What can we learn from Tacitus’s account about the economy, politics,society, and culture of the Germanic peoples of the first century C.E.

•What can we learn from Tacitus’s account about the economy, politics,society, and culture of the Germanic peoples of the first century C.E.?

•In what ways are his accounts descriptive of the economy, politics,society, and culture of the Romans of the first century C.E.? In what ways are his descriptions of the Germans implicitly comments on the Romans? Please provide specific examples.

•As described by Tacitus, what were some of the principle values that governed German society? How did those valuescompare with values of imperial Roman societies, as evidenced implicitlyin Tacitus’s account?

•Modern scholars have argued that Tacitus used the Germanic peoples toimplicitlycriticize aspects of his own Roman culture. What evidence might supportthis point of view? From what you have read about Roman civilization,what does this document reveal aspects of Romans?

•Given that Tacitus’s intended audience are Romans, why wouldn’t Tacitus make his criticisms of Roman culture more explicit?

•Which statements of Tacitus might you regard as reliable, and which aremore suspect? Why?

•In what ways did Tacitus regard Germanic peoples as distinctly inferior toRomans? In what ways were they not?

•How might he have responded to the idea that these peoplewould play a major role in the collapse of the Roman Empire severalcenturies later?

•Does Tacitus’s account, in any way, explain the cause of the Western Roman Empire’s collapse in the fifth century CE? Here Ward-Perkin’s book with be crucial. Please keep in mind Tacitus is writing while the empire is strong. This is hundreds of yearsbefore the Western Roman Empire is invaded by the Germanic people.

•What similarities and differences might you notice between the description of Herodotus’s Histories(in Hunt, 81) ofa neighboring civilization of the Greeks and Tacitus’s discussion of the Germans?