Dar kartą apie Tacito aisčius
Once More About Tacitus’ Aestii

Summary/Abstract: The study presents a new Lithuanian translation of Tacitus’ Germania 45, 2–4 and provides detailed commentaries on the extract. This text, which mentions the Aestii, is read and interpreted taking into consideration the materials found in the other ancient sources (e. g. the other Tacitus’ works, Caesar’s, Pliny the Elder’s, Ptolemy’s, etc works) concerning various Germanic, Celtic and other barbarian tribes. Also, the reader should take into consideration the different aspects of Tacitus’ native Roman culture phenomena and the conventions of the Greek and Roman traditions of ethnographical description . While translating and analyzing the Tacitus’ text, close attention is devoted to the problems posed by the complicate transmission of the manuscripts of Germania. The discussion of Tacitus’ presented information about the Aestii is, first of all, based on present-day commonly accepted point of view that for the Romans and Tacitus himself Germania (this is most probably Caesar’s political construct) meant not a region characterized by a population of ethnically homogeneous tribes but rather a wide geographical area, inhabited by various nations of similar culture but not necessarily of the Germanic descent. This leads to a conclusion that if the Aestii are assigned to Germania, they also belong to this cultural community, and then they should share a variety of Germanic features described by Tacitus; however, these features might not specially be mentioned in the description of the Aestii (e. g. their appearance, marriage customs, clothes, peculiarities of house-building, military traditions, agriculture etc). In addition, according to Tacitus, the Aestii could be granted by some features of the Suebi (a group of ancient Germanic tribes). These features ought to be carefully distinguished because Tacitus attributes to the ethnonym “Suebi” three kinds of features. For Tacitus, the Aestii are similar to the Suebi in their religious rituals. Consequently, the study refers to Tacitus’ observations concerning sacred groves, worshiping of idols, human offerings. On the basis of Tacitus’ evidence regarding amber extraction, the hypothesis is put forward that at the end of the 1st century – the first half of the 2nd century the Aestii not only gathered amber but carried it to the Roman territories, possibly till Aquileia. This excludes the opinion that the main amber trade place was somewhere in the delta of the Vistula.

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