GERMA'NIA. The general name under which the Romans designated a great part of modern Germany, and, in addition, two districts, respectively, in the east and in the extreme north of Gaul, called Germania Superior (or Prima) and Germania Inferior (Seeunda). Germany proper was styled Germania Magna, Germania Trans Rhenana ( `beyond the Rhine') , or Germania Bar bara. The boundaries of the region compre hended under these designations were the Rhine and Celtic Gaul on the west; on the east, the Vis tula and the Carpathian Mountains; on the south, the Danube; and on the north, the sea, which was divided by the Cimbrie Chersonesus (Jutland) into the German and the Suevic (Bal tic) seas. The first occurrence in connection with the history of the people of Germania with which we are acquainted was the appearance of war like tribes of Cimbri and Teutones in the present Styria, where they defeated the Roman consul Papirius, in the year n.c. 113. Eleven years later they again came into collision with the Roman arms, but the result was their signal defeat by Marius. The names Germani and Ger mania do not seem to have been appellations in use among the people themselves, and it is probable that the Romans borrowed them from the Gauls, in whose language the word gairm, a loud cry, may possibly have served to designate this people, whose habit it was to accompany their attack on an enemy by loud cries. The Tungri were the first German people that crossed the Rhine, but other tribes soon followed; and when Julius Cnsar opened his Gallic campaigns, B.C. 58, he found the Germanic nations of the Triboei, Nemetes, and Vangiones in possession of the districts lying between the left bank of the Rhine and the Vosges, while he even encountered a rival pretender to the supremacy of Gaul in the person of Ariovistus, the leader of the Suevie tribe of the Marcomanni. The Germanic peoples west of the Rhine were reduced to subjection with the rest of Gaul, while the Teneteri and Usipetes, who had invaded Belgium, were driven, together with the Sicambri, across the Rhine to their for mer settlements by the victorious general, who for the first time (B.C. 55) led a Roman army into Trans-Rhenic Germany. The quiet which Ca'sar's victories had secured in the Rhenish dis tricts was again so seriously disturbed by the Usipetes and several of the neighboring tribes in the year B.C. 16, that Augustus, who had hast ened to Gaul on the outbreak of disturbances, saw that stringent measures must be adopted to keep the Germans in check, and sent Drusus at the head of eight legions into Germany. The first step of the Roman general was to dig a canal ('fossa Drusiana') from the Rhine to the Yssel, by which the Roman galleys could sail from the heart of the continent to the ocean; and so suc cessful were his measures, that in the course of four campaigns he had carried the Roman arms as far as the Albis (Elbe), subdued the Frisii, Batavi, and Chanel in the north, and defeated the Catti of the Menus (Main) districts. Drusus, who died B.C. 9, began the series of forts, bridges, and roads which were completed and extended under succeeding commanders. The attempt made by Varus, under the direction of Augustus, to introduce the Roman provincial forms of admin istration into Germany, brought, however, a sudden check to the advance and consolidation of Roman power; for the tribes of Central Ger many, indignant at this attempted subversion of their national institutions, ranged themselves under the leadership of Arminius, a chief of the Cherusci, who organized a general revolt. The
result of this movement was the destruction, in the Saltus Teutoburgiensis, in A.D. 9, of the three legions commanded by Varus, and the subsequent loss of all the Roman possessions between the Weser and the Rhine. The news of this disastrous event threw the city of Rome into consternation. Germanieus, who was sent forth in A.n. 14 to re store Roman supremacy, would probably have again wholly subjugated the Germanic tribes had he not been recalled by Tiberius in the midst of his victories. From this time forth the Romans ceased their attempts to conquer Germany, and contented themselves with repelling the incur sions which the tribes made on their frontiers, and endeavoring by their influence to foster the intestine disturbances which were perpetually generated through the ambition and jealousy of rival leaders, such as Arminius, Marbadius, and the Goth Catualda. After the murder of Armin ins by his own people, the power of the Cherusei declined, while the Longobards and Catti began to assert a recognized preponderance among the neighboring tribes. Occasional encounters took place between the people of Central Germany and the legions who guarded the well-protected Roman boundary-line, which extended from the Rhine to the Taunus, and from thence to the Danube; and from time to time the Batavi and other warlike tribes of the north and northwest, who, like them, had been brought into partial dependence on the Romans, rose in formidable insurrection; but after Trajan had restored order and strengthened the forts, peace remained undis turbed in the north, till the beginning of the third century, while, with the exception of the sanguinary war of the Marcomanni and Quadi under Marcus Aurelius, which began about the year A.D. 166, there was a similar absence of hostilities in the south. But with the third cen tury the tide' of war turned, and the Romans were now compelled to defend their own empire from the inroads of the numerous Germanic tribes, foremost among whom stood the powerful con federacies of the Alemanni and Franks. In their track followed, during the next two centuries, successive hordes of the Vandals, Suevi, Heruli, Goths, and Longobards, who soon formed for themselves States and principalities on the ruins of the old Roman provinces. From this period almost down to the establishment of the Western Empire in the person of Charlemagne, the history of Germany is a blank; but the condition of the country when he entered on the possession of his German patrimony showed that since the re tirement of the Romans the lesser tribes had be come gradually absorbed in the larger, for on his accession the land was held by a few great na tions only, as the Saxons, Frisians, Franks, Swa bians, and Bavarians, whose leaders exercised sovereign power within their own territories, and, in return for military services, parceled out their lands to their followers.