Tacitus’ Germania
Around the end of the first century A.D., Tacitus, a Roman historian, wrote an account of the Germanic peoples who lived beyond the frontier of the Roman Empire along the Rhine. A hundred and fifty years before him, Julius Caesar had written of the Germanic tribes as well. Both these accounts were in reference to the West Germanic people, as the Romans had not been in contact with the East Germanic people at that time. Towards the end of the second century A.D., however, both the West and East Germans would begin to play a role in the history of the Roman Empire.
Around the end of the first century A.D., Tacitus, a Roman historian, wrote an account of the Germanic peoples who lived beyond the frontier of the Roman Empire along the Rhine. A hundred and fifty years before him, Julius Caesar had written of the Germanic tribes as well. Both these accounts were in reference to the West Germanic people, as the Romans had not been in contact with the East Germanic people at that time. Towards the end of the second century A.D., however, both the West and East Germans would begin to play a role in the history of the Roman Empire.
| Updated >> 21 September 2004 |