Earliest records of Germanic tribes

 

The records of ancient Germanic tribes are based on testimonies by Greek and Roman travellers and geographers. The earliest of them refers to the IV c. B.C. made by Phytheas, a Greek astronomer and geographer who sailed from Gaul (France) to the mouth of the river Elbe. He described the tribes of the Teutons.

The next major description of the Teutons came from Julius Caesar, the Roman general and statesman which he left in his book ‘Commentaries on the War in Gaul’ (1 c. BC.)

A century later (1 c. A.D.) Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist, gave a classification of the Germanic which until quite recently had basically been accepted by modern researchers. According to it, the tribes in 1^st c.A.D. comprised 5 major groups which fell into 3 subgroups: Eastern Germanic, Western Germanic and Northern Germanic. They were 1) the Vindili 2) the Ingaevones 3) The Istsaevones 4)the Hermiones 5) the Hilleveones. Table 2 illustrates this division.

A few decades later the Roman historian Tacitus compiled a detailed description of the life and customs of the ancient Teutons where he reproduced Pliny’s classification of the Germanic tribes. Having made a linguistic analysis of several Germanic dialects of later ages, F. Engels came to the conclusion that Pliny’s classification of the Teutonic tribes accurately reflected the contemporary dialectal division.

The traditional tri-partite classification of the Germanic languages was reconsidered and corrected in some recent publications (Rastorgueyva). It appears that the development of the Germanic group was not confined to successive splits; it involved both linguistic divergence and convergence. It has also been discovered that originally PG split into two main branches and that the tri-partite division marks a later stage of its history.

The earliest migration of the Germanic tribes from the lower valley of the Elbe consisted in their movement north, to the Scandinavian peninsula, a few hundred years before our era. This geographical segregation must have led to linguistic differentiation and to the division of PG into the northern and southern branches. At the beginning of our era, some of the tribes returned to the mainland and settled closer to the Vistula basin, east of the other continental Germanic tribes. It is only from this stage of their history that the Germanic languages can be described under three headings: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic.

 

Table 2

Classification of Ancient Germanic Tribes

 

Record	Languages	Tribes	Settlement
- 4^th c. B.C. – Pytheas, Greek astronomer and geographer - 1^st c. B.C. – Julius Caesar< Roman general and statesman - 1^st c. A.D. – Pliny the Elder, Roman naturalist: classification of the Germanic tribes:	East Germanic	The Vindili (including the Goths and the Burgundians)	Eastern part of Germanic territory
	Western Germanic	The Ingaevones	North-western part of Germanic territory, the shores of the Northern Sea, modern Netherlands
		The Istsaevones	The western part of the Germanic territory, on the Rhine (the Franks)
		The Hermiones	Southern part of the Germanic territory (southern Germany)
	Northern Germanic	The Hilleveones	Scandinavia
- 2^nd c. A.D. Cornelius Tacitus, Roman historian	Characterized the	social structure of the	old Germanic tribes

 

Material Culture

According to Julius Caesar, the Germans were pastoralists, and the bulk of their foodstuffs—milk, cheese, and meat—came from their flocks and herds. Some farming was also carried out, the main crops being grain, root crops, and vegetables. Both the cattle and the horses of the Germans were of poor quality by Roman standards. The Iron Age had begun in Germany about four centuries before the days of Caesar, but even in his time metal appears to have been a luxury material for domestic utensils, most of which were made of wood, leather, or clay. Of the larger metal objects used by them, most were still made of bronze, though this was not the case with weapons. Pottery was for the most part still made by hand, and pots turned on the wheel were relatively rare. The degree to which trade was developed in early Germany is obscure. There was certainly a slave trade, and many slaves were sold to the Romans. Such potters as used the wheel—and these were very few—and smiths and miners no doubt sold their products. But in general the average Germanic village is unlikely to have used many objects that had not been made at home. Foreign merchants dealing in Italian as well as Celtic wares were active in Germany in Caesar's time and supplied prosperous warriors with such goods as wine and bronze vessels. But from the reign of Augustus onward, there was a huge increase in German imports from the Roman Empire. The German leaders were now able to buy whole categories of goods—glass vessels, red tableware, Roman weapons, brooches, statuettes, ornaments of various kinds, and other objects—that had not reached them before. These Roman products brought their owners much prestige, but how the Germans paid for them is not fully known.

 

Warfare

 

In the period of the early Roman Empire, German weapons, both offensive and defensive, were characterized by shortage of metal. Their chief weapon was a long lance, and few carried swords. Helmets and breastplates were almost unknown. A light wooden or wicker shield, sometimes fitted with an iron rim and sometimes strengthened with leather, was the only defensive weapon. This lack of adequate equipment explains the swift, fierce rush with which the Germans would charge the ranks of the heavily armed Romans. If they became entangled in a prolonged, hand-to-hand grapple, where their light shields and thrusting spears were confronted with Roman swords and armour, they had little hope of success. Even by the 6th century, few of the Germanic peoples had adequate military equipment.

 

Form of Government

No trace of autocracy can be found among the Germans whom Caesar describes. The leading men of the pagi (kindred groups) would try to patch up disputes as they arose, but they acted only in those disputes that broke out between members of their own pagus. There appears to have been no mediatory body at this date. In fact, in peacetime there appears to have been no central authority that could issue orders to, or exercise influence over, all the pagi of which any one people was composed. In wartime, according to Caesar, a number of confederate chieftains were elected, but they were joint leaders and held office only in time of war. By Tacitus' time a new type of military chieftainship had come into being. For this office only the members of a recognized “royal clan,” such as is known to have existed among the 1st-century Cherusci and Batavians, the 6th-century Heruli, and others, were eligible. Any member of this royal clan was eligible for election, and the chieftainship was in no way hereditary. A chief of this type held office for life and had religious as well as military duties. He could be overruled by the council of the leading men, and his proposals to the general assembly of the warriors might be rejected by them. The degree of his influence depended largely on his own personal qualities. A rudimentary judicial apparatus had come into existence among the Germanic peoples by Tacitus' time. The general assembly elected a number of the leading men to act as judges, and these judges traveled through the villages to hear private suits. Each of them was accompanied by 100 attendants to lend authority to his decisions. A person who was found guilty by these judges had to pay a number of horses or cattle proportionate to the gravity of his offense. But many disputes (e.g., those arising from homicide, wounding, or theft) continued to be settled by the kindreds themselves, and the blood feuds to which they gave rise might continue from generation to generation. Long after the conversion to Christianity the German rulers found it difficult to stamp out the blood feud..The monarchy did not become fully established in the Germanic world until German peoples had settled as federates inside the Roman Empire, and the leaders of the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Visigoths in Gaul and Spain, the Vandals in Africa, and so on are the first Germanic kings. Other famous German chieftains in this period, such as Athanaric and Alaric, who either lived outside the Roman frontier or whose peoples were not federates settled in the provinces under a treaty (foedus) to defend the frontier, seem to have had little more personal authority than the leaders described by Tacitus.

 

Conversion to Christianity

 

Evidence suggests that before the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, none of the great Germanic peoples was converted to Christianity while still living outside the Roman frontier, but that all the Germanic peoples who moved into the Roman provinces before that date were converted to Christianity within a generation. The Vandals seem to have been converted when in Spain in 409–429, the Burgundians when in eastern Gaul in 412–436, and the Ostrogoths when in the province of Pannonia about 456–472. In all these cases the Germans embraced the Arian form of Christianity (Note 9); none of the major Germanic peoples became officially Catholic until the conversion of the Franks under Clovis (496) and of the Burgundians under Sigismund. The reason for their adoption of Arianism rather than Catholicism is very obscure. The last Germanic people on the European continent to be converted to Christianity were the Old Saxons (second half of the 8th century), while the Scandinavian peoples were converted in the 10th century. England had been converted in the 7th century.

Germanic Alphabets and Old Germanic Writings

Germanic tribes used 3 different alphabets for their writings which partly succeeded each other in time.

The earliest of these was the Runic alphabet (Note 10) each separate letter being called a rune. The word rune originally meant ‘secret’, ‘mystery’ and hence came to denote inscriptions believed to be magic. According to scholars, this alphabet was derived either from Latin or from some other Italic alphabet, close to Latin, in the 2^nd c. A.D. somewhere on the Rhine or the Danube where the Germanic tribes came into contact with Roman culture. This alphabet was used by such tribes as the Goths, Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians. The runes were used as letters, each symbol indicating a separate sound. Besides, a rune could also represent a word beginning with that sound and was called by that word. For example, the rune denoted the sound [θ], [ð] was called ‘thorn’ and could stand for OE Þorn (NE thorn). The letters of the runic alphabet are angular, straight lines are preferred, curved lines are avoided. This is due to the fact that runic inscriptions were cut in hard material: stone, bone or wood. The shapes of some letters resemble those of Greek and Latin; others have not been traced to any known alphabet.

The number of runes in different OG languages varied from 28 to 33 runes in Britain against 16 or 24 on the continent. That is the number of runes in England was larger: new runes were added as new sounds appeared in English. Neither on the mainland nor in Britain were the runes ever used for everyday writing or for putting down poetry and prose works. Their main function was to make short inscriptions on objects, often to bestow on them some special power or magic.

The two best known runic inscriptions in England are the earliest extant OE written records. One of them is an inscription on a box called the ‘Franks Casket, the other is a short text on a stone cross known as the Ruthwell Cross. The Franks Casket was discovered in the early years of the 19^th c. In France, and was presented to the British Museum by a British archeologist A.W. Frank. The Casket is a small box of whale bone; its four sides are carved: there are pictures in the centre and runic inscription around. The longest of them, in alliterative verse, tells the story of the whale bone, of which the Casket is made.

The Ruthwell Cross is a 15ft tall cross inscribed and ornamented on all sides. The principal inscription has been reconstructed into a passage from an OE religious poem” The Dream of the Rood”, in which Christ’s Passion is told from the point of view of the Cross on which he was crucified. The Cross speaks: Ic wæs miÞ blodi bistemid (Old English translation) (I was with blood bedewed).

Many runic inscriptions were preserved on weapons, coins, amulets, tombstones, rings, various cross fragments. Some runic insertions occur in OE manuscripts written in Latin characters. The total number of runic inscriptions in OE is about 40; the last of them belong to the end of the OE period.

Next came Ulfiala’s Gothic alphabet used in his translation of the Bible. It’s a peculiar alphabet based on the Greek alphabet with some admixture of Latin and Runic letters. (The Gothic alphabet should not be confused with the so-called Gothic script which is used in German writings and is a modified version of Latin script).

The latest alphabet to be used by the Germanic tribes is the Latin alphabet. It superceded both the Runic and the Gothic alphabets when a new technique of writing was introduced, namely that of spreading some colour or paint on a surface instead of cutting or engraving the letters. The material used for writing was either parchment or papyrus. Introduction of the Latin alphabet accompanied the spread of Christianity and Christian religious texts written in Latin. Since the Latin alphabet was adequate to represent all the sounds of Germanic languages, it was adapted to the peculiar needs of the separate languages. For example, to denote the dental fricative [θ], [ð] the runic Þ was used (derived from Latin D).

Ulfilas’s Bible, otherwise called the Silver Code (Codex Argenteus) is kept in Sweden. Along with other OG writings, next comes the Old High German Song of Hilderbrandt, a fragment of an epic, 8^th century, and the Beowulf, an OE epic, probably written in the 8^th c. Then come Old Icelandic epic texts collected in the so-called Older Edda comprising songs written down in the 13 c.

A most important role in the history of the English language was played by the introduction of Christianity. The first attempt to introduce the Roman Christian religion was made in the 6^th century during the supremacy of Kent. In 597 a group of missionaries from Rome dispatched by Pope Gregory the Great landed on the shore of Kent. They made Canterbury their centre and from there the new faith expanded to Kent, East Anglia, Essex, and other places. The movement was supported from the north; missionaries from Ireland brought the Celtic variety of Christianity to Northumbria. In less than a century practically all England became Christianized.

The introduction of Christianity gave a strong impetus to the growth of learning and culture. Monasteries were founded all over the country, with monastic schools attached. Religious service and teaching were conducted in Latin. A high standard of learning was reached in the best English monasteries, especially in Northumbria as early as the 8^th and 9^th centuries. During the Scandinavian invasions the Northumbrian culture was largely wiped out and English culture shifted to the southern kingdoms, most of all to Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great. From that time till the end of the OE period, Wessex with its capital at Winchester remained the cultural centre of England.

OE scribes used two kinds of alphabet: runic and Latin. The bulk of the OE records is written in Latin characters but the scribes made certain modifications and additions to indicate OE sounds. Like any alphabetic writing, OE writing was based on a phonetic principle: every letter indicated a separate sound. This principle, however, was not always observed, even at the earliest stages of phonetic spelling. Some OE letters indicated two or more sounds; some letters stood for positional variants of phonemes: a and æ. Fricatives stood for 2 sounds each: a voiced and a voiceless consonant.

The letters could indicate short and long sounds. The length of the vowels is shown by a macron or by a line above the letter; long consonants are indicated by a double letter.