When last thou saw'st me parting for the war:
I send a lock of hair destined for thee,
When Hermann falls, to clip from his queen's head.
By Styx! the trader by the capitol can't offer it:
It's a love token from the foremost lady of the land:
The Princess of Cheruscia herself." (H. S.)
The blue eyes, described by the Roman witnesses as full of fire and chaste defiance, the white rose cheeks and the strong, well-proportioned form make almost ideal the beauty of the German woman when undefiled by foreign admixture. Emphatically does Tacitus state that the German tribes not taking in foreign blood became a genuine, unmixed nation, similar only to themselves (Germanice populos, nullis aliis aliarum nationum connubiis infectos, propriam et sinceram et tantum sui simikm gentem exstitisse.)
The physical beauty of the ancient German woman was heightened by the fashion of her garments, though Tacitus relates that these were not essentially different from those of man. Despite the assertion of the historian, we do not doubt that a touch of innocent vanity was present: a cloak of skin or fur, held together by a gold buckle, or, in the case of the poor and lowly, by a thorn, constituted the outer garment. This usually covered a linen, purple-edged undergarment, somewhat like the Roman tunic, which, by its cut, left the arms, neck, and the upper breast uncovered. The question of dress is so interesting and so indicative not only of the state of civilization of any people, but also of their moral characteristics and habits, that works like Weiss's Kostumkunde, and Falke's Deutsche Trachten und Modenwelt, with the object lessons of good pictures, shed a flood of light upon the subsequent stages of the evolution of dress. The scanty clothing of the early historical period was chiefly for out-of-door use; it gave way to absolute nakedness at the hearth-fire of home, as well as at the common bathing of the two sexes.
Cæsar's account of the sexual life of the Germans of his time is of great importance to our theme. Says the imperial historian: "It is a matter of the highest praise to the youth of a people whose minds, from early childhood, had been directed to strenuous conditions and warlike efforts, to remain sexually undeveloped as long as possible, since this made the body stately and vigorous, and strengthened the muscles. It was a disgrace for a youth to know a woman before his twentieth year. Nor could such things be kept secret, since both sexes bathed together in the rivers, and had only furs as garments, which left the body, to a large part, naked."
Their garments, as described above, remained, on the whole, unchanged for centuries; even until about the time of the Prankish kings. The upper body was free, though often cloaked, the lower body clothed in trousers, braccce, the genuine manly German garment, and it is thus clothed that we meet their men in the first historic records. In winter a sagum, mantle, was added, according to Tacitus and Pomponius Mela. We have in plastic art only two pictorial reproductions: the so-called Vienna gemma, Augustus's Pannonian triumph, and the Parisian gemma, Germanicus's triumph, to show us objectively the vestments of the ancient Germans.