Terra—advehebantur. Zeugma for terra adveniebant, classibus advehebantur. H. 704, I. 2; Z. 775.
Nec—et. These correlatives connect the members more closely than et—et; as in Greek oute-te. The sentiment here advanced touching colonization (as by sea, rather than by land), though true of Carthage, Sicily, and most Grecian, colonies, is directly the reverse of the general fact; and Germany itself is now known to have received its population by land emigration, from western Asia. The Germans, as we learn from affinities of languages and occasional references of historians and geographers, belonged to the same great stock of the human family with the Goths and Scythians, and may be traced back to that hive of nations, that primitive residence of mankind, the country east and south of the Caspian Sea and in the vicinity of Mount Ararat: cf. Tur. His. Ang. Sax. B. II. C. 1; also Donaldson's New Cratylus, B. I. Chap. 4. Latham's dogmatic skepticism will hardly shake the now established faith on this subject. The science of ethnography was unknown to the ancients. Tacitus had not the remotest idea, that all mankind were sprung from a common ancestry, and diffused themselves over the world from a common centre, a fact asserted in the Scriptures, and daily receiving fresh confirmation from literature and science. Hence he speaks of the Germans as indigenas, which he explains below by editum terra, sprung from the earth, like the mutum et turpe pecus of Hor. Sat. 1. 3, 100. cf. A. 11.
Mutare quaerebant. Quaerere with inf. is poet. constr., found, however, in later prose writers, and once in Cic. (de Fin. 313: quaeris scire, enclosed in brackets in Tauchnitz's edition), to avoid repetition of cupio. Cupio or volo mutare would be regular classic prose.
Adversus. That the author here uses adversus in some unusual and recondite sense, is intimated by the clause: ut sic dixerim. It is understood by some, of a sea unfriendly to navigation. But its connexion by que with immensus ultra, shows that it refers to position, and means lying opposite, i.e., belonging, as it were, to another hemisphere or world from ours; for so the Romans regarded the Northern Ocean and Britain itself, cf. A 12: ultra nostri orbis mensuram; G. 17: exterior oceanus. So Cic. (Som. Scip. 6.) says: Homines partim obliquos, partim aversos, partim etiam adversos, stare vobis. This interpretation is confirmed by ab orbe nostra in the antithesis. On the use of ut sic dixerim for ut sic dicam, which is peculiar to the silver age, see Z. 528.
Asia, sc. Minor. Africa, sc. the Roman Province of that name, comprising the territory of Carthage.—Peteret. The question implies a negative answer, cf. Z. 530. The subj. implies a protasis understood: if he could, or the like. H. 502.
Sit. Praesens, ut de re vera. Gün. Nisi si is nearly equivalent to nisi forte: unless perchance; unless if we may suppose the case. Cf. Wr. note on Ann. 2, 63, and Hand's Tursellinus, 3, 240.
Memoriae et annalium. Properly opposed to each other as tradition and written history, though we are not to infer that written books existed in Germany in the age of Tacitus.
Carminibus. Songs, ballads (from cano). Songs and rude poetry have been, in all savage countries, the memorials of public transactions, e.g. the runes of the Goths, the bards of the Britons and Celts, the scalds of Scandinavia, &c.
Tuisconem. The god from whom Tuesday takes its name, as Wednesday from Woden, Thursday from Thor, &c., cf. Sharon Turner's His. of Ang. Sax. app. to book 2. chap. 3. Some find in the name of this god the root of the words Teutonic, Dutch (Germ. Deutsche or Teutsche &c.,) Al. Tuistonem, Tristonem, &c. More likely it has the same root as the Latin divus, dius, deus, and the Greek theios, dios, theos, cf. Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, sub v.
Terra editum==indigena above; and gaegenaes and autochthon in Greek.