Excerpt from Stories From German History: From Ancient Times to the Year 1648 Pontius Pilate, the judge who delivered Christ to suffer death at the hands of the Jews. Now the Romans were ever a warlike and ambitious race, and they sought to extend the empire won by Julius Caesar, never resting from their labour of conquest, never seeking content in the blessings of peace. And having subdued many tribes in Gaul, they found themselves confronted by the race to which they gave the name of Germans. The territory of the Germans was large, extending from the frozen Baltic and the North Sea southward to the Danube, and from the Rhine to the Vistula and even beyond, into the land which we now call Russia. Impenetrable forests covered the land; huge oak, pine, and beech trees formed giant barriers which were rendered the more mysterious by the dense fog and mist peculiar to that damp, cold country. And through the gloomy forests, underneath the giant trees, flowed great rivers, with here and there waterfalls and torrents which gave sound and life to the vast wilderness. But in the desolate tracts that lay far remote from these large rivers, and from the cultivated lands, the country was mainly swamp where black mud oozed from moss and rushes, and silence brooded over the misty scene. Imagination could conceive no land more desolate than the grey, cold forests of ancient Germany. Wolves and big brown bears lurked in the shadows, huge wild oxen emerged to drink at the rivers, fierce boars multiplied undisturbed under the cover, and in the air eagle and falcon wheeled and screamed above their nests among the rocks. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.