You have entered Germania.
You are a stranger (walha), you do not look like us. We do not intermarry with other peoples. We all look the same, wild, blue eyes, reddish hair and Big body frames.
It has been said, that we are unique among "barbarians" because we only have ONE wife. The dowry is brought by the husband to wife, she in her turn brings some present of arms to her husband.
In this interchange of gifts we recognize the supreme bond, the holy mysteries, the presiding deities of marriage.
German women live in a chastity that is impregnable, uncorrupted by the temptations of public shows or the excitements of banquets.
Clandestine love-letters are unknown to men and women alike.
Adultery in our nation is rare in the extreme, and punishment is left to the husband.
He shaves off his wife's hair, strips her in the presence of kinsmen, thrusts her from his house and flogs her through the whole village. We have, in fact, no mercy on a woman who prostitutes her chastity.
Neither beauty, youth nor wealth can find the sinner a husband.
To restrict the number of children or to put to death any born after the heir is considered criminal.
Our children grow up in every home, naked and dirty, to that strength of limb and size of body which excite the admiration of other nations. Every mother feeds her child at the breast and does not depute the task to maids and nurses.
The master is not to be distinguished from the slave by any pampering in his upbringing. They grow up together among the same flocks and on the same ground, until maturity sets apart the free and the spirit of valour claims them as her own.
The young men are slow to mate, and their powers, therefore, are never exhausted.
The girls, too, are not hurried into marriage.
A man's heirs and successors are his own children, and there is no such thing as a will.
Information from Cornelius Tacitus
