For The Classical Scholar, The 'Germania' Of Tacitus Is A Minor Work GMAT Reading Comprehension

Reading Passage Question

For the classical scholar, the 'Germania' of Tacitus is a minor work, forming with the 'Agricola' a kind of prelude to the great works of Tacitus, the Annals and the Histories. However, for the student of the Germanic people, Tacitus' ethnographic treatise is a major source of information, mainly reliable, about the German tribes of the first century A.D. Studies of Tacitus have often attempted to clarify the author's purpose in writing the 'Germania' by defining it as an example of a particular literary genre. A few have seen the book primarily as a satire of Roman corruption, which uses the warlike but upright Germans as a stick with which to beat the degeneracy and vice Tacitus observed in his contemporary Rome; others classify the book as an extended political pamphlet whose central purpose is to urge the emperor Trajan to some decisive Roman action, possibly invasion, to destroy the growing threat posed by the German tribes.

Both these themes are present in the 'Germania', but they are not central to its purpose; if they were, Tacitus would certainly have made them more prominent and explicit. The book's real purpose is the obvious one-to explain as fully as possible to a Roman audience what was known of the customs and character of a significant neighboring people. In this task, Tacitus was following the examples of several earlier ethnographers, including Livy, whose Histories included an ethnographic study of the German people, and Seneca, who wrote lost works about the peoples of India and Egypt that may well have resembled the 'Germania'. Such works formed the type to which the 'Germania' belongs, and though most of the examples are lost, it seems to have been a recognized genre of the period. However, as with most ethnographic studies to this day, the 'Germania' reveals as much about the preoccupations of the society to which its author belonged as about the people who are the work's ostensible subject. Thus, the fear of a German threat to the security of Rome is reflected in the largely military orientation of the study. The picture Tacitus paints is of a thoroughly warlike people, a nation of men who will 'transact no business, public or private, without being armed,' a society that regards weapons as 'the equivalent of the man's toga with us' - that is, the Romans-'the first distinction publicly conferred upon a youth, who now ceases to rank merely as a member of a household and becomes a citizen.' The Germans even applaud in assembly, not by clapping, but by clashing their spears. If Tacitus' aim was to arouse the concern of his audience over a German military threat, his choice of details surely advanced his purpose.

“For the classical scholar, the 'Germania' of Tacitus is a minor work”- is a GMAT reading comprehension passage. The candidates must attain a solid understanding of English GMAT reading comprehension to gain the GMAT goals. There are three sets of comprehension questions with a series of answers in this extract of GMAT Reading Comprehension. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions test the efficiency level of candidates to capture a better concept of the passage. The candidates can polish up their knowledge and skills by answering GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solutions and Explanation

1. The author's primary purpose in the passage is to:

1. discuss the importance of the Germania in relation to the entire body of work by Tacitus
2. explore in detail the usefulness of the Germania as a source of historical information about ancient Germany
3. compare the Germania to other ethnographic studies, including those written in our own time
4. analyze the ways in which the Germania reveals the ancient Roman attitude toward the Germans
5. explain the main purposes for which the Germania was written

2. According to the passage, the Germania is today of greatest importance to:

1. historians of the politics of imperial Rome
2. classical scholars
3. military historians
4. experts on the work of Tacitus
5. scholars in the field of Germanic culture

3. It can be inferred from the passage that those who consider the Germania as primarily satirical in purpose would probably regard the most significant feature of the book to be:

1. its emphasis on the military threat posed by the German tribes
2. the contrast it draws between the mores of the Germans and those of the Romans
3. the picture it paints of the German people as warlike and unsophisticated
4. its attack on the political intrigues that characterized imperial Rome
5. its support for the idea of a Roman invasion of Germany

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