The Romans tell us more about the worship and the priests of the Germans living in Germany than about their gods. The German priests were held in great respect, but they did not form a special class like the Druids or the priests of the Gauls. Their singers, like those of the Gauls, were not priests but poets and singers of battle songs. The Germans had no images of their gods, and they did not honour them in temples but in sacred groves in which the priests offered up sacrifices for the people. Among the victims there were captive foes. The will of the gods and the future were interpreted in different manners, preferably by the neighing of sacred white horses which were kept in the groves of the gods. If we turn back from this general observation of the Germanic nations to their wars with Augustus, we find the Romans in hostile contact with them on the Rhine and the Danube. Since the time of Cæsar some German tribes--of which the Ubii in the region of Cologne and the Vangiones, Tribocci, and Nemetes between Schlettstadt and Oppenheim, were the most important--had settled on the left bank of the Rhine and had begun to adopt Roman customs.[b] THE GERMAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE AGAINST ROME Augustus had no liking for war; he was wont to say that laurels were beautiful but barren, and it was his glory and pride that during his reign the Temple of Janus at Rome was repeatedly closed, and that the Parthians voluntarily restored the ensigns and prisoners captured from the army of Crassus. His mind was not set on the augmentation and extension of the empire but upon the founding and consolidation of monarchical institutions, his wars in Spain and the Alpine regions were undertaken for the purpose of protecting and safeguarding the frontiers of the empire, and the war in Dalmatia and Pannonia was purely defensive. On the Rhine alone he indulged in schemes of conquest; there Cæsar’s Gallic campaigns were to be continued, and the martial honours of the Julian race and name enhanced. [Sidenote: [16-11 B.C.]]