1. All references are to the Anderson edition: Anderson, J.G.C. (ed.), Cornelii Taciti de origine et situ Germanorum (Oxford 1938)Google Scholar.

2. Five examples: Anderson (n.1 above), ix; Syme, R., Tacitus (Oxford 1958), 48, 126Google Scholar; Dudley, D.R., The World of Tacitus (London 1968), 221Google Scholar; Dorey, T.A., ‘“Agricola” and “Germania”’, in T.A. Dorey (ed.), Tacitus (London 1969), 12–14Google Scholar; Mellor, R., Tacitus (New York 1993), 14–16, 62Google Scholar.

3. ‘The Romans created the enemy whom they could not overcome, but who was later on ready to overcome the Romans.’ Sallman, K., ‘Reserved for Eternal Punishment: The Elder Pliny’s View of Free Germania’, AJP 108 (1987), 108–28Google Scholar at 125.

4. Textual countries offer scope for playing with the boundaries/connections between representation and the physical world; examples abound, such as Salman Rushdie’s Pakistan and David Lodge’s Rummidge.

5. This first half follows very closely the traditional structure of ethnography (as summarised by Thomas, R.F., Lands and Peoples in Roman Poetry: The Ethnographic Tradition [Cambridge 1982]Google Scholar, chapter 1) and mirrors the structure of the ethnographic digression in the Agricola (chapters 10–13).

6. O’Gorman, Edmundo, The Invention of America (Greenwood 1972)Google Scholar, discusses similar issues in the context of the Columbus journeys. His contention that America is invented rather than discovered is also concerned with the question of the recognition of (or refusal to recognise) shape.

7. The Roman view of, or display to, the Germans is for the most part male and military/administrative: ceteris gentibus arma modo castraque nostra ostendamus (‘we only show our armies and camps to the other tribes’, 41.2). But in the Annals Agrippina shows her power to the Ubii: Agrippina quo vim suam sociis quoque nationibus ostentaret in oppidum Ubiorum in quo genita erat veteranos coloniamque deduci impetrat (‘Agrippina, in order to display her power to allied tribes as well, arranged for a colony of veterans to be established in the town of the Ubii where she had been born’, Ann. 12.27.1). The gender distinction of spectator and viewed object is further problematised within the Germania by the parallel between the Roman presence as audience to the fighting Germans (Germ. 33; cf. pp.148f. below) and that of the German women, who watch their men in battle (7.3–8.1).

8. Forma navium eo differt quod utrimque prora paratam semper adpulsui frontem agit (‘the shape of their boats differs like this: they have a prow at both ends, with a front always ready to go forward’, 44.1); insigne superstitionis formas aprorum gestant (‘they carry representations of boars as their religious totems’, 45.2).

9. ‘The sun-god with radiate head, driving a horse-drawn chariot, is an idea that belongs to Greek and Roman mythology but is not found in German.’ Anderson (n.1 above), 208.

10. OLD forma 15a; Nicolet, C., Space, Geography and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 1991), 152CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. ‘The question of otherness raises that of frontiers. Where does the break dividing the same from the other occur?’ Hartog, F., The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History (Berkeley 1988), 61Google Scholar.

12. Mutuo metu, the psychological boundary, at first seems to operate only within the first role, that of a barrier. However, it does often lead to bellum, which can play both roles.

13. See, e.g., Thomas (n.5 above) and Hartog (n.11 above), 331.

14. Whittaker, C.R., ‘Trade and Frontiers of the Roman Empire’, in P. Garnsey and C.R. Whittaker (eds.), Trade and Famine in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge 1983), 110–27Google Scholar, approaching from the archaeological viewpoint, arrives at similar conclusions about the role of boundaries between Roman and barbarian, particularly stressing the role of trade.

15. The meaning of adversus here is debated, whether it is purely spatial (meaning ‘antipodal’, Anderson [n.1 above, 38)] or is personified as ‘hostile’ (see esp. Romm, J.S., The Edges of the World in Ancient Thought [Princeton 1992], 142–49Google Scholar). Since my contention is that meaning in the Germania is never simply spatial, both these interpretations can be incorporated.

16. At a lesser level, we find the other boundaries of 1.1 operating as inhabitable spaces: Batavi…insulam Rheni amnis colunt (‘the Batavi live on an island in the river Rhine’, 29.1); Venethi…inter Peucinos Fennosque silvarum ac montium erigitur (‘the Venethi live between the Peucini and the Fenni in the woods and mountains’, 46.2).

17. See Said, Edward, Orientalism (Harmondsworth 1985)Google Scholar, chapter 1: ‘Knowing the Oriental’.

18. A comparable passage can be found in Pliny’s Natural History (5.51), where the source of the Nile is held to be uncertain because that area has only been discovered by explorers and not by war (tantum inermi quaesitu sine bellis quae ceteras omnis terras invenere). War here functions as the criterion of discovery and of certainty (perhaps because of the origin of annalistic history as an account of wars, rather than the ethnographical link with the fabulous and ambiguous).

19. Ceteris gentibus arma modo castraque nostra ostendamus (‘we only show our armies and camps to the other tribes’, 41.2). Said (n.17 above) also refers to the Orientals’ view of the British, when they see only male administrators under the age of fifty.

20. ‘Knowledge gives power, more power requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and control.’ Said (n.17 above), 36.

21. See Balsdon, J.P.V.D., Romans and Aliens (London 1969), 82Google Scholar: ‘Roman history is in fact a story of continuous extension of the citizen body…’

22. ‘What is the meaning of “difference” when the preposition “from” has dropped from sight altogether?’ Said (n.17 above), 106.

23. ‘If for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labour which gives form to desire takes from desire its form.’ Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 14.

24. Catharine Edwards has pointed out to me how the original sense of luxuria as excessive growth can echo here, so that luxuria nostra dedit nomen can be read in the wider sense of Germany as a whole. This, in conjunction with the occurrence of the word informis, implies amber as a synecdoche for Germany. The idea of Rome’s expansion as excess does not seem consistent with the absence of any sense of transgression of boundaries, as noted in the previous chapter. However the expansion of empire in the pursuit of gloria is here exploited for amber, a moral excess at Rome’s centre which is articulated at the margin. We see this transgression from a slightly different angle in the Annals: lapidem causa pecuniae nostrae ad externas am hostiles gentes transferuntur (‘our money is handed over to foreigners and enemies to buy stones’, Ann. 3.53.4).

25. The use of framea rather than hasta seems to be an isolated resistance to Roman possession through naming. If it is a German act of invasion into Latin text, the author is certainly colluding by his recognition and choice of the word. Germanicised Latin or Latinised German?

26. This reading is often contested; see, for example the two articles by Gilmore, G.D. and Wellesley, K. entitled ‘Tacitus, Germania 36.1’, CQ 20 (1970), 371CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. ‘For the Roman, who attaches such importance to the utterance of solemn formulae, seeing is less important than hearing.’ E. Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, quoted in Hartog (n.11 above), 261. The text itself would be heard rather than seen, in the ancient practice of literary recitation.

28. This forms part of the representation of Germans as early Romans (and of the ethnography as a history of the early Romans). See Wiseman, T.P., ‘Monuments and the Roman Annalists’, in I.S. Moxon et al. (eds.), Past Perspectives: Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing (Cambridge 1986), 86–100Google Scholar. Particularly interesting in this context are his comments on the proximity of history to fabula and the interpretation of early monuments (licentia vetustatis).

29. Robinson, R.P., The Germania of Tacitus: A Critical Edition (Middletown CT 1935)Google Scholar, has remarked how Mannus as origo and his sons as conditores (and source of names) evoke Aeneas and Romulus, who play the same roles in the Roman mythology (he cites also origo luliae gentis Aeneas…et conditor urbis Romulus (‘Aeneas the origin of the Julian family… and Romulus founder of the city’, Ann. 4.9.2).

30. For an alternative reading, see Hansen, O., ‘Did Poseidonios give Germania her Name?’ Latomus 48(1989), 878fGoogle Scholar.

31. Anderson (n.1 above), 45.

32. It is interesting to note how the markers left by Ulixes serve to validate the boundaries drawn around Germany by the Latin text.

33. However, the question is not answered satisfactorily even at this level. Though it purports to answer itself, it is, in effect, unanswerable.

34. D.C. Feeney has remarked that it is usual for Hercules not only to found a city, but also to father a child or two (occasionally originating a race) on his travels, whereas Ulixes only fathers once on foreign soil. Both actions, founding and fathering, intensify the representation of the foreign land as a passive object before the active invader, and confirm the female/male opposition mentioned n.7 above.

35. The use of the Greek alphabet by Celts is not unheard of: see Anderson (n.1 above), 52; Balsdon (n.21 above), 118.

36. There is a parallel patterning between 2.3–5 and 3.1–3 in the appeal first to German oral accounts (celebrant carminibus antiquis; Herculem memorant, primumque canuni) then to nameless authorities (quidam opinantur; quidam adfirmant).

37. Hartog (n.11 above), 360.

38. See Lovejoy, A.O. and Boas, G., Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (New York 1973)Google Scholar, for example, on the alternating ascriptions of vegetarianism and cannibalism to primitives. Note also their distinction between cultural and chronological primitivism.

39. German materialism is examined in this paper. The main focus on sexual morality in the Germania occurs at chapters 18–20. Anderson’s (n.1 above) commentary for these chapters charts the implied contrasts with contemporary Rome.

40. ‘The use of foreign terms emerges as one manifestation of a powerful ideological myth that whatever is viewed with anxiety has been brought in from outside.’ Kennedy, D.F., The Arts of Love (Cambridge 1992), 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Said (n.17 above), 206.

41. See Hartog’s examination of Persians occupying the role of Greeks when they are portrayed in opposition to Scythians (n.11 above, 259): ‘The rhetoric of otherness thus tends to be dual and, as might be expected in this narrative, alter truly does mean the other one (of two).’

42. See Earl, D.C., The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome (London 1967), 19ff.Google Scholar, for a selection of dates marking Rome’s moral decline. All are associated with materialism and sexual licence issuing from the East. A recent examination of Rome’s encounter with the Greek East is Gruen’s, E.S.Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (Ithaca 1992)Google Scholar.

43. Storoni Mazzolani, L., The Idea of the City in Roman Thought (Bloomington 1972)Google Scholar, chapter 9.

44. It is worth noting that of the ten occasions in the text where Tacitus employs the first person singular, seven carry strong overtones of uncertainty.

45. See Henderson, J., ‘Tacitus/The World in Pieces’, Ramus 18 (1992), 162–98Google Scholar; Plass, P., Wit and the Writing of History (Madison 1988)Google Scholar; Woodman, A.J., ‘Nero’s Alien Capital: Tacitus as Paradoxographer’, in J. Powell and A.J. Woodman (eds.), Author and Audience in Latin Literature (Cambridge 1992), 173–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. For example, the search for libertas, which develops into a complex nexus of ideas integrally linked over the entire Tacitean corpus. Even within the Germania, tracking libertas through the markers of slaves, masters and freedmen enmeshes the reader in the complexities of German religion viewed through the filter of Roman interpretation.

47. Quis…Germaniam peteret…nisi si patria sit? (‘who would want to go to Germany, unless it were his native land?’, 2.2). This reminds us that Ulixes is not the only wanderer to move westwards from Asia. There is also Aeneas, an interesting model for the Roman in this text, since he seeks his patria elsewhere, having left it behind him, in ruins.

48. ‘Audience’ combining the idea of the spectator at a show and of the ‘reader’ of the orally presented text.

49. Anderson (n.1 above), 162.

50. The idea of civil war as spectacle is most particularly prevalent in Lucan’s Bellum Civile.

51. The use of two separate images here to represent the German, as gladiator or as early Roman (bound together by the same role for the contemporary Roman as audience) represents the conflict of the two roles of the barbarian, as noble or ignoble savage (see Lovejoy and Boas [n.38 above]). The ambiguous status of the gladiator (marginal and yet/therefore reaffirming Roman-ness) is examined in Wiedemann’s, ThomasEmperors and Gladiators (London 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. Compare Nero’s deformation in effigy: effigiesque in eo Neronis ad informe aes liquefacta (‘and a statue of Nero therein was melted into shapeless bronze’, Ann. 15.22.2).

53. Not only the Rome of the younger Agrippina (Ann. 12.7.3) but even that of Livia Augusta (Ann. 1.10.5).

54. Their similarity to the Scythians of Herodotus make them a familiar sign of otherness.

55. See particularly T.E.J. Wiedemann, ‘Between Men and Beasts: Barbarians in Ammianus Marcellinus’, in I.S. Moxon et al. (n.28 above).

56. Discussed in Gabba, E., ‘True History and False History in Classical Antiquity’, JRS 71 (1981), 50–62Google Scholar; Romm (n.15 above); Woodman (n.45 above).

57. I am grateful to D. Braund, S.H. Braund, D. Hershkowitz, D.F. Kennedy, C.A. Martin-dale, and most especially Catharine Edwards for their helpful criticism and advice.