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La Germania di Tacito (Classic Reprint): Discorso
Excerpt from La Germania di Tacito
Ignorata rimane in ogni altra parte la Germania di Tacito pe' secoli che seguono, sino al XV, smar rita forse nella polvere delle biblioteche, dove sfugge financo alla conoscenza di quel miracolo di sapere che fu, nel secolo XII, il monaco Vincenzo de Beauvais, i cui voluminosi Specula sono la vera e grande En ciclopedia delle cognizioni del Medio Evo.
Ignorata rimane in ogni altra parte la Germania di Tacito pe' secoli che seguono, sino al XV, smar rita forse nella polvere delle biblioteche, dove sfugge financo alla conoscenza di quel miracolo di sapere che fu, nel secolo XII, il monaco Vincenzo de Beauvais, i cui voluminosi Specula sono la vera e grande En ciclopedia delle cognizioni del Medio Evo.
43 pages, Paperback
Published August 24, 2018
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July 6, 2026
Didn't plan to read this. Why then?
I've been on a Latin language journey for the last two and a half years. After finishing a course based on Lingua Latina per se illustrata. Pars I: Familia Romana, Grammatica Latina, I started a Latin reading book Sermones Romani. In parallel, I decided to give another try to Barbarians on Netflix. Barbarians seemed more interesting and gripping to me now, as I could better appreciate both Roman conquerors speaking Classical Latin and locals speaking German. (Although why barbarians are speaking modern German while their adversaries strive to be more historically accurate is a good question. Still, I'm gladly granting the creators a poetic license on this inconsistency.).
So, this time I continued watching Barbarians all the way to the massacre of Varus and his legions, a.k.a. the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, when it dawned on me that the series are based on historical events not at all as loosely as I had imagined before. And then in Sermones Romani I arrived at the excerpt from Tacitus's Annals describing the debate between Arminius and Flavius, the protagonists of the series. The two sons of a Cherusci chieftain, they were taken as hostages by Romans and raised at the imperial court to become Roman officers. They both served under Varus (the series takes the liberty of making Varus their adoptive father), but took opposing sides in Rome's conflict with barbarians, with Arminius uniting German tribes under his leadership and ambushing Varus and his forces.
This in turn made me look up Tacitus's books on audible and discover that his De Origine et Situ Germanorum (widely known as Germania) is not only very short but also available to me for free with my audible.it subscription (in Italian translation). It was a quick listen, and I could see how a lot of its trivia on different German tribes was used while creating Barbarians (for example, this bit about women: they believe that there resides in women something sacred and prophetic.).
At the beginning of the audiobook there was a tiny introduction, which made me think that the history of the only surviving manuscript of Tacitus's Germania is even more interesting than the information it contains. And indeed, many a book have been written about the rediscovery of Germania and the fight for its possession. This one, for example: A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich.
Not surprisingly, Nazis especially were preoccupied with Germania, which was the cornerstone of their Arian propaganda. Hitler requested the manuscript from Mussolini. Mussolini was about to grant the request, but Italian intellectuals rebelled, and he didn't.
Himmler was obsessed with Germania. When Mussolini fell, Himmler dispatched an SS team to the Italian countryside with the secret mission to raid the family possessions of count Aurelio Baldeschi-Balleani who owned The Codex Aesinas, which included Tacitus's Germania. They found neither the book nor the count and his family.
As Wikipedia enlightens us, "In 1994, the Baldeschi Balleani family sold the codex to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma where it is now known as the Codex Vittorio Emanuele 1631."
[image error]
Germaniae veteris typus (Old Germany) edited by Willem and Joan Blaeu), 1645, based on information from Tacitus and Pliny. (Image credit: Wikipedia commons, Public domain.)
I've been on a Latin language journey for the last two and a half years. After finishing a course based on Lingua Latina per se illustrata. Pars I: Familia Romana, Grammatica Latina, I started a Latin reading book Sermones Romani. In parallel, I decided to give another try to Barbarians on Netflix. Barbarians seemed more interesting and gripping to me now, as I could better appreciate both Roman conquerors speaking Classical Latin and locals speaking German. (Although why barbarians are speaking modern German while their adversaries strive to be more historically accurate is a good question. Still, I'm gladly granting the creators a poetic license on this inconsistency.).
So, this time I continued watching Barbarians all the way to the massacre of Varus and his legions, a.k.a. the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, when it dawned on me that the series are based on historical events not at all as loosely as I had imagined before. And then in Sermones Romani I arrived at the excerpt from Tacitus's Annals describing the debate between Arminius and Flavius, the protagonists of the series. The two sons of a Cherusci chieftain, they were taken as hostages by Romans and raised at the imperial court to become Roman officers. They both served under Varus (the series takes the liberty of making Varus their adoptive father), but took opposing sides in Rome's conflict with barbarians, with Arminius uniting German tribes under his leadership and ambushing Varus and his forces.
This in turn made me look up Tacitus's books on audible and discover that his De Origine et Situ Germanorum (widely known as Germania) is not only very short but also available to me for free with my audible.it subscription (in Italian translation). It was a quick listen, and I could see how a lot of its trivia on different German tribes was used while creating Barbarians (for example, this bit about women: they believe that there resides in women something sacred and prophetic.).
At the beginning of the audiobook there was a tiny introduction, which made me think that the history of the only surviving manuscript of Tacitus's Germania is even more interesting than the information it contains. And indeed, many a book have been written about the rediscovery of Germania and the fight for its possession. This one, for example: A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich.
Not surprisingly, Nazis especially were preoccupied with Germania, which was the cornerstone of their Arian propaganda. Hitler requested the manuscript from Mussolini. Mussolini was about to grant the request, but Italian intellectuals rebelled, and he didn't.
Himmler was obsessed with Germania. When Mussolini fell, Himmler dispatched an SS team to the Italian countryside with the secret mission to raid the family possessions of count Aurelio Baldeschi-Balleani who owned The Codex Aesinas, which included Tacitus's Germania. They found neither the book nor the count and his family.
As Wikipedia enlightens us, "In 1994, the Baldeschi Balleani family sold the codex to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma where it is now known as the Codex Vittorio Emanuele 1631."
[image error]
Germaniae veteris typus (Old Germany) edited by Willem and Joan Blaeu), 1645, based on information from Tacitus and Pliny. (Image credit: Wikipedia commons, Public domain.)
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