To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names, they say, the coast tribes are called Ingaevones those of the interior, Herminones all the rest, Istaevones. In their ancient songs, their only way of remembering or recording the past they celebrate an earth-born god Tuisco, and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race, as their founders. 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.Īnd, beside the perils of rough and unknown seas, who would leave Asia, or Africa or Italy for Germany, with its wild country, its inclement skies, its sullen manners and aspect, unless indeed it were his home? The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. The Danube issues from a gentle slope of moderate height in the Black Forest, and after passing more peoples than the Rhine in its course discharges itself into the Black Sea through six channels - a seventh mouth being lost in the marshlands. The Rhine rises in a remote and precipitous height of the Raetian alps and afterwards turns slightly westward to flow into the North Sea. The northern parts of the country are girdles by the sea, flowing round broad peninsulas and vast islands where a campaign of the present century has revealed to us the existence of some nations and kings hitherto unknown.
"The various peoples of Germany are separated from the Gauls by the Rhine, from the Raetians and Pannonians by the Danube, and from the Sarmatians and Dacians by mountains - or, where there are no mountains, by mutual fear.
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