Ashley Brightbill September 15, 2014 LBST 2101 - 203 The Differences Between the Germanic’s and the Romans Culture It can be assumed that Tacitus received his detailed descriptions, presented in the Germania, of the Germanic people and their culture from hearing stories from people who had personally come in contact with the Germanic people. Tacitus gave great detail about the culture and ethnicity of the Germanic people ranging from the importance of war, the war tactics they used, and the loyalty of marriage. By describing the Germanic people’s culture with these certain characteristics, Tacitus was attempting to point out some of the differences between the Germanic people’s culture and the Roman culture possibly to show the Romans that …show more content…
Young males were raised in such a manner to prepare them to become dignified warriors and have the capacity to fight for their leaders. In their society, war was such a popular act that “if a warriors land was currently enduring peace, they would deliberately seek out other tribes and people that were currently in a war” (14). One especially savage tribe that Tacitus discussed is the Harii. According to Tacitus the tribe would “attack at night after staining their bodies and shields,” by doing this, the enemy was stricken with a “mortal panic” and would be defeated (43). Tacitus goes into such great detail about how warlike the Germanic people’s culture was to display the threat that they could have imposed to the Roman Empire and how different the Roman Empire was by not always wanting to be in a warlike state; unlike the Germanic people the Romans enjoyed times of peace. The war tactics the Germanic people used is very different when compared to the Roman Empire. Unlike the Roman Empire, the Germanic people used horses that were “not distinguished for speed or trained to perform turns” (6). Also the Germanic warriors would use “frameae”, horseman only requested a shield and a spear, and the infantry would have javelins. When compared to the Germanics war tactics, the Romans used trained horses, their weapons were made from …show more content…
Marriage within the culture was very different when compared to other barbarian ethnicities and the Roman Empire in the way that a man was satisfied with only one wife; in the Roman culture it was the norm for a man to have one wife but also have multiple lovers. Another difference presented with marriage in the Germanic culture was that instead of the woman providing a dowry to the man, which was the tradition in Roman and many other cultures, the man had to provide the dowry to the woman. By the man having to provide the dowry to the woman, it is said to have created a sacred bond between the couple. Within marriage in Germanic culture, the woman must come to the idea that she is “coming to share her husbands toils and dangers” (18). The descriptions that Tacitus gave of marriage serve to show the belief of almost unison that a man and woman have once they are married. Since marriage is such a sacred and important aspect in Germanic culture, Tacitus possibly went into such great detail to show that the marriage culture, having multiple lovers, in Rome could possibly not be the best