Cornelius Tacitus, one of the best historians of ancient Rome, wrote this Treatise on the Situation, Manners, and Inhabitants of Germany in the first century of the Christian era. It is one of our earliest records on the people who lived in that region of Europe.
This text is the Revised Oxford Translation. As usual, how revised is unknown at present. The original translator was Birley. This text is on the web, in part, elsewhere. However, it doesn’t include the very detailed notes. These comments throw a great deal of light on the text and are very interesting to boot. All the notes are present now.
The text is very short and the translation is extremely readable even by today’s standards.
As usual, when you click on a footnote number you will bounce down to the note. Then when you click on the note number there, you will leap back to the spot where you where. Now the footnote number will be in the first line at the top of the browser window.
After reading this — you might want to read the second part of this book, Tacitus’ biography of his father-in-law Agricola, who conquered much of Britain for the Romans.
First, though, brush up on your period characterizations of Romans and Barbarians with HERE.