Tacitus - Germania

12 Sourced Quotes

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Good habits are here more effectual than good laws elsewhere.

Tacitus
No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.

Tacitus
They even say that an altar dedicated to Ulysses, with the addition of the name of his father, Laertes, was formerly discovered on the same spot, and that certain monuments and tombs with Greek inscriptions, still exist on the borders of Germany and Rhaetia.

Tacitus
Mercury is the deity whom they chiefly worship, and on certain days they deem it right to sacrifice to him even with human victims.

Tacitus
All this is unauthenticated, and I shall leave it open.

Tacitus
Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others.

Tacitus
To abandon your shield is the basest of crimes; nor may a man thus disgraced be present at the sacred rites, or enter their council; many, indeed, after escaping from battle, have ended their infamy with the halter.

Tacitus
The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For in former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond us, is seldom entered by a sail from our world.

Tacitus
On the whole, one would say that their strength is in their infantry, which fights along with the cavalry; admirably adapted to the action of the latter is the swiftness of certain foot soldiers, who are picked from the entire youth of their country, and stationed in front of the line.

Tacitus
Their shields are black, their bodies dyed. They choose dark nights for battle, and, by the dread and gloomy aspect of their death-like host, strike terror into the foe, who can never confront their strange and almost infernal appearance.

Tacitus
Who the first inhabitants of Britain were, whether natives or immigrants, remains obscure; one must remember we are dealing with barbarians.

Tacitus
Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop.

Tacitus