Tacitus
Roman orator, lawyer, and senator.
They even say that an altar dedicated to Ulysses, with the addition of the name of his father, Laertes, was formerly discovered on the same spot, and that certain monuments and tombs with Greek inscriptions, still exist on the borders of Germany and Rhaetia.
Tacitus has written an entire work on the manners of the Germans. This work is short, but it comes from the pen of Tacitus, who was always concise, because he saw everything at a glance.
So true is it that all transactions of preeminent importance are wrapt in doubt and obscurity; while some hold for certain facts the most precarious hearsays, others turn facts into falsehood; and both are exaggerated by posterity.
No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.
He possessed a peculiar talent of producing effect in whatever he said or did.
He had talents equal to business, and aspired no higher.
The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For in former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond us,is seldom entered by a sail from our world.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Abuse, if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated you will be thought to have deserved it.
It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.
It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured.