the domain of their influence: Urd (the Past), Verdande (the Present), and Skuld (the Future) supervise, as it were, the judgment place of the gods where they meet in council at the sacred well, Urdharbrunn, at the foot of the ash tree Yggdrasil. It is interesting to note how their influence is reflected and depicted by Shakespeare's genius in Macbeth, where the three witches surely, though perhaps unconsciously, derive their origin from the Norse Norns. In the witches' kitchen in Goethe's Faust is brewed likewise the charm that controls the fateful lives of Faust and Gretchen.

CAPTURE OF THUSNELDA
After the painting by H Konig

It is in the period of Roman attack that we meet for the first time agreat royal character, Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius, the liberator of Germania from a foreign yoke. Her history is the oldest Teutonic love story. Betrothed to another man, she is by force carried away by Arminius from her father Segestes, the friend of the Romans. Betrayed to the latter under Drusus Germanicus, she is captured. Inspired more by the spirit of her husband than by that of her father--no tear, no complaint or entreaty came from Thusnelda's lips at her capture. The news of the capture of his wife and of her slavery exasperated Arminius to mad rage. But in vain he flew to her rescue. With her son and her brother Segimunt she adorned the triumph of Drusus, while traitor Segestes looked on.

Under such circumstances the elevation of woman among the Teutons was more of a religious than of a social character. The Teuton considered woman as a physically weak but spiritually strong being, who had a just claim to protection and reverence. Though it is true that women prophetesses, like Veleda and Albruna with their far-reaching influence, were regarded rather as semi-divine beings than as ordinary women, and though the legal status of woman was thoroughly subordinated to that of man, being in fact about equal to that of a minor child, yet her honor and chastity were held sacred, and her intellectual gifts were highly prized. Her natural physical weakness began to be her strength, and her lack of legal rights was compensated for by her great spiritual influence in family and society.

The potential and inherent virtue, in the Latin sense, and the physical as well as moral vigor of Teutonic men began to assert itself earlier than among many other races further advanced in civilization. It rose unconsciously from the stage of crude sensuality to a free humanity. But we must in no wise modernize the single trait of the ancient veneration of woman, as mentioned above. Though harshness and cruelty were yet the order of the day, nevertheless, gradually the cruel tenets of primitive law began to be softened and modified in practice by many exceptions. This occurred especially in the higher levels of primitive society. The natural affections arising from family ties and blood relationship steadily transformed woman's status in fact, if not in law. What the dim, though growing intellect of the man, trained only for war and the hunt, could not compass, the natural reasoning power of woman, her natural womanly prudence, did accomplish. Concessions regarding the purchase money, which originally subjected her absolutely to the buyer, were made in her favor; the purchase of her body and soul became gradually the acquisition of the right to protect her; the husband's power over his wife's body became more limited; her immolation with her dead husband fell into disuse; the widow's right over her children, even her male children, arose and increased. Womanly power and influence made many a free man dependent, regardless of law; women began to exert a tremendous influence over their husbands, their tribes, their state formations. All the Roman sources preserved to us prove that when the Romans, after the conquest of Gaul, entered upon the gigantic task of subjugating the Germans, women played a prominent part in the political upheaval which then occurred.

It is in the period of Roman attack that we meet for the first time a great royal character, a tragic type of a historical German woman: Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius (Hermann), prince of the Cherusci, the liberator of Germania from a foreign yoke. Her history is the oldest Teutonic love story. History, legend, and poetry have vied in idealizing and immortalizing her. Betrothed to another man, she is by force carried away by Arminius from her father Segestes, Arminius's political adversary, the friend of the Romans. Betrayed to the latter under Drusus Germanicus, she is captured. "Inspired more by the spirit of her husband than by that of her father no tear, no complaint or entreaty came from Thusnelda's lips at her capture; with her hands clasped over her bosom, she looked down silently at her pregnant body. The news of the capture of his wife and of her slavery exasperated Arminius to mad rage. But in vain he flew to her rescue. She was carried to Rome and there bore Thumelicus. With her son and her brother Segimunt she adorned the triumph of Drusus, while the traitor Segestes looked on, as son, daughter, and grandson walked in chains before the carriage of the triumphator." Indeed, Strabo, the celebrated Greek geographer, confirms the story in his Geographica (vii, i, 4): "To them, conquerors of Varus in the Teutoburg forest, Drusus Germanicus owed a splendid triumph at which the foremost enemies were carried personally in triumph: Segimuntos, son of Segestes, chieftain of the Cherusci, and his sister Thusnelda, with Thumelicus, her three years' old son. Segestes, however, who from the beginning had not shared his son's policy, but had rather passed to our side, overwhelmed with honors, beheld how those who ought to have been dearest to him, walked in chains." Here Johannes Scherr makes the pertinent remark that, eighteen centuries before Napoleon had founded the Rhenish Confederacy, there were already in existence princes of that Confederacy; that is, traitors to the German cause.

How long Thusnelda outlived the disgrace is unknown. It is reported, however, that, to accomplish the revenge of the Romans, Thumelicus was trained to be a gladiator at Ravenna, if nothing worse. Gottling, in Thusnelda and Thumelicus, in Contemporaneous Pictures, 1856, seems to have proved that the beautiful marble statue of a German woman in the Loggia de' Lanzi at Florence represents Arminius's wife bearing herself with a wonderful majesty to impress the Romans with her regality.

Now, in contrast to Thusnelda's strength, we have Bissula, a picture of Germanic grace. Ausonius, a poet of the late Roman period, sketches the portrait of this German maiden a prisoner who had been captured in the expeditions of Emperor Valentinianus I. against the Alemanni on the Neckar and Upper Rhine. She fell as booty to the poet, who stood high in pedagogical and political offices. The beauty and grace of this charming Alemannian maiden contrast strangely with the majesty and heroism and tragic bitterness of Armin's wife. The slave Bissula becomes a queen, as the queen had become a slave. Ausonius speaks with enthusiastic tenderness of her shining countenance, her blue eyes and blonde hair. "Art possesses no means," he says, "to imitate so much grace."

The ancient Teutonic woman is, in general, represented as beautiful in countenance and form. Her rich, reddish-blond, flowing hair became the envy and imitation of the Roman ladies of fashion. Ovid and