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Explanation: Studying ancient history is like playing Minesweeper, but half the time the numbers don’t appear, and if they do, they’re wrong, and you aren’t even told if you click on a mine at all!
Historians really have no room to be picky about their sources, but this is a reminder not to believe everything some old dude wrote on paper thousands of years ago.The first image references Book VI of Caesar’s Commentarii De Bello Gallico, where he talks about the Germanic tribes. We know he’s full of shit because Tacitus (depicted in the second image) gives a wholly different account of the Germanic tribes in his Germania. Although one should be wary of him too, as he never went to Germany in person, and most of his book probably relies on second-hand sources (some speculate Pliny the Elder, considering that some of the information he gives is outdated by the time the book hit the press).
TL;DR: I wish I could travel back in time and punch these guys in the face.
There’s also the fact the Germans hung on to their gods an unusually long time before finally switching to monotheism, so we can read about Thor being a rascal ourselves.
Caesar: “I saw the Germans once when they crossed a river and I killed a bunch of them in response; I am now an expert”
It also doesn’t help that the Germanic tribes of the period were a very diverse bunch.
Tacitus, for example, said that the Germanics didn’t have any gods with human forms with is a pretty interesting claim considering that we have statues of Germanic gods from his lifetime.
Didn’t Hitler justify some of his grand plan by historical comparison to propaganda Tacitus put out? One could maybe call this “barbarianism” as in orientalism or borealism.
Tacitus also had a bit of an agenda to represent Germanic tribes as being “simple and pure and wonderful,” as a counter to Roman culture of the time. Similar to the “simple and perfect natives” trope/myth that has been popular in America. Germania is kind of where the whole “Aryan Race” thing got started, too.
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