Introduction Summary and Analysis

The Agricola and The Germania is a book containing two distinctly different stories of Rome. In Agricola, Tacitus tells of the glory of one man's rise to power through military achievement, and his subsequent downfall as a result of the jealousy of the Emperor of Rome. The Germania, on the other hand, tells of the people of ancient Germany, and serves as both a cultural examination as well as a warning to the people of Rome that the German inhabitants are a force to be reckoned with.

The Introduction, by Harold Mattingly, begins by noting that the Agricola was one of the most famous governors of Roman Britain, and that Germania was written to describe the "great people that had already begun to be a European problem." The first section of the Introduction, I, is an account of the life of...