ipers, but worshiped God in the form
of the sun, moon, and stars, and in the silence of their majestic groves.
Odin was their great traditional hero, whom they made an object of
idolatry. War was their great occupation, and the chase was their
principal recreation and pleasure. Tacitus enumerates as many as fifty
tribes of these brave warriors, who feared not death, and even gloried in
their losses. The most powerful of these tribes, in the time of Augustus,
was the confederation of the Suevi, occupying half of Germany, from the
Danube to the Baltic. Of this confederation the Cauci were the most
powerful, living on the banks of the Elbe, and obtaining a precarious
living. In close connection with them were the Saxons and Longobardi
(Long-beards). On the shores of the Baltic, between the Oder and the
Vistula, were the Goths.

(M1050) The arms of Caesar and Augustus had as yet been only felt by the
smaller tribes on the right bank of the Rhine, and these were assailed by
Drusus, but only to secure his flank during the greater enterprise of
sailing down the Rhine, to attack the people of the maritime plains. Great
feats were performed by this able step-son of Augustus, who advanced as
far as the Elbe, but was mortally injured by a fall from his horse. He
lingered a month, and died, to the universal regret of the Romans, for he
was the ablest general sent against the barbarians since Julius Caesar,
B.C. 9. The effect of his various campaigns was to check the inroads of
the Germans for a century. It was at this time that the banks of the Rhine
were studded by the forts which subsequently became those picturesque
towns which now command the admiration of travelers.

(M1051) After the death of Drusus, to whose memory a beautiful triumphal
arch was erected, Tiberius was sent against the Germans, and after
successful warfare, at the age of forty, obtained the permission of
Augustus to retire to Rhodes, in order to improve his mind by the study of
philosophy, or, as it is supposed by many historians, from jealousy of
Caius and Lucius Caesar, the children of Julia and Agrippa--those young
princes to whom the throne of the world was apparently destined. At
Rhodes, Tiberius, now the ablest man in the empire, for both Agrippa and
Maecenas were dead, lived in simple retirement for seven years. But the
levities of Julia, to which Augustus could not be blind, compelled him to
banish her--his only daughter--to the Campanian coast, where