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lank figures with the fair locks and bright blue eyes, the hardy and
stately women who were little inferior in size and strength to the
men, and the children with old men's hair, as the amazed Italians
called the flaxen-haired youths of the north. Their system of warfare
was substantially that of the Celts of this period, who no longer
fought, as the Italian Celts had formerly done, bareheaded and with
merely sword and dagger, but with copper helmets often richly adorned
and with a peculiar missile weapon, the -materis-; the large sword was
retained and the long narrow shield, along with which they probably
wore also a coat of mail. They were not destitute of cavalry; but
the Romans were superior to them in that arm. Their order of battle
was as formerly a rude phalanx professedly drawn up with just as many
ranks in depth as in breadth, the first rank of which in dangerous
combats not unfrequently tied together their metallic girdles with
cords. Their manners were rude. Flesh was frequently devoured raw.
The bravest and, if possible, the tallest man was king of the host.
Not unfrequently, after the manner of the Celts and of barbarians
generally, the time and place of the combat were previously arranged
with the enemy, and sometimes also, before the battle began, an individual
opponent was challenged to single combat. The conflict was ushered
in by their insulting the enemy with unseemly gestures, and by a
horrible noise--the men raising their battle-shout, and the women
and children increasing the din by drumming on the leathern covers
of the waggons. The Cimbrian fought bravely--death on the bed of
honour was deemed by him the only death worthy of a free man--but
after the victory he indemnified himself by the most savage brutality,
and sometimes promised beforehand to present to the gods of
battle whatever victory should place in the power of the victor.
The effects of the enemy were broken in pieces, the horses were killed,
the prisoners were hanged or preserved only to be sacrificed to the gods.
It was the priestesses--grey-haired women in white linen dresses and
unshod--who, like Iphigenia in Scythia, offered these sacrifices, and
prophesied the future from the streaming blood of the prisoner of war
or the criminal who formed the victim. How much in these customs was
the universal usage of the northern barbarians, how much was borrowed
from the Celts, and how much was peculiar to the Germans, cannot
be