A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania From The Roman Empire To The Third Reich

Description

This, the riveting story of the Germania, tells of its incarnations and exploitations through the ages. The pope wanted it, Montesquieu used it and the Nazis pilfered an Italian noble's villa to get it: the Germania, by the Roman historian Tacitus, took on a life of its own as both an object and an ideology. When Tacitus wrote a not very flattering little book about the ancient Germans in 98 AD, at the height of the Roman Empire, he could not have foreseen that the Nazis would extol it as "a bible" and that Heinrich Himmler would vow to resurrect Germany on its grounds. But the Germania inspired and polarised readers long before the rise of the Third Reich. In this elegant and captivating history, Christopher B. Krebs traces the wide-ranging influence of the Germania over a five-hundred year span, showing us how an ancient text rose to take its place among the most dangerous books in the world.

Reviews

A fascinating story of how a book could be used and especially abused over two thousand years, as enemies saw it aspresenting Germans as brutish and barbarian, while German nationalisticpride extracted a quite different message of a nation that was simple, virtuous, and pure.... beautifully told by Christopher Krebs. Christopher Pelling, editor of "Greek Tragedy and the Historian".

Author description

Christopher B. Krebs is a classics professor at Harvard University whose academic publications include extensive work on the ancient historians and a recent contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus.