XXIII
Potui humor (potui humor: potui is dat. of purpose or end, from potus, -us: ‘liquid to drink’.) ex hordeo aut frumento, in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus. Proximi ripae et vinum mercantur. Cibi simplices; agrestia poma, recens fera, aut lac concretum. (lac concretum: ‘curdled milk’) Sine apparatu, sine blandimentis, expellunt famem. Adversus (adversus: here preposition governing the accusative) sitim non eadem temperantia. Si indulseris ebrietati suggerendo quantum concupiscunt, (suggerendo quantum concupiscent: ‘by furnishing as much as they will desire’; suggerendo is use of abl. gerund to express means or instrument.) haud minus facile (haud minus facile: probably in place of facilius, a case of litotes, since to say that Germans are overcome by drink as easily as they are by arms would imply that they are easily beaten in battle, something Tacitus would never say.) vitiis, quam armis vincentur. (si indulseris ebrietati … vincentur: conditional sentence of type I (reality): condition given as a fact, not as possibility; indicative in both protasis and apodosis; future tense for action related to future time, simple future in apodosis, future perfect in protasis for anterior action. indulseris is use of the second person singular as indefinite subject; ebrietati is dat. with indulgeo. The notion that Germans can be destroyed by furnishing them with as much drink as they want finds grim confirmation in what the Agrippinenses once did to Civilis’ best German cohort. The story is told in Historiae, Book 4, ch. 79. After plying the Germans with drink and food at a banquet, they barred the doors, set fire to the building, and burnt them all alive.)