The knowledge which we possess of the habits and government of the ancient Germans is prin cipally derived from the Commentaries of Caesar and the Germania of Tacitus. According to the Roman historians, the Germans were a people of high stature, fair complexion, and red or yellow hair, endowed with great bodily strength, and distinguished for an indomitable love of liberty. The men delighted in active exercises and the perils of war, and the women, whose chastity was without reproach, were held in high esteem. Each master of a family had absolute power over those of his household. Their habitations were generally separate, and surrounded by their sev eral stalls and garners; for although there were villages whose inhabitants made common use of the fields and woods surrounding them, the Ger mans seem to have preferred isolated and de tached dwellings to aggregate settlements. Towns and cities they long regarded with aversion, as inimical to personal freedom. In regard to their political organization, it would appear that sev eral villages formed a 'hundred,' several hundreds one 'gam, and several gnus one 'tribe.' In each tribe the people were divided into four classes— nobles, freemen, freedmen or vassals, and slaves. The King or chief was elected from among the nobles ; but his power was very limited, and the government of the several tribes seems to have been democratic rather than monarchical.
The religion of the Germans, which is shrouded in great obscurity, was based upon myths of the creation of the world. and the existence of gods having the forms and attributes of a perfect hu manity. The different tribes had all their special gods or demigods, who were often their own lead ers or chiefs, to whom the attributes of the god to whose worship they were most partial were ascribed. It is generally said that the Germans had neither temples nor statues. Both Caesar
and Tacitus expressly affirm this, but it cannot be regarded as literally true, for Tacitus himself mentions a temple of a goddess Tanfana among the Marsians; and at a later period we find Christian missionaries exhorting the Germans to change their pagan temples into Christian churches, while we also read of the destruction of pagan idols. Nevertheless, the religion of the Germans was mainly carried on in the open air in groves and forests, and on heaths and moun tains. Although a priestly order also existed among the Germans, yet each master of a house hold performed religious services for himself and his family within his own homestead. A knowl edge of the will of the gods and the events of the future was sought by divination, from observa tions of the flight of birds, the rushing of waters, and other similar signs, in the interpretation of which women were thought to be especially skilled. Belief in a future life, and in an abode after death for those who had deserved well in this life, was cherished among the Germanic races, who had a strong faith in retributive jus tice, whose sway they believed would be extended over the gods by involving them in a universal annihilating conflict as the punishment of their evil deeds, after which a new world was to arise, guarded by a pure and perfect race of gods. In addition to the higher deities, the Germans peo pled every portion of space with a class of sub ordinate beings who pervaded the earth, air, and water, in the shape of elves, nixies, kobolds, dwarfs, and giants; while Norns and Valkyrs stood apart from either grade of spiritual ex istence as the representatives of destiny like the Moira and Parcae of the Greeks and Romans. Consult: Tacitus, Germania ; Caesar, De Bello Gallico, book vi.; Kingsley, The Roman and the Teuton (London, 1887).