page_title: Aesti
section_title: Tacitus
hierarchical_section_title: Aesti / Historical sources / Tacitus
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Roman Empire in 125 during the reign of emperor Hadrian. Projection Lambert azimuthal-equal area. Central latitude: 45° N, central longitude: 20° E. X, Y origin offset - 0 Datum: ETRS89 Sources The physical map was made using the following public domain sources: Topography: NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM30) data Shoreline, lakes and rivers: derived from Natural Earth data Additional references for the map content: Tacitus, Germania (ca. 100) Ptolemy, Geographia (ca. 140) Atlante storico DeAgostini, Instituto Geografico DeAgostini, 1998. pg. 35-41. Historischer Weltatlas, Dr. Walter Leisering, Marix Verlag, 2011. pg. 26-27 Történelmi világatlasz, Cartographia Kiadó, 2005. pg. 20-21. The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome by Christopher Scarre, Penguin Historical Atlases, 1995. pg. 81. Software used GIS: Open JUMP GIS (open source): http://www.openjump.org/ GRASS GIS (open source): http://grass.osgeo.org/ Graphics editors: Inkscape (open source): http://inkscape.org/ GIMP (open source): http://www.gimp.org/
context_page_description: The Aesti were an ancient people first described by the Roman historian Tacitus in his treatise Germania. According to Tacitus, the territory of Aesti was located somewhere east of the Suiones.
context_section_description: The ancient writers, beginning with Tacitus, who was the first Roman author to mention them in his Germania, provide very little information on the Aestii. Although Tacitus never travelled to Magna Germania himself and only recorded information he had obtained from others, the short ethnographic excursus below is the most detailed ancient account of the Aestii that we have:
  Upon the right of the Suevian Sea the Aestian nations reside, who use the same customs and attire with the Suevians; their language more resembles that of Britain. They worship the Mother of the Gods. As the characteristic of their national superstition, they wear the images of wild boars. This alone serves them for arms, this is the safeguard of all, and by this every worshipper of the Goddess is secured even amidst his foes. Rare amongst them is the use of weapons of iron, but frequent that of clubs. In producing of grain and the other fruits of the earth, they labour with more assiduity and patience than is suitable to the usual laziness of Germans. Nay, they even search the deep, and of all the rest are the only people who gather amber. They call it glesum, and find it amongst the shallows and upon the very shore. But, according to the ordinary incuriosity and ignorance of Barbarians, they have neither learnt, nor do they inquire, what is its nature, or from what cause it is produced. In truth it lay long neglected amongst the other gross discharges of the sea; till from our luxury, it gained a name and value. To themselves it is of no use: they gather it rough, they expose it in pieces coarse and unpolished, and for it receive a price with wonder. (Germania, chapter XLV).
  The placement of the Tacitean Aestii is based primarily on their association with amber, a popular luxury item during the life of Tacitus, with known sources at the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The Baltic amber trade, which appears to have extended to the Mediterranean Sea, has been traced by archaeologists back to the Nordic Bronze Age; its major center was in the region of Sambia.
  This trade probably existed before the historical Trojan War in the 13th century BCE, as amber is one of the substances in which the palace of Menelaus at Sparta was said to be rich in Homer's The Iliad.
caption: The approximate location of the Aestii purported by the Roman historian Tacitus, north east of the Roman Empire near the Baltic Sea.
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