The same objection lies against the _political_ ends, which have been imputed to the author, such as the persuading of Trajan to engage, or _not_ to engage, in a war with the Germans, as the most potent and dangerous enemy of Rome. For both these aims have been alleged, and we might content ourselves with placing the one as an offset against the other. But aside from the neutralizing force of such contradictions, wherefore such an imposing array of geographical research, of historical lore, of political and moral philosophy, for the accomplishment of so simple a purpose? And why is the purpose so scrupulously concealed, that confessedly it can be gathered only from obscure intimations, and those of ambiguous import? Besides, there are passages whose tendency must have been directly counter to either of these alleged aims (cf. note § 33). The author does indeed, in the passage just cited, seem to appreciate with almost prophetic accuracy, those dangers to the Roman Empire, which were so fearfully illustrated in its subsequent fall beneath the power of the German Tribes; and he utters, as what true Roman would not in such forebodings, the warnings and the prayers of a patriot sage. But he does this only in episodes, which are so manifestly incidental, and yet arise so naturally out of the narrative or description, that it is truly surprising it should ever have occurred to any reader, to seek in them the key to the whole treatise. The entire warp and woof of the work is obviously _historical_ and _geographical_. The satire, the political maxims, the moral sentiments, and all the rest, are merely incidental, interwoven for the sake of instruction and embellishment, inwrought because a mind so thoughtful and so acute as that of Tacitus, could not leave them out. Tacitus had long been collecting the materials for his Roman Histories. In so doing, his attention was necessarily drawn often and with special interest to a people, who, for two centuries and more, had been the most formidable enemy of the Roman State. In introducing them into his history, he would naturally wish to give some preliminary account of their origin, manners, and institutions, as he does in introducing the Jews in the Fifth Book of his Histories, which happens to be, in part, preserved. Nor would it be strange, if he should, with this view, collect a mass of materials, which he could not incorporate entire into a work of such compass, and which any slight occasion might induce him to publish in a separate form, perhaps as a sort of forerunner to his Histories. [It has even been argued by highly respectable scholars, that the Germania of Tacitus is itself only such a collection of materials, not published by the Author, and never intended for publication in that form. But it is quite too methodical, too studied, and too finished a work to admit of that supposition (cf. Prolegom. of K.).] Such an occasion now was furnished