s per certa capita distribuere et explicare constitueret,
insigniorum nomina gentium vastioribus spatiis adhibuisse, nulla mala
fraude et successu infelici. Nam Ephoro quoquomodo dicta pro exploratis
habebant Graeci plerique et Romani: ita gliscebat error posteritate.
Igitur tot tamque diversae stirpis gentes non modo intra communem
quandam regionem definitae, unum omnes Scytharum nomen his auctoribus
subierunt, sed etiam ab illa regionis adpellatione in eandem nationem
sunt conflatae. Sic Cimmeriorum res cum Scythicis, Scytharum cum
Sarmaticis, Russicis, Hunnicis, Tataricis commiscentur.--G.]

[Footnote 1002: The Germania of Tacitus has been a fruitful source of
hypothesis to the ingenuity of modern writers, who have endeavored to
account for the form of the work and the views of the author. According
to Luden, (Geschichte des T. V. i. 432, and note,) it contains the
unfinished and disarranged for a larger work. An anonymous writer,
supposed by Luden to be M. Becker, conceives that it was intended as an
episode in his larger history. According to M. Guizot, "Tacite a peint
les Germains comme Montaigne et Rousseau les sauvages, dans un acces
d'humeur contre sa patrie: son livre est une satire des moeurs Romaines,
l'eloquente boutade d'un patriote philosophe qui veut voir la vertu la,
ou il ne rencontre pas la mollesse honteuse et la depravation savante
d'une vielle societe." Hist. de la Civilisation Moderne, i. 258.--M.]

Ancient Germany, excluding from its independent limits the province
westward of the Rhine, which had submitted to the Roman yoke, extended
itself over a third part of Europe. [1] Almost the whole of modern
Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, Prussia, and the
greater part of Poland, were peopled by the various tribes of one great
nation, whose complexion, manners, and language denoted a common origin,
and preserved a striking resemblance. On the west, ancient Germany was
divided by the Rhine from the Gallic, and on the south, by the Danube,
from the Illyrian, provinces of the empire. A ridge of hills, rising
from the Danube, and called the Carpathian Mountains, covered Germany on
the side of Dacia or Hungary. The eastern frontier was faintly marked
by the mutual fears of the Germans and the Sarmatians, and was often
confounded by the mixture of warring and confederating tribes of the two
nations. In the remote darkness of the north, the ancients imperfectly
descried a frozen ocean that l