of Tacitus. The oldest
documents, e. g. of the Codex Laureshamensis, are easier explained by
the help of the household than of the village community. On the other
hand, new difficulties now arise and new questions pose themselves. It
will require further investigations to arrive at definite conclusions.
However, I cannot deny that the probability is very much in favor of the
intermediate stage of the household community.[29]

While the Germans of Cesar's time had either just taken up settled
abodes, or were still looking for them, they had been settled for a full
century at the time of Tacitus. As a result there is a manifest progress
in the production of necessities. The Germans lived in block houses;
their clothing was still as primitive as their forests, consisting of
rough woolen cloaks, animal skins and linen underclothing for the women
and the wealthy. They lived on milk, meat, wild fruit and, as Pliny
adds, oatmeal porridge which is the Celtic national dish in Ireland and
Scotland to-day. Their wealth consisted in cattle of an inferior race.
The kine were small, of unattractive appearance and without horns; the
horses, little ponies, were not fast runners. Money, Roman coin only,
was rarely used. They did not make ornaments of gold and silver, nor did
they value these metals. Iron was scarce and, at least among the tribes
on the Rhine and the Danube, was apparently only imported, not mined by
themselves. The Runen script (imitations of Greek and Latin letters) was
only used as a cipher and exclusively for religious sorcery. Human
sacrifices were still in vogue. In short, they were a nation just
emerged out of the middle stage of barbarism into the upper stage. But
while the tribes whose immediate contact with the Romans facilitated the
import of Roman products, were thereby prevented from acquiring a metal
and textile industry of their own, there is not the least doubt that the
tribes of the Northeast, on the Baltic, developed these industries. The
pieces of armor found in the bogs of Sleswick--a long iron sword, a coat
of mail, a silver helmet, etc., together with Roman coins from the close
of the second century--, and the German metal ware spread by the
migrations represent a peculiar type of a superior finish, even such as
were modeled after Roman originals. With the exception of England, the
emigration into the civilized Roman empire everywhere put an end to this
home industry. How simultaneously this industry