We always term the people over the wall “barbarians,” but the Germans had their various political and social systems and some of their tribes were more civilised than others. By comparing the _Commentaries_ of Cæsar with the _Germania_ of Tacitus we get a fairly comprehensive notion of German institutions, which, it must be remembered, were those of our own ancestors. They had no cities. Like the Gauls they were grouped in tribes and the tribes were subdivided into cantons, the cantons into villages. They lived on the produce of their flocks and herds, on the chase, and on a primitive type of “extensive” agriculture, which involved fresh ploughlands every year and thus caused continual unrest and jostling of tribe against tribe. This was what made them such troublesome neighbours to the Gauls, and led to those gigantic “treks” which meet us from time to time in history. Their only political system was a fighting organisation; hereditary chiefs and princes led them in battle and the general in a large movement was elected from amongst the princes by the freemen of the tribe. In peace there was no general magistracy, but the elders and priests administered justice in the villages. Among the warriors there was a rough freedom and equality. The free warrior had very considerable rights, but only as a warrior. Among the Suevi, according to Cæsar, there were a hundred cantons, each of which furnished a thousand men to the army for a year’s service while the rest stayed at home to carry on agriculture and hunting. But this seems, if it is accurate, to be an exceptional degree of organisation. The chastity, the patriotism, the honesty of these barbarians as well as their courage and gigantic stature were favourite themes for Roman eloquence. It is likely enough that Tacitus heightened their virtues with his satirical instinct in order to point a moral to his fellow-countrymen. Julius Cæsar had left the Rhine as the frontier of his Gallic provinces, though he had crossed it twice by way of reconnaissance. Quite at the beginning of Augustus’s presidency, the Suevi had had to be chased back across the Rhine, and the Treveri across the Moselle. At this time, Germany was still for administrative purposes a part of the Gallic provinces, and as a rule there was some high officer in charge of both. The Rhine was not impassable to the barbarians, and moreover there were Germanic tribes on both sides of it, such as the Treveri of Trier and the Ubii of Cologne, who were in frequent intercourse with their neighbours on the other side. This made the river a somewhat insufficient boundary. There were inroads of German barbarians in 29, 25, 20 and 16 B.C. In the latter case a Roman legate was surprised and defeated, and the eagle of the Fifth Legion carried off in triumph.