Tacitus Sentence Examples

This defeat is coupled by Tacitus with the disaster of Varus, but it was disgraceful rather than dangerous.

Whilst under the first of these tutors, in nine months he read all Thucydides, Sophocles and Sallust, twelve books of Tacitus, the greater part of Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and several plays of Aeschylus and Euripides.

Tacitus, besides being a man of immense wealth (which he bequeathed to the state), Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, Bk.

Tacitus possessed many admirable qualities, but his gentle character and advanced age unfitted him for the throne in such lawless times.

The classics, " as low as Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Juvenal," had been long familiar.

No wonder that it stands the comparison badly; but with all its faults the Getica of Jordanes will probably ever retain its place side by side with the De moribus Germanorum of Tacitus as a chief source of information respecting the history, institutions and modes of thought of our Teutonic forefathers.

The chief ancient authorities for his life are Horace (Odes with Scholia), Dio Cassius, Tacitus (Annals), Suetonius (Augustus).

See Tacitus, Annals, xiii.

The avarice with which both Tacitus and Suetonius stigmatize Vespasian seems really to have been an enlightened economy, which, in the disordered state of the Roman finances, was an absolute necessity.

See Tacitus, Histories; Suetonius, Vespasian; Dio Cassius, lxvi.; Merivale, Hist.

The law under which the slaves of Pedanius were put to death, probably introduced under Augustus and more fully enacted under Nero, is sufficient proof of this anxiety, which indeed is strongly stated by Tacitus in his narrative of the facts.

In the wars from Otho to Vespasian they were employed, as Tacitus tells us, even by the most scrupulous generals.

Waitz holds with some show of probability that the Franks represent the ancient Istaevones of Tacitus, the Alamanni and the Saxons representing the Herminones and the Ingaevones.

Fauchet took part in a translation of the Annals of Tacitus (1582).

Tacitus mentions it, and Florus describes it as one of the municipia splendidissima.

The patrocinium they were made ready to understand by the existence of a somewhat similar institution among themselves, the comitatus, described by Tacitus.

The Hartungen are probably identical with the divine youths (mentioned in Tacitus as worshipped by the Vandal Naharvali or Nahanarvali), from whom the Vandal royal family, the Asdingi, claimed descent.

The basis of discussion is furnished chiefly by the above-quoted passage from Cicero, and by the common division of the work of Tacitus into Annales and Historiae.

This view of the distinction seems to be borne out by the division of the work of Tacitus into the Historiae, relating the events of his own time, and the Annales, containing the history of earlier periods.

It is more than questionable, however, whether Tacitus himself divided his work under these titles.

A contemporary t ccount of this event has been preserved in two letters of the tl ounger Pliny to the historian Tacitus.

Tacitus wrongly speaks of it as a colony; but it appears to have received a new colony under Gallienus.

In the same year he betrothed his daughter to Tacitus.

The Life of Agricola by his son-in-law Tacitus is practically a panegyric or funeral oration.

None of his great orations has survived, a loss regretted by Pitt more than that of the missing books of Livy and Tacitus, and no art perishes more completely with its possessor than that of oratory.

The spirit of Rome appears only as animating the protest of Lucan, the satire of Persius and Juvenal, the sombre picture which Tacitus paints of the annals of the empire.

The new extraneous element introduced into Roman literature draws into greater prominence the characteristics of the last great representatives of the genuine Roman and Italian spirit - the historian Tacitus and the satirist Juvenal.

The reign of Domitian, although it silenced the more independent spirits of the time, Tacitus and Juvenal, witnessed more important contributions to Roman literature than any age since the Augustan, - among them the Institutes of Quintilian, the Punic War of Silius Italicus, the epics and the Silvae of Statius, and the Epigrams of Martial.

The Emperor Tacitus and his brother Florianus were probably natives of Interamna, which also has been claimed as the birthplace of Tacitus the historian, but with less reason.

Among his friends were Tacitus and Suetonius, as well as Frontinus, Martial and Silius Italicus; and the Stoics, Musonius and Helvidius Priscus.

The reconciliation of the empire with liberty, inaugurated, as Tacitus says, by Nerva, seemed now to be securely achieved.

See Tacitus, Annals, i.

The chief authority for his life is Tacitus, according to whom Secundus was a man of refinement and brilliant intellect.

Quintilian asserts that he was far superior to any writer of tragedies he had known, and Tacitus expresses a high opinion of his literary abilities.

John Sterling pronounced Thirlwall "a writer as great as Thucydides and Tacitus, and with far more knowledge than they."

See Tacitus, Hist.

See Suetonius, Caligula; Tacitus, Annals, vi.

They were probably descended from the Hermunduri, a Suevic people referred to by Tacitus as living in this region during the 1st century.

See Tacitus, Annals, xx.

He also wrote an account of the Polish general Chodkiewicz, and translated Tacitus and Horace.

Boccaccio had discovered Martial and Ausonius, and had been the first of the human'sts to be familiar with Varro and Tacitus, while Salutati had recovered Cicero's letters Ad Familiares (1389).

See Ritter and Preller §§ 477, 4 88, 489; Tacitus, Annals, xv.

Perhaps there is only one extant MS. of the text, as in the case of the Mimes of Herodas and the Annals and Histories of Tacitus.

The old historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, were familiar to him, and the accuracy of his historical knowledge is astonishing.

According to one account in Tacitus, Sarapis was the god of the village of Rhacotis before it suddenly expanded into a great capital; but it is not very probable that temples were erected to the dead Apis except at his Memphite tomb.

The gold mentioned by Tacitus proved scanty.

In Tacitus's time, however, when the area occupied by the Teutonic peoples was, of course, considerably less than now, a consciousness of their relationship to one another was fully retained.

Tacitus speaks of tribes which had kings and tribes which had not, the latter apparently being under a number of principes.

Further, while Tacitus represents the power of Teutonic kings in general, with reference no doubt primarily to the western tribes, as being of the slightest, he states that among the Goths, an eastern people, they had somewhat more authority, while for the Swedes he gives a picture of absolutism.

The concilium or tribal assembly figures largely in Tacitus's account of the Germani, and he represents it as the final authority on all matters of first-rate importance.

Such religious gatherings were no doubt common to all Teutonic peoples in early times, but it may be questioned whether among the eastern and northern tribes they were invested with all the powers ascribed to them by Tacitus.

Moreover, kings and other distinguished persons kept standing bodies of young warriors, an honour to them in time of peace, as Tacitus says, as well as a protection in war.

The followers (called by Tacitus comites, in England " thegns," among the Franks antrustiones, &c.) were expected to remain faithful to their lord even to death; indeed so close was the relationship between the two that it seems to have reckoned as equivalent to that of father and son.

According to Tacitus it was regarded as a disgrace for a comes to survive his lord, and we know that in later times they frequently shared his exile.

The origin of the earls or counts, on the other hand, is to be found in the governors of large districts (Tacitus's principes), who seem at first generally to have been members of the royal family, though later they were drawn from the highest barons.

There is a good deal of uncertainty in regard to both the exact position and the numbers of the nobles and freedmen of Tacitus's age.

Groups of family and kindred occupy a prominent position in the accounts of Teutonic society given by Caesar and Tacitus.

It appears also in the tenure of land, and according to Tacitus the tribal armies were drawn up by kindreds.

On the other hand there are distinct traces of cognation not only in Tacitus's works but also in Northern traditions and more especially in the Salic law.

Again, Tacitus states that the presents of arms and oxen given by the bridegroom at marriage were made to the bride herself and not to her guardian, and such appears to have been the case in the North also from early times.

But Caesar himself seems to have regarded the Germani as essentially pastoral peoples and their agriculture as of quite secondary importance, while from Tacitus we gather that even in his time it was of a somewhat primitive character.

Hence it is not so surprising as might at first sight appear that the remote Aestii, a non-Teutonic people settled about the mouth of the Vistula, are represented by Tacitus as keener agriculturists than any of the other inhabitants of Germany.

Yet Tacitus seems to represent their military equipment as being of a somewhat primitive type.

Great improvements took place likewise in armour and weapons; the equipment of the warriors whose relics have been found in the Schleswig bog-deposits, dating from the 4th and 5th centuries, appears to have been vastly superior to that which Tacitus represents as normal among the Germani of his day.

Tacitus says that certain marks were inscribed on the divining chips, but it cannot be determined with certainty whether these were really letters or not.

The former practice is the one recognized by Tacitus.

Their father, Niiir6r, the god of wealth, who is a somewhat less important figure, corresponds in name to the goddess Nerthus (Hertha), who in ancient times was worshipped by a number of tribes, including the Angli, round the coasts of the southern Baltic. Tacitus describes her as " Mother Earth," and the account which he gives of her cult bears a somewhat remarkable resemblance to the ceremonies associated in later times with Frey.

He may be the deity whom Tacitus called " Hercules."

Tacitus tells of horses consecrated to the service of the gods, and of omens drawn from them, and we meet again with such horses in Norway nearly a thousand years later.

In contrast with later Scandinavian usage Tacitus states that the ancient Germans had no images of the gods.

The sanctuaries mentioned by Tacitus seem always to have been groves, and in later times we have references to such places in all Teutonic lands.

In England, however, the case was otherwise; we are told that the priests were never allowed to bear arms. There is record also of priests among the Burgundians and Goths, while in Tacitus's time they appear to have held a very prominent position in German society.

After the adoption of Christianity, and possibly to a certain extent even before, such persons came to be regarded with disfavour - whence the persecutions for witchcraft - but it is clear from Tacitus's works and other sources that their influence in early times must have been very great.

Those offered to Odin (Woden) were generally, if not always, men, from the time of Tacitus onwards.

Bonn (Bonna or Castra Bonnensia), originally a town of the Ubii, became at an early period the site of a Roman military settlement, and as such is frequently mentioned by Tacitus.

As Stubbs says " the thegn seems to be primarily the warrior gesith " - the gesithas forming the chosen band of companions (comites) of the German chiefs (principes) noticed by Tacitus - " he is probably the gesith who had a particular military duty in his master's service "; and he adds that from the reign of Athelstan " the gesith is lost sight of except very occasionally, the more important class having become thegns, and the lesser sort sinking into the rank of mere servants of the king."

We know from Tacitus that the German tribes in his day were wont to celebrate the admission of their young men into the ranks of their warriors with much circumstance and ceremony.

Polybius and the authors who copy him regard the Bastarnae as Galatae; Strabo, having learned of the Romans to distinguish Celts and Germans, first allows a German element; Tacitus expressly declares their German origin but says that the race was degraded by intermarriage with Sarmatians.

Tacitus describes him as brave in action, ready of speech, clever at bringing others into odium, powerful in times of civil war and rebellion, greedy, extravagant, in peace a bad citizen, in war an ally not to be despised.

See Tacitus, Histories, ii., iii., iv.; Dio Cassius lxv.

According to Tacitus it was first applied to the Tungri, whereas Caesar records that four Belgic tribes, namely, the Condrusi, Eburones, Caeraesi and Paemani, were collectively known as Germani.

In the east a Gaulish people named Cotini are mentioned, apparently in the upper basin of the Oder, and Tacitus speaks of a tribe in the same neighborhood, the Osi, who he says spoke the Pannonian language.

After the time of Tacitus our information regarding German affairs becomes extremely meagre.

Bibliography of German History.Although the authorities for the history of Germany may be said to begin with Caesar, it is Tacitus who is especially useful, his Germania being an invaluable mine of information about the early inhabitants of the country.

Seleucia on the Tigris is spoken of by Tacitus as being in A.D.

There can be little doubt that from a remote antiquity Zealand had been a religious sanctuary, and very probably the god Nerthus was worshipped here by the Angli and other tribes as described in Tacitus (Germania, c. 40).

They then fortified the Forth and Clyde Isthmus with a line of forts, two of which, those at Camelon and Barhill, have been identified and excavated, penetrated into Perthshire, and fought the decisive battle of the war (according to Tacitus) on the slopes of Mons Graupius.

Tacitus represents the result as a victory.

See Tacitus, Annals, xiv., xv., xvi.; Hist.

He was anxious to show that sacred history might be presented in a form which lovers of Sallust and Tacitus could appreciate and enjoy.

We are enabled thus to contrast Tacitus with Josephus, who warped his narrative to do honour to Titus.

Tacitus says of the ancient Germans reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt; i.e.

He is also identified with the German god mentioned more than once by Tacitus, as well as in inscriptions, by the name Mars.

In the Stubbenitz and elsewhere Huns' or giants' graves are common; and near the Hertha Lake are the ruins of an ancient edifice which some have sought to identify with the shrine of the heathen deity Hertha or Nerthus, referred to by Tacitus.

That the Germans were familiar with some sort of marks on wood at a much earlier period is shown by Tacitus's Germania, chap. x.

See Tacitus, Annals, xi.

The conflagration is said by all authorities later than Tacitus to have been deliberately caused by Nero himself.'

But Tacitus, though he mentions the rumours, declares that its origin was uncertain, and in spite of such works as Profumo's Le fonti ed i tempi dello incendio Neroniano (1905), there is no proof of his guilt.

To defray the enormous cost, Italy and the provinces, says Tacitus, were ransacked, and in Asia and Achaia especially the rapacity of the imperial commissioners recalled the days of Mummius and of Sulla.

Tacitus states that the ancient Germans worshipped Mercurius more than any other god, and that they offered him human sacrifices.

According to Tacitus they were governed by a king whose power was absolute and comprehensive, and possessed a strong fleet which secured them from the fear of hostile incursions.

Hence arms were not borne in times of peace but stored away under charge of a slave, and Tacitus suggests in explanation that the royal policy did not commit this trust to noble, freeman or freedman.

Tacitus mentions another tribe, the Sitones, which he places next to the Suiones, but they have not been identified, and it is not clear from his description whether they lived within the peninsula or not.

Special opportunities were afforded by the law of majestas, which (originally directed against attacks on the ruler by word or deed) came to include all kinds of accusations with which it really had nothing to do; indeed, according to Tacitus, a charge of treason was regularly added to all criminal charges.

We should infer also that he was not dependent on any professional occupation, and that he was separated in social station, and probably too by tastes and manners, from the higher class to which Tacitus and Pliny belonged, as he was by character from the new men who rose to wealth by servility under the empire.

It is noticeable that, while Juvenal writes of the poets and men of letters of a somewhat earlier time as if they were still living, he makes no reference to his friend Martial or the younger Pliny and Tacitus, who wrote their works during the years of his own literary activity.

Tacitus belonged to the highest official and senatorial class, Juvenal apparently to the middle class and to that of the struggling men of letters; and this difference in position had much influence in determining the different bent of their genius, and in forming one to be a great national historian, the other to be a great social satirist.

The peculiar greatness and value of both Juvenal and Tacitus is that they did not shut their eyes to the evil through which they had lived, but deeply resented it - the one with a vehement and burning passion, like the " saeva indignatio " of Swift, the other with perhaps even deeper but more restrained emotions of mingled scorn and sorrow, like the scorn and sorrow of Milton when " fallen on evil days and evil tongues."

For Tacitus the prospect is not wholly cheerless, the detested tyranny was at an end, and its effects might disappear with a more beneficent rule.

It is true also that he shares in the traditional idolatry of Brutus, that he strikes at Augustus in his mention of the "three disciples of Sulla," and that he has no word of recognition for what even Tacitus acknowledges as the beneficent rule of Trajan.

In this power, which is also the great power of Tacitus, he has few equals and perhaps no superior among ancient writers.

The difference between Tacitus and Juvenal in power of representation is that the prose historian is more of an imaginative poet, the satirist more of a realist and a grotesque humorist.

Unfortunately, however, it is clear from a comparison of his map with the evidence furnished by Tacitus and other Roman writers that the indications which he gives cannot be correct.

The evidence for this view is derived partly from English and Danish traditions dealing with persons and events of the 4th century (see below), and partly from the fact that striking affinities to the cult of Nerthus as described by Tacitus are to be found in Scandinavian, especially Swedish and Danish, religion.

He was appointed governor of the East by the emperor Tacitus, at whose death he was immediately proclaimed his successor by the soldiers.

The Semnones claimed to be the chief of the Suebic peoples, and Tacitus describes a great religious festival held in their tribal sanctuary, at which legations were present from all the other tribes.

Tacitus uses the name Suebi in a far wider sense than that defined above.

Neuss, the Novaesium of the Romans, frequently mentioned by Tacitus, formerly lay close to the Rhine, and was the natural centre of the district of which Dusseldorf has become the chief town.

The Roman historians, from Fabius Pictor to Tacitus, cared for none of these things.

He is often righteously indignant, but never satirical, and such a pessimism as that of Tacitus and Juvenal is wholly foreign to his nature.

But in spite of all this we are forced to acknowledge that, as a master of what we may perhaps call "narrative history," he has no superior in antiquity; for, inferior as he is to Thucydides, to Polybius, and even to Tacitus in philosophic power and breadth of view, he is at least their equal in the skill with which he tells his story.

Similarly, though the influence of rhetoric upon his language, as well as upon his general treatment, is clearly perceptible, he has not the perverted love of antithesis, paradox and laboured word-painting which offends us in Tacitus; and, in spite of the Venetian richness of his colouring, and the copious flow of his words, he is on the whole wonderfully natural and simple.

His idea of history was gained from Tacitus, whose works he translated.

The noble style of his biographies and orations has earned for him the title of the Swedish Tacitus.

That he possessed considerable literary abilities, and that these were carefully trained, we gather, both from the speeches which Tacitus puts into his mouth, and from the reputation he left as an orator, as attested by Suetonius and Ovid, and from the extant fragments of his works.

See Tacitus, Annals, i.-iv.

From Livy to Tacitus the gulf is greater than from Herodotus to Thucydides.

Tacitus is at least a consummate artist.

The single figure of Ammianus Marcellinus stands out of this age like a belated disciple of Tacitus.

Tacitus tells us that the town was burnt by Boadicea in A.D.

The simplicity of his life and his adherence to Stoic principles were looked upon as a reproach to the frivolity and debaucheries of Nero, who "at last yearned to put Virtue itself to death in the persons of Thrasea and Soranus" (Tacitus).

The narrative of Tacitus breaks off at the moment when Thrasea was about to address Demetrius, the Cynic philosopher, with whom he had previously on the fatal day held a conversation on the nature of the soul.

For her influence see Juvenal, Satires, vi., and Tacitus, Hist.

Here in 1517 the manuscript of the five first books of the Annals of Tacitus was discovered.

Duren derives its name, not, as was at one time believed, from the Marcodurum of the Ubii, mentioned in Tacitus, but from the Dura or Duria, assemblies held by the Carolingians in the 8th century.

As Tacitus tells us, the ancient Germans made use of their slaves in a different way from the Romans.

These slaves had their separate households, while the masters exacted tribute from them in the shape of corn, cattle or clothes, and the serfs had to obey to the extent of rendering such tribute (Tacitus, Germania, 21).

Education was in the hands of rhetoricians and grammarians; historians were read for their style, not for their matter, and since the days of Tacitus, none had arisen worth a schoolmaster's notice.

Eventually he settled in Rome, where, at an advanced age, he wrote (in Latin) a history of the Roman empire from the accession of Nerva to the death of Valens (96-378), thus forming a continuation of the work of Tacitus.

It is a striking fact that Ammianus, though a professional soldier, gives excellent pictures of social and economic problems, and in his attitude to the non-Roman peoples of the empire he is far more broad-minded than writers like Livy and Tacitus; his digressions on the various countries he had visited are peculiarly interesting.

But the scientific accuracy of Tacitus Germania is not beyond dispute, and that light fails centuries before the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Great Britain.

Like others who have gone through the conventional course of instruction, he kept a place in his memory for the various charms of Virgil and Horace, of Tacitus and Ovid; but the master whose page by night and by day he turned with devout hand, was the copious, energetic, flexible, diversified and brilliant genius of the declamations for Archias the poet and for Milo, against Catiline and against Antony, the author of the disputations at Tusculum and the orations against Verres.

The first historical notices of the Frisians are found in the Annals of Tacitus.

As regards their geographical position Ptolemy states that they inhabited the coast above the Bructeri as far as the Ems, while Tacitus speaks of them as adjacent to the Rhine.

Possibly, therefore, Tacitus's statement holds good only for the period subsequent to the revolt of Civilis, when we hear of the Canninefates for the last time.

See Tacitus, Ann.

The period at which the phoenix reappears is very variously stated, some authors giving as much as 1461 or even 7006 years, but 500 years is the period usually named; and Tacitus tells us that the bird was said to have appeared first under Sesostris (Senwosri), then under Amasis (Ahmosi) under Ptolemy III., and once again in A.D.

Tacitus and Josephus mention boats on the lake, and boats are shown upon it in the Madeba mosaic. The navigation dues formed part of the revenue of the lords of Kerak under the crusaders.

The answer to this question involves an exegesis of the terrible twenty-sixth chapter of the Germania of Tacitus.

After a short interregnum Tacitus was selected as his successor.

A narrative of the revolt is given in detail by Tacitus.

In our first glimpse of Teutonic institutions, as given us by Tacitus, this older nobility appears as strictly immemorial (see Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, i.185 sq.), and its immemorial character appears also in the well-known legend in the Rigsmal-saga of the separate creation of jarl, karl and thrall.

It included, besides Hearne's Ductor historicus and the successive volumes of the Universal History, which was then in course of publication, Littlebury's Herodotus, Spelman's Xenophon, Gordon's Tacitus, an anonymous translation of Procopius; "many crude lumps of Speed, Rapin, Mezeray, Davila, Machiavel, Father Paul, Bower, &c., were hastily gulped.

Felix the procurator - a king, as Tacitus says, in power and in mind a slave - tried in vain to put down the revolutionaries.

It was taken by the Romans in 335 B.C., and, a colony with Latin rights of 2 500 citizens having been established there, it was for a long time the centre of the Roman dominion in Campania, and the seat of the quaestor for southern Italy even down to the days of Tacitus.

This " extensive " husbandry is found in combination with a nomadic or seminomadic and pastoral organization, such as that of the German tribes described by Caesar and Tacitus (see especially Germania, 26).

There is some resemblance between it and the two assemblies mentioned by Tacitus in the Germania, a larger and a smaller one, but this analogy must not be pressed too far.

It is the same note which Tacitus embodied in the speech of Galgacus at the dawn of Scottish history.

Tacitus, in describing the attack made on the island of Mona (Anglesea) by the Romans under Suetonius Paulinus, represents the legionaries as being awestruck on landing by the appearance of a band of Druids, who, with hands uplifted towards heaven, poured forth terrible imprecations on the heads of the invaders.

The list of his works includes hymns and national songs - among others, the famous Chant du depart; odes, Sur la mort de Mirabeau, Sur l'oligarchie de Robespierre, &c.; tragedies which never reached the stage, Brutus et Cassius, Philippe deux, Tibere; translations from Sophocles and Lessing, from Gray and Horace, from Tacitus and Aristotle; with elegies, dithyrambics and Ossianic rhapsodies.

To these causes we attribute the pathological observation of Seneca and Tacitus, the new sense of purity in Persius called out by contrast with the impurity around him, the glowing if somewhat sensational exaggeration of Juvenal, the vivid characterization of Martial.

Though it was not one of the great eras in the annals of literature, yet the century which produced Martial, Juvenal and Tacitus cannot be pronounced barren in literary originality, nor that which produced Seneca and Quintilian devoid of culture and literary taste.

He has knowledge of the world, the suppleness of a courtier, Spanish vivacity, and the ingenium amoenum attributed to him by Tacitus, the fruit of which is sometimes seen in the "honeyed phrases" mentioned by Petronius - pure aspirations combined with inconsistency of purpose - the inconsistency of one who tries to make the best of two worlds, the ideal inner life and the successful real life in the atmosphere of a most corrupt court.

The Letters of C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus or Pliny the Younger (61-c. 115), though they do not contradict the representation of Tacitus and Juvenal regarded as an exposure of the political degradation and moral corruption of prominent individuals and classes, do much to modify the pervadingly tragic and sombre character of their representation.

The veneration for republican tradition is curiously attested by the reproduction of many republican types of coin struck 1 It has been conjectured, not improbably, that the Germania of Tacitus, written at this period, had for one of its aims the enlightenment of the Romans concerning the formidable character of the Germans, so that they might at once bear more readily with the emperor's prolonged absence and be prepared for the necessity of decisive action on the frontier.

The Agricola, Germania and Dialogue of Tacitus reached Italy from Germany in 1455, and the early books of the Annals in 1508.

Tacitus himself records a variant form of the genealogy (see above), according to which Mannus had a larger number of sons, who were regarded as the ancestors of the Suebi, Vandilii, Marsi and others (see Suebi, Vandals).

Tacitus states that many Teutonic tribes worshipped her with orgies and mysterious rites celebrated at night.

While still a child he could declaim most of the Iliad in Greek without a book, and read and quoted Tacitus with enthusiasm.

There he passed nine studious years, chiefly devoted to classical reading, Plato and Tacitus being his favourite authors, because "the former described the ideal man, and the latter man as he really is."