This book is the second edition of Luciano Canfora’s 1979 study on Tacitus’ Germania. Forty-five years later, it reappears in a refined 88-page edition.[1] The first edition of Canfora’s work was not reviewed in English. A review of the second edition therefore offers the opportunity for assessment not simply of the work itself, but also its impact.[2]
This new edition is surely welcome, since not much has been published on this topic in Italy lately, except for a few articles in specialized journals, including introductory notes to new editions of Tacitus’ Germania and the 2012 translation of Christopher B. Krebs’s book A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich. Such a scarcity of publications appears to confirm, to a certain extent, the late Latinist Luca Canali’s opinion that “it is one of the many paradoxes of civic education that this text is almost absent from the mainstream culture of Italians.”[3]
This edition includes a new foreword summarizing key themes: the uniqueness of Tacitus’ Germania, its portrayal of the Germanic tribes, and its lasting influence from Luther to Nazism. Italian translations of Latin and German passages enhance accessibility for both general readers and scholars. Unlike the first edition, this version omits the appendix entitled “Le Untersuchungen di Till”,[4] which recounted the story of the famous Codex Aesinas. Its removal likely reflects newer research, especially Niutta’s 1996 article, still the key study on this manuscript sought by the Germans before and during WWII.[5] Despite its brevity, the book is not a basic introduction to Tacitus’ Germania. It assumes solid prior knowledge of both the textual tradition and modern scholarship if one is going fully to understand the analysis and apply it in further research.
In Chapter I (“La «purezza» razziale”), the author explores the idea of racial homogeneity and the supposed autochthony of the ancient Germans, focusing on the origins of Blut und Boden (“blood and soil”), central to National Socialist ideology, as formulated by Johann G. Fichte (1762–1814). The chapter also examines racial interpretations of German identity by J. Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882) and Houston S. Chamberlain (1855–1927), as well as the shifting geography of the Germanic world in response to political change. Notably, Johann Paul Richter (1763–1825, pp. 28–29) observed that during Napoleon’s invasion, the French were seen as transplanted Germans—such labile notions of what constituted true German territory would later be tragically echoed in German ambitions in Eastern Europe during WWII.
Chapter II (“La Germania nella tradizione etnografica: Norden”) examines the influence of the German-Jewish scholar Eduard Norden (1868–1941), who was the first to challenge the supposed uniqueness of Tacitus’ portrayal of the ancient Germani. Norden identified striking parallels between certain passages in Tacitus and others in the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, and Places, where similar descriptions are applied to the Scythians. He also noted comparable traits in the works of Posidonius, as preserved by Diodorus of Sicily, where characteristics traditionally considered uniquely Germanic were likewise attributed to the Celts (pp. 33–35). The remainder of the chapter traces the academic reception of Norden’s 1920 book Die germanische Urgeschichte in Tacitus’ Germania, and the progressive marginalization—and eventual exclusion—he faced within German academia. This was largely due to his thesis that notions of German racial purity had already been compromised by Tacitus’ time, a view that directly contradicted the dominant political and scholarly ideologies of the period.
Chapter III (“Gli Stammfremde Elemente”) explores how the myth of ancient German racial purity fuelled later programs of racial purification aimed at purging Germany of so-called foreign elements—particularly Jews. Among those who contributed to this ideological trajectory was the renowned philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848–1931). In the aftermath of World War I, he praised the ancient Greeks for preserving a racial sensibility (Rassegefühl) he believed modern Germans urgently lacked. He also denounced, in his view, the corrosive influence of Jewish elements and press within the German state, which he blamed for a perceived moral crisis.
Chapter IV (“Il comitatus”) examines the concept of the Germanic comitatus—a fellowship or retinue—that later served as a foundational model for the National Socialist notions of Führergefolgschaft and Führerprinzip. These concepts emphasized a direct, personal bond of loyalty and obedience between the leader (Führer) and his followers, unmediated by any political institutions—an idea central to the National Socialist power structure. Drawing effectively on Norden’s work, Canfora argues that this institution should not be regarded as uniquely Germanic, noting that a comparable form of comitatus appears to have existed among the principes of Cisalpine Gaul.
Chapter V (“I Germani di Engels”) focuses on Friedrich Engels’ interpretation of Tacitus’ Germania in his 1852 work Zur Geschichte und Sprache der deutschen Frühzeit. There, Engels—co-founder of Marxism alongside Karl Marx—criticizes the Roman Empire’s attempts, particularly under Varus, to impose imperial law on a free people: the ancient Germani who famously defeated Varus at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Surprisingly, Engels’ lesser-known text contains several racial stereotypes, contrasting the supposedly noble, freeborn Germani with the “eastern” peoples of Syria, previously governed by Varus. Yet as Canfora rightly observes, Engels’ real focus was not the ancient Volksgeist, but rather the structure of land tenure—specifically, the search for traces of a primitive agrarian communism.
Chapter VI (“Gli «antichi Germani» del nazismo”) examines how the National Socialist regime appropriated Tacitus’ Germania to justify core ideological tenets such as Führergefolgschaft, racial hygiene, moral codes, and a new model of statehood—conceived as a vehicle for national racial fulfillment. Yet Canfora goes beyond a mere account of this ideological manipulation, highlighting internal contradictions within the National Socialist political movement itself. Central to his analysis is the tension in Hitler’s own worldview: a conflicted stance between the glorification of ancient Germanic identity and his personal admiration for the classical Greek world, especially Sparta, which he sought to emulate in his vision for a new Germany. While Himmler and his archaeologists exalted prehistoric Germanic culture and the Arminius myth, Hitler privately mocked such claims, reportedly stating that the ancient Germani had “reached no higher cultural level than today’s Maori,” especially when compared to the cultural achievements of the Greeks, like the construction of the Acropolis.[6] This inner contradiction—Hitler’s cultural schizophrenia between a venerated Germanic past and a longed-for Graeco-Roman legacy—parallels what Canfora sees in Tacitus himself: a complex ambivalence toward the untamed Germani, whom Tacitus regards with a mix of fear, awe, and admiration. Tacitus, aware that these tribal peoples might one day eclipse Rome, casts them as a latent force rising even as his own civilization declines.
Canfora also discusses contemporary anthropological, classical, and political literature, including works like Wilhelm Sieglin’s 1935 raciological study Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums. Though the question of hair colour in antiquity may seem outdated, recent research—particularly on ancient Egyptians—suggests pigmentation was ancestry-based, not due to embalming or post-mortem changes.[7] This shows that questions posed by ethnographers like Tacitus remain relevant today. A recent psychological study, for example, links regional differences in health, well-being, and personality in modern Germany to historical exposure to Roman culture, suggesting that ancient cultures can leave lasting macro-psychological legacies.[8]
A reader in 2025 should be interested in Canfora’s book not merely because it fills a gap in Italian scholarship but because it delivers a rare and incisive account of how the Germania was received, interpreted, and manipulated in German intellectual history. What sets this work apart is its ability to navigate seamlessly between classical philology, political ideology, and racial theory, tracing the text’s instrumentalisation from Enlightenment thinkers to National Socialist ideologues. Canfora situates Germania not as a neutral ethnographic document but as a volatile cultural artefact, repeatedly reinterpreted to serve conflicting visions of identity, purity, and statehood. His deep engagement with German-language scholarship—including figures like Norden, Engels, and even Hitler—provides insights into the ideological tensions within German academia and politics that few non-German works confront so directly. In this sense, the book transcends its Italian context and becomes essential reading for anyone interested in how classical texts are politicized, how philology intersects with power, and how ancient ethnography still echoes in contemporary scientific and psychological research. Canfora’s study is a compelling demonstration of how one ancient text can illuminate the dark undercurrents of modern history.
In conclusion, this book is a rigorous and substantial study that merits inclusion in future research on Tacitus’ Germania. Many of its insights, if further developed, hold the potential to open new multidisciplinary avenues of investigation. An English translation would undoubtedly be of great value to the international scholarly community.
Notes
[1] The second part of the title (da Engels al nazismo) should not be seen merely as a chronological frame for La Germania di Tacito, but rather as a reference to the opposing ideological extremes—Marxism and Nazism—that Tacitus’ Germania came to influence, as explored chiefly in the final two chapters (V and VI).
[2] James Chlup, in a review of J.B. Rives’s Oxford edition of Tacitus’ Germania, listed Luciano Canfora’s book among the five studies that stood out on the topic of the Germania‘s reception (BMCR 2001.04.19).
[3] L. Canali, in his 1991 introduction to La Germania di Tacito (repr. 2020, Editori Riuniti), p. XVIII; he also noted its unavailability outside specialized series. While this was largely true at the time, several accessible annotated editions have since appeared—e.g., Stefanoni (Garzanti, 2004), Risari (Mondadori, 2019), and Audano (Rusconi, 2021)—though still mostly within semi-specialized collections. An exception is Sellerio’s 1993 reprint of Marinetti’s 1928 Futurist translation, notable more for its artistic than scholarly merit.
[4] Rudolf Till (1911–1979), a German philologist and SS Ahnenerbe scholar, gained prominence under the National Socialist regime. Though efforts by ambassador von Mackensen to purchase the manuscript failed, Till was granted special access to it for research purposes.
[5] F. Niutta, “Sul Codice esinate di Tacito,” Quaderni di storia 43 (1996): 173–202. This article is notable for reproducing original diplomatic documents.
[6] See Canfora, pp. 68–69 and p. 87 note 131, with reference to Hitler’s Tischgespräche. On the Maori, see B. Mees, The science of the swastika (Central European University Press, 2008), p. 112. Notable also is Canfora’s mention of the 1934 Mussolini–Rosenberg dispute over national achievements.
[7] J. Davey, G. Spring, G. (2020). “Is ancestry, not natron, an explanation for fair-haired children in Greco-Roman Egypt?,” Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology 16.2 (2020): 207–215.
[8] M. Obschonka et al., “Roma Eterna? Roman rule explains regional well-being divides in Germany,” Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 8 (2025): 100214.