XXXIII
Juxta Tencteros Bructeri olim occurrebant: nunc Chamavos et Angrivarios (Bructeri … Chamavos et Angrivarios: the Bructeri inhabited the region around Munster, above the river Lippe and below the river Ems, not too far west of the Teutoburg forest; the Chamavi, at this point in time (end of first century A.D.) lived between the rivers Ijssel and the Ems, south of the Frisii and north of the Bructeri and Batavi; the Angrivarii were settled along the Weser river, south of Bremen.) immigrasse narratur, pulsis Bructeris ac penitus (penitus: ’completely’, adv.) excisis (pulsis Bructeris ac … excisis: abl. abs.) vicinarum consensu nationum, seu superbiae odio, seu praedae dulcedine, seu favore quodam erga nos (favore quodam erga nos: quodam is adj. qualifying favore: ‘through what might be called a favor of the gods with regard to us’; quodam favore is abl. of cause, as are the preceding odio and dulcedine.) deorum: nam ne spectaculo quidem proelii invidere: (ne spectaculo quidem proelii invidere [nobis]: ‘[the gods] have not even begrudged the spectacle of a battle’; spectaculo …invidere: invidere is found (a) with dat. of person and acc. of the thing; (b) with dat. of person and gen. of the thing; (c) with dat. of person and in + abl. of the thing; (d) with dat. of person and abl. of the thing: this last option (used here) is post-classical.) super sexaginta millia, non armis telisque Romanis, sed, quod magnificentius est, (quod magnificentius est: ‘something truly admirable’; a comparative without second term of comparison is called Comparative Absolute or Comparative of Excess: it is translated by using an adverb, such as ‘too’, ‘very’, ‘exceedingly’, etc. before the corresponding adjective. The compararative is often retained in English also.) oblectationi oculisque ceciderunt. (oblectationi oculisque ceciderunt: ‘they fell for the pleasure of our eyes’; oblectationi oculisque is hendiadys; both oblectationi and oculis are dative of purpose.) Maneat, quaeso, duretque gentibus, si non amor nostri, at certe odium sui: (maneat, quaeso, duretque gentibus, si non amor nostri, at certe odium sui: maneat and duret are optative subjunctives, expressing a wish or a prayer; cf. G. 256, 2.: ‘if not the sentiment of love of us, at least of hatred of one another may, I pray, last and persist among these peoples’. The possessive nostri, ‘of ourselves’, is objective genitive pronoun with reflexive sense. On the other hand, the reflexive sui, ‘of themselves’, has here reciprocal sense, ‘of one another’, after a Greek pattern. The dative gentibus is in place of apud eas gentes, as the case was for Tencteris in previous chapter.) quando, urgentibus imperii fatis, (urgentibus imperii fatis: abl. abs., ‘the destinies of the empire pressing ominously on us’. Although these words were in all likelihood written in the reign of Trajan, one of best Roman emperors, under whom the empire was reaching its maximum expansion, Tacitus, the incurable pessimist, saw signs of decay all about him and felt that the whole building would soon collapse. In a way he was wrong, since the empire would continue, albeit by fits and starts, for more than another three hundred and fifty years, but the rot had already set in and the holes and cracks in the fabric were not to be missed by the penetrating mind of Tacitus. It is a sign of his genius that in this little book about the Germans, whom he obviously much admired, he was pointing , perhaps consciously, to the agent ultimately fated to destroy the empire.) nihil jam praestare fortuna majus potest, (quando … potest: causal quando is regularly with indicative.) quam hostium discordiam.