What struck Tacitus in the economy of the Germans (and by Germans he obviously meant the _free tribesmen_, not their slaves) was that they did _not_ live in cities like the Romans. 'They dwell' (he says) 'apart and scattered, as spring, or plain, or grove attracted their fancy.'[514] Of whom is he speaking? Obviously of free tribesmen or tribal households, _not of villagers or village communities_, for he [p339] immediately afterwards, in the very next sentence, speaks of the Germans as avoiding even in their villages (_vici_) what seemed to him to be obviously the best mode of building, viz. in streets with continuous roofs. 'Their villages' (he says) 'they build not in our manner with connected and attached buildings. There is an open space round every one's house.' And this he attributes not to their fancy for one situation or another, as in the first case, but 'either to fear of fire or ignorance of how to build.'[515] It is obvious, therefore, that the Germans who chose to live scattered about the country sides, as spring, plain or grove attracted them, were not the villagers who had spaces round their houses. We are left to conclude that the first class were the chiefs and free tribesmen, who, now having become settled for a time, were, in a very loose sense, the _landowners_, while the latter, the villagers, must chiefly have been their servile dependants. And this inference is confirmed when Tacitus comes to the second point and tells us that the _servi_ of the Germans differed greatly from those of the Romans. There were some slaves bought and sold in the market, and free men sometimes sank into slavery as the result of war or gambling ventures; but in a general way (he says) their slaves were not included in the tribesmen's households or employed in household service, but each family of slaves had a separate [p340] homestead.[516] They had also separate crops and cattle; for 'the lord (_dominus_) requires from the slave a certain quantity of corn, cattle, or material for clothing, as in the case of _coloni_. To this modified extent (Tacitus says) the German _servus_ is a slave. The wife and children of the free tribesman do the household work of his house, not slaves as in the Roman households.' Clearly, then, the _vicus_--the _village_--on the land of the tribesman who was their lord, was inhabited by these _servi_, who, like Roman _coloni_, had their own homesteads and cattle and crops, and rendered to their lord part of their produce by way of tribute or food-rent. The lords--the tribesmen--themselves (as Tacitus elsewhere remarks) preferred fighting and hunting to agriculture, and left the management of the latter to the women and weaker members of the family.[517] «A later tribal stage than Cæsar described.» «Division among heirs.»