The condition of the German people, even so late as the time when they began their invasion of the Roman territory, was far behind that of the majority of their Aryan fellows. It is likely that they were little more civilized than the Greeks and Romans were, in days when they lived together as one collection of tribes. For the moment when we catch sight of these--the Greeks and Romans--in their new homes, we see them settled agriculturists, with no trace left of their wandering habits. It was not so with the Teutons: they knew agriculture certainly, they had known it before they separated from the other peoples of the European family (for the Greek and Latin words for plough reappear in Teutonic speech[146]); but they had not altogether bid adieu to their migratory life--we see them still flowing in a nebulous condition into the Roman lands. Even the Tartars of our day--the very picture of a nomadic people--practise some form of agriculture. They plant buckwheat, which, growing up in a few months, allows them to reap the fruits of their industry without tying them long to a particular spot. The Teutons were more stationary than the Tartars, but doubtless they too were constantly shifting their homes--choosing fresh homesteads, as Tacitus says they did, wherever any spot, or grove, or stream attracted them. The condition of society called the village community, which has been described in a former chapter, though long abandoned by the cultivated Greeks and Romans, was still suitable to the exigencies of _their_ life; but these exigencies imposed upon it some fresh conditions. Their situation, the situation of those who made their way into the western countries of Europe, was essentially that of conquerors; for they must keep in subjection the original inhabitants, whether Romans or Celts; and so all their social arrangements bent before the primary necessity of maintaining an effective war equipment. Age and wisdom were of less value to the community than youthful vigour. The patriarchal chief, chosen for his reputation for wisdom and swaying by his mature counsels the free assemblies of the states, gives place with them to the leader, famous for his valour and fortunes in the field, by virtue of which he exacts a more implicit obedience than would be accorded in unwarlike times, until by degrees his office becomes hereditary; the partition of the conquered soil among the victors, and the holding of it upon conditions of military service, conditions which led so easily to the assertion of a principle of primogeniture, and thence, by slow but natural stages, to the conditions of tenure known as _feudal_; these are the marks of the early Teutonic society.