At the time of the great migrations, the German tribes were barbarians, in that they were destitute alike of humanity toward enemies and inferiors, and of scientific culture. Neither the pursuit of learning nor the practice of mercy to the vanquished could seem to them other than unmanly weakness. Their ferocity spread misery and ruin through the whole arena of history, and made the fifth and sixth centuries of our era the crowning epoch in the annals of human suffering; while their active, passionate contempt for learning destroyed the existing monuments of intelligence and habits of inquiry and thought, almost as completely as they swept away the wealth, prosperity, and social organization of the Roman world. Their ablest kings despised clerical accomplishments. Even Theodoric the Great could not write, and his signature was made by a black smear over a form or mould in which his name was cut. Nevertheless these nations were not what we mean by savages. Their originally beautiful and resonant language was already cultivated in poetical forms, in heroic songs. There was intercourse and trade among the several nations. Minstrels, especially, passed from one royal court to another, and the same song which was sung to Theodoric in Ravenna could be heard and understood by the Vandals in Carthage, by Clovis in Paris, and by the Thuringians in their fastnesses. A common language was a strong bond of union among these nations. Messengers, embassies, and letters were sent to and fro between their courts; gifts were exchanged, and marriages and alliances entered into. Thus the nations were informed concerning one another, and recognized their mutual relationship. It was this international intercourse that gave rise to the heroic minstrelsy—a faithful relation of the great deeds of German heroes during the migrations; but the minstrel boldly transforms the order of events, and brings together things which in reality took place at intervals of whole generations. Thus they sing of Hermanric, of Theodoric the Great (Dietrich the Strong, of Berne), and of his faithful knight Hildebrand; then of the fall of the Burgundian kings, of the far-ruling Attila, and of Sigurd, or Siegfried, who was originally a Northern god of spring, but here appears as a youthful hero, faithful and child-like, simple and unsuspicious, yet the mightiest of all—the complete image of the German character.