[19] The Germans had no system of taxation on land or other property, such as the Romans had and such as we have to-day. It was not until well toward the close of the Middle Ages that the governments of kingdoms built up by Germanic peoples in western Europe came to be maintained by anything like what we would call taxes in the modern sense. [20] 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. [21] That is, on the Rhine, where traders from the south brought in wines and other Roman products. The drink which the Germans themselves manufactured was, of course, a kind of beer. CHAPTER II. THE VISIGOTHIC INVASION 3. The Visigoths Cross the Danube (376) The earliest invasion of the Roman Empire which resulted in the permanent settlement of a large and united body of Germans on Roman soil was that of the Visigoths in the year 376. This invasion was very far, however, from marking the first important contact of the German and Roman peoples. As early as the end of the second century B.C. the incursions of the Cimbri and Teutones (113-101) into southern Gaul and northern Italy had given Rome a suggestion of the danger which threatened from the northern barbarians. Half a century later, the Gallic campaigns of Caesar brought the two peoples into conflict for the first time in the region of the later Rhine boundary, and had the very important effect of preventing the impending Germanization of Gaul and substituting the extension of Roman power and civilization in that quarter. Roman imperial plans on the north then developed along ambitious lines until the year 9 A.D., when the legions of the Emperor Augustus, led by Varus, were defeated, and in large part annihilated, in the great battle of the Teutoberg Forest and the balance was turned forever against the Romanization of the Germanic countries. Thereafter for a long time a state of equilibrium was preserved along the Rhine-Danube frontier, though after the Marcomannic wars in the latter half of the second century the scale began to incline more and more against the Romans, who were gradually forced into the attitude of defense against a growing disposition of the restless Germans to push the boundary farther south.