This is explicit; and, although one might say that Cæsar was unacquainted with the Germans at home,[56] it has great weight as coming from so clear-headed a writer. Let me, however, call attention to the fact that the passage from Cæsar is by no means a description of the mark as Maurer and his disciples conceive it. Cæsar does not show us a _markgenossenschaft_, an association of peasants cultivating in common land of which they were the common owners. He describes, and this is a very different thing, the chiefs of the cantons arbitrarily disposing of the soil of which they alone appear to be the owners, and each year moving families and groups of men from one place to another. These people apparently have no rights, no power of initiative; the chiefs leave them only “as much land as they think fit,” “where they think fit,” and they “force them” to move from place to place. All this is far enough removed from the supposed association of the mark--an association, that is, of free peasants cultivating land in common, in virtue of their joint ownership; and it would be difficult to make Cæsar’s observation fit into such a condition of things.[57] Next comes Tacitus. Does he introduce the mark into the picture which he draws of the institutions of the Germans? “Yes,” says Maurer; “for in his 26th chapter, when he uses the word _agri_ he means the mark.” And again, “all land held in common and not divided, Tacitus calls _ager_.” But by what authority does Maurer translate _agri_ in Tacitus, and further on _ager_, by “common lands,” when the word _common_ is not to be found there? “Because,” says he, “the word _ager_, in the Roman sense, signified when used by itself _ager publicus_.” Here we have an apparently unimportant philological statement, but it is one which plays a considerable part in Maurer’s book. He repeats it three times (pages 6, 84, and 93). Indeed, if we look more closely into it, we find that it is the foundation of his system. It was necessary for his view that the mark should be found in Tacitus; and therefore the word _ager_ by itself had to mean _ager publicus_, _i.e._, mark, common land, _Gemeinland_. This is exactly what has to be proved. The true sense of a word cannot be got at by an effort of imagination, or by turning over the pages of a pocket-dictionary. It is only to be found by bringing together a number of examples of its use and comparing them; and the term _ager_ occurs so often in Latin literature that an attentive student can hardly make any mistake as to its meaning. Nowhere do we find it in the sense of public land, unless when accompanied by the adjective _publicus_ or the genitive _populi_, or some other term to show clearly the especial meaning it is intended to have.[58] By itself it never meant public land. Read Cato and Varro; they do not once mention public lands; and yet the word _ager_ occurs frequently in their works, each time in the sense of a private estate. Some one