Recently I bought a reprint of Jacob’s Grimm Deutsche Mythology (Teutonic Mythology, 4th edition 1875), a pioneering work and a milestone in the scholarship of Germanic religion and customs. The foremost early source about Germanic tribes is Tacitus’ Germania, but this work is not without its problems when taken as an ethnographical description. I think Grimm was more aware of this than some later scholars, but it is almost all we have. The following two chapters – 24 and 25 - are about games and servitude, neatly connected by the voluntary servitude of those who lost a game of dice, but this is likely to have been an exception rather than common practice. Chapter 24 starts with sword dancing of young men and I can’t help thinking of Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance. The conditions described in c.25 are almost applicable to feudalism during the Middle-Ages in Western-Europe.
coetus (= coitus), -us (m.): gathering, meeting
quibus id ludicrum est: for whom this is a game (thus unlike gladiators, who
were often forced to fight in the arena)
infestas frameas: threatening spears
se saltu iaceo:
to jump/leap
exercitio…artem… decorum: exercise…skill…gracefulness
quaestus –us
(m.): profit, gain
merces mercedis
(f.): reward
quamvis audacis:
though daring/dangerous
lascivia:
playfulness
alea: (game
of) dice (at Rome dicing though formally forbidden, was tolerated)
quod mirere
(= mireris): what will surprise you
sobrius:
sober, not drunken (unlike the Romans, who played dice often after dinner)
inter seria:
amongst their serious occupations (note that dicing also plays an important
role in the Indian epos Mahabharata and at an earlier period in groups of young
man, the vratyas, who were send outside society before being integrated as full
men)
tanta lucrandi perdendive temeritate: with such a recklessness for winning or losing
deficio defeci defectum: to lose
extremo ac novissimo iactu: with the last and final throw
quamvis iuvenior, quamvis robustior: i.e. a younger and stronger man would have won in a
physical fight for freedom
adligari se ac venire: to be bound and sold (venire from veneo – venii `to be sold’)
pravus:
crooked, distorted
pervicacia: stubbornness
fidem: keeping
one’s word (Tacitus disproves of such stubbornness, but there is also another element:
only Romans can have true fides: the fides of barbarians is folly))
condicionis huius: of this sort (i.e. won by gambling)
ut se quoque pudore victoriae exsolvant: to release them also from the shame of their victory
(maybe the term pudor reflects more
Tacitus’ moral attitude towards this practise than that of the German tribes.
As for selling such slaves: Rudolf Much (1937 ) thought this was unlikely, as the
kinsmen (Sippe) of such a slave would not allow him to be sold abroad. Anderson
(1938) suggested that they were sold in other to prevent troubles with the
kinsmen of the enslaved man)
descriptis per familiam ministeriis: with their duties well-defined for a household
penates:
family gods and so `household’
frumentum:
grain
modum:
measurement
pecus pecoris
(n.): cattle
vestis –is (f.):
clothing
ut colono:
as (a Roman landlord does from his) tenant (colonus)
iniungo – inunxi –iniunctum (-ere): to
impose
hactenus: to
this extent
cetera domus official: the further duties of the house (of the master)
verbero (-are): to whip, beat
vinculis et opere
coercere: to punish (force) with chains and hard labour (which with not unusual
by the Romans, especially forced working in mines was a harsh punishment)
non disciplina et
severitate = non disciplinae
severitate (hedyadis) : not for (keeping up) the strictness of discipline (all the slaves
of a household could be executed for a severe crime, such as the murder of a
master)
impetu et ira =
impetu irae: in an impulse of anger
ut inimicum: as
if it were an enemy
nisi quod impune
est: except that their deed remains unpunished (a slave-owner could do with
his slaves what he wanted, but when he killed the slave of another, he had to
pay wergild, i.e. an amount of money to the owner of the slave killed)
liberti:
freedman still depended on their former masters for protection
raro aliquod momentum (sunt):
seldom something important (monumentum; weight in a scale. In Rome freedman
could gain high positions and even become very rich, cf. the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius)
dumtaxat:
only
regnantur:
some Germanic tribes had kings, especially those in Eastern Germania and
Scandinavia
ingenuus:
freeborn
apud ceteros (populous) impares libertini libertatis
argumentum sunt: amongst the other (tribes)
the inferior freedman (= the inferior position of freedmen) are proof of (their, i.e. the higher ranking people) liberty. (For
the aristocrat Tacitus, the fact that freedmen could gain high positions was a
gruelling thought and what he does here is applying Roman terminology to Germanic
social conditions as a mirror for his Roman readers: true freedom doesn’t depend
on freedmen!)
