Tacitus & Dlugosz

Tacitus

Cornelius Tacitus’ recent fame rests on the Germania but, of course, he wrote a lot more.  Such as his Histories and Annals:

„Caesar avidas legiones quo latior populatio foret quattuor in cuneos dispertit; quinquaginta milium spatium ferro flammisque pervastat. non sexus, non aetas miserationem attulit: profana simul et sacra et celeberrimum illis gentibus templum quod Tāfanae vocabant solo aequantur.   Sine vulnere milites, quisemisomnos, inermos aut palantis ceciderant, excivit eacaedes Bructeros, Tubantes, Vsipetes, saltusque, per quos exercitui regressus, insedere.”

“Cæsar, to spread devastation more widely, divided his eager legions into four columns, and ravaged a space of fifty miles with fire and sword.  Neither sex nor age moved his compassion. Everything, sacred or profane, the temple too of Taefanae, as they called it, the special resort of all those tribes, was leveled to the ground.  There was not a wound among our soldiers, who cut down a half asleep, an unarmed, or a straggling foe. The Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipetes, were roused by this slaughter, and beset the forest passes through which the army had to return.”

Tacitus, Annals I, 51 Codex Laurentianus 68,1

Dlugosz

“Et quondam imperium Lechitarum in region vastissimas silvas et nemora continente fundari contigerate, quos Dianam a veteribus inhabitare et illorum nactam esse imperium proditum fuerat, Ceres autem mater et dea frugum, quarum satione regio indigebat, fingebatur, Diana lingua eorum Dzewana et Ceres Marzyana vocatae, apud illos in praecipuo cultu et veneratione habitae sunt.”

“And because the state of the Lechites happened to arise in a country with many a wood and forest and such country was believed by the ancients to have been inhabited by Diana and that Diana was their [i.e., the ancient dwellers’ of Poland] mistress, whereas Ceres was seen as a mother and a goddess of plentiful harvests which the country needed, therefore these two goddesses: Diana which in their tongue was called Dziewanna and Ceres called Marzanna were especially venerated and worshipped”

Jan Dlugosz, Annales seu cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae

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