1It is recorded that certain battle lines, already wavering and giving way, were restored by the women, through the persistence of their prayers, the baring of their breasts and the pointing out of captivity close at hand, which the men fear far more intolerably for the sake of their women, so much so that the loyalty of those states is more effectively secured which are required to give, among their hostages, girls of noble family as well. 2They even believe that there is something holy and prophetic in women, and they neither scorn their advice nor disregard their answers. 3We saw, under the deified Vespasian, Veleda, long regarded by many as a divinity; 3but in earlier times too they revered Aurinia and several others, not out of flattery, nor as though they were making goddesses of them.
Tacitus · Germania
Germania 8
The reverence paid to women
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Tacitus, Germania. Latin text: H. Furneaux, Cornelii Taciti Opera Minora (Oxford, 1900), public domain; digital text from the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA. Word analysis: drafted by our own tagger (trained on the hand-checked texts on this site), with every doubtful word checked by hand. English translation and section titles: written for this app, each checked against the Latin by a second reader.