ABSTRACT
IN the same way as Latin and Greek writers state that the Goths enjoy a high degree of skill and circumspection in arms and military training, so Gothic writers, too, say that at home and abroad their people possess practical accomplishments in many useful subjects, especially knowledge of the stars, by which they have the special ability to foretell the future, 1 as the attached picture partly demonstrates. We see here an old and a young man each holding a staff marked with Gothic characters. From these engraved sticks we can perceive the implements with which, in very ancient times before books were in use, they found out with unfailing success the properties and influences of the moon, the sun, and the other heavenly bodies, a skill shared by nearly all present-day inhabitants of the North. The staff is adapted to the height of a man, with the number of weeks in a year on each side, and for each week seven Gothic letters, by which the golden numbers and, after the acceptance of Christianity, the dominical letters are marked off in the vernacular by characters. 2
Training in arms
Skill in the stars
Description and property of staff
Golden number, dominical letter, and lunations are declared by staves
