er him as a pledge, or he was bound to observe the treaty."[34]

For the rest, as Engels shows, the mother-right had already yielded to
the father-right among the Germans, at the time of Tacitus. The children
inherited from their father; in the absence of these, then the brothers
and the uncle of the father on the mother's side. The admission of the
mother's brother as an heir, although descent from the father determined
the line of inheritance, is explained with the theory that the old right
had only recently died away. It was only reminiscences of the old right
that furnished the conditions, which enabled Tacitus to find a, to the
Romans, incomprehensible regard for the female sex among the Germans. He
also found that their courage was pricked to the utmost by the women.
The thought that their women might fall into captivity or slavery was
the most horrible that the old German could conceive of; it spurred him
to utmost resistance. But the women also were animated by the spirit
that possessed the men. When Marius refused the captured women of the
Teutons to dedicate themselves as priestesses to Vesta (the goddess of
maidenly chastity) they committed suicide.

In the time of Tacitus, the Germans already acquired settled
habitations. Yearly the division of land by lots took place. Besides
that, there was common property in the woods, water and pasture grounds.
Their lives were yet simple; their wealth principally cattle; their
dress consisted of coarse woolen mantles, or skins of animals. Neither
women nor chiefs wore under-clothing. The working of metals was in
practice only among those tribes located too far away for the
introduction of Roman products of industry. Justice was administered in
minor affairs by the council of elders; on more important matters, by
the assembly of the people. The chiefs were elected, generally out of
the same family, but the transition of the father-right favored the
heredity of office, and led finally to the establishment of a hereditary
nobility, from which later sprang the kingdom. As in Greece and Rome,
the German gens went to pieces with the rise of private property and the
development of industries and trade, and through the commingling with
members of strange tribes and peoples. The place of the gens was taken
by the community, the mark, the democratic organization of free
peasants, the latter of which, in the course of many centuries,
constituted a firm bulwark in the struggles aga