Germanic Sources
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Jerome (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus), c.342-419 CE:
Chronicon Eusebii Caesariensis, which extends from 325 to 378; http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001.htm
Letters and Selected Works [At CCEL]
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook2.html
St Jerome expressed the feelings of many when he wrote of the occupation of Rome by Alaric's forces: 'Who will hereafter credit the fact, or what histories will seriously discuss it, that Rome has to fight within her own borders, not for glory, but for bare life; and that she does not even fight but buys the right to exist by giving gold and sacrificing all her substance?'
'This humiliation has been brought upon her not by the fault of her Emperors, who are both most religious men, but by the crime of a half-barbarian traitor (Stilicho), who with our money has armed our foes against us.'
Viris Illustribus
St. Jerome's short entries in On Illustrious Men concern both pagan and
Christian illustrius men of the period from Christ until his own time. He gives biographical information which is clearly distinct from hagiographic genres.
Born at Stridon, a town on the confines of Dalmatia and Pannonia, about the year 340-2; died at Bethlehem, 30 September, 420. He went to Rome, probably about 360, where he was baptized, and became interested in ecclesiastical matters. From Rome he went to Trier, famous for its schools, and there began his theological studies. Later he went to Aquileia, and towards 373 he set out on a journey to the East. He settled first in Antioch, where he heard Apollinaris of Laodicea, one of the first exegetes of that time and not yet separated from the Church. From 374-9 Jerome led an ascetical life in the desert of Chalcis, south-west of Antioch. Ordained priest at Antioch, he went to Constantinople (380-81), where a friendship sprang up between him and St. Gregory Nazianzus. From 382 to August 385 he made another sojourn in Rome, not far from Pope Damasus. When the latter died (11 December, 384) his position became a very difficult one. His harsh criticisms had made him bitter enemies, who tried to ruin him. After a few months he was compelled to leave Rome. By way of Antioch and Alexandria he reached Bethlehem, in 386. He settled there in a monastery near a convent founded by two Roman ladies, Paula and Eustochium, who followed him to Palestine. Henceforth he led a life of asceticism and study; but even then he was troubled by controversies which will be mentioned later, one with Rufinus and the other with the Pelagians.
The literary activity of St. Jerome, although very prolific, may be summed up under a few principal heads: works on the Bible; theological controversies; historical works; various letters; translations. Among the historical works of St. Jerome must be noted the translation and the continuation of the "Chronicon Eusebii Caesariensis", as the continuation written by him, which extends from 325 to 378, served as a model for the annals of the chroniclers of the Middle Ages; hence the defects in such works: dryness, superabundance of data of every description, lack of proportion and of historical sense.
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Johannis, abbatis biclarensis, chronica anno 585; John, a Catholic from Lusitania wrote the Chronicle; the most informative document on Visigothic Spain and one of the very earliest works of history produced by a scholar of Germanic origin in any part of Europe- M. Todd
T. Mommsen, MGH, Auct. ant., tomus XI, p. 2l7:
"Leovigildus rex Gallaecias vastat, Audecanam regem comprehensum regno privat, Suevorum gentem, thesaurum at patriam in suam redigit potestatem et Gothorum provinciam facit." =
"In 585, Leovigild, king of the Visigoths, invaded Galicia, drove the Suevian ruler, Audeca, from the throne, and reduced his kingdom to the status of a province" -
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John of Antioch Chronicle (!)
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Jonas of Bobbio: see Columban
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Jordanes, c. 550 CE: History and Origins of the Goths (+); Excerpta de Lergationibus (?)
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/jordanes.html
http://www.boudicca.de/jordanes0-e.htm
Jordanes was a Goth who, although not a scholar, devoted himself to writing history in Latin. His first major work, De origine actibusque Getarum ("On the Origin and Deeds of the Getae"), now commonly referred to as the Getica, was completed in 551. At the time, Jordanes probably lived in a Roman province on the lower Danube River. In the title of the work, Jordanes confuses the Goths with the Getae, a wholly distinct people. Jordanes' other extant work is the chronicle De summa temporum vel origine actibusque gentis Romanorum ("The High Point of Time, or the Origin and Deeds of the Roman People"), also completed in 551 and called the Romana. The Getica is by far the more valuable work, because it is the major contemporary source on both the Goths and Huns. It is a 1-volume summary of the 12-volume history of the Goths by the 6th-century writer Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus. Jordanes claims that he was able to reproduce only the general sense of Cassiodorus' work because he had access to it for only three days. He states that he added material from certain Greek and Latin authors but that the beginning and the end are entirely his own. Although the book is exceedingly disjointed, it preserves the legends of the origin of the Goths in Scandinavia and traces their migrations and wars through the period of the Ostrogothic king Ermanaric's 4th-century empire in what is now Ukraine.
Jordanes is especially valuable on the Huns, because his chief source on them is the work--now known only in fragments preserved by other writers--of the Greek historian Priscus, who had traveled among the Huns in 449. Jordanes cites the beautiful lyric sung by the Huns at Attila's funeral (453) and relates much information about the collapse of his empire in the last half of the 5th century.
The Romana is an outline of world history that records the growth of Rome from the time of its legendary founder, Romulus, to the Byzantine emperor Justinian (reigned 527-565).
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Josephus (!) http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/JOSEPHUS.HTM
(AJ 18. 195-202) recounts how a Germanic captive made predictions from the appearance of an owl, but since the owl was so significant in Graeco-Roman lore the story seems suspicious.
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Julian, (360 CE): Letter to Athens; see From Rome to Merovingian Gaul: The Emperor Julian: Panegyric and Polemic; ISBN 0853233764; See also: Eunapius
From Roman to Merovingian Gaul pp. 12-14
Constantius appointed his cousin Julian as Caesar and sent him to Gaul in December 355; at the same time news reached Italy that Cologne had fallen to Barbarian attack. Julian was an inexperienced student and, for the first year, was closely supervised by Constantius's officials; during this time Cologne was recovered from the Franks. In the second campaign year of 357, the young Caesar was given more authority and took an active part in military affairs; that year he defeated the Alamanni at the battle of Strasbourg.
When Julian decided to march against Constantius in 360, he sent letters to a number of important cities justifying his actions. Only the letter to Athens survives. In it Julian offers his own evaluation of his achievements in Gaul. The letter contains the first reference to the Salian Franks.
Julian begins his account at the point when he was granted active command in the spring of 357, but he covers events of the previous year as well. Three hundred stades (stadia) measured about 35 miles.
Letter to the Athenians
Excerpts:
…a great number of Germans had settled themselves near the towns they had sacked in Gaul.
Now the number of towns whose walls had been dismantled was about forty-five, without counting citadels and smaller forts. And the barbarians then controlled on our side of the Rhine the whole country that extends from its source to the Ocean. Moreover those who were settled nearest us were as much as three hundred stades from the banks of the Rhine, and a district three times as wide as that had been left a desert by their raids; so that the Gauls could not even pasture their cattle there. Then too there were certain cities deserted by their inhabitants, near which the barbarians were not yet encamped. This then was the condition of Gaul when I took it over.
I recovered the city of Agrippina [Cologne] on the Rhine which had been taken about ten months earlier and also the neighboring fort of Argentoratum [Strasbourg], and there I engaged the enemy not ingloriously.
…the gods gave into my hands as prisoner of war the king of the enemy [Chnodomar of the Alamanni],…sent him at once to Constantius who was returning from the country of the Quadi and Sarmatians. So it came about that, though I had done all the fighting and he had only traveled in those parts and held friendly intercourse with the tribes who dwell on the borders of the Danube, it was not I but he who triumphed.
Then followed the second and third years of that campaign, and by that time all the barbarians had been driven out of Gaul, most of the towns had been recovered, and a whole fleet of many ships had arrived from Britain. I had collected a fleet of six hundred ships, four hundred of which I had built in less than ten months, and I had brought them all into the Rhine, no slight achievement, on account of the neighboring barbarians who kept attacking me. At least it seemed so impossible to Florentius [the praetorian prefect] that he had promised to pay the barbarians a fee of two thousand pounds weight of silver in return for a passage.
However no payment was made to them. Instead I marched against them, and…received the submission of part of the Salian tribe, and drove out the Chamavi and took many cattle and women and children. And I so terrified them all…that I immediately received hostages from them and secured a safe passage for my food supplies.
…three times while I was Caesar I crossed the Rhine; one thousand persons who were held as captives on the further side of the Rhine I demanded and received back; in two battles and one siege I took captive ten thousand prisoners, and those not of unserviceable age but men in the prime of life; I sent to Constantius four levies of excellent infantry, three more of infantry not so good, and two very distinguished squadrons of cavalry. I have now with the help of the gods recovered all the towns, and by that time had already recovered almost forty.
Source: The works of the Emperor Julian, trans. Wilmer Cave Wright (1913), VOL. 2, letter to the Athenians 279-280.
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Julius Caesar: (58-50 BCE) Gallic War (De Bello Gallico) (+ text, references and various commentaries) eight books collected as The Gallic War, reporting on his conquests of Gaul and two invasions of Britain;
Online at: Volume I. Gallic War Book: ISBN 0674990803
The Germans, c. 51 BCE
[Ogg Introduction]: This general account of the Germans is drawn from the middle of Book VI of De Bello Gallico. We are not to suppose that Caesar's knowledge of the Germans was in any sense thorough. At no time did he get far into their country, and the people whose manners and customs he had an opportunity to observe were only those who were pressing down upon, and occasionally across, the Rhine boundary---a mere fringe of the great race stretching back to the Baltic. We may be sure that many of the more remote German tribes lived after a fashion quite different from that which Caesar and his legions had an opportunity to observe on the Rhine-Danube frontier. Still, Caesar's account, vague and brief as it is, has an importance that can hardly be exaggerated. These early Germans had no written literature, and but for the descriptions of them left by a few Roman writers, such as Caesar, we should know almost nothing about them.
21. The customs of the Germans differ widely from those of the Gauls; for neither have they Druids to preside over religious services, nor do they give much attention to sacrifices. They count in the number of their gods those only whom they can see, and by whose favors they are clearly aided; that is to say, the Sun, Vulcan, and the Moon. Of other deities they have never even heard. Their whole life is spent in hunting and in war. From childhood they are trained in labor and hardship.
22. They are not devoted to agriculture, and the greater portion of their food consists of milk, cheese, and flesh. No one owns a particular piece of land, with fixed limits, but each year the magistrates and the chiefs assign to the clans and the bands of kinsmen who have assembled together as much land as they think proper, and in whatever place they desire, and the next year compel them to move to some other place. They give many reasons for this custom---that the people may not lose their zeal for war through habits established by prolonged attention to the cultivation of the soil; that they may not be eager to acquire large possessions, and that the stronger may not drive the weaker from their property; that they may not build too carefully, in order to avoid cold and heat; that the love of money may not spring up, from which arise quarrels and dissensions; and, finally, that the common people may live in contentment, since each person sees that his wealth is kept equal to that of the most powerful.
23. It is a matter of the greatest glory to the tribes to lay waste, as widely as possible, the lands bordering their territory, thus making them uninhabitable. They regard it as the best proof of their valor that their neighbors are forced to withdraw from those lands and hardly any one dares set foot there; at the same time they think that they will thus be more secure, since the fear of a sudden invasion is removed. When a tribe is either repelling an invasion or attacking an outside people, magistrates are chosen to lead in the war, and these are given the power of life and death. In times of peace there is no general magistrate, but the chiefs of the districts and cantons render justice among their own people and settle disputes. Robbery, if committed beyond the borders of the tribe, is not regarded as disgraceful, and they say that it is practiced for the sake of training the youth and preventing idleness. When any one of the chiefs has declared in an assembly that he is going to be the leader of an expedition, and that those who wish to follow him should give in their names, they who approve of the undertaking, and of the man, stand up and promise their assistance, and are applauded by the people. Such of these as do not then follow him are looked upon as deserters and traitors, and from that day no one has any faith in them.
To mistreat a guest they consider to be a crime. They protect from injury those who have come among them for any purpose whatever, and regard them as sacred. To them the houses of all are open and food is freely supplied.
Source: From: Frederic Austin Ogg, ed., A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the German Invasions to the Renaissance, (New York, 1907, reprinted by Cooper Square Publishers (New York), 1972), pp.20-22. Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton. The text has been modernized by Prof. Arkenberg.
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Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) 13.164 (?) ISBN 0674991028 ?
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