no arms; fast laid up is every hostile weapon; peace and repose are
then only known, then only beloved, till to the temple the same priest
reconducts the Goddess when well tired with the conversation of mortal
beings. Anon the chariot is washed and purified in a secret lake, as
also the curtain; nay, the Deity herself too, if you choose to believe
it. In this office it is slaves who minister, and they are forthwith
doomed to be swallowed up in the same lake. Hence all men are possessed
with mysterious terror; as well as with a holy ignorance what that must
be, which none see but such as are immediately to perish. Moreover this
quarter of the Suevians stretches to the middle of Germany.

The community next adjoining, is that of the Hermondurians; (that I may
now follow the course of the Danube, as a little before I did that of
the Rhine) a people this, faithful to the Romans. So that to them alone
of all the Germans, commerce is permitted; not barely upon the bank of
the Rhine, but more extensively, and even in that glorious colony in the
province of Rhoetia. They travel everywhere at their own discretion and
without a guard; and when to other nations, we show no more than our
arms and encampments, to this people we throw open our houses and
dwellings, as to men who have no longing to possess them. In the
territories of the Hermondurians rises the Elbe, a river very famous and
formerly well known to us; at present we only hear it named.

Close by the Hermondurians reside the Nariscans, and next to them the
Marcomanians and Quadians. Amongst these the Marcomanians are most
signal in force and renown; nay, their habitation itself they acquired
by their bravery, as from thence they formerly expulsed the Boians. Nor
do the Nariscans or Quadians degenerate in spirit. Now this is as it
were the frontier of Germany, as far as Germany is washed by the Danube.
To the times within our memory the Marcomanians and Quadians were