchs and brilliantly dressed pages are moving obsequiously through the chamber, eager to anticipate the slightest wish of their master, the Lord of the Universe does not present the outward show of happiness. There is a look of weariness and anxiety in his face, dark lines under his eyes; languor and satiety in the very tones of his voice. Though there are some exceptions to the rule, the Augustus, since the changes introduced by Diocletian, leads generally an indoor life, unfavourable to health. He does not take those long and varied journeys which filled up the life of Hadrian: he does not, except in dire necessity, march at the head of his troops like Trajan: he does not even drive chariots and contend for prizes in the theatre like Nero. He has now to keep himself aloof from his subjects in dignified seclusion: his chief business in life is to be worshipped: and the life of an idol must, as it seems to us, be always a tedious life. The one thing that varies the monotony of the slowly-pacing days is fear—that fear which, even under this new and more settled order of things, no Emperor can wholly banish from his mind—that in some camp of misty Britain, or by the mob of some Syrian city, a rival Augustus may be suddenly acclaimed, and that it may be necessary to struggle not for dominion only but for bare life against the desperate antagonist.

Deification of the Emperor.

The being who dwelt in this stately seclusion was not only raised to the ranks of the gods after his death (‘Divus’ being the regular official prefix of the name of a deceased Emperor): he was occasionally even addressed as ‘Deus Noster,’ ‘our God,’ during his life. ‘Dominus Noster,’ ‘our Lord’ or ‘our Master,’ was, however, his more usual title, this appellation which the modesty of Augustus had waived (since, as he said, it implied that those who used it were his slaves) having been freely accepted, and then jealously claimed, by his successors of the Lower Empire. Everything belonging to the Emperor was habitually, and without any trace of irony, spoken of as ‘Sacred.’ The ‘sacred bedchamber’ meant the Emperor’s bedroom: the ‘sacred largesses,’ the Imperial subscription-list. ‘Our Mildness,’ ‘our Tranquillity,’ ‘our Clemency,’ are the terms which the Emperors generally use when they are speaking of themselves, though occasionally we find an Emperor soaring even to higher regions of august self-contemplation and speaking of himself as ‘my Eternity⁠[7]⁠.’ This reverential mode of speaking of the Emperor’s dignity by no means disappeared with the adoption of Christianity. A writer on military affairs, who was probably contemporary with Theodosius⁠[8]⁠, says of the oath taken by the army: ‘The soldiers swear by God and Christ and the Holy Spirit, and by the Majesty of the Emperor, which, according to the will of God, is to be loved and worshipped by the human race. For when the Emperor has received the name of Augustus, faithful devotion is to be rendered, life-long service is to be paid, to him as to God present in a human body⁠[9]⁠. For that man, whether soldier or civilian, serves God who faithfully loves him who reigns by God’s ordinance.’

The Imperial Consistory.

In one of the apartments of the palace was assembled the Consistory of the Emperor, a body somewhat resembling our Privy Council, and consisting of all the highest officials of the State. From this Consistory now went forth all laws, addressed in the Emperor’s name to some great functionary charged to see to their execution. Here, too, were announced the names of those persons whom the Emperor nominated to the highest places in the civil and military service. All this legislative and administrative work, which in the days of the Republic had required the concurrence of the Senate and People of Rome, and a large share of which had been left even by Augustus and Tiberius to the Senate, was now done by the mere fiat of the Emperor; and only slight traces of even a theoretical right of confirmation by the Senate, none at all of such a right of confirmation by the People, seem to have been preserved.

Three classes in the Imperial hierarchy.

The officials, civil and military, by whom the work of ruling the vast Roman Empire was carried on, were divided into three great classes:—

1. The Illustres, nearly corresponding to our Cabinet Ministers and Commander-in-Chief.

2. The Spectabiles, whose rank was not unlike that of our Privy Councillors, and who included most of the governors of provinces and military officers of rank.

3. The Clarissimi. This title was given to all Senators, and was also shared by some of the governors of provinces of inferior rank, and subordinate commissioned officers.

The Notitia.

The various degrees and orders of this great official hierarchy were accurately described in a treatise called the Notitia Utriusque Imperii, which, there is some reason to think, was written up by each Emperor afresh on his accession to the throne. This document is illustrated by somewhat grotesque pictures, emblematic of the contents of the various chapters, which may have been drawn by the unskilful fingers of the Imperial scribe. The copies of the Notitia which we possess describe the state of things existing about the beginning of the fifth century, and bring before us in a wonderful manner the various and skilfully contrived channels by which, in theory at least, the great Imperial power flowed down to, and was brought in contact with, the meanest of its subjects. The first chapter enumerates all the chief officers of the Eastern Empire. The second takes up the office of the Praetorian Prefect, greatest of all the Illustres, a man who, after his office had undergone great mutations, had at length become, so to speak, the Grand Vizier of the Emperor, his alter ego and vicegerent, the official who took as much as possible of the drudgery of ruling off the shoulders of a monarch, who, if ill-disposed, wanted to take his fill of luxury and sensual enjoyment, or if earnest to perform the duties of his station, was generally busy on the frontier, warring with the barbarians.

Though the scheme of Diocletian for ‘adoptive succession, and partnership’ had broken down, his skilful division of the vast spaces of the Empire still endured, and each one of the four Prefectures founded by him was still under the rule of its own special Praetorian Prefect. This second chapter, then, of the Notitia describes the various provincial governors, who are, in its phrase, ‘under the disposition’ of the Illustrious Praetorian Prefect of the East. Then follows an enumeration of the official staff—the registrars, the shorthand-writers, the process-servers, the beadles, the gaolers who were employed in the court of the Praetorian Prefect, himself not merely a great Minister of State, but also the highest Judge of Appeal, Premier, and Lord Chancellor in one.

Magister Militiae.

Probable size of the Imperial army.

Another chapter of the Notitia gives the emblems of the dignity of the Illustrious Master of the Soldiery in the East, and enumerates the various legions which were under his disposition. And here we are brought face to face with the interesting question, What was the size of the Roman army at the time when its greatest struggle with the barbarians began? Unfortunately the Notitia, though it gives us much detailed information as to the disposition of various bodies of infantry and cavalry, does not enable us to give a definite answer to this question; and unfortunately also an impression has been produced, one can hardly tell how, that by this time the Legion, the well-known unit of computation in the Roman army, had been formally reduced from its old strength of 6100 men to about 1000. Of course this suggestion throws all calculations as to the size of the army, derived from the number of legions contained in it, into confusion. But as no proof of this formal reduction of the legion has yet been offered, I prefer to take it at its old valuation: and so doing, I come to the conclusion that the Roman army at the end of the fourth century consisted on paper of at least 950,000 men⁠[10]⁠. To deduce from this its actual effective strength can be only a matter of conjecture; but my conjecture would be that fully one-half of the above number, or 475,000 men, were at that time serving under the banners of the Empire⁠[11]⁠.

Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi.

If I am not wearying you, we will turn over a few more pages of this wonderful handbook, which I have often in my own mind compared to a Whitaker’s Almanack and an Army List for the fifth century after Christ, bound up together. Even that comparison hardly does justice to the Notitia. I doubt if we have any book which in our own country shows so clearly and so concisely the relations of the various departments of our State to one another (for instance, of the Exchequer to the Treasury, or of the Privy Council to the Poor Law Board) as this treatise shows the functions of the great officers of the Roman State and the classes of civil servants over whom they bore sway. After the Master of the Soldiery, that is, the Commander-in-Chief, we come to the Illustrious Grand Chamberlain, or, as he was called in the high-flown language of the Court, the Superintendent of the Sacred Cubicle. Our MSS. of the Notitia are defective in the chapters relating to this magnificent personage, but we know from other sources that he ruled over an army of pages, scullions, keepers of the wardrobe, grooms of the bedchamber, and the like, and that the thirty gleaming Silentiarii who watched outside the purple veil took their orders from him.

Magister Officiorum.

The Illustrious Master of the Offices is next described. In a quaint picture are represented the emblems of his rank, a table with the likeness of the Emperor standing upon it, and underneath shields, spears, greaves and helmets. We learn from the text that the arsenals of the Empire, the Postal Service, the four great bureaux⁠[12] which were responsible for the Imperial correspondence and for receiving and answering petitions, the swarm of King’s Messengers (as they would now be called) or Agentes in Rebus, who rode up and down through the provinces, executing the orders of the Sovereign, were all under the disposition of this hard-worked and useful functionary.

Quaestor.

The Illustrious Quaestor was responsible for the preparation of the Emperor’s Edicts, and seems to have shared with the Master of the Offices the duty of replying to the humble petitions of his subjects. A bundle of these petitions and a box, which looks like a pillar post-office, inscribed ‘Leges Salutares,’ appear on his page of the Notitia among the emblems of the Quaestor’s dignity.

Comes Sacrarum Largitionum.

Comes Privatarum Rerum.

The Illustrious Count of the Sacred Largesses and Count of the Private Domains were the two great financial ministers of the State. Theoretically the first might have been expected to discharge only the duties of a Grand Almoner, in supervising the Imperial Charities. Practically, however, he had to superintend the collection of revenue from Illyrian silver mines and Egyptian corn-fields, from the manufacturers of linen, and the traders in salt. The Count of the Private Domains similarly superintended the vast estates belonging to the Crown in the various provinces of the Empire, defended them from squatters, urged the claims of his sovereign to the land of a subject dying without natural heirs, and received the reports of the stud-masters who watched over the troops of horses reared for the Emperor in the plains of Thrace and Cappadocia. The pictures denoting the functions of these two officers are nearly alike, both representing money-chests, sacks fat with gold and silver, and great bowls filled with round masses of bullion.

Merits and defects of the Imperial Bureaucracy.

Such is a very brief outline of the system of civil and military administration as arranged by Diocletian and Constantine. This Bureaucracy (I know no pure English word which expresses the idea) carried on the government of the Eastern Empire for more than a thousand years. It had great faults—it was grasping, repressive, too often corrupt. At the beginning of the fifth century, if we may believe a poet of the Opposition⁠[13]⁠, an Eunuch, who by Imperial favour had climbed up into the high place of Praetorian Prefect, dared to open an auction mart in his private chamber for the actual sale of provincial governorships to the highest bidder. And even where there was not positive corruption, there can be little doubt that the rule of the Byzantine officials was generally impoverishing and exhausting to the provinces, paying but little heed to their just complaints, and bent on screwing out of them the uttermost farthing for the Emperor, if not for the officials’ own private benefit. Still the officialism of the Empire had some great merits, without which it could never have subsisted so long as it did. The regular gradation of offices, the scientific division of powers, the career opened by the civil service to intellect, irrespective of noble birth or warlike prowess—all these things made of the administrative hierarchy of the Roman Empire a great engine of civilisation in those dim mediaeval centuries, and one which contrasted favourably in many respects with the rough barbaric forces that were everywhere else struggling for supremacy. If the student wishes to know how it was that the Empire of Constantine, notwithstanding all its degeneracy, lasted on in the East for 1120 years, let him study that curious and interesting document, the Notitia Imperii.

Social condition of the Empire.

Passing from the political, I will make a few remarks on the social state of the Empire in the fourth century after Christ. Our information on this subject is very imperfect. We have no authors who, like the comedians of Athens, or like Horace and Juvenal in Rome, enable us to reconstruct a picture of the manners and customs of those far-off times, almost as vivid as is furnished by the Miss Austens and the Anthony Trollopes of the nineteenth century. Still we have something. Ammianus Marcellinus, the great historian of Julian and Valentinian, possessed the eye and hand of a satirist; and St. Jerome, even in denouncing the vices of fashionable society in Rome, brings us into nearer acquaintance with its good as well as its evil qualities.

Division between classes.

Taking a broad survey, we may say that the characteristic of Roman social life in the later Empire, was the gulf (a far wider and more bridgeless gulf than exists in our own day) between the very rich and the very poor. The Roman did not take naturally either to manufacturing or to retail shop-keeping. He was (perhaps I should rather say, he had been) essentially a warrior. The rich Roman was still lawyer, civil servant, money-lender, and land owner. The poor Roman was tiller of the soil—often under very hard conditions—or else ‘loafer’ (no other word will express my meaning) in the cities. What was true of the dweller in Rome was true also to some extent of the Romanised population of the provinces. Now, if we consider what these statements amount to, and if we consider also the invariable influence of slavery in crushing out the better class of free artisans, we shall see that we have here a society from which the middle class and the more independent portion of the lower class are perpetually tending to disappear; in other words, a society composed of the very rich and of the employés of the State at one end, and of the proletariat⁠[14] at the other, with only weak and insufficient padding between.

Roman fortunes.

We have some interesting information as to the fortunes of wealthy Romans about the year 420, after the distress caused by the invasion of the barbarians had begun. In the first families in Rome it was not unusual for the master of the household to have an income of £160,000 a year, besides the produce of vineyards and corn-lands, which was worth quite £50,000 more⁠[15]⁠. Wealthy families of the second class were worth from £40,000 to £60,000 a year. A Senator named Probus, when his son was made Praetor about 423, spent £48,000 on the shows which it was still customary for that functionary to exhibit to the people. Some fifteen years before, ere Rome had yet been taken by the barbarians, Symmachus the orator, a man who was deemed to possess only a moderate fortune, had spent £80,000 on similar exhibitions; while Maximus, who was considered one of the very rich citizens of Rome, lavished £160,000 upon the festivities, which, notwithstanding this prodigious expenditure, only lasted seven days. At this time the palace of every Roman nobleman had spacious baths, forum, hippodrome, fountains, temples (or churches) within its enclosure, so that a stranger visiting Rome cried out with enthusiasm

St. Jerome tells us that the devout lady Paula, who claimed descent on the paternal side from Agamemnon, and on the maternal from the Scipios, was possessed of vast wealth, and that the whole city of Nicopolis (founded by Augustus to commemorate the battle of Actium) belonged to her alone.

Habits of wealthy Romans.

The men who owned these enormous fortunes seemed to Ammianus to be for the most part cold-hearted and effeminate dandies, unworthy of the great name of Rome, whose foremost citizens they were. A lofty chariot would be one man’s sign of distinction, another covered himself with a multitude of cloaks of finest silken texture, each one fastened round his neck by a jewelled clasp, and perpetually wriggled his body about or waved his hand in order to call the attention of the bystanders to the gay fringes of his robe or the figures of animals embroidered upon it in divers colours of needle-work. Others strutted along the street followed by a whole army of retainers, and when they entered the public baths attended by at least fifty slaves, at once began to shout out in a voice that was meant to strike awe into all humbler visitors, ‘Where are my people?’ A contemptuous toss of the head was all that they vouchsafed to an acquaintance; to the fawning flatterer who was hungering for their smile they would contemptuously offer a hand or a knee to kiss. But all this affectation of aristocratic hauteur vanished when some woman of doubtful reputation drew near, or when news was brought to them of the arrival of some fresh horses or charioteers of extraordinary skill. The banquet was to these men a time of dull and solemn sensuality. When the panting slave placed on the table a fish or a turkey of unusual size, they would send for the scales and order it to be weighed, and then one of the crowd of hungry secretaries standing by would be called upon to record the prodigy on his tablets. Beyond this kind of employment for the pen, their ideas either of literature or of science hardly soared.

The poorer citizens of Rome.

Bread distribution.

Thus empty and frivolous appeared to a contemporary satirist the lives of the Roman nobility. Of the lives of the poorer citizens he gives us fewer details, but we can see that for them as for their ancestors the interest of life was summed up in three words ‘Panem et Circenses’—bread and circus-shows. By a well-understood bargain between the Roman mob and the Roman Emperor—a bargain which lasted through all the centuries from Julius to Augustulus—he was bound to provide them with at least food enough to keep them from starving, and with a proper amount of excitement in the form of games, chariot races, and fights of gladiators and wild beasts; and if he failed in this, the first duty of a ruler, his diadem and his life were both forfeit. The elaborate provisions of the Theodosian code enable us to understand how the duty of feeding the mob was performed. We see the householders of Rome seated on broad flights of stairs throughout the fourteen regions of the City, and receiving from the slaves who obeyed the orders of the Superintendent of Supply (Praefectus Annonae) their loaves of fine wheaten flour, each weighing about a pound and a half⁠[16]⁠, and in addition, a certain quantity of oil.

Games.

And then as to the games. The history of Ammianus and the letters of Cassiodorus show us these same unemployed citizens flocking to the stately Colosseum, or the spacious Hippodrome, and shouting themselves hoarse with the name of some favourite gladiator or charioteer. The chariot races especially, stirred the people to a frenzy of excitement, surpassing that of a contested election or an Irish faction-fight. The two colours, blue and green, flaunted by one set of charioteers or the other, stirred the citizens both of Rome and Constantinople to the very madness of triumph or disappointment. ‘The green charioteer flashes by: part of the people is in despair. The blue gets ahead: a larger part of the city is in misery. They cheer frantically when they have gained nothing: they are cut to the heart when they have received no loss: and they plunge with as much eagerness into these empty contests as if the whole welfare of the imperilled fatherland was at stake⁠[17]⁠.’

Slave-system.

In such a round of ignoble excitements, in such an attitude of dishonourable dependence on the feeding power of the State—pauperism disguised under high-sounding names—the mob of Rome and of Constantinople, apparently also of Antioch and Alexandria, spent their lazy lives. Meanwhile the agricultural population and the inhabitants of the smaller provincial towns were daily sinking lower into the gulf of hopeless poverty, toiling, yet scarce able with all their labour to keep famine from their doors. At the base of the social pyramid were of course to be found the Slaves, those unhappy beings who, shut up at night in the huge and gloomy ergastula (slave-barracks), worked all day under the hot Italian sun, cultivating the land of some wealthy master, unknown, unseen, only represented by a hard, relentless villicus (steward), himself a slave, but delighting to make the more miserable creatures under him feel his power. These were the kind of establishments which, a hundred years or more before the Republic fell, had replaced the happy home-steads of the Latin or Sabine farmer: and it was the sight of this spreading plague-spot of servile agriculture which in the first century of the Christian era forced from Pliny the well-known cry of lamentation, ‘Large estates have been the ruin of Italy and are now causing the ruin of the provinces⁠[18]⁠.’ Yet perhaps in the fifth century the slave was not the most miserable of the rural inhabitants. Christianity had already introduced some betterment into his condition. The ergastulum was prohibited by law, if we may not think that it had entirely disappeared in fact: and decrees were beginning to be issued, earnestly protesting against that breaking up of families which is one of the most cruel characteristics of predial slavery⁠[19]⁠. And at any rate the slave, in all ordinary circumstances, was safe from death by starvation, a security which was not always enjoyed by his social superiors.

Coloni.

Next above the slave, and often hardly to be distinguished from him, was the colonus or serf, a man over whom his lord had no power of life and death, but who was bound—as were his children after him—to cultivate a particular piece of ground for the owner, at a rent which seems to have been practically unchanged from generation to generation. He had therefore no power of changing his condition nor of choosing a better landlord, but on the other hand he had practically a kind of tenant-right which he transmitted, with the corresponding liability, to his children. This class of compulsory cultivators seems to have sprung out of freeholders who were weighed down by hopeless debt, and who by process of law became coloni of their creditors⁠[20]⁠; but it was probably enormously increased during the troubles of the third and fourth centuries, when men finding freedom with starvation a burden too heavy to be borne, voluntarily lowered their condition, and becoming coloni accepted the helping but degrading hand of a dominus. In times of peace and plenty the condition of a colonus, notwithstanding his bounded horizon and his depressing round of unvarying toil, was perhaps not altogether to be pitied: but war, famine, and pestilence must have terribly reduced his narrow margin of profit.

Curiales.

Of all classes of the community, however, none seem to me so truly to be commiserated as the curiales, the vestrymen and town-councillors of the provinces. These were the descendants of the men by whom the local self-government of the Empire had formerly been carried on, the representatives of a once flourishing and happy middle class. Their ancestors had been men of importance in their little world, and the letters D E C (for Decurio, or town-councillor) carved on their tombs had shown their right to a coveted dignity. But as they bore rule in their little commonwealth, so they were responsible for its contributions to the public revenue; and as the Empire grew older, as it became divided, as there came to be three or four Imperial Courts to support instead of one, and as heavier sums had to be paid to buy off or to fight off the barbarians, so the pressure of the tax-gatherer became more severe, while the privileges of the town-councillor became more shadowy. At last the truth was openly confessed: the curialis was a mere bond-slave of the Empire, bound to fulfil his ‘curial obligations,’ that is, to bear an ever-increasing burden of local rates and imperial taxes, transmitting this sad necessity to his children, compelled if the land next to him fell out of cultivation to take it up and cultivate it for the benefit of the Imperial Treasury, forbidden to become a priest or even a slave, lest by either process he might escape from his bondage to the curia. One or two ways of escape from this bitter servitude were indeed left open, but they were narrow, thorny, and difficult. Practically the chief liberator of the curialis and his kindest friend was Death.

The sketch which I have thus offered you of the social condition of the Empire in the fourth century is certainly a gloomy one. Like all such sketches it can only be approximately true. Doubtless there were at Rome many nobles unlike the effeminate dandies whom Ammianus has described to us: doubtless there was in the provinces many a cultivator of the soil, whether colonus or curialis, who glided happily enough through life, not crushed by the burdens and the despairs which seem to us so terrible. Yes: though I cannot accept the proposition that the sum of human happiness is a constant quantity throughout the centuries, I doubt not that in the saddest periods of the history of the world there has been more individual happiness, and in the happiest of such periods more individual suffering, than the historian pourtrays to us. But upon the whole we may confidently say that the Roman World, at the time when the barbarian invasion began in earnest, was not happy or flourishing. Large tracts of land within the Limes Imperii were going out of cultivation, population both in Italy and the provinces was dwindling, and I think Hope was unusually absent from the hearts and minds of men. In short, the Empire was sinking under the weight of its official administration, even as I fear that after ages will see that many fair states of Europe are now sinking under the weight of the terrible armaments with which mutual suspicion has led them to array themselves.

§ 2. The Teuton.

From the highly-developed life of the Empire, with its signs of exhaustion and decay, we turn to that of our German forefathers and their kindred—a life rough, untrained, undisciplined, but already utterly different from that of mere savages, and bearing within it the seeds of many noble institutions. The German peoples (to speak of them in the language of Rome), the Deutsche (as they have in more recent times called themselves), or the Teutonic⁠[21] race (which is the term now generally used in contrast to Celts and Slaves), occupied, broadly speaking, the territory from the Rhine to the Danube, and along the northern shore of the Danube to the Black Sea. There were settlements, however, of the Teutons on the west of the Rhine, and in the east of Europe Sclavonic nations were mingled with Teutons in a confusion which it is now impossible to disentangle. Of their ethnological relations, however, I shall have a little more to say in my next lecture. At present my object is to give a slight sketch of the inner life of these Teutonic peoples, in its social and political aspects.

The Germans at the end of the first century after Christ not a nomadic people.

The first detailed information that we possess as to the customs of the Germans is given us by Julius Caesar, who describes the state of things which prevailed about 55 years before Christ. Our next and by far our fullest information comes from Tacitus, who wrote his priceless monograph, the Germania, in 98 A.D., that is, about a century and a half after Caesar. During that interval it is clear that an important change had come over the habits of the Germans. From being a pastoral people, living chiefly on milk and cheese and the flesh of their cattle, they had become, to a large extent, tillers of the soil. They still kept their flocks and herds, and wealth among them was still measured chiefly by these possessions; but bread was now a staple article of food, and perhaps that upon which the slaves and the poorer freemen chiefly subsisted. This change in diet involved a necessary change in the habits of the people. The shepherd and the herdsman are essentially wanderers; the varied needs of their dumb companions in winter and summer, make frequent change of abode not only easy but profitable, while the agriculturist of course must remain stationary to watch the growth of the corn which he has sown. It seems probable that Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, Tiberius’s victories in Switzerland and the Tyrol, and the strong restraining hand of Augustus upon all the tribes beyond the Rhine and the Danube, were partly the cause of this change in the habits of the Germans. Cooped within narrower limits, and no longer able to overrun at their pleasure the fair lands of Gaul and Pannonia, they betook themselves of necessity to a more careful cultivation of their restricted territory, and practised the arts of a rude husbandry—rude indeed, but incomparably less wasteful of the earth’s resources than the nomadic life of the grazier and the sheep-master. In its turn this change in their habits reacted on their character. It made the maintenance of peace between them and the Empire possible for two or three generations at a time, and it so far fixed the bounds of the habitations of the Germanic peoples themselves, that the map of Germany which is drawn to illustrate the text of Tacitus will serve, without many changes, for the distribution of the tribes in the time of Constantine.

A German village-settlement.

Let us try to understand what the life of these German farmers looked like in a time of peace during the second and third centuries of the Christian era. Their settlements, like those of a Canadian backwoodsman, were for the most part clearings in the midst of ‘the forest primeval.’ Here, then, with a girdle of woodland round them, was planted the cluster of scattered houses which made up the village. The Romans called it a vicus, the modern Germans call it a dorf (a word akin to our own thorp); our Saxon and Anglian ancestors called it sometimes a ton⁠[22] (town), sometimes a ham⁠[23]⁠; while their Danish invaders gave to the same kind of settlement the name of a by or a wick⁠[24]⁠. The houses in the German village were built of timber, and if Tacitus is correct in saying that tiles were unknown among them, we must, I suppose, conclude that the straw thatches which are still common in rural England were the roofs chiefly used by our German ancestors. One feature of a German village which struck the eye of a Roman observer, and in which it probably differed even from a Celtic town, was that there were in it no rows of contiguous houses. Each dwelling, whether large or small, stood surrounded by its own plot of ground, and thus fires were less dangerous than where the lines of buildings were continuous. The description of such a vicus given by Tacitus reminds one of a Swiss village, say Meyringen, Grindelwald, or Altdorf, if we can imagine all the changes which have been wrought therein by the tide of summer tourists done away. And the great belt of woodland which seems always to have surrounded the German vicus, and which was to a certain extent the common property of the villagers, who possessed rights of collecting fuel, and probably also of hunting game in these encircling forests, reminds me of several modern German villages which I have seen, but especially of Schwalbach, which is environed by just such a belt of trees, chiefly beech-trees. In this beautiful green girdle, which is from one to two miles in depth, the poor of the village are still employed during the winter in felling and carrying wood for the benefit of the Gemeinde, and the wages paid to them for this work seem to supply the place of what is called with us ‘out-door relief.’

Distinction of classes in a German village.

In these little sequestered villages the bulk of the German warriors had their homes. There was a distinction of classes among them. Then, as now, the German looked upon noble birth with reverence, and probably in every village there were at least one or two heads of families called noble, and believed to be sprung in far-distant ages from the seed of gods. But the largest and most important class was that of the men, free but not noble⁠[25]⁠, who took part in all public assemblies, and who formed the bone and muscle of the national army, but who, though proud and independent, did not look upon themselves as eligible for any of the highest places in the State. Among these, however, there were all sorts of gradations of rank, depending partly on personal qualities, but largely also on their relative wealth. The chief outward sign of this wealth was cattle, so much so that the earliest translator of the New Testament into a Teutonic tongue coined a word equivalent to ‘cattle-hoarder⁠[26]⁠,’ when he wished to warn his readers against the ‘mammon of unrighteousness.’ But slaves also were possessed, probably in considerable numbers, by wealthy German villagers, though they were employed almost entirely in the labour of the farm and the pasture, all domestic work being as a rule performed by the female members of even the rich German family. Half-naked, and far from clean, the children of the master and of the slave sprawled about together on the floor of either home, until the years of manhood were reached, when it was deemed fitting that some distinctive dress should show the difference of their rank. But it was in these smoky huts, on these dirty floors, and doubtless also in many a long day’s chase along with the slave-boys in the encircling forest, that the fair limbs of the young German warriors grew to that size and that sinewy stateliness which, as Tacitus admits, were the admiration and the terror of Rome.

Land-system of the Germans.

⁠[27]⁠The agriculture of these Teutonic tribes was conducted in a manner which necessarily kept it in a backward and primitive state. Apparently the Germans had learnt the lesson that frequent grain-crops exhaust the fertility of the soil. Anything like a scientific system of manuring, in order to repair that exhausted fertility, was of course yet undiscovered; but a rude provision for fallows seems to have been generally made. Periodically, the whole population of the village went forth into the adjacent country and decided upon the portion of pasture or moorland which was to be broken up by the plough in order to replace the portion of arable land which had earned the right to repose. The new corn-land thus created was divided among the villagers, not equally, but according to their rank and wealth, chiefly because rank and wealth implied a proportionate power of cultivation⁠[28]⁠. While the poor freeman, who was only just above the rank of a slave, could bring only his own arms and those of his sons to till the little patch of ground which was allotted to him, his wealthy neighbour, who had slaves and horses and herds in abundance, could cultivate, and therefore might insist upon having allotted to him, a much larger part of the new corn-land. Thus, by this arrangement, as by so many of those which belong to a more complicated civilisation, ‘to him that had, more was given, so that he had abundance.’ After all, every German village had still so much land at its disposal, that few heartburnings seem to have been caused on the score of too scanty allotment⁠[29]⁠. And in order to prevent the complaint that one villager received a more fertile or a sunnier portion than another, the lots periodically⁠[30]⁠, perhaps even annually, changed hands, though still on the same principle of unequal division.

At first sight, such a system as this appears communistic, but on reflexion we see that the right of property, and the inequalities which flow from the acknowledgment of that right, are fully recognised by it. Only I think we must admit—and here the words both of Caesar⁠[31] and Tacitus seem to justify our conclusion—that there was in the minds of the rough German politicians of the first century before and the first century after Christ, a conviction, or perhaps rather an instinct, that the land, though still cheap and not much more an object of desire than water or air, was, like water and air, essential to the nation’s life; and that, though cottages and the surrounding gardens were the subject of absolute property, and descended from father to son without question, it was safer for the community by frequent changes to prevent the right of any one of its members to a given space of corn-land or meadow from becoming firm and immovable.

How these open fields were probably divided into strips, or ‘yard-lands’; how the villagers sometimes helped one another in the necessary ploughing; how some traces of this peculiar kind of joint occupation existed through the Middle Ages, and were still manifest in our own country even in the early part of this century, has been set forth with much fulness of detail by my friend Mr. Seebohm, in his interesting book, The English Village Community⁠[32]⁠.

Indolence of the Germans.

Whatever other advantages this system might possess, it was not likely to encourage highly-developed agriculture. But indeed, from the account given by Tacitus, which is generally confirmed by later historians, it is clear that the German freemen, though far from being the squalid savages that they have been sometimes represented, were not industrious tillers of the soil. War, the chase, the sword-dance, and the throw of the dice-box were their chief excitements, and when they were not excited they were torpid and lethargic. Long and heavy potations, sometimes continued for a day and night together, sometimes interrupted by a bloody brawl, were followed by equally long and heavy slumbers. Whether they went to the banquet or to market they always wore arms, a sure sign of a low state of civilisation; and the gravest affairs were all discussed amid copious draughts of beer, or, if the disputants dwelt near the Rhine or the Danube, of wine from the land of the Romans. In short, while we can trace in the Teuton of the first Christian centuries some noble qualities—truth, courage, chastity—we also discover the marks of some deep inbred vices, which beset him till this day, especially drunkenness and the love of gambling; and we do not find even the germs of that capacity for steady and continuous toil which, since they became Christian and civilised, has been the glory of the German, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Scandinavian.

How the village community developed into the state.

Such, then, in brief outline, seems to have been the ordinary life of a German village. The political institutions of the Teutonic races—which are what we are chiefly now concerned with—depended on the manner and extent of the consolidation of these villages into larger and more powerful communities. If we go up to some high table-land we shall see little brooks and streams running off from it in all directions, some of which will perhaps eventually form part of a great and world-famous river, while others will find their way unnoticed to the sea. In studying the early history of the Germanic tribes, we stand on such a table-land. The future fortunes of Franks, Visigoths, Burgundians, Angles, Saxons, are involved in the village politics of these much-drinking, freely-fighting German boors; but there are also involved the obscure destinies of countless little tribes, whose uncouth names survive only in the pages of Tacitus or Jordanes, and are in fact forgotten by men.

Manifoldness of German political life.

The characteristic of German polity, as much in the first century after Christ as in the sixteenth, as much in the time of Arminius as in that of Charles V, was its infinite diversity. There were tribes that knew no king, tribes that had kings with very limited powers, tribes that submitted to despotism—or something very like it—on the part of their kings, and tribes that even endured to have such authority over them exercised by a woman. And the chief—I will not say the only—cause of this diversity seems to have been the relative greatness or littleness of the clusters into which the village communities ultimately coalesced; and, closely connected herewith, the question whether the organism which was thus finally formed entertained widely extended schemes of aggression and foreign conquest, or whether it rested content with the defence of its own narrow borders against an invading foe.

The Pagus, Gau, County or Canton.

Apparently every German village, at the time which we are now considering, had so far coalesced with some of its neighbours as to form what the Romans called a pagus. The extent of these pagi, and the number of vici which united to form them, doubtless differed exceedingly, but as we find that in the time of Caesar⁠[33] each Suevic pagus sent forth 1000 armed men, an equal number remaining at home to till the ground, we may perhaps assume that the whole population of a pagus generally consisted of about 10,000 persons, and that about ten vici, more or less, contributed to its formation. The choice of a Teutonic word to represent the term pagus, which, though convenient, is foreign, has not been found easy. Modern German scholars have generally adopted the word Gau, which was extensively used in the Middle Ages, though it is admitted that this does not precisely correspond to the pagus, but was often of somewhat smaller extent. As an English equivalent, county or shire comes the nearest, though both of them suggest ideas of a somewhat later time⁠[34]⁠. Whether such a translation be scientifically accurate or not⁠[35] there can be little doubt that the feeling of local patriotism which still animates a Devonshire man or a Shropshire man when he speaks of his county, represents, at least as well as any other modern equivalent, the bond which bound a German warrior to his pagus. But, upon the whole, the Swiss canton, both in extent and in the manner of its growth, namely, by the coalition of the inhabitants of several neighbouring valleys, seems to me the most fitting representative of the pagus of the Germania.

Some German communities, perhaps, stopped in the process of consolidation at the canton, and never reached a further stage. They may have had traditions, and even religious rites, which kept alive the remembrance that they formed part of a larger tribe, that they were Suevi, or Mattiaci, or Chauci; but as far as political organisation went they were willing to be a pagus and nothing more. If so, we may probably affirm that the tribes which contained many of these self-isolated cantons retained what has been called their ‘republican’ organisation, engaged but little in offensive war, were feeble in their resistance to Rome, and have left but little mark in history.

Several Pagi might coalesce into a Civitas.

The first step towards national existence on a larger scale was taken when many pagi, bound together for the most part by the traditions of a common origin, organised themselves into what the Romans called a civitas, and in doing so generally, perhaps not always, elected for themselves a King. I do not think it is possible to find a term which exactly represents the stage of development which was thus reached, but the Saxon and Anglian kingdoms which were set up in our own land—Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria—will convey the true idea of it to our minds better than an elaborate description.

Kingship and tendency towards unification went together.

Kingship and a tendency towards unification went hand in hand in the history of the German races. And not in that history alone: we may safely illustrate the tendency of the kingly office among the Germans by what we read in the Old Testament of the election of Saul. The Twelve Tribes of Israel, conscious that they were losing national unity and were in danger of being absorbed by the great monarchies on their borders, elected Saul to be their king, and his very first act of kingship was the deliverance of the outlying settlement of Jabesh-gilead from the destruction with which it was threatened by Nahash, King of the Ammonites. In our own days we have seen the aspirations of the Germans after national unity, aspirations which seemed for centuries doomed to hopeless failure, at length successful; and the visible token of their success and of that victory over their foes which unity made possible, was the crowning of the Emperor William by a host of kings, dukes and generals⁠[36]⁠, in the palace of Versailles. We must not press the conclusion too far, since the history both of Rome and of the United States of America shows that a Republic can found a great dominion and defend the oneness of a nation: but for the German peoples, properly so called, I think we may safely say Monarchy has meant Unity, and Unity has meant Monarchy.

Character of the kingly office among the Germans.

Far other, however, than the languid despot upon the sanctity of whose presence-chamber we intruded in the beginning of this lecture, was the King of the Goths or the Alamanni. Whether himself the son of a king or not, it was necessary that he should be of noble birth⁠[37]⁠, and he had therefore probably been reared in a house, rude but somewhat larger than the ordinary freeman’s dwelling, built by the side of a fountain or near a sacred grove, at some little distance from the village settlement⁠[38]⁠. But his life had been passed in the active exercises of war and the chase: and before he was chosen king of a great and important civitas he had probably given some proof of valour and ability, to cause him to be singled out from the ranks of nobles, each of whom was a chief in his own canton. Even after his election as king, his power was by no means unlimited. He might not bind nor strike any one of the free German warriors under him. Both in council and in war he had so much authority as his gifts of intellect, of daring, or of strength enabled him to acquire and retain, and not much more⁠[39]⁠. And when thus elected he had no absolute right to transmit his crown to his first-born, nor indeed to any of his sons. Doubtless the eldest son of a recently deceased king, if himself a man of capacity and valour, had always a good chance of being chosen to succeed him, but that was all. Gradually as the nation and its royal race grew accustomed to one another, and especially when the kings of that race had often led the nation to victory, the feeling grew stronger and stronger that out of that race only the nation ought to choose its kings. Thus were the Amals looked upon as the natural kingly race of the Ostrogoths, the Merwings of the Franks, the Asdings of the Vandals. But still there was no strict hereditary right, and the nation on the death of its king exercised its power of choice often in utter defiance of the rule of primogeniture.

Meeting of the members of the Civitas.

The choice of the ruler, the decision as to war or peace, the enactment of a few very simple laws, these formed the chief business of the assembly of the civitas, which was called probably by some name like our own Anglo-Saxon Folc-gemot or Folcs-thing. Tacitus gives us a concise but vivid picture of the proceedings of one of these national assemblies. The gemots-men indicated their deep-seated love of liberty by the unpunctuality of their attendance. Two days, and sometimes three, would elapse before a sufficient number had arrived to enable them to commence their proceedings. Then, when the crowd was in the humour for beginning, they sat down on the ground, all arrayed in their armour. The priests called for silence, and upon them rested the duty of maintaining order during the deliberations of the assembly⁠[40]⁠. Then the king or chief whose age, or eloquence, or noble birth gave him the right of pre-audience, addressed the assembly, and afterwards each in his turn according to the same blended qualifications. All the speakers sought rather to persuade than to command. An unpopular proposal was drowned in murmurs of disapproval, while eagerly brandished lances testified the applause and the agreement of the assembly.

Judicial power of the popular assembly.

In these assemblies an accusation might be brought against a man who was suspected of treason against the nation’s life, and if the charge were pushed home, a capital sentence was pronounced upon the offender. Betrayers and deserters were hanged from a tree; the mere coward and fugitive, the man whom our Saxon forefathers would have called a nithing, was plunged deep in mud and covered with a hurdle to prevent his struggling back to life—a mode of punishment which reminds one of some scenes in Dante’s Inferno.

Election of the King.

Probably, however, it was neither the legislative nor the judicial, but the elective aspect of these national councils which was the most important. The chiefs, or elders, or judges, or by whatever name they were called, the men whose business it was to administer a rude justice in the cantons and the villages, were chosen in the national council⁠[41]⁠. And the highest act of the nation’s great assize was performed when the chief who was to repel the eagles of Rome, to lead the people across the frozen Danube, or to swoop upon the wealthy plains of Gaul, was solemnly chosen king. The clashing arms testified the nation’s assent to his nomination. Six strong warriors slowly upheaved the shield on which stood the newly-chosen one, and shouts of ‘Thiudans! Thiudans⁠[42]⁠!’ proclaimed to the echoing hills that the nation had once more a king. Thus was he singled out from his fellows who was to conduct the people’s quarrel with the far-off, mysterious, Imperator of Rome.