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01.09.2015

From Caesar to Tacitus: changes in early Germanic governance circa 50 BC-50 AD

verfasst von: Andrew T. Young

Erschienen in: Public Choice | Ausgabe 3-4/2015

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Abstract

Julius Caesar and Cornelius Tacitus provide characterizations of early Germanic (barbarian) society around, respectively, 50 BC and 50 AD. The earlier date corresponds to expansion of Rome to the Rhine and Danube. During the subsequent century Germanic governance institutions changed in a number of ways. In particular, (1) temporary military commanders elected from the nobility gave way to standing retinues under the leadership of professional commanders, (2) public assemblies met more frequently and regularly, (3) councils made up of nobility gained agenda control in the assemblies, and (4) these councils relinquished their control over the allocations of land. I account for these constitutional exchanges in light of Rome’s encroachment. This encroachment brought new sources of wealth as well as constraints on the expansion of Germans into new lands. Incentives favored a reallocation of resources away from pastoralism and towards both sedentary farming and raids across the frontier.

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Other scholars have insisted on explorations of how government (just or not) actually emerged from anarchy (e.g., de Jassay 1985, 1990, 1997; Mueller 1988).

Other researchers have documented episodes of existing governments encroaching upon previously anarchic areas of society. For example, Benson (1990, 1994, 1998) and Ekelund and Dorton (2003) study the evolution of English law enforcement and the role of the state. For an excellent survey of the economics of anarchy, both theoretical and empirical, see Powell and Stringham (2009).

By government I mean a monopoly on coercion that functions as the final arbiter of disputes.

Demsetz’s (1967) work on the emergence of property rights (or lack thereof) in different Native American populations was early and seminal. See Stringham (2015) for a discussion of a number of examples of emergent private governance and citations to numerous related studies.

Even when Evans-Pritchard (1947 [1940]) made his classic observations of the Nuer people, centered in southern Sudan, they were in the midst of (or closely surrounded by) British, Egyptian, and Ethiopian political structures.

An exception to this may be the laboratory. Experimental studies document norms and other patterns of human interactions arising from constructed states of nature (e.g., Powell and Wilson 2008; Kimbrough et al. 2010; Smith et al. 2012). However, the participants in these experiments all have government-based institutional templates ready in hand.

The details in Tacitus’ Germania may be based partly on observations up to about 100 AD; more on this below.

Most of Germania’s inhabitants spoke languages belonging to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. That branch broke off from what linguists refer to as the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language around 3000 BC, as did the Italic and Celtic branches. The Germanic branch includes not only modern German but also, among others, English, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Flemish. See Anthony (2007) for a discussion of the reconstruction of the PIE language and efforts to locate its speakers temporally and geographically.

Arminius double-crossed the Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus, leading him into a narrow path between high ground to the south and bogs to the north. After 3 days of battle nearly all of the Romans were slaughtered and Varus committed suicide. So the story goes, Caesar Augustus “was so beside himself that for months he let his hair and beard grow and sometimes hit his head against the doors crying out, ‘Quinctilius Varus! Give me back my legions!” (Suetonius 2011, p. 62). This appealingly romantic explanation for Rome’s halt at the Rhine was put to great (and unfortunate) use by 19th and 20th century German nationalists (Krebs 2011).

The general’s name actually was Julius but he is known to history by the honorific he posthumously received in acknowledgement of his military victories over Germanic barbarians.

See Todd (2004, p. 49) on the paucity of wealth to be extracted: “There were no deposits of precious metals, no great expanses of cornfields. [Germania’s] major resources were in manpower and these, for the greater part, were ranged against Rome.” See Wells (1999, p. 93) on the difficulties involved in further conquest: “The communities in these lands showed nothing of the centralization of manufacturing, trade, and […] collection and storage of food and other goods. Hence the Romans could not acquire the sources of supply they needed in the field”.

The analysis that follows, then, is in the spirit of Demsetz (1967). He accounts for institutional change amongst the Montages tribe of Native Americans as means to internalize innovations to the economic environment.

In this sense, this paper is related to Kurrild-Klitgaard and Svendsen’s (2003) and Baker and Bulte’s (2010) studies of Vikings (circa 800 AD to 1100 AD). They argue that the agglomeration of Viking groups was part of a transition of those groups from roving to stationary bandits (Olson 1993). In Young (2015) I document how a confederacy of fourth century Germanic barbarian groups (the Visigoths) made a similar transition in the fifth century (becoming the Visigothic Kingdom). I argue that the transition involved the provision of different collective goods as well as the redefinition of group membership and interests.

Also, the Icelandic Free State ended in 1262 AD when Iceland was absorbed formally into the kingdom of Norway. The institutional changes from Caesar to Tacitus occurred without a serious threat of Roman subjugation.

The initial invasion appears to have consisted of 15,000 Germanic people.

As we shall see below (in Sect. 3) by the middle of the first century AD the role of Germanic kings as violent entrepreneurs (or formeteurs: Congleton 2011b) has grown in importance. Note that proximate to the reference to brigandage Caesar refers to a dux while rex is reserved for a small number specific individuals mentioned, including Ariovistus who had been “saluted as king and friend by the Senate” in 59 BC, the year of Caesar’s consulship (Caesar, Book I, p. 55). Tacitus, as we shall see, is clearer regarding his use of dux versus rex and the difference between the two.

Caesar, when referring to a political rather than kindred unit, uses the word pagus, translated as: “a village or country district; a canton” (University of Notre Dame online Latin to English dictionary: http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=pagus Accessed May 5 2014). He is referring to a small unit, a tribe or clan. This is the interpretation of Thompson (1965 Chap. 1, Sect. 2). Caesar also attributes to the Suebi “a hundred cantons from which they draw one thousand armed men yearly.” A pagus was small relative to what was represented by a king such as Ariovistus or at the council of principes at which such a rex would be elected.

References to the Germania text generally will be from the (1970) Penguin edition; I have used the (1869) Macmillan and Co. edition to confirm the original Latin for key words.

Aside from nobles (principes), Caesar’s earlier account does not elaborate on other distinctions of rank or class amongst the Germans. However, similar degrees of social stratification likely existed circa 50 BC. Caesar does discuss the “two classes of persons of definite account and dignity” amongst the Gauls and the fact that “[a]s for the common folk, they are treated almost as slaves” (Caesar book VI, p. 335). The two classes of distinction are druids and knights. The former were a class of priests who also acted as judges “in almost all disputes, public and private” and were excused from military service (Caesar book VI, p. 337). Knights, as the term would suggest, comprised the warrior class.

These horses remained “undefiled by any toil in the service of man” (Tacitus Chap. 9, p. 108). They were maintained continuously as sources of public goods provided in the form of insights regarding the future.

The economic theory of clubs is rooted in the work of Buchanan (1965). Sandler and Tschirhart (1997) survey the subsequent literature.

Clubs with a religious basis often rely on stigmas and requirements of sacrifice to ferret out potential defectors (e.g., Berman and Laitin 2008; Iannaconne 1992).

In Young (2015), I provide a case study of how a confederacy of Gothic retinues, initially under the leadership of Alaric I, eventually became the Visigothic Kingdom in Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula.

Leeson (2007b, 2009a, 2009b) elaborates on eighteenth century pirate outfits as constitutionalized roving bandits. Leeson has the benefit of much better documentation of the workings of piratical governance (including formal constitutions (i.e., the “pirate code”).

“With the replacement of tribal kings by kings of migrating armies, the representatives of the new kingship had to take on rights and responsibilities of the older form of rule” (Wolfram 1997, pp. 17–18). Wolfram is referring to the barbarian migrations of the fourth and fifth centuries, but his comments characterize where the evolution of Germanic kingship from Caesar to Tacitus ultimately was heading.

Smith (1928, p. 32) notes that what Tacitus observed is echoed by later Germanic law codes: “Besides the composition obtained by suit in court or included in such composition, there was definite smaller sum to be paid to the people or to the prince or king, which was called ‘peace money,’ in the Anglo Saxon wite, and in Danish England ‘law breach.” Smith (pp. 36–37) also notes that the earliest written Germanic laws indicate that a “law speaker” or a “wise man” would propose judgments to an assembly and receive a share—e.g., one ninth amongst the Bavarians and Swabians—of any imposed fine[;] the lawyer “seems to have been chosen by the people from some prominent and distinguished family”.

These names are found in various chapters of the Germania. Examples include the Cherusci, the Chatti, the Frisii, the Langobardi, and the Teutoni. See Heather (2006, map 2, pp. 50–51) for a sense of where literary sources geographically locate these tribes.

Consistent with this assertion is the fact that the public assembly (i.e., a formal meeting of all adult freemen) is also characteristic of later Germanic groups (for examples, the placitum of the Franks and Lombards; the conventus of the Burgundians; the gemot of the Anglo-Saxons; the thing of the Scandinavians) (Wickham 2009, pp. 100–101; Barnwell and Mostert 2003).

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Titel: From Caesar to Tacitus: changes in early Germanic governance circa 50 BC-50 AD
verfasst von: Andrew T. Young
Publikationsdatum: 01.09.2015
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Public Choice / Ausgabe 3-4/2015
Print ISSN: 0048-5829
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7101
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-015-0282-7

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