Tacitus's Germania was written centuries before Beowulf became an oral poem or a written text. There are ways it can serve as a helpful guide to the culture shown in the poem, however. Read the two works closely to discover some ways you can map the actions and speeches of the characters in Beowulf onto the descriptions of the Germanic cultural practices described so vividly by Tacitus. Then write a good paper describing how Tacitus can help you understand the later poem. Are there some things that Tacitus gets wrong or that changed in the intervening years?