[1] This treatise was written in the year of Rome 851, A.D. 98; during the fourth consulate of the emperor Nerva, and the third of Trajan. [2] The Germany here meant is that beyond the Rhine. The Germania Cisrhenana, divided into the Upper and Lower, was a part of Gallia Belgica. [3] Rhaetia comprehended the country of the Grisons, with part of Suabia and Bavaria. [4] Lower Hungary, and part of Austria. [5] The Carpathian mountains in Upper Hungary. [6] "Broad promontories." Latos sinus. Sinus strictly signifies "a bending," especially inwards. Hence it is applied to a gulf, or bay, of the sea. And hence, again, by metonymy, to that projecting part of the land, whereby the gulf is formed; and still further to any promontory or peninsula. It is in this latter force it is here used;--and refers especially to the Danish peninsula. See Livy xxvii, 30, xxxviii. 5; Servius on Virgil, Aen. xi. 626. [7] Scandinavia and Finland, of which the Romans had a very slight knowledge, were supposed to be islands. [8] The mountains of the Grisons. That in which the Rhine rises is at present called Vogelberg. [9] Now called Schwartzwald, or the Black Forest. The name Danubius was given to that portion of the river which is included between its source and Vindobona (Vienna); throughout the rest of its course it was called Ister. [10] _Donec erumpat_. The term _erumpat_ is most correctly and graphically employed; for the Danube discharges its waters into the Euxine with so great force, that its course may be distinctly traced for miles out to sea. [11] There are now but five. [12] The ancient writers called all nations _indigenae_ (_i.e._ inde geniti), or _autochthones_, "sprung from the soil," of whose origin they were ignorant. [13] It is, however, well established that the ancestors of the Germans migrated by land from Asia. Tacitus here falls into a very common kind of error, in assuming a local fact (viz. the manner in which migrations took place in the basin of the Mediterranean) to be the expression of a general law.--ED. [14] Drusus, father of the emperor Claudius, was the first Roman general who navigated the German Ocean. The difficulties and dangers which Germanicus met with from the storms of this sea are related in the Annals, ii. 23. [15] All barbarous nations, in all ages, have applied verse to the same use, as is still found to be the case among the North American Indians. Charlemagne, as we are told by Eginhart, "wrote out and committed to memory barbarous verses of great antiquity, in which the actions and wars of ancient kings were recorded."