Agricola and Germania

Table of Contents

Agricola (ca. 98), Translation based on Alfred John Church and William
Jackson Brodribb

Germania, or The Origin and Situation of the Germans, Translation based on
Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
Germania, or The Origin and
Situation of the Germans, Translated by Thomas Gordon

Cornelius Tacitus Biography

******************

The Germania (Latin: De Origine et situ Germanorum, lit.
The Origin and Situation of the Germans), written by Gaius Cornelius
Tacitus around 98, is an ethnographic work on the Germanic tribes outside the
Roman Empire.

This work survived only in one single manuscript that was found in Hersfeld
Abbey, Holy Roman Empire and brought to Italy in 1455 where Enea Silvio
Piccolomini, the later Pope Pius II, first examined and analyzed it, whereby he
sparked interest among German humanists such as Conrad Celtes, Johannes
Aventinus, and especially Ulrich von Hutten into the Germania as an
authentic source on ancient Germany. Ever since then, treatment of
the text regarding the culture of the early Germanic peoples in ancient Germany
remains strong especially in German history, philology, and ethnology studies,
and to a lesser degree in Scandinavian countries as well.

The Agricola (Latin: De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae,
lit. About the life and character of Julius Agricola) is a book by the
Roman historian Tacitus, written c 98, which recounts the life of his
father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, an eminent Roman general. It also covers,
briefly, the geography and ethnography of ancient Britain. As in the
Germania, Tacitus favorably contrasts the liberty of the native Britons
to the corruption and tyranny of the Empire; the book also contains eloquent and
vicious polemics against the rapacity and greed of Rome.

— Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.