Tacitus & The Goddess

“…a good wife deserves more than half the praise, just as a bad one deserves more than half the blame.” – Tacitus

In the rapid proliferation of “Neo-pagan” religions that have developed since the late 20th and early 21st century, it is truly remarkable the sheer number of different names and ideologies that have become attached to the same, extremely sparse, primary source materials. Born out of the 1960’s counter-culture, The Tree: The Complete Book of Saxon Witchcraft (1974) is, as far as I am aware, the first book to have intentionally capitalized the words “Witch”, “Wiccan”, “Pagan”, and “Heathen” as one coherent philosophy. Buckland was able to do this thanks largely to the help of one woman: Margaret Murray (1863-1963), and one man: Brian Branston (1921-1993). Given the cultural history from which Saxon Wicca originates, it is perhaps unsurprising that the political zeitgeist that left The Tree behind like a time capsule, still sees itself as “progressing”. Progressing toward what, however, is unclear. My annual wall calendar hasn’t gotten the memo that there is anything other than Wiccan religious holidays as far as “Pagans” are concerned, and given the vanishingly small numbers of those interested in any kind of “Paganism” to begin with, it seems likely to stay that way.

That said, the Neo-pagan tendency to constantly seek “new” translations and “new” scholarship in a never-ending flight from an abstract boogeyman called “the 1950’s” is still worthy of pause. If those of us living within the long-term consequences of a world rebuilt by World War II were sincerely worried about fascism, why would we willingly ignore the interpretative groundwork laid by a working class Yorkshire man, who in 1957 was the first to take seriously the idea of a new Goddess religion he called “Wicca”? Primary source materials for “pagans” and “heathens” will continue to be interpreted, in one fashion or another, in support of some underlying idea or another. The “devil”, so to speak, is in the details. But for the would-be “Pagan” or “Heathen”, perhaps none of our primary sources exemplify the need for a philosophical foundation in the Wiccan Goddess more than our primary pagan source himself: Tacitus.

Living in the 1st century, Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman senator who recorded the first “detailed” (not very) account of the British Isles in The Agricola in honor of his father-in-law who had been a governor of Britannia. Tacitus also wrote The Germania (far more informative). The most important thing to keep in mind about Tacitus is that he was a pagan, and when reading Tacitus, one sees how meaningless the word (unlinked to Wicca) quickly becomes.

Of the Britons, Tacitus paints a bleak picture of tribal violence among warlords in a “wretched” climate. At least they had decent soil for farming he informs us (if not for olives). What really made Britannia worth conquering however, according to Tacitus, were its mineral resources of gold, silver, and other metals. The entire idea behind Celtic or “British Traditional” Wicca appears to be based on one singular statement by Tacitus that “…the whole island rose under the leadership of Boudicca, a lady of royal descent—for Britons make no distinction of sex in their appointment of commanders.” No distinction of sex, perhaps, distinction of class or caste—clearly. We do at least learn something else about being a “Pagan” here though. Tacitus’ wife was “given” to him by her father Agricola.

Onward to Germania.

Among the multitude of tribes described by Tacitus in The Germania (the crowded map in my copy is pretty much illegible), the Saxons are not mentioned. Of the ancient tribes still identifiable by their modern names, the only tribes I can personally identify are the Anglii (i.e. Scots-English and English) and the Frisii (i.e. Frisians, of whom nothing is really said). The Anglii, according to Tacitus, were primarily Goddess worshippers who saw Earth as their Mother. Saxon Wicca’s ultimate historical origin is here. As Buckland wrote in The Tree:

Freya herself was born of Nerthus (Mother Earth), but later took on herself many of the attributes of her mother. The name Freya means “Lady”. She is regarded as the equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus; a goddess of Love, a mother, a protectress of children and women in childbirth. She is referred to in Norse mythology as “most lovely of goddesses”. Snorri Sturluson in the Prose Edda (1241), gives many details of the gods and includes a myth of Freya in search of her sacred necklace “Brisingamen” (This necklace, or torque, was named after the Brisings, the dwarves who made it. It is mentioned in Beowulf.)

We are also told by Tacitus that the Anglii were idol worshippers (according to him, not all tribes had anthropomorphized images of their Gods), whose Goddess “Nerthus” physically journeyed among her people. This is thought to have occurred in what is now modern Denmark. Whether this was a sculpture of the Goddess, or whether the Goddess was thought to dwell in the body of a living woman is unclear. Either way, after making her rounds, the Goddess was taken by her priest to an “inviolate” grove on a sacred island and bathed. The slaves who bathed the Goddess were then ritually drowned. The Anglii practiced human sacrifice. Wiccans, as clearly stated in The Charge of the Goddess, do not.

Of the tribes generally, Tacitus observed also the worship of a God he calls “Mercury” to whom human sacrifices were also made. There is little argument among scholars that this God was Woden. Two other Gods whom Tacitus calls “Hercules” and “Mars” received only animal sacrifice, “in accordance with ordinary civilized custom”. “Hercules” is likely to be Thunor. “Mars” is thought to be Tiw. Aside from their traditional songs, the tribes practiced divination by horses, with white horses in particular being kept for this purpose. Divination by the cries and flight of birds was another method common both to the tribes, and to Tacitus’ own people.

Divination by lots using carved pieces of wood cast on a white cloth (i.e. divination by “runes”) was also said to be a general practice among the tribes, but something many modern texts on runic divination tend to leave out is that this form of divination was particularly associated with men, rather than with women, even though women were said to be associated with prophecy in a general sense. So, picture in your mind Willow Ufgood and the High Aldwin from the movie Willow (1988) more than anything. As Tacitus wrote:

…the priest of the state, if the consultation is a public one, or the father of the family if it is private, offers a prayer to the gods, and looking up at the sky picks up three strips, one at a time, and reads their meaning from the signs previously scored on them.

This is important to highlight because Tacitus has plenty to say about the role of women in the tribes:

A specially powerful incitement to valour is that the squadrons and divisions are not made up at random by the mustering of chance-comers, but each composed of men of one family or clan. Close by them, too, are their nearest and dearest, so that they can hear the shrieks of their womenfolk and the wailing of their children. These are the witnesses whom each man reverences most highly, whose praise he most desires. It is their mothers and wives that they go to to have their wounds treated, and the women are not afraid to count the gashes. They also carry supplies of food to the combatants and encourage them.

It stands on record that armies already wavering and on the point of collapse have been rallied by the women, pleading heroically with their men, thrusting forward their bared bosoms, and making them realize the imminent prospect of enslavement—a fate which the Germans fear more desperately for their women then for themselves. Indeed, you can secure a surer hold on these nations if you compel them to include among a consignment of hostages some girls from a noble family. More than this, they believe that there resides in women an element of holiness and a gift of prophecy; and so they do not scorn to ask their advice, or lightly disregard their replies.

The reason Saxon Wiccans do not practice ritual scourging is also easily found in Tacitus. It is symbolic of infidelity:

Adultery is extremely rare, considering the size of the population. A guilty wife is summarily punished by her husband. He cuts off her hair, strips her naked, and in the presence of her kinsmen turns her out of his house and flogs her all through the village.

This reaction is perhaps not as tyrannical as it would first appear when Tacitus also reports:

The dowry is brought by husband to wife, not wife to husband…but she in turn brings a present of arms to her husband. This interchange of gifts typifies for them the most sacred bond of union, sanctified by mystic rites under the favour of the presiding deities of wedlock.

Beyond the Anglii and their descendants among the “Wica”, Tacitus wrote of one particular tribe known as the Naharvali:

The Naharvali proudly point out a grove associated with an ancient worship. The presiding priest dresses as a woman; but the deities are said to be a counterpart of our Castor and Pollux. This indicates their character but their name is the Alci. There are no images, and nothing to suggest that the cult is of foreign origin; but they are worshipped as young men and as brothers.

Tacitus also wrote of the tribes generally:

The mode of execution varies according to the offense. Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees; cowards, shirkers, and sodomites are pressed down under a wicker hurdle into the slimy mud of a bog. This distinction in the punishments is based on the idea that offenders against the state should be made a public example of, whereas deeds of shame should be buried out of men’s sight.

This would seem to imply that a husband was seen as the “head of state” for his family (certainly the arrangement in pagan Rome), and thus (apparently) the rationale behind the public punishment of a wife whom a husband believed had betrayed him. Naturally, Tacitus says nothing about the equivalent punishment for the unfaithful husband (for the “Pagan” man I think it can reasonably be said that the concept does not necessarily exist at all)—unless this was seen (internally to the tribes in a way Tacitus did not perceive or understand) as part of this more shameful category that Handford and Mattingly translate as “sodomite”. It is important to note here that the Latin concept of “corpores infames” is a rather nuanced one, and that the term “sodomite”, even in the English, is not just a derogatory colloquialism for a male homosexual. In the English usage, both males and females can derogatorily be said to be “sodomized”, and when the word is used as a verb in this context it means rape. Tacitus’ reference is an allusion to a serious social transgression of a nature he was likely (as an outsider) to not have understood the social mores behind himself. What Tacitus does repeatedly emphasize is the importance the tribes placed both on their women, and on fertility. As he elsewhere states that warriors would willingly choose to hang themselves (a method of human sacrifice to “Mercury”) rather than dishonor their chief, it seems not too far afield to entertain Tacitus’ related claim that the man who was seen to abuse fertility in some way would be regarded with even greater shame than the woman who may have merely wounded a husband’s pride—but for whom there was still a method for him to “save face”, and reclaim his social status as head of the family. A derogatory attitude toward not only same sex activity between men, but toward sex with a low status woman, (i.e. sex a man had to “pay for”—one way or another), was not an uncommon one among pagan men, and it does beg the question of how many of Tacitus’ observations are really just political polemic (Romans aren’t breeding enough!) that may have little actually to do with these tribes and their sexual practices or social mores at all. But it is notable that neither execution, nor the social expectation of suicide, are presented as acceptable punishments for the discovered infidelity of a wife—not even as rhetoric regarding barbarians Rome sought to conquer. Ultimately, the unpopular reality remains that for many areas of inquiry Tacitus is, for Northwestern Europe, our only pagan, let alone “Pagan”, source. And things are often not what they seem. Like much of what Tacitus reported, this is a subject that will remain open to endless possible debate. In the end, it is simply impossible to know much of anything beyond a very reasonable doubt.

The Gothonic tribes (who Tacitus seems clearly to have been quite taken with, despite what he describes as their relative barbarism, drunkenness, and the dirtiness of their numerous naked children) were distinguishable by “fierce-looking” blue eyes, reddish hair, and large physical frames—“in so far as one can generalize about such a large population”. Tacitus felt they were the original, indigenous, inhabitants of the lands in which they lived, whereas he felt less confident this was the case of the inhabitants of the island Britannia who counted among their number (in what is now modern Wales) the swarthy Silures tribe—who Tacitus speculated had originally come northward to Britain from Spain. However in the north of Britannia, in Caledonia (i.e. modern Scotland), Tacitus speculated that the Picts were also a Gothonic people.

Tacitus also gives us clear evidence of a matrilineal kinship system very different from that of patriarchal Rome:

The sons of sisters are as highly honored by their uncles as by their own fathers. Some tribes even consider the former tie the closer and more sacred of the two, and in demanding hostages prefer nephews to sons, thinking that this gives them a firmer grip on men’s hearts and a wider hold on the family.

Tacitus emphasizes the pride the women took in their motherhood, saying for instance, that they breastfed their own babies (i.e. did not use wet nurses) and did not practice infanticide. In this particular case, there is no reason to believe that Tacitus is merely engaging in some diatribe against the pagan women of Rome, (as may be the case regarding his claims of the Gothonic woman’s comparative sexual exclusivity), as the esteem with which the men of these cultures held mothers is well-attested by archaeological evidence in the monuments they erected to the Matres. As individuals, we are also told that the Goths (including the women) always had on their person a weapon, such as a knife. And finally, it is in Tacitus that the origin of skyclad practice among the Seax Wica can also be found:

They have only one kind of public show, which is performed without variation at every festive gathering. Naked youths, trained to the sport, dance about among swords and spears leveled at them. Practice begets skill, and skill grace; but they are not professionals and do not receive payment.

(“Earth” by George Frederic Watts, 1817-1904. All English language translations of Tacitus are from the revised 1970 edition by S.A. Handford of the 1948 Harold Mattingly translation.)