From what you describe it sounds like Tacitus was dehumanizing the Germanic people for not being as metropolitan as Romans, not talking about fires. Tacitus al

From what you describe it sounds like Tacitus was dehumanizing the Germanic people for not being as metropolitan as Romans, not talking about fires. Tacitus also wrote of the Great Fire of Rome, so it would be weird for him to argue that fires were an argument for urbanization. His perspective was not ours, in his era cities sometimes turned into infernos. Something only the quite elderly have experienced in our era.