t skins, by reason of the scantiness
of which a great portion of their body is bare, and besides they bathe
in open rivers.

II.--Merchants have access to them rather that they may have persons to
whom they may sell those things which they have taken in war, than
because they need any commodity to be imported to them. Moreover, even
as to labouring cattle, in which the Gauls take the greatest pleasure,
and which they procure at a great price, the Germans do not employ such
as are imported, but those poor and ill-shaped animals which belong to
their country; these, however, they render capable of the greatest
labour by daily exercise. In cavalry actions they frequently leap from
their horses and fight on foot; and train their horses to stand still in
the very spot on which they leave them, to which they retreat with great
activity when there is occasion; nor, according to their practice, is
anything regarded as more unseemly, or more unmanly, than to use
housings. Accordingly, they have the courage, though they be themselves
but few, to advance against any number whatever of horse mounted with
housings. They on no account permit wine to be imported to them, because
they consider that men degenerate in their powers of enduring fatigue,
and are rendered effeminate by that commodity.

III.--They esteem it their greatest praise as a nation that the lands
about their territories lie unoccupied to a very great extent, inasmuch
as [they think] that by this circumstance is indicated that a great
number of nations cannot, withstand their power; and thus on one side of
the Suevi the lands are said to lie desolate for about six hundred
miles. On the other side they border on the Ubii, whose state was large
and flourishing, considering the condition of the Germans, and who are
somewhat more refined than those of the same race and the rest [of the
Germans], and that because they border on the Rhine, and are much
resorted to by merchants, and are accustomed to the manners of the
Gauls, by reason of their approximity to them. Though the Suevi, after
making the attempt frequently and in several wars, could not expel this
nation from their territories, on account of the extent and population
of their state, yet they made them tributaries, and rendered them less
distinguished and powerful [than they had ever been].

IV.--In the same condition were the Usipetes and the Tenchtheri (whom we
have mentioned above), who for many years resiste