a "dance in honor of Ares." One of the most frequent epithets of Achilles is "swift-footed," and his friend Antilochus is praised by his father Nestor as "exceeding swift in running, and a good fighter."

The battles on the plain are intended only to weaken the Trojans. The Achaeans make no attempt to take the city by storm, nor by a close siege; and indeed since the ancient city walls have been laid bare by the excavations of the last quarter of a century, we see plainly that without engines of war and projectiles more powerful than bows, an assaulting army would suffer much and accomplish little. Andromache reminds Hector, it is true, that thrice the two sons of Atreus and their companions had assailed the city "by the wild figtree"; but this passage was rejected by Aristarchus, and seems to be under the influence of the later story which made Aeacus an associate of Poseidon and Apollo in building the walls of Troy. The confidence of Polydamas is fully intelligible that if Achilles shall desire to come from the camp and fight about the wall of the city, he will weary his horses, but will not sack the town.

The siege of Troy certainly was not close according to our standards. From the first the Trojans had accepted the defensive method of warfare, and Hector complains that the elders of the city had been blindly infatuated in their course, and he insists that now when the gods have granted to him to gain glory by the ships, the Trojans shall not return to the city to be cooped up within the walls. The Trojan allies also seem to have been quartered within the town; they have no camp on the plain corresponding to that of the Achaeans, and when they are driven in flight by Achilles they retire in confusion within the walls of the city. Yet at night the Achaeans withdraw to their camp, which we may think of as three or four miles from the city, and the people of Troy are free to open their gates for the entrance of supplies and of friends, and for the departure of those who prefer to go. The Trojans still have some flocks and herds pasturing on the mountains, and they visit the fields and forests to obtain

wood, although they are obliged to abandon the use of the stone washing-troughs by the sources of the Scamander, where "the wives of the Trojans and their fair daughters were wont to wash their gleaming raiment formerly, in time of peace, before the sons of the Achaeans came." But the wealth of the Trojan city is gradually exhausted by their own needs and by gifts to their allies, and they cannot long continue to maintain the defensive position; they must drive the enemy from the land, or yield. Hence though fewer in number they come forth to fight. Their families are safe for the present behind the city walls, but the pressure of humiliation and physical discomfort is too great to bear indefinitely.

VIII. The Sources of the Germania of Tacitus.1

BY PROF. ALFRED GUDEMAN,

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

THE possible sources of information on the geography of Germany and the life and customs of its inhabitants which were accessible to an investigator at the close of the first century A.D. may be conveniently classified under two heads :

I. Information at first hand acquired by the author himself in German territory through personal interviews and observation.

II. Information at second hand, furnished:

(a) by friends or acquaintances who had been in Germany or on the frontier, either in a private capacity or in the army, and finally through the medium. of traders.

(b) by literary records dealing incidentally, professedly, or exclusively with Germanic geography and ethnology.

But while these sources may be determined with satisfactory completeness, and while there can be no doubt that so painstaking an investigator, as Tacitus admittedly was, would not have failed to consult what was available for his

1 Bibliography: L. Voelckel, Index lectionum, Marburg 1788-89 (not accessible to me); R. Koepke, Zur Quellenkritik der Germania in Deutsche Forschungen 1859 pp. 5-43. 222-226; A. Baumstark, Urdeutsche Alterthümer 1873 pp. 1-19. 27-58; M. Manitius, Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, vol. XXII (1882) pp. 417-422 (on Pomponius Mela); G. Schleussner, Quae ratio inter Taciti Germaniam ac ceteros primi saeculi libros Latinos . . . intercedere videatur, Gymn. Progr. Barmen 1886 (a worthless compilation); A. Lueckenbach, De Germaniae quae vocatur Taciteae fontibus, Dissert. Marburg 1891 pp. 69; K. Muellenhoff, Deutsche Alterthumskunde, vol. IV (1898) pp. 17-50, and the brief introductions to the editions of the Germania, e.g. by Kritz, Zernial, E. Wolff, Furneaux, and Gudeman (Allyn & Bacon 1900), which latter contains an abstract of the present paper.

purpose, the question as to the precise nature of his indebtedness to his predecessors is beset with considerable difficulties, owing to the complete loss of so many works of importance which might have definitely settled numerous problems now incapable of solution.

The hypothesis that Tacitus himself visited German lands, though seriously maintained by many scholars of repute and not altogether abandoned even now, may be briefly dismissed, for the Germania does not contain a single observation or statement which would be explicable only on the supposition of a personal visit, not to mention that such a journey of exploration on the part of a Roman would have been next to impossible even in regions to which Roman legions had at one time or another penetrated. But even if we admit the possibility of a personal acquaintance with the territory and the people described by Tacitus, there still remain numerous passages in the Germania which would necessarily have been expressed quite differently under the circumstances,1 nor does Tacitus himself anywhere appeal to his own observations, even in matters where the explicit confirmation of an eye-witness would have been expedient, if not actually called for. But if the Germania, as just pointed out, not only contains nothing which might imply a direct knowledge of things Germanic on the part of the author, but on the contrary furnishes numerous details fatal to such a hypothesis, it follows that all of his information was secured at second hand.

Now of the six hundred items 3 accumulated in this treatise, it is to the highest degree probable that a considerably larger number than has generally been assumed, came to him through the medium of personal friends who had visited

1 Cp. esp. Baumstark 1.c. pp. 43-58; Lueckenbach 1.c. pp. 55-69; Muellenhoff 1.c. pp. 23-26. The salient passages subversive of the above hypothesis are found in ch. 3. 9. 23. 27. 30. 33. 35. 41. 43. 46. The contention of Kritz and others that Tacitus was also conversant with the German language no longer merits serious refutation.

2 Cp. the statement in Ann. XI. II, quod non iactantia refero sed ut in rebus varie traditis verbis meis fides habeatur.

3 Of these only about seventy are found in other extant sources.

Germany and served in military campaigns, for we know that Tacitus habitually availed himself of such authentic sources of information, in preparing his Histories and Annals,1 so that there is no reason to believe that he would have failed to do so in collecting his material for the Germania.

But however extensively the author must be supposed to have drawn from this fountain, the great mass of the detailed knowledge concerning Germanic rites and customs displayed in his treatise cannot well have been due to other than literary sources which lay in profusion about him.

Unless there existed highly important contributions to our subject, of which no trace has survived (a very unlikely sup position), the sources accessible to Tacitus were the following: Extant: Caesar's de bello Gallico, Strabo, Diodorus, Velleius Paterculus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny's Naturalis Historia.

Not extant: Pytheas, Posidonius of Rhodes, Sallust, Livy, Agrippa's map, Aufidius Bassus, Pliny's Bella Germaniae, Marinus of Tyre. With the exception of the Greek authors, all of them have been regarded as having been more or less extensively consulted by Tacitus. It is the object of this paper to ascertain in each case to what extent or with what justice this has been done, and I hope I may be able to show, even within the narrow limits to which I am confined, that the conclusions hitherto accepted almost without question rest on very unstable foundations and are in not a few instances wholly unwarranted.

Before proceeding it will, however, be expedient to draw attention to the general neglect of a methodological principle which seems chiefly responsible for the false inferences so constantly met with in investigation of this nature. It is usually held that mere similitude between two authors is sufficient to establish the fact of indebtedness of the

younger to his predecessor. But quite apart from the observation that similarity of subject-matter, especially where concrete details are involved, necessarily leads to a

· Cp. Ph. Fabia, Les Sources de Tacite, pp. 220–222, 342-346, and esp. Plin. Epist. VI. 16, 1, petis ut tibi avunculi mei exitum scribam quo verius tradere posteris possis.