It was their place to preside over the small councils that dealt with the less important affairs of the state, and to lay before the larger meeting of the tribe measures that seemed to require public discussion. Lying round their camp fire in the moonlight the younger men would listen to the advice of the more experienced and clash their weapons as a sign of approval when some suggestion pleased them.
At the councils were chosen the _principes_, or magistrates, whose duty it was to administer justice in the various cantons and villages. Tribal law was very primitive in comparison with the Roman code that required highly trained lawyers to interpret it. Had a man betrayed his fellow villagers to their enemies, let him be hung from the nearest tree that all might learn the fitting reward of treachery. Had he turned coward and fled from the battle, let him be buried in a morass out of sight beneath a hurdle, that such shame should be quickly forgotten. Had he in a rage or by accident slain or injured a neighbour, let him pay a fine in compensation, half to his victim’s nearest relations, half to the state. If the decision did not satisfy those concerned, the family of the injured person could itself exact vengeance, but since it would probably meet with opposition in so doing, more bloodshed would almost certainly result, and a feud, like the later Corsican _vendetta_, be handed down from generation to generation.
Such a state of unrest had no horror for the German tribesman. From his earliest days he looked forward to the moment when, receiving from his kinsmen the gift of a shield and sword, he might leave boyhood behind him and assume a man’s responsibilities and dangers. With his comrades he would at once hasten to offer his services to some great leader of his tribe, and as a member of the latter’s _comitatus_, or following, go joyfully out to battle.
Like the Spartan of old he went with the cry ringing in his ears, ‘With your shield or on your shield!’
‘It is a disgrace’, says Tacitus, ‘for the chief to be surpassed in battle ... and it is an infamy and a reproach for life to have survived the chief and returned from the field.’
This statement explains the reckless daring with which the scattered groups of Germans would fling themselves time after time against the disciplined Roman phalanxes. The women shared the hardihood of the race, bringing and receiving as wedding-gifts not ornaments or beautiful clothes but a warrior’s horse, a lance, or sword.