made it their boast that they would let no other tribe live anywhere
near them. About a hundred years B.C., two great German tribes. the
Cimbri and the Teutones, broke across the Rhine and poured into the
Roman lands in countless numbers. For seven years they roamed about
until at last they were conquered in two bloody battles by a Roman
general, who was Caesar's uncle by marriage. After this time, the
Romans tried to conquer the country of the Germans and they might have
been successful but for a young German chief named Arminius. He had
lived in Rome as a young man and had learned the Romans' method of
war; so when an army came against his tribe, he taught the Germans how
to defend themselves. As a result, the Roman army was trapped in a big
forest and slaughtered, almost to a man.

[Illustration: Gaius Julius Caesar. From a bust in the British Museum]

This defeat ended any thought that the Romans may have had of
conquering all Germany. For the next one hundred and fifty years,
Germans and Romans lived apart, each afraid of the other. Then came a
time when the Germans again became the attacking party. Other fiercer
and wilder peoples, like the Huns, were assailing them in the east and
pushing them forward. They finally broke over the Rhine-Danube
boundary and poured across the Roman Empire in wave after wave. Some
of these tribes were the Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Franks, and
Lombards. The Roman Empire went to pieces under their savage attacks.


Questions for Review

1. Why is it that after nations become civilized, people need less
land to live on?