Heroic culture

I hugely enjoyed plaidder’s post about the Heliand, the Old Saxon epic poem about the life of Christ. I was vaguely aware that this thing existed, but I had no idea it was so interesting.

plaidder’s account of it put me in mind of some passages in Tacitus’s Germania, written more than seven centuries earlier:

When they go into battle, it is a disgrace for the chief to be surpassed in valour, a disgrace for his followers not to equal the valour of the chief. And it is an infamy and a reproach for life to have survived the chief, and returned from the field. To defend, to protect him, to ascribe one's own brave deeds to his renown, is the height of loyalty.

...

No nation indulges more profusely in entertainments and hospitality. To exclude any human being from their roof is thought impious; every German, according to his means, receives his guest with a well-furnished table.

...

To pass an entire day and night in drinking disgraces no one.

Cornelius Tacitus (c.56–after115)

from Germania

trans. A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb in 1877


Thanks to the Medieval Sourcebook for the text of this translation

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