Vegetius and Montescieu

[eugene]

According to Vegetius (I 2), northern people are better warriors in comparison with southern. Why did he think so? What were the origins of this strange, Montescieu-sounding theory?

[Jona Lendering]

According to Vegetius (I 2), northern people are better warriors in comparison with southern. Why did he think so? What were the origins of this strange, Montescieu-sounding theory?

It's as old as the hills. You can find it in the prologue of Caesar's Gallic War: the Belgians are the bravest of all Gauls, because they live at greatest distance of the civilized Roman world with its weakening influences, and closest to the (even more barbarous) Germans. The farther you go to the north, the more barbarian the people are, and the more braver. Therefore, the Julio-Claudians hired Batavians as bodyguard.

Caesar did not invent it, though. See Herodotus 4.17-18"

West of the seaport at the mouth of the Borysthenes (Dnieper) which lies in the middle of the Scythian coastline - the first people are the Graeco-Scythian tribe called Callipidae, and their neighbors to the eastward are the Alizones. Both these peoples resemble the Scythians in their way of life, and also grow grain for food, as well as onions, leeks, lentils, and millet.
North of the Alizones are agricultural Scythian tribes, growing grain not for food but for export.
Beyond these are the Neuri, and north of the Neuri the country, so far as we know, is uninhabited. [...] Beyond [the uninhabited country] live the Maneaters - who have no connexion with the Scythians but are a quite distinct race.

Again, the more you get to the north, the less human, the more barbarian, and (implicit) braver.

Here you can find a piece I wrote about it. It's the first chapter of a book on the Romans in the Low Countries, but the principle -we have opinions about foreign cultures that influence are perception- still holds,

[Epictetus]

I've heard it jokingly said that this idea grew from the sack of Rome in the 4th century BC and was continuously reinforced by ongoing experience.

Indeed, Tacitius mentions this experience:

Between the beginning and end of that long period [210 years till the second consulship of Trajan] there have been many mutual losses: neither Samnite nor Carthaginian, neither Spain nor Gaul, nor even the Parthians have taught us more lessons. The German fighting for liberty has been a keener enemy than the absolutism of Arsaces. What taunt, indeed, has the East for us, apart from the overthrow of Crassus...? But the Germans routed or captured Carbo and Cassius and Aurelius Scaurus and Servilius Caepio and Maximus Mallius, and wrested five consular armies in one campaign from the people of Rome, and even from a Caesar wrested Varus and three legions with him. Nor was it without paying a price that Marius smote them in Italy, and Julius of happy memory in Gaul, and Drusus, Nero, and Germanicus in their own homes... on the opportunity offered by our dissensions and by civil war, they carried the legions' winter quarters by storm and even aspired to the Gallic provinces...

Tacitus, Germania, 37