File:The ancient world, from the earliest times to 800 A. D (1913) (14778408681).jpg

Identifier: ancientworldfrom00west (find matches)
Title: The ancient world, from the earliest times to 800 A. D
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: West, Willis Mason, 1857- (from old catalog)
Subjects: History, Ancient
Publisher: Boston, New York (etc.) Allyn and Bacon
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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Their cold, damp forestshad helped to make them excessive drunkards and immoderateeaters, and when not engaged in war they spent day after dayin sleep or gluttony. They were desperate gamblers, too, and,when other wealth was gone, they would stake even their libertyupon the throw of the dice. At the same time, they do seem to have possessed some pe-culiar traits not common in savage races. They revered women.Tacitus dwells upon the affection and purity of their familylife. They reverenced truth and fidelity. Their grim joy inbattle rose sometimes to fierce delight or even to a Baersark rage that made men insensible to wounds. In particular, theypossessed a proud spirit of individual liberty (in contrastmth. the Roman devotion to the State), a high, stern sense;)f manhood and the worth of man, which was to influence;)rofoundly later European history. Another quality is especially important. The Germanslesemble the Hebrews in a serious, earnest, imaginative tern* 572 THE TEUTONS (§707
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6 708) CULTURE AND MORALS 573 perament, which has made their Christianity differ widely fromthat of the clear-minded, sunnier peoples of southern Europe.They felt the solemn mystery of life, with its shortness ofdays, its sorrows, and unsatisfied longings. This inspired inthem, not unmanly despair nor light recklessness, but aheroism tinged with melancholy. In the Song of Beoimlf (anold poem that has come down to us from the German forests)the chieftain goes out to an almost hopeless encounter with aterrible monster that had been destroying his people. Eachman, exclaims the hero, must abide the end of his life work ;let him that may work, work his doomed deeds ere night come.And, again, as he sits by the dragon mound, victorious, butdying: — These fifty winters have I ruled this folk ; no folk-king of folk-kingsabout me — not any one of them — dare in the war-strife welcome myonset! Times change and chances I have abided ; held my own fairly ;sought not to snare men ; oath never

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